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"[...]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:
Another, Wynn Bullock.
My father sent me two glossy biographies for Christmas ten years ago, one on Lucrezia Borgia and one on Catherine de Medici.
Ah, I always knew that tired routine of stretching didn't work:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/sports/playmagazine/112pewarm.html?em
I will have some new kinesthetics for tomorrow morning as I wait for the coffee to brew.
The gift of popular fiction, it turns out, was intended for another woman.
I am not this model here, and it turns out that I like his work, without human subjects, better. It is difficult to orient my feelings in 2008.
http://wynnbullockphotography.com/featured/2012-05/featured-1205-popup2.html
I do push-ups (20) as a spiritual exercise, not everyday, but when the core muscles speak to me about willpower. I go in the evening to the gym with my mother because I want her to retain the habit of going.
Was this queued for a photographic contrast with Stuyvesant Park of the Sixties, where
https://books.google.com/books?id=9xzqCgAAQBAJ&lpg=PT70&dq=%22Perhaps%20despite%20great%20sadness%20to%20read%20a%20few%20paragraphs%20of%20this%20fascinating%20moon%20manuscript.%20He%20noted%20a%20female%20bum%20drunkenly%20sleeping%20like%20a%20dugong%22&pg=PT70#v=onepage&q=%22Perhaps%20despite%20great%20sadness%20to%20read%20a%20few%20paragraphs%20of%20this%20fascinating%20moon%20manuscript.%20He%20noted%20a%20female%20bum%20drunkenly%20sleeping%20like%20a%20dugong%22&f=false
I remember that this was the book that I found at the defunct hole-in-the-wall in Salem that looked like a used book library exploded, and then the texts were hastily righted. The prices were great! The finds were legendary!
https://www.libertybookstore.com/pages/books/2270/wynn-bullock/wynn-bullock-the-enchanted-landscape-photographs-1940-1975
Slowly, I am finishing deliverables for this evening for class without shortcuts so that I can merit my free time. I am supporting a single mother and getting my hair colored on the six-week rota. I receive texts the two weeks before, one week before, and daily, for my appointment. Like a lot of people who spend immoderate time on appearance, she is not attractive, but I have been going now for a bit. Being the older peer among young girls at work requires maintaining a professional helmet of amber-blonde. I don't wear warpaint (foundation, false lashes), and the concession I make is the hair and the cinch-waisted uniforms for this article:
https://www.economist.com/films/2023/06/02/can-being-thinner-make-women-richer
https://www.wearfigs.com/products/womens-extremes-hw-yola-scrub-pants?color=Extreme%20Blue&size=S
This psalm is special as an acrostic of the aleph-bet that captures the spiritual essence of each letter.
https://books.google.com/books?id=AJPhGdPkFDMC&pg=PA133&dq=tehillim+119&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiog9L46_SFAxVhj4kEHZhZDdUQ6AF6BAgKEAM#v=onepage&q=tehillim%20119&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=y74-x96GwSkC&pg=PA252&dq=tehillim+119+batsheva&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi68-bJ7PSFAxXajIkEHbWaAWcQ6AF6BAgGEAM#v=onepage&q=tehillim%20119%20batsheva&f=false
I mention Batsheva here in this post about the eyes, which lead astray.
Tehillim 10, 12, 14, and pages from Feldbrand's Teshuvah: Inspiration, Stories & Practical Advice (2008), which is to be finished gradually.
This morning, I started, and will finish Yaakov Astor's The Hidden Hand: The Holocaust (2009) because I had this compelling reason to read it today.
Something about Hashgacha pratis, individual Divine Providence, and the number nine of tet, and Tisha B'Av, the ninth of Av (July-August) with the destruction of the first and second Temples and other contemporary events. The current Card with Delillo's Libra required that I check out The Library of America's The Guns of August (1962) for the second time. Barbara W. Tuchman was the granddaughter of Henry Morgenthau, Jr., who was Roosevelt's close associate and the architect of the Morgenthau plan as Secretary of the Treasury.
