Paul and Marlene Kos, 1976

I posted this somewhere else a while back, but I couldn't stop thinking about it this morning.

Walter Kuhn

Roberto, 1946.

...By the 1940s, Kuhn’s behavior began to take on unsound characteristics. He became increasingly distant, and when the Ringling Brothers Circus was in town, he attended night after night. One get the impression his religious attendance was more compulsive than eccentric; it's what led those around him to suspect his slipping mind. In 1948, he was institutionalized, and on July 13, 1949, he died suddenly from a perforated ulcer.

More on Walter Kuhn.
Clown and Drum.
If anyone knows the title of this one, send it over. That's not the title. Isn't it beautiful?
Chorus Captain, 1935.

Today is Ashley's birthday.

She's older than she's ever been.

And it's as if she's crossed over a border. The one where, suddenly, you step across the line and, although you're older numerically, you hold the bad things less and the good things harder. It's amazing how that happens. You get older and then you start getting younger.

We watched this in a museum today. It made me very happy. Overall, a wonderful, wonderful day.

Yesterday I went to sleep at five in the morning.

Halloween is my favorite holiday, but I don't always dress up. This year I've been to one party already. I dressed as a Very Naughty 50's housewife -- apron, bouffant, garter belt, etc. -- and caught up on all on the partying I've been missing the last couple of months.

An S&M house-party will catch you up on a lot of things you've been missing.

I think Smashley caught up too. She was Hot Girl in Fabulous Red Bra all night. We had a good time. Per usual when we have too much fun, we forgot to take photos before we arrived (the party was a no-camera kind of party).

There were more than one hundred fantastic people there. I reacquainted myself with old friends, made at least one very good new one, fell in lust with the most beautiful hermaphrodite, ran into a customer from work and have a number of small bruises on my ass. It was a good night.

At the back of the house, there was a photographer. He sent me the photos he took, but because they include someone who has to remain entirely anonymous, I cannot post them. But they're good. Really, really good.

Rudolf Nureyev

"...because of Nureyev’s late training, his style was unrefined. In the Russian films his shoulders are hunched, his landings are heavy, and his hands and feet flap. But what he lacked in polish he made up for in intensity. He launched himself into fabulous bravura steps; he breathed fire.

Most ballet dancers aim for a look of effortlessness. Nureyev did the opposite. 'He comes onto the stage as if into an arena,' his friend Violette Verdy later said. 'Is he going to be eaten by the lion or not?'"

The text is from this New Yorker review of a probably inflammatory biography of Nureyev written twenty-so years after his death. "...As a friend of his put it, he did things that are 'absolutely out of our habits.' He dropped ballerinas on the floor, threw dinner plates at people, and blew his nose on hotel towels." These are very certainly the kinds of details that make you want to read about someone. It's the dancing that makes you want to, well, everything else.

I'm in a Bergman mood!

For the Man With the Erection Lasting More Than Four Hours

He’s supposed to call his doctor, but for now he’s the May King with his own maypole.
He’s hallelujah. He’s glory hole. The world has more women than he can shake a stick
at. The world is his brickbat, no conscience to prick at, all of us Germans he can ich
liebe dich at. He’s Dick and Jane. He’s Citizen Kane. He’s Bob Dole.
He’s Peter the Great. He’s a tsar. He’s a clown car with an extra car.
Funiculì, Funiculà. He’s an organ donor. He works pro boner. He’s folderol.
He’s fiddlesticks. He’s the light left on at Motel 6. He’s free-for-alls.
He’s Viagra Falls. He’s bangers and mash. He’s balderdash. He’s a wanker.
He’s got his own anchor. He’s whack-a-doodle. King Canoodle. He’s a pirate, Long John
Silver, walking his own plank. He has science to thank. He’s in like Flynn. He’s Gunga Din,
holding his breath, cock of the walk through the valley of the shadow of death. He’s Icarus,
hickory dickerous, the mouse run up the clock. He’s shock and awe. He’s Arkansas.
He’s the package, the deal, the Good Housekeeping Seal. He’s Johnson & Johnson.
He’s a god now, the talk of the town. He’s got no place to go but down.

- John Hodgen

Gratitude.

I have a grand affinity for letters and notes from non-native English speakers.
And by grand, I mean Grand. This one is from this morning:

Hi Tracy & Ashley,
I find you in Internet month ago with you blog The ingoing, very good and very interesting, and very long :-)) . But when I find pics & word I passed a nice time . I don't know if you are only a friend and a neightborhood, but hope your friendship go away for a long years , I'm happy to read your blog .
Thank you and greetings from Italy . Claudio

PS : tracy, great actress in Come on Over , I bought in the web the song.

I'm a sucker. Much, much thanks for brightening my morning, Claudio.
Yesterday was very long for me; I needed (and appreciate) this.

And yes, she and I will always be a Neighborhood. In and of ourselves.

a dog, (ahem) a sailor, and a soldier, W. Eugene Smith

(Game: there were as many chairs as children, minus one; while the children marched around, a lady pounded on a piano; when she stopped, everyone dashed for a chair and sat down, except the clumsiest, the least brutal, or the unluckiest, who remained standing, stupid, de trop: the lover.)

The endless shades
of lipstick with names like
injuries -- gash, asphyxia, big bang.

- Kara Candito

No crap-talk about what a nerd I am, okay?

I found this from a guy who,

"was given secondhand a list of eighty-one books, the recommendations of Donald Barthelme to his students. Barthelme’s only guidance, passed on by Padgett Powell, one of Barthelme’s former students at the University of Houston and my teacher at the time, was to attack the books in no particular order, just read them, which is exactly what I, in my confident illiteracy, resolved to do."

