sat a gypsy woman at one end of the village and installed the telescope at the entrance to the tent. Upon payment of five reales, people would look through the telescope to see the woman within arm’s reach. “Science has eliminated distance,” proclaimed Melquiades. “Soon Man will be able to see what occurs anywhere on Earth without leaving his house.” Theirs is not terrible, unlike the following’s equivalent: One scorching midday they made an amazing demonstration with the gigantic lens: they placed a mound of hay in the middle of the street then set it ablaze by means of concentrated solar rays. There is no reference to the sun in the original Spanish nor to any magnification hence none in the above translation and mound works nicely for montón, certainly better than pile, see how it works? The sun’s rays here would be like dry hay, dumb. Later: Jose Arcadio Buendia didn’t even try to console her, entirely absorbed as he was in tactical lenticular experiments that he conducted with the abnegation of a scientist and even at risk to his own life. Trying to show the potential effects of the lens on enemy troops, he so exposed himself to concentrated solar rays that he suffered ulcerous burns that were slow to heal. Fine I added lenticular and arguably modified ulcer into its adjective form but said additions are yummy and amply supported by the record that is the original. Similarly contrast this: Despite the fact that trips to the capital were then only slightly less than impossible, Jose Arcadio Buendia promised that the moment the government placed its order he would attempt one so he could appear before the military powers-that-be to make practical demonstrations of his invention and personally train them in the complicated art of solar warfare. With the gnarled mess the world got. It’s all enough to make the non-Spanish speaking world jump ship before Buendia can even announce his discovery that the world is round like an orange. In sum, can anyone prefer “an earthly condition that kept him involved in the small problems of daily life” to “a terrestrial condition that kept him entangled in the miniscule problems of quotidian life” and does preference even matter when the Spanish is una condicíon terrestre que lo mantenía enredado en los minúsculos problemas de la vida cotidiana? Problematic English, finally then, is my diagnosis. The invisible sounds they generate, sure, but also just the way some words look on a page, black ink on white paper, so that it almost seems as if even someone deprived of their sense would recognize their beauty: LONESOME Death is insufficient to us part, deaths is required…. the literary equivalent of melody. Art, or a purposeful form of play that seeks to illuminate Life. The author’s task is not to invent or even discover but to reassert, in compelling fashion, what we’ve long known to be true. Melville dying in the gutter though he did damn near write The Gospels of his century…. requires… special… selflessness… interest in others… inhabit… nature… engagement with… high… questions… With proper Art man reminds himself of the ideal…. great only insofar as it creates palpable human beings one can feel for; otherwise it’s far more likely empty exercise designed principally to benefit the exerciser. Perfection (v.) of which marks the zenith of human activity such that… “Avenge me man.”“Avenge?”“You mean avenge your death. His death he wants you should avenge.”“What does that even mean?”“I’m dying bro, you see the blood.”“He’s dying.”“No that part I get. It’s the avenging part that stops me.”“Avenge my death.”“How?”“How he says. Kill the man who killed him, there’s no other how.”“Kill? I’m going to kill someone? From what I’ve seen society frowns upon that sort of thing.”“Society? Who brings up society at a time like this? It’s his dying wish, just accede to it.”“Easy for you to say, I don’t see you rushing to avenge. Go ahead. Take a blood oath to do so, there’s plenty with which.”“That’s silly, I don’t know this guy from a hole in the wall.”“That’s another thing. I mean I know you and all but we were never really that close. Don’t you have like a brother or something who can avenge?”“Course not, don’t you think you’d know if he had a brother? Falls on you man.”“My point exactly. If I don’t even know if he has a brother, I’m probably not the best choice for avenger. I could probably be the guy who relays the message to his eight brothers that he wanted to be avenged.”“His death avenged.”“No brothers, avenge me. My death.”“What about, like, a really tough sister?”“Will you stop? There’s no time to lose. Look at him. Swear you’ll avenge!”“Fine, I’ll avenge! But I don’t even know where to start. Who’s the recipient of my avengeance? Is that even a word?”“Who did you man?”“Also who asks for avenging? You own a deli, all of a sudden you’re a goddamn Shaolin monk or something?”“Know him?”“No.”“Better describe him then.”“He’s black.”“African-American.”“Great, I’m avenging a racist.”“Huge.”“Naturally, can’t buy a break.”“What else? Nothing else, he’s gone. You’re going to have to run with that.”“Run? I can’t even trot with that.”“You’ll have to do some investigation. Start collecting fibers.”“Fibers?”“Yeah, it all starts with fibers it seems.”“Fibers. You collect the damn fibers you roped me into this thing. Fibers.”“Here’s a fiber, a giant one. Yellow and spongy, what do you make of it?”“That’s a Twinkie.” Proper Art increases the recipient’s capacity for empathy thereby increasing the world’s store of Love. Emily Dickinson’s Letter to the World bound in a drawer away from any auction of the mind. Ask the four if the forty come back no more and only the waves reply. I am not a man who suffers fools gladly. In fact if you ever see me in the presence of a fool you will almost immediately note that I refuse to suffer him. Or if I do suffer him, do so in a manner that can never be mistaken for glad. Of course this inability and the biting comments it requires has earned me a well-deserved reputation so that I will often hear my name come up in public discourse only to hear one party say something to the effect that well you know he doesn’t suffer fools gladly to which the other will respond something like no, he doesn’t. Which reputation, of course, comes with its own responsibilities so that many is the time I have found myself in the presence of a fool and thought why don’t you go ahead and suffer this guy for a while, where’s the harm? But then I’ll remember what I’m known for doing with fools and I’ll stop. Not that it’s always easy to identify a fool either because many is the time that I’ve been going along suffering some person like it was the most natural thing in the world when I’ll suddenly realize hey this person’s a fool, and what’s worse I’ve been suffering him, gladly!… by filling it with allusive arcana for eager professors. Of course he could’ve just written King Lear. If the world is supported by a giant turtle what supports the turtle? Don’t be silly, it’s turtle all the way down. There’s no void to fill, it’s all void. Blind Milton, penniless Melville, suicided Woolf and Hemingway, incarcerated Cervantes, epileptic Dostoyevsky, walking into a river your pockets full of stones, squeezing a shotgun between the floor and your forehead, wandering in the cold to your death, tuberculosis in the twentieth century right after a masterwork, but I concede nothing…. an unhealthy fascination with technique and innovation to the detriment of the true and… 1. Narrative Poetry2. Prose Fiction3. Music Just a cruel place, but one where the transcendental often walks alongside the cruel. Character is foundational. Art is a common language and commonalities combat loneliness. ‘Tis majority ruleth all.The minor one, alone to fall. The miner won a loan, two of all.The mine or won, all own to fall.The my nor won, a low an to a fall.Them I know run, a lone two of awe.Dumb I now run, all owe into Fall.The my now are one, a loam too fall. The My now are oneThe mine are oneA loam too fallI am oneAll oneToo fallA oneAloneONE Because I no longer wish to be of you, I’ve tried it your way and it’s empty, I don’t want to monitor numbers or keep time like a metronome; I want the small part of life that flows through me to transmute then emerge as metaphor, clean and hard and inclusive but sharp enough to cleave the world that we the pained may digest it whole. To justify the ways of man to God.