"It was strange she should have told him not to be afraid of Frank because it was she Harold had always been afraid of. Any vulgarity that could not be paid off and dismissed intimidated him.
...
Already there was a crease at the front of her ankles, and the flesh of her upper arms was loose, and her hips had a girdled hardness. Not that Harold did not find her attractive. He did, and this went with his fright. Her beauty seemed a gift she would abuse, like a boy with a gun, or squander, like a fool with a fortune. She struck him as a bad investor who would buy high and sell after the drop and take everybody she could down with her. So he walked, up Milk, through the thick of Boston's large codger population, along Tremont, through the Common and the Public Garden, in a pinching mood of caution. The sidewalk was so hot it stung through the soles of his thin black Italianate shoes; yet scraps of velour and highlights of satiny white skin skated through his head, and it was somewhat romantic of him not to have taken a cab" (118-119).
"And Danny Skinner had flown back into town feeling more disorientated than ever. For the entire flight he was thinking about Dorothy, the traumatic tearfulness of their departure at San Francisco airport shocking them both in its intensity. His mind danced with the wonderful possibilities and cruel improbabilities of a long-term, long-distance romance. But his quest was incomplete. Greg Tomlin had been removed from the list, but he knew that his mother had been in some kind of relationship. While it warmed his heart to think that he might have been the product of a real, if fleeting, love, rather than a cider-and-speed fuck, he couldn't bring himself to confront her again, at least for the time being. De Fretais was the one he wanted.
When he got back to his cold flat in Leith, he switched on the central heating, then took some sleeping pills and knocked himself out. The next day he called Bob Foy, finding out that De Fretais was currently filming in Germany. The next person he phoned was Joyce Kibby and he was still jet-lagged when her met her for a coffee in the St John's café in Corstorphine" (281).
17 comments:
Has that ever happened to you, as coiled tungsten wires are said to fray from that added bit of electricity when a particular person enters the room, your necklace is timed to explode?
I was struck by these texts when it hadn't yet occurred to me that I was dropped into the nest of my parents' antagonism.
Guttuso was here.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/801aa7dc-b112-11e4-831b-00144feab7de.html
Yes, his work is apt for this reading, where Bogakov, a Soviet, and German POW, has left the Krupp plant where his guards have deserted:
"[...] Lucerne 1919, I still have it, I can show it to you—and six fat expensive cigars, if you're not too extravagant that makes thirty-six quite passable cigarettes, and if you have matches as well it's a fortune, and not only matches but cigarette paper, in the form of a prayer book from Grossvernich, printed on India paper, five hundred pages and the name on the flyleaf was: Katherina Wermelskirchen, First Communion 1878—and naturally before rolling my cigarettes I'd read what was on each page: 'Examine thy conscience and see wherein thou have offended God in thought, word, or deed. I have sinned against Heaven and against Thee. I have strayed like a lost lamb, I am not worthy to be called Thy child.' I owed the poor old paper at least that much before it went up in smoke.
[...] 'Hast thou conducted thyself in the holy state of matrimony according to thy duty? Hast thou sinned against it in thought, word, or deed? Hast thou deliberately or consentingly—even if in fact no act took place—desired to sin with the spouse of another or with a single person?' Questions put to Katherina Wermelskirchen [...]And now leave your hand in mine and say nothing' (which deeply disturbed Au. did [sic], nothing that Bogakov gave evidence of T. and W., also of P. and, with a probability bordering on certainty, of S.).
— Heinrich Böll's Group Portrait with Lady, translated by Leila Vennewitz (1973)
It was poignant to me, not because I have contemplated others, but because the memory is like rolling paper. How intentional is forgetting, if it is re-excavated using the simplest, if clumsy, means of repetition? It is a situation, or a topography; we have to revisit.
Group Portrait with Lady fell off the shelf where my cat was sitting last night. It was the first thing I noticed this morning.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/what-time-is-it-on-saturn-we-finally-know?utm_source=dscfb&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dscfb&fbclid=IwAR3WZx4cPudcnfLfPikcn7VpOchUaj9MzShTcG_NaUkS8nTAMGWFce02MY0
https://youtu.be/klaJqofCsu4
Yes, I lost my Liberty's dragonfly necklace today out of the shower. It became entangled in my wet hair and the thin silver chain snapped. I will find another one.
Scorpio New Moon: descending the patio after tree ID for The Green Goat, I saw John and Dottie at the fire pit. The group visit was unplanned, but they looked like they had seen a ghost... and he limped inside while she stared at me. They huddled together over reubens and departed hand-in-hand.
No one wanted to take John away from her, or to be acknowledged, but that I am a reminder of Sharon and his other relation, John Keith, is a nemesis to them. I gather that he does not know about D. Herodotou, so he looks at me strangely like I am his.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1mlKhCCf0g
https://michellegurevich.bandcamp.com/track/wrong-side-of-the-fence
https://tarotator.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/78-The-Madness-of-the-Alchemist-Folly-The-Etteilla-Tarot-The-Book-of-Thoth.jpg
LXXVIII. Du mauvais côté de la clôture
I am not pursuing this, the Tarot designation, and otherwise.
Exercise 91 will go here.
https://on.soundcloud.com/GwsH9bLF6rE223cQ7
To recap, I read Couples (1974) for Updike's language, and I excerpted the scene above of the walking paramours to the abortion clinic in enlightened Boston because it was awful. The serial adultery ended very badly to my sensibilities.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26279914
https://www.nps.gov/sagu/learn/nature/the-crested-saguaro.htm
I found this, a few days ago, at a time when I most needed it. I queried Google Books just now for "Saguaros" with the terms "Endpoint Updike saguaro", the search yielded Yvain in English and Ptolemy's Almagest.
https://books.google.com/books?id=TkO4MVy_MNUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=endpoint+john+updike&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiclPq-3JiGAxX8SjABHXgFCL0Q6AF6BAgOEAM#v=onepage&q=endpoint%20john%20updike&f=false
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/03/07/saguaros
To be read. It is about generational guilt and atonement. Two-she bears eat 42 boys in Second Kings.
https://books.google.com/books?id=EWveDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA3&source=kp_read_button&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&gboemv=1#v=onepage&q&f=false
The novel format of sins of the fathers considers that humans are capable of knowing G-d's direct measure for measure judgments. In the yearly confession, the sins of the fathers visit on the children because they never correct their ways, and proceed with the same distorted morals and selfishness.
Keith is flawed, but he remains in the house with his children. A fatherless home is worse.
My father, not the man in my house, probably does a lot of what I do by enlarging the breadth and diversity of his mind. There too, is no reason for satisfaction because it will be given back to the Maker, and comparably less than the goodness of one's deeds. Torah learning is the only learning that does not sway to fashions, ideologies; instead offering moral clarity.
The 80,000 cesspools under Oahu that threaten to undermine what the seas do not wash away.
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