As the proverbial hammer makes everything look like a nail, so too my restlessness casts a sad pallor on everything I see…

WORK

“Trains”

I am seduced by trains. When one moans in the night like some dragon gone lame, I rise and put on my grandfather’s suit. I pack a small bag, step out onto the porch, and wait in the darkness. I rest my broad-brimmed hat on my knee. To a passerby I’m a curious sight—a solitary man sitting in the night. There’s something unsettling about a traveler who doesn’t know where he’s headed. You can’t predict his next move. In a week you may receive a postcard from Haiti. Madagascar. You might turn on your answering machine and hear his voice amid the tumult of a Bangkok avenue. All afternoon you feel the weight of the things you’ve never done. Don’t think about it too much. Everything starts to sound like a train.

—David Shumate
—from The Floating Bridge

WORD(S)

glauque /glok/. adjective. Literally a sea-green color, glauque has become an untranslatable that implies a wrongness, an unnaturalness, an unhealthy quality. Something sad and disgusting; something murky and creepy; something shady, creepy and sordid.

“un regard glauque, un regard d’huitre”
“his gaze glauque, the eye of an oyster” (Cocteau on the ballet master Diaghilev)

“un buffet chinois? c’est glauque.”
“A Chinese buffet? It’s glauque.” (Anonymous)

WEB

1. Weird Al’s “Word Crimes” video is wonderful, but it’s everywhere, so I didn’t bother sharing it before. But this overly-serious response makes me think of people who thought Jonathan Swift was seriously proposing eating Irish infants.

2. A post, with many great examples, about about the use of books on book covers.

3. Masakazu Shirane and Saya Miyazaki’s giant kaleidoscope in a shipping container is trippy.

4. Call Me Ishmael is a novel way to celebrate books: readers call and leave voice mail messages about books they love, at least one of which is transcribed and presented each day. Call in!

5. Today in 1893, Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky—one of Russia’s great poets—was born. His poems are often long and political, neither of which are my cup of tea, but his observation in “A Cloud in Trousers” resonates with me:

   Formerly I believed
   books were made like this:
   a poet came,
   lightly opened his lips,
   and the inspired fool burst into song
   if you please!
   But it seems,
   before they can launch into a song,
   poets must tramp for days with callused feet,
   and the sluggish fish of the imagination
   flounders softly in the slush of the heart.
   And while, with twittering rhymes, they boil a broth
   of loves and nightingales,
   the tongueless street merely writhes
   for lack of something to shout or say.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader M inquires as to the point of the katexic Facebook page? First: a lot of people use Facebook. Second: katexic will hopefully encompass a few other projects in months to come. Third: I’m still unsure how to balance the various social media so they aren’t annoying. The bottom line: the newsletter is the thing. I want more subscribers, but I want readers, not just numbers…

I welcome comments, suggestions, thoughts, feedback and all manner of what-have-you. Just press ‘Reply’ or email to: clippings@katexic.com.

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