Alternative title? “Anatomy of a link”
But I like, “This is how we retrograde” best. The alternative title, Anatomy of a link was the first version, and what I was thinking.
I was reading a library book by Joan Didion, about grief, a novelist and memoirist in a different format. It is true, life makes more sense when I wrestle the questions to the page, although, I don’t really use a pen, ink, or typewriter. The technical motions and emotions are the same.
Early in the text, there’s a quote from an e.e.cumming’s poem. I searched for a phrase, thinking I knew the poem, and I did, but I didn’t have it easily accessible. I suppose, all those poetry collections, save for a very few that are dear to me, the rest have long since been recycled. No ‘Modern American Anthologies’ handy. The internet is nice for that search feature, and that brought me to a site about — I’m not sure. Music, poetry, lyrics, and rambling essays about … I’m not sure. However, that was the source of the link. Ran some time past. Random, and yet, not random.
I still get requests for commercial links, and anymore, these are thinly veiled, with the usual, “I liked you article at (some URL), and wondered if you would like to link to my thinly veiled (commercial crap).”
This is how we retrograde
Two other authors, in recent memory, have spurred me thus. One is Sanford and his Davenport character, who was reading a book, and then I had to look up the book series, and that brings me around to the streaming series, Slow Horses, which was on par with some of the best stuff to view, albeit laced with literary insider jokes that might miss the less-subtle delivery on-screen.
Laura Lippman’s oeuvre, which, oddly enough, was a nod from another book, from the various feeds, The Duchess Goldblatt. The bulk of Laura’s series, a lovingly tender look at the harsh reality of inner-city, along with murder and mayhem, and some sculling? There were occasional literature references in there, as well. Sends me on the search. I like that.
This is where the current series of links start out. Usually from books. Not always, but I’ll hear something, see something, or read something, and want to further my own knowledge about the topic, the source, the roots.
Intellectual curiosity and meanings, definitions, terms.
This is how we retrograde
“From whence did that originate?”
Always a good question.
the Portable Mercury Retrograde