TOM CLARK: September 2013

Monday, 30 September 2013

The Gardens of Pompeii

Fresco, Garden with birds around the fountain, Casa della Venere in Conchiglia, Pompeii: artist unknown, before 79 AD; photo by *Karl*, 28 April, 2012

Yesterday is not a milestone that has been passed, but a daystone on the beaten track of the years, and irremediably part of us, within us, heavy and dangerous. We are not merely more weary because of yesterday, we are other, no longer what we were before the calamity of yesterday.

Samuel Beckett: from Proust (1931)

Fresco, Garden with birds around the fountain, Casa della Venere in Conchiglia, Pompeii: artist unknown, before 79 AD; photo by *Karl*, 28 April, 2012

Fresco, Casa de Cubicoli floreali, Pompeii: artist unknown, before 79 AD; photo by Marcus Cyron, 3 April 2006

Fresco, Casa de Cubicoli floreali, Pompeii (detail): artist unknown, before 79 AD; photo by Marcus Cyron, 3 April 2006

Fresco, Casa del frutetto, Pompeii: artist unknown, before 79 AD; photo by Marcus Cyron, 3 April 2003

Fresco, Casa di Euplia, Pompeii: artist unknown, before 79 AD; photo by Marcus Cyron, 3 April 2006

File:Pietro Fabris - Ausgrabung des Isis-Tempels in Pompeji.jpg

Excavation of the Temple of Isis at Pompeii: Pietro Fabris. gouache, in Sir William Hamilton: Campi Phlegraei, 1776; image by Marcus Cyron, 16 February 2006

Garden of the Fugitives, Pompeii -- a vineyard in which a group of fugitives attempted in vain to take shelter from the rain of ash and lapilli during the eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed the town in 79 AD. The people, including several children, were suffocated by the fumes of the volcano. In place of their bodies, decomposed with time and completely covered by lapilli, remained the cavities, which were filled with plaster at the time the vineyard was excavated in 1860, allowing archeologists to reconstruct the shape of the victims and reveal the tragedy which occurred in this place: photo by Sören Bleikertz, 2003; image by Simon Eugster, 9 July 2009

Eruption of Vesuvius: Pietro Fabris, gouache, in Sir William Hamilton: Supplement to Campi Phlegraei. Observations on the Volcanoes of the Two Sicilies, as they have been communicated to the Royal Society of London, Naples, 1779: image by *Karl*, 5 September 2013

Sunday, 29 September 2013

Weldon Kees: Robinson

"Steady" [Profile on a hunting dog (likely a retriever), signaling steady on point]: "Mammoth plate" photo by William Henry Jackson for the Detroit Photographic Co. (later the Detroit Publishing Co.), c. 1902; image restoration by trialsanderrors (Detroit Publishing Company Collection, Library of Congress)

The dog stops barking after Robinson has gone.

His act is over. The world is a gray world,

Not without violence, and he kicks under the grand piano,

The nightmare chase well under way.

The mirror from Mexico, stuck to the wall,

Reflects nothing at all. The glass is black.

Robinson alone provides the image Robinsonian.

Which is all of the room -- walls, curtains,

Shelves, bed, the tinted photograph of Robinson’s first wife,

Rugs, vases, panatellas in a humidor.

They would fill the room if Robinson came in.

The pages in the books are blank,

The books that Robinson has read. That is his favorite chair,

Or where the chair would be if Robinson were here.

All day the phone rings. It could be Robinson

Calling. It never rings when he is here.

Outside, white buildings yellow in the sun.

Outside, the birds circle continuously

Where trees are actual and take no holiday.

