THE BOOK
..........................-
TENDER
BUTTONS
THE SUBBOOK ...................-
OBJECTS
THE SUBPOEM
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A DRAWING: NUMBER 30
STANZAS..............................-
1
WORD COUNT......................- 38
THE
LEADER........................-
THE STEINY ROAD POET
CO-LLABORATORS..............-
MODPO
STUDENTS/THE BUTTONS
GENRE..................................-
VIRTUAL OPERA
LOCATION............................- USA, UK, Australia, Philippines, S.
Africa, Canada.
TIME......................................-
ALL HOURS OF EARTH’S CLOCK
TONE.....................................-
EXPANSIVE
“How wonderful
that GS should come straight back at us with such a statement about
meaning after all our talk and musings in the
last thread about in what way(s), how, or if, she [Stein] conveyed meaning.”
Peter Treanor
A DRAWING.
The meaning of this is entirely and
best to say the mark, best to say it best to show sudden places, best to make
bitter, best to make the length tall and nothing broader, anything between the
half.
That the
Steiny Road Poet is still able to pull on her boots and move forward after
processing long discussions like “Careless
Water.” is only made more remarkable by the magnitude of big themes
discussed in conjunction with “A Drawing.”.
Inside the ModPo
Discussion Forum where all this Tender
Buttons study is taking place, Steiny exclaimed, “I love how we mark
through endless lists of possibility--river
measurement, Hobbit
bloodletting, midpoint
(wisdom) of Sefirot, Super Bowl
drawing, pen & ink
drawing, a portrait of
Moses’ Sister Miriam, until we get full
and Dave [Green] quotes Rabbi Tarfon: ‘It is not your
responsibility to finish the work of perfecting the world, but you are not
free to desist from it either.’”
And should
Steiny say that the Buttons never seemed to be sated on this discussion and
kept coming back with more thoughts. So added to this list were associations
with erections, comparative symbology (vinculum and solidus), lesbian lovemaking,
contemporary French philosophy (including Écriture Feminine of Luce Irigaray), Egyptian
myth of Isis, ordinal numbers, String Theory, the element Thorium, and who
knows what was overlooked in this stream of ideas.
Here in part 1 of "A Drawing.", Steiny
ipauses for those skeptical about the scope of this discussion.
Steiny raised the question during this study session how deeply can we associate? Peter Treanor responded, “I think as
deeply as we like or are able to. But I think we can only say I think rather than I know with our associations. Best not to become association
fundamentalists.” So, Dear Reader, be warned, that here there exists no gospel—no
absolute truth—but plenty of Steinian circularity. Put on your boots, we are
wading in.
MARKING
TWAIN
best to say the mark… best to make the
length tall and nothing broader, anything between the half.
Pictorially,
Allan Keeton responded:
mark
between the half
Mark
Twain
make the
length tall and nothing broader
Tall tales
&
b r o a d
humor
This caused
Judy Meibach to scratch her head and so Steiny jumped in with a definition of mark that included:
6. Nautical
a.
A knot or piece of material placed at various measured lengths
on a sounding line to indicate the depth of the water.
Allan also
glossed his picture with:
Judy,
between
the half
is the place between something that was
whole,
but has now been cut (there's that
cutting again) in twain.
Since mark shows up earlier,
I heard
Mark Twain
being drawn forth from “A Drawing.”
Thus we see
Stein taking a measurement, like a Mississippi boat captain tossing down a
knotted line to see how deep and can he navigate through this part of the
river.
DRAWING
BLOOD WITH TOLKIEN
As if this
were a card game on one of those Mississippi riverboats, Mary Armour said,
“Like your
Mark Twain, Allan, and raise you with JR Tolkien:
I will draw you, Saruman, as poison is drawn from a wound. - Gandalf.
Hmm, Steiny
joins Judy in puzzlement. Is this the groom Gertrude on her wedding night with
bride Alice piercing the hymen?
Moving
along, Peter pondered,
“There is so
much to mark in mark. To mark and
draw.
“And best
best best best best, five times. Only one thing can be best surely, five things
can’t all be best can they? Unless
there is a bestest.
“Best so sounds like Est, (east in French ) or the impersonal verb IS (from etre—to
be). Is she pointing us eastwards again? Or telling us that the meaning
of THIS IS IS, it is, to be, to be is the meaning, to be
est, entirely and totally be.
“But what/
how is best?
its best to
say
to say
to show
to make
to make.. She says.
“And they
are all ways of expressing yourself artistically, or just expressing yourself,
to make something with meaning, to convey meaning.
“And what
does she say to engage in these activities with? Mark, sudden places, bitter, length tall and nothing broader, anything between the half.
“So what are
they?
“Marks, (words/lines pencil/ink on
paper)
Sudden places, maybe are performance spaces,
spontaneous occasions
Bitter, emotion(s) maybe
Length tall (height) breadth, three-dimensional
space
Anything between the half, well, I don’t know about this, its
very enigmatic. Between the half could be he ha, could she mean comedy? Humour? he ha what a laugh!
