I’ve long been enamored with the beautiful words of the Romanian expatriate poet Andrei Codrescu, but, thanks to Sherry Chandler, whose words I also love, I have another Romanian writer to wrap myself in: 2009 Nobel Laureate Herta Müller. I’m reading her Nobel lecture this morning and her words are so beautiful that I ache in reading them.

Later, when I was meeting with Oskar Pastior so I could write about his deportation to the Soviet labor camp, he told me that an elderly Russian mother had given him a handkerchief made of white batiste. Maybe you will both be lucky, said the Russian woman, and you will come home soon and so will my son. Her son was the same age as Oskar Pastior and as far away from home as he was, but in the opposite direction, she said, in a penal battalion. Oskar Pastior had knocked on her door, a half-starved beggar wanting to trade a lump of coal for a little bit of food. She let him in and gave him some hot soup. And when she saw his nose dripping into the bowl, she gave him the white batiste handkerchief that no one had ever used before. With its a-jour border, and stems and rosettes precisely stitched with silk thread, the handkerchief was a thing of beauty that embraced as well as wounded the beggar. It was a combination: consolation made of batiste, and a silk-stemmed measure of his decrepitude. For the woman, Oskar Pastior was also a combination: an unworldly beggar in her house and a lost child in the world. Both of these personae were delighted and overwhelmed by the gesture of a woman who was two persons for him as well: an unknown Russian woman and the worried mother with the question: DO YOU HAVE A HANDKERCHIEF.

And this:

Can we say that it is precisely the smallest objects-be they trumpets, accordions, or handkerchiefs-which connect the most disparate things in life? That the objects are in orbit and that their deviations reveal a pattern of repetition-a vicious circle, or what we call in German a devil’s circle. We can believe this, but not say it. Still, what can’t be said can be written. Because writing is a silent act, a labor from the head to the hand. The mouth is skipped over. I talked a great deal during the dictatorship, mostly because I decided not to blow the trumpet. Usually my talking led to excruciating consequences. But the writing began in silence, there on the stairs, where I had to come to terms with more than could be said. What was happening could no longer be expressed in speech. At most the external accompaniments, but not the totality of the events themselves. That I could only spell out in my head, voicelessly, within the vicious circle of the words during the act of writing. I reacted to the deathly fear with a thirst for life. A hunger for words. Nothing but the whirl of words could grasp my condition. It spelled out what the mouth could not pronounce. I chased after the events, caught up in the words and their devilish circling, until something emerged I had never known before. Parallel to the reality, the pantomime of words stepped into action, without respect for any real dimensions, shrinking what was most important and stretching the minor matters. As it rushes madly ahead, this vicious circle of words imposes a kind of cursed logic on what has been lived. Their pantomime is ruthless and restive, always craving more but instantly jaded. The subject of dictatorship is necessarily present, because nothing can ever again be a matter of course once we have been robbed of nearly all ability to take anything for granted. The subject is there implicitly, but the words are what take possession of me. They coax the subject anywhere they want. Nothing makes sense anymore and everything is true.

When writers I respect and admire bring my attention to the writers they, in turn respect and admire, I often read in awe and despair of ever being worthy of the simple title writer.

Yet, I continue to write in hopes of someday writing beautiful words.

0647: When the flags start to flutter, common sense slides right into the trumpet

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes:

Your grandmother has never heard of Jacob Hacker. But Lieberman will gladly place her fate on one end of the scale, and Hacker’s glee on the other. That is poisonous.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.

Attributed to Disorder In The Court.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

And you may have read Faulkner”s comment that ever short-story writer is a failed poet, and every novelist a failed short-story writer. p. 45

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

My total word count remains at 21,380.

The leadership of Myanmar’s opposition political party, the National League for Democracy, is aging and the party leader has been granted permission by the State Peace And Development Committe (aka, Myanmar’s military dictators) to meet with three of her elders in the party leadership who are ailing.

From the Associated Press:

The meeting will take place Wednesday at a location chosen by the government, said [Aung San] Suu Kyi’s lawyer and spokesman Nyan Win, who with three other lawyers visited the Nobel peace laureate for two hours Tuesday at her lakeside house in Yangon where she is detained.

In a Nov. 11 letter to Senior Gen. Than Shwe, the head of the country’s junta, Suu Kyi sought permission to meet several elderly colleagues, and separately with other members of her party’s central executive committee. She also requested a meeting with the junta chief to discuss how they can cooperate for the national interest.

The government’s liaison with Suu Kyi, Relations Minister Aung Kyi, informed her that she will be allowed to meet the elderly party leaders, though not where she requested, at their homes, Nyan Win said. Police chief Brig. Gen. Khin Yi visited Suu Kyi and party Chairman Aung Shwe to make arrangements for the meeting, the spokesman added.

Suu Kyi will be allowed to meet party chairman Aung Shwe, 91, Secretary U Lwin, 86, who has a spinal problem, and Lun Tin, 88.

