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Tag Archives: Memento Mori
Digital Materiality
Read in the Globe and Mail Quebec is touting its cool climate, plentiful water supply, relatively cheap, clean and reliable electricity supply and attractive high-tech talent pool as reasons that make the province the ideal place for the high-heat generating, … Continue reading
Training and Birthing
In Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag offers this one striking line: “Anthropology is necrology.” Short and pithy, it occurs in an essay full of luxurious sentences where the elegant comma reigns; it is entitled “The anthropologist as hero” and I begin … Continue reading
Intimations of Mortality
I am struggling with material from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I know I want to propose a reversal of old and young in this passage: The young man proudly names his scars for his lover; the old man … Continue reading
A Smile at A Smile in His Lifetime
Joseph Hansen has his lead character visit a home from his past, a home that time has ravaged. He steps into the room where he slept. Damp trash lies in the corner where his bed was. There are books without … Continue reading
Homage
Andrew Holleran in his essays collected in Ground Zero strikes a tone that borders on the ironic and then pulls away to a quiet, contemplative assertion of the value of pragmatic attention. Take, for instance, the conclusion to “The Absence … Continue reading
Estate Sales
We Are Still Married: stories and letters by Garrison Keillor has a piece called “Estate” which is about a stint as a writer of obituaries and a frequenter of estate sales. He speaks of an editor: But I managed to … Continue reading
Scenes of Wat Sankatan
Thai Vegetarian Cooking by Vatcharin Bhumichitr is part travelogue part cookbook. There is a photo with the following caption: In a forest temple, a young monk meditates beside the body of a deceased colleague. Without the caption, one would not … Continue reading
Any time
I used to confuse Valerie Miner with Isobel Miller, author of Patience and Sarah. Must be the cover art of Winter’s Edge in the Crossing Press 1985 edition — two women conversing by a window at a cafe … in … Continue reading
a Skip and a Beat
In a piece collected in Close to the Knives David Wojnarowicz writes: Hell is a place on earth. Heaven is a place in your head. In case any readers might want to take this aphoristic slice of quotation as a … Continue reading
Mortal Musings
Robin Romm’s narrators interject into the telling miniature meditations on the nature of dying and the consequences of death for the surviving. These are not just of the memento mori variety. The story “The Tilt” which gives its name to … Continue reading