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these passages are quotes that sunk into me like teeth, quotes that shaped me, formed me, molded me… they are quotes that i quoted to my friends and family, quotes that i quoted without consciously realising who they were by or how i had come across them. they are quotes that i sometimes thought i myself had invented. they are quotes that made me love reading, and quotes that made me want to write. they are quotes that made me want to cry, question society, question god! they are quotes i wanted to emulate with every phrase i uttered, every whiplash of line that i wrote. these quotes, knitted together like a giant afghan of ideas, for better or for worse, have become the actual fabric of my universe:
– Waby

iain banks – walking on glass
13/03/2025

kazou ishiguro – when we were orphans
14:13 19/02/2025

the house appeared to be empty. then as i was standing bewildered in the entrance hall, i heard a giggling sound. it had come from the library, and as i turned and went towards it, i saw through the half-open door mei li sitting at my work table. she was sitting very upright and as i appeared in the doorway, she looked at me and made another giggling sound, as if she were enjoying a private joke and trying to suppress her laughter. it dawned on me then that mei li was weeping, and i knew, as i had known throughout that punishing run home, that my mother was gone.

iain m. banks – the player of games

the vast armed spiral (of the galaxy) was spread over half the sky like a million jewels caught in a whirlpool.
gurgeh was overcome by the sensation that he was like a wire with some terrible energy streaming through him; he was a great cloud poised to strike lightning over the board, a colossal wave tearing across the ocean towards the sleeping shore, a great pulse of molten energy from a planetary heart; a god with the power to destroy and create at will.

john steinbeck – the grapes of wrath

i figgered about the holy sperit and the jesus road. i figgered: why do we got to hang it on god or jesus? maybe, i figgered, maybe it’s all men an’ all women we love; maybe that’s the holy sperit – the human sperit – the whole shebang. maybe all men got one big soul ever’body’s a part of.
and perhaps a man brought out his guitar to the front of his tent. and he sat on a box to play, and everyone in the camp moved slowly in toward him, drawn in toward him. many men can chord a guitar, but perhaps this man was a picker. there you have something – the deep chords beating, beating, while the melody runs on the strings like little footsteps. heavy hard fingers marching on the frets. the man played and the people moved slowly in on him until the circle was closed and tight, and then he sang ‘ten-cent cotton and forty-cent meat’. and the circle sang softly with him. and he sang ‘why do you cut your hair, girls?’ and the circle sang. he wailed the song, ‘i’m leaving old texas’, that eerie song that was sung before the spanish came, only the words were indian then.
and now the group was welded to one thing, one unit, so that in the dark the eyes of the people were inward, and their minds played in other times, and their sadness was like rest, like sleep. and the singing came into their dreams.
after a while the man with the guitar stood up and yawned. goodnight folks, he said.
and they murmured, good night to you.
and each wished he could pick a guitar, because it is a gracious thing. then the people went to their beds, and the camp was quiet. and the owls coasted overhead, and the cayotes gabbled in the distance, and into the camp skunks walked, looking for bits of food – waddling, arrogant skunks, afraid of nothing.
the night passed, and with the first streak of dawn the women came out of the tents, built up the fires, and put coffee to boil. and the men came out and talked softly in the dawn.
when you cross the colorado river, there’s the desert, they say. look out for the desert. see you don’t get hung up. take plenty water, case you get hung up.
i’m gonna take her at night.
me too. she’ll cut the living jesus outa you.
the families ate quickly, and the dishes were dipped and wiped. the tents came down. there was a rush to go. and when the sun arose, the camping place was vacant, only a little litter left by the people. and the the camping place was ready for a new world in a new light.
but along the highway the cars of the migrant people crawled out like bugs, and the narrow concrete miles stretched ahead.
a harmonica is easy to carry. take it out of your hip pocket. knock it against your palm to shake out the dirt and pocket fuzz and bits of tobacco. now it’s ready. you can do anything with a harmonica: thin reedy single tone, or chords, or melody with rhythm cords. you can mould the music with curved hands, making it wail and cry like bagpipes, making it full and round like an organ, making it sharp and bitter as the reed as the reed pipes of the hills. and you can play it and put it back in your pocket. and as you play, you learn new tricks, new ways to mould the tone with your hands, to pinch the tone with your lips, and no one teaches you. you feel around – sometimes alone in the shade at noon, sometimes in the tent door after supper when the women are washing up. your foot taps gently on the ground. your eyebrows rise and fall in rhythm. and if you lose it or break it, why, it’s no great loss. you can buy another for a quarter.
a guitar is more precious. must learn this thing. fingers of the left hand must have callus caps. thumb of the right hand a horn of callus. stretch the left-hand fingers, stretch them like a spider’s legs to put the hard pads on the the frets.
this was my father’s box… it’s a good box. see how the head is wore. they’s many a million songs wore down that wood an’ scooped her out. some day she’ll cave in like a egg. but you can’t patch her nor worry her no way or she’ll tone. play her in the evening, an’ they’s a harmonica player in the next tent. makes it pretty nice together.
shrill as the wind, the fiddle, quick and nervous and shrill.

jack kerouac – maggie cassidy

chris stewart – a parrot in the pepper tree

ken follet – the hammer of eden
11:55 10/01/2025

ken follett – the pillars of the earth
16:14 30/12/2024

everything to the north and the west of the church was public, worldly, secular and practical, whereas what was to the south and east was private, spiritual and holy.
romance of alexander
a moment later they reached the church and went inside. the sudden hush was like going deaf. the wind still howled and the rain drummed on the roof, and the thunder crashed every few moment, but it was all at one remove.

adelaida garcia morales – el sur, bene
23/12/2024

susan howatch – glamorous powers
15/12/2024

the cloud of unknowing
the philosophy of plotinus
the humility required for [the ministry of healing] is so great that it really has to be inborn. i’m not naturally a humble person – i can attain humility, but i have to work hard to achieve it. my natural inclination is to be proud and arrogant.
but why does healing require this great humility?
because healing is really an exercise in power, and as everyone knows, all power corrupts. the humble man will be in a better position to withstand corruption because he doesn’t find power attractive, but the proud arrogant man is vulnerable because power provides the most delectable fodder for his hungry ego.
but if you have the gift of healing, peristed anne, isnt it wrong not to use it?
strictly speaking there is no gift of healing – all healing comes from god. a ministry of healing begins when an individual feels called to offer himself as a channel for the healing power of the holy spirit. the power comes from without, not from within.
but what would it really have been like?

roberto bolaño – una novelita lumpen
14:51 07/11/2024

jon berryman – the moon and the night and the men

on outer drive there was an accident
a stupid well-intentioned man turned a sharp
right and abruptly became an angel
fingering an unfamiliar harp,
or screaming at nothing at all.

robert lowell – the quaker graveyard in nantucket

slowly along the munching english lane,
like cows to the old shrine, untill you lose
track of your dragging pain

robert lowell – walking in the blue

he thinks only of his figure
of smilling on sherbert and giger ale-
more cut off from worlds than a seal.

anne sexton – you, doctor martin

you, doctor martin, walk
from breakfast to madness
…
you lean above the plastic sky,
god of our block, prince of all the foxes

syvlia plath – lazy lazams

herr god, herr lucifer
beware, beware.
out of the ash
i rise with my red hair
and i eat men like air

dj enright – the laughing hyena, by hokusai

for him, it seems, everything was written. court ladies flow in gentle streams
or gathering lotus, strain sideways from their curving boat, a donkey prances, or a kite dances in the sky, or soars like sacrificial smoke.
all is flux: waters fall and leap, and bridges leap and fall. even his tortoise undulates, and his spring hat is as lively as a pool of fish.
all he saw was sea: a sea of marble splinters – long bright fingers claw across his pages, fjords and islands and shattered trees.

