: ::theJINX.org:: : About

To lift a weight so heavy,
Would take your courage, Sisyphus!
Although one’s heart is in the work,
Art is long and Time is short.
—Baudelaire, Le Guignon. ["Evil Fate" tr. W. Aggeler.]

One thing I like people to know about me right from the start is that my last name means bad luck and that, yes indeed, I tend to be unlucky. (This hopefully discourages them from asking me to do things…and if it doesn’t I just pretend I’m sleeping or something). I won't say my luck is "chronically" bad, it’s that the bad luck is accentuated by a general dearth of good luck (at least in things that matter; e.g. everywhere I travel just happens to be experiencing "unprecedented bad weather for this time of the year"…but, in turn, I have absolutely no trouble finding parking spaces.)
At an early age I was told that my last name, Guignon, meant "bad luck" in French, but I was never able to truly substantiate the claim with any dictionary…or French person, until a friend came upon a poem by Stephane Mallarme titled, Le Guignon, "The Jinx." After that, I stumbled upon a Le Guignon by Charles Baudelaire, translated as "Evil Fate," "Ill Luck," "Ill-starred," and "Bad Luck." I had found my literary namesake, and it wasn’t quite as fun as when you discover your name means "pretty flower" in Welsh. From Le Guignon:

Black winds upon their march deployed as flags
Whipped them with cold unto the very flesh,
Hollowing furrows in their arms and legs.
—Mallarme, Le Guignon. ["The Jinx" tr. Henry Weinfield.]

This basically describes all of my travel experiences.