"[...]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.
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Yes, R Plus is Dido's brother, Rowland.
Teacher's Poem is from their collaboration in The Last Summer (2019).
https://youtu.be/uThIwMaUf6Y?si=GPYvMpYpZDqqV1dN
What would have happened if I had not misread you standing there, and went with you somewhere to talk?
Let me tell you things that I remember:
I know it took a lot for you to meet me there. You wore your leather jacket, and smoked in the quadrangle with a defensive scowl. Who with what I had burdening me at home would have called every hour to see where I was, and you would have rolled your eyes over that.
I regret every day that I did not put my books in my car, and come back down the hill to talk you.
I remember the few times I went there, and every time the calculation that I made that if I knocked on your door, you would have been very upset. One's house is one's refuge, and it would upset me too, to have someone just showing up without calling first. It was difficult drive back every time.
Someone has to retake the first step. I am writing you a light message on Wes Anderson photographs that inspired his films. I will mail it today. I am assuming that you won't sign your name, if you decide to write back.
I have to work the next three days, and the mail here is rerouted to Butner, North Carolina. You can text.
Should I send another one?
"Does my humility cause me to be self-contained and anti-social or does it express itself in empathy for others. Is my humility balanced and beautiful? Or is it awkward?"
Day Three of Week 5: Tiferet of Hod
31st Day of the Omer
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/276702/jewish/Omer-31.htm
The prosecutor would ask both of us the reasons for our silence.
I finished Philip Roth's Everyman (2006) this morning. Some choice passages:
"there was also loneliness—no less a problem" (5).
"a tree trunk with its upper half sawed away" (54).
"In 1998, when his blood pressure began to mount and would not respond to changes in medication" (62).
"the remainder of each day fulfulling a long-standing ambition by happily painting away" (64).
"how bitterly disappointed parents could be" (76).
"their personal biographies having by this time become identical with their medical biographies" (80).
"He vaguely remembered Chuck Close's having said in an interview: amateurs look for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and get to work" (82).
"a motionless cipher angrily awaiting the blessing of an eradication that was absolute" (88).
"understand that he had lost the same family they did" (95).
"Baling forgiveness as though it were so much hay. The harm inevitably came when she concealed from herself just a little too much that was wanting in the makeup of the ostentatiously brilliant young crybaby she had fallen for and married" (106).
"a library of oversized art books" (128).
"the kind of sobbing that overpowers babies" (169).
"My father always said, 'It's best to give while your hand is still warm [...] who might someday soon be digging a hole for him that was flat enough at the bottom to lay a bed on'" (180).
I share Roth's disappointment with his sons in this novel, who are very much their mother's sons. I know that my brother's other half will betray him, and I cannot forgive her for that; resultingly, my niece and nephew take up for her, and cannot forgive me. Stalemate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WKK9w-m2II
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