Weldon Kees (1914-1955): Robinson, from The Fall of the Magicians, 1947

Cave Canem (Beware of Dog) mosaic from The House of the Tragic Poet, Pompeii: photo by Radomil, 10 January 2004

"There on the left as one entered...was a huge dog with a chain round its neck. It was painted on the wall and over it, in big capitals, was written: Beware of the Dog." -- Petronius, Satyricon, XXIX

Saturday, 28 September 2013

Body Search

Hamadryas Baboons (Papio hamadryas), Brooklyn Prospect Park Zoo: photo by Wally Gobetz, 28 April 2007

Adam got into the carriage with the Younger Set. They still looked a bit queer, but they cheered up wonderfully when they heard about Miss Runcible's outrageous treatment at the hands of the Customs officers.

"Well," they said. "Well! how too, too shaming, Agatha darling," they said. "How devastating, how unpoliceman-like, how goat-like, how sick-making, how too, too awful." And then they began talking about Archie Schwert's party that night.

"Who's Archie Schwert?" asked Adam.

"Oh, he's someone new since you went away. The most bogus man. Miles discovered him, and since then he's been climbing and climbing and climbing, my dear, till he hardly knows us. He's rather sweet really, only too terribly common, poor darling. He lives at the Ritz, and I think that's rather grand, don't you?"

"Is he giving his party there?"

"My dear, of course not. In Edward Throbbing's house. He's Miles' brother, you know, only he's frightfully dim and political, and doesn't know anybody. He got ill and went to Kenya or somewhere and left his perfectly sheepish house in Hertford Street, so we've all gone to live there. You'd better come, too. The caretakers didn't like it a bit at first, but we gave them drinks and things, and now they're simply thrilled to the marrow about it and spend all their time cutting out 'bits', my dear, from the papers about our goings on.

"One awful thing is we haven't got a car. Miles broke it, Edward's I mean, and we simply can't afford to get it mended, so I think we shall have to move soon. Everything's getting rather broken up, too, and dirty, if you know what I mean. Because, you see, there aren't any servants only the butler and his wife and they are always tight now. So demoralizing. Mary Mouse has been a perfect angel, and sent us great hampers of caviare and things.... She's paying for Archie's party tonight, of course."

"Do you know, I rather think I'm going to be sick again?"

"Oh, Miles!"

Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966): from Vile Bodies (1930)

Adult male Hamadryas Baboon (Papio hamadryas) with his troop, Cologne Zoo: photo by BS Thurner Hof, 2005

Hamadryas Baboons (Papio hamadryas), Madrid Zoo: photo by Manuel González Olaechea y Franco, 2007

Hamadryas Baboons (Papio hamadryas), Brooklyn Prospect Park Zoo: photo by Wally Gobetz, 28 April 2007

Hamadryas Baboons (Papio hamadryas): photo by davidbuttle, 16 October 2011

Hamadryas Baboon (Papio hamadryas): photo by davidbuttle, 16 October 2011

Hamadryas Baboons (Papio hamadryas), Singapore Zoo: photo by Li3, 18 January 2010

Hamadryas Baboon (Papio hamadryas), male, Singapore Zoo: photo by Li3, 18 January 2010

Hamadryas Baboons (Papio hamadryas), Antwerp Zoo: photo by Truus and Zoo, 27 March 2010

Saturday 24 May 1930

Worked in the morning. Went to tea with Edith Sitwell. Stale buns and no chairs. Numerous works by Tchelitchew in wire and wax. Harold [Acton] there. Diana [Guinness, née Mitford] in a hat of the grossest eccentricity. Edith talked only of poetry. Home to change, then to 500 Club to meet Anthony Bradley who took me to dinner with a beastly woman called Lady Jean Mackintosh [daughter of the 13th Duke of Hamilton]. From there to a dance by Mrs Gurling. No one I knew. Eventually I talked to a young man who turned out to be Jim Laurence. He stole a car and drove me home.

from The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, edited by Michael Davie (1976)

Hamadryas Baboon (Papio hamadryas), Kölner Zoo, Cologne: photo by Truus and Zoo, 12 August 2010