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/946703/jewish/What-Happened-on-the-Ninth-of-Av.htm
https://blog.loa.org/2012/03/how-barbara-tuchmans-guns-of-august.html
I have read The Hidden Hand: Discovering Divine Providence in the Events of the 20th Century (2007).
The Hidden Hand: The Holocaust (2009):
"Hashgachah [...] means 'to see over' or 'oversee.' In other words, Hashem 'watches over' and supervises events. They do not happen independently of Him, without his knowledge or ability to intervene. They are not random or left to chance (19)."
"The word 'Holocaust' comes from the Greek word used in the Septuagint,* meaning 'a completely (holos) burned (kaustos) sacrificial offering.' Some objected to this term and preferred Shoah, a Hebrew word meaning a 'devastating calamity.' Others objected to Shoah, since it was often used in a secular, even anti-religious sense or context. Churban, meaning 'destruction' or Churban Eiropa, 'destruction of Europe (specifically, European Jewry).' was also used. For simplicity's sake, I have chosen to use the term most commonly used in the English language: Holocaust (29)."
"May 22, 1945, about three weeks after Germany's surrender. Henry Blitt, an American major, who is also Jewish, makes an unplanned stop at a farmhouse just off the road on his way to Bertschesgarden, Hitler's favorite retreat now in Allied hands. He meets the farmhouse's occupant, a short, white-haired, bearded man. 'What do you think of the Nazis?' Blitt asks.
'I'm an artist,' comes the reply, 'and have never bothered about politics.'
'But you look like Julius Streicher!' Blitt says jokingly in broken German, trying to make conversation.
There's silence. Then...
'You recognized me?' the man blurts out incredulously, startling Blitt.
After a moment's pause, Blitt composes himself and arrests the man who, both inside and outside Germany, was considered Nazidom's number one Jew-baiter (271)."
"One of the most remarkable testimonies by a leading Nazi himself is that of the man put in charge of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoess. Arrested in 1946, after the Nuremberg Trial began and thus too late to be included, Hoess was tried and executed at Auschwitz in April 1947. Before his execution,** he was interviewed by Gustav Gilbert, court-appointed psychologist at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial. Gilbert recorded these conversations in his book, Nuremberg Diary:
[...]
I pressed him for some explanation of why it was taken for granted. 'Well, we just never heard anything else. It was not just newspapers like the Sturmer [the leading anti-Semitic newspaper, published by Julius Streicher and reaching a peak circulation of 2,000,000 copies in 1938] but it was everything we heard (288)."
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-66875251
*Referencing the Tanakh translated by 72 Hebrew scribes into Koine Greek under the penalty of death by Ptolemy II in the third century - not only to test the consistency of a Divine text, but to spread its knowledge - the problem is that it was not just a text among texts, to lead to other denigrated translations and misreadings unfaithful to the primary Source.
**by hanging per Haman and his sons
I did not read this today to bestir the coarse sympathies or to apply it any way to my own life.
Having faith, bitachon, is a constant exercise. I kept looking at the side-by-side stacked, The Hidden Hand: The Holocaust (2009), and this other text every morning since March:
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Love_in_a_Time_of_Hate/n9erEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover
Bertschesgaden*
Autocorrect again.
I am off sixteen days, now.
https://images.app.goo.gl/mfHsyqTowoZLB44g6
I found this pristine copy at the same place as as a 1959 copy of Böll's Billard zum halbzehn, but I likely cannot read it in German, yet.
I already had this copy:
https://books.google.com/books?id=Xl6Ujjb1UbUC&pg=PA1&source=kp_read_button&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&gboemv=1#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2024/06/02/budget-axe-falls-at-lynchburg--brandeis-university-of-the-arts-to-close/?sh=5cd26c0d2f8c
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