Les Americains in Paris

N’avez-vous pas des griddle-cakes?
Quelle espèce de dump is this, anyhow?
Appelez-vous cela coffee?

Où est le N.Y. Times?


What’s the matter?
Don’t you understand English?


De tous les pays godams que j’ai vu.

Je n’ai pas vu une belle femme jusqu’à présent.
Ici est où nous used to come
quand j’étais ici pendant la guerre.


Say, ceci est de la bière vrai!

O boy! Deux semaines from tomorrow
nous sail for home. Sogleich wir zu hause sind,
geh ich zum Childs und eine tasse kaffee
und ein glass eiswasser kaufen.

Phrases most in demand by American visitors to Paris.

Masque

When CARINE ROITFELD
invited me at VOGUE PARIS
90th Anniversary
party on the september 30 in Paris,
I was so thrilled, but when I knew
that was a BAL COSTUME
inspired by EYES WIDE SHUT,
I was worried.

Why?
Cause if CARINE ROITFELD
invites you to her party,
she expects to be
surprised by your look.

All the guests are form creative environments, than are supposed
to be creative even about themselves.

How to think of a dentist who hasn’t
the most white and beautiful teeth?

Anna Della Russo’s blog via the Guardian. By Marika Rose.



The morning question

The morning question,
What good shall I do this day?

Rise, wash, and address
Powerful Goodness;
contrive day’s business,
and take the resolution of the day;
prosecute the present study;
and breakfast.

Work.

Read, or overlook my
accounts, and dine.

Work.

Put things in their places,
supper, music or diversion,
or conversation;
examination of the day.

Evening question,
What good have I done today?

Sleep.

Benjamin Franklin’s daily schedule, from his autobiography which was written between 1771 and 1790. By Rishi Dastidar.

To Poetry

Poetry is dead –
Poetry is like –
Poetry is what gets lost

in translation.

Poetry is everywhere –
Poetry is emotion
recollected in tranquility.

Poetry is to prose
as dancing is to walking,
poetry is not a luxury

Audre Lorde.

Poetry is the synthesis
of hyacinths and biscuits,
poetry is not a luxury–

Poetry is not a project.

Google autosuggestions for the search ‘poetry is’.

Not a Tame Lion

Supposing there were other worlds,
and if one of them was like Narnia –
and if it needed saving –
and if Christ went to save it
as He came to save us –
let’s imagine what shape and name
He might have taken there.
And the answer was Aslan.

From a C.S Lewis letter to a fan, 12 February 1958.

For Love

It is a restless moment
She has kept her head lowered,
To give him a chance to come close.
But he could not, for lack of courage,
She turns and walks away.

He remembers those vanished years.
As though looking through a dusty windowpane,
The past is something he could see, but not touch.
And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.

Subtitle translations of the opening and closing text of In the Mood for Love (Kar Wai Wong, 2000). By Marika Rose.

Analysis

All I can do is
tell the truth. No that isn’t
so – I have missed it.

There is no truth that
in passing through awareness
does not lie.

But one runs after it all the same.

From the preface to The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis by Jacques Lacan. By Marika Rose.

On the Angel

Get into these streets
these people
this glorious ark;
this joy, this spirit
this towering pride.

Get into the day
the evening
the night.
Into the heart
Into the life.

Get into your city
Get into my city
Get into Newcastle.

Audio advert on the 21 “Angel” bus between Durham and Gateshead, July 2010. By Marika Rose.