donald davie – the mushroom gatherers

strange walkers! see their processional
preambulations under low boughs.
the birch white, and the green turf under.
these should be ghosts by moonlight wandering. their attitudes strange: the human tree
slowly revolves on its bole. all around
downcast looks; and the direct dreamer
treads out in trance his lance, unwavering.

philip larkin – poetry of departures

sometimes you hear, fifth hand,
as epitaph:
he chucked up everything
and just cleared off,
and always the voice will sound
certain you approve
this audacious, purifying,
elemental move
and they are right, i think
we all hate home
and having to be there:
i detest my room,
its specially-chosen junk,
the good books, the good bed,
and my life in perfect order:
so to hear it said

philip larkin – toads

why should i let the toad work
squat on my life?
can’t i use my wit as a pitchfork
and drive the brute off?

william henry marquess – lives of the poet (the first century of keats biography)
19:24 26/10/2024

keats was not, as some later readers tried to make him, an isolated poete maudit.
la belle dame sans merci, the eve of agnes, the eve of saint mark
chatterton
the most vulgar and fulsome doggerel ever whimpered by a vapid and effeminate rhymster in the sickly stages of whelphood.

ali smith – the accidental
10/06/2024

he sits up, holds his stomach. he squints in the light, the dark. far far away, as if he is looking down the wrong end of a telescope, he can see a boy. the boy is the size of a small stone. he is shining, as if polished. he is wearing his school clothes. he waves his arms the size of spiders’ legs. he speaks in a squeaking voice. he says things like well cool, quality, quite dodgy really. he talks all about things. he talks as if they matter. he talks about calculus, about how plants grow or how insects reproduce or about what the inside of a frog’s eye is like. he talks about films, computers, binaries. he talks about how holograms are produced. he himself is a hologram. he has been created by laser, lenses, optical holders, a special vibration-isolated optical table. he is the creation of coherent light. he is squeaking about it now. he says coherent light is well cool. he is quality. he contains all the necessary information about his shape, size, brightness.
he is sickeningly excited about himself. he is quite dodgy really. he only seems to be dimensional. he is a three-dimensional reproduction of something not really there. he was never really there. look at him. he’s lucky. first of all, he doesn’t exist. that’s lucky. second, he is so small. he could slip away under a door. he could slip away through a crack in a wood floor. third, he is back then, before. the real magnus is this, now, massive, unavoidable. the real magnus is too much. he is all bulk, big as a beached whale, big as a floundering clumsy giant. he looks down at his past self squeaking, shining, clambering about on his own giant foot as if the foot is a mountain, an exciting experiment or adventure. hologram boy has no idea what the foot belongs to. hologram boy could never even imagine such monstrous proportions. first they. they then. then they. then she.
she walks down a street she knows or into a shop she’s been in a thousand times. it’s strange to her, it’s changed. she sits at home. her family, sitting in the same room, is in a different world, one where things haven’t changed. she sits on her bed. catherine masson. doesn’t matter. here it comes, the darkening, it comes down on him, the grass he’s sitting on turns grey. he shakes his head, closes then opens his eyes. the leaves above him are black. the river is black water. it ends in a massive smashed black ocean.
he could see his own hands like he’d never seen them. he had seen the light. he was the light. he had been lit, struck, like a match. he had been enlightened. he was photosynthetic; he had grown green. he was leafy and new. he looked around him and everything he saw shone with life. the glass. the spoon. his own hands. he held them up. they floated. he was floating, he hovered in air here on this chair. he was a defiance of gravity. he was fiery, full of fire, full of a new and uncorrupted fuel. he picked up his glass again. look at it. it had been shaped in an intense heat. it was miraculous, this ordinary glass. he was it. he was this glass. he was that spoon, those spoons there. he knew the glassiness of glass and the shining spooniness of spoon. he was the table, he was the walls of this room, he was the food he was about to prepare, he was what she’d eat, sitting opposite him, looking straight through him.
she had ignored him over supper.
she had ignored him the whole time.
he even loves michael. michael’s all right. at the very same moment magnus understands that if he ever let it be known that he feels anything at all, things will fly apart, the whole room will disintegrate, as if detonated.
there are things that can’t be said because it is hard to have to know them. there are things you can’t get away from after you know them. it is very complicated to know anything.
he was a very ordinary bloke.
he turned from sand to glass and then he broke.
eve felt drunk. her heart was beating like mad. eve smart had a mad heart. that sounded good. it sounded extraordinary. it sounded like a heart that belonged to a different person altogether.
eve walked back through the murderous village to the church.
its grounds were at least quite interestingly wild and its door reassuring and traditional in its heaviness. but inside, the church was disappointing. it was nothing special. it was blank, utilitarian and modern, regardless of its old stone walls. it was ugly. it didn’t smell spiritual, whatever spiritual would smell like. it smelt of disuse; it smelt a bit seedy. it said nothing about the possibilities of anything after this life, other than more of the same small dull accountings, more of the same colour brown. brown, eve decided, was the real colour of the empire, of great britishness – the sepia colour that had set in like a dampstain in the victorian era. ceremonial brownness. the union jack should be brown white and blue. the st george cross shouldn’t really be red. it should be brown on white, hp sauce on a white plate, or an hp sauce white bread sandwich. all the small towns and villages flew the flag. they had driven, on their way here, past repetitions of repetitions of brown-brick victorian semis and terraces, houses and shops like extras from a post-war kitchen-sink drama, houses brown as decrepit dogs and so on their last legs that someone should really take them in hand and have them humanely put to sleep. it was the end of an era. it was the brown end of an era.

