We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas” with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.
- Joan Didion
Monthly Archive for May, 2009
31 December, 1959
On the other hand, the qualities of a Roman senator don’t seem tied to a certain historical time, the same way Schelling showed that Romanticism is not a literary school belonging to a phase in the evolution of taste, but one of the permanent propensities of the human soul. The Jew of over eighty-two years old, the little retiree from Bucharest, proved, out of the blue, and in the simplest of ways, capable of authentic senatorial feelings.
After I told him how things happened, he spoke:
- Why did you come home, you fool? You gave them the impression that you’re hesitating, that there’s room for the possibility that you’re going to betray your friends. In business, when you ask for time to think, it means that you’ve accepted already. Under no circumstances are you to agree to be a witness for the prosecution. Come on, go right now.
I remember how he used to come home in the evenings in Pantelimon, how martial he looked on the step of the coach; when during the Troubles in 1919 he went through the factory workshops in uniform and with his sword drawn, but I’m inclined to believe that he is acting, for both our sakes, at least a little. I steal glances at him, I’m afraid to find that he’s posturing. I explain to him that I won’t find anybody there now, and that to go and sit with a suitcase at the Securitate’s gates until Monday is futile, this heroism being very close to buffoonery… And I feel worn out, and there’s still dinner to come. And I also explain to him what prison means in reality, that he’s old, he’ll be left alone with a very small pension; he should not expect charity from anyone; nor to receive any visits; and I’m also afraid; after all, I’m only asked to declare the truth; and we’ll never see each other again; I’ve already caused him trouble all his life, at least now at the end I should try to sweeten his days a little; and – to be honest – the prospect of prison, of suffering, and to top it all off, the thought of his misfortune horrify me.
Continue reading ‘From The Happiness Diary, by Nicolae Steinhardt’
My previous post has me thinking about an email I was sent by another SBA contributor, Pauric Holleran, in which he explained that it is possible to drink free every night of the week, so long as you are willing to attend artsy type functions that may not meet your minimum standards of entertainment. According to Pauric, this was explained to him by someone at a Some Blind Alleys reading where there was free wine. This is quite obvious, when you think about it.
I’m mentioning this because if anyone has the time to do this for a week straight (no nights off), and can write something interesting about it, I’ll publish it.
Send it to editor [ at ] someblindalleys.com
SBA contributor Adrian Duncan will be exhibiting some new drawings at the Joinery. The exhibit opens on Thursday, May 28. There’s free booze from 7 – 9. It runs for week. According to Adrian, the drawings were conceived after a recent trip from Cork City to his home in Co Longford.
Below is a section of one of the drawings. The full drawing, presumably, can be seen at the exhibit.
The idea of a Plugs section for the site came about around the same time as my ill-fated decision to include an Events Guide and Writers’ Resource Page. The idea was to have something I could regularly update, without the need for editing, and that would provide a distraction for people at work.
I know that the Plugs appear, at the moment, to be nothing more than quotes by famous writers, and to a certain extent that has a value, but it had always been my intent that the link (the author’s name at the end of the quotation) would be the plug’s reason for being.
The most interesting plug so far, in my opinion, is a video of performance art on the Nietzsche Plug, but the audio files of Barry Hannah’s readings – Hannah is a fine reader – are also pretty spectacular.
If you happen to run into any interesting websites or videos or audio clips, please send them my direction. Just send an email to editor [ at ] someblindalleys.com.
Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish.
– Eugene Ionesco
The following phrases are actual search terms people typed into Google to arrive at Some Blind Alleys. This represents all the weird things I could find in Google Analytics starting from November, barring about a hundred more terms including the word “crackhead.” I presume the majority of these people found the site by accident, but a few of them stuck around to read a little bit. In parentheses I have listed those terms which were used more than once.
Ed note: I have had to remove the crackhead terms because they were creating a confusingly high number of hits. You can email to receive the list, if you have any interest.
Additionally, the humor got rather shallow very quickly for the crackhead search terms.
