Above: A new favorite book cover: Writings From the Zen Masters, from Penguin’s Great Ideas series. Cover design by Alistair Hall. You know you’re a designer with clout when you can convince a major publishing house to go with a book cover so minimalist that it has neither title nor author on it, or in fact any text at all. (And reduces that publisher’s iconic logo to an almost indistinguishable purple stamp.)

Above: Under the Volcano movie poster from PolishPoster.com, newly canvas-mounted.
(The unfortunate chopping-off of the text along the poster’s left edge is my fault.)
Below: Emily Dickinson.

A still — Volcano — Life —
That flickered in the night —
When it was dark enough to do
Without erasing sight —

A quiet — Earthquake Style —
Too subtle to suspect
By natures this side Naples —
The North cannot detect

The Solemn — Torrid — Symbol —
The lips that never lie —
Whose hissing Corals part — and shut —
And Cities — ooze away —

Antonio Porchia: Set out from any point. They are all alike. They all lead to a point of departure.

I want to try an experiment. With the vernal equinox tomorrow, and thus only several hours of winter left, I want to mention that we have had another 100% mouse-free winter. Here goes: We have had another 100% mouse-free winter. It is written. The jinx is now in play. I am trying to see if I can make mice materialize.

G.K. Chesterton, “The Ballad of the White Horse”:

For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.

Boston variation:

For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made hot,
For their whisky’s wicked pissah,
And their stouts are wicked smaht.

San Francisco, last June: Crazy guy yelling in the street: “Who’s got the little baby? Who’s got the BIG baby?” [A beat.] Dave: “It’s a riddle.”

Meister Eckhart: Only the hand that erases can write the true thing. (Via.)

W.G. Sebald, The Emigrants:

The wind blew sand across the road and under the wooden sidewalks. The dunes, said Uncle, are invading the town. If people didn’t keep coming in the summer, this would all be buried in a few years.

Annie Dillard, For the Time Being:

Earth sifts over things. If you stay still, earth buries you, ready or not. The debris on the tops of your feet or shoes thickens, windblown dirt piles around it, and pretty soon your feet are underground. Then the ground rises over your ankles and up your shins. If the sergeant holds his platoon at attention long enough, he and his ranks will stand upright and buried like the Chinese emperor’s army.

Evocative Chinese Engrish printed on the box of the bamboo table easel I buy last fall: Ideal easel wood and new trend for future. And: Finish: Vanished.

Billy Collins, “Winter Syntax”:

Bare branches in winter are a form of writing.
The unclothed body is autobiography.
Every lake is a vowel, every island a noun.

Above: Six beautiful and startling theater posters (well, five theater and one ballet) by Polish artist Tomasz Bogusławski that we recently purchase from PolishPoster.com. They are 27″ by 39″ and look ridiculously great in person. The plan is to get them canvas-mounted and then hang them together on a large wall, to help keep us in a more or less constant state of creeped-out disquiet. Clockwise from upper left:

• Witkacy, Szewcy (The Shoemakers)
• Heiner Müller, HamletMaszyna (Hamletmachine)
• Hommage à Niżyński (Tribute to Vaslav Nijinsky)
• Janusz Głowacki, Obciach (Chop)
• Tadeusz Różewicz, Odejście Głodomora (The Hunger Artist Departs)
• Fyodor Dostoevsky, Bracia K. (The Brothers Karamazov)

For future reference: Singing extremely loudly over various tracks by Maroon 5 in crazed nonsense syllables, caterwauled in a piercing, screaming Dave-Coulier-as-Animal-from-Muppet-Babies voice — in unaffectionate imitation of Adam Levine’s AutoTuned mosquito-whine singing — turns out to be surprisingly effective at reducing one’s significant other to unprecedented levels of convulsive, helpless mirth. In the car. At night. Speeding west across the Niagara Peninsula’s highways, post-Fat-Bob’s.

Hemingway’s widely-quoted observation to the Paris Review: “The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof shit detector.” I finally acquired one of these detectors, but whenever I turn it on, it just detects itself.

Back on 24 January I go to the Guns n’ Roses show here in Hamilton. The venue is conveniently located right down the street. It is a rainy Sunday night. I walk. The show is kind of fun but kind of depressing. I am not sure what proportion of this depressed response can be chalked up to the advanced age of the band, the advanced age of the crowd, and the advanced age of me. There is something absurd and vaguely off-putting about the way Axl Rose sprints offstage during every non-vocal part of every song, as if he figures why bother wasting his time being in front of people if sound isn’t coming out of his mouth. There is also something vaguely off-putting about the way his face looks like it is melting off his skull.