cut-corner

    there was a certain feeling along the narrow streets and stiletto alleys.  it was the second day of December and the dusk hovered steadily around too-warm-for-a-jacket-degrees.  a man dismounted from a still-rolling bicycle and wipe the sweat from his brow.  a dribble of snot went along for the ride.  the dusk hovered steadily at don't-bike-wearing-a-jacket Celsius, and the asphalt exhaled a laden breath of day cares, what-for rush, eight-hour frustrations and twelve-hour delights deferred.  there was a certain implication in mute glances and barely licked lips as another man, seated outside the café on the corner, watched the first man walk in to said shop and softly request vodka in the coffee and cream to boot.  there are certain stories that draw in a short breath, lips parted over white teeth in anticipation of a secret spilled, and then think better of it all, and leave only the delicious shiver of a need unfulfilled as they contemplate the ripples of restrained words on a glass of Italian soda.
    "My kingdom for a cigarette," said the second man to the first as he settled into a chair for a white Russian and a smoke.  the first half-glanced over and readied a noncommittal "no" before eyes headed off language at the pass and turned the truncated sound into a weak cough.
    "Certainly," stumbled out the response.  hands clumsily rooted around inside of a purple leopard-print bag, fingers fumbled excitedly for purchase on two slim cylinders, eyes darted somewhat nervously from pack to coffee to interlocutor and back.  meaning is seldom as easily found as a lighter, so the lighter served as a surrogate, the cigarette as a stalling tactic, inhalation and combustion as cheap imitations of coherent thought and successful expression, as number two gave thanks to number one, who in turn gave confused gratitude to whatever serendipity had landed him next to a handsome stranger with a need easily fulfilled, and on a lonely and uncertain evening.  presently, when internal monologue had almost built a strong enough springboard to leap unfettered into the brighter airs of the spoken word, a clarinet riff sounded from the bag and scattered the whole nascent colossus back into pebbles and sand.
    "Excuse me," said number one with a healthy hint of annoyance.  he had already turned his attention from any forthcoming response to manipulate a small, balefully glowing screen into revealing its contents, a disinterested prestidigitation that started at the fingers and spread quickly to the face.  an erstwhile lover's sister, seeking the company of souls named Molly and Cid.  of all the boneheaded impositions: an attempt at a drug deal, seeking merchandise he'd lost the art to acquire some years since.  he did not attempt a reply for fear of losing the tenuous thread of attention which bound him to the tousled man in the seat opposite, but that one had already turned to resume a listless conversation with a frumpy girl pacifying a distempered dog.  he sighed, and put down the phone just in time to unwitting, serendipitously hear the man's last remark:
    "And then the stupid fuck had the nerve to send his sister asking if I'd sell some of the best acid I've had since The Crystal Method was a household name.  The nerve of some twinks, eh?"  This last volley he aimed panoramically, beginning as the girl turned to slap the dog away from a raspberry scone and swinging a full 180 degrees to find its terminus on the first's face in the precise moment that it collapsed from a mask of disbelief into a barely concealed, smoldering ruin of thwarted hope.
    "Pardon me," said he, rising from his seat distractedly to pull his jacket back on, almost departing before he recalled his pack of cigarettes, which the second had begun to eye with mild avarice.  the smoking, decimated remnants flared into a stony wall of silence.  he slid the box into his pack, nodded fraternally to the second, and rounded the corner to the busier street.  the text would go unanswered as a certain feeling that crept along the gutters stretched out, reptilian, and laid itself down beneath rotten leaves and midden detritus to wait out the cooling night for the inevitable sunrise.

a brief message from Alfonsina Storni

Subconciencia
Has hablado, has hablado y me he dormido.
Pero duermo y no duermo, porque siento
que estoy bajo el supremo pensamiento:
vivo, viviré siempre y he vivido.

Has hablado, has hablado y he caído
en un marasmo... cede hasta el aliento.
Tiempo atrás, en las sombras, me he perdido:
estoy ciega. No tengo sentimiento.