I can't wait until Christmas break.

Find out what the dots and checks represent
via

I had a very good teacher in high school at the time — I was either a junior or senior. Her name was Katherine Lappa, and she was interested in my writing. I showed her these sexy and sadistic things I wrote, afraid that no adult would like them, but she said ‘That’s fine.’

Kenneth Koch, 1969

Inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, March 4, 1861

Between Your House & Mine

The Skinned Rabbit

Chaim Soutine

Paul Auster said,

In my own case, I certainly don’t walk into my room and sit down at my desk feeling like a boxer ready to go ten rounds with Joe Louis. I tiptoe in. I procrastinate. I delay. I come in sideways, kind of sliding through the door. I don’t burst into the saloon with my six-shooter ready. If I did, I’d probably shoot myself in the foot.

via

Do you sometimes wake up feeling like a piece of music? A specific piece?

Frank O'Hara

POEM, 1954


I watched an armory combing its bronze bricks
and the sky there where glistening rails of milk.
Where had the swan gone, the one with the lame back?

Now mounting the steps
I enter my new home full
of grey radiators and glass
ashtrays full of wool.

Against the winter I must get a samovar
embroidered with basil leaves and Ukranian mottos
to the distant sound of wings, painfully anti-wind,

a little bit of the blue
summer air will come back
as the steam chuckles in
the monster's steamy attack

and I'll be happy here and happy there, full
of tea and tears. I don't suppose I'll ever get
to Italy, but I have the terrible tundra at least.

My new home will be full
of wood, roots and the like,
while i pace in a turtleneck
sweater, repairing my bike.

I watched the pallisades shivering in the snow
of my face, which had grown preternaturally pure.
Once I destroyed a man's idea of himself to have him.

If I'd had a samovar then
I'd have made him tea
and as hyacinths grow from
a pot he would love me

and my charming room of tea cosies full of dirt
which is why i must travel, to collect the leaves.
O my enormous piano, you are not like being outdoors

though it is cold and you
are made of fire and wood!
I lift your lid and mountains
return, that I am good.

The stars blink like a hairnet that was dropped
on a seat and now is lying in the alley behind
the theater where my play is echoed by dying voices.

I am really a woodcarver
and my words are love
which willfully parades in
its room, refusing to move.

Skin with Frank O'Hara poem, Jasper Johns, 1963

(text below via)

In this image, the artist’s handprints are set on either side of the composition. Running across the center is an imprint of the artist’s face, rolled across the image plane in order to capture the back, side, front, and side of his head, and obviously due to the functioning of imprinting, only the high areas of his face and head were printed, leaving the concave areas of the eyes and ears vacant. This, like his Study for "Skin" series, appears as if Johns placed the flayed high areas of his face onto the paper, a look achieved when he rubbed charcoal over the oiled pressings of his face and hands. In the case of O’Hara Poem, this look was obtained by preparing the lithography matrix to appear in this manner. Also like Study for "Skin" series, Johns printed this on drafting paper, so that there exists a pre-printed labeling area in the right bottom corner. On the right side of the print there is the inclusion of the poem "The Clouds Go Soft" from 1963, appearing roughly as thus [minus the indentions, can't get those here]:

the clouds go soft
change color and so many kinds
puff up, disperse
sink into the sea
the heavens go out of kilter
an insane remark greets
the monkey on the moon
in a season of wit
it is all demolished
or made fragrant
sputnik is only the word for "traveling companion"
here on earth
at 16 you weight 145 pounds and at 36
the shirts change, and less procession
but they are all neck 14 sleeve 33
and holes appear and are filled
the same holes anonymous
no more conversion; no more conversation
the sand inevitably seeks the eye
and it is the same eye

Nicholas Brothers, Gregory Hines, Sammy Davis Jr.

Unidentified Sounds

From the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, here is something to blow your mind (meaning, mine). The division that is Acoustics Monitoring. They have been recording and listening to oceanic noises since 1991 using the U.S. Navy Sound Surveillance System network and autonomous underwater hydrophones.

The site is overwhelming and full of frightening whimsy. You can listen to all of these specific sounds here, in small ten second to one minute segment audio files: here

I found this because of the unidentified sounds category, particularly the Slow Down (the link above allows you to listen to the Slow Down as it was recorded). According to their website,

This sound was recorded May 19, 1997 on the Equatorial Pacific Ocean autonomous hydrophone array. The sound slowly descends in frequency over about 7 minutes and was of sufficient amplitude to be heard on three sensors at 95W, and 8S, 0, and 8N, at a range of nearly 2,000 km. This type of signal has not been heard before or since. It yields a general location near 15^oS; 115^oW. The origin of the sound is unknown.

These are the spectrograms from the sounds listed.

Volcanic Seismicity

Marine Mammals

Man-Made Sounds

Unidentified Sounds

Diane Arbus, double self-portrait with infant daughter, Doon, 1945

The only really interesting thing is
what happens between two people in a room.

- Francis Bacon

from Sight Unseen: International Photography by Blind Artists

via

White Oak Bayou, September

I'm in university classes this semester. It's taking up all my time. Today, I remembered that I have a camera. It's been three days since I took a photo, and I wasn't lonely for it even once. That's the longest I've gone in a quite a while. I blame it on the rain. Of all the disasters I put my cameras through, rain is not one that makes me comfortable.

In exchange, I've listened to (and identified) more birds in my neighborhood than in my entire life. This morning I heard a house wren, a yellowthroat and a bluejay. And mourning doves. Mourning doves everywhere, every day.


As I uploaded these photos, a bird shadow swung on the white wall in front of me, swung like a pendulum, diving down and back up and back down.

Teddy Rossevelt and his Rough Riders, 1903