“Is she
talking about ways to convey meaning, is she conveying meaning, is she saying
the meaning is IS, to be, we are. Maybe these are the conclusions she is drawing in the
drawing, the meaning she is meaning.
Steiny
jumped in quoting this from Peter’s thoughts:
the
meaning of THIS IS IS, it is, to be, to be is the meaning, to be est, entirely
and totally be.
Then she
said to Peter:
“I think you
have nailed her insistence about being in the present moment—continuous
present. This is what William James taught her about how the window of now is hard to achieve.
“Maybe there
is also something here about physics. Einstein's Theory of Relativity (1905)
combines space and time together. One explanation I read explained it this way:
space is three dimensions and time adds
the fourth dimension.”
Still caught
up in what was between the half, Peter suggested the study group was again
looking at the infinity called fractals. Steiny digging in deep lobbed out this
big bomb: anything between the half might
fall into the gematria [kaballalistic number analysis] of the 5th Sefirot [kaballalistic
Tree of Life], Gevurah, something the Buttons had discussed
in pairing the fourth Commandment with “A Box.”. Steiny liked this
possibility because Gevurah [restraint, judgment, power] is associated Chesed (loving
kindness, mercy), God's 72 hidden names, and divine love for what he has
created. Basically, Gevurah fits with this repeating best to, which seems like Stein trying to make a judgment on how to
proceed.
Meanwhile
Peter tinkered with The meaning of this is. What he saw was Isis but this was
ignored in the heat of the larger Buttons discussion. Because this subject
borders on Fourth Dimension conceptualization (as in the life of the mind),
Steiny will come back to the Egyptian myth of Isis anon.
PLAY BALL
“I'm not a
big sports fan,” Dave said, “but this clearly sounds like the Super Bowl. The
Super Bowl is a ‘drawing’ in the sense that it is a contest. Its purpose is to
determine which team can hit the mark. Not just which team says they are the
best, but which team can prove that by dynamic plays that suddenly get them big
yardage and into the end zone. By making the other team taste the bitterness of
defeat. By throwing long passes that are precisely targeted. And, of course,
the half time show (what happens between the halves) is a lot of fun too. Or
maybe Stein was thinking about the World Series since she was a baseball fan.”
FROM THE
ABSTRACT—A FACE
Sarah
Maitland Parks, Dave Green, and Eleanor Smagarinsky huddle over associations to
drawings, particularly cubist drawings where multiple angles of a subject can
be seen. Eleanor offered this riff on the biblical character Miriam:
“I see a
portrait too, it's of a poet—Miriam.
M is for
Matthew & Mark, also Moses.
But Moses
had a sister—Miriam.
M for meaning, M for mark.
Who makes a
better mark on history, who has the better meaning?
Miriam was a
leader, a poet, and a prophet.
Her name
means embittered (MAR is the Hebrew
root meaning bitter).
After the
Red Sea split in two (halves) during the Exodus, Miriam wrote a poem and all
the women danced and sang. ‘Song of the Sea’ it's
called. Look how it has to be written by the scribe... like Allan's poems, form
shows the content.
Her gift to
the people was a moving well - it was her well, which provided the Children of
Israel with water throughout their travels in the desert.
After Miriam
died, the well dried up, all that was left was a rock. Moses hit the rock with
his staff instead of speaking to it, and was punished by never setting
foot in Canaan.”
FROM
ABSTRACTION BACK TO THE BODY
As with all
abstractions, sometimes the best next move is distraction and so Steiny made a
party to celebrate Gertrude Stein’s 140th birthday but pretty soon
Tamboura Gaskins wandered back to the study hall with these thoughts:
While
the party goes on, I have been struck with a thought:
A
DRAWING.
The
meaning of this is entirely and best to say the mark, best to say it best to
show sudden places, best to make bitter, best to make the length tall and
nothing broader, anything between the half.
A
drawing ==>
an act of drawing ==> to move or pass, especially slowly or continuously, as
under a pulling force ==> an erection
The
meaning of this is entirely and best to say the mark, ==> Restructuring this
phrase, “It is entirely and best to say that the meaning of this is the
mark.” ==> Here, we’re being instructed to think of this
meta-poetically: the meaning is in the
mark, and the mark is the writing, the words, on the page.
…best
to say it… ==>
Go ahead, Alice B., say it…
…best
to show sudden places, ==> Go ahead, Alice B., show how it is done
==> these sudden places are a sudden erection, a sudden
ejaculation, a sudden orgasm ==> a drawing, or stroke of the penis,
is best to show these sudden places
…best
to make bitter, ==>
Go ahead, Alice B., even if in doing it, I have to
swallow a bitter pill
…best
to make the length tall and nothing broader, ==> Go ahead, Alice B.,
arouse them…I know you prefer them long with not much girth
…anything
between the half. ==>“half”
when written as a fraction is one-stroke-two; the stroke is between
the one and two, ergo “between the half” ==> the one and two
represent the penis and the testicles ==> the stroke is the “drawing”
that lengthens, but does not broaden ==> “anything between the
half” is a question here, perhaps; is there anything or anyone who might
lengthen the stroke on the penis? Alice, is there anything between the
half?
