Opening the curtains on Monday morning the snow was a surprise. By Tuesday morning it was seriously hazardous. By this morning simply a bore (& grubby, too). Snow's great if you don't have to drive in it.

Routines have been knocked out of kilter. I get to work late. Free periods have been even more 'on the hoof' than usual. Snatched time scarce. Writing suffers (of course).

Last night I went into Brussels to see Aida Kazarian's small-scale exhibition of artist's books (a term she doesn't particularly like). For her, each book is an 'occasion' directly related to a person or event - a 'placing between'. She works directly with her hand onto the page - thumb prints, palm impressions, rubs, smears, blotches, dots.  I love it. And much as I enjoyed being able to leaf through these volumes they really demand a different kind of reading: leisurely, at home, picked up now and again. The simple act of page turning acquires a new meaning. (More on this later.)

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The first chapter of Difference & Repetition seems to make a lot more sense. Reading it in tandem with Gertrude Stein helps: one text throws light onto the other. 

Yesterday, Tim Atkins' Horace arrived in the post - and his approach to translation might owe more than a little to Deleuze's ideas of repetition. I see very little evidence of any simple one-to-one - or representational - relation between Atkins' Odes and Horace's 'originals'. And that seems fundamental to the exercise. Their filiations are of the orchid:wasp model - and exciting for this very reason. What a dull game trying to spot echoes anyway. Better to 'take a line' and take flight. 

As Atkins states in The Chicago Review: The only way I could make it enjoyable was to mess around with the tight Latin structures & cut chunks. ... Poundian? Versions? Intralingual (certainly). Most of them come from reading the poems in English in various translations and then going at them. Others homophonic too. ... When I knew less I could imagine more. ... Appropriation, Approximation, Association, Clarification ... through Evaporation, Negation, Resurrection (etc.). ... Stole lines from Robert Lowell, P.G. Wodehouse, Cockney, all etc. Willfully misunderstood. ... " 

This takes me back to some discussions about Celan & translation (during the summer was it?). 

Anyway, I've plenty to keep me occupied with Atkins, Deleuze, Stein, & Spicer's After Lorca. An interesting constellation taking shape. And, of course, no distractions ...