Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Simone Weil 16


Error as an incentive: a letter sent to the wrong address reaches its intended receiver, because who's to say who that was. My student lacks incentive to do her Gertrude Stein exam. I am not William James nor was meant to be, I should say. My paragraphs are emotional; they contain sentences that run on like cash register tape. So many coupons, so little time. Longs is now CVS, but at least it's not Walgreens. We value our dignity, you know, holding as we do to the local stores, the ones with shadow names. Those of us who work in memory, she said, know that both events happened. They met at a party and they met on the back stairs. The rest was beautiful friendship. The Comedy of Errors in Hawaiian has less to do with comedy than with mistakes. Some genres don't take. A name is a noun, but it's harder to remember.

3 comments:

Karen said...

I love how you've tied all of these things together. It seems it shouldn't work, but it does. J just read your FB status to me about the Stein exam. We're both writing to you from a cafe in Amherst. Don't you want to come visit? Why would a name as noun be harder to remember? Poor Apple. btw, I just stumbled on this article, "Noun baby names make a statement." Read at your peril. Good poem, S. http://www.sheknows.com/parenting/articles/1047847/noun-baby-names-that-make-a-statement

susan said...

hey, is this going to work today? Names are harder to remember because they're not attached to anything, are completely arbitrary. See Daniel Schecter's _7 Sins of Memory-_! Nice to think of you both in the cafe. I'll get there one day!

Janet said...

Can the Gertrude Stein essay arrive in the end? When you come in October we will all hang out at the cafe. Whichever October. Whichever cafe.