Stephen Lapthisophon: October 2010

SAILING LESSONS

“Facts, not schoolbook history, not Mr. Wells's history, but history nevertheless.” He leaned forward. “The archives of the Order from the twelfth century on are still at Malta. They are not intact, but what is there holds no less than three”-he held up three fingers-' references that can t be to anything else but this jew. eled falcon. In J. Delaville Le Roulx's Les Archives de l'Ordre de Saint-Jean there is a reference to it-oblique to be sure, but a reference still. And the unpublished-because unfinished at the time of his death - supplement to Paoli's Dell' origine ed institute del sacro militar ordine has a clear and unmistakable statement of the facts I am telling you.”
“'All right,” Spade said.
“All right, sir. Grand Master Villiers de l'Isle d'Adam had this foot-higli jeweled bird made by Turkish slaves in the castle of St. Angelo and sent it to Charles, who was in Spain. He sent it in a galley commanded by a French knight named Cormier or Corvere, a member of the Order.”' His voice dropped to a whisper again. “It never reached Spain.” He smiled with compressed lips and asked: “You know of Barbarossa, Redbeard, Khair-ed-Din9 No? A famous admiral of buccaneers sailing out of Algiers then. Well,, sir, he took the Knights' galley and he took the bird. The bird went to Algiers. That”s a fact. That's a fact that the French historian Pierre Dan put in one of his letters from Algiers….”

— Dashiell Hammet, The Maltese Falcon

From the vantage point
of the banks of Golden Gate Bridge Park,
she seemed to simply disappear…

The construction of a structure on which to hang
Our beliefs come to us framed by a sense of the past
Completely below the surface of memory

We will never know what Gericault’s sailors saw
Far away hopes for a future yet undisclosed
Romanticism promises us these virtues in History

But they will meet us again: lost souls, distracted pilots
Crushing images of the deplorable ways we treat others
Writing these secrets across a violence still waiting

Spinning out of control, like WCW’s Figure 5, the watercolors
Reflect a subculture described in such detail that the polite nature
Uniformly distributed across a surface still not yet unbroken by
The comedy of the moment explodes in a wealth of infinitesimal holes
Carrying information folded over the waves of misery brought on by shelter
Against this background of help with justification for hope against

The bell rings during this phase of development: that construction facing meaning to sink your teeth in. We were miserable then, with only friends
This line of defense beating back the onrushing years of regret, remorse and

Emotions stained into the surface of these acts of little contacts made
Worthy actions are recorded here. Heroes of love and compassion fake
genuine feelings replaced by injunctions of legislated codes of conduct

This swirl of associations: Hitchcock, Demuth, Williams, Burgin is Contradicted every time he opened his mouth, first by the interviewers
History serves as another contradiction, the sequence involved by

Panic reflects a cultural gathering of forces best left in the ethereal, the
Magnificent lines of smoke streaming across the sky demonstrate the distance travailed by those who do not mind long hours and hard work

None of the pursuits of fame or fortune mattered to the starry-eyed fanatics who crowded into the exhibition halls long into the night to witness fantastic
Stories of other grand narratives have been relayed via vocal incantation out

This line, this box will change over time; and over the course of transforming a need into volition. Breakthroughs will come later
Right now, pull back the sheet and see how deep the wounds have