une:
A certain someone grabbing a coffee in Ann Arbor. Comet. A former Tragos-haunt.

une:
A certain someone grabbing a coffee in Ann Arbor. Comet. A former Tragos-haunt.
“In my case, literature is a kind of revenge. It’s something that gives me what real life can’t give me - all the adventures, all the suffering. All the experiences I can only live in the imagination, literature completes.”
-Mario Vargas Llosa
Baba the pangolin on Flickr.
Pangolins: Tragos- and Marianne Moore-endorsed
The Pangolin
Another armored animal–scale
lapping scale with spruce-cone regularity until they
form the uninterrupted central
tail row! This near artichoke with head and legs and
grit-equipped gizzard,
the night miniature artist engineer is,
yes, Leonardo da Vinci’s replica–
impressive animal and toiler of whom we seldom hear.
Armor seems extra. But for him,
the closing ear-ridge–
or bare ear licking even this small
eminence and similarly safe
contracting nose and eye apertures
impenetrably closable, are not;–a true ant-eater,
not cockroach-eater, who endures
exhausting solitary trips through unfamiliar ground at night,
returning before sunrise; stepping in the moonlight,
on the moonlight peculiarly, that the outside
edges of his hands may bear the weight and save the
claws
for digging. Serpentined about
the tree, he draws
away from danger unpugnaciously,
with no sound but a harmless hiss; keeping
the fragile grace of the Thomas-
of-Leighton Buzzard Westminster Abbey wrought-iron
vine, or
rolls himself into a ball that has
power to defy all effort to unroll it; strongly intailed, neat
head for core, on neck not breaking off, with curled-in feet.
Nevertheless he has sting-proof scales; and nest
of rocks closed with earth from inside, which he can
thus darken.
Sun and moon and day and night and man and beast
each with a splendor
which man in all his vileness cannot
set aside; each with an excellence!
“Fearful yet to be feared,” the armored
ant-eater met by the driver-ant does not turn back, but
engulfs what he can, the flattered sword-
edged leafpoints on the tail and artichoke set leg-and
body-plates
quivering violently when it retaliates
and swarms on him. Compact like the furled fringed frill
on the hat-brim of Gargallo’s hollow iron head of a
matador, he will drop and will
then walk away
unhurt, although if unintruded on,
he cautiously works down the tree, helped
by his tail. The giant-pangolin-
tail, graceful tool, as prop or hand or broom or ax, tipped like
an elephant’s trunk with special skin,
is not lost on this ant-and stone-swallowing uninjurable
artichoke which simpletons thought a living fable
whom the stones had nourished, whereas ants had done
so. Pangolins are not aggressive animals; between
dusk and day they have the not unchain-like machine-like
form and frictionless creep of a thing
made graceful by adversities, con-
versities. To explain grace requires
a curious hand. If that which is at all were not forever,
why would those who graced the spires
with animals and gathered there to rest, on cold luxurious
low stone seats–a monk and monk and monk–between the
thus
ingenious roof-supports, have slaved to confuse
grace with a kindly manner, time in which to pay a
debt,
the cure for sins, a graceful use
of what are yet
approved stone mullions branching out across
the perpendiculars? A sailboat
was the first machine. Pangolins, made
for moving quietly also, are models of exactness,
on four legs; on hind feet plantigrade,
with certain postures of a man. Beneath sun and moon,
man slaving
to make his life more sweet, leaves half the flowers worth
having,
needing to choose wisely how to use his strength;
a paper-maker like the wasp; a tractor of foodstuffs,
like the ant; spidering a length
of web from bluffs
above a stream; in fighting, mechanicked
like to pangolin; capsizing in
disheartenment. Bedizened or stark
naked, man, the self, the being we call human, writing-
master to this world, griffons a dark
“Like does not like like that is obnoxious”; and writes error
with four
r’s. Among animals, one has a sense of humor.
Humor saves a few steps, it saves years. Uningnorant,
modest and unemotional, and all emotion,
he has everlasting vigor,
power to grow,
though there are few creatures who can make one
breathe faster and make one erecter.
Not afraid of anything is he,
and then goes cowering forth, tread paced to meet an obstacle
at every step. Consistent with the
formula–warm blood, no gills, two pairs of hands and a few
hairs–that
is a mammal; there he sits in his own habitat,
serge-clad, strong-shod. The prey of fear, he, always
curtailed, extinguished, thwarted by the dusk, work
partly done,
says to the alternating blaze,
“Again the sun!
anew each day; and new and new and new,
that comes into and steadies my soul.”
