Paul Klee, Little Castle in the Air (Luftschlösschen)

Thinking of Ann Lauterbach’s “Elegy, or To Begin Again”— with its wonderful serial form, its repetitions, its figurations of dead faces — the soft rendering of Seurat’s Child in White, and the sound of its “absent agitations” . . .

Detail from Paul Klee’s *Schützerin (Protectress)*, (1932)

GARY INDIANA’S PENGUINS

Gary Indiana’s penguins keep wandering through my head, as do the zoo-keepers in “yellow smocks” — which I share, for the pleasure of the “blowy” and the “shirring” and the “way of penguins"“:

Last month I went to the zoo in Edinburgh to visit the penguins. The day was so blowy the treetops thrashed in the wind with a shirring sound like crashing surf. Finally rain thin as needles fell and the zoo closed the park. I only had time to see the giant sloths and pink flamingos and a leathery aquatic mammal I don't know the name of moving swiftly back and forth under the inky water of his pond.

The penguins were diving and feeding, feeding and diving.

The zookeepers, in yellow smocks and blue galoshes, hand-fed them whole, dead fish. They snapped the fish up as if pulling them from a vending machine. We love penguins, but that is one-sided. No penguins will talk to you. No penguins will even look at you unless you are close enough to be a threat. Why should they? Unless you are holding a dead fish, no penguin has any reason to go near you. That is the way of penguins, and it always will be.

PAUL KLEE IN HIS NOTEBOOKS

The story of a “nice walk” and getting drenched in yellow:

Yesterday afternoon I took a nice walk. The scene was drenched in a sulfur yellow, only the water was a turquoise blue—blue to deepest ultramarine. The sap colors the meadows in yellow, carmine, and violet. I walked about in the river bed, and since I was wearing boots, I was able to wade through the water in many places. I found the most beautiful polished stones.

I took along a few washed-out tiles. It is just a short step from this to plastic form.

Suddenly I was surprised by extremely dense fog and I hastened back in the direction of the air base, since I am not well acquainted with this region even in clear daylight. I took a familiar path; and soon got into the vicinity of Langweid and strolled on toward the left, below the highway to Stettenhofen, where the fog grew lighter; the Lech was at some distance. The soil's tender, warm tones came through. I went to the old familiar inn and had two helpings of hors d'oeuvres and immediately felt quite warm again.

Ann Lauterbach, “Elegy, or To Begin Again” (Conjunctions, 2008)
Gary Indiana, I Can Give You Anything But Love
Nick Cave, “Helpless”
Paul Klee, Instrument for a New Music (1914)
Paul Klee, Little Castle in the Air (Luftschlösschen)
Paul Klee, Schützerin (1932)