Como el espacio soy, como el vacío.
Es una sombra todo el cuerpo mío
y puedo como el humo levantarme:

Oigo soplos etéreos... sobrehumanos...
Sujétame a la tierra con tus manos,
que si el viento se mueve ha de llevarme.

Subconscience
You've talked, you've talked and I've fallen asleep
But I sleep and do not sleep, because I perceive
that I am beneath the highest thought:
I live, I shall always live, and I have lived.

You've talked, you've talked and I have fallen
into a paralysis... even my breath stops.
Some time ago, in the shadows, I got lost:
I am blind. I have no feeling.

I am like space, like the void.
A shadow is my entire body
and I can rise like smoke:

I hear ethereal sighs... superhuman...
Bind me to the earth with your hands,
for if the wind blows, it must carry me away.

translated 6th Nov 2013

further deliberation

"but this," he gestured helplessly at the letter crumpled on the counter next to the stove, "I just can't understand..."

the small iron assembly on the stove began to burble and hiss. he pressed his fingers to his eyes, and watched thoughts emerge swimming in the warm saline darkness. a hope that had gently lain trailing atop the waters grew heavy and broke the surface tension to sink slowly in a coiled spiral, a hungry twister's tip seeking the airless deeps.

she pressed her lips into a mute line, exhaled through her nose, and glanced sideways at the clock on the wall. its dim insistent staccato stuck and then strained as if clearing its throat, minute hand jumping angrily in place until with a sharp click it regained the customary rhythm.

"well," he gestured to the folded letter laid neatly beside the coffee service, "some stories write themselves, and all the characters don't appear in every act." the steam gasped forth from the spout of the small percolator as out tumbled two cups of coffee. he waved her to hers and carried his to the front door to stare out into the brittle light of the freezing afternoon.

amid watery shadows the doorway was a burning rectangle framing an immobile, gouged-out blackness. she moved the empty pot from the heat and fixed her eyes on his occluding stillness as she held the paper from the tray over the unwavering flame.

the hissing candescence rendered the contents forever irrelevant, wordlessly concurring as she whispered "a caesura."

6er: deliberation

"a caesura," she said simply.
he turned from the stove and looked at her inquisitively.
"brief pause, you know: do like the natives, let a full minute pass before you respond."
"malarky," he sharply retorted. a moment later, Understanding cleared its throat.
he looked chagrined as the coffee began to percolate.

leakage to the left

When Jon Smith was hired as executive director of the French Market Corporation in late September, he came into the job with some big ideas and harsh words that aren't sitting well with some of the vendors in the 200-year old flea market.

"200-year old", though it obviously modifies the market, creeps back to "vendors" in reading this sentence, and makes one think of highly venerable and agitated peddlers from 1813 going into fits of apoplexy.

letter to a cousin

epistles sent to dead men's daughters
quite rightly; our last names rhyme
trees with roots in cloudbank quarters
all earth gives way to air, in time.

Zhenya in the tropics

 the wind had been mild all morning, but Yevgenia stood at a second story window and frowned. a mighty gust tore up the avenue, sharply convulsing the trees, smooshing her face back and up. cue the stationary roller-coaster. an unsecured cat atop a marble-rimmed peristyle in the adjacent park gave an indignant squawk, fumbled vainly for purchase, and toppled off into the rhododendrons below. 

she felt a momentary pang when the sudden rain came, drenching, insistent, yet soft; pang turned into reverie in an open window as the wind sliced the rain into mist through the mosquito screen. how auspicious the day a cold front rushes down to meet an oncoming hurricane.

thorough and inclusive, aw yeah

the CDC tested St. Bernard water supplies after a death from naegleria fowleri earlier this year, and WWL reported on it.  included in the list of "DO" actions to take with your water is this gem:

"DO use only boiled and cooled, distilled, or sterile water for making sinus rinse solutions for neti pots or performing ritual ablutions."


which I'm sure are a daily occurrence in the Parish.

Meanwhile, in Cuba...