herman hesse – peter camenzind
16/05/2024

i have inherited important elements of my temperament from both parents. from my mother: a modest worldly wisdom; a trust in god; a calm, taciturn disposition. from my father, on the other hand: a dread of firm resolutions; an inability to keep money and the habit of consciously drinking more than was good for me. but the latter defect had not revealed itself in those tender years. outwardly, i have my father’s eyes and mouth, and my mother’s slow, heavy gait; her build and strength. from my father and our people in general i inherited a natural peasant cunning, but also their melancholy and their tendency to unaccountable fits of depression. since for years it was my destiny to intermingle with foreigners, far from my native village, i would have been better equipped with more gaiety, more lightheartedness.
with these provisions, and a new set of clothes, i set forth on my journey into life. my parental gifts have stood me well, for i went out into the world, and have stood on my own feet ever since. yet something must have been lacking which even knowledge and experience has not righted. even today i can still vanquish a mountain, walk ten hours at a stretch, row a boat and, if necessary, i could kill a man with my bare hands, but the on of living eludes me. my early, single-minded contact with the earth, its flaura and fauna, has allowed few social graces to blossom in me, and to this day my dreams are remarkable proof of my unfortunate tendency towards a purely animal existence. i frequently dream that i am a creature lying on the shore, usually a seal, and i am conscious of such an intense feeling of wellbeing that on waking, i return to human dignity, not with pride r rejoicing, but only with regret.
with a delicious shudder i felt the fragrant coolness stream from these books towards me, i breathed a rarefied atmosphere of a life which though real enough did not seem of this world. it was this life that sent its waves pounding against my stricken heart and i was eager to share its fate. i used to read in a corner of the attic. there, where the only sounds that reached me were the chimes from the neighbouring tower and the dry flapping of the wings of the nesting storks, the characters of goethe and shakespeare made their exits and their entrances. the godlike and comic side of all humanity rose before me – the enigma of our divided, unruly heart, the reality of the world’s history and the mighty wonder of the spirit that illuminates our brief span of life, and, through the power of discernment, raises our petty existence to the realm of the necessary and eternal. whenever i put my head out of the narrow window, i saw the sun shine on roofs and narrow streets, and heard amazed, the noises of work and everyday activity rise up mingling together; i felt the loneliness and secrecy of my attic, inhabited with the great souls of the past, encompass me like some strangely beautiful fairy tale. and gradually as i read more and was more strangely moved by my view down onto the roof-tops, streets and everyday life below, the feeling, mixed with doubts and hesitations, came over is that i too perhaps was a visionary, and the world that lay before me was waiting for me to collect some portion of its treasure, to lift the veil from the accidental and common-place, and, through my creative power of poetry, save from destruction and immortalize whatever i might discover.
somewhat shamefacedly i began to compose a little poetry and gradually several notebooks were filled with verses, sketches and short stories. they have perished and were probably of little worth, but they provided me with many thrills and much secret ecstacy. only by a slow process did my critical powers and powers of self-examination keep pace with these attempts, and only in my last year at school did i suffer the inevitable, first great disappointment. i had already begun to throw away my juvenalia and to examine my writings with misgivings when i chanced upon some volumes of the works of gottfried keller. i immediately read these two or three times in succession. then i saw in a sudden revelation how far removed from true, austere, genuine art my immature vapourings had been, burned my verses and short stories, and with feelings of pain and depression looked sadly and soberly into the world.

somerset maugham – the moon and sixpence
12/05/2024

“ata,” he called. “ata.”
she took no notice. again the beastly stench almost made him faint, and he lit a cheroot. his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, and now he was seized by an overwhelming sensation as he stared at the painted walls. he knew nothing of pictures, but there was something about these that extraordinarily affected him. from floor to ceiling the walls were covered with a strange and elaborate composition. it was indescribably wonderful and mysterious. it took his breath away.
it filled him with an emotion which he could not understand or analyse. he felt the awe and the delight which a man might feel who watched the beginning of a world. it was tremendous, sensual, passionate; and yet there was something horrible there, too, something which made him afraid. it was the work of a man who had delved into the hidden depths of nature and had discovered secrets which were beautiful and feastul too. it was the work of a man who knew things which it is unholy for men to know. There was something primeval there and terrible. it was not human. it brought to his mind vague recollections of black magic. it was beautiful and obscene.
“mon dieu, this is genius.”
the words were wrung from him, and he did not know he had spoken.
then his eyes fell on the bed of mats in the corner, and he went up, and he saw the dreadful, mutilated, ghastly object which had been strickland. he was dead. dr. coutras made an effort of will and bent over that battered horror. then he started violently, and terror blazed in his heat, for he felt that someone was behind him. it was ata. he had not heard her get up. she was standing at his elbow, looking at what he looked at.
“good heavens, my nerves are all distraught,” he said. “you nearly frightened me out of my wits.
he looked again at the poor dead thing that had been man, and then he started back in dismay.
“but he was blind.”
“yes; he had been blind for nearly a year.”
then robert strickland struck a match and lit a cigarette. “the mills of god grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small,” he said, somewhat impressively.

cixin liu – of ants and dinosaurs
18:47 22/04/2024

zane grey – the man of the forest
13:55 26/03/2024

gao xingjiang – one man’s bible
20:30 11/03/2024

freedom is a look in the eyes, a tone of voice, and it can be actualized by you, so you are not destitute. affirming this freedom is like affirming the existence of a thing, like a tree, a plant, or a dewdrop, and for you to exercise this freedom in life is just as authentic and irrefutable.

freedom is ephemeral; the instant of that look in your eyes and that tone of your voice springs from a psychologicall state, and it is that flash of freedom that you want to capture. to express this in language is to affirm freedom, even if what you write can’t last forever. in the process of writing, freedom is visible and audible, and, at the instant of writing, reading, and listening, freedom exists in your mode of expression. to be able to obtain that small luxury of freedom of expression and expressive freedom is what it takes to make you happy.

freedom is not coferred, nor can it be bought, it is your own awareness of life. such is the beauty of life, and, surely, you savor this freedom just as you savor the ecstacy of sexual love with a wonderful woman.

this freedom can tolerate neither god nor a dictator. to be either of these is not your goal, nor would such a goal be attainable, so rather than wasting the effort you may as well simply want a bit of freedom.

instead of saying buddha is in your heart, it would be better to say that freedom is in your heart. freedom castigates others. to take into account the approval or appreciation of others, and, worse still, to pander to the masses, is to live according to the dictates of others. thus it is they who are happy, but not you yourself, and that would be the end of this freedom of yours.

freedom takes no account of others and has no need for the acceptance by others. it can only be won by transcending restrictions that are imposed on you by others. freedom of expression is also like this.

freedom can be manifested in suffering and grief, as long as one does not allow oneself to be crushed by it. even while immersed in suffering and grief, one can still observe, so there can also be freedom in suffering and grief. you need the freedom to suffer and the freedom to grieve, so that life will be worth living. it is this freedom that brings you happiness and peace.

anne brontë – the tenant of wildfell hall (retold by elizabeth walker)
20:35 02/03/2024

maya angelou – the heart of a woman
28/02/2024

– * hanifa fathy, egyptian poet

saul bellow – dangling man
17.02.24

fog and rain had gone, abolished by a high wind, and, in place of that imagined swamp where death waited in the thickened water, his lizard jaws open, there was a clean path of street and thrashing trees. through the clouds the wind had sunk a hole in which a few stars dipped. i ran to the corner, jumping over puddles. a streetcar was in sight, crashing forward, rocking on its trucks from side to side and nicking sparks from the waving cable. i caught it while it was in motion and stood on the platform, panting; the conductor was saying that it was bad business to flip a car in the wet, you wanted to be careful about such tricks. we were swept off with quaking windows, blinking through floods of air, the sound of the gong drowning under the horn of the wind.

