You're Love in the Time of Cholera!
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Like Odysseus in a work of Homer, you demonstrate undying loyalty by
sleeping with as many people as you possibly can. But in your heart you never give
consent! This creates a strange quandary of what love really means to you. On the
one hand, you've loved the same person your whole life, but on the other, your actions
barely speak to this fact. Whatever you do, stick to bottled water. The other stuff
could get you killed.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
You're Infinite Jest!
by David Foster Wallace
While you1 consider yourself2 to be clever,
there are those3 who think you're just full of yourself or, perhaps worse,
playing a joke4 on everyone around you, and yet you are pretty sure that
you really are that brilliant after all, since people would hardly take the time to
get to know you5 if they didn't care very deeply about what you had to
say to them, to wit, about their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their fears, their
drug habits, and of course what videos6 they prefer to watch, since,
after all, your impressive vocabulary and tendency to go on and on7 makes
you seem superior, able to educate them, and really drive a sense of something
ineffable into their measly little skulls while you are not above making a cheap
gag or really going after anyone or anything or telling them about incredible
futures involving tennis, geopolitics, and
1Meaning you personally, not someone like you or your own
personal daddy, for example.
2As well as you can see yourself, which, frankly, may not be that well.
3Though we wouldn't deign to be so peripatetic as to name them here, mind.
4Jokes, though not common in Victorian England, were known to originate
sometime in ancient history, perhaps as early as the time of Babylon, or even before.
It is thought that the history of the joke plays an integral role in the mindset of
the characters depicted here, though you may disagree at this point, in which case I
am facing quite the dilemma in relaying this narrative, no?
5It is rather time consuming, after all.
6Ha!
7and on and on and on...
Take the Book Quiz II
at the Blue Pyramid.
You're The Metamorphosis!
by Franz Kafka
Though you think you're in the midst of a dream, the fact of the
matter is that your life has become a nightmare. The nightmare at first seems
horrific to you, but you are slowly able to adjust to the facts of the matter
and settle down and make do with what you've been given. There are those that
would say you're pointless and absurd, but you're really just trying to
demonstrate that people can (and do) adapt to anything, no matter how absurd
it is. Not that this will really inspire them to change, because they probably
don't understand.
Take the Book Quiz II
at the Blue Pyramid.
21 comments:
Actually, Pisces in the 4th house.
Here is what the cookbook has to say:
Pisces on the cusp of the 4th house
"The Pisces influence in the fourth house shows an emotional tie to the home. You are sentimental about your family and willing to make sacrifices for your loved ones. You have a strong need for domestic peace and seclusion. You value the privacy of your home and use it as a retreat. Neptune, the planet of the idealistic and unrealistic, is ruling this area of the chart. You are sensitive to your home environment, and to the environment in general. You want and need ideal conditions in your surroundings. You look for the kind of living space that provides an escape from the realities of your everyday life."
I agree with this to the extent that I like going to movies or restaurants, or other public areas to socialize, but I do not like entertaining at home.
The 4th house contains the Imum Coeli, which is the psychological backbone of the natal chart.
http://marianneohagan.com/astrology/asc-dec-axis-and-mc-ic-axis/the-mc-ic-axis/?PHPSESSID=fb4d00fa106f15e31eda525b6ee1785b
http://metaxy-art.com/peter-doig-le-corbusier-unite-dhabitation-marseilles-france/
http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=3872
http://solarhousehistory.com/blog/2013/5/23/public-housing-and-the-thermal-ghetto
http://expositions.bnf.fr/boullee/expo/1/index.htm
In Peter Stamm's novel, Sonia is ostensibly the betrayed spouse, but her architectural plans, as in life, are so distorted by ideology. She travels to Marseilles to be inspired by Le Corbusier's Unité d’Habitation, or as it has come be known, La Maison du Fada. Sonia, like the abject mistress, Ivona, reminds me of that Piscean sufferer rolling out projections on a plane of shifting water. Both women are types, as in a Dickens novel.
Michael Hofmann's translation:
"By way of Aldo Rossi I came across Étienne-Louis Boullée, a pre-Revolutionary French architect who designed melancholy monumental structures not one of which had been built. I became fascinated by his way with light, which in his drawings was not a given, but more like a substance. It looked as thought the buildings were pushing back against a stream of light, against a stream of time.
...
When, quoting Aldo Rossi, I said in a letter that every summer felt like my last, she shot back that to her, this summer had felt like her first. She had never cared for Rossi's melancholy and fixation on the past. She believed that the world could be transformed by architecture, and when I objected that all the great things had already been built, she mocked me and said I was just trying to excuse my lack of ambition" (97-98).