1620: Why James Chartrand wears women”s underpants: because it pays better

I was fortunate to see Dave Brubeck perform at Severance Hall here in Cleveland. It (sorry Kiss Army) is the concert I will always remember most.

[Update — 1139, 1 January: Dave Brubeck’s portion of the show is now posted.]

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All of them.. The live ones put up too much of a fight.

Attributed to Disorder In The Court.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

I suspect the business of writing a novel becomes less a source of anxiety and more of pleasure if we learn to concern ourselves more with the writing process and less with the presumptive end product. The writer who does each day”s work as it comes along, enjoying it as activity and not merely enduring it as a means to an end, is going to have a better time of things. p. 45

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

My total word count remains at 21,380.

It always fascinates me how the most reactionary of governments are often responsible for so much of the illicit drug trade. You’d think that the law and order types — even if their version is perverse — would have a real handle on drugs like cocaine and opium. In Myanmar, the poppies are blooming.

From The BBC:

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says there has been a worrying rise in the extent of opium cultivation in Burma.

According to a new UN survey, the amount of land used for growing opium has increased by almost 50% since 2006.

The UN drugs agency says the cultivation of opium poppies has risen in Burma for the third year in a row.

This is undermining efforts to rid the country of its dependence on profits from illicit crops, it says.

Over 31,000 hectares of land are now devoted to growing opium, an increase of 11% compared to one year ago.

To help but that number in perspective, 31,000 hectares is 76,602 acres or 119.7 square miles.

Earlier this year Mother Jones reported on opium in Afghanistan with these numbers: 18 million pounds of opium from 476,710 acres or 745 square miles. As a cash crop, an opium farmer gets about $2,105 per acres. That’s compared to $221 per acre for wheat.

No wonder there’s so much marijuana grown in Meigs County, Ohio.

I get smuggling. I get smuggling goods through tunnels. But how does a nation miss a tunnel crossing its border big enough to drive even a Mini-Cooper through? This isn’t the Italian Job guys.

From Haaretz:

Egyptian security forces on Monday destroyed a tunnel being used to smuggle cars into the Gaza Strip.

Security sources said border patrol officers found the entrance to the tunnel some 300 meters from the Gaza border. The width of the tunnel was about two-and-a-half meters, said the sources.

One the Egyptian side of the border, the smugglers had built a cement ramp over which the towed the cars into the tunnel. According to the sources, this is the second time [emphasis mine, JH] a car-smuggling tunnel has been found.

If you can smuggle a car in, just imagine what else you could push through there?

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.

Attributed to Disorder In The Court.

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Whenever I project, whenever I start envisioning the novel as a whole, I”m paralyzed with terror. p. 44

From Telling Lies for Fun and Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block.

My total word count remains at 21,380.

The case of American citizen Kyaw Zaw Lwin, who is on a hunger strike protesting his imprisonment in Myanmar is worsening and American diplomats are becoming involved. ?Lwin was arrested on 3 September for alleged forgery and currency violations stemming from his attempt to visit his mother who is stricken with cancer.

From The Irrawaddy:

The United States on Friday sought immediate consular access to American national Kyaw Zaw Lwin (aka Nyi Nyi Aung), who is currently on a hunger strike in a Burmese prison and whose health is reported to be deteriorating.

“We have heard reports that Kyaw Zaw Lwin has been on a hunger strike since Dec. 4. We are pressing for immediate consular access to him,” US State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told The Irrawaddy.

“We understand that Kyaw Zaw Lwin”s Dec. 11 court hearing was postponed. No new date has been announced. Burmese authorities said that the postponement was due to concerns about his health,” Kelly added.

The US Embassy in Rangoon has been granted consular access to Kyaw Zaw Lwin six times since his arrest on Sept. 3, most recently on Dec. 3. In addition to this, US consular officers have been present at all eight of his court hearings.

Meanwhile, US Sen. James Webb, who traveled to Burma earlier this year to secure the release of another US citizen imprisoned by the Burmese junta, urged the regime to grant Kyaw Zaw Lwin all rights guaranteed under international law.

Webb expressed concern about news reports that Kyaw Zaw Lwin had been mistreated during his detainment and that he is being denied regular access to US consular visits.

Webb, who in August became the first US senator to visit Burma in more than a decade, asked the US State Department to provide him with updates on the status of Kyaw Zaw Lwin’s case.

“In the interim, I urge the government in Burma to afford Kyaw Zaw Lwin all the rights guaranteed under international law,” said Webb, who serves as chairman of the East Asia and Pacific Affairs subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

“I also trust that the government will allow him the same access to US Embassy personnel that American citizen John Yettaw, whom I escorted out of the country in August, received during his detainment and trial earlier this year,” Webb said.

Ive got to redeem the perception of American History to less insane parameters. –Ryan Costa.

I would have voted for the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but a Transformer Voltron works too.

1315: And Chag Sameach to Orrin Hatch, too