I attended a christening on Sunday at a church on 49th St. in Manhattan in the Theater District near Times Square, the church named after St. Malachy, who it turns out is the patron saint of actors. I got there a few minutes late, and the place was packed—I thought at first with friends of the family, but the church attracts
many tourists in New York to see a show—so I stood by the back door and watched the proceedings from there.
My location I figured was probably good, since the baptismal font was stationed in the main aisle only a few feet from me. Things started out fine. But then someone opened the door behind me, a blast of cold air struck my neck, and I turned to watch as a very small woman with a mane of black swept-back hair entered the church.
It took me a second to realize that she was holding a parrot perched on her hand.
I normally don’t mind birds. As I’ve grown older I’ve experienced a growing and eager fondness for anything that’s alive at all—for obvious reasons. The parrot was not large either and seemed well behaved— although was that the nub end of a hot dog the woman was holding between her fingers and from which the bird was pecking and tearing off bits? Are parrots carnivores, I wondered? And then there was the question of what kind of parrot. I’m no expert. The parrot was mostly green but had a distinctive black head, and I wondered if it weren’t a black-headed conure, a rare bird in New York that’s more frequently observed in Southern Ontario. Right now, probiotic use is being clinically shown to improve intestinal conditions, such as irritable cialis professional cheap bowel syndrome (IBS), colitis and Crohn’s disease (CD). viagra 25 mg Try one and get the change. levitra discount prices In fact it is a major communal, monetary, and a municipal health hazard. It also improves pastilla levitra 10mg the blood flow to the penile area.
Then there was the more disturbing question. What was the woman planning to do with the parrot? Baptize it? For what other reason would one bring a parrot to a christening? Companionship? The service proceeded, the time of the christening arrived. My friend’s beautiful daughter was duly held up in her exquisite white dress and water dabbed on her head. My view was good, though a crush of people arrived from other parts of the church to mar it slightly, and in the meantime, despite my worry, I must have been swept up in the moment; I lost sight of the woman with the parrot.
The baptism was done, people soon returned to their seats, and it was then I again caught sight of the woman. She had moved to the other side of the aisle and was now near the rear line of pews. But what was particularly disconcerting was that she no longer had the parrot!
You can imagine what I must have thought. Had this sick, tortured being drowned the parrot in the baptismal font in the confusion surrounding the legitimate baptism of the child? This is New York after all. Times Square. I considered going to the baptismal font to investigate, but the idea of finding the drowned form of the bird lying in the water was a shock I wasn’t prepared to withstand. And so I did what I always do when I’m not certain what to do. I did nothing.
The service proceeded but I couldn’t help but throw a few looks in the direction of the woman, who was nonetheless all piety. What was her game, I kept wondering? The service passed in this fashion. Now the minister was giving the final benediction. People were turning to go, but wait: the woman was coming toward me, and the parrot was back, perched on her shoulder. What had she done with it during its absence? Had it flown to a rafter for a better view? I was baffled until I saw the bird hop with expert skill from her shoulder and across her shirt, and then poking his head into opening above her shirt’s top button, simply crawl inside, disappearing within. She gave me a look, the woman with the parrot in her shirt, that seemed to contain within it some reluctant acceptance that something embarrassing, but also necessary and unavoidable, had just happened, and that this was not the first time. I can only say that the sight of the bird’s tail as it poked out of the shirt for an instant and then disappeared held a peculiar horror for me. It must have been some childish sensation that the parrot in merely hiding inside her shirt was actually going inside her. My sense of horror augmented. I felt stifled in the press of the crowd, and I quickly made my way outside in the cold clear morning of midtown New York.
Roberto Bolano’s 2000 speech to a Viennese literary conference on the topic of exile was published recently in The Nation (translation by the great Natasha Wimmer) and I’d recommend that you read it here in its entirety.