joyce carol oates – the faith of a writer

sylvia plath – the bell jar
14.11.23

halldór laxness – the atom station
16.09.23

in this house there hung, so to speak, mountains and mountains and yet more mountains, mountains with glacial caps, mountains by the sea, ravines in mountains, lava below mountains, birds in front of mountains; and still more mountains; until finally these wastelands had the effect of a total flight from habitation, almost a denial of human life. i would not dream of trying to argue that this was not art, especially since i do not have the faintest idea what art is; but if this was art, it was first and foremost the art of those who had sinned against humanity and fled into the wilderness, the art of outlaws. quite apart from how debased nature becomes in a picture, nothing seems to me to express so much contempt for nature as a painting of nature. i touched the waterfall and did not get wet, and there was no sound of a cascade; over there was a little white cloud, standing still instead of breaking up; and if i sniffed that mountain slope i bumped my nose against a congealed mass and found only a smell of chemicals, at best a whiff of linseed oil; and where were the birds? and the flies? and the sun, so that one’s eyes were dazzled? or the mist, so that one only saw a faint glimmer of the nearest willow shrub. yes, certainly this was meant to be a farmhouse, but where, pray, was the smell of the cow dung? what is the point of making a picture which is meant to be like nature, when everyone knows that this is the one thing which a picture cannot be and should not be and must not be? who thought up the theory that nature is a matter of sight alone? those who know nature hear it rather than see it, feel it rather than hear it; smell it, good heavens, yes – but first and foremost eat it. certainly nature is in front of us, and behind us; nature is under and over us, yes, and in us; but most particularly it exists in time, always changing and always passing, never the same; and never in a rectangular frame.
“it was a violin concerto by roberto gerhard,” he said, and asked me not to be angry, saying that he had just been joking. “he is a spanish boy in cambridge, who does not even know music; if there were any vigour left in the esterhazy family they would beat him. let us hope he does not get a bigger funeral than mozart.”
after a moment’s silence he replied, “you make me talk, and now i have talked too much. it’s a sign of weakness.”
“but you still haven’t told me what you yourself think,” i said. // “of course not,” he said. “the reason a man talks is to hide his thoughts.
both of them had in generous measure that icelandic talent, straight from the sagas, of speaking mockingly of what was nearest to their hearts – this one about his vocation, the other about his children. the boy i lay with for a few nights once, he never said anything. and i never knew what my father was thinking a man who says what he is thinking is absurd; at least in a woman’s eyes. // “may i see your patterned mittens?” i asked. // he let me see his patterned mittens in the light of a street lamp in the night.
“walk gently through the doors of joy.” my father was always in a good temper, and no one had a sweeter smile – unless he happened to hear a joke; then his face would stiffen, as if he heard cutting tools being rasped on one another’s edges, and he would fall silent and become distant. no one ever saw on his face an expression of anxiety or grief, not even if the wild horses themselves froze to death. my mother loved everything, hoped everything, endured every-thing; even if misfortune struck the cow, she was silent. if we hurt ourselves, we were forbidden to cry; i never saw weeping until i went to the domestic college: one girl cried because one of her puddings got burned, another cried over poetry, and a third because she saw a mouse. i thought at first they were play-acting but they were not, and then i felt ashamed in the way one feels ashamed for someone whose trousers have fallen down. there was never an occasion on which my father and mother told us children what they were thinking or how they were feeling. such idle chatter would have been unseemly in our house. one could talk about life in general, and of one’s own life so far as it concerned others, at least on the surface. one could talk endlessly about the weather, about the live-stock, or about nature so far as weather conditions were concerned; for instance. one could talk about dry spells, but not about sunshine. likewise, one could talk about the sagas, but not criticise them; one could trace ancestries, but never one own mind: only the mind knows what is nearest the heart, says the edda.
he walked by my side without uttering a single word. // “say something,” i said. // “no,” he said. “i am walking home with you because you are from the north. then i shall leave you.” // very well, then, friend,” i said. “you can be as silent as we like; it gives me nothing but pleasure to listen to you being silent. // before i knew it he had taken hold of my arm and draw me close to him and was walking me arm-in-arm; he walked me quickly, perhaps too quickly, but without haste; and silently. he was holding my upper arm and his hand was touching my side, right up against my breast. // “are you used to walking with a man?” he asked. // “not one with a vocation,” i said. // “talk as if you were from the north and not from the south, he said. // we walked on and on, until he said bluntly, “you’re cross-eyed” // “is that so, indeed?” i said. // “it’s quite true, so help me,” he said, “you’re crosseyed’ // “not one-eyed, though,” i said. // “it’s quite true,”he said. “if one looks at you closely, you’re crosseyed. sometimes i think you’re not, but now i’m quite sure you are. listen, you’ve no idea how appallingly crosseyed you can be.” // “only when i’m tired,” i said. “on the other hand my eyes are much too wide apart, just like the owl that i am.” // “never in my whole life have i ever seen anything so crosseyed,” he said. “what am i to do?”
whether i was kissed or not kissed, a person’s mouth was a kiss, or at least half a kiss.
first he danced with me for a whole evening, then he wrote me a letter, and finally he whistled outside my window. i sneaked out during the night. we had nowhere to go but we went nonetheless, for nothing can thwart a boy and a girl. but there is one thing they do not like – that it should be discovered, that it should be spread around; this is ourselves, this we alone know, here is the point where experience ceases to be a story, where the story has no longer any rights.
and the maiden fruit-blood swayed silently though the open doorways like a river trout.
and when i was upstairs, and by myself, i suddenly became so alone in all the world that i started thinking that i must be in love; and not merely in love, but literally unhappy, a manless maiden, tortured by the sort of love-sorrow which one thinks there can be no word for except in danish, but which it is possible to establish and analyse with a simple urine test. i felt within myself all the strange humours which can rage within a woman, felt how this my own body was stirred by the enlarged and intensified presence of the soul, with the soul which was once merely a theological abstraction becoming a component of the body, and life becoming a strange greedy joy bordering on unhappiness as if one were wanting to eat and vomit at the same time; and not only could i see a difference every day in how i was swelling up, but there was also a taste in my mouth which i could not recognise, a glint in my eyes and a colour on my skin as in someone who has had a couple of drinks, a slackness around the mouth and puffiness of the face which suspicion and anxiety magnified for me when i looked at myself in the mirror. the woman who swallowed the trout.
i think that in the beginning she had considered me an animal in the same way i had thought her a plant. the plan wanted to know how the animal felt pain. on the other hand i was never aware of any dislike from her towards me.
and at this sight i was once again captivated by the essential security of life, by the radiance of the mind and the healing powers of the heart, which no accident can destroy.
previously, children could conquer god by loving him and praying; he made them shareholders in omnipotence.
“when i discovered some years ago that your father believed in horses, i vowed to myself to do everything i could for him. you see, i once had a religious revelation, rather after the manner of the saints. in this revelation it was revealed to me that horses are the only living creatures which have a soul – with the exception of fish; and this is due, among other things, to the fact that horses have only one toe; one toe, the ultimate of perfection. horses have a soul, just like the idols; or the paintings of some artists; or a beautiful vase.” // how smoothly he talked of the loftiest matters, almost absently, with that amiable civilised smile which was never quite free from sleepiness and could moreover sometimes end in a yawn…
yes, i once heard a tipsy man say that i was one of those women whom men want to go to bed with, without a word, the minute they see her for the first time.
“man is that animal species which rides a horse and has a god,” said my father. // “and builds a roof over god and lets the horses go roof-less,” i added. // “the herd looks after itself,” said my father. “but the god is a domestic animal,” he said, giving the word a neuter inflection.
“can’t you understand that i’m nothing, man?” i said. i know nothing. can do nothing, am nothing.” // “you are the ultimate thing in a northern valley,” he said.
when i was at home, as a boy, i discovered communism on my own, without reading about it in books. perhaps all poor boys in the country and towns do it, if they are right in the head and fond of music.
yes, what a well-sculptured creature the horse is, so finely carved that even if there were no more than half a chisel stroke extra the workmanship would be ruined; that curve from neck to rump, and all the way down to the fetlock, is in actual fact a woman’s curve; in the oblique-set eyes of these creatures lies buried a wisdom which is hidden from people but blended with the mockery of the idols; around the muzzle and the underlip hovers the smile which no movie star has ever been able to reproduce; and where is the female star who smells as wonderful as the nose of a horse? and what about the hoof where all the world’s fingers end: claw and cloven hoof, hand and flipper, paddle and paw, fin and wing. and probably because the horse is such perfection, the horse’s token, the horseshoe, is our token of faith over all our doors, the symbol of good fortune in fertility and woman, the opposite of the south of the cross.
penal laws are passed to protect criminals and punish the others who are too naive to understand society.

