I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze
than it should be stifled by dryrot.
I would rather be a superb meteor,
every atom of me in magnificent glow,
than a sleepy and permanent planet.
The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.
I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
I shall use my time
— Jack London (1876 - 1916)
Excerpts, from the web page, which has some 80 entries in full, at
http://www.recollectionbooks.
JANUARY 12
NORMAN COHN
British historian of anarchist millenarianism, old & new.
FESTIVAL OF SARASYATI: Hindu goddess of wisdom,
children make offerings of marigolds.
ULLR FESTIVAL (mythical god of winter): Ice sculpture,
fireworks, torch light skiing.
______________________________
1517 -- Vasco Núñez de Balboa, Spanish conquistador/admiral,
beheaded at age 41.
At the Gulf of San Miguel, in 1513, with water up to his waist,
he raises his sword & yells to the four winds.
He splashes about & lets himself be dragged by the waves,
dizzy with a joy he won't feel again. The sea opens for him,
embraces him, rocks him. Balboa would like to drink it dry.
1628 -- Soggy Bottoms? French writer Charles Perrault lives.
In the story of Cinderella, he mistranslated vair, the word
for fur, as verre, glass, thus making her wear glass slippers.
However it is easier to drink from a glass slipper than a
soggy fur one.
1876
Jack London, sailor tramp, gold miner,
author (The Call of the Wild) hits the road,
lives, Frisco.
Oyster pirate, hobo, drunk, socialist, writer, suicide.
1880 -- Anglo-American sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein lives.
Created the sculpture for the tomb of the gay anarchist
Oscar Wilde in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
1913 -- US: Emma Goldman delivers six Sunday lectures in New
York City (January 12-February 16) on the modern drama.
Emma lectures on the plays of Scandinavian, German,
Austrian, French, English, & Russian dramatists including
August Strindberg, Gerhart Hauptmann, Arthur Schnitzler,
Frank Wedekind, Maurice Maeterlinck, Edmond Rostand,
Octave Mirbeau, Eugène Brieux, George Bernard Shaw,
Arthur Pinero, John Galsworthy, Charles Rann Kennedy,
Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Maxim Gorki, & Leonid
Andreyev.
http://recollectionbooks.com/
http://infoshop.org/page/
1926 -- Pedro Augusto Mota (189?-1926) dies. Brazilian
graphics worker, journalist & militant anarchist & labor activist.
In 1924 he was arrested, with hundreds of other militant laborers,
anarchists & Communists, & sent to a concentration camp in Oiapoque
(NE Brazil). In 1926 he managed to escape to French Guyana,
but died today from deteriorating health due to his maltreatment in
the forced-labor camp. The labor camp of Oiapoque meant the
death of some of the most well-known labor militants: José Alves do
Nascimento, Nicolau Parada, Biófilo Panclasta, Pedro Augusto
Mota e Nino Martins, among others.
1928 -- Police seize 800 copies of the lesbian novel
The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall. Now they
have some decent books to read.
1931 --
"Headin'
For
Better
Times" recorded by
Ted
Lewis
& His
Band
It was the winter of street corner apple sellers, of
whom Hoover observed: "Many persons left their jobs for
the more profitable one of selling apples." America's
plight so moved citizens of the Cameroons in Africa that a
collection of $3.77 was raised and mailed to New York
City with instructions that it be used for "the relief of the
starving." For his part, Ted Lewis provided square meals
and steady work to first-rate jazzmen on their way up,
notably cornetist Mugsy Spanier and clarinetist Benny
Goodman, on this performance.
1936 -- A. D. Winans lives, Frisco, California.
Part of the Beat movement.
"A. D. Winans is one of the few writers who doesn't act like a
writer & maybe that's why he writes better than they do ... I
always prefer a poet I can tolerate for more than 10 minutes;
that's rare, & so is A. D."
1951 -- International Convention on Genocide comes into force. Yup.
1960 -- Nevil Shute dies. British-born Australian novelist,
best-known for the novel On the Beach (1957). A pessimistic
tale of the atomic age adapted to the screen in 1959.
The film is one of the most celebrated anti-Bomb films.
1963 -- Bob Dylan sings "Blowin' In the Wind" on the BBC Radio
presentation of The Madhouse on Castle Street. The song became
a classic of the 1960s protest movement.
1984 -- Spanish film by José Luis Lopez del Rio, "Casas Viejas"
documents the tragic events of 1933, including interviews with
survivors from the village.
1986 -- In Frisco, California, Beat poet Bob Kaufman
dies, still silent after many years of vowed silence.
Camus, I want to know, does the sour taste of
promise flee the dying mouth & eyes & lip
1997 -- Anti-Dave?: HAL becomes operational
(2001: A Space Odyssey).
http://www.indelibleinc.com/
2002 -- England: Anarchist flag appears atop the Argentine
Embassy! Scaling the heights of one of the slag heaps of
authority to signal the need of a large dustbin for this
debt-ridden fleabag.
http://recollectionbooks.com/
http://recollectionbooks.com/
______________________
Pure poetry — & the mystical echoes were no
accident. Marx's allusion was to the Spiritualists,
who in his time clasped hands around tables in
Boston, Paris, Prague, & St. Petersburg, waiting
for the spirits of departed loved ones to set
their hands knocking on wood, to make the tables dance.
The Spiritualists had nothing to do with
commodities, but the commodity had everything to
do with magic.
— GREIL MARCUS, 1984
______________________
— anti-HAL, 2001, mmorre or les
______________________
— anti-HAL, 2001, mmorre or les
No comments:
Post a Comment