how can i help this writer

Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counseling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, "How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style?" and avoid "How can I show him how I would write it, if it were my piece?"

~ James Thurber in a 1959 memo to The New Yorker

[Damen Avenue at Chicago Avenue]

the propagation of this comfortable feeling

If it were possible for me, I would make films which, apart from entertaining the audience, would convey to them the absolute certainty that they DO NOT LIVE IN THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS. And in doing this I believe that my intentions would be highly constructive. Movies today, including the so-called neo-realist, are dedicated to a task contrary to this. How is it possible to hope for an improvement in the audience and consequently in the producers when every day we are told in these films, even in the most insipid comedies, that our social institutions, our concepts of Country, Religion, Love, etc., etc., are, while perhaps imperfect, UNIQUE AND NECESSARY? The true "opium of the audience" is conformity; and the entire, gigantic film world is dedicated to the propagation of this comfortable feeling, wrapped though it is at times in the insidious disguise of art.

~ Luis Buñuel in "Film: Book 1," edited by Robert Hughes

[State Street below Lake Street]

in the clear water

i picked some blossoms and fashioned myself a tiara of flowers, i looked at myself in the clear water. I had no opinion of my face. I was bred for a higher system of vanity.

"Babel," Patti Smith

[Damen Avenue below North Avenue]

i lived a few weeks

I was born when you kissed me. I died when you left me. I lived a few weeks while you loved me.

"In A Lonely Place," "Dixon Steele"

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

only shallow people

People say sometimes that Beauty is only superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.

"The Picture of Dorian Gray," Oscar Wilde

[California Avenue below Chicago Avenue]

junk that's going round

Mother told me yes she told me I'd meet girls like you
She also told me stay away, you'll never know what you'll catch
Just the other day I heard a soldier falling off
Some Indonesian junk that's going round.

Mommy's alright, Daddy's alright, they just seem a little weird
Surrender, surrender, but don't give yourself away

"Surrender," Cheap Trick

[Chicago Avenue west of Washtenaw Street]

creating an imaginary, it's always imaginary

You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing? My answer is most emphatically yes. I would go on writing for company. Because I'm creating an imaginary—it's always imaginary—world in which I would like to live.

~ William Burroughs, Paris Review, Fall 1965

[Illinois Street west of New Street]

last night i ate stolen bread

Yes, lass, last night I ate stolen bread and left my son among men who are going to use pick-handles on the authorities, so I thought I might just as well look you up this morning.

"Independent People," Halldór Laxness

[Ukrainian Village below Augusta Avenue]

i am the least difficult of men

Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous
(and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable
list!), but one of these days there'll be nothing left with
which to venture forth.

Why should I share you? Why don't you get rid of someone else
for a change?

I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.

Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too,
don't I? I'm just like a pile of leaves.

"Meditations in an Emergency," Frank O'Hara

[Chicago Avenue east of Damen Avenue]

i used to think they were all alike

Today has that special, lapidary
Todayness that the sunlight reproduces
Faithfully in casting twig-shadows on blithe
Sidewalks. No previous day would have been like this.
I used to think they were all alike,
That the present always looked the same to everybody
But this confusion drains away as one
Is always cresting into one's present.

"Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror," John Ashbery


[Armitage Avenue east of Spaulding Avenue]

secrecy, masonic oaths, an underworld

The word 'subculture' is loaded down with mystery. It suggests secrecy, masonic oaths, an Underworld. It also invokes the larger and no less difficult concept 'culture.' So it is with the idea of culture that we should begin.


"Subculture and the Meaning of Style," Dick Hebdige

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

he loved lightning he lived on an island

He loved lightning
He lived on an island
His mother was a
His father was a gold
Cutting tool
Old scholia say that
Stesichoros says that
Geryon had six hands and six feet and wings
He was red and
His strange red cattle excited envy.
Herakles came and
Killed him for his cattle

The dog too

"XV Total Things Known About Geryon," "Autobiography of Red," Anne Carson

[Chicago Avenue west of Damen Avenue]

desiring

The fact there is massive social repression that has an enormous effect on desiring-production in no way vitiates our principle: desire
produces reality, or stated another way, desiring-production is one and the same thing as social production. It is not possible to attribute a special form of existence to desire, a mental or psychic reality that is presumably different from the material reality of social production.

"Capitalism and Schizophrenia," Deleuze and Guattari

[Chicago Avenue east of Winchester Street]

making my life absurd

I hate the government for making my life absurd.

~ Jane Jacobs

[Damen Avenue below Division Street]

most of my time

I spend most of my time not dying.
That's what living is for.
I climb on a motorcycle.
I climb on a cloud and rain.
I climb on a woman I love.
I repeat my themes.

"Racer," Frederick Seidel

[Chicago Avenue at Winchester Street]

when you stop listening

People are aware of having too many external stimuli. What do you hear when you stop listening? The question is about whether anyone has an internal world any more.

~ Adam Phillips

[Armitage Avenue east of Spaulding]

using a feather

Erotica is using a feather, pornography is using the whole chicken.

~ Isabel Allende

[Halsted Street north of Hooker]

kodachrome

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the worlds a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my kodachrome away

If you took all the girls I knew
When I was single
And brought them all together for one night
I know they'd never match
My sweet imagination
And everything looks worse in black and white

"Kodachrome," Paul Simon

[Damen Avenue above Haddon Street]

all kinds of supernatural powers

Like the artist,
the government has at its disposal all kinds of supernatural powers.
Without anyone telling it anything,
it knows everything. What it can do,
it has not learned. It has
learned nothing. Its education
is sorely wanting, yet magically
it is able to put in a word on everything, to decide everything,
even on matters it doesn't understand.

"The Government As Artist," Bertolt Brecht

[Augusta Avenue west of Damen Avenue]

the cat & the squirrel

The thing comes
of itself

(Look up
to see
the cat & the squirrel,
the one
torn, a red thing,
& the other
somehow immaculate.

"Love," Robert Creeley

[Chicago Avenue west of California Avenue]