Paraphernalia

According to Graeme S, "paraphernalia"used to mean a woman's OWN posessions - you know, like, those things she collected that were outside of her dowry, really hers. For some reason, this tickled me. It made me happy and I didn't bother to google for accuracy. I mean, Graeme S is pretty trustworthy - he's one of my oldest friends.

According to Mike W, the Nazis called one of their loot fields - the place where they put
teeth and other valuables - "Canada". Canada was all myth, untapped purity and white potential.

I had a dream about Canada's innocence. I had a dream about snow cover over Toronto so high that only the peaks of buildings + a harvest moon + sunset (max technicolour) were visible. A thaw came next, this crazy melting that let all the snow drain to a river beneath the gardner. A few whales were in there, swimming, with huge glorious floppy tails.

Sarah B likes Debussy and she thinks that the early Americans were shitty painters, who did not progress because they did not have access to the Europeans, and because they had no solid competition. They started out strong and cocky, perfect revised blueprints for future boy painters, but after a while there was nobody to spar with and their work, like their bodies, suffered.

Sarah read me bits of Dorian Grey and an entire David Antin poem, after we ate a dignified dinner. I read her some little flamboyant bits, the better ones, from Summer Crossing. Sarah leant me Summer Crossing years ago, and I still have it. I hate that people have to call it an "immature" work. That's only because of what came after.