— Marianne Moore
Ocelot on Flickr.
Ocelots: Tragos-endorsed.
The book advertised in the placard pictured above is titled, “Hello Baby!” Its subheading reads, “This book will give your baby, your partner and you a good start!” [My translation. I can’t vouch for its accuracy.]
And yes. This is a men’s bathroom. And yes. That placard is placed over every single one of those urinals.
Want to know how baby crazy Turkey is? There you have it.
— Tragos, reporting from Ankara.
Manuscrito de Jorge Luis Borges -
Jorge Luis Borges’ notebook
This morning, Mrs. Tragos, Baby Tragos and I headed down to a big indoor mall in Ankara. It was time to get some more serious toys for Baby Tragos. It was also time for Mrs. Tragos to get a haircut.
While Mrs. Tragos sat down for the above-mentioned haircut, I took Baby Tragos for a walk around the mall. Normally, I would put her facing out in the Baby Bjorn, which she loves. She gets to encounter the world that way. Unfortunately, we forgot the Baby Bjorn. So instead, I just held her in my palm so she could still meet and greet the world.
Now, I am not a very strong man. I’m a normal guy. So the tax on my biceps was pretty severe. I had to keep switching hands to hold Baby Tragos so that I could give each arm a rest in turn. Baby Tragos was loving our venture, talking up a storm with whomever we’d come across. Toward the end of our little perambulation, we wandered into a home furnishings store. Why? Because they had a whole row of different colored bright candles that looked like a gigantic crayon box. Perfect for entertaining a four-month-old.
As we drew near this wall of candles, two older women — grandmother-aged — approached. They took to Baby Tragos immediately, telling her she was “çok tatlı” (really sweet) and “çok güzel” (really beautiful). It was a really nice moment. Except my right arm was just killing me.
[Brief interruption for a sartorial detail: I was wearing a long sleeve snap-down-the-middle collared shirt today.]
I needed to make an adjustment, but the women were nowhere near finished cooing over Baby Tragos. So I went for it. As Baby Tragos swiped across my chest from right to left, she took one side of my shirt with her, unsnapping me completely.
So there I was, in Ankara, Turkey, in a quaint home furnishing store, bare chested in front of two grandmothers.
I nodded, grunted a quick, “Afedersiniz,” (hopefully the appropriate “excuse me” for the occasion), turned around, and with my free right hand, snapped my shirt up while Baby Tragos yelled out at the shiny mirrors on the shelf in front of her.
I turned around. The grandmothers were gone.
“The solution came in a most unexpected way, on a flight between Buenos Aires and Madrid which, by chance, was commemorating the first flight between those cities (by an Iberian Airline Douglas DC4) on 22 September 1946. I bought at Ezeiza airport a copy of a short novel by Alejo Carpentier that I had not read: The Kingdom of This World. Nothing had prepared me for the surprise. From the first lines of the story, which recreates the hallucinating life of Henri Christophe and the building of the famous Citadel in Haiti, this superbly written and even better constructed narration in which, as in all literary masterpieces, nothing could be added or taken away, absorbed me body and soul and took away my surroundings, transporting me, for the ten hours or so of the flight, away from the frozen starry night into a prodigious epic account of Haiti in the previous century, where the most ferocious violence intermingled with the most fevered imagination, and everyday and trivial events blurred into miracles and legends. I read the final lines when the plane touched down in Barajas; the book had lasted the flight, and had taken away my fear for the entire journey.”
-Mario Vargas Llosa, “How I Lost My Fear of Flying”
Isa the Fossa01 10-15-11 by pacsworld on Flickr.
Love this portrait of Isa the fossa. Don’t let it fool you though, he’s a feisty dude.
“I believe that literature must address itself to the problems of its time. An author must write with the conviction that what he is writing can help others become more free, more sensitive, more clear-sighted; yet without the self-righteous illusion of many intellectuals that their work helps contain violence, reduce injustice or promote liberty. I have erred too often myself, and I have seen too many writers I admired err—even put their talents at the service of ideological lies and state crimes—to delude myself. But without ceasing to be entertaining, literature should immerse itself in the life of the streets, in the unravelling of history, as it did in the best of times.”