juleshorne

And Some Interesting

A physicist friend once explained that a brilliant proof was both functional and beautiful. We all see the world through our own maps and patterns, and maths for me is an alien language - this is about trying to feel another aesthetic.

And Some Interesting

And some interesting pictures appeared. They were shapely and shimmering, light and majestic, small and filigree, yet with unsayable grandeur.

They were beautiful code.

To the uninitiated, they were just numbers, arranged in sequences, looking fairly random. Some were long, extending to several pages, others were short – groups of five, six, seven – and ranked in ways that suggested a larger scheme that couldn't be discerned.

But to us, they were ineffably lovely. They flocked and grouped in weird ways. They resonated with each other, picking up each others' themes, echoing them in part, suggesting and avoiding them and creating their presence in their absence. They teased and blatantly blurted. They held such meaning in their fragile shapes – the small shapes of the digits, the larger ones of groups, the bigger hidden shape that underpinned the whole work, and could only be perceived with a mental gesture of such scope that it hurt.

And those meanings are invisible to almost everyone we meet. How to talk? How to share that awe?

© 2007 Jules Horne

31/10/2007
Ann Jefferson

Modern Literary Theory, 1982

p 91

http://www.oreilly.com/pub/wlg/4707

Et De Sexualité

A spate of French stories at the moment. The books come from completely different shelves. This story came from the magnificent word 'sensibilisation'.

Et De Sexualité

Mme Sang had an adolescent daughter. That daughter was very beautiful, with long careless hair and even longer careless legs. Both were starting to attract increasing attention from similarly aged boys in the neighbourhood. 

It was time to think about sensibilisation. Mme Sang thought hard. She couldn't keep her daughter, Cecile, in the house all the time. She couldn't fit her with a tracking device, which would be a violation of her liberté. Nor could she be on hand at every corner, popping up in cafes, appearing in shopping arcades, manifesting three rows behind in the cinema while her daughter was cosying with a new friend. They had a close relationship, but the coincidences would eventually become obvious, even to her daughter.

It was time to get the neighbours involved – une exercise de collaboration avec les ressources du milieu. There were lots of them, they all knew her daughter, and there was one on every corner, in every café and arcade, and at least one always three rows behind in the cinema. She wrote to them all, and set up Daughter Watch. Now they produce a monthly newsletter - a joyful document of young French life.

Ah! Cecile! You are so very loved.

© 2007 Jules Horne

1/11/2007
Dominique Viart

Le roman francais au XXe siècle, 1999

p 115

http://www.sicsq.org/

Machine May Be

The leeches were edgy. Suck this for a malarkey, said one. Not good, not good, said another, lazily bloating on an old man's chest.

We'll have to unionise, said another. Elect a leader. Pool our resources.

I can't take any more, said a shiny young leech which had overdosed on a big girl's belly and was having trouble digesting the consequences.

It's inevitable, said an old, gnarled leech with blunt teeth. It's progress. We have to roll with it. We can't fight them. This thing is bigger than us.

The apothecary hurdled in the bright new machine, its pronged suction cups waving in the air.

It looked hungry. It looked thin. It had 5,000 litres of capacity and a row of twenty patients. They stirred in their drugged sleep. They wouldn't see the morning.

© 2007 Jules Horne

16/11/2007
Dorothea Brande

Becoming a Writer, 1934

p 65

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/12/1219_wireleeches.html

Cailles Replètes

A circular particle fiction! For the first time, the book led back to the book. Seems there aren't many references to fat French quails on the internet...

Cailles Replètes

Barbaric poems, where the fat quails sing

Their quailish songs and lay their speckled eggs,

Where syllables dance and staunchly refuse to conform

With any laid-down versifier's laws,

Where words erupt and wear their meanings large

And spreading wild beyond the corset-line,

Where words have beards and smoke illicit drugs

That draw deep down into the throat of truth,

Where words cut ice and slice through sense and time,

Where words engulf the world and nail our breath,

Which cut me short when seconds tick to nil-

© 2007 Jules Horne

12/11/2007
Christian Damour
Leconte de Lisle, 1973

p 49

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravine_Saint-Gilles

The Existentialist Owl

This is a sound poem in Scots inspired by the work of the German poet Christian Morgenstern. I'd been thinking about his poem 'Der Werwolf', which is untranslatably about a werewolf in a graveyard tussling with a grammatical declension, and having an existential crisis. It's also funny - a party piece beloved of German kids from poetry-reciting families.
Thinking about how the poem worked, I was playing around with the reporter's question words - who, what, where, when, why and how - and declensions. By the time I got to 'to whom', an owl had appeared. And a poem.

Here's a recording

The Existentialist Owl

to whit to who
to whit to whom

to whit to where
to whit to when

to whit to which
to whit to why

to whit to howl
to whit end?

© 2007 Jules Horne

When the Sun

From an English poet to cowboys...

When The Sun

When the sun goes down, I head for the dirt track and home.
 

Home is round the corner, out of sight, in a clearing. I pitched it away from trees after last time. Thought they'd be good shelter. Instead, they dripped green slime trails all down the canvas. It went from looking clean and new and proud and tall to looking like some great bird had chucked on it.

I keep the fire going much as I can. Sometimes I don't get back all day and it's out. Takes a good hour to get something up again. Something I can boil water with, heat some beans.

The fire becomes your heart. It's the beat of your day. If it's still running, you've had a good day and you can lie down by it, kick back, eat and watch the shadows on your wall. If it's out, you've had a bad day and you have to fight for that little flame, talk to it, breath on it, treat it like an infant till it chooses to come good.

Today, I had a good day. The shadows are wild and loose on the walls, and the beer is cold from the stream.

© 2007 Jules Horne

7/11/2007
David Constantine

Madder, 1987

p 25

http://www.amazon.com/When-Goes-Down-Kenny-Chesney/dp/B00017LV7S

Very Still

Here's another piece from the series of random stories. Liz Lochhead led to a Kervorkian painting.

Very Still

Very still, now. Relax. Feel your arms grow heavier and heavier, their weight sinking into the ground. Loosen your back and let it sink, sink, the muscles releasing their hold. Let yourself fall deeper where you lie, the ground an earthen pillow, taking the mounting weight of your body.
Your jaw is too tense. Let it fall, let it fall. Let all the tension drift away. Your jaw is a heavy tool of bone, flopped into your drifted tissue. Let gravity take you deep down, your body soft and melding with the giving earth.
That twitch on your right eye – stop it. Curl up your eye and release it, curl and release. Let that twitch float free, up and up and into the sky. Do not watch it go. Shut your eye and feel the lids sink heavy and heavier on your eyeballs, pressing them deeper into your skull.

When you are heavier than you have ever been, just stop.
Lie there.
There are no further instructions.

© 2007 Jules Horne

25/10/2007
Liz Lochhead

Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off, 1989

p 67

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/kevorkian/aboutk/art/still.html