Caesar Comes
Another episode in my hot classics summer
Dear Friends,
Welcome to my hot classics summer. Iʻve had Homer in my ears, and Virgil and Shakespeare. Such a confusion of glories, such poetry, such violence!
Iʻm driving under the influence of all of them, but whenever Caesar comes, for me itʻs not only Julius who appears, but also Gertrude Stein.
— Sal
Caesar Comes
Seize her, say the guards, and carry away. I am all that is carried, by ship, or by land or through the air. I am crying out my omens and my laments. There was a day when the oracle in her cave spoke her last word, or when the interruptions became too great. Place the window here, place the window there, fit the glass to the opening this way or that. No one has asked permission for this moment to exist as itself. Every age is ending. We move between transparency and reflection, between interruption and poetry. Seize her, I am seized and named as if by some magic or by some god. Male and female, brutal in narrative and Greek in cunning. A new century comes and comes again. Come, Caesar! And so, Caesar came and became, and in became now was only a name. And I, I am standing by, I am lost to the tale, because nameless as the sand. I am tumbling fruit, I am heavy in the hand, I am the body of some falling bird, I am giving in to air, I am choosing chaos. Later, everything will become yellow as we try to remember, a violent and mystical color. We look to the shadows behind all that is visible, that dark space of the in-turning seashell curve we cannot see into. There are hyphens between all the things of the world that marry each to each. There is the way that the wrong pairs of letters are always doubling. We are the brutes depicted in nearby paintings: the pissing cow, the pacing lion. Better that than becoming the dead matter of seeing. One round portal looks out onto nothing, and I misplace my faith there. Do we lament the dictator and his dictations? Or do we turn into ourselves and bring her down?
Gertrude Stein
from Lifting Belly
Listen to me. Did you expect it to go back. Why do you do to stop.
What do you do to stop.
What do you do to go on,
I do the same.
Yes wishes. Oh yes wishes.
What do you do to turn a corner.
What do you do to sing.
We don't mention singing.
What do you do to be reformed.
You know.
Yes wishes.
What do you do to measure.
I do it in such a way.
I hope to see them come.
Lifting belly go around.
I was sorry to be blistered.
We were such company.
Did she say jelly.
Jelly my jelly.
Lifting belly is so round.
Big Caesars.
Two Caesars.
Little seize her.
Too.
Did I do my duty.
Did I wet my knife.
No I don't mean whet.
Cezanne
The Irish lady can say, that to-day is every day. Caesar can say that every day is to-day and they say that every day is as they say.
In this way, we have a place to stay and he was not met because he was settled to stay. When I said settled I meant settled to stay. When I said settled to stay I meant settled to stay Saturday. In this way a mouth is a mouth. In this way if in as a mouth if in as a mouth where, if in as a mouth where and there. Believe they have water too. Believe they have that water too and blue when you see blue, is all blue precious too, is all that that is precious too is all that they meant to absolve you. In this way Cezanne nearly did nearly in this way. Cezanne nearly did nearly did and nearly did. And was I surprised. Was I very surprised. Was I surprised. I was surprised and in that patient, are you patient when you find bees. Bees in a garden make a specialty of honey and so does honey. Honey and prayer. Honey and there. There where the grass can grow nearly four times yearly.
Friend, this letter is a letter to you. I love nothing more than hearing about your hot summer and whatʻs been in your ears.
Further adventures and new ways of seeing can be found in my book, The Uses of Art.
Artist Sal Randolph’s THE USES OF ART is a memoir of transformative encounters with works of art, inviting readers into new methods of looking that are both liberating and emboldening.
Dazzlingly original, ferociously intelligent.
— Michael Cunningham
A joyful, dazzling treasure-box of a book.
— Bonnie Friedman
Here’s a guide, to waking up, over and over again.
— Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara