Happy Birthday, Jane Russell!

Summer!

summer turns me upside down
summer summer summer
it's like a merry go round
i see you under the midnight
all shackles and bows
how far will you take it
well no one knows
don't let me go
i got a hold on you tonight

oh oh it's magic
when i'm with you
oh oh it's magic
you know it's true
got a hold on you

Summer lovin' had me a blast - summer lovin', happened so fast
I met a girl crazy for me - I met a boy, cute as can be
Summer days driftin' away, to uh-oh those summer nights

Yeah! The sun shines on the shortening days! Theres a paradox for you!

The Untraveller

Ok, so this is too weird. I have a friend coming to visit me, a dear friend of many years and tequilas.

She is anxious about coming here, crossing the invisible border between me and her, on a plane, alone, seeing me for the first time in like, my natural habitat? because I have always visited her and she hates big towns, crowds, people, buses,not being in control and she has been most happily married forever.

And thats all good but---

She will travel against her will. She does not like travelling.

She is not a traveller. She is not a traveller. It astounds me that one of my best friends dreads travelling and is not familiar with the codes of air travel as well, we all are?

That there is someone like that in MY life is short of paradox. No, wait, it is paradox and that is a word and concept I do not like particularly. But it will do.

What we know to do by the time we take a seat on that plane, take off from the gate, leave the airport--the things we do not know how we know we do. Some people don't.

Is this the moment to quote a favorite quote of mine, culled from Ian McEwan's The Kindess of Strangers, which I wish I could live up to but have been touched on very tangentially, still I know what it means:

Travelling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it." -Cesare Pavese

Oh, yeah. And a gift and a skill.

God's Retirement

God has retired to Niagara on the Lake.

He lives in any one of the bed and breakfasts here, as petal-plentiful as the roses, peonies and lilacs, in any of the distinctive historic building among the peonies, the roses, the lilacs, all of which mount a cloud of summer scent to please him. Of course, one would have to go through all of the 300 or more bed and breakfasts to find him, an easy proposition only for those who could afford to and those who can afford to already have a view of the Lake Ontario waterfront from their majestic porches. They are not about to leave their own homes looking for God. They have it on their own word that all is right with the world because God is in his heaven, and that is exactly the assurance God needs to keep his cover as a permanent, reclusive resident of Niagara on the Lake.

Not that he need worry. It is said that 75% of the population of Niagara on the Lake are retired folk, or folk who have come here to retire and while away the time contesting for the most dutiful of lawns, declamatory of rose bushes, and dairy-and berryfull of boards. The region has, it is said in its very Museum, put its eggs in one basket, dispensing with the chattle of cattle and instead stressing its vinyards and orchards which fruit amply, tendered to by the gentle lake clime. The hotels/ bed and breakfasts and farms share an understanding of the needs of a tourist and provide for each other, so that griddle is always sizzling, and the strawberries ripe for garnish. Sure, winters can be harsh and the harvest in question, but the region is blessed, blessed with temperate weather enough that its wines are receiving renown, and the peaches, it is said, are the best in the world.

When God is not reading a book, he walks among the peach trees, gladdened by the flutter of the wind that sets the leaves in motion, the sun he had set in motion so long ago he forgot who did it. He waves to a passing car, walks over to its passengers who want to buy a basket of peaches from him, smiles, nods, walks away and sits right back in his wrought iron chair to watch the petals fall from yet another bush and enrich the ground he has claimed as his home.

For now, of course. For though God has given up on monitoring the affairs of the world, he does not wish to grow flabby and idle and he circulates among the hospitable establishments, making up his mind himself about the state of the poached egg, and the texture of the omelette and the doneness of the steak. It pleases him that so many of the people he sees, retirees like himself, watch TV dismissively, preferring the view from the porch and having made up their own minds about the state of the world simply from the visitors who arrive each summer, credit cards flashing as brightly as their cars, white smiles broadening in faces toasted by the happy sun.

This is the world as he imagined it once, when he was younger and took his own injunctions much more seriously. Dont eat the apple, pshaw. When he first arrived in town, he winced every time he reached for an apple himself, remembering the stubborn willfulness of his past commands. He is no longer that God, and he is relieved that he has outgrown himself as an apple tree outgrows its flushed blush and matures into that very fruit. Even now, he does not want to be reminded, so he dotes on the peach because it does not belong in this land no more than he does, yet it is there, the best peach in the world, grazing the sun. And this little town, population 13,000 is where he finally settled in for the long wait.

