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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.
3 comments:
THAT'S LIFE by Peter Gizzi
It couldn't be closer than Mars
these days. First you're off on a tangent,
then glittering beyond the call
in the backyard to no good effect.
Later when you shrugged you were blue,
I mistook it for "that's life" not "help me."
I mistake many things in dusk
like seeing liberty everywhere today,
smallish unacknowledged moments
of door holding, tossing coins
into a worn paper cup, smiling.
To rediscover our neighborhood
one wrapper and bum at a time.
Where am I going with this?
Down to the riverbank to watch the light
dazzle and showcase trees
in all their prehistoric movement.
Two more animals blinking in the breeze.
The guest-host relationship is
bigger than a house, older
than cold planets in space.
One of the earliest manuals
is about the guest-host thing.
Sit down, breathe deeply and
welcome ourselves. If you listen
you can faintly recall the song.
The sweet height of it all
breaking free from a canopy of leaves.
Remember the day
you first took in the night sky?
I mean really let it enter
and unfold along the interior
when the architecture of the body
resembles a cauldron for a dying star,
twinkle twinkle inside, and inside that
a simple hole. So now you know
what it is to be sucking air,
to be walking upright, to love.
Why not enjoy the day,
this moment to moment thing,
and the furnace above sending
you messages: breathe, dummy.
Birds do it and the rest of the ark
all following the great blank of what's next.
What's next is courage.
To take it all in and feel it for keeps,
that persons you meet
have a hole too and a twinkle.
Embrace them and have a meal.
Look straight into their impermanent flash,
the nervous-system tic of their talk.
Welcome their knowing
not knowing their coming and going.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100528810
The pineapple was awkwardly disassembled on the marble counter top with a half dozen plastic knives with the greedily sucked and discarded rind in the walk-out waste (lingering it would gather ants) by one person.
Exercise 91.
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