Independent March in Front of the Capitol Demands Gay Marriage -- Lilianne Ruiz

translation submitted to and cross-posted from Translating Cuba

Posted on July 20, 2013

Independent LGBT activists marched before the Capitol this weekend — photo by  Lilianne Ruiz

HAVANA, Cuba, July 2nd 2013, Lilianne Ruiz / www.cubanet.org — In concurrence with Gay Pride Day, celebrated worldwide every 28th of June, a dozen activists marched past the Capitol last Saturday, led by Leannes Imbert Acosta, director of the LGBT community’s Rights Observatory. Afterwards, they continued the march towards the Paseo del Prado, carrying the rainbow flag.

At this event, the protesters wore slogans supporting marriage between persons of the same sex.  Imbert Acosta had this to say:

“This year the march brings up the topic of marriage between persons of the same sex.  We are announcing the beginning of a campaign to collect at least ten thousand signatures, in order to later present a legal initiative before the National Assembly of Popular Power to grant the right to enter into matrimony to same-sex couples.”

The LGBT Observatory of Cuba since 2011 has called for the march around Gay Pride Day, not only for people in the LGBT community, but also for any citizen who identifies with the cause of ending discrimination on basis of sexual orientation.  Regarding this and other rights, Imbert Acosta stated:

“What we are asking for is not the right to be gays or lesbians… We demand that, being gays and lesbians, the State and society recognize the totality of our rights. One does not lose one’s religious dimension, nor political, nor legal personality by expressing a homosexual orientation. Sexuality is one human dimension, just as are all the others.  Historically we have been discriminated against for cultural, religious, and political reasons.  Nonetheless, a homosexual person must also have the right to share in culture, religion, and politics, as well as enter into matrimony, in the same way and for the same reasons as would a heterosexual couple.”

Asked about the role of the CENESEX official (National Center of Sexual Education) in this sense, Acosta comments:

“Mariela Castro, daughter of the Cuban president, serves more as a government spokesperson to the LGBT community than as a representative of the LGBT community to the government.  It is a means of maintaining control.  Hence many times the title of political group stigmatizes us because we are not in agreement with the Center that she directs.  Nevertheless, we have tried to build bridges for dialogue and they are the ones who have refused, alleging that we visit diplomatic offices, to which we respond that Mrs. Castro also does the same.  We have talked with transsexuals who are affiliated with the center and they tell us that they recognize that CENESEX does not authentically represent the interests of the LGBT community, but they allege that they need their operation (surgical sex change).

“On the other hand, Mrs. Castro does call on the march for World Day Against Homophobia to dance the conga with slogans in support of socialism, which as we all know is the political system which her family heads.  So, she is making a political campaign with the interests of the community.”

Mariela Castro is currently deputy of the National Assembly of Popular Power.  She has expressed on multiple occasions that CENESEX already put forth a draft bill before the National Assembly, “But,” comments Imbert Acosta, “in every case, it only contemplates civil recognition, not marriage as such.  And that is another of the matters that we wish to clarify today.  At the least, we, the non-officially allied LGBT activists of the island and many members of the community, want marriage, not just a civil union law which would leave us where we are situated, in a situation of disadvantage in matters of rights compared to heterosexuals.”

Although it is true that the authorities have not intervened directly against the protesters, it is known that they have made warnings to possible participants to keep them from marching.

A police warning can discourage many in a country with iron control by the State.

By Lilianne Ruiz

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

of Latin deponent verbs in Parasite Eve OST lyrics

A curious recurring theme of video game and anime soundtracks is the song that speaks a different language from that of singer, perhaps also the composer.  This has happened in Spanish, Italian, and Russian, to name a few, but Latin is a repeat favorite.  My oh my, can Latin yield results from distressingly beautiful to merely distressing.  This depends not just on the inflection (or lack) of the singer but also the skill of each writer.  The latter may seem to get off easier: if not having to sing weren't advantage enough, lifting non-contextual but stirring phrases from literature is a perennially beloved cheat. 