So to keep his mind nimble, every week or so, God makes slow, deliberate rounds of the beds and breakfasts and runs his own tally of the best peach pies, peach and apple pies, peach tartes in the area, rewarding the most skilled peach growers and artisans with what is left of his blessing, so that the fruit remains as sunny as his disposition, now that he has let go, let go of the West Bank, of Mesopotamia, of the promises of a Covenant he made too long ago too hastily, and everything since.

Most of the time, God is happy enough to eat a peach, glance at the sky, especially when, as it often happens, it is cloudless and crisp, and he waves at the planes passing by, delighted to be at a distance from their roar. And then he goes back to the parlor for tea or a sip of peach wine from Josephs Winery down the road which he takes on the porch of whatever establishment he happens to be enjoying. When he is not happy with his wine, he will read a book, from back to front and gaze out at passerbys, people he no longer feels responsible for.

When everyone is asleep, he slips out to make the rounds of the picket fences, whitening into the dusk. Flowers and fruit come and go, but picket fences remain steadfast and proper.

everyone lived in a pretty how town

everyone in niagara on the lake lives in a pretty how town

How pretty?

Prettier than the word imagines. Beyond the prettiness of merely pretty. The very pretty, the prettiest as stated by the committee that picked it to be pretty. Pretty as in claims to be the prettiest town in canada. This claim is also shared by Goderich by Lake Huron and Hammerfest in BC. But we have not seen them nor been assured of the how they make their town pretty. In NOTL contests are said to be held monthly for the best mowed lawn, the most flowerlicious bed, the most shiny of windows, the best of the rest that makes this town the most the prettiest the oh so swissmiss scrumptious of historic towns this side of Galena.

How do you count the ways?

How do you make a town so that everyone will go, oh so pretty? Oh! Oh!

Picket fences as long as a golf course.

A golf course the oldest in North America.

Wrap around porches that go the distance of the picket fences.

Roses clambering up walls and peonies busting their heads open against the picket fences, white.

Roses and peonies and philadelphus scenting the streets.

Dark shutters wherever there are white framed windows.

A historic street buildings unchanged since the late nineteenth century.

Public outrage over the arrival of Tim Hortons.

Condos that never go up.

Niagara River gliding into Lake Ontario, held silver by the tongs of history: Fort Niagara on the American side, and Fort George on the Canadian site.

Greaves jams, a chocolatier and yummy scones.

No drug stores. No chain stores.

Every flower rubbing scents with every other flower.

Wineries tracking north and south around the town.

Well off people content to theatre and bed and breakfast at $200 a night.

Trees trees trees and picket fences minding the lawns that surround the flowerbeds.

Wrought iron chairs and tables waiting for the tea party.

How not?

anyone who lives in this pretty and how town, why would they want to go anywhere but back to their home to mow its lawn again?

407 King Street, NOTL

On the way to Pillar and Post, past the crew cut smooth lawns brushed against the crisp white picket fences, I witness an untenable collapse of etiquette. The white picket fence turns broad two and four green staves like poorly kept teeth, leaning into each other, a hairy thicket pours over its border, wild moustache. The lawn turns woods and runs like this for some 50 yards, clearly property, rampant with boughs and leaves, almost shoving the passerby off the sidewalk, yet contained by fence.

 Clearly property! Whose property could it dare be, this wicked wicked woods that actually does open into a gate with some semblance of rooftop flashing behind it as we walk. In the evening as I pass, there is a distant light or two. Clearly someone who has raised a barricade of boughs against the how of the pretty in this town, one at war with the pretty in ugly ugly ways.

Hayley

Hayley is a broad faced and freckled blond woman happy to be showing us around the winery that wants to be a barn not a chateau but looks a hangar, Jackson Triggs. Hayley is young and so still honest: she sees that the components of a barn--troughs instead of sinks, exposed wood, loftish height, do not combine into the semblance of a bar. And she says so, right out loud, with a smirk a more experienced tour guide would not have even contemplated.

She walks us along Chardonnay. The vines run north and south as they do in this area. The wine grapes should be small with a skin ready to yield the flavor of the wine.

Best show: the assortment of glass cubs, decanters and pitchers to serve wine in. The stirrup cup is explained, and we are urged not to waste precious spirit by warming the wine glass. Swirl and savor, Hayley explains, do the backward whistle against the palate.

The stirrup cup, the most engaging of drinking cups, requires two to use it: the servant to hold it and to set it, upside down in its tray, when the lord departs. Mr. Jackson has quite a collection there, and I enjoy its many flavors, as I do the Riesling which is perched on the cusp of sweet and dry, a vivacious wine, and which I buy.

