A Poem For Sunday

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Dish poetry editor Alice Quinn writes:

James Laughlin, the founder and publisher of New Directions from 1936 until his death in 1997, was also a prolific poet, who established his style with some guidance from William Carlos Williams, one of his most distinguished authors. In Peter Glassgold’s introduction to The Collected Poems of James Laughlin, 1935-1997, the omnibus volume he has edited, I learned that Laughlin dubbed it “typewriter metrics.” Glassgold describes it thus: “The lines in any given stanza could not vary in length more than one typewriter character.” Laughlin said that he was after “an effect of tension from the war between the strictly artificial pattern and the strictly natural spoken rhythms.”

The poem below was written in the mid-30s, around the time he took a trip to Key West to try to talk Elizabeth Bishop into joining his list. She didn’t say yes, but there’s an enchanting picture of her on the steps of a brothel where they were treated to tea, and, as Laughlin recalled, “Oreo cookies, my favorites.”

“What My Head Did to Me” by James Laughlin:

I guess I like myself
pretty well anyway I
wanted a statue of my-
self so I had a woman

make one it was a head
and she modelled it in
clay then one night I
dreamed I’d killed my

very best friend and
there was my head right
there ready to tell on
me when the police came

I tried to destroy the
face so they wouldn’t
know it was me but my
hands stuck tight in

the clay I couldn’t
tear them loose and
there I was when the
police came held by my

own head with the body
of my friend multi-
plying itself like
endless mirrors down

the street that’s the
thing my head did to
me but of course it
was only a dream see.

(From The Collected Poems of James Laughlin, 1935-1997, edited with an introduction and notes by Peter Glassgold © 1995 by James Laughlin. Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. Photo by Lori Leaumont)

Quote For The Day

“That music you hear in the distance?  It’s St Augustine, St Teresa, Teilhard de Chardin, Pascal, Kierkegaard and Simone Weil all singing together, and what they are singing is that, as Christ commanded, we are supposed to love God with our minds, as well as with our hearts and our souls and our strength.  It is an illusion to think that there is any necessary conflict between a Christian commitment and free, adventurous thinking.  No-one ever does their thinking on a blank sheet of paper. Every intellectual of every kind is in a conversation with some set of ideas, doctrines, ways of seeing the world, and that’s what makes their own thinking serious.  The Christian conversation with Christian ideas, and with every other kind of idea, need not be defensive or imprisoning.  Why is there a stereotype that says you have to choose between faith and thought?  Two reasons, I think.  One, that people think belief means entering a kingdom of fixed answers — when, in my experience, it really means living with more and more questions.  Two, that people imagine religion must shrink as science grows bigger.  But they don’t do the same thing, or occupy the same space.  There is plenty of thinking room for both.  The great contemporary American novelist Marilynne Robinson says there is nothing like a subscription to Scientific American to fill you with wonder at Creation,” – Francis Spufford, in a recent interview.

The Beauty Of Brunch

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David Shaftel isn’t feeling it. He scoffs that the “meal has spread like a virus from Sunday to Saturday and has jumped the midafternoon boundary”:

Once the domain of Easter Sunday, it has become a twice-weekly symbol of our culture’s increasing desire to reject adulthood. It’s about throwing out not only the established schedule but also the social conventions of our parents’ generation. It’s about reveling in the naughtiness of waking up late, having cocktails at breakfast and eggs all day. It’s the mealtime equivalent of a Jeff Koons sculpture.

“What’s wrong with that?” replies Tim Teeman:

Brunch is a break from routine. It doesn’t seem infantilizing though, more just a chance to play hooky from the stresses of the workweek. It is hardly a rejection of adulthood, rather a momentary escape from routine. And if it is a rejection of adulthood, the brutal truth is it only lasts two hours tops before the demands of the big-A—bill paying, work stuff, relationship crises, cleaning your apartment, running errands—reassert themselves.

Brunch is like an afternoon trip to the cinema, a lost hour to yourself walking and mooching, a stolen half hour watching the table tennis players in Bryant Park, or losing yourself in The New Yorker in a coffee shop: delicious time, time to be savored that’s off the grid.

(Photo by Ted Eytan)

The Trouble With Religion

In a follow-up interview to his comments featured in our “Trouble with Islam” thread, Reza Aslan elaborates on what the New Atheists get wrong about religion:

I think the principle [sic] fallacy of not just to the so-called New Atheists, but I think of a lot of critics of religion, is that they believe that people derive their values, their morals, from their religion. That, as every scholar of religion in the world will tell you, is false.