It is also easier.  In perfect fairness, there are brave original compositions that have a grand sweep all their own.  But the details, ever a place of devilry, are even more Satanic when a writer's love of pretty new words meets Latin's schizophrenic vocabulary, mostly obedient to a prolific set of rules, and please please please mind the exceptions (they are manifold).  Mostly the errors will go unnoticed, for in the average course of playing or watching no one will hear the Latin and grab paper and pen to begin parsing.  Yet there will always be pedants in the audience, some of whom will necessarily be classicists, and their curiosity once roused does not abate.

I am a pedant.

I was curious when I heard the song Somnia Memorias from the Parasite Eve OST.
This is because the song, composed by Yoko Shimomura and sung by Shani Rigsbee, has lyrics in intermittent Spanish and Latin.  The lyrics can be found here with a running translation.  The letras en español are simple, beginning with an existential wanderlust dissociative fit which segues into a mild attack of Spanish emo before careening into a lesson about coming to terms with your apocalyptic fever dreams.

Fine and well.  But ah, the Latin.  It gives the song its title, and takes peace from the pedants.  It begins innocuously enough: ultra somnia, ultra memorias -- "beyond dreams, beyond memories" (or "on the other side of", if repetition annoys).
Now see Grammar and Orthography conspire to introduce the hosts of Confusion: 
arbor sacra, mala dulcem, maturum ferens

Though the commas would have you parse it one way, the inflections would have it otherwise: "a sacred tree bearing sweet, ripe fruit" makes the most sense, but if mala is a neuter plural accusative, which it is, it wouldn't be dulcem nor maturum, and so it instead tells us of "the sacred evil tree carrying a pleasant early thing" which, if less mystical, is no less mystifying.  

But the confusion deepens verses later, when the lyrics seem to abandon Latin altogether:
Alicubi apud memorias longinquas, aliquid intra me espergiselt
"Somewhere in the view of distant memories, something within me"...
Is a word that proves one of two things: either no official lyrics were ever released and the transcription is in error, or the composer completely invented a word, and did not even bother to dress it in a toga.

So which is it?  A pedant, after compulsive repetitions of six seconds of the song, will notice that the word sounds like espergesit: closer, but still not a word... unless the pedant has a decent dictionary, which will reveal a curious verb:

expergiscor, expergisci, experrectus sum  -- 3rd, dep:  awake, bestir oneself

Any disciple of Wheelock can tell you: the deponent verbs are active in meaning, but passive in form.  Now it is evident!  Our transcription underlined above is a strangely Late Latin manhandling of giving the deponent verb an active form.  It reads expergiscit in some lyric writer's forgotten notebook, and makes poppa Cato circumvolve in his fields, groaning a correction: expergiscitur.  But what could defunct rotary Romans say to the next line?

Amorem indulgentiam macroem dolorem conguoscebit 

Ah yes.  Love, concession, and sorrow are direct objects.  Repeat listenings do not help descry what macroem could be.  Surely another third declension accusative? Maiorem? An older person? Or big, great? Great big sorrow? An older person? Yes, then -- love, concession, old people and sorrow, or just great big sorrow, they are the direct objects of... something that will happen in the future!  Cognoscebit, could it be?  Ah, but no, that'd have to be cognoscet.  We leave this lying by the roadside, romantically.  Omnia terminabit: it will end everything.

I can only close by noting that the final line in Latin begins with a spelling error:
luro ut esses prope me

To mean "I swear that you were near me", it would have to read iuro.  Or juro, if you truly insist.

Can you spot the wild subjunctive?

morning noise

tuna niçoise
trituration
tiramisu
treachery
tessellated
thyroidal
tone-deaf
titillating
tulle

we are pregnant

a man turns to me, arm around a girl thick with foetus, who chitters and giggles with the girls around the high table but does not take a proffered jello shot.  he accepts his and removes the lid from the tiny cup. the follicles in my nose wither at the draft of alcohol fume like bus exhaust. a moment and he has polished the cup clean, saying with a dopy, sugar-glazed grin in no general direction at all: "We're pregnant!"

