#james hoch

[havingapoemwithyou]

dedication by James Hoch

[firstfullmoon]

I want to dedicate this poem to my son who I worry into a misshapen form of worry. And to worry itself, how it hangs like a blanket over the head of a horse. Why do they blanket the heads of horses standing by themselves alone in a field, not seeing, but snorting and roaming, their skins seeking each other’s aloneness? I have no idea. I have never owned a horse, though property is no giver of ideas. Forgive me, my mother has died, and I am trying to understand, so my son understands why his father’s saying nothing in the car, the yard, the table. My mother has died. Do you know? It’s like standing in a field, swallows carving flit and whir and hatch, then it’s like the field being gone. No one notices in the clumsy fog. Do you see there is no distance? She is not a thing. There are no figures for this grief, the air tastes of ground. Have you ever lost all context? I tack this poem to a telephone pole that survives drought, survives flood, though it is made of heat and water. The other day, walking across the room, my son looked at me like he was eyeing a sick planet, then put his arms around his weeping father, who can’t make it through a meal without weeping, as if holding a planet might heal it. I want to thank him, but only have this poem, a raft I’ve made from the skins of flayed horses I’ve filled with air. It floats between us. It is wrong he feels asked to wade the river, his love a busted hydrant on a forever sunny day.

— James Hoch, “Dedication”

[whisperthatruns]

Disgrace and Oblivion in Ancient Rome

Sometimes names were shaved from relief, chiseled off or written over with others’ scrawled with frenzied hammer. Sometimes one man’s head took another’s ear; the image mauled, contorted until nothing looked true. Refiguring one thing for the aggrandizement  of another, it’s older than the hills. All day I was thinking it over---The morning Gabija was sick, cross-legged in bed, eating a jar of horseradish, I took her son, Pijus, for a walk in the park outside Vilnius, where Soviets fashioned the stone of Jewish cemeteries into Stalin. When I think of Pijus, he looks like me, or what my son might, bored, tracing the wells of letters with his finger. Then he’s running toward me, hands cupped, lifting them to his ear. In the dark, a cricket, a little song amid history.

*

My father, who taught history thirty-eight years but drank longer and with greater dedication, told me history was dust. It was noon, both of us warm on chowder and cherryless manhattans. He must’ve meant the dust of books, of stacks of Civil War Times, dust of a lens, of a projector he captained nodding off, dust of a warbling record, dust of stone, of a slave’s hand, of furnace, dust of field, of horse dragging plow, dust of work camp, death camp, breath, dust of one tower, another coming down, the birds disturbed seething in and out of form. I have no idea what my father meant, or can’t figure how he held it together---history and liquor.

*

Once I saw a horse shot in the head. I was sitting in the Cutlass beside my father. Ahead, a pickup’s flashers blinked in fog. The driver pulled a gun off the window rack, stood over the buggy wrecked on its side, the horse broken in its traces. Another lifted the horse’s head, held it awhile, in his lap. I thought the man might fix the horse, its place of dying. Instead, my father covered my eyes, as if he could blind the clap spreading over the field, the far ridge, the sky filling, the blood. All my life I wanted his hands. Now, if I could, I’d leave them for air, the way Pijus, who knew a hundred ways to kill an insect, left the cricket in the grass. And though they are not the same, it is hard to say this world, the last, the other we have yet to know are not the same, that a star’s brilliance and misery are not the same, that Pijus is not the boy I was, that I am not the man he already is.

*

I was thinking about it walking near the newly unveiled aqueducts, crabs scurrying white in the video’s bright flood. In Rome, still young, my wife and I, holding hands as we crossed--- Gregorio, Claudia, Annia, Aurelio, Capo D’Africa. And there, a man squatting against a wall, a wad of newspaper in his hand. And there--- rising up, decaying down, the Colosseum small, far off, distant-flat like a painting, before the pocks of erosion, before the rosary of coin and traffic, before ancient became kitsch. Still time for the thing to stay, film at the end of a film, screen white, reel aching in its circle, the way Pijus and the cricket looked being held, the way they do now---ash stepping out of ashcan, memory the wind shifts into nothing. I can’t explain this. It goes on older than the hills of Rome or Vilnius or New York. Walking in a park, looking at things, it was brief.

James Hoch, Last Pawn Shop in New Jersey (Louisiana State University Press, 2022)

[n-atacia]

Why are we equal parts tender and not?

Perhaps, we were once polycardial:

one heart of air; the other air that burns.