People don’t derive their values from their religion — they bring their values to their religion. Which is why religions like Judaism, Hinduism, Christianity, [and] Islam, are experienced in such profound, wide diversity. Two individuals can look at the exact same text and come away with radically different interpretations. Those interpretations have nothing to do with the text, which is, after all, just words on a page, and everything to do with the cultural, nationalistic, ethnic, political prejudices and preconceived notions that the individual brings to the text. That is the most basic, logical idea that you could possibly imagine, and yet for some reason, it seems to get lost in the incredibly simplistic rhetoric around religion and the lived experience of religion.

Below is how he responds when especially problematic verses in sacred texts – such as those permitting the faithful to kill nonbelievers – are noted in debates about religion:

This is the thing — it’s not that you can interpret away problematic parts of a scripture. It’s that the scriptures are inundated with conflicting sentiments about almost every subject. In other words, the same Torah that tells Jews to love their neighbor also tells them to kill every single man, woman, and child who doesn’t worship Yahweh. The same Jesus who told his disciples to give away their cloaks to the needy also told them to sell their cloaks and buy swords. The same Quran that tells believers if you kill a single individual, it’s as though you’ve killed all of humanity, also tells them to slay every idolater wherever you find them.

So, how do you, as an individual, confront that text? It’s so basic, a child can understand: The way that you would give credence or emphasis to one verse as opposed to the other has everything to do with who you are. That’s why they have to sort of constantly go back to this notion of an almost comical lack of sophistication in the conversations that we are having about religion. And to me, there’s a shocking inability to understand what, as I say, a child would understand, which is that religions are neither peaceful nor violent, neither pluralistic nor misogynistic — people are peaceful, violent, pluralistic, or misogynistic, and you bring to your religion what you yourself already believe.

Hasidic No More

In an interview about her forthcoming book, Becoming Un-Orthodox: Stories of Ex-Hasidic Jews, Lynn Davidman offers a glimpse of what life is like in Hasidic communities:

They’re taught to be modest: Aside from dressing in an unrevealing way, this means not talking in a loud voice, not wearing gaudy colors, generally not calling attention to yourself. Men, when walking down the street, will look down so they don’t catch a woman’s eye. Before marriageable age, there is complete and utter separation of the sexes. Inside the Satmar community, there are Yiddish signs indicating which side of the street men walk on and which side of the street women walk on.

The entire day is filled with ritual.

When you wake up, you are not allowed to walk more than three steps from your bed before you encounter a big bowl of water that was placed on the floor the night before. There’s a cup with two handles; you pick it up and pour it over each hand three times. Then you say a prayer thanking God for returning you from sleep. Then you go to the bathroom. There’s a special blessing to say after you go to the bathroom — you thank God that all your organs are functioning. Then there are more prayers, especially for the men. The men are obligated to pray every morning by a certain time. If you go to breakfast, you’re supposed to say a blessing over each food. There’s an order in which you say the blessings. If you have a fruit salad, but you have granola too, which do you bless first? One idea is that if the fruit’s grown in Israel, you bless that one first. There’s a whole system.

Her summary of what typically prompts someone to leave:

They generally have had some childhood experience that doesn’t fit with the ideal Hasidic way. They’re taught that this is the ideal life — but if they’re subject to un-ideal conditions, they start to question what’s wrong. Sometimes there’s verbal or physical or sexual abuse. Perhaps they have two parents whose levels of religiosity differ. This is confusing for a kid, because [they’re taught that] there’s one right way. If their parents disagree, they start to wonder: Is there really one truth? Other people may have cousins or relatives who are secular. One woman said [of her cousins], “They go skiing, they have such a great time — and nobody’s punishing them.” People who leave are mostly young, up to around 25 years old. If you’re married and starting to have kids, it’s much harder to get out.

Growing Up With God

Emma Green highlights some surprising findings about how childhood influences churchgoing as an adult:

[B]irth order seems to matter: middle children are more likely than their older or younger siblings to lose their attachment to religion as they get older. Perhaps this is because of underlying personality differences. Compared with their brothers and sisters, these kids were rated more “rebellious” as well as less “agreeable” and “conscientious”—two traits the authors associated with religiosity. In another twist, although those with bachelor’s degrees have historically had lower levels of religious affiliation, a study published this year found that this isn’t true for people born after the 1950s. In fact, college grads born in the 1970s are more likely than nongrads of the same age to identify with a particular faith. Maybe there’s something about contemporary campus life that makes people more, not less, likely to gravitate toward traditional institutions—or maybe college grads have simply learned that religion is pretty good for you.