jonathan raban – soft city
11.09.23

in dickens, our greatest urban novelist, the physical shape of someone is a continuing part of his personality. people appear in his novels as they might appear on a street or in a party, equipped with a set of dimensions and a name which we learn later. in our mutual friend, bradley headstone is huge, coarse and slablike; jenny wren is a tiny cripple; rumty wilfer is pink and roly-poly. and, however much the characters change and emerge during the course of the novel, we are constantly reminded of these initial cartoon images. they carry their personal stereotypes with them like grotesque, gaily-painted husks – even when, morally, they have outgrown them. how different this is from a novelist like jane austen, in whose work the closer you get to a character, the less visible is his external, easy-to-spot cara-pace. most writers use caricature for their background characters: dickens foregrounds the technique, and makes caricature something which the characters themselves have to lug, often unhappily, through the plot. r. wilfer wishes he wasn’t so infuriatingly round, pink, and ineffectual; Bradley Headstone rages against being so damningly associated with graveyards and dark, thickset emotions. Yet that is how people in cities are recognised again and again by every new acquaintance, by every observer of the crowd; and dickens’s characters simply have to put up with their dwarfish-ness, their wooden legs, and their toppling craggy heights. to be merely grey, especially subtly grey, in a city, is not to be seen at all.
in jewish american novels, for which the experience coming new to the city has been a particularly rich them source, the halo of liberty’s head is characteristically st silhouetted against a setting western sun; it is at once welcoming and sinister, a generous promise and an omen disillusion. in his superb and only novel, call it sleep (193? henry roth began with the figures of a mother and child standing on the deck of an incoming steamer as it nosed in new york:
wordsworth in london
figure than the girls he hires.
a or gunnicant city
for the really lonely individual in the city, life becomes string of disconnected occasions; each present moment is exaggerated, and its theatrical glare seems designed to illuminate and isolate his aloneness. eating by himself in a restaurant he feels conspicuous; he catches the eyes of other lone diners, imagines himself the subject of other people’s conversations, sees a world divided into two groups -the majority, complacent couples, parties and families, and an envious parasitical minority of single people, all with the picky eyes of gunfighters. he prickles at the imagined smabs or cursory service of the waiter. He calls for his bill with his coffee, knowing he has no further excuse to stay on in a phone booth, he makes a cliffhanger out of the ringing tone, and gulps with relief when it is answered. when his own phone stays silent for a day, he suspects a conspiracy, to drop him, and pesters the operator to check his bell. at a party, he stays too long, since there is nothing to follow it. walking on the street at night, he sees himself in the third person, hero of a scenario without a plot, only an unending series of empty locations. he ransacks crowds for faces he knows, drinks alone close to the bar where the action is in pubs, resists obvious palliatives like cinemas for he feels that there he would be shamefully advertising his loneliness. people detect in him something strained and overbright; his talk is hectic, his condemnations too strident to be convincing. his brief oases of evenings in other people’s houses are hoarded and counted; each engagement that he makes marks a small sod of safe ground in the bog of the future. he criss-crosses the city, moving fast and purposelessly; little surprises him, but then neither is anything – outside, perhaps, of his job and his sleeping-quarters – predictable. it lacks both causes and results. he begins to see his time as a pin-board which every week must be filled with scraps . . . cuttings, bottle-tops, anything to take the edge off the emptiness.
her syntax had the painful clarity of a hangover.
one is barraged with advertisements which announce that you should have a baby, a small boy to take to the ball park on Saturdays, a dog to guzzle something called alpo, and a wife with an unremitting interest in the workings, needs, whims, and occasional breakdowns of the digestive tracts of all members of the family, not excluding the dog. After a few hours of this, torn between panic and nausea, you start looking around the room for the bassinet. in the world of TV ads, loneliness is worn like a scarlet a; it is the prerogative of the man whose breath smells bad, whose nervous system has pooped, and who, through his own fecklessness, stays feebly on the bottom rung, scorned by the boss and the toothpaste sparkling stenographers alike. to be alone is to fail your self and society; away from the family or the boys at the office, you are not likely to consume enough, you may think too much, and you should certainly be made to feel guilty and perverse if you take any pleasure at all in your predicament.
yet despite this insistent plugging of the oppressively collective life, people clearly do enjoy the privacy and anonymity of the city. not knowing one’s neighbours may be a privilege, not a dreadful fate; to be without a family is, for some, a luxurious escape, and an honourable one, from a state of repressive social bondage. the rules and condition of isolation, like those of other arts, may be liberating and invigorating to those who properly understand them and a straitjacket only to those who don’t. taught to fear the isolation both of ourselves and of others, commanded and cajoled to seek the cosiness of the herd, aloneness is an increasingly difficult craft to practise.
soya beans, miso and wakame seaweed have the dim inwardness of gaze of elizabeth siddall in rossetti’s jenny. in bedsters in ladbroke grove, they create themselves over gas rings, feeding their immaculate insides on harmoniously balanced amounts of yin and yang foods. it is hard to tell whether their beatific expressions come from their convictions of inner virtue or from undernourishment. when they speak, their voices are misty, as if their words had to travel a long was from their inscrutable souls to the naughty outer world. Serious, narcissistic, terrifyingly provident, like all fanatics they brim with latent violence; when they exclude and condemn, they do so with a ringing stridency that smacks more of mothers in romford and hornchurch than of oriental sages preaching doctrines of universal gentleness. ‘oh, man…’ withers its recipient as skilfully as any mean current of sub-uban disapproval. their city is a pure and narrow one: they are miniaturists in their talented cultivation of themselves. in her scented room, annette feeds herself on honey and grape juice and brown rice; she reads haiku by basho. 1 thing that’s really beautiful? she said … a vague poem, with 4 horseman and some bullrushes in it, a long way from the things you see at the gate. on her shelves, a meagre stretch of paperbacks: trout fishing in america, steppenwolf, the macrobiotic way, the i-ching, louis macneice’s coffee table look on astrology (an awkward christmas present from her father), poems by rod mckuen, lewis carroll, barry, slaughterhouse 5…
meetings in the city, even when you have arranged them beforehand, are always small coincidences to be glad of and surprised about.

olivia laing – to the river

the name weald comes from the old english word for woodland, and these sloping acres of entwined forest and field were once the largest wildwood in england. the anglo-saxons called it andredesleage: a vast knotted wilderness of oak, ash and hornbeam, alder, hazel and holly, full of wolves and wild boar. vaguely alchemical industries grew up in the weald: charcoal burning, iron smelting, the production of forest glass. it is astonishing what wood and earth together will yield, given a spark and a puff of air. a window-pane,, say, bubbling and settling into cool green sheets, like ice on a winter’s day.
scraps of wealden language have also survived, and even today the river’s tributaries cut through steep-sided valleys called ghylls, and the trees edge fields in shaggy strips known as shaws.
the streams hiding discarded slag within their shingle beds.
the author of the chronicle of oxmede was moved to write: it was there seen that the life of man was as the grasses of heaven; a great multitude, unknown to me, was slain.
the past only comes back, wrote virginia woolf in her unfinished memoir, when the present runs so smoothly that it is like the sliding surface of a deep river.
either way they (the birds) remain on the page, ambivalent and ecstatic, singing ‘in voices prolonged and piercing in greek words, from trees in the meadow of life beyond the river where the dead walk, how there is no death.’
backed onto paper and labelled in fountain pen

tennyson – in memoriam
11:00 08/08/2023

there rolls the deep where grew the tree.
o earth, what changes hast thou seen!
there, where the long street roars, hath been
the stillness of the central sea. the hills are shadows, and they flow
from form to form, and nothing stands;
they melt like mist, the solid lands,
like clouds they shape themselves and go.

