[lit-ideas] Sunday Twofer
- From: David Ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2012 16:33:08 -0800
Having said in class that the lives of regular people disappear from history as
quickly as hand-picked vegetables, I thought this week I might try a recording.
Testing, testing...this week I inverted Hopper's "Nighthawks," looked out of a
cafe window onto the early morning. Because I had fasted, and because the dean
got sick and so canceled our rubrics meeting--"I rubric, you rubric, he, she or
it rubrics"--I presented with an opportunity to have breakfast out. Usually
this would be heresy. To me the day should start at home, with a newspaper,
the light coming up like Jeeves, with coffee and toast and cheese. There
should be no talking, no jazz, no fuss. But here I was embracing change like a
flexible person in the concrete echoing space of the Daily Cafe. I ordered two
eggs, toast, jam, coffee, pulled Kagan on Thucydides from my bag. Across the
way, art students were smoking. Ex-Admiral Thucydides said of Herodotus that
he had written, "a prize-essay, to be heard for the moment." His own work, by
contrast, was "a possession for all times." The eggs arrived.
my flannel pajamas are a souvenir
present and past joined in a thick-striped bundle
designed probably in nineteen ought something
by bespoke tailors of jermyn street
which is where one buys the very best stilton
and socks
it is an expensive little street
off the socialist coast of venezuala
i accepted the gift from my father
as one does
in a monastic cell
halfway up a hill
two flights away from home
in the middle of the night
David Ritchie,
Portland,
Oregon------------------------------------------------------------------
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