wild orchids, good friends, and wine

Wild Orchids is a terrific journal, received in the mail today, from Buffalo, edited by Sean Reynolds and Robert Dewhurst. It concerns itself with Herman Melville, and ranges from poetic responses to Melville's poem, "A Utilitarian View of the Monitor's Fight," to Geraldine Monk's marvelous likening of Ahab's obsession with the whale to her own quest to see the elusive raccoon, to considerations of Clarel, of the undervoiced crew of the Melville through C.L.R. James, to Benjamin Friedlander's consideration of Clarel and the ground of the Holy Land, and a lot more. It is a marvel.

I interrupted my reading of Marie de France's Lais, which had interrupted my reading of Badiou's Being and Event, which had interrupted my reading of Walter Benjamin essays (vol. 4 of the collected writings), to read Wild Orchids. Life is interruption if it is anything. I interrupted my reading of Wild Orchids to receive a phone call, while at a coffee shop, telling me that my best friend in Tucson is in the hospital awaiting heart surgery.

Now I am home having a glass of La Crema, a Pinot Noir well worth drinking. My friend would approve, as would Melville, as probably would Benjamin and Badiou and Marie de France.

This is my world today.

(note: can I blog again? I haven't in months and months, it seems. I'll try.)