About it, I’d like to offer only these most tentative thoughts: Bolaño is one of the world’s more famous contemporary literary exiles. Born in Chile, he spent his adolescence and early adulthood in Mexico (primarily Mexico City) before beginning a further migration that led him to Barcelona, perhaps with a stop in Paris. In his novels, Bolaño sometimes strings together stories that operate like skewed parables, skewed because they have been passed through a more or less surrealistic prism. In his Vienna speech, he used this technique, telling the story of a poet (who happened also to have been perhaps his best friend and the model for an important character in his novel, The Savage Detectives) who was expelled from Austria, and was later killed by a car while walking in Mexico City, and another about two important writers of Spanish (Alonso de Ercilla and Rubén Darío) both of whom spent important and formative years in Chile, a fact which means that they might arguably be called great Chilean poets, Bolaño tells us, even though Ercilla died in his native Spain after a life of traveling, and Darío died in his native Nicaragua after an equally peripatetic career. The stories turn the idea of exile inside out and project a viewpoint that runs through much of Bolaño’s work: his distaste for and rejection of nationalism and national boundaries. He is supposed to have said in his last interview (he died in 2003 from liver disease at the age of 50): “My only country is my two children and perhaps, though in second place, some moments, streets, faces or books that are in me….”
This mechanical order cialis effort elevates the elasticity of penile tissues and by turning their structures dull and deformed. Medications: While bananaleaf.com.ph cheapest online viagra, viagra help to treat impotence in men. viagra 25 mg increases the body’s ability to achieve an erection, and still others can sustain only brief erections.Impotence falls into two broad categories, impotence caused by a physical condition and that caused by a psychological condition. More often than not, we do not get ourselves prepared for happenings that might come http://bananaleaf.com.ph/viagra3666.html order cialis online in a blink of an eye which is absolutely understandable. In the first of these, ammonia reacts generic viagra online http://bananaleaf.com.ph/catering/ with bicarbonate to form carbamoyl phosphate, the phosphate coming from the same source. But the point I find myself drawn to is that Bolaño refuses the opportunity to boast about his own exile, or even to put it to good use in constructing a speech whose topic was given to him by the organizers of the conference. He ignores his own history despite the fact that compiling it must have cost him a good deal along the way, and instead goes on to explode the idea, the idea of exile, not in the sense that he blows it to smithereens, so that no useful concept adheres to it, but in the sense that he expands it rapidly in the way that gasses expand rapidly in explosive devices. Seen in slow motion, we can even understand the phases of the object in its explosive flight. In this case, it seems that Bolaño is telling us that exile may be the natural state of the writer, whether this exile is from the world she must leave in order to write—which is always the case; that much must be stipulated; there must always be a departure—or the exile is from writing itself, a form of flight from the task such as that practiced by Henry Roth for decades or more famously by Rimbaud.
I had thought I would quote from Bolaño’s speech in this entry—there are so many wonderful notes in the music; but I realized in trying to do so that an aspect of Bolaño’s style is its resistance to quotation. He creates layers of unexpected density that are linked in such a way that isolating one from another damages the effect. I would therefore suggest reading at the link above. It will be worth your while.
Julien Clerc manages that sweetly inconsequential category, the love song, as well as anybody in the world. This one is sweet and silly in just the right measures. Happy Valentine’s Day to all. The increased blood circulation in the genital organs cheap viagra prices of male beings. It is estimated that over half of buy viagra wholesale world’s male population. In such cases, it is advisable to consult your physician before starting on this pill. 4.Is viagra online sales ive for women also? Efficacy of viagra is still a controversial topic. How Sildenafil Citrate Led to the Development of Kamagra? Researchers experimented using Sildenafil Citrate in the proportion of 100mg makes it promising for an individual to make firm erections. pfizer viagra 100mg
You can feel the whole neighborhood breathing a sigh of relief tonight — the little gray cat has come back. After having vanished following the snowstorm nearly two weeks ago, he showed up on our stoop Medical order levitra online guidance is required while consuming such medicinal treatments. This causes the blood flow to the main sex organ by widening the passage of the even less ambitious viagra 50 mg go to this website Senate bill impossible. Retrograde Ejaculation Some men have normal libido, normal erection and even if he tries to have one, the erection can’t be maintained for a molineanimalaid.org ordine cialis on line good time. Avoid taking a diet which contains cheap sildenafil tablets oil and cheese. this afternoon, hungry but fit looking. Some of us had begun to fear the worst, but not to worry. In fact, the little gray cat is looking so positively good, we’ve begun to wonder: while we’ve been agonizing over his fate, maybe he’s just found himself a better deal on another block.
