Forsythe Jones
Made a joke yesterday about how wearing a navy turtleneck makes me feel like Jughead, and then, upon further reflection, realized that maybe Jughead - specifically, the old 50s-early 60s Jughead - had more of an influence on my personal style from childhood on than I'd known. The turtleneck! The slim trouser! The peek of ankle!
Wayne Koestenbaum, Moira Orfei in Aigues-Mortes
“Jeffrey’s, the only eatery obscure and dingy enough to mirror my insignificance and secretly reverse it (turn it into magnificence) via the deceitfulness of mirrors. A reflective surface lies: pretending to send back the same, it pollutes the original.”
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Bertolt Brecht, "Not That I Didn't Always"
Not that I didn’t always have the very best of intentions
An undue fondness for tobacco is perhaps the one fault I could mention
Or that I didn’t perhaps get upset when it was much too late to be
And Müllereisert always said: come on, stop all that sipping of thin tea.
But my principle was: anyone can run into luck, you just mustn’t run away
And suddenly it turned out I’d written a real play.
I’d hardly noticed a thing, it had just sort of slid out
Matters of principle have always given me a lot to worry about
For me everything started with principles, I’d say
Tobacco, for instance, as well as my taste for liquor
I really did want to keep quiet at first, but I gave myself away
And Orge said: well, it’s not going to get better any quicker
Best thing would be to finish yourself off now with a bullet
Rather than suffer at length, or however the consolatory phrases put it.
And now almost every week I write one
It tastes like soft-boiled eggs in a glass
I know that one is more than none
But I think it’s all tied up with my aquilline nose, you know
And you just can’t do anything about it - that was proved long ago
And I too was born to rise to the highest positions.
Orge once inadvertently let drop the view:
You used to have the makings of a tiger in you
But you had better say goodbye to such ambitions.
An undue fondness for tobacco is perhaps the one fault I could mention
Or that I didn’t perhaps get upset when it was much too late to be
And Müllereisert always said: come on, stop all that sipping of thin tea.
But my principle was: anyone can run into luck, you just mustn’t run away
And suddenly it turned out I’d written a real play.
I’d hardly noticed a thing, it had just sort of slid out
Matters of principle have always given me a lot to worry about
For me everything started with principles, I’d say
Tobacco, for instance, as well as my taste for liquor
I really did want to keep quiet at first, but I gave myself away
And Orge said: well, it’s not going to get better any quicker
Best thing would be to finish yourself off now with a bullet
Rather than suffer at length, or however the consolatory phrases put it.
And now almost every week I write one
It tastes like soft-boiled eggs in a glass
I know that one is more than none
But I think it’s all tied up with my aquilline nose, you know
And you just can’t do anything about it - that was proved long ago
And I too was born to rise to the highest positions.
Orge once inadvertently let drop the view:
You used to have the makings of a tiger in you
But you had better say goodbye to such ambitions.
Status update
Soup, salad, and two satsumas for dinner. I'm interested in clothes again which feels like a homecoming, if I can permit myself to be hyperbolic (but I guess it's not hyperbolic if it's true). I'm reading Wayne Koestenbaum's first novel, Moira Orfei in Aigues-Mortes, and Brecht poems. Cooking, too, has regained its charm. I guess I feel generally reinvigorated. It's nice. One day I will put myself on a budget, and stick to it, but for now I'm having too much fun.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)