Aural Sex, Ctd

https://dailymotion.com/video/x24m45q

EJ Dickson profiles Nica Noelle, “a veteran porn director and performer turned ASMRtist”:

Nica has been interested in doing erotic ASMR [autonomous sensory meridian response] since she first stumbled on the community a few years ago. Her project, she tells me, is twofold: She wants to fuse the basic principles of ASMR with traditional POV porn, but she also wants to make the relationship between the viewer and performer more intimate; she wants to turn the viewer on, but she also wants them to feel nurtured, cared for, needed. In short, Nica is trying to capture a feeling that no other porn director has ever tried to replicate before: Love.

But, like some Dish readers, not everyone is thrilled with sexualizing ASMR:

[I]f the ASMR party line is that it’s not intended to be sexual, Nica’s channel, which features her massaging her breasts and speaking in low, seductive tones, doesn’t necessarily support that view point. …

Nica doesn’t have any patience with the argument that her erotic ASMR work makes mainstream ASMR-tists “look bad,” or invites male viewers to give them unwanted sexual attention. “It’s very simple: If you don’t want to add a sexual component to your artistic expression, then don’t,” she says. But she admits she was shocked by the backlash she received for her erotic ASMR channel, though she says she anticipated it to a certain extent.

“Many ASMRtists are already on the defensive about being viewed as doing something dirty or creepy, when actually they feel ASMR is a pure, almost childlike artistic expression; the antithesis of porn,” she told me via email. “I can see why someone who makes videos of themselves clipping coupons or shining shoes doesn’t want to be viewed as a pornographer.” …

As she talks about her new HotMovies project, which will likely feature “erotic ASMR” as a new fetish category, it seems that Nica’s general artistic project has switched focus somewhat: Instead of trying to convince the ASMR community at large that sexualizing brain tingles isn’t dirty or bad, she wants to convince porn viewers that porn isn’t necessarily dirty or bad, that it can be loving and intimate and nurturing and highly erotic, all at the same time. Put another way, she’s transitioned from trying to apply porn principles to ASMR, to applying ASMR principles to porn.

Previous Dish on ASMR here.

App-Based Affairs

Michelle Cottle examines how technology is making it easier to cheat – and easier to get caught:

In an earlier era, a suspicious husband like Jay might have rifled through Ann’s pockets or hired a private investigator. But having stumbled upon Find My iPhone’s utility as a surveillance tool, Jay wondered what other apps might help him keep tabs on his wife. He didn’t have to look far. Spouses now have easy access to an array of sophisticated spy software that would give Edward Snowden night sweats: programs that record every keystroke; that compile detailed logs of our calls, texts, and video chats; that track a phone’s location in real time; that recover deleted messages from all manner of devices (without having to touch said devices); that turn phones into wiretapping equipment; and on and on.

One might assume that the proliferation of such spyware would have a chilling effect on extramarital activities. Aspiring cheaters, however, need not despair:

software developers are also rolling out ever stealthier technology to help people conceal their affairs. Married folk who enjoy a little side action can choose from such specialized tools as Vaulty Stocks, which hides photos and videos inside a virtual vault within one’s phone that’s disguised to look like a stock-market app, and Nosy Trap, which displays a fake iPhone home screen and takes a picture of anyone who tries to snoop on the phone. CATE (the Call and Text Eraser) hides texts and calls from certain contacts and boasts tricky features such as the ability to “quick clean” incriminating evidence by shaking your smartphone. CoverMe does much of the above, plus offers “military-grade encrypted phone calls.” And in the event of an emergency, there’s the nuclear option: apps that let users remotely wipe a phone completely clean, removing all traces of infidelity.

Face Of The Day

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Photographer Visarute Angkatavanich captures Siamese fighting fish:

His intimate, crystal-clear photos of Siamese fighting fish (betta) make it seem as though they are suspended in air instead of water. Angkatavanich recently told Popular Photographythat he only started photographing the fish after encountering them for the first time three years ago at a fish show and has since become obsessed with the different species which vary greatly in size, shape, and color patterns.

Angkatavanich spoke about his inspiration in an interview last year:

“When I was young, my father gave me some goldfish, guppy and Siamese fighting fish. A few years ago I went to pet market and saw so many bettafish mutants from those I saw when I was young. Those are my inspiration for this photo set.”

The brilliant coloration, and long flowing fins of Siamese fighting fish make it one of the most well-known aquarium fish. They have been line bred for over 120 years in Thailand and Cambodia to achieve today’s stunning colours and long finage. A long history of captive breeding has changed the shape of the species and today virtually all species for sale are captive-bred.

See more of his work here and here.