Wild Sound

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 2:00 pm under Misc
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John McCain could have won my vote just now…

had he simply looked at that protester and said, “Hey, do I come down to where you don’t work and knock the bong out of your mouth?”

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 6:32 am under Misc
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excerpt from evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. An army man noting his loss of love for his occupation:

…as I lay in that dark hour, I was aghast to realize that something within me, long sickening, had quietly died, and felt as a husband might feel, who, in the fourth year of his marriage, suddenly knew that he had no longer any desire, or tenderness, or esteem, for a once-beloved wife; no pleasure in her company, no wish to please, no curiosity about anything she might ever do or say or think; no hope of setting things right, no self-reproach for the disaster. I knew it all, the whole drab compass of marital disillusion; we had been through it together, the Army and I, from the first importunate courtship until now, when nothing remained to us except the chill bonds of law and duty and custom. I had played every scene in the domestic tragedy, had found the early tiffs become more frequent, the tears less affecting, the reconciliations less sweet, till they engendered a mood of aloofness and cool criticism, and the growing conviction that it was not myself but the loved one who was at fault. I caught the false notes in her voice and learned to listen for them apprehensively; I recognized the blank, resentful stare of incomprehension in her eyes, and the selfish, hard set of the corners of her mouth. I learned her, as one must learn a woman one has kept house with, day in, day out, for three and a half years; I learned her slatternly ways, the routine and mechanism of her charm, her jealousy and self-seeking, and her nervous trick with the fingers when she was lying. She was stripped of all enchantment now and I knew her for an uncongenial stranger to whom I had bound myself indissolubly in a moment of folly.

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 8:57 pm under Misc
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My keyboard is broken. I spilled water onto it. The pretty much essential and, I’m discovering, very frequently used e,a,d,c keys do not work. I had to cut and paste them a million times into just these three sentences so they would make sense.

Othrwis thy’ look lik this. So until I gt nw kybor or nw omputr I won’t b posting muh.

Tht ws xhusting.

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 8:43 pm under Misc
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Fascinating story of the creation — and abandonment — of National Art Schools in Cuba just after the revolution. The buildings’ design was intended to reflect the revolutionary spirit, but before they could be completed the architects found themselves and their buildings labeled counter-revolutionary, one fled the country, another was jailed. Half-completed, though, they are still in use as an art school, though one in considerable decay. Read the whole story here and see more awesome images here.

“Perhaps it is not incidental that the two schools that inspire us the most are the two schools that lay in the greatest ruin and neglect today; they are also the two schools which most closely connect with the natural terrain of the landscape and most closely relate to the Quibu River. To visit this landscape is to feel, in a very fundamental way, the union between the process of nature and the process of culture. The seamless integration between building and landscape does not engender a feeling of imbalance between what is “man-made” and what is nature; only a feeling of natural process where nature will, in the end, always take its own course. As landscape architects, the value of this landscape is enhanced by its sense of ruin, especially when we understand the special and unique cultural circumstance that gave rise to the school’s creation and ultimate abandonment. To now ignore the value of the ruin would certainly be to end the cultural and historic lesson that the National Schools of Art teach – that an interim of neglect in this case was necessary for a process of cultural renewal to begin.”

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 7:42 pm under Misc
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On a conservative talk radio show this morning:

“Who do you think’s gonna win American Idol tonight?”

“As long as they’re both here legally, I don’t care.”

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 10:01 am under Misc
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chelsea hotel dirge
after Leondard Cohen

I know I should write a poem about you.
a friend, a former lover, dead.
I should write things about how much

                                                                         I’ll remember you
                                                                         I’ll think of you
                                                                         I’ll miss you.

I should write things about

                                                                         The good times we had
                                                                         The laughs we shared
                                                                         The love we felt.

It doesn’t seem appropriate to say

     that it’s hard to remember your face
     that more than your touch I remember
          your withdrawal
     that others who have shared my unmade bed
          have crowded you out of my head
     that I can’t suggest I loved you the best
          or even that I think of you often.

It doesn’t seem appropriate to say

     that I don’t grieve your death
          but your life.

Filed by cynthia rockwell at 11:20 pm under Misc
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