I do not recognize him.  If I ever knew the girl, it was two trimesters and a poor dye job hence.  She smiles thinly at me, and excuses herself to the ladies' room. A muffled, mumbling loudspeaker informs us that now, Leonora Borealis will sing us… something: "nur, Lirrynrruh Buhriyella gunnahingalee Blerstercut", we are assured. A sloshy short woman stumbles up to the stage on powerful legs, clad in a diaphanous yellow dress which outlines her gracious and unkempt pubic hair. The karaoke track of Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla" begins in tinny earnest.

The fellow pulls deeply from a plastic cup of beer, and repeats through foam and bubbles:
"We're pregnant!"
His face has begun to resemble an over-boiled potato, and I picture this man suffering morning sickness directly, horking up his stale beer and chicken biscuits at 7:13am, and then the coffee and second round of chicken biscuits at 8:49. I mean to inquire after his gastrointestinal health, but he laughs as Liranova Barbarella belts out a surprising, throaty growl:

"Widda puppusful grimmiss anna terribah sound
He pullsa spitty high tenshun whyers daown"

He looses a guffaw, loud, jarring, and beery. I notice the girl has not returned, and I picture him achy and bloated, waddling to the john every quarter hour, keeping proximity to bathrooms much as sex offenders keep distance from schools. I wonder how long he has been pregnant for, if the gestation is of differing length and severity, if it began concurrent with hers. They are the both of them pregnant! The implications of plurality demand attention, not just for the curiosity of the person, but the biological sciences, and natural order.   

"Do you get much morning sickness?" I simply must know.

He laughs, and refills the plastic cup from a pitcher on the table. Another round of jello shots has arrived, all of them uncapped and reeking Mephistophelian vapors. The girl is returning from the bathroom, but halts just before the table as a look of pure nausea sweeps her face, and she makes for the toilet again.  The man does not notice, but responds to me, "When I overdo it!" and swallows the unnaturally blue gelatinous cube.
Learaneara Bree Ella punctuates this magisterially:

"Ohhh no, DARE GO TOE-KEY-OH
oh-oh GAHZILLAH!
yee-eeaa-ah"

He swallows, and begins listening to another girl across the table. I cannot hear them over the sultry titanette gyrating on the stage to the instrumental break, microphone held suggestively to her chest. But then the man is cackling at whatever has been said, clapping his hands vigorously, and leans back on his stool. He slaps his thighs and, reclining too far, slides right off the back of his seat squarely onto his tailbone.

A short groan escapes him, and I see that the girl has returned from the bathroom behind him and is looking down at him. With his paunch now gathered round as he sits knees-up on the floor, I see him as a suddenly deflated ball, frayed and beaten in a flimsy gown, on his way to a gooch reconstruction after a particularly nasty parturition trauma. I realize now that the girl is laughing to herself, albeit quietly, as he moans and leans forward, rubbing his lower back. He rises slowly, heavily, as if pained with a dull, leaden ache, and gingerly returns to the stool. 

"Owww… I think…" he begins, and catches a breath. She has sat down again, and is talking low and fast to the two girls at her side, one or the other at times barking a short, unmistakeable laugh. 

"I think I gotta…" he begins again, and stops short. 
"Go?" she asks. He nods, as does she. He rises and shuffles to the door, while another girl at table wears a smile like a hyena. Learner-A-Bury Hellas grips her gown at the left thigh, rocks backward, and roars triumphantly:

"HISSORY SHOWS a-GEN AN a-GEN
how NATURRE POINS OWT da folly of men-nn
GAH-ZIL-LA!"

To ponderous, thunderous applause.

