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beverley bie brahic's Blog
November 21, 2009
- This morning I went to the Cité Universitaire for Helene Cixous's seminar, cutting through the Luxembourg Garden to the metro station. The leaves were still on the trees a week ago; now they are on the ground; it was the joggers' hour.Going down into the station I was a few steps behind a couple of men--father and son?--I decided were masons. The station is being renovated; on the walls, ...
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November 15, 2009
- Yesterday late afternoon I took a long walk along the Seine with my daughter, visiting from London for the weekend. I love to walk, I walk almost everywhere both here and in California, but strangely enough this was a walk I'd never taken before: along the quays, not at street level, where I usually stay, but under the bridges. The poplars along the water yellow, losing their leaves, a few ...
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November 4, 2009
- The time has come, the walrus said, to solve the problem of death. God has been dead for at least a century. Existentialism has come and gone. Beckett ("I can't go on, I must go on"): in his grave (just around the corner, as it turns out). Derrida, who was obsessed by it: gone. Reincarnation: not too many adepts. Behavior therapy: is there any hope there? Can we ...
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November 1, 2009
- The rain is raining very hard, it rains on ships and trees...something like that. A Child's Garden of Verses comes to mind more frequently. Not long ago I took out my childhood copy, and was (mildly) surprised by the flavor of its dicta, punitive my daughter sniffed, not quite believing people talked to children like that. It's not far from the principles of my upbringing, however, which brings ...
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October 27, 2009
- Here is a text for today, from Anthony Hecht's poem "A Fall" (but how the devil do you get a blog to print poetry in lines?):"The cowbell's ludicrous music, the austere / Sobrieties of Calvin, precision watches, / A cheese or two, and that is all the Swiss / Have given the world, unless we were to cite / The questionable morals of their banks."
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October 26, 2009
- I saw Goya's dog for the first time two days ago, and also Goya's dogs, because he painted lots of dogs, hunting dogs especially, and many of them are in Madrid, in the Prado. They are just as expressive as his human being portraits. Only being dogs and not people they have a lot more pathos.
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October 20, 2009
- And here's another question: is there such a thing as friendship between women and men, in the way there is friendship between women and women, and men and men? If there is, what's it like? (I don't mean the friendship with the colleague at work.) Can friendship even be defined so as to allow the possibility of women and men being friends? Is desire allowed? Under what ...
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October 16, 2009
- Went perfume sniffing with an old friend yesterday, my list of scents dutifully in my ever-schoolgirl hand. A decadent afternoon sealed with a purchase (Guerlain, Derby, "one of the ten best masculine's of all time," says my perfume bible, Perfumes: The Guide) and best of all, samples. Coffee, lemon meringue (one piece, two spoons) in a tea place on the Rue des Rosiers. Then, ...
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October 10, 2009
- I think what nice clouds Paris has! What a nice sky, always changing! Plump white clouds, tumbling in the machine. And grey ones, like the pigeons who make nests with strands of construction site metal in the flowerpot on my back porch. White eyelet over blue silk: a lingerie sky. Walking up the four flights of stairs to my apartment I pause at each landing and think what nice dinners ...
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October 7, 2009
- Back in Paris last night, back to the motorcycles parked below, the amplified sound of a drill in the next block, passing phone conversations, a crocodile of kids heading from the primary school to the swimming pool in the basement of a shelter for the deranged and/or homeless. Did I mention my neighbors, the couple who live on the roof of the church across the street and tend three potted pine ...
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September 19, 2009
- B went to a wonderful concert the other evening, a group of baroque composers (Muffat, Purcell, Kerckhoven...) on the new organ in the church of Saint-Louis-en-l'île. Why did B's mind wander to the question of internet porn, and the fun she could have critiquing sites: the saccharine lesbian, the repetitive hetero, the exciting...but B knows better: this is dangerous ground. The internet ...
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September 17, 2009
- Last night B called her mother, who is going on 92 or 93 (how can B not know the year of her mother's birth? 1918? just after Armistice Day?) B's mother is forgetful too; she wonders where B is calling from and what time it is. Paris? B's mother's voice perks up: "Have you been shopping?"Well, yes, B allows, she has been shopping: for cheese and pastries.B knows this is not what ...
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September 13, 2009
- An uneventful flight. "Uneventful," one notes, when applied to air travel is the highest of compliments, the adjectival equivalent of 10/10. Having retrieved my suitcase I exited baggage claim and paused behind two American women who were trying to figure out how to get where I was going. So we went together. Seconds later they were accosted by a customs officer: "Papers, ...
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September 6, 2009
- A quick update on the vegetable garden. I think the mystery squash is probably some kind of yellow-skinned pumpkin. They have pumpkin leaves, and pumpkin shapes and are growing to pumpkin size. Their flesh is also yellow, squash yellow, not orange at all. They are sweet, wonderful to cook. I wish I knew the name...perhaps if I google "yellow pumpkin"? The apple tree is ...
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September 2, 2009
- Have just heard from CBeditions that Unfinished Ode to Mud, my translation from French of a selection of Francis Ponge's poems, has been shortlisted for the Corneliu M Popescu Prize.
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