Author: paulattinello
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bring back the seventies
The end of the second of three long days: long, at least, by my current standards – I have become, over the past very quiet year, rather unaccustomed to following other people's schedules, so three or four days of appointments, meetings, classes, seems like a great deal. Very tired, thus: fairly winded. Didn't have a…
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The Greek Poet
Now here is a fine webpage: http://www.cavafy.com/index.asp The Cavafy archive, with most of his work neatly and openly available… plus some obscure things that were generally unknown. That is how the web should work, I think. At least in regards to literature….
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A bit dim
After all that travel, as the days get short, my days are not sharply defined – my body seems a bit off to me: as though my liver, my body's processing systems, are slightly out of whack. Some work gets done, fragmentarily: I am in focus for an hour or less, then tired for an…
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Italians and circuses
Reading a Fellini biography; and watching many Fellini movies, plus other bits of Italian neorealism – it's avoidant, I know (still fallow after that long trip, must get back to work). I've always loved a few things of Fellini – notably Satyricon – but I didn't know any of the early work; it's addictive –…
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James!
It’s interesting to notice that James’ The Aspern Papers actually works off the same mechanism as The Turn of the Screw – the obsessive narrator and literary detective, who thinks he is so valiantly pursuing truth and the papers themselves, hears what he wants to hear, distorts and twists everything, pushes every conversation away from…
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A vanity of musicologists
The American Musicologists Society annual meeting, in a city that has its own characteristic reputation – Nashville – but which doesn’t really have all that strong a character, really: a large collection of people who have devoted careers, lives actually, to something that is perhaps not terribly important. A collection of mostly rather dull people,…
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Spaces
So: somewhere between Newcastle, London, Philadelphia, Washington, New York and Nashville; somewhere among the planes, trains and cars, and between various family members and old friends; and somewhere among a 'historic' election (but aren't they all historic?) and my luggage getting lost for a day and a half, and my credit card falling afoul of…
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Off, off, off… we are off
Leaving early tomorrow: two days with my brother and brother-in-law in Washington, a day with my sister's family in New York, back to Washington, then to a conference in Nashville. Apologies for the relative brief and sparse blogging lately: my writing mind has needed to work on other things. Perhaps I'll have intermittent Internet while…
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Psychologists
Over the past two or three months, since having the idea of studying to become an analyst, I read certain things differently – writings that include some reference to therapy, psychology, dreams, etc. have become much denser and more interesting. Because, I suppose, I am no longer interested only when those writings seem to directly…
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I open my eyes in the nightSee a great dark shape in the skyI think: that is the shape of my death.Watching – and it vanishes: it was sky behind the clouds.
Paul Attinello 