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Desember With Syriac and her other languages, Cleopatra also knew Hebrew and Aramaic Who knows what they spoke together but Ceasar's leap-year reform of the solar calendar and his plans to create public libraries in Rome were her ideas. The leap-year solution came to her from Sosigenes, her court's astronomer. Libraries of course were always the Alexandrian way Luster blue, redder and duller than copen and redder and deeper than Dresden The Cheminée de Moretti's pipes of many colors stand in La Défense as if to wheeze pit a calliope version of Marcel Landowski's First Symphony from 1948 And Moretti's reds, his greens and grays Buongiorno Mario Davidovsky's Chacona Two teen-age boys in a fight on West 34th, one screaming "bitch" at the other, watch them while walking away and step onto a discarded glueboard Ten minutes to get both feet free, lost in Zugzwang Drive-by shootings, wilding, train surfing, machine pistols, pit bulls, crack, carjacking, general vandalism, monster trucks, arena football, glueboards Foolish to argue that the present is as it is because of the past. The present never struggles to be born Nothing at all inevitable about evolution The last common ancestor of humans and gorillas lived as recently as five million years ago and was essentially a chimpanzee Remarkably genetically homogeneous, all humans may have a common African ancestor who lived less than 200,000 years ago Genetically distinct from the Neanderthalers who went extinct not much more than a few thousand years ago Modern behavior, defined by the fossil record as complex language, hunting in addition to gathering, high population density, kinships observed, dates from about 35,000 years back "Ashokan Farewell" Perspectivas halagueñas Milori blue is Prussian blue Graceful pearl pink arms hands spread fingering the hammer question first movement cross-overs of the Bartók Piano Sonata The Casablanca megalopolis now reaches north through Rabat Merguez, just like the merguez at any grill wagon in France, and mudammas, zalouk, babaganush, taboulé, bastilla, melokhia. Emshem, makalli, derbel, couscous royale Lime blue is French blue, azurite blue Maybe Hussein, back from Basra, picked up Time and Der Spiegel but not finding his picture anymore, decided to invade Kuwait Life never abstract for his ilk, simply a matter of blood, sex and power Hyde Park as Edwardian manifestation of the pedestrian, background to FDR's expansive power and noblesse oblige They'd sit in summer whites in wicker and Adirondack chairs on the lawn on that river hill Now their Hudson Valley view is grown in The brevity of this country's eras stuns It was a lunch-box America then, a volkish Europe, a colonial tropical world They sat thoughtfully on that sloping lawn for their segment of the century like white marble sculptures sit in time Lupine, a light purplish blue, bluer and paler than periwinkle, even bluer than the zenityh on a clear, low-humidity day Cuesta abajo Cuesta arriba Perfectly understandable that Ravel's mother was Basque Smalt, redder and deeper than Dresden blue, greener than luster blue, is also known as cobalt glass, Dumont's blue, king's blue, power blue, starch blue Karaoke laser, karaoke bars, karaoke taxis If many Japanese can enjoy themselves as easily as ten-year-olds, then most French are sixty-five Debussy's Estampes, "Pagodes," "Soirée dans Grenade," "Jardins sous la pluie" Harcourt vert and frites in a cafeteria in La Défense, raining hard outside Up into the Grande Arche to a terrace roof nearly three acres square. Open monolithic cube, 112 meters square, its open interior 90 meters high, 70 meters wide, and 70 meters deep. Surfaced with white marble, its side walls used as office space The Brahms and the Franck A Major violin sonattas, her sleek performance of the second Bach Partita Paris was Lutétia. Lutétia, Lutèce The Beethoven E-flat Major Piano Trio, the Brahms C Major Mineral blue is Bremen blue Bach's Arioso arranged for string orchestra France des Libertés, France des Estrangers Passing, seeing the instant in Paris's whole history, one flash, one look, one fix among them all, register, record, then on Endives la flamande, mousseline de poisson au Saint Pierre, fromage The Musée d'Orsay's "multidisciplinary approach" is the final deferred triumph of the nineteenth century academy. Curatorial theories over art, the cultural