A delicious breakfast from House of the Seven Gables: Broiled mackerel, indian (corn) cakes with clovery butter, and coffee. I was thinking about this yesterday as I was sitting in the jury assembly reading room around lunchtime. I and three other people had the place to ourselves. I spread out at my own table, put my feet up, and got to work. All morning long, I pounded away on a pile of design work I’d been trying to do get around to for weeks. The reading room is better than silent, the ventilation is loud enough to cover all the small sounds of people working alone. The throat clearing, sniffs, and shuffles are flattened out in a nice white whoosh. No toddler to show me things or explain how cool his pelota is or list the colors of all the balls be plays with that the playground or explain to me how naughty it is to put tiny balls of tin foil in one’s mouth. All the perfectly justified interruptions that are enough to derail me over and over. When I got home last night, he had a whole new repertoire of La Ballena Moby stories to tell me, mostly morality tales describing how La Ballena Moby knows how to wait for his hard boiled egg without screaming or how La Ballena Moby never goes in the street because it’s dangerous. Dangerous, which he pronounces dangeous, is a very popular word these days and the base of his very first pun: Juice, juice, juice, dangeous! Hahaha! Fun-ny! All of his jokes conclude with haha funny. And speaking of remarkable urchins, I have been not really enjoying House of the Seven Gables as much as I have been enjoying Hawthorne’s notebooks with their unconnected characters and landscapes, but I did love the description of Hepzibah’s small gingerbread animal eating patron as Father Time.
…These articles Phoebe accordingly supplied, and, as a mark of gratitude for his previous patronage, and a slight super-added morsel after breakfast, put likewise into his hand a whale! The great fish, reversing his experience with the prophet of Nineveh, immediately began his progress down the same red pathway of fate whither so varied a caravan had preceded him. This remarkable urchin, in truth, was the very emblem of old Father Time, both in respect of his all-devouring appetite for men and things, and because he, as well as Time, after engulfing thus much of creation, looked almost as youthful as if he had been just that moment made.
On the other hand, 2666 is perfect so far. All weird little eddies of characters and voices. If only I have more moments with a free hand to hold up an actual book.
An example of an existing structure of authority in Science (Medical in this case). So to answer your question, I don’t think disrupting the centers of authority in the medical or scientific or publishing world is bad or dangerous at all. Just the opposite. So much of what Jane Jacobs said about urban community and safety is relevant again here in our new communities. It’s a struggle again between the muscular authoritarian model of urban development imposed from above and the gentle accretion of a structure made of paths worn and spaces populated by the people within an environment—that is, those who have the most interest in it. The most to gain and the most to lose by every change. More eyes keep us safe. More eyes keep us honest. (Go DIYbio!)
McSweeny’s is busting out with a newspaper!
Does Kenichi Yokono ever make prints anymore?
