Tuesday, July 31, 2018

A Living Dust, a Dust Winged, Each Grain with a Chewing Mouth, or: Born 94 Years Ago Yesterday, Born 76 Years Ago Tomorrow



William Gass born ninety-four years ago yesterday  This is the traditional William Gass birthday post excerpt: from The Tunnel:
    
The other large carton unpacked in the same way - box into box - but the feeling it gave me was the opposite of that suggested by the endless nest of Russians dollies it otherwise resembled, for what I was opening was a den of spaces which now covered the floor near my feet. It was plain that every ten-by-ten-by eight container contained cubes which were nine by nine by seven, and eight by eight by six, and seven by seven by five, and so on down to three by three by two, as well as many smaller, thinly sided one at every interval in between, so that out of one box a million more might multiply, confirming Zeno's view, although at that age, with an unfurnished mind, I couldn't have known of his paradoxes let alone have been able to describe one with any succinctness. What I had discovered is that every space contains more space than the space it contains.

That passage reminds me what I'm trying to get at here though of course Gass does it better (though mine has directions to the venue of Planet's wedding).

Like Ashbery, he died between his 2017 birthday and 2018 birthday, here's Gass' obit from here last December:
















From The Tunnel, read out loud if you can, if you want:





Also too:

Excerpt from The Tunnel

William Gass

I built, of blocks, a town three hundred thousand strong, whose avenues were paved with a wine-colored rug and decorated by large leaves outlined inappropriately in orange, and on this leafage I'd often park my Tootsie Toy trucks, as if on pads of camouflage, waiting their deployment against catastrophes which included alien invasions, internal treachery, and world war. It was always my intention, and my conceit, to use up, in the town's construction, every toy I possessed: my electronic train, of course, the Lincoln Logs, old kindergarten blocks—their deeply incised letters always a problem—the Erector set, every lead soldier that would stand (broken ones were sent to the hospital), my impressive array of cars, motorcycles, tanks, and trucks—some with trailers, some transporting gas, some tows, some dumps—and my squadrons of planes, my fleet of ships, my big and little guns, an undersized group of parachute people (looking as if one should always imagine them high in the sky, hanging from threads), my silversided submarines, along with assorted RR signs, poles bearing flags, prefab houses with faces pasted in their windows, small boxes of a dozen variously useful kinds, strips of blue cloth for streams and rivers, and glass jars for town water towers, or, in a pinch, jails. In time, the armies, the citizens, even the streets would divide: loyalties, friendships, certainties, would be undermined, the city would be shaken by strife; and marbles would rain down from formerly friendly planes, steeples would topple onto cars, and shellfire would soon throw aggie holes through homes, soldiers would die accompanied by my groans, and ragged bands of refugees would flee toward mountain caves and other chairs and tables.

O! Jerry born 76 six years ago tomorrow, gonna bump his traditional High Egoslavian Holy Day to today because (a) there's yet another High Egoslavian Holy Day tomorrow and (b) because you'll see, or not.





Jerry Garcia was born 75 years ago tomorrow. Something else I say once a year: that 4/12/78 Durham show ▲? , one of the five best nights of my life, the buzz, the girl and that week, the intimacy of the venue, the Dead on (despite the shitty recording - trust me). Saw dozens of dozens of shows, others who have can vouch too, there were stinkers, there were the many meh minus to meh plus shows (though, with few exceptions, BLAST was had), then there were the shows when the band clicked, as infrequent as a come-from-behind walk-off home run home game, and made all the mehs and stinkers worth it.

Click THIS for LOTS more songs. Was at this show too:



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