lorraine adams – harbor
11:54 17/07/2023

his shame was exquisite, flowers and more flowers of it, multiplying across fields and fields, covering the world.
their eyes were like skies or lakes.
life was a series of dramas in which the goal was place where you could talk, truly talk, and say whatever it was that haunted you at night alone.
the day he left for training, his father gave him the photograph to keep. in the desert, it stayed in his boot, wrapped in paper and foil. when he was certain he was alone, which was almost never, he took it out and studied her. // she had eyes like an open window. he saw in them that she did not like this photograph being taken, and that she was not afraid of her defiance. she looked like a girl who had worked in orchards all her life, though why he thought this he could not tell. she was not smiling, but her lips were not pouting. they, like her brow, were relaxed. she looked not so much impatient as unconvinced – of what, that her life was about to begin? that anyone her father chose would matter? she seemed to be saying to aziz, you my think i will be your wife, but i will do so only for the world to see. inside i will be a brown nut, and it is that nut you will have to woo to open, because i can very well keep it shut from you for lifetimes.

j.m. coetzee – youth
11:08 16/05/2023

he would like to believe there is enough pity in the air for black people and their lot, enough of a desire to deal honourably with them, to make up for the cruelty of the laws. but he knows it is not so. between black and white there is a gulf fixed. deeper than pity, deeper than honourable dealings, deeper even than goodwill, lies an awareness on both sides that people like paul and himself, with their pianos and violins, are here on this earth, the earth of south africa, on the shakiest of pretexts. this very milkman, who a year ago must have been just a boy herding cattle in the deepest transkei, must know it. in fact, from africans in general, even from coloured people, he feels a curious, amused tenderness emanating: a sense that he must be a simpleton, in need of protection, if he imagines he can get by on the basis of straight looks and honourable dealings when the ground beneath his feet is soaked with blood and the vast backward depth of history rings with shouts of anger. why else would this young man, with the first stirrings of the day’s wind fingering his horse’s mane, smile so gently as he watches the two of them drink the milk he has given them?
what we call beauty is simply a first intimation of terror, rilke tells him.

sándor márai – casanova in bolzano
16:21 11/05/2023

blended animation is what beauty is

damon galgut – the good doctor

tracy emin – strangerland
23:16 17/02/2023

john berger – mohr – a fortunate man
22:29 18/01/2023

isaac bashevis singer – the slave
11:18 06/01/2023

he opened his eyes. the web of branches and pine needles strained the sunlight like a sieve, and the reflected light became a rainbow-coloured mesh.
the wagon entered a pine wood which seemed less a forest than some heavenly mansion. the trees were as tall and straight as pillars and the sky leaned on their green tops.
it became cold. columns of mist rose from the mountains. in the distance, a huge bird, an eagle perhaps, hung suspended in mid air, wings motionless as though kept aloft by cabala. the moon rose and one by one, like candles being lit, stars appeared. suddenly there was a noise, a kind of roaring. an animal or the wind?
the mountain is high; the sky is my skin
the earth is my shoe; the sky is my dress
save me, lord god
let no sword cut me,
no horn gore me,
no toothe bite me,
no waters flow over me.
under the black sea lies a white stone.
in the throat of the hawk a hard bone is stuck.
YUDAH will guard me!
SHADDAI will save me!
TAFTIFIAH will be a wall for me!
all at once, a strange light flooded the forest, and for a second jacod thought heaven had heard him. all of the birds began to scream and sing at once: the trunks of the pine trees seemed aflame. far off in the clearing between the trees he saw a conflagration. a moment later, he realised it was the sun.

sharon gmelch – nan: the life of an irish travelling woman

dylan thomas – a new life

shaft of winter morning light
is realler than your faces, boys
senselessly lifting food to mouth, and food to mouth,
to keep the senseless being going
i want to imagine a new colour, so much whiter than white that white is black… he felt man’s lack of vision derived from his rigid upright stance. he would be much wiser if he adopted a different perspective, lying on his back to view he sky and on his stomach to see the earth.
dylan had snatched today from the procession of time, and made it eternal.

orhan pamuk – other colours

the passport was not a document of who we were but of what other people thought of us.

carol shields – mary swann
15:32 16/12/2022

the best poetry joins binocular clarity to universal vision.

nikos kazantzakis – the fratricides
16:50 05/12/2022

he threw back his head, tightened his hold on his staff, and thrust it with might into the ground, as though he were taking an oath. then he looked about at the bald, deserted hills that were saturated with blood; he looked at the rocks, the cliffs, and he was overcome with divine respect.
‘god was born here in these wild hills,’ he murmured, ‘the god of greece – our god, with the evzone skirts, the shin guards, the tsarouchia, and our pancreator was made from these bloodstained rocks. every nation has its own godl this is the one we us – stone of our stone, blood of our blood – pained, a thousand times wounded, stubborn like us, immortal.’
he stooped and picked up a black pebble splattered with blood; he kissed it and placed it in the crack of a cliff, as though it were holy bread, so no one would step on it.
he felt the invisible all around him, as hard as stone, scented like thymel; the uninhabited hilltops filled with god, and father yánaros’ heart neighed like a stallion; he was not alone and desolate in the world; all of god was with him; he suddenly felt a supernatural strength in his heart and in his hands; he gained new courage, and the stones began to roll under his boots again.
captain drakos slowly crumbled the rock in his fist. he had scrambled atop the high lookout post just a stone’s throw from his comrades, and as he crouched there in the moonlight with his neck craned, pondering his black thoughts, he resembled a bear about to spring on his victim.
a flaming, pock-marked face, his head round and thick, full of hair and whiskers – and within it, in flowing waves, were the seas he had drifted upon, the ports where he had anchored, the white, black, yellow, and brown races of men he had seen.
his mind, a dark wine-colored sun, rose from a vast, fertile valley and looked down upon the earth like a hungry lion. at first he could distinguish nothing; the earth had not awakened yet, and her nakedness was covered by the morning mist. but slowly the thin veil moved; lifted by the sun, it became transparent, turned to vapour, and settled over the grass like dew. and one could see the valley flooded with light, and the muddy – yellow river, wide as an ocean, crowded with small boats with raised masts – black and orange sails – and the little yellow men who shrieked and jumped like little monkeys on the decks…
freedom – that armed ghost covered with blood marched ahead. and behind it, like a tail, the immortal mob; hunger, plunder, fire, slaughter!
the whole world and all the oceans were gathered upon this hill. all these months, the hill and the people had become one – their fates had merged. he felt that he was a centaur – that from the waist down he was this mountain; he had taken of its wildness and its hardness, and the mountain seemed to have taken on the soul of man.
angrily, captain drakos threw the rock he had been crumbling in his hand; he heard it echoing on the hillside and within him, and then, silence.
what is man’s body made of that it can give and receive so much happiness? how is it that lips – a mere bit of flesh – can touch your lips and cause your mind to swerve?
they had reached an indian port when the telegram came: war in albania – the cowardly spaghetti-eaters, the sneaks in the night, had entered greek soil and were tuning their guitars to go down to yánnina. when he heard this, a voice leaped within him. it was not his voice, it was his father´s his grandfather’s. it was an old, old voice, born of freedom and death. when he heard it, he shouted back furiously: ‘you dare order me to do my duty? i don’t need you for that, and ill show you!’
it was not the monk he crucified; no, it was that new voice within him; he killed it so it would be silent. but the voice cannot be crucified; you may kill the body, you may cut the throat, but the voice remains; and tonight, again, it rose within captain drakos and tore at his chest.
he leaned over her, neighing like a horse, and his beard pricked her cheeks. a thick smell of sour milk and bitter almonds rose from her breast; his nostrils drew it in and he jumped, tore his face away from hers, shoved her aide, and raised a fist; but he stopped, embarrassed, and lowered his hand.
‘get out, you whore! get out and don’t dirty me, too!’ he growled. but as she buttoned her robe, he sprang on her, grabbed her by the neck, and bent her backwards.
‘let me go, let me go!’ she screamed. ‘i hate you!’
he moaned over her and sank his teeth in her neck. ‘i hate you, too; i hate you, too.’
for a moment from far away, from the ends of the earth, the woman heard people singing, a dog howling. the veins in her throat and in her thighs swelled and lashed at her like whips, then deep silence, as though the world had crumbled and sank.
…suddenly the woman placed her head between her knees; she felt an unbearable nausea come over her whole body, as though she had fallen into a pigsty and cold not wash herself clean. the smells poured, drainlike, from her. she took out her handkerchief and furiously began to wipe her mouth, her neck, her breast. the handkerchief filled with blood.
it was a warm april night; the metal of the sky had melted. gold had been poured over the rocks and thorns and the earth – slowly the shadows fell over the hill. the cloudburst which had broken out for a moment had scattered and passed. it had fallen on the dry grasses, and the earth smelled sweet.
the captain’s blood whirled, his eyes dulled; black lightning tore through his brain, as he saw that the woman sitting on the other end of the ledge was his wife.