Oaken Barrels

Hayley directed us to glide a hand over the oaken barrels that are aging the wine at Jackson Triggs. Indeed, the grain of the French barrels is much more coarse than that of the American oak. American oak grows faster and bigger than French oak hence the feel of the grain.

And then the signage. The French barrels have a cluster of letters designating their provenance, which part of the country, which forest, which stand, I suppose.

The American barrels--zip.

Nothing.

"The Americans dont care which woods the wood comes from. It's all wood," smiles Hayley.

Officer Ken

Officer Ken is not really an officer though he might be. It is not quite clear. he claims to have been in the military since 1988. That is a history book ago. Now he walks the beat of Fort George, a casualty of the War of 1812, and he is fully uniformed, down to the epaulettes and buttons and collar, in his trim red British Officer uniform, exactly so as not to be confused with an Officer of the 49th Regiment. He wears round glasses and talks at attention and peers at you intently as he answers all questions pertaining to the Officers Quarters and the "internal economy" of the Fort, the mess hall which he patrols. The palisades, which have withstood seventy years, are crumbling, and will soon be replaced, and maybe then the outhouse will be found. Officer Ken's eyes twinkle at the prospect.

Officer Ken is far more real than the the stuffed soldier crawling with rats in the prison cell. I actually jumped to see that simulation, never mind the tale of the cat of nine tails that was used on soldiers who travelled all the way to this British outpost with or without family, depending on how the lots were drawn on the wharf (six of 100 soldiers got to bring their families with.) Officer Ken is concerned that the shoelaces the other mock soldiers wear should be brown and not black. Because we owe this to the soldiers who fought for us, he explains.

But that is because Officer Ken has been standing on guard for us since 1988. We can sleep safely because of his outstanding method acting. This is precision with passion.

Like all the others, he will swelter in his uniform once the sun bears down, but that will be nothing compared to the heat and sweat of the summers of the past, with soldiers and their families sharing their patch of space in the barracks. And as for those soldiers, what fit in their two feet by two feet knapsacks was all they needed.

And all that Officer Ken needs is to remember that for us all.

Elvis Lives, Upstairs

Elvis Lives, Upstairs
Originally uploaded by evita2005.

Elvis on the Second Floor

Yes, Elvis lives.

He has not at all after all left the building.

He lives on the second floor of Graceland, the rooms they don't want you to see. Or you would see him.

Instead, you get to see all the people, the people like you, like me, Julie and me who line up and sweat and throng to see him whom they cannot see, so instead they get to see the mirrored walls, gilded mirrors, the white sofa, the table set for six, the kitchen waiting for the cook, shaggy armchair and bed, jungle room and the trophy room padded with gold records. All those people stream by and crane necks to glance at the staircase that we are not allowed to take, for where Elvis could possibly be if not upstairs, from where his presence is, we are told, felt throughout the house. Priscilla's soothing voice glides in from the headset, softly recounts how you would hear him coming down the stairs, his suit jangling, heard before seen, felt before met. You end up taking pictures of the stairs leading up to the second floor where you cannot go, the chandelier over the landing, the white wall, the mirrors expanding the size of what is really an average mansion, daring you to take a photo, as if taking the pictures could help you get past the young bored hot tired women who rush and usher you into the house and then have nothing else to say except not to use flash because it damages the artifacts.

They let the audio do the talking.

And it has nothing to say much though it does its best to say it.

In fact, you remember less of Elvis, and how could he, he is not coming down to see you, than you do of the bits of the past that he lived through on his way to now, this moment at which he shuns you because you have rudely agreed to clasp that headset over your head, learn the keypad and follow the people dutifully following the crumb trail of discrete but seemingly pointed detail left by the voice in our heads whose job is to distract us from hearing Elvis laughing at us.

Which he is, I am sure, as he lounges on the bed upstairs, waiting for it to cool down and the place empty for his kind of night.

Which Julie and I never get to see, Elvis After Dark, a tempting exhibit, the last green stub on my card of tickets, because the bus back into town and the other museum reception leaves at 5:30 and there is not even time to grab an ice cream.

In fact there was no time to light a candle or drop a teddy bear and barely to take a picture at the Elvis family grave because we were only ever getting closer to the place where you had to surrender your headset and keypad to the bored young women and be waved into the bus and out the premises, Elvis releasing a long sigh of relief if he were turning in his grave...

Which he wasn't of course because Elvis, Elvis....

