It was the day after Saturday and the day before Sunday...
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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.
13 comments:
It just lingered there for weeks, with the snow collecting around it, so I photographed it. An inciting piece of rhetoric? I am convinced, but I want to reciprocate; I want you to feel the sense of containment, pleasure that you give me.
The firing receptor is a final frontier, which has been overworked. I find that I am my best with a provided structure, and one of the signifiers is the hierophant, of exoteric meanings and initiation. If that is my much needed growth experience, which is the one that I can give you?
http://books.google.com/books?id=9CR6AvOrs-MC&pg=PA103&dq=tarot+d%27amour+temperance&hl=en&sa=X&ei=D06kU7SrMZCdyATgnIHwBw&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=tarot%20d%27amour%20temperance&f=false
Yes, I want that with you, and my unconscious is not easily stilled. My impression is that you are capable of persistently pushing my limits, and I ran, not because I did not want it, but I was afraid of disappointing you.
XIII
At the break of the following day,
St. Elijah's Day,
Steller went ashore. Ten hours
Bering, with dread already imprinted
on his brow, had granted him
for a scientific excursion.
Now a deep blueness
pervaded both water and the forests
that grew right down
to the coast. Unperturbed
animals came close to Steller, black
and red foxes, magpies too, jays and
crows went with him on his way
across the beach. In the translucent darkness
between the trees he moved
with a tread more like a hovering
over a cushion of moss a foot thick.
He came close to simply proceeding
towards the mountains, into
cool wilderness, but the constructs
of science in his head,
directed towards a diminution
of disorder in our world,
ran counter to that need.
Later, in a shelter made
out of joined fir-logs, he experienced
the effect of forsaken things
in a foreign place. A circular
drinking vessel of peeled-off bark,
a whetstone dotted with copper ore,
a fish-head paddle and
a child's rattle of fired clay
he carefully selects, and in their place
leaves behind an iron kettle, a string
of many-colored beads,
a little strip of Bokhara silk,
half a pound of tobacco and
a Chinese clay pipe.
After half a century this mute
exchange is still remembered,
as can be seen in a report by Commander Billings,
by an inhabitant of this remote region
with a laugh that's a rustling
turned inwards.
From W.G. Sebald's After Nature translated by Michael Hamburger
http://www.mam-st-etienne.fr/index.php?rubrique=260&rsrc=778&rec=brauner
Portrait d’Ubu, 1936
http://mediation.centrepompidou.fr/education/ressources/ENS-subversion/ENS-subversion.html
http://www.top-philosopher.com/edward-goreys-epiplectic-bicycles/
https://www.livescience.com/65906-oldest-modern-human-skull-eurasia.html
Apidima 1 and Apidima 2 of Areopolis,
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02075-9
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbinwk
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/giacometti-fake-or-fortune-sold-1633909/amp-page
https://books.google.com/books?id=WhcqEAAAQBAJ&pg=PP8&dq=The+World+According+to+Color+Fox+%22my+daylong+obsession%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjKs5rwisGHAxUMEFkFHQYqC_IQ6AF6BAgMEAM#v=onepage&q=The%20World%20According%20to%20Color%20Fox%20%22my%20daylong%20obsession%22&f=false
To read, and then pass on to my niece, Siena.
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbQpspoFwblrNKRMmNF11XybIpFz5d9tu7GxwI5pPofDNZwg_EEafD9y1g5VMAj_WmMKP37YRzmZDA-qENt1ZgHQLPr7P2mvjFbIy5nWDNOoAV_Q6W935MCxjG0urdbR31wI62m9qBOeQ/s1600/nouge7.jpg
Paul Nougé, les oiseaux vous poursuivent (1929-1930)
Thank you for reminding me. The love of color is the love of fire.
You light up my days.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Book_of_Jewish_Knowledge/7UBHEQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=aish%20fire%20man%20woman&pg=PA405&printsec=frontcover
Three things I need to do:
Mail Siena the finished Fox book.
Plant all of my bulbs Sunday afternoon in order to enjoy a profusion of springtime color.
Get this book pre-ordered, which is 450 pages and a tome, which arrives on December 9th: Neuronal brown?
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Chromorama/QDZhEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=chromorama&pg=PP5&printsec=frontcover
I loved that tire print coat, and I have spent time looking for a replacement for winter. Still.
On the advice of Neil Zuckerman, whose speeches I like, and who reminds me of Nathan Zuckerman whose witnesses America through the decades as a writer, I will see that film before Nebraska (1982). It is fascinating to me that someone so gifted in Torah interpretation would idolize a Catholic from New Jersey.
I think I could drag you to an empty theatre on Sunday afternoon to see it. You could tell me what you were doing in 1984.
Sunday at 1245: Deliver Me from Nowhere (2025). Tanglewood AMC. I am not a Springsteen admirer or aficinado, but I like that song "Dancing in the Dark" (1984) that excerpt here for my birth year and the non-coincidence here:
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Dancing_in_the_Dark/h0NN3ozDglQC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=springsteen%20dancing%20in%20the%20dark&pg=PA102&printsec=frontcover
Apparently, Szalay's Spring (2006) mimics the Amis London Trilogy to good effect. To read.
On Zuckerman: to be speaking far away from Pennsylvania in that shul feels the slightest bit foreign. Not all the time, but the Springsteen asides designate his sympathies with the working class.
Sometimes I watch the first Asian-American Rabbi (not because she is Reform), but because she is comfortable in her own skin, of having a Jewish soul, and then formalizing it with the Bet Din and immersion in the mikveh. A Korean will always be accepted as a Jew with some skepticism, yet one's actions accord, and her appearance becomes less of a distraction. I aspire to that.
https://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2025/10/28/jech-2025-224663
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