2012.01.12 — Fushigi Catch-All: Gay Nixon, Chomsky, Covert Gia, Dreamy Apples and More.

Tonight I am making the time to catch up on the latest string of the tiniest of fushigi things. They range from allegations of Richard Nixon being in the closet, to apples, from poetry and dreams to gossip rags and academic texts.

2012.01.07 — I was in my local supermarket doing my weekly shopping. I noticed, with some bemusement, that a gossip rag had some kind of Richard Nixon is Gay headline, which is also on the web @ for example, BuzzFeed. I barely noticed it beyond a small shake of my head and a bemused smile. Thus starts a typical fushigi, with a nonce event.

That evening I went into my poetry social networking group on Goodreads, as I usually do. But for a change I visited the 'I Want Critique' section and was pleasantly surprised to see that Jefferson Carter, a published poet and sharp and honest critic, had included a poem of his for our critical review. The poem he wrote needs to be prefaced with the caution that it may be perceived as being offensive, which is why he wanted our opinion on it. Neither I or the other critics found it offensive, although JC assured us that he had been told in no undertain terms that it was. Hence his query about it being 'gayphobic.' I found it to be very funny and more gay-naîve than phobic. Here's what he wrote:

A little thang I whipped up after being unfriended [on Facebook] again!

PURR

No matter how much
she hates me, our cat can’t help
purring when I rub that spot
between her ears. Biology is
destiny. Isn’t it? One of my 800
Facebook friends complains
Hollywood won’t portray gay sex.
I feel like Nixon, nothing wrong
with homosexuality until an aide
whispered in his ear & he blurted
“They do what?” That’s how
I feel. So shoot me. My friend
posts back one word, "Bang!"

When I read this oddity I didn't feel it was strong enough to fushigi blog, even though two completely disparate references to Nixon in one day with a gay

element is very odd. However, the straw that broke the fushigi back was when I read on 2012.01.10 the following from an academic text by Justin Leiber on Noam Chomsky's linguistic philosophy:

In other words, it may be that the best sort of picture one will ever be able to give a native speaker of English, for example, the thought, Charlie thinks Nixon is a national disaster, is the 'functional diagram' provided by the following thirty-seven symbols: Charlie thinks Nixon is a national disaster. And the purpose of an adequate grammar of English would be able to give a more precise — more formal, explicit, and general — explanation of who to read this functional diagram (Leiber p156).

Next.

2012.01.08 — I finished writing a challenging poem for a photograph in the Houseboat blog. I wrote 'Quiet Histrionics at the Wall.' (I later read it with music and uploaded it to SoundCloud.)

Quiet Histrionics at The Wall by egajd

Hello wall.
Today I have decided to call you, name you, 'Hello Wall.'
Or maybe just 'Wall', or 'Brick Wall.'
I have no truth on which I can stand, and so I am hoping to be able to stand by you.
Today, anyway.
I had one, once,
but I now understand that choice to have been a misapprehension of compassion.
I can see that you have been here a while, and that provides me some comfort
because I have become a nameless.

When you were first created, Wall,
was there in the plans this confused, if not ambivalent, state of being?
By nature I would have expected from you a flat character,
but you have exposed those prosaic expectations as false,
and given me another false-truth to stand under without a parasol.
Now, don't mis-understand me — I am not saying you are beautiful because you not.
It is just that now that you have been photographed
you have achieved some things — not notoriety, perhaps,
but a published obscurity on an optimistic blog in a very big universe.
And I wonder: if I had been there when your picture was taken,
would I have been exposed, too?
I see that there have been times when masks were feverishly applied
but have now been allowed, with time, like mine,
to be stripped or fallen away so that I now recognize when we have been,
see who we are, Wall.
Hello Wall. Unseen I stand in front of your painted patchwork of bricks.
I won't move because I don't have anywhere else I would rather be.

Later that night I wandered to my book shelf to pick at random a book I hadn't looked at before. I didn't feel like resuming the four other books I am currently reading, and settled on Marion Woodman's book Addiction to Perfection: The Still Unravished Bride>. I flipped the pages, read the intro, flipped a few more pages than began to laugh.

I wanted to stop this,
this life flattened against the wall,
mute and devoid of colour,
built of pure light,
this life of vision only, split
and remote, a lucid impasse.
I confess: this is not a mirror,
it is a door
I am trapped behind (115).

Margaret Atwood, 'Tricks with Mirrors'.

Next.
2012.01.08 — Now, this next one is truly truly trivial, but just warrants inclusion in a catch-all kind of post. On Sunday I was watching a silly TV show, called Covert Affairs. In a product promotional ad scene the protagonist, Annie the beautiful CIA spy, takes from a fridge a can of some soft drink, and proceeds to break the opener-tab. During the commercial a few minutes later,

I flipped through the stations as I am prone to do during ads which I find myself unable to watch, and paused briefly when I saw a young Angelina Jolie in the movie Gia. It is a movie I watched a few years ago and thought was very good. But what made this viewing memorable was that in the minute or so I paused

on the film I watched Gia's make-up artist break the opener-tab on a soft-drink can and Gia open it with a knife.

2012.01.12 — And the final one, which almost escaped me. Sometime in mid-morning I left my desk at work and moved past RT's desk in the next partition. RT greeted me with 'Oh, EG, if I'd known you were at your desk I'd have offered you a bite of this apple,' which was about 4/5ths gone. 'It is a honeycrisp. They're really good. Have you had one?' 'Yes,' I answered, 'they are are very good' as RT continue to chomp with obvious pleasure.

I appreciated RT thinking of me and thought, what an unusual request.

A little later after dealing with some paperwork in BH's area, I stopped by to see what kind of dream she had last night. She elaborated on her interesting and unusual dream. I commented that her description of a room with people sitting on one side of a long table reminded me of Christ's last supper. 'OMG,' BH said, 'I hadn't

thought of that. And there was food — I'd forgotten until you said that. What was there? Pineapple and coconut. And one more thing. Apple? Yes, that's it. Cut apple.' But BH continued to describe the food, and did not eat any of the apple, even though she was hungry.

Life is strange.

2012.01.15 Addendum.
And now continues stranger. Sunday night's edition of Once Upon a Time, episode True North brought another near fushigi The Evil Queen kidnaps two lost children, Hansel and Gretel, in order to send them into the magical gingerbread and candy house of the Blind Witch, a powerful and magical weapon. It turns out to be an apple.