isaac asimov – i, robot

little forest film
17:58 14/11/2022

the sprouts in spring, they look up at the holy sky like small earthly spirits

paul bowles – a hundred camels in the courtyard
17:42 14/11/2022

i looked in the fire and i saw an eye in there, like the eye that’s left when you burn chibb and you knew there was a djinn in the house
djenoun, djilala hamatcha

haruki murakami – colorless tsukuru tazaki and his years of pilgrimage
17:40 14/11/2022

finnish stuff: sibelus, aki kaurismaki films, marimekko
the human heart is like a night bird. silently waiting for something, and when the time comes, it flies straight towards it.

jennifer e. smith – the statistical probability of love at first sight
11:25 08/11/2022

charlotte brontë – jane eyre
09:08 14/10/2022

great grey hills heaved up round the horizon: as twilight deepened, we descended a valley, dark with a wood, and long after night had overclouded the prospect, i heard a wild wind rushing amongst the trees.
then her soul sat on her lips, and language flowed, from what source i cannot tell; has a girl of fourteen a heart large enough, vigorous enough to hold the swelling spring of pure, full, fervid eloquence?
when mists as chill as death wandered to the impulse of east winds along those purple peaks, and rolled down ‘ing’ and holm till they had blended with the frozen fog of the beck! the beck itself was then a torrent, turbid and curbless; it tore asunder the wood and sent a raving sound through the air, often thickened with wild rain or whirling sleet; and for the forest on its banks, that showed only ranks of skeletons.
the ground was hard, the air was still, my road was lonely; i walked till i got warm, and then i walked slowly to enjoy and analyse the species of pleasure brooding for me in the hour and situation.
like heath that, in the wilderness
the wild wind whirls away
…with what is bright and energetic and high
i sought the orchard, driven to its shelter by the wind, which all day had blown strong and full from the south, without, however, bringing a speck of rain. instead of subsiding as night drew on, it seemed to augment its rush and deepen its roar: the trees blew steadfastly one way, never writhing round, and scarcely tossing back their boughs once in an hour; so continuous was the strain bending their branchy heads northward – the clouds drifted from pole to pole, fast following, mass on mass: no glimpse of blue sky had been visible that july day.
mosquitoes came buzzing in and hummed sullenly round the room; the sea, which i could hear thence, rumbled dull like an earthquake – black clouds were casting up over it; the moon was setting in the waves, broad and red, like a hot cannon ball.
i saw hope revive – and felt regeneration possible. from a flowery arch at the bottom of my garden i gazed over the sea – bluer than the sky: the old world was beyond; clear prospects opened thus: –
the sobbing wind
he seemed to devour me with his flaming glance
to me, he was in reality become no longer flesh, but marble; his eye was a cold, bright, blue gem; his tongue a speaking instrument – nothing more.
reader, do you know, as i do, what terror those cold people can put into the ice of their questions? how much of the fall of the avalanche is in their anger? of the breaking up of the frozen sea in their displeasure?

chris stewart – driving over lemons
15:06 10/08/2022

flavia company – haru
02:03 30/06/2022

a las cosas y a los lugares no se puede volver ni siquiera volviendo

jostein gaarder – the castle in the pyrenees
12:26 07/03/2022

the one million dollar paranormal challenge
* ragnhild jolsen – the dream and the wheel
sirius, i was pleading. andromeda, steinn
* ibsen stories

federico garcia lorca – yerma

patrick mcgrath – dr haggard’s disease
16:08 11/12/2021

ken follet – code to zero
13:21 19/11/2021

science-poetry-history
the common condition in which the patient loses his memory is known as global amnesia…
such a patient does not know his identity and will not recognise his own parents or children. however he remembers a great deal else. he may be able to drive a car, speak foreign languages, strip down an engine, and name the prime minister of canada. the condition would more appropriately be called autobiographical amnesia…
the autobiographical memory records events we have experienced personally. these are labelled with time and place: we generally know not only what happened, but when and where.
the long term semantic memory holds general knowledge such as the capital of romania and how to solve quadratic equations.
the short term memory is where we keep a phone number for a few seconds in between looking it up in the phone book and dialling it.

bruce fogle – the dog’s mind
09:03 16/10/2021

our brains are certainly different to other animals and have allowed us to become the dominant species on earth, but to argue that our brains are superior is the same as saying a cow’s intestines are superior to ours because they can digest cellulose fibre.
thylacine – australian pouched wolf, a marsupial but wolf-like in body and mind.
as the dog moved through cultures, from the forest to the sofa, he had the genetic plasticity to cope well with each new situation. a marvellously successful opportunist.
gaze-hounds, war dogs, shepherd dogs, guard dogs.
tay-sachs disease – a disease of the nervous system, only affect jews of european origin, probably has its origin in a genetic change caused by a cosmic ray hitting someone (who happened to be jewish) in eastern europe in the 1400s.
when they play, they have a lightness of being. they dance through the air. reality is fleetingly suspended but comes back instantly if play get too rough or if they are distracted.

stepehen king – christine
13:56 13/08/2021

tom wolfe – a man in full

the golden glow at the top of the hill was merely the twilight at the rim of an abyss.

barbara kingsolver – flight behaviour
10:32 04/08/2021

the choir looked like they were having a barrel of fun. all except one older fellow who was too in ernest, holding his hand to his chest as if asking jesus to marry him, fearing the wrong answer.

