pp II III ano

(for Bugge Wesseltoft)

STICKY PAGES IN THE UK!

ONE DAY EXHIBITION AT SIDESHOW, NOTTINGHAM, OCT 30:

WHAT IS IMPORTANT IS KEEPING IT MOVING

Follow this link for more information:

http://verysmallkitchen.com/

A New Leaf Press is launched today.

More details on The Sticky Pages site.

HMS Astute ran aground on a shingle bank near the Isle of Skye, where it was stuck for 10 hours.

(From the Independent website. You can't invent headlines like this).

(birthday dinner 21/x/2010)

Library Acquisitions (II)

""The principles of the Way of Tea are directed toward all of one's existence, not just the part that takes place in the tearoom. In practice, the test lies in meeting each occurrence of the day with a clear mind, in a composed state. In a sense, even one's smallest action is the Way of Tea."

Library Acquisitions (I)

thwart is published today.

More details on The Sticky Pages site.

New Acquisitions

Worked on thwart this evening & printed off a trial copy. Plenty to tinker with but it should be finished tomorrow.

A potential image for the forthcoming volume thwart.

What subconscious thoughts & malice might a programme harbour?

One by one the Chilean miners are being reborn, emerging out of a chrysalis from the depths of the earth. Watching the events it's hard not to feel you're witnessing something approaching a mythic power of suggestion.

At last, one really good news item.

"But the ideal of our education, and of our society, is the clever scientific technician, his human emotions data laden, and atrophied by objective technicality ... " (Cecil Collins The Vision of the Fool and other writings)

Thanks to Alan for that one.

New product soon to appear ...

Spend a good half an hour online this morning ordering a Birth Certificate. (It seems my Certified Copy will not be accepted by the British Passport Office).

Praise where praise is due, they've done their best to make the process unnecessarily complicated. You have to register, set up an account, create yet another password (a minimum number of letters and at least two non-alphabetic symbols), give personal details and so on and so on. There's a set fee and then an additional amount for postage (a higher amount if you want a speedy delivery). And of course my netbook starts to threaten me with low battery warnings at the crucial moment when the credit card transaction is about to go through. All this to prove I am me (if you see what I mean).

Once upon a time you could send a letter or telephone. Maybe you still can but I hate to think of the call options, muzak and holding time you'd have to suffer.

I wonder how many people simply give up in despair. (And perhaps that's the idea).

It reminds me of last week's experience in the supermarket. I'm queuing when an assistant beckons me to another check-out. I assume she'll open a till and scan my items - no, it's a Self Scan. I explain I don't want to use this system - preferring the luxury of an actual human being checking things through. Not listening, the assistant explains that this is a much more efficient system and (rather patronisingly) she'll show me how to use it. I assure her that I know how the thing works (and frequently doesn't) and for this very reason I prefer to stand in line - tedious as it may be. She persists. Beginning to wonder whether I need to be rude to get the point across (never easy, given my French), I ask whether she realises the system is designed to make her redundant? Blank stare. However, she knows when she's beaten and agrees - this one time, Monsieur - to check the items through.

A minor victory - but not really. Once again you're left with that bitter taste in the mouth of a system being created that diminishes your (and the other person's) life.

Get home yesterday and the kids from across the way have drawn up a series of roads in chalk. It chimes with what I've been reading about - diagrams of one sort or another. Dubuffet returned to source. The combination of child writing and wobbly lines. In sharp contrast to the official markings of cycle path and one-way signs. The oldest boy wears a fluorescent yellow jacket in unconscious parody of police/traffic warden. He directs the traffic and warns of cars rounding the bend. A peculiar blend of street art and defiant graffiti: WE PLAY HERE. The kids reclaim the streets.

(photo taken in the Men's toilets

of the Crematorium near Bertem yesterday)

Today I've been exploring David Berridge's archive at http://verysmallkitchen.com/

For anyone interested in the intersection of poetry and modern art practice as well as the potential of the book as verbal-visual space I can't recommend it highly enough. The names and titles he throws up have kept me busy all day trying to source them via Amazon or Abebooks. The Kostelanetz volume Essaying Essays is especially desirable (and expensive). At times like this I feel my distance from the Bodleian or the British Library.

Grammatical collapse? A correspondent from Frimley has pointed out the howler in Thursday's post: 'bored of' rather than 'bored with' - especially humiliating given my current Johnsonian lamentations about declining standards in education due to technology.

And then it occurs to me - is this another manifestation of a French linguistic subconscious declaring itself? Now and again I catch myself using constructions that seem 'infected' by this Other. Thus 'we go now?' - I never used to say this ('let's go' would be the phrase).

'J'en ai marre de' is the typical French way of expressing boredom - you're bored 'of' whatever it is.

The price one pays, perhaps, for inhabiting two languages.

I write up on the board a series of titles and instructions in a deliberately old-fashioned secretary hand. During the class I go to rub it all off only to hear the students ask me to stop. They say they like the look of it. I ask whether they're kidding me. No, they genuinely like it. Two or three ask whether I could teach them to write like that.

Calligraphy classes for a generation already bored of Power Point? There's a thought.

Just discovered this via a new Follower's Blog - & surprise, surprise it's by Gary Barwin.

I love this: the cartoon, the concept, the text. Suggests all sorts of ways to go - but does anyone know how to make such little films? Which programme? A series of scans? If anyone could drop me a line ...

Damn! Looks like I missed the opportunity to participate in The Festival of Nearly Invisible Publishing.

(http://verysmallkitchen.com/2010/09/07/the-festival-of-nearly-invisible-publishing-dispersals-by-mirja-koponen/)

David Berridge kindly left a message in the Comments of the Sticky Pages site back in July and I never read it until this evening. I've just checked his site.

I suppose there's an appropriate irony in that my contribution is present in hypothetical retrospect.

Oh well ...

This will be going out to the usual subscribers (& anyone else who wants one)