You've got to dig to dig it, you dig?
a feeling he could not name but was disquieted by—longing? (Bel Canto, Ann Patchett)
Lutz Bacher. (… we don’t know the California-born artist’s real name, nor where her public-facing persona came from, but we do know this lifelong game of hide-and-seek was deliberate, an act of authorial resistance that framed her 50-year oeuvre)
Accordingly, the Court finds that the Constitution of these United States trumps this administration’s detention of petitioner Adrian Conejo Arias and his minor son, L.C.R. The Great Writ and release from detention are GRANTED pursuant to the attached Judgment.
Judge Biery, a federal judge in Texas’ Western District, granted their petition for a writ of habeas corpus. NYTimes annotates.
… But still
I buy a pack at Kingston airport mall—
jade confetti in a see-through sack.
That night I stew the leaves to make a tea—
to see her there, to plant her here with me.
Guinea Hen Weed, Hannah lowe
I.
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
II.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.
III.
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
She Walks in Beauty, George Gordon Byron
When I stop and think about what it’s all about I do come up with some answers, but they don’t help very much.
I think it is safe to say that life is pretty mysterious. And hard.
Life is short. I know that much. That life is short. And that it’s important to keep reminding oneself of it. That life is short. Just because it is. I suspect that each of us is going to wake up some morning to suddenly find ourselves old men (or women) without knowing how we got that way. Wondering where it all went. Regretting all the things we didn’t do. So I think that the sooner we realize that life is short the better off we are.
Now, to get down to the basics. There are 24 hours a day. There is you and there are other people. The idea is to fill these 24 hours as best one can. With love and fun. Or things that are interesting. Or what have you. Other people are most important. Art is rewarding. Books and movies are good fillers, and the most reliable.
Now you know that life is not so simple as I am making it sound. We are all a bit fucked up, and here lies the problem. To try and get rid of the fucked up parts, so we can just relax and be ourselves. For what time we have left.
Life, Joe Brainard
Miami’s Haitian Community Braces for Deportations, Edwidge Danticat (The New Yorker)
“Attorneys at the Haitian Lawyers Association, a Miami-based nonprofit, have created a dedicated task force to help those at risk of deportation. They have organized free law clinics and offered pro-bono counsel, while also helping clients prepare for possible deportation by organizing powers of attorney, wills, trusts, and guardianship documents for their children and elderly parents. The attorneys consult with counterparts in Haiti, as well as in Canada, where many Haitians have fled, sometimes by walking long distances in freezing temperatures and crossing the northern border on foot.”
“Rosalyn Deutsche has argued that the public sphere remains democratic
only insofar as its naturalized exclusions are taken into account and made open to
contestation: “Conflict, division, and instability, then, do not ruin the democratic
public sphere; they are conditions of its existence.” Deutsche takes her lead from
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a
Radical Democratic Politics. Published in 1985, Laclau and Mouffe’s Hegemony is one
of the first books to reconsider Leftist political theory through the lens of post-
structuralism, following what the authors perceived to be an impasse of Marxist
theorization in the 1970s. Their text is a rereading of Marx through Gramsci’s the-
or y of hegemony and Lacan’s under st anding of subject ivit y as split and
decentered.”
“Jean-Luc Nancy’s critique of the Marxist idea of community as communion in The Inoperative
Community (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991) has been crucial to my consideration of a counter-model to relational aesthetics. Since the mid-1990s, Nancy’s text has become an increasingly important reference point for writers on contemporary art, as seen in Rosalyn Deutsche, Evictions; chapter 4 of Pamela M. Lee’s Object to Be Destroyed: The Work of Gordon Matta-Clark (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000); George Baker, “Relations and Counter-Relations: An Open Letter to Nicolas Bourriaud,” in Zusammenhänge herstellen/Contextualise, ed. Yilmaz Dziewior (Cologne: Dumont, 2002); and Jessica Morgan, Common Wealth (London: Tate Publishing, 2003).”
Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics, Claire Bishop.
Divina proportione, written by Luca Pacioli.
AG2020_1890144a
Light filtering through thin plant–mostly green, some yellow, some browning leaves and branching stems–casting soft shadows on a wall. Image was shot in Saint Augustine, at night, March 2020.
What is most near?
Ah, sweet dead year-
Thy fallen leaf
And gathered sheaf,
The presence that is fled,
The vows that once were said-
These are most near.
Swift speeds away
Rose-crowned To-day.
So far, so far
Her light feet are!
I look and see thy face
Haunting the upland place,
Dear Yesterday.
The blooming flowers,
The sunny hours-
These cannot rest,
These are half blest.
But thou forevermore
Art mine, love, as of yore,
And time is ours.
Shadows, Harriet Moore
among and in between
canopies, a murmur,
purple and black intoned
in chant,
seemingly leading elsewhere,
slight, in its sursurrated syntax,
emanant and reaching
longed-for gardens
Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics by Claire Bishop. OCTOBER 110, Fall 2004.