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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.
17 comments:
Yes, I posted a prehistory as Sekhmet here to stimulate a new poem.
Steven Pinker's How the Mind Works:
Hotheads
-Fools for Love-
...
Somewhere in this world of five billion people there lives the best looking, richest, smartest, funniest, kindest person who would settle for you. But your dreamboat is a needle in a haystack, and you may die single if you insist on waiting for him or her to show up. Staying single has costs, such as loneliness, childlessness, and playing the dating game with all its awkward drinks and dinners (and sometimes breakfasts). At some point it pays to set up house with the best person you have found so far.
But that calculation leaves your partner vulnerable. The laws of probability say that someday you will meet a more desirable person, and if you are always going for the best you can get, on that day you will dump your partner. But your partner has invested money, time, childrearing, and forgone opportunities in the relationship. If your partner was the most desirable person in the world, he or she would have nothing to worry about, because you would never want to desert. But failing that, the partner would have been foolish to enter the relationship.
...
Marriage laws work a bit like leases, but our ancestors had to find some way to commit themselves before the laws existed. How can you be sure that a prospective partner won't leave the minute it is rational to do so--say, when a 10-out-of-10 moves in next door? One answer is, don't accept a partner who wanted you for rational reasons to begin with; look for a partner who is committed to staying with you because you are you. ... An emotion that the person did not decide to have, and so cannot decide not to have. An emotion that was not triggered by your objective mate-value and so will not be alienated by someone with greater mate-value. An emotion that is guaranteed not to be a sham because it has physiological costs like tachycardia, insomnia, and anorexia. An emotion like romantic love" (418).
HOW THE MIND WORKS
Hotheads
"The body is the ultimate barrier to empathy. Your toothache simply does not hurt me the way it hurts you. But genes are not imprisoned in bodies: the same gene lives in the bodies of many family members at once. The dispersed copies of a gene call to one another by endowing bodies with emotions. Love, compassion, and empathy are invisible fibers that connect genes in different bodies. They are the closest we will ever come to feeling someone else's toothache. When a parent wishes she could take the place of a child about to undergo surgery, it is not the species or the group or her body that wants her to have that most unselfish emotion: it is her selfish genes" (Pinker 401-402).
William Wadsworth is published in the 1993 Paris Review and David Lehman's anthology...no where else.
http://books.google.com/books?id=HXISmot3DdkC&pg=PA95&dq=%22how+we+gnaw+at+the+barrier+because+we+are+two.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aHx9U6r3L8WBoQSBv4CIDg&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22how%20we%20gnaw%20at%20the%20barrier%20because%20we%20are%20two.%22&f=false
Exercise 91.
One of the reasons I feel directed to the script representing the building blocks of Creation, represented by the letter Mem (13) and the letter Shin (21), is for the reasons I submit to you. It is our personal idiom, and it does not have to be translated for others. I would be happy if no one saw it but you. You are the intended recipient.
I had to migrate from the deck of Aleister Crowley, with the floating signifiers of other systems, given that the world is degenerating. One must pick a side.
https://books.google.com/books?id=2jdXCGxQOysC&printsec=frontcover&dq=artscroll+mesorah+hebrew+letters&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwispr_7nISFAxWivokEHarvA68Q6AF6BAgLEAM#v=onepage&q=artscroll%20mesorah%20hebrew%20letters&f=false
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Le_lettere_del_cielo/vATfEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Shir%20HaShirim%20%22shin%22&pg=PT46&printsec=frontcover
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Four_Minim/oPcNt8WFscYC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=hebrew%20letter%20lamed%20lulav&pg=PA213&printsec=frontcover
Today's letter is lamed, the ox-goad.
I have an annotated Shir HaShirim, the Song of Solomon, but I have not read it as planned over Purim because I lack the intention to really understand it, for now.
Schottenstein Edition Ein Yaakov: Tishah B'Av Excerpts from Tractate Gittin: Kamtza U'Bar Kamtza
August.
Thank you, for reminding me, here. I love you very much, and I am thinking about the Things of August file to renovate, too.
Today's letter was the kaf, the palm of the hand and the crown.
https://books.google.com/books?id=d--bS_7gyzYC&pg=PT116&dq=Kamtza+Bar+Kamtza&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwirnMKun4iIAxVmM1kFHUxrAeQQ6AF6BAgIEAM#v=onepage&q=Kamtza%20Bar%20Kamtza&f=false
We celebrated my niece's sixth birthday yesterday, and everybody, including myself, behaved.
I am upset that I performed worse than the first time. It disgraces me, and I think about what happened, the answers I changed in self-sabotage. Nobody knows, and it is not a problem with my employment. I am upset because there isn't a redress for this. I have to call when I am off, and then there is the question about the standstill in my education, my personal life. I take accountability for all this, and I know that not learning about some things in a systematic way may have lead me to read things incorrectly. Ten questions out of 90 referred to vasovagal response after pulling a femoral sheath, in case one should flip the bed instead of running of to look for atropine while the patient's heart rate and pressure is tumbling...
One should never justify wrongheadness for egotistical reasons. The chapter on this is pausing. I work, and then I will go back to the other projects next week.
It upsets me because I have to acknowledge what happened, and it is known by you.
I will regroup by the week's end, when I am paid, as to when I can do it again.
Finish cardiac ACLS (in-class 9/4/24), log into a Quickbooks account (first quiz 9/4/24), register to retest after 8/30/24.
Exercise 91.
" The Torah’s perspective is that our intellectual prowess is only one aspect of the cognitive process. Our ability to discover and grasp the truth – regardless of our intelligence – is determined by the context in which we find ourselves. If we are in the proper situation, we have been exposed to the appropriate hints, have encountered the facts in the proper sequence, are in the requisite frame of mind, and we are free of any blinding bias, then we may discover the truth. However, without all of these factors properly aligned, the truth may just as easily elude us. Our petition to Hashem represents an acknowledgment of the limits of human cognitive ability and recognition of our dependence on Him for even our grasp of basic reality."
https://outorah.org/p/57/
https://learn-cardionursing.docebosaas.com/learn/public/catalog/view/27?utm_campaign=website&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sendgrid.com
Fifth impression (2005) of Rabbi Shimon Finkelman with Overviews by Rabbi Nosson Scherman's ArtScroll Mesorah Series: Shabbos: The Sabbath—Its Essence and Significance:
"Our weekday cares stand in the way. They blind us and tear at our energy and attention until we think that they and their demands are the sole reality of our lives. Then the Sabbath comes and says, 'No, this is not so. God made this world that entices and consumes you. It is His and so are you.' He created it that you could find it within yourself to see through it, and the Sabbath is the day when blinders are removed from your eyes—if only you will not hold onto them so tightly. God blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy so that it would make you holy. Let it take hold of you and bring you back to your Heavenly root, and then you will keep your life-giving Sabbath alive—and through it, all the world (4)."
September 24th at 0900.
ArtScroll Yom Kippur.
I apologize that my turbulence this year has upended things.
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