-James Hoch, Polycardial

[gustaving]

“Last Pawn Shop in New Jersey,” by James Hoch

[gleamingsilence]

so after a nice and quite day in home-office i watched the first episode of The Office. Very strombergian... Do I have to watch all seven seasons to understand the James Spader episodes???

[therescues]

Become one of us…

Based on the 1987 classic Warner Bros. film, The Lost Boys- A New Musical will be directed by Michael Arden with music and lyrics by The Rescues and book by David Hornsby & Chris Hoch.

Produced by James Carpinello, Marcus Chait, and Patrick Wilson.

[jbrasseul]

Armadas françaises en Irlande

[aeriondripflame]

ON SIBLINGS, SANSA & ROBB STARK

george r. r. martin, a song of ice and fire. game of thrones (2011). james hoch, wall. ruth madievsky, the atlantic. mitski, should’ve been me. joan baez, girl of constant sorrow. venetian red, victor casimir zier. george eliot, brother and sister. chao fang-shen, the little sister’s struggle: sibling conflict in brother and sister and the mill on the floss.

[mushroomwriter]

— James Hoch, Wall

[roadmotel]

James Hoch, Wall

[tinkafine]

Harry: Ja und das ist meine Verlobte Ginny.

Sirius: Ist das nicht Rons kleine Schwester?

Harry: Ja, aber-

Sirius: Du bist mit der jüngeren Schwester deines besten Freundes verlobt? WAS IST NUR LOS MIT EUCH SCHEIẞ POTTERS?! DU BIST WIE DEIN SCHEIẞ VATER HARRY!

Harry: Was?

Sirius (starrt hoch zum Himmel): BIST DU JETZT ZUFRIEDEN JAMES? ER KOMMT GANZ NACH DIR! DU SCHEIẞ LITTLEBROTHERFUCKER!

[fortheloveofaussiegrit]

@fortheloveofaussiegrit 's deep dive into Mark and his love of twinks...

Sebastian Vettel 

Where does one even start when trying to explain this... that's his twink of the past, present, and future— his forever. [first: debatable but the beginning of martian at the Fuji GP 2007 when Seb crashed into the back of Mark ruining both of their races, they were running 2nd and third. second: the day i lost my sanity, Abu Dhabi 2022]

Oscar Piastri

His twink of the present [i don't think i need to say anything... but photos above are from Mark's website from his blog post about Oscar winning the F2 championship and how Mark stayed in Abu Dhabi with Oscar after the GP for the young driver f1 test...]

Mitch Evans

Without Mitch we wouldn’t have got Oscar/Mark... (this is what oscarmark could’ve been but not sure i would’ve been able to handle oscar posting mark the way mitch did) Started in 2010, Mark then went on to manage him and Mitch even moved into Mark’s home in England, down the drive but point still stands [first: Mark Webber takes protege on birthday tour, 2010 (speedcafe.com) second: Mark embracing Mitch after he took maiden victory in Formula E, 2019 (📷Sam Bloxham) bottom two: from Mitch’s IG circa 2014] 

Daniel Ricciardo

i like that belt buckle mate [first/second: F1 Paddock 2013 (📷skysports.com) third: Mark & Daniel’s BBQ on the beach ahead of the Aus GP 2011 (📷flickr) fourth/fifth: Dutch GP 2022.]

 

Fernando Alonso

again do i need to say anything? i think this sums it up (thank you to @seafoampearlygirl for the screen shot and your help too, much appreciated!!

and this... [Jenson Button, Giancarlo Fisichella, Fernando Alonso & Mark Webber for Benetton Renault 2001 F1 launch]

Lewis Hamilton

If there's one thing about Mark that you need to know its his love of twinks with world championships... @mwebber​ has a post here on these two! Mark always loves talking about Lewis and the way they look at each other.. [first: Mark and Lewis during the post-qualy presser at the Spanish GP, 2010 (📷Sutton Images) second: during the pre-race presser at the Aus GP, 2013 (📷Hoch Zwei) third: Abu Dhabi GP, 2017 (📷James Moy)]

Nico Rosberg

from teammates at Williams to Mark snapping pics of the back of Nico in 2023… [first: Mark talking to test driver Nico Rosberg during the German GP, 2005 (📷Pakusch) second: Monaco ePrix 2023]

Max Verstappen

like i said... twinks with championships [first: ‘bumped into these two over easter and managed a few k on the trails’ Apr, 2018 (Mark’s FB) second: Hangar-7, 2019]