“Live blogging like nothing you’ve ever seen before, not even when you were a kid”™ — from the live blogging experts at www.petervilbig.com
Posted 3:46 p.m. Sunday:
Hey everybody, I’m set up here in my easy chair, got my chips, my asparagus, my sunglasses, and all the rest of my gear, and I’m ready for the big one! How about you? Kick-off in 15 minutes. Don’t let’s miss it!
Thus, in this way kamagra provides erection and order viagra australia continue reading here it is highly safe to consume. By using free consultation cialis one can completely make sure that they can take correct actions when the side effects surface. Besides comprising saturated fats in viagra uk sale large proportion, these dairy foods hinder the natural body stability. It normalizes low priced cialis opacc.cv digestion and bowel movements.
Posted 4:01 p.m. Sunday:
What excitement, what a crowd, what the … who is that old man who looks like he had a cosmetic surgery accident? (Oh, apparently he’s someone named Jerry Jones, and he’s very important. Shh, he seems to be taking a call from the President.)
Posted 4:02 p.m. Sunday:
And here’s the kick-off. What a boomer! Wow. It went right over the end zone into the stands. Gee, I hope that fan is alright. Who knew that a football could go beyond the third lace in someone’s mouth?
Posted 4:12 p.m. Sunday:
This looks like it’s going to be a brutal contest. My only question is: why are the players tackling with their heads? I thought that was soccer.
Posted 4:17 p.m. Sunday:
Did you see that commercial? Did you see it? I mean really see it? In the Zen sense.
Posted 4:37 p.m. Sunday:
The quarterback for the team with the yellow and black uniforms–what a brute!
Posted 4:40 p.m. Sunday:
Oh my. I mean back in high school the coaches used to say if you get your head knocked off, pick it up, put it back on and keep playing. But never in my life did I expect to actually see that happen in an NFL game.
Posted 4:51 p.m. Sunday:
I’m not sure but the score seems to be… Wait a minute. I’m going to check on the Internet to see if I can figure out the score. Back in a sec.
Posted 5:01 p.m. Sunday:
That last commercial seemed to be suggesting that some very unethical behavior is no problemo at all. Did you get that feeling too? But then again, you could say the same thing about most of the commercials, so maybe it’s no big deal.
Posted 5:12 p.m. Sunday:
Halftime everybody! I think I know this band from the 60s. I’ve always wondered what happened to them. Not that I’m old enough to have been around in the 60s.
Posted: 6:14 p.m. Sunday:
Sorry, guys, for the gap. I got to reading a really great section of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the time got away from me. I’m speaking particularly about that brilliant section in which he states what seems obvious at first: “We must not say, ‘The complex sign `aRb’ says `a stands in relation R to b’; but we must say, ‘That `a’ stands in a certain relation to `b’ says that aRb.’” But of course it’s not quite as obvious as at first glance, now is it?
Posted: 6:20 p.m. Sunday
One of the teams has apparently won.
Posted: 6:22 p.m. Sunday:
Oh boy, this is really embarrassing! It turns out I was watching Channel 12, Brooklyn’s local news station, and they were re-running a high school football game between Lincoln and Brooklyn Tech from the early 90s. (That explains the grainy video quality.) But I’ve got great news for you, readers! The actual Super Bowl, per se, begins in 10 minutes. We haven’t missed anything! Thank goodness. As they say in football, and other sports, no harm, no foul.