Elvis lives.

The Acacias

The Acacias are scenting, the acacias are scenting.

For only a little while, but still! But still!

More on the Tour

Rushed, I say.

Directed, says Julie.

Baudrillard, we echo each. Julie has just discovered Baudrillard so it all fits. I know Baudrillard so Graceland mirrors Baudrillard again. More proof of

me

di

a

tion

Enforced mediation, wear those headsets or else. Or else. Or else you will meet Elvis.

But there is a poignant moment for me I admit, in the gold records room with records from all over the world celebrating the selling of 400 million records, more than there are people in the USA. And the walls tower over you and there is the screen looping a short bit of Elvis in Las Vegas in 1968, or maybe one of his later shows, the King on the cusp of the glorious swivel hipped past and the slide towards 1977. He is putting on weight but giving it all he has and the sweat streaming down his face is proof of how much he must want to have it all again.He is giving it all he got then and it was still a lot, but you cannot watch it without the knowledge he did not know, how soon weight would overtake him and he would not sing as lustily again. Yet all the songs he sold, all of them. The wall of that room is made of gold.

And then the door spits you out to the tiny plot of land that is the family gravesite and you have to move it move it because there are people behind and ahead and everyone wants to see, to crowd, to be next to the King, and there is only so much time. Not enough.

It is a tiny plot of land and tiny time to spend with a man this big.

It seems to be so over in a blink, and you are handing over the headset and you feel Just What Do I Remember?

What I will remember is the pink cadillac and the exhibit on 1956 where on one screen Elvis pivots and wriggles, as obscene as Madonna in her prime time, and the other where Perry Como just stands there, his cardigan aglow like fresh snow, his smile as smug as his songs.

Spot the Smiley Face

Spot the Smiley Face
Originally uploaded by evita2005.

Go ahead. Zoom IN. Spot the smiley face within. The puddle,in which there is much busy ness.

That Memphis Conference

If you scour the web, you will find the participants summarizing the main profile and most interesting presentations, as I intended to do initially and would had I another dimension. They dwell in that headspace. But I left it some time ago and woops, now it I depend on my memory. Even now time is bearing me away from the moment so the memory must suffice in some way or other so what do I remember now of all the papers and ideas bumping into each other like timber floating down the river?

The perfect balance of theory and practice in one paper on communal ethos by a PhD student from Copenhaged: her prose was pellucid; crouching on the floor at AWs presentation which I always forget to book early and so I run into throng, me an embodiment of the ear; the hermeneutic antics of Mailloux and Davis who shared an argument and chocolate martinis begrudged them by some; Davis's dry-mouthed espousal of the naivete of Levinas which for a moment I thought interesting but only because of his insistence on "face" which I still muse on from time to time; "compassionate listening"; the misleading titles which are often as pretentious and bumbling as a bearded Oxford professor after five scotches and seriousness of people who have reason to be serious: they have worked on an idea, an argument, a position so long that they have become married to it, which kinda kills the romance. 

 I intended this conference as a reminder, a review or revisitation of a scene I had never mastered or mistressed and feel I lack the ability or desire to. Still, I like the idea of rhetoric, poise and pathos and principle unified in some sort of stylistic elegance. And some of the sentences and encapsulations struck me as quite fine and interesting--the term "space" has become a "breach" now and some of the turns of phrase were quite compact and clear. I love a just so sentence as I love a pointed portrait, and that can be anything odd yet pointed. But often the sentences do not cohere and there are gaps as there should be and yet, yet, a conference is testimony to a tireless spirit to produce. 

AWs CV is 12 pages long. Eve already has 5 articles out. These people care. They care. They care about their issues and I am excited by them, tickled, buzzed and then I wake up and think, scratch head, just what do I remember? And remembering takes time. Of all the pictures I know take (and why) I think, which is the one picture I will save and consider not worth remembering because I cannot do it now, but which is the one I will be pleased to be reminded of in the future? 

Since I have been tossing files on files and pictures on pictures, trimming and divesting, this is the main question for my future--which will be the image the memory that I will want to be reminded about in the future? And tough, but it is crouching on the floor listening to heady theory and that first panel, in the Ben Hollander room when Thomas Rickert talked about the "leap" in rhetorical theory and logic. How will I remember the conference and what will be its flavor? And the ice cream and superb chocolate cake, of course. By Erica, the pastry chef. So next stop, that image. Which bears a significant symbolism.

This Is How it Rained Again

Pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter
patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter
pitter patter pitter patter pitter patter
patter pitter patter pitter patter pitter

This is the pitter pattern of spring storm.