The Non-Crackhead Search Terms
shoes for dogs in west island of montreal
smallest piano
spread her + leg + oil + “master”
tar gravel driveways
we circle around the boundaries of the earth
we offer false ceilings blinds -india -trade -mart
“capacity for love” “sound of music”
my bare tummy
romania “brown nipples”
alleyways as outdoor living room for community
blind cock ket west
bra strap falls off shoulder stories
chanting circle dublin
animal holocaust (2)
afraid of tongue
cherries rubies rubies cherries, what’s the difference
daylight between her legs
dump man fuking animals
i’m a binge drinker but when i stop i get itchy hands and feet. why?
japanese guy jerking
mattress to lay on ground when working under car
orafice that a reptile both urinates and deficates from
porn in prestonpans
rob hopkins too many sisters
same father blood test
some mothers have them arthur’s girlfriend
there are no absolute moral blind alleys
filled with hot sperm stories
flat philtrum children curse
francesca vernon
goat sheds in ireland
goats who suddenly go blind
grass roof houses
helen chandler begin center for visually impaired
how to get a thick drizzle of paint
how to read blind writing
i am a mistress poems
jeanne moore can you hear me?
move to estonia with no money
navy ship at rathmullan pier
overmuscled
pat+dowling+stalker
pier fishing techniques
punchlines on mosquito net
I’ve spent a lot of time in disagreement with myself over the question of an introduction to Some Blind Alleys. Should I speak for the content, or let the content speak for itself? I think the latter is the decision one ought to come to, if one has the luxury. There is far more resonance in that silence – far more meaning. It speaks to an assuredness in the editor – to create something and vanish – a fearlessness and openness. It frees the authors who contribute. Journals live more productive, more interesting lives when they discover their nature gradually and cumulatively. An editor who feels compelled to justify a publication is after something different. His journal is not made to last. His journal will not outlive him, nor even his temperamental obsession with it. It is, to be blunt, never going to be a very good journal. But it may, in its short life, be exceptional.
The risks of endeavoring in justification are great: the act of it may inflate you with such a sense of destiny that your humble invitation for submissions suddenly becomes a manifesto; you may overshoot the mark so badly that your aspirations for a new literature – or such other absurdity – are betrayed by the pieces you publish, which cannot possibly live up to your ideals; you might easily take away from those pieces – though you had merely wanted to enhance them – by demanding that they serve your ambitions; you may, by trying to entertain the possibility of newness, of originality, end up defining that newness so narrowly that you exclude the very authors who could make it happen; and the worst blunder – you appear so desperate to be taken seriously – to be involved in some literary discussion that takes place among people who will not let you in – that you become pathetic; you are like a little stomping child trying to get adults at a dinner table to listen to you tattle on your sister.
When I was young, around nine or ten, I used to go fishing with my friend in a river that ran through the fields at the back of his house. The river was wide and slow. We dug up worms and walked to where the river turned. There were some rapids further up. Germans and Englishmen in braced, waterproof trousers would stand in the river, fish, and wave. I once caught a small perch. I would like to recount the feral excitement one usually encounters when catching a fish, but I don’t remember being terribly excited. I didn’t care for fishing. The fish was landed, killed, and then we put it in a plastic bag and brought it to my friend’s home. His mother floured the fish and fried it. It was full of bones. She told us if we catch one that young and small again, put it back.
I remember one day, or more specifically one moment, when we were fishing. It was a sunny day, and we were up by a still part of the river. I looked to my left, back down to the rapids. The sun was low and in line with that part of the river. The water twinkled and the trees on the banks drooped over it – the airy leaves in these trees glittered goldenly – one might call it picturesque. When I looked, there was a large fish in the air. Trout do this: leap from the water to catch a fly. I remember this big fish in the air. Then it fell. And there was a splash.
Continue reading ‘The point of calm at the tip of the tree that is itself fully’
We fell into a special mood on those nights off the Zinc Cliffs: gay, but with a touch of suspense, as if inside our skulls, instead of the brain, we felt a fish, floating, attracted by the Moon. And so we navigated, playing and singing. The Captain’s wife played the harp; she had very long arms, silvery as eels on those nights, and armpits as dark and mysterious as sea urchins; and the sound of the harp was sweet and piercing, so sweet and piercing it was almost unbearable, and we were forced to let out long cries, not so much to accompany the music as to protect our hearing from it.
– Italo Calvino
