|k| clippings: 2015-11-19 — little notes of the world

WORK

She gave him a small kick, he gave her one back, she punched his shoulder, he grabbed her arm, she tripped him, he pulled her down, she landed on him face to face, they rolled and rolled and rolled until laughter in the deep loamy leaves until hugging until he brushed her marble-y breast until he kept his hand there and until what was this what was this but here he was here she was here they were and there his breath and here hers and there his hand and here hers rolling and rolling up there the trees waving at them and the sky beyond like that the surface and this the sea.

—Barbara Ganley
—from “The Physics of Falling”
—found in Sonora Review (Issue 68)

WORD(S)

marmoreal /mar-MOR-ee-əl/. adjective. Resembling or made of marble. Cold, hard and smooth. If I spun wax, I’d be DJ Marmoreal. From Latin marmor (marble).

"Eyes brimming o’er and brow bowed down with lovey
Marmoreal neck and bosom uberous…
(Robert Browning)

“And to my surprise, I was comforted. Somehow, the great Nobodaddy in the sky reached down a marmoreal hand and laid it on my burning brow and soothed me.” (John Banville)

“God, she looked huge. Her crimson, purple wings, in flight, obscured the roof-tree of the Imperial Circus. Yet those marmoreal, immense arms and legs of hers, as they made leisurely, swimming movements through the air, looked palely unconvincing, as if arbitrarily tacked on to the bird attire.” (Angela Carter)

WEB

1. Dammit!

2. Crass materialism at its finest…because 70 years of copyright protection isn’t enough? » Anne Frank’s Diary Gains ‘Co-Author’ in Copyright Move

3. “Is marginalia, finally, truly marginal?” » Atlas of Interest: On the Hidden Life of Marginalia

4. I might need to play with this in a letter or two » A “masked letter” from 1777

5. Today in 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivers what has come to be seen—despite being just ten sentences long and initially receiving deeply partisan reactions—one of the most eloquent and influential political statements ever made: the Gettysburg Address. Now seems like one of those times politicians should take a few minutes to really read and think about Lincoln’s words, doesn’t it?

WATCH/WITNESS

Giang Dinh’s work is instantly recognizable and his short (5 minute) TEDx talk is wonderful: A simple fold, a thousand words | Giang Dinh

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader B. writes in on a visionary: “Engelbart is one of the great, under sung heroes of our time.”

• Reader J. catches me out on ‘enow’: "Well, first, I can’t believe you skipped the Rubaiyat (or: why am I the only one thinking of the Rubaiyat?)

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread — and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness —
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!"

• and more: “And then, on the history of ‘sleep music,’ one of my favorite Townes van Zandt stories. He said a record company asked him to make an album of lullabies. But then (he said) he realized that if it was any good, no one would ever hear the B side.”

• Reader S. had something to say about sleep music as well: “Your reference to Songs in the Key of Zzz reminded me of one of my favorite music compilations, Songs in the Key Of Z, an engrossing collection of outsider music. (Also a book by Irwin Chusid.) If you’ve never encountered the Shaggs, now’s your chance.”

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