if memory serves me right here are my origins

view larger

Above Roy R. Behrens, In Point of Fact (© 2021). Digital montage.

•••

Henry Miller, quoted in Robert Snyder, ed., This is Henry, Henry Miller from Brooklyn (Los Angeles: Nash Publishing, 1974), pp. 119-121—

If my memory serves me right, here is my genealogical line, Boccaccio, Petronius, Rabelais, Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau, Maeterlinck, Romain Rolland, Plotinus, Heraclitus, Nietzsche, Dostoievski (and other Russian writers of the nineteenth century), the ancient Greek dramatists, the Elizabethan dramatists (excluding Shakespeare), Theodore Dreiser, Knut Hamsun, D.H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Elie Faure, Oswald Spengler, Marcel Proust, van Gogh, the Dadaists and Surrealists, Balzac, Lewis Carroll, Nijinsky, Rimbaud, Blaise Cendrars, Jean Giono, Céline, everything I read on Zen Buddhism, everything I read about China, India, Tibet, Arabia, Africa and of course the Bible, the men who wrote it and especially the men who made the King James version, for it was the language of the Bible rather than its "message" which I got first and which I will never shake off.

his pistol shot caused the weather vane to clang

Above Roy R. Behrens, Well-Healed. Digital montage, ©2021. 

•••

Robert Conot (recalling an incident in the life of Thomas A. Edison), A Streak of Luck. New York: Seaview Books, 1979, p. 118—

It was a case of the famous ogling the famous. One evening after he [Edison] and Fox, who roomed together, had gone to bed, a thunderous knock on the door shook them upright. In strode "Texas Jack" [John Wilson Vermillion, aka "Shoot-Your-Eye-Out" Vermillion], the top of his head brushing the door frame, his eyes bloodshot, and his hands on his gunbelt. Which one, he wanted to know, was Edison? When Edison manfully identified himself in a quavering voice, Texas Jack said it was a pleasure: he himself was the boss pistol shot of the West, and he wanted to meet the great inventor of the phonograph. Whereupon he pulled out his six-shooter and, firing through the window, caused the weather vane across the street to clang into a dizzy spin.

tabula rasa / the disjunctive effect of pandemics

Above Roy R. Behrens, Bus Boy. Digital montage, ©2021.

•••

S. Howard Bartley, A Bit of Human Transparency. Bryn Mawr PA: Dorrance and Company, 1988, p. 89—

A huge catastrophe such as a war…or a peacetime one such as the Great Depression [or a pandemic, such as COVID-19], serves as a definite disjunctive force in history…

As the new generation after the catastrophe emerges, that generation seems largely and sometimes totally oblivious to what occurred prior to it. It is as though history is a sort of a blank. Although many of the material achievements might survive, they are not properly appreciated and are not seen in a perspective.…

Names that were outstanding or at least worth recognition get lost. Things start anew as if from scratch. This means that if someone were working before the catastrophe…and had produced something worthwhile but became a casualty, what he had done would likely go down to oblivion with him. But if such a person were fortunate enough to survive the catastrophe, he could go on. One of his tasks would be to review for those who would be working in the same general areas that he had been in before the catastrophe. In other words, he would be the connecting link between the past and the present. Otherwise the blankness would be there.

Harold Lloyd's walking wooden hobby horse

Above World Cinema poster depicting American film star Harold Lloyd (designer and date unknown).

•••

S. Howard Bartley, A Bit of Human Transparency. Bryn Mawr PA: Dorrance and Company, 1988, p. 73—

[Hollywood film star Harold Lloyd designed a wooden] walking hobby horse large enough for adults to ride…[It] looked much like a regular hobby horse except it was not on rockers. As the rider would lean forward the horse would tilt forward, pivoting (or rocking) on its front legs. This would lift the rear end of the horse and lift the hind legs off the floor. They would swing forward to reach what would now be the perpendicular. As the rider would then lean back, the front end of the horse would lift off the ground and in tilting back the front legs would swing to a new position. The pivot for this second phase of action (tilt) would be the hind legs. So as the rider would alternately tilt forward and backward the animal would carry its rider across the floor. 

Harold Lloyd in Safety Last (1923)

famous for an hour—his only sports achievement

Paul Pfurtscheller, c1910

Above Detail (restored and adapted) of anatomical wall chart by Austrian zoologist Paul Pfurtscheller (1855-1927), c1910.

•••

Roger G. Barker (Iowa-born social scientist) in Gardner Lindzey, ed., A History of Psychology in Autobiography. Volume VIII. Stanford University Press, 1989—

On the first day of the boy’s [himself] attendance at the junior high school in Palo Alto there is a free-throw basketball contest. Boy reluctantly joins the line of contestants; he has never thrown a basketball. He comes to the throw line; he hefts the ball and is surprised by its great weight. He throws—a good one. Another good one. Still another basket. On and on, he can’t understand it. He is a machine,…13, 14,…24 hits out of 25. The boy is famous for an hour, his only sports-connected achievement.

the latest debacle / in iowa we call it pork barrel

a modern art museum, telephone and a martini

Donald Barthelme (in “Brain Damage” in City Life, 1976)—

The Wapituil are like us to an extraordinary degree. They have a kinship system which is very similar to our kinship system. They address each other as “Mister,” “Mistress,” and “Miss.” They wear clothes which look very much like our clothes. They have a Fifth Avenue which divides their territory into east and west. They have a Chock Full o’ Nuts and a Chevrolet, one of each. They have a Museum of Modern Art and a telephone and a martini, one of each. The martini and the telephone are kept in the Museum of Modern Art. In fact they have everything that we have, but only one of each thing... They can conceptualize but they don't follow through. For instance, their week has seven days—Monday, Monday, Monday, Monday, Monday, Monday, and Monday. They have one disease, mononucleosis. The sex life of a Wapituil consists of a single experience, which he thinks about for a long time.

turned, hopped up, and sharply rapped the door

Paul Pfurstscheller (c1910)

Above Detail (restored and adapted) of anatomical wall chart by Austrian zoologist Paul Pfurtscheller (1855-1927), c1910.

 •••

Linda Elegant, “The Chicken” in Paul Auster, ed., I Thought My Father Was God, and Other True Tales from NPR’s National Story Project. New York: Henry Holt, 2001—

As I was walking down Stanton Street early one Sunday morning, I saw a chicken a few yards ahead of me. I was walking faster than the chicken, so I gradually caught up. By the time we approached Eighteenth Avenue, I was close behind. The chicken turned south on Eighteenth. At the fourth house along, it turned in at the walk, hopped up the front steps, and rapped sharply on the metal storm door with its beak. After a moment, the door opened and the chicken went in.