Felipe Massa 

yeah... [first: Brazil 2012, i think (📷sky-sports.com) second: Brazil 2013 (📷xpb images)]

Brendon Hartley 

he’s already featured a few times, but from rbr junior driver to teammate... yeah.. is there a pattern? [first: Spanish GP 2009 (📷DPPI Images) second: Brendon, Mark & Timo after winning the 6 hours of Bahrain and the WEC Drivers Championship 2015 (📷fiawec.com)]

Jenson Button

and finally we get to Jenson Button, who, yes, is younger than Mark so makes it onto the list... the ultimate twink on twink... you cannot tell me this wasnt a couples holidays covered up as ‘training’. you cannot tell me they were not fumbling around in their bedsheets at night. you cannot tell me— [redacted redacted redacted] — [pre-season training session in Lanzarote, Spain. 4 Jan 2001 📷Mark Thompson]

[whisperthatruns]

Self-Portrait as Last Pawn Shop in New Jersey

Lately I have not been feeling myself. I walk around like a figure missing its ground. I see a braid of smoke a hand passes through and envy hands, how smoke stays on skin, the faint hairs of a cheek a hand brushes against. Used to be enough to be the blown engine of a VW outside of Durango, whiskey we killed watching our father die, a bad painting I loved because our mother loved bad paintings, without irony. Lead sinkers in the gray bar of self--- There! I’d say, strapped to the mast of a tall ship in a Turner painting, or a grip dangling from the center pole of a circus tent above a troupe of dachshunds trying to find the tiny pedals of tricycles. I collected myself like I was vying to be the last pawn shop in New Jersey. Now I am not even a whir of gnats on a dirt road, a threadbare cloud on a ridgeline, the steam riding off an old man stepping out of a sauna. Days nothing seems to tie me to me. The more I live, the more the rucksack lightens, the more I can’t find myself in the mirror of the world, and roam storefronts as if I have misplaced myself. When I was a kid, I used to keep a Pringles can filled with volcano rocks someone once sold as Apache Tears, one weird ass way of marketing pain. Gone now, as the name of the boy I bailed out for stealing CDs from Walmart, for the girl he crushed on. Which is not really a crime I explained to the cops. The girl loved Stevie Nicks so much I found her stoned under blackberry bramble, listening to “Landslide” on a Walkman. Perhaps it matters to say they were Apache or Pueblo, Inde or Kewa, that they were minor thieves flung far from home. Perhaps all they wanted was the ground inside each other. But even as I say Landslide, Walkman, I feel the scree of words, the pawn shop emptying out. The things that made me are ether now, as clear as those who went and died and took what mattered---bodies, a joke, a late meal that wove itself into morning--- as if they had packed for the afterlife. And empty and whole and empty, the air inside me tastes like leaving, and leaving tastes like rain that never comes. Which I love like breath on a window, like someone else drawing a heart, a face a pleasure in the taking. No wonder, I am marveling over the demo crew slaying each other: Fuck wad, lug nut, waste of skin---Cuts, we used to call them, nicking wing, heel, gutting into laughter, then, tender tender, as one with angels or dogs, where the wound is transom. The words hold them to the ground, and I am whatever hovers when they go.

James Hoch, Last Pawn Shop in New Jersey (Louisiana State University Press, 2022)

[ava-of-shenanigans]

hihi i just have a question!! what books do you use to study hieroglyphics? im looking for more books to add to my arsenal :3

Thank you for the ask!

To learn Middle Egyptian I’ve mainly been using Middle Egyptian Grammar by James E Hoch. It’s generally really easy to understand, my one tiny problem with it is that not all the exercises in it have answers in the book, which can make it hard to tell if you're correct sometimes if you're using it on your own instead of in a college course (like I am).

Both of the dictionaries I use are available on the internet archive for free, because I’m real cheap like that.

Dictionary of Middle Egyptian in Gardiner Classification Order. This dictionary is organized so that you can search for words by their hieroglyphs (using their sign list numbers) instead of transliterations. It doesn't have every potential spelling, so sometimes it is better to search the words by transliterations, but is very convenient for figuring out words that have been abbreviated down to just their determinatives. You can search the transliterations in it using Manuel de Codage as well. This dictionary is really great because of how searchable it is, but the drawback is that the definitions in it aren't that full. Like, the verbs don't have explanations of what they mean when they're used with certain prepositions.

I use this dictionary a lot more for figuring out what words I'm looking at than for defining words.

A Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian (Modernized). This one has full definitions! You can also search it by Manuel de Codage, but there is an issue I've noticed where, because the transliterations in the book aren't Manuel de Codage and proper nouns are capitalized, sometimes searching for place names or god names with match case on doesn't work, or you will need to change the first letter to a capital. Like, "wsir" or "iwnw" won't get results, but "Wsir" or "Iwnw" will. But then neither "stX" or "StX" will get results. Also, as the name says its "concise," which means all the words aren't there, just the ones that are the most common an useful.

I haven't gotten too deep into learning hieratic yet, but I have been at least trying to teach myself what shapes signs generally had in the Middle Kingdom, and I really like this website! It has scans of a bunch of different hieratic signs from various eras, and it will let you search for glyphs by their Gardiner sign list number.

In the 1,000 years it took for me to answer this ask (sorry) my mom got me a copy of Alan Gardiner's Egyptian Grammar for my birthday, but I haven't looked at it at all yet (also you probably already knew about this one).

[inuhiime]

:: 𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒 !

' i invented a world because death is unknowable and someone i loved was about to live there ' ( ramona ausubel )

' because it's mine, i wait for it to die. then i bury it ' ( carrie fountain )

' it's okay. i love you, it's okay ' ( aracelis girmay )

' what's the word for being born of sorrow that isn't yours? ' ( cam awkward-rich )

' we were hungry, and human, and knew exactly what we were doing ' ( ali shapiro )

' what you fear will not go away : it will take you into yourself and bless you and keep you ' ( william stafford )

' it hasn't escaped me that the object that keeps me alive is the same one that will kill me ' ( margartet atwood )

' didn't you have to promise, a hundred times, not to die? ' ( rainer maria rilke )

' i don't remember my youth, do you think that i do? ' ( sheila heti )

' that's how it is for humans, unless and until they are tragic ' ( michael kinnucan )

' those who have died are always in my prayers ' ( nick cave )

' of course the love is there ' ( anne sexton )

' whatever you need. there's no rush ' ( durga chew-bose )

' in the next world, should i remember this one, i will praise it above everything ' ( david ignatow )

' last night i dreamt about you ' ( franz kafka )

' go on, talk to me, please ' ( william carlos williams )

' it's not enough to brace yourself ; eventually you must allow this world to hit you in the face ' ( carrie fountain )

' so what is the fuck is the matter with me? ' ( tony kushner )

' i'm preparing myself for a series of ongoing burials ' ( hanif abdurraqib )

' what sense could there be in that? ' ( anne carson )

' i love you with what in me is unfinished ' ( robert bly )

' i was there. i am always here ' ( summer farah )

' don't tell me your fears. let's just swap our worst pick up lines ' ( ali shapiro )

' i missed sadness because i no longer missed you ' ( paul guest )

' here is the game : today you are not going to die ' ( grant howitt )

' you thought you could make things be a certain way ' ( fleda brown )

' let it hurt. but let me survive ' ( susan sontag )

' i don't know, but you were there and i was there ' ( ada limón )

' i will not do the old things that i've always done ' ( heather havrilesky )

' it was an honor to have loved you ' ( joanna klink )

' i'm not so sure i need to say goodbye anymore ' ( nick cave )

' didn't you wake up feeling that you had no future? ' ( rainer maria rilke )

' there's no such thing as life, it's just catastrophe ' ( anne carson )

' do you think anything else under heaven really matters? ' ( james baldwin )

' why are we equal parts tender and not? ' ( james hoch )

' you will save yourself. you cannot help it ' ( molly brodak )

' we have to put our hands in the earth to make ourselves whole again ' ( robin wall kimmerer )

' i have killed for it and would again ' ( natalie shapero )

' i want to know what is holy ' ( carrie fountain )

' aren't we all disquieted by what we'll leave behind? ' ( durga chew-bose )

' so take me with you as a reminder that this present moment will one day be gone ' ( sheila heti )

' it's not sad at all, any of it ' ( carl phillips )

' i left the last of you to be lost in the fog inside me ' ( paul guest )

' in the whole entire world, you are the only person, the only person i love or have ever loved ' ( tony kushner )

' i could have told you it's all right, it's going to be all right ' ( carmen maria machado )

' you are wasting this life expecting disappointment ' ( eliza griswold )

' it's okay. i think i did what i could ' ( jane mead )

' i don't think we're all meant to save the world all the time ' ( andrew garfield )

' sometimes, when i'm careless, i think survival is easy ' ( ocean vuong )

' i'm satisfied with being. are you? ' ( clarice lispector )