"[...]a vessel cleaving the dungeon of the waves[...]"
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.
Never miss a word
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.
About Me
- Σφιγξ
- possesses wholly unmerited academic pretensions; examines love as an entomologist; collects haunted dollshouses; notes the lunar phase as regularly as the temperature; peruses field guides; reads like a serial magazine subscriptionist; functions through coffee and "mood" music; draws to the very corners of the page; takes notes on unlined paper; reads poetry as prayer; observes textual authority with the incredulity of fiction; suppresses the smart-ass answer(s); adapts as well as anyone beseiged by her own bibelots; she is a sensation seeker in spite of all of this.
13 comments:
I am generally speechless except for an astringent aftertaste.
We should go to Tindari...Sicily, where St. Lucy's eyes appear on a plate (patronness of the blind), where Fonte Ciane holds the true name of the colors of its cyan waters, where Suetonius wrote about the volatile temper of a noble who threw his house slave into a pond of lampreys for breaking a glass. Slippery Arethusa (of Siracusa) is depicted in the tetradrachma with seaweed plaited in her hair. Sicily is also the ground of vendettas. Blindness, blueness and
blusterous tempers--I think it might be fate.
Wind at Tindari by Salvatore Quasimodo
Tindari, I know you
mild between broad hills, overhanging the waters
of the god’s sweet islands.
Today, you confront me
and break into my heart.
I climb airy peaks, precipices,
following the wind in the pines,
and the crowd of them, lightly accompanying me,
fly off into the air,
wave of love and sound,
and you take me to you,
you from whom I wrongly drew
evil, and fear of silence, shadow,
- refuge of sweetness, once certain -
and death of spirit.
It is unknown to you, that country
where each day I go down deep
to nourish secret syllables.
A different light strips you, behind the windows
clothed in night,
and another joy than mine
lies against you.
Exile is harsh
and the search, for harmony, that ended in you
changes today
to a precocious anxiousness for death,
and every love is a shield against sadness,
a silent stair in the gloom,
where you station me
to break my bitter bread.
Return, serene Tindari,
stir me, sweet friend,
to raise myself to the sky from the rock,
so that I might shape fear, for those who do not know
what deep wind has searched me.
From Ovid's "Metamorphoses":
Arethusa, yet another huntress who loved the comfort of the deep woods. She detested love and marriage and vowed never to marry.
One day, as she was tired and hot from the chase, she came upon a crystal-clear river deeply shaded in silvery willows. She undressed and bathed in the river, which was a place that was perfect for bathing. For a while, she swam to and fro, until she began to feel something below her. She sprang up from the river and stood on the bank, as she heard a voice that said "Why such haste fairest maiden?" Without looking back she fled in terror. With all the speed the she could muster up, she kept running and running, but still she was pursued by one stranger, he told her he was the god of the river, Alpheus, and that he was following her only out of absolute love. But she wanted no part of him and yet he unsparingly followed. Arethusa called to her god, Artemis, she changed her into a spring of water, and split the earth so a tunnel was made under the sea from Greece to Sicily. Arethusa plunged down and emerged in Ortygia, where the place in which her spring bubbles up is holy ground, sacred to Artemis. But it is said that she is still not free of Alpheus. The story is that the god changed back into a river, followed her through the tunnel and the now his water mingles with hers in the fountain. They say that often Greek flowers are seen coming up from the bottom, and that if a wooden cup is thrown into the Alpheus in Greece, it would reappear in Arethusa's well in Sicily.
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSSCH70569720070807
It doesn't in my case.
I purchased some blood oranges today. The right eye twitch is a recent, relentless development.
I think standing on the caldera of the most active volcano in the world would be exciting, Mt. Etna...
After I finish XIII. Tendue, I am going to draw this, and post it. Today, I bought toned gray paper with this in mind.
http://www.juxtapoz.com/current/designs-by-verner-panton
https://books.google.com/books/about/Give_Me_Your_Heart.html?id=pq_qDwAAQBAJ#v=onepage&q=joyce%20carol%20oates%20give%20me%20your%20heart&f=false
Exercise 90.
The title story in the JCO collection, "Give Me Your Heart" is too close to home. I hate that story...there is a tired copy of it at UVA about a pair where it ended unhappily, and now she blames him for her entire life. When read the first story, I wanted to stop.
I object to re-editorializing, and just because one does not get everything one is allegedly "entitled to" then a career demolition follows. The definition of assault is broadly interpreted to include bad feelings, leers, and brushes... not on the same level as traumatic penetration.
Ahem; if someone is finger-banging you in a restaurant? Wouldn't you open your strong, independent mouth, and say let's take this somewhere else... Or, because it is dry, this is the cue, what you are doing isn't working?
https://www.wikiart.org/en/rene-magritte/memory-1948-1
https://dailyprogress.com/news/uva/uva-panel-finds-casey-responsible-of-inappropriate-sexual-contact-with-student/article_39bf3996-ff3e-11e8-8786-57a7d7c74cca.html
https://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug01/kordis/london/professors.html
Tom Schievelbein is the CEO of a subsidiary of New York Life.
Not to slander the girl. But I hate that story. I hate that dynamic...not being responsible for one's work, and one's lot in life. It is so depressing to think that after progress has been made, women are so weak, and give up so easily, and want to blame the world.
Since I have allowed time to pass, I will make Exercise 90 after this, which made me recall.
https://poems.com/poem/forested/
Exercise 90.
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AsA4BY25Ql_1mx1h6W8Y91QaAAL7
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GpaUjF-BBw0&pp=ygUiTCdhdnZlbnR1cmEgbm90IGdvaW5nIHRvIG1hcnJ5IHlvdQ%3D%3D
https://www.chabad.org/theJewishWoman/article_cdo/aid/424441/jewish/The-Jewish-Heart.htm
The only solution is to wait until you retire to remove any possibility of professional disgrace.
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