THE
DIMPLED BON-BONS OF WOMEN WRITING THE BODY
“Tamboura, I
so like that way you've drawn connections here,” responded Mary Armour who had
also broken away from the Gertrude’s birthday party, “I do think GS was so
informed by a phallocentric society in a way we perhaps might not be,
or at least we might pose fluidity and clitoral and
lipocentric metaphors as against that phallus. We're post-Lacan [French
psychoanalyst-psychiatrist Jacques
Marie Émile Lacan], we know the lips
moving against one another, the speculum of Irigaray [French
feminist-philosopher-linguist Luce
Irigaray], that the realm of
the Phallus as Father is not absolute. Gertrude was just beginning the undoing
of that patriarchal mindset but she laid claim to it as a woman who wanted to
be a man on her terms.
“A
lesbian friend of mine had a T-shirt she wore in the 1990s that read
'I like penises so long as they're not on men.'”
When
Steiny returned to the restarted study session, she suggested to Mary that not
everyone knew the work of Lacan and Irigaray.
“Karren
[a.k.a. Steiny], you're right—I'm dashing in and out and scattering
obscure references like dimpled bon-bons,” Mary quipped and then continued more
seriously:
“For some
years, side-stepping the temptation of essentialism, I read French feminists
on what is called Écriture
féminine or 'women writing the body' and revelled in
the jouissance (orgasmic blissfulness) of Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Catherine Clément (The Weary Sons of Freud) and
the great daunting writer and psychologist Julia Kristeva. I
was hoping to be able to unlearn some of the patriarchal bleakness
of Jacques Lacan who influences many Francophiles and not always
for the better. (William James, the lingering influence of Charcot as
well as the scientific laboratory at Harvard may have damped GS's
enthusiasm for the new study of human psychology in something of the same way).
“Many of the
French feminist theorists sought to reclaim the womanly body for
pleasure and creativity, to look at writing through the body and Luce
Irigaray saw women's sexual pleasure as something diffuse and proliferating
in its multiplicity and Otherness: " a woman has sex organs just
about everywhere…the geography of her pleasure is much more diversified, more
multiple in its differences, more complex, more subtle, than is imagined” by
phallocentric ideologies.
“I find that
GS moves back and forth, sideways and in all ways between options and
understandings of a differently gendered body.”
Then Mary
address issues brought up by Peter:
“Peter,
when you speak about gender and geldings seen as entire,
what it might mean to be unmanned and yet whole, to have survived the
bitterness of cultural castration, to be a woman sexually potent with an
imaginary penis, we come closer to why GS was able to play with the
notions of length, thickness, potency of the penis, considerations that
often evoke such anxiety about sufficiency, amplitude and performance
in heterosexual men. Whatever Gertrude has is enough to satisfy Alice, it
is le meilleur (best) in le tailleur (measure), the best in the
length, it is unexpected in sudden places and thrilling, it is 'measureless to
man' and perfect in itself.”
THE MATHEMATICS OF PILLOW TALK
While
acknowledging the physicality of what Tamboura and Mary addressed, Peter
rejoined his own musing on anything
between the half in this way:
“Half when written as a fraction
is one-stroke-two [1/2]; the stroke is between the one and two,
ergo between the half ==> the
one and two represent the penis and the testicles ==> the stroke is the
drawing that lengthens, but does
not broaden ==> anything
between the half is a question here, perhaps; is there anything or
anyone who might lengthen the stroke on the penis? Alice, is
there anything between the half?
“This phrase
has been puzzling me for a while, I liked the fraction idea and the notion that
the fraction bar is ACTUALLY between the numbers of the fraction. So I looked
up fraction bars. There are two types apparently, a horizontal one—(erect penis
I guess) called a vinculum
|
and a forward slash / (very impressive erect penis!),
called a solidus.
The fantastic thing about the solidus is it has many uses one of which is
gender-neutrality in Spanish and Portuguese.”
So for
example:
In Portuguese and Spanish, as well in
other West Iberian
languages, many feminine forms are very similar to the masculine
ones, differing only by an extra desinence, usually an
"-a". For instance, the feminine of "pintor" ("male
painter" both in Spanish and Portuguese) is "pintora". These two
forms can be joined together through a slash: pintor/a. Proponents of
gender-neutral language assert that this composed form should be used when the
sex of the person referred to is unknown or when a description fits both sexes.
Traditionally, speakers of these languages (and others from the Romance family)
employ the masculine form in this sense, even when the description is also
suitable for a woman.
“I think the
idea of conveying gender neutrality or ambiguity,” Peter continued, “seems to
fit with GS's persona and gender ambiguity/ neutrality and seems to slot into
the idea of an erect penis. Love the fact that you found the solidus
[Tamboura’s description evoked the solidus without naming it]. Even its name
suggests engorged erectile tissue!”
Then the
Buttons moved collective energy to discuss “Water Raining.” and “Cold
Climate.”. That is, until Steiny stirred up some muddy water here on the topic
of Isis.
Boots on, brollies up. On to Part II.
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