Miss Rhoda Bee

It was 7:51 a.m. of a Sunday when he first crossed paths with Miss Rhoda Bee. The parking lot of the grocery was rich with a spring symphony of birds and circling cars, all made mazy and gracious in the mellifluous light of an April morning, and he felt expansive and warm for the first time in days. He would have coffee soon, and maybe even a banana.
Beneath an old crape myrtle not yet in bloom, she stood resolute, aflame in wrath, a five-foot colossus -- excluding her hair, a sentry tower of twists and sharp outcroppings, itself vaguely foreboding. she roundly, colorfully berated a father who had sat his child in a buggy festively made to resemble a police car by way of pieces of cardboard zip-tied to the sides.
"I'm just..." he began, waving one hand halfheartedly, but she cut him off, firing as might a Gatling.
"Just getting young Junior acquainted with the dominance hierarchy whose lineage he's been so lucky to have? Readying his unknowing hands for the cold mercy of the department standard-issue? Or aren't you a police officer yourself?"
The man shook his head, looking hopelessly toward the grocery's cool, inviting entrance. Ah, reposeful heads of lettuce, cheery tomatoes, quiet tubers. She grew truly incensed.
"Ah, a happy turncoat, then! Familiarity breeding a rich complacency. Either gross or a simpleton, you!  Marring the tabula rasa with the hateful code of men! Tainting the easy freedom of innocence with the noxious repression that poisons the flower of life! And on the day you damned Saxons insist the Lord himself favors!" She drew in a breath here and stopped abruptly. He had drawn close to them, and stopped for a moment.
"The zip-ties even remind one of handcuffs," he offered reasonably.
Her glare went supernova. Her quarry had taken a vague resemblance to a turtle.
"Ah… but I'm a Unitarian?" the man ventured uncertainly. Apoplexy ensued.
"And all of this from a damned hippy-dippy bohemian bourgeois animist!" she spat.  "Sacre merd de chevre! Fils de putin! Bonté! You, sir, are a shameless protozoan, and I pray that whenever you go seeking your quinoa, fair-trade certified organic Brazilian cocoa, and kefir, you find only Cream of Wheat, Hershey's, and drinkable yogurt for the lunchboxes of the youth condemned to follow in your sad footsteps."
The child looked uncertain, but amused. The man nodded, then blinked, as if astonished, and quickly wheeled the putative cop cart off, a refugee seeking sanctuary among the produce. She followed him with her withering stare.
He suddenly thought that he must also buy ginger ale. There was a hand-basket on the ground beneath the myrtle's branch pointing toward the entry. He nodded to her as he picked it up.
"Ma'am."



VII aprilis MMXIII scripta hoc plostro ante Rousem viso

epistle to a social worker

Kay-kay,

The days of late have had a surreal quality, almost as if a fog were burning off, but taking a measure of colour and saturation along with it.

Then I wake to find that things are still maraudingly vivid here in the Most Serene Republic of Atlantis-upon-Mississippi.

http://louisianavoice.com/2013/03/24/greenstein-pay-no-attention-to-the-man-behind-the-curtain-richard-cms-says-dhh-unresponsive-medicaid-questions-which-if-unanswered-could-cost-la-another-800-million/

Meanwhile: a communiqué from our Esteemed Directress.

Good morning all

I  made these cupcakes http://www.yourcupofcake.com/2013/03/lemon-mascarpone-cupcakes.html and will be selling them  today for  $1 each [a bargain because the cake lady by my house sells cupcakes for $2!) for our March of Dimes fundraising .   I also have a few  devils food with vanilla buttercream (and Cadbury eggs too). (24 total)

I am going to put the  all names of the Walk for Babies Team volunteers  in a basket  and draw one  name  to apply the $$ to.

If you would like to “reserve”  one of these cupcakes, shoot me an e-mail—first come, first served!

It is almost enough to make my heart weep, the sheer absurd poesy of it all.  Nero only raped burning Rome with his own theatrical compositions.  Eat your heart out!  Here we sit, a Bastille in the making (though not a shred so populist), and the Directress, instead of answering a few nice questions from the feds, bakes cake!

O, let them eat cake, sweet lemon mascarpone cupcake for babies, as little Brucie goes into the crucible!

Sometimes I wonder if the Latin American republics couldn’t take a lesson or two from us.

*identifying markers redacted from the letter.