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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.
8 comments:
I really did not want to smatter my overprecious picture/word log with National Enquirer interest items but, this is such a prize...
for Chuck Palahniuk, Jeffrey Eugenides or ?
Then again, the coincidence of an Angelina look-alike octo-mom making her rounds of the incubabtors mounted with uV lamps makes me think of the litigation that would ensue, for their maintenance.
This touches me to the extent that I recall my undergraduate roommate, who turned her neglected, aquarium-tanked gerbils out to an awaiting cat. She is a mother of three, now.
The language of this entire "endeavor" fascinates me: "schlep them to the various therapies".
Yes, I think vegetarians should espouse abortions on principle--if for the world's conveyance of less meat. Humans, are meat, too, but we dress and redress ourselves (that it won't putrify too soon) for an end: cremains (toast crumbs shaken out of a box, really) or formalin-logged vault meat.
That comment is less fatalistic to me than it might sound.
Recall Swift's A Modest Proposal.
Yes, the experts look like a mini wax museum.
I like Kiki Smith so much for her explorations of the visceral and complex emotions around our body filth:
Untitled
198790
silvered glass water bottles
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, gift of Louis and Bessie Adler Foundation Inc., 1990
I used to love medieval books of hours, the idea that every hour you had some kind of meditation, something to think about or believe in. . . . I wanted to make a calendar with the fluids written on it, to think about every day. -Kiki Smith, 1998
Smith has developed an elaborate vocabulary to describe the body's forms and functions and its metaphorical role in society. Inspired by medieval prayer books, this installation consists of twelve glass water bottles that resemble antique medical specimen jars. Each bottle is empty, plated with silver, and etched in Gothic lettering with the name of a bodily fluid. The named substances range from life sustaining (semen, blood, milk) to disease bearing (pus and vomit), and they all evoke powerful emotional responses. Smith's "calendar" of carefully labeled vessels lends itself to an array of possible interpretations and points to humanity's complex relationship to the body and its products.
Beating this illusion of a suitable-love-match to a froth of frustration:
Chapter 4
...
"A man of liberal education, but with an income only just sufficient to enable him to associate in the rank of gentlemen, must feel absolutely certain that if he marries and has a family he shall be obliged, if he mixes at all in society, to rank himself with moderate farmers and the lower class of tradesmen. The woman that a man of education would naturally make the object of his choice would be one brought up in the same tastes and sentiments with himself and used to the familiar intercourse of a society totally different from that to which she must be reduced by marriage. Can a man consent to place the object of his affection in a situation so discordant, probably, to her tastes and inclinations? Two or three steps of descent in society, particularly at this round of the ladder, where education ends and ignorance begins, will not be considered by the generality of people as a fancied and chimerical, but a real and essential evil. If society be held desirable, it surely must be free, equal, and reciprocal society, where benefits are conferred as well as received, and not such as the dependent finds with his patron or the poor with the rich.
These considerations undoubtedly prevent a great number in this rank of life from following the bent of their inclinations in an early attachment. Others, guided either by a stronger passion, or a weaker judgement, break through these restraints, and it would be hard indeed, if the gratification of so delightful a passion as virtuous love, did not, sometimes, more than counterbalance all its attendant evils. But I fear it must be owned that the more general consequences of such marriages are rather calculated to justify than to repress the forebodings of the prudent."
...
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/malthus/malthus.0.html
I recall, on several occasions, of being reminded (complete with the broken snicker into speech) of the pointlessness of my opinion on matters I have no real stake in.
What now, but of, reeling the big fish?
A likely answer would be, with hat in hand, "No, you are not being patronizing at all."
To add to that note about meat, I was reading in my translation of Götzen-Dämmerung (1888):
"The sedentary life (das sitzfleisch--literally "sitting meat") is the very sin against the Holy Spirit. Only thoughts reached by walking have value."
Philosophenweg of Heidelberg?
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