TC: Ticky Tacky

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Surf-Riders, Honolulu: Charles W. Bartlett, 1919 (Honolulu Academy of Arts)

Life should have enough arresting moments
to create at least a tropism in Xanadu

between the bamboo swizzle sticks
and the sarongs soaked in lizard spittle

revolving ceiling fans banana trees
birds of paradise and pineapple daiquiris

but little is expected by those who
dwell in the environs of the lawn bowling court

for them it is a perennial Mondo Samarkanda
a pointed tin roof above cute wood shingles

the ghost of Reagan bumbling through the palms
amid a sunset out of Papua New Guinea

like a great snork bird homing in on orange juice

The Surf-Rider, Hawaii: Charles W. Bartlett, 1921 (Honolulu Academy of Arts)

TC: Little Bang

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Big Bang: NASA animation conceptualizing the beginnings of the universe

The night was hot and heavy and a hazed arc
Flared from the dark rising lamp city
The way a star might ignite above the banks
Of some unlit river, wasting on objects
More revelation than they are worth
To those who dwell and toil amid the ruins

At the witching hour, now, there’s little bang
Left to shrink from, nothing much, just these same blank
Vistas, all lost, receding, much as the man
On the Jupiter mission got littler
And littler, so too we, older, grow closer
To other spheres than to that earth we recall

Mel 111, open cluster in Coma Berenices: astronomical simulation by Roberto Mura

TC: Humility

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"Oh, don't hurt me! cried Tom. I only want to look at you; you are so handsome": Jessie Willcox Smith, in Charles Kingsley: The Water Babies, 1916 (Library of Congress)

There are a great many things in the world which you never heard of; and a great many more which nobody ever heard of; the picture of happiness which you harbor is steeped through and through in the time which the course of your own existence has conferred on you; and this could equally be a picture of unhappiness; and you would never know it.

An underwater shot looking up at a palm tree and clouds distorted by the ripples on the surface: photo by Bryan Calloway, 4 November 2010

TC: The Last Poem (after Robert Desnos)

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Night Shadows: Edward Hopper, 1921

I’ve dreamed so much of you
Walked so much
Talked so much made love to your shadow
So much that there’s nothing left of you
What is left
Of me is a shadow
Among shadows but 100
Times more shadowy than the rest
A shadow that will come
To rest
In your life in which the sun
Is so much.

TC: The Dream of Constantine

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Parhelion or "sun dog" [similar to that said to have been seen in the "vision" or "dream" of the Emperor Constantine I, on the eve of his victory over Maxentius, 312 CE]: photo by M. Metz, 23 September 2005

To Constantine in the constant cañon of his morbid discontent
Vision distorted by the acridity of some mysterious potion
Guarded conspiracies in the family, rebellion bruited, haystacks aflame at the borders
The latest hue and cry from the provinces fading into the din of background noise
The breakdown of communications with the common people,
The haze of stars, the tingle, the flame, the wincing shame of the general decay
Across the great breadth of the subject lands, not in his imperial tent alone --

Or again, later, the epidemic of lamentation about the way life was lived now --
The disputes among the wizards, the coins thrown down upon the marble tiles,
The relentless advance of barbarian industry at the exposed frontiers,
The news that the knights sent out to explore the ruins had not been heard from,
That shadows were lengthening across the paved courtyard, even as day was expected to
Be coming on -- the troublous murmurings, the brazen trumpeting from the stables --
To the good ruler once seen banging his tankard in high revelry, all woes forgotten,
At the jolly reunion, none of this would have needed to be explained --

So that the attacks of insomnia which had become ever more frequent with the years
Were now no longer interrupted by the brief welcome respites of fitful slumber --
And the cold night wind, another sign, turning back the light of the stars
So that the victims could not make out the astronomical figures on the bills of accounting, this too --
And the light of the stars turning up again on the night wind,

Blowing out over the dark mountains, across the vast lost stretches of the subdued continents
Which must now be left to the helpless ones, the hapless inheritors,
To whom the empty words, without the experiences to which they had once referred,
Could mean less than nothing -- mere words, so plainly useless against the fates --
The relentless advance also of memories of the poisoned son, the wife left to boil in her bath -- and
Other smothered memories, now unfolding themselves into limbless monsters of pain --

All of this occurred exactly as had been written.

Legend of the True Cross -- the Dream of Constantine: Piero della Francesca, c. 1452-1456, San Francesco, Arezzo



Marble head of the Colossus of Constantine: Roman, c. 313-324 CE, recovered from the west apse of the Basilica of Maxentius, 1487; Capitoline Museums, Rome (image by Jean-Christophe Benoist, 3 August 2007)

TC: Mirror Traffic

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Mirror Traffic: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, produced by Beck Hansen, cover art by Tom Clark, Matador Records, release date 23 August 2011

TC: Ideology

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Ideology dates back to the veldt,
Blood in the dust, the lion's rage against
The antelope it's about to have for lunch.
For the luckless prey prayer's all that's left,
No ideology's yet been known to incorporate
Mercy as a feature. But of course all this is irony.
No lion's yet been known to subscribe to a noble lie.

The Hungry Lion Throws Itself upon the Antelope: Henri Rousseau, 2005 (Fondation Bieler, Basel)
Lioness hunting warthogs in the western corridor of the Serengeti: photo by Schuyler Shepherd, 2009