"[...]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.
10 comments:
I remember being a little girl and looking at the pictures from the Tribune article (1987)somehow saved in a relative's book...
"Dear Readers: We wanted this article written to make our daughter Sage’s adjustment to her new life as easy as possible. We should like you to be aware of her struggle from when she was first burned and almost through death’s door to her return to us as a 6-year-old girl with feelings, who sees life in terms of Barbie dolls and her Brownie troop. When you come upon Sage unexpectedly in a store or restaurant, your first reaction may be one of sadness. But if you do run into her, we hope you will see her as we do - as a brave little girl. Thank you, from Sage’s family: Michael, Denise and Avery Volkman"
[The story that made me afraid of matches...for some time.]
Up from the ashes
Remember the cute little girl in the sleeping bag, snugly snoozing in the family camper at Bluewater Lake, her father and brother fishing nearby until they heard the dogs bark and saw the smoke.
Flames quickly devoured the camper that morning in October 1986 when Michael Volkman pulled his tiny daughter from the inferno, the sleeping bag melting around her blackened, steaming body.
Gone were her freckles, her nose, her eyelids, her fingers, her ears, her brown hair. Fire liquefied her face, fused her toes, charred a knee, scarred 45 percent of her body.
But it could not touch what was inside.
That was Sage Volkman, age 5.
*I am exploring this issue of exploiting tragedy for all of its angles...
I noticed that I cannot find the pictures from 1987 online...
Maslow studied exemplary people such as Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass rather than mentally ill or neurotic people, writing that "the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology...
I am reminded of Anchises, who was crippled for boasting of the love of a goddess...he had to be carried out of the flames of his former glory on Aeneas's back.
Abraham Maslow was a "Volk" lover...
I was not trying to scam her story; it affected me on a very profound level.
I recall thinking yesterday, would I have evoke this story for a young person already sticking things in wall outlets and checking out coats for books of matches? The threat of burning herself or the entire house was not yet real for her.
Basking in the January sun en route to an errand, I heard again the performance of Chiara Ferraù and Ennio Morricone's Nella Fantasia (1986) by Sarah Brightman (1998). Not that I would destroy a property, or allow negligence to do the same, but I contemplated that given the myriad of defects with the gas fireplaces that will require investment, the house is a tinderbox should one go ahead without due diligence.
Walking in the charred foundation in January sunshine reminds me of Tarkovsky's Offret (1986), which would be just as satisfying as at the beginning of finding it, as leaving it behind. This is not ingratitude, and life will carry on without incidence (as much a scud there or there proclaims otherwise), but the timing and the thoughts were very ironic. The Sarah Brightman experience in the car was a benediction of sorts, but the Sumi Jo rehearing, which is more rounded and technically perfect, is painful to hear as I view the patriarch being carted away to the madhouse. The claustrophobia and dissatisfaction with relative abundance tempts annihilation, which is, thankfully, short-lived.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5ztmPLpPGg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljxUf8Jc9g4
After being at work and being encouraged to sign a loyalty oath of sorts and agree to work piecemeal four-hour shifts here and there, I was relieved to later float to staff a critical need in palliative care, a ten-bed unit with an ICU model. If it did not mean losing many clinical skills, I would apply there in a minute. The modalities there ensure a good death, and I could see my fellow lightworker, the prison charlie from the Midwest. She is asexual, and happily married, but we recognize each other, really, without saying a word, in our respective domains.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uZo86Mfd3c
http://www.cantstopthemovies.com/2013/10/andrei-tarkovsky-the-sacrifice-1986/
https://www.kinolorber.com/film/view/id/1222
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC204UJp6xA
One fireplace is in good working order. The other on inspection needs a new insert. The refinance has been approved. The exterior will be painted? Sided? In the spring.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01793-4
I envision the worst outcomes, and then, when they do not transpire, I have the fortitude to face them.
The fireplace is picturesque but weak as a primary source of heat.
You didn't gather that the lot of them live here, at Stephenson, and I sleep at Montrose?
I do it for the kids.
"There is also evidence that one’s neighborhood during childhood has intergenerational effects on their own children’s cognitive performance (Sharkey & Elwert, 2011)."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7347335/
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