"I went up to the attic to look for the model that Sonia had given me back then, the house she had created for the two of us. I was pretty sure it was in one of the boxes of my student stuff, but it took me a long time to find it. It was in a shoebox, along with the plans for it. It was much smaller than I'd remembered it. The cardboard was yellowed, and the glue had come off in one or two places, the two figures that represented Sonia and me had fallen off. They were plastic figurines of the sort you can get in any model shop. I looked at the plans and sketches. Le Courbusier's influence could clearly be seen. The house occupied a relatively small area, but was three stories and had a roof terrace. The rooms were generously cut. Light came in through a wall of windows, and through skylight on the top floor. I imagined what it would be life to live in that house, asked myself how it would have changed our lives. The house we were in now was much cozier, but there was something small-scale about it, with its narrow staircase and saddle roof. It was conventional in every way, and emanated a modesty and unobstrusiveness that might have suited me but that certainly didn't express Sonia's nature. It's absurd, she said to me once, we think about beautiful buildings all day long, but we'll never be able to afford one for ourselves. And the people we build for have no appreciation of quality. I took the model downstairs to the living room and put it on the sideboard" (129-130).
"More silence from him. Then he said it was a delicate situation, and he didn't want to speak out of turn, but he didn't like the way I was treating Ivona. I wondered how much he knew. [...] She loves you, he said, and sighed deeply. I shrugged my shoulders. With all her heart, the way Jacob waited for Rachel. I only vaguely remembered the story, but I remembered that at the end of seven years, Jacob had gone off with the wrong woman. Leah, Harmeier said. And then he had to wait another seven years. I didn't understand what he was driving at. Whether she waits for you for a year or seven or fourteen, makes no difference, he said. [...] Ivona's feelings are a matter for her, I said" (153-154).
http://english.emory.edu/classes/paintings&poems/mermaids.html
Not that this is a comment on a relationship dilemma, but some images such as the idea of Le Corbusier's flat block shaped like a cruise ship intended for recreating a prewar Gemeinschaft; what with complications of householding and cohabitation, stab at the moorless core of being in many self-contained people.
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2013/12/06/arts/design/20131206-SCARPA-5.html
http://www.archdaily.com/454892/light-matters-glass-beyond-transparency-with-james-carpenter/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3DfyJRIT4jyTzBtZWJTR2lWR1k/edit?usp=sharing
One can accuse J.G. Ballard of cruelty to his subjects, by forcing them into car accidents, but I do not think it is illegitimate to interact with artworks. A play, a fashion show, a sculpture, can be a curatorial ekphrasis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jw0Fu8nhOc
http://www.bridgemanimages.com/en-US/asset/754385//the-lobster-symbol-of-cancer-with-dean-detail-from-sign-of-cancer-scene-from-month-of-june-attributed-to-master-occhi-spalancati-active-15th-century-fresco-hall-of-months-palazzo-schifanoia-palace-of-joy-ferrara-emilia-romagna-italy-ca-1470
http://books.google.com/books?id=nv2-7-pS48QC&pg=PP134&lpg=PP120&focus=viewport&dq=I,+Lobster+Vallayer-Coster&output=html_text
http://hijaktaffairs.tumblr.com/post/8651272629/peter-doig-cricket-1998
The feeling of his pictures is very inspiring.
Finally, a source for pre-developed cyanotypes:
www.sunprints.com
"Marner's inward life had been a history and a metamorphosis, as every fervid nature must be when it has fled, or been condemned to solitude." George Eliot's Silas Marner The Weaver of Raveloe
The link above was to a skilled sunprint artisan. This is the kit:
http://www.sunprints.org/
https://youtu.be/EHglOQepTnI
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Tokyo_Ueno_Station/-FS9DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Tokyo+Ueno+Station&printsec=frontcover
https://www.moma.org/artists/5895
http://hoaxes.org/weblog/comments/nerval_lobster
Yes, I thought of Silas Mariner today, when I found a copy of Scenes from Clerical Life (1857).
https://www.archdaily.com/373826/ice-falls-james-carpenter-design-associates-inc
A recollection. We are closing in on acquiring and asking all the Trivial Pursuit sets excluding the themed sets like Game of Thrones. Five hours last evening we went through all the 20th and Genus stacks.
https://www.themodernnovel.org/oceania/australia/white/fringe/
I remember being five or six, and looking up to the top shelf on the built-in bookcase in the sunken den with the Rand McNally roadmap jigsaw puzzle of the United States and the Trivial Pursuit Genus edition (1981). My stepfather pieced the map on a card table with my assistance, and much tolerance for a small child. I studied the boardgame cards myself.
I liked that den. It had built-ins along the wall and an aquarium. The undergravel filter, the pH testing, and that time I drank the malachite green for ick treatment, which made my tongue turn green. Much effort was expended for years on aquaria.
I would like to put an aquarium in the Stephenson house for the kids.
One treats methemoglobinemia from malachite green with methylene blue.
https://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/fishkeeping-news/child-hospitalised-after-drinking-fish-medication/
I was notorious for sitting in the bathroom as a small child while my mother slept in the day, and ingesting chloroseptic spray, oil of cloves, Camphophenique, and any liquid I could open. Not fatal amounts, obviously. Just a taste.
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