glory of the Jeu de Paume erased No more going to the Jeu de Paume for Impressionist light, no more painters as painters of flaring walls of genius The Musée d'Orsay dismissed all that as "atmospheric reconstitution" Japanese animated cartoons, dubbed and retitled, used as long fillers on French television night and day now Past the Passerelle St-Louis behind Notre Dame at the upstream point of the Ile de la Cité, under the stark yellow stone of the monument to the deported "Deported" was a word used in France like "Disappeared" is in the Southern Cone Deux cent mille Fran¨ais sombres exterminés dans les camp Nazis Reptilian gray-pink shelled lychees from Madagascar flood Paris at Christmas. The sticky white, the bolus of pit Christian rescuers in the Holocaust Twenty of our years like a half century in most eras Eva Gonzalès's masterpiece, Une loge aux Italiens, referé au salon 1874, Salon de 1879. Women on a balcony painted black with a Manet sense of mystery On the top floor of the Musée d'Orsay, here genre pastel La matinée rose was in the Salon of 1874, woman looking down at kittens Then there's Manet's big 1870 portrait of Gonzalès, white arms and Spanish eyes, she holds brushes and maulstick, a rolled canvas on the floor is signed "Manet" Gonzalès left Paris for Dieppe during the Siege Morisot supposedly was bitterly jealous of Gonzalès and Manet After Manet's death in 1883, Gonzalès married his engraver friend, Henri Guérard. She died at thirty-four during the birth of her first child Permanent blue is French blue Earth, stone and heaven Aromatic shrubs of the treeless Mediterranean coastlands, the cloud-shaped maquis, the earthbound garrique Geai de chênes, pie bavarde, choucas de tours, corbeau freux, corneille noire, corneille mantelée Limestone hills above the Via Aurelia. Pin parasol Mountain blue is the blue of mineral blue or azurite blue Crozes Hermitage, Hermitage, Gigondas, Châteauneuf du Pape, Lirac, Tavel Mousse de saumon aux herbes, feuilles de choux aumônières, ganache au choco café, Pissenlit Boudin pommes, lotte aux petits oignons Orient, a strong blue redder than Prussian blue Claire spéciales, langoustine tourteau, clams, praires, bigorneaux, crevettes grises, bulots. Chantegrive. Glace citron parfait framboise La Gambetta, common café name in the Midi, it evokes Republican values Gambetta's spectacular balloon escape from Paris of the Siege The profound red of framboise brighter even than North American purple finch and house finch flush The classic is romantic, the romantic is modern, and the remarkable overlaps like Ives writing songs in Connecticut while Brahms was still composing Culture like roof tiles, everything ties in, imbricates, spans out to cantilever across time Like the famous antefixa from Apulia represent bold women's faces at the eaves Their hair spread back, full-face, direct as any modern porno fashion spread. Each face on each terra-cotta antefix a particular woman from Taras Those young women each must have looked up, recognized themselves and laughed Van Gogh's L'Arlésienne, Madame Giroux on chrome yellow background, like corposant, like lightning, the mysterious cloud lofting out of chignon Les Garrigues beyond the Pont du Gard and to the far northeast more than fifty kilometers out there is snow on Mount Ventoux Once followed a June nightingale's song down Tournon's quai Gambetta along the Rhone and out into night riverine brush In Australia there are always night birds like that. Galahs in the Northern Territory in flocks of hundreds with their fresh shade of pale gray, crests, rose-red breasts Drunk drivers on Saturday afternoons in the Midi, drunk drivers on Saturday afternoons all over France for that matter Before the Roman roads, crossing rivers took the most time, was the most perilous Preposterous to assume that anybody understands much of anything outside themselves without knowing the geography of where and what they are But Van Gogh ignored Roman stone totally. Painted the wild olive grove mistral and key-hole swirl des Alpilles in St-Rémy as though the Roman Glanum ruins were not there Drip moss shade plane tree ancient Roman streets and hill-lipped city ways Salon-de-Provence's mushroom fountain in the Place Crousillat Nostradamus died in Salon in 1566 Glimpse Cézanne's montagne Sainte-Victoire again and again from the autoroute to Italy |
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