That Image

The Peabody and me: it was not love at first sight.

It was dark. Brooding even, and I had not expected it. Dark wood bearing up the floors. dark panelling, as if the heavyset ambience was to keep the heat and sun in its place: outside, in the empty streets of downtown Memphis.

It's a dark hotel and the website does not convey it. Perhaps the smokes of history have darkened it because it does bear a lot of history. Compared to the bogus brash loud extravaganza of Vegas, this hotel was real. Well, except for the player piano anonymously tinkling, at one point, Bronski Beat. The ducks were plenty real if their march was hyperbole, too and the drinks were real if not the cleavages of the servers. Nonetheless. Julie was loooking at Memphis thru the eyes of Baudrillard that she had recently discovered, so now that I think, Peabody was real even though it was not the original Peabody.

That room I imaged, Ben Hollander, is one of several tucked away behind a block of rooms, the bathroom and Frank Schutte room. It is closed though I know there is a session in it, Rethinking Rhetorical Artifacts, but a hotel person swipes her card and I am in. I slide in the last row and watch Janice Lauer of Purdue and then see the person that I really want to see who would speak on aviation artfacts, is not there. Ok, I will sit and sift through what is there then.

The light of the day streaming through the panelled windows behind the speakers backlights them fiercely, so that their faces are in shadow and I have to peer to focus on them. I get used to their lighting and note their name tags, glasses of water, papers. They are framed by the dark panelling around and from where I sit I hear the voice of the next door speaker and occasional applause. It's dark with a blast of light that the speakers sit with their backs to. Plato's cavern with a twist.

This too is a no-place as they all sit waiting to say their bit and when it comes to Q and A they always repeat their bit without branching out because this is almost it, casting their argument among their peers, and next stop publication. This is an academic conference where we come out of the dark of our involvement with a project into the light, into the light of the readers, but not quite into the light, not quite. It's right behind us where we cannot see it, and we see the audience and we can also hear the muted voices of others pursuing their points just within reach. They applaud, but for us? And when they do applaud for us, those that do applaud our courage to reach out with our "shabby equipment always deteriorating". This is where we wait to see if it sounds right when others are in the room, do they nod, do they wonder, do they ask questions, do they mock. This is where the academic meets some of the readers and perhaps the only time she will. This is a rare moment in time when writers climb blinking out of their caves, into another cave it seems.

This is not a place for bell hooks.

Always at moments like this I snicker at the relevance of the enterprise, though I am certainly no one who should question it, I who has nothing to show even in this ironic light.

That is the image I remember, Memphis daylight so bright, the contrast between the dark and the light and the talking heads blocking the light and the light dimming their faces and the papers, delivered. And politely applauded.

Went Running!

Since lately I have been feeling like I cannot do anything except what anyone else can do, as in roll out of bed, brush my teeth, ponder, pout, yawn and watch Tv and oh, promise myself I can selfadminister discipline---

I finally went running after my slight sickness, and for the first time in three or more weeks and it was the best thing I could have done for myself.

Run, eva, run!

The Conference Itself: Auge

For reasons not utterly clear, I wish to make the mind of the conference memorable to me before I resume the ordinary, the banal, the trite grammar of the local routine.

So here are some moments to recall. I miss the session on no-place which Julie reports on, briefly. In which Auge is invoked. Apparently, there is controversy about the claim for a no-place. How can that be? Auge, the man of no place. Yes, airports, I think, where contact is transient and profound, where we pass through and pass outside ourselves, like my room now, places of waiting. Having no concept of home except the airport, I imagine myself conspiring in supermodernity though of course not living in it. Sinking into a chair waiting for the destination name to move up the D & A screen, fanning myself with the latest Grisham or People magazine, nodding with mild but unecessary annoyance at the kids tumbling about. Soon they will be gone. Or they might be on my plane, but hopefully not in my lap. The state of transience, so comfortable, so alluring. In the airport, we are each others spectres, unless of course, a delay, such as a strike, organizes us into social events of public significance. And even then, not. Not so much.

A no-place is it seems a place of anticipation not relation.

A take on airports a la Auge.

Locative Art and Rhetorical Agency by one David Rieder.

It Rains Now!

It is not pouring but raining in that little way that a storm makes itself a memory when it crosses over to another area. I am still here, I am watching you with oh so many tiny beady eyes plastered to the window pane. Don't you think I can't rain on you some more.

Psst. It's raining and raining some more, right now, at midnight.