Friday, 27 September 2013

Conflagration

Central High School Fire, York, Nebraska. Onlookers and window outlines in silhouette: photo by Johnson, 13 February 1917; image by yorklib (Kilgore Memorial Library, York, Nebraska), 7 March 2012

On the night of the library fire all the data went up in smoke and when the backup systems then failed too all the information about how everything works was lost

File:Brimingham Central Library fire jan1879.jpg

Birmingham (UK) Library fire, 1879. [Mason Science College visible through the wreck of the original Birmingham Central Free Library, burned down in 1879]: photographer unknown; image by Rich Farmbrough, 14 July 2005 (Birmingham City Council)

Interior of the Famous Library at Louvain [Library of the Catholic University of Leuven, set ablaze by German occupying forces as part of the burning of the entire city in an attempt to quell Belgian resistance, 25 August 1914]: photo by N. J. Boon, in The New York Times Current History: The European War, February 1915; image by William Avery, 2 July 2006

The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., destroyed during the War of 1812 when British troops set fire to the US Capitol during the burning of Washington: drawing for Capture and burning of Washington by the British, 1876 (Library of Congress)

File:Iraq National Library Destroyed.jpg

Iraq National Library and Archive, Baghdad, one of several libraries in Iraq looted, set on fire, damaged and destroyed in various degrees during the 2003 Iraq war: photographer unknown. 28 June 2003 (Iraq National Library and Archive)

Ragnal Library, Ragnal Castle, Wales. The Earl of Worcester's Library, burnt during the English Civil War by Parliamentary forces under the command of Thomas Fairfax, 1642: photo by Hchc2009, April 2011

A cello player in the partially ruined National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina, destroyed by Bosnian Serb shellfire during the siege of Sarajevo, 17 May 1992: photo by Mikhail Estafiev, 28 September 2005

Remains of the National Library of Serbia, Belgrade, destroyed in bombardment by Nazi German Luftwaffe, 6 April 1941: photo by Orjen, 23 November 2008

Conflagration. The Four Courts in Dublin during the Battle of Dublin. The building had been taken over by Anti-Treaty forces on 14 April 1922. Bombarded by National Army forces on 28 and 29 June, a huge explosion of stored munitions on 30 June destroyed the Public Records Office, and with it a huge swathe of Irish cultural memory. [Origin of fire now disputed. Possibly set deliberately by Anti-Treaty IRA; or possibly by accidental ignition of their stored explosives due to shelling by Provisional Government forces.]: photographer unknown, 30 June 1922 (National Library of Ireland)

Thursday, 26 September 2013

White Out

Rawlins, Wyoming T/A in daylight: photo by aortali1375, 9 February 2008

Coming down out of Ten Sleep Canyon into Worland
where they still haven't cleared the dust away
from last winter's thirty foot tall drifts
which just melted down and left puddles of
everything that blew through Worland since last Fall

TC: Worland (Worland, Wyoming, March 1980), from A Short Guide to the High Plains, 1981

Rawlins, Wyoming T/A: photo by aortali1375, 9 February 2008

Rawlins, Wyoming T/A in daylight: photo by aortali1375, 9 February 2008

Wamsutter, Wyoming. I80 snow buildup behind snow fence. They build snow fences about 20 feet high, then when the wind blows it slows the air enough for the snow to drop to the ground. it cuts down on the amount that blows over the highway: photo by aortali1375, 9 February 2008

Blowing snow and ice on the road, Fort Bridger, Wyoming: photo by aortali1375, 10 March 2009

Speed limit 75 yeah not just now thanks. This year Wyoming has implemented seasonal variable speed limits on i80 near Elk Mountain -- 65 in decent conditions, and they can change the signs remotely as needed. They REALLY needed this change. Fort Bridger, Wyoming: photo by aortali1375, 10 March 2009

I80 after a plow spreads sand. It gets everything filthy but at least its helps keep you from sliding around too much. Fort Bridger, Wyoming: photo by aortali1375, 10 March 2009