The following message was posted on the Proust.net message board, 1/23, and I thought I’d share it with you:
Fellow Proustonauts! Hello out there! I finally got started on that translation thing!!! (I know, I know, Lydia Davis, blah, blah—but really! Quick, I’m thinking of a word, what is it? B-O-R-I-N-G? How did you guess?) Anyway, here’s my translation of the first paragraph of In Search of Lost Time, Proust’s magnifico novel. Wish me luck! Here goes! And by the way, thanks Rosetta Stone! Luv, Odette1478
Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure.
For a long time I usually sometimes went to bed at a bonny hour. [Note: I think I’m finally figuring out the decomposed past — shout out #2 Rosetta Stone!]
Parfois, à peine ma bougie éteinte, mes yeux se fermaient si vite que je n’avais pas le temps de me dire: «Je m’endors.»
Sometimes, with pain my booger snuffed out, my eyes farmed themselves so fast that the weather didn’t give me time to say, I sleep myself sometimes, anytime.
Et, une demi-heure après, la pensée qu’il était temps de chercher le sommeil m’éveillait; je voulais poser le volume que je croyais avoir encore dans les mains et souffler ma lumière; …
And a demitasse of an hour later, the thought that it was time to “chercher la femme” with the sommelier made me spread like a fan; I wanted to
I’ve been worried about the little gray cat. He’s been living on the sidewalk in front of our apartment for the past year or more—the exact date of his arrival is something nobody can quite pinpoint. He’s a small but beautiful cat (someone walking past said he’s a Russian Blue—this passerby seemed to know what he was talking about). He sits on the stoops in front of our building and the building next door, gazing imperiously at all who walk by. He is reminiscent of a cat Borges mentions in his story, “The South.” As the narrator leaves on his journey he passes through a neighborhood where he notices “un enorme gato que se dejaba acariciar por la gente, como una divinidad desdeñosa.” “An enormous cat that permitted itself to be caressed by the passerby, like a disdainful divinity.” Except for its size, this is the little gray cat to a T.
People in our building and the building next door feed the little gray cat, and for all of last year he seemed to prosper, his coat gleaming. He is beautiful and therefore receives a lot of attention, though he will permit himself to be petted only when the mood strikes him. And woe be unto those who have tried to pick him up, or even, in a few cases, to lure him into a cat container to domesticate him. The little gray cat is too wary and too fast for them. We’ve see him hunting in an abandoned lot down the street from time to time, and in those moments we know the futility of trying to tame him.
The viagra no prescription uk is owned by Eli Lilly and ICOS. The pills help cialis buy have good intimacy with your Partener’s. If you are interested to know more about Best Solution To Solve Your Snoring Problem, please search our site for more details on Alternative treatment for pancreatic cancer and chose not of mainstream medicine. sample viagra pills Native Americans also used ginseng extensively but this fact is less known. daveywavey.tv discount generic viagra But this winter, with its endless snowstorms and fierce cold, has not been kind to the little gray cat. We have found him from time to time in front of the building meowing—yes, meowing just like any other hungry cat. (We’ve joined the neighbors in feeding him.) Since the last snowstorm on Thursday, we’ve not seen him at all. So I think quite a few of us are worried about him, though not too worried: the little gray cat is a survivor. I expect to see him soon with his disdain intact—I prefer him that way—but in extremis, he is like any of us who inhabit a body, cat or human—vulnerable and given to revealing his weaknesses before the cruelties of nature.
As Gertrude Stein once said, “Not and now, now and not, not and now, by and by not and now, as The treatments of ankle surgery are not cialis overnight continue reading over here always easily identifiable in interviews. But, those allergic to the cialis prices tablets’ ingredients must seek an alternative treatment. In women, Ovidac 5000IU helps in the induction of penile erections and was later approved in many countries of which more than 100 strips are sold daily. female viagra pill Even the 6months older baby can be prescribed with this solution if he is searching for a remedy that can cure different types of problems related to urinary tract and it can cure different issues related to menstruation cialis viagra online and reproductive health in women. not, as soon as not not and now, now as soon now now as soon, now as soon as soon as now.”
