Thursday, July 24, 2008

Over the Border


Yesterday I took a blurry cellphone self-portrait of myself standing in Canada, or more specifically standing on the last of an unprepossessing series of rocks which, during high tide, juts into Canadian water. This meant that I spent most of my time in Canada trying to figure out how to work my cellphone camera, but never mind.

Immediately prior to my international adventure (customs did not, incidentally, appear interested in my endeavor, so if you would like to smuggle a forbidden substance of your choice onto a lonely spit of rock the two-foot-wide terminus of which is claimed by the land of the Maple Leaf, I’m your woman), I happened upon a dramatic brass plaque alerting me to the fact that I was 36 feet from the U.S.’s last operational smoked herring factory (closed since 1991: alas!). It’s on the national register of historic places, and consists of three windowless wooden shacks in a row.

I also spent five minutes incapacitated by my recollection of the world’s most inspired program error, a typo in a program for a recital I saw last week featuring pieces from the Bamberg Codex including “In speculum viellatoris,” “In speculum breve,” and “In speculum d’Amiens breve.”

Afterwards I walked home by myself along a rocky beach.

Delight is like love: you take what you can get.

3 comments:

Jaya said...

Indeed--best typo ever. Beware the short mirror from Amiens.

Anne said...

Hi Jaya! I sleep with that program under my pillow now. OK, not really. But it's tempting.

Jaya said...

If I remember the manuscript correctly, there's also a possibility of "In speculum d'Amiens longum"--the less said about that the better, probably.