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Category: reading table

Wednesday, July 4th

violin festival
day three

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Chaconne (Partita No. 2 in D Minor); Ivry Gitlis (violin), live, Tokyo, 1990

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lagniappe

reading table

Try to Praise the Mutilated World
by Adam Zagajewski (1945-)
(translated from Polish by Clare Cavanagh)

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June’s long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You’ve seen the refugees going nowhere,
you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

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Saturday, June 30th

desert island disc

Sly and the Family Stone, Fresh, 1973

Track list:

1. In Time 00:00
2. If You Want Me To Stay 05:47
3. Let Me Have It All 08:48
4. Frisky 11:44
5. Thankful N’ Thoughtful 14:56
6. Skin I’m In 19:38
7. I Don’t Know (Satisfaction) 22:33
8. Keep On Dancin’ 26:25
9. Que Sera, Sera 28:49
10. If It Were Left Up To Me 34:13
11. Babies Makin’ Babies 36:13

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lagniappe

reading table

Now as a spirit
I shall roam
the summer fields.

—Katsushika Hokusai, 1760-1849 (Japanese Death Poems, Yoel Hoffmann, ed.)

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2018

Saturday, June 23rd

what’s new

Various DJs (Muqata’a, Sama’, et al.), live, Palestine (Ramallah), 6/22/18

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lagniappe

reading table

[W]e may reason on to our heart’s content, the fog won’t lift.

—Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), “The Expelled”

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2018

Thursday, June 21st

basement jukebox

Jimmy Ruffin, “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted,” 1966

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lagniappe

reading table

Our share of night to bear –
Our share of morning –
Our blank in bliss to fill,
Our blank in scorning –

Here a star, and there a star,
Some lose their way!
Here a mist – and there a mist –
Afterwards – Day!

—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), 116 (Franklin)

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2018

Friday, June 8th

what’s new

Rolling Stones, “Like a Rolling Stone” (B. Dylan), live, England (Coventry), 6/2/18

lagniappe

reading table

The Death Deal
by Ron Padgett (1942-)

Ever since that moment
when it first occurred
to me that I would die
(like everyone on earth!)
I struggled against
this eventuality, but
never thought of
how I’d die, exactly,
until around thirty
I made a mental list:
hit by car, shot
in head by random ricochet,
crushed beneath boulder,
victim of gas explosion,
head banged hard
in fall from ladder, vaporized in plane crash,
dwindling away with cancer,
and so on. I tried to think
of which I’d take
if given the choice,
and came up time
and again with He died
in his sleep.
Now that I’m officially old,
though deep inside not
old officially or otherwise,
I’m oddly almost cheered
by the thought
that I might find out
in the not too distant future.
Now for lunch.