david hughes – the imperial german dinner service
26/07/2021

the english mind at its effusive nadir, drowning thought and feeling in irony and wine.
chatterton poet

nick tosches – dino
23/07

-he was only 54; he would turn 55 a month from this day. but he felt like an old man, like the carrion those old men spoke of in days of shadow and sunlight; felt as if he had skulked and staggered and stridden through 3 lifetimes, being wrung and wracked and worn down by them. sometimes those days of shadow and sunlight returned to him. they brought a calmness laced with chill, like nighttime pond-water in the woods of a dream; and the voices of the old men from those days came too, like haunted breezes rippling across that dream-pond

scuccia
more relaxed than ever – in fact he appears to be imitating his imitators
this was a good one. he had seen it before. the guy on the left, the one on the roan, he was the one. // “the way i see it” – what the fuck was his name? – // “a man aint got but 2 choices.” look at those clouds, the way they rolled, real slow. the way that guy thumbed his hat back before he talked: they all did that. he himself had done it different; he had drawn it forward, downward, sort of shading one eye. but he was alright, this one. the broad too, she was something. “you don’t know what love is.” pretty hair, pretty lips. you’ve lived too long with a gun as your only friend. // the last kiss. il bacio finale. now back on the roan (red horse) la comare secca. those clouds. that song he loved, it was like that. it ended with death’s dark breeze: non farmi morir. so beautiful a song, so dark an ending. he had felt it, even as a child, long before he had understood it.

olivia manning – the levant trilogy

the macchis
animalcule
you can feel you feet, cant you?
yes. i know they’re there but they’re sort of ghostly
dog river

junichiro tanizaki – diary of an old man

ian mcewan – on chesil beach
09:38 25/06/2021

clubfoot or harelip

john le carre – the deadly affair

it’s the devil you don’t know that gets you

patrick mcginley – the red men

as he looked out the window, a sturdy, black donkey came down the road, sniffing the tarred surface, testing it with pouted lips. he lay down on his left side and tried to roll over. he failed and tried again. for a moment his four legs hovered in the air, while he balanced precariously on his backbone, which had become the keel of a boat out of water. then he rolled on to his right side and lay exhausted with the expense of effort. he struggled to his feet and shook himself, sending a cloud of dust into the bright air, with a look of boredom he walked out of the cloud and began cropping the selvage of the road.
he turned to her with a little laugh that she found predictable and patronising. he always talked loudly and volubly whenever they were alone together, yet behind the words she could hear a terrifying silence. he seemed to be standing on a beach with a ground-sea breaking round him. he was shouting to make himself heard between waves, while she stood alone on another beach from which the sea had ebbed before she was born.
he stood for the order of the day-thoughts as opposed to the dream-demons of the night.

colin wilson – rudolf steiner, the man and his vision

our ancestors who built the first cities around 6000bc were deeply religious – for some odd reason, man always been a religious animal – but they did very little thinking as such. the solved problems by common sense and rule of thumb.
it seems conceivable that our ancestors were psychic… and unable to focus the mind for more than a few minutes at a time. in teaching ourselves to concentrate, we have voluntarily abandoned that wider sensitivity to the universe that is still possessed by many primitive tribes. ‘psychics’ are people who, through some accident of birth or heredity, still possess these primitive abilities.
aldous huxley (doors of perception): like the earth of a hundred years ago, our mind still has its darkest africas, its unmapped borneos and amazonian basins. in relation to the fauna of these regions we are not yet zoologists, we are mere naturalists and collectors of specimens…
like the giraffe and the duck billed platypus, the creatures inhabiting these remoter regions of the mind are exceedingly improbable. nevertheless, they exist…
if i have made use of geographical and zoological metaphors, it is not wantonly, out of a mere addiction to picturesque language. it is because such metaphors express very forcibly the essential otherness of the mind’s far continents, and the complete autonomy and self-sufficiency of their inhabitants. a man consists of what i may call the old world of personal consciousness and, beyond a dividing sea, a series of new worlds – the not too distant virginias and carolinas of the personal subconscious and the vegetative soul; the far west of the collective unconscious, with its flaura of symbols, its tribes of aboriginal archetypes, and, across another, vaster ocean, at the antipodes of everyday consciousness, the world of visionary experience…
some people never consciously discover their antipodes. others make an occasional landing. yet others (but they are few) find it easy to come and go as they please.
stone circle of penaenmawr

francoise sagan – sunlight on cold water

gilles threw him an inquiring glance from which, as with all inquiring glances, he learnt nothing. it was only the casual glance which informed.

hugh maclennan – two solitudes

paul had thought the winter would never end, but at last it was over and now the season of break-up called spring in quebec was with them. farmers were sitting in their kitchens under their holy pictures waiting anxiously for the land to dry out. geese were flying north, and wind rushed fiercely over everything. sometimes it woke him up in the middle of the night as it rattled the bare branches of the old maple tree against his window.
… paul walked slowly along the road this saturday morning on his way to get the mail. as he passed each field he looked at it carefully and saw how the land was emerging out of the snow like a living thing. the lower fields were brown and wet, and crows pecked and brooded in the old furrows. and above the wet flat land the whole sky was in turbulent motion. a north wind rushed through the watery sunshine and made the shredded, driving clouds look like torn laundry blowing loose across the sky.
clayton drifted off, safe on a wave of talk. like so many men of the same age, he thought he could prove that the system by which he lived was good because it wallowed from one mess to another while he himself somehow managed to survive. strained, worried, high blood pressure and stomach ulcers, but so what? … business consisted in making money and moving large objects from one place to another
next day the weather broke and they left Percé in a driving rain. by the time they had reached riviere au renard the air was much colder and paul noticed that the wind was hauling. at mont louis the rain had ceased and a straight norther was blowing hard across the gulf from labrador. the sea was bursting on the shore over the road and the light on the water had the same hard, bleak colour he had often seen off newfoundland.
her life was in her breath and it entered his brain in sound.
out of the society which had produced and frustrated him, which in his own way he had learned to accept, he knew that he was at last beating out a harmony. his fingers seemed to be feeling down through the surface of character and action to the roots of the country itself. in all his life, he had never seen an english-canadian and a french-candian hostile to each other face to face. when they disliked, they disliked entirely in the group. and the result of these 2 group-legends was a canada oddly naive, so far without any real villains, without overt cruelty or criminal memories, a country strangely innocent in its grouping individual common sense, intent on doing the right thing in the way some children are, tongue-tied because it felt others would not be interested in what it had to say; loyal, skilled and proud, race-memories lonely in great spaces.
she watched the rollers coasting in. through dark glasses she saw them arch up in the late afternoon sun, break and pause, swing in a long backwards sluice into the next coming waves. the air sang like the inside of a sea shell. the sun held her firmly to the sand.

frank herbert – dune

flann o’brien – the poor mouth

the old-grey-fellow did not reply to this sentence but he probably made a little speech quietly for his own ear.
gaels! he said, it delights my gaelic heart to be here today speaking gaelic with you at this gaelic feis in the centre of the gaeltacht. may i state that i am a gael. i’m gaelic from the crown of my head to the souls of my feet – gaelic front and back, above and below. likewise, you are all truly gaelic. we are all gaelic gaels of gaelic lineage. he who is gaelic will be gaelic evermore. i myself have spoken not a word of gaelic since the day i was born – just like you – and every sentence i’ve ever uttered has been on the subject of gaelic. if we’re truly gaelic, we must constantly discuss the question of the gaelic revival and the question of gaelicism. there is no use in having gaelic, if we converse in it on non-gaelic topics. he who speaks gaelic but fails to discuss the language question is not truly gaelic in his heart; such conduct is of no benefit to gaelicism because he only jeers at gaelic and reviles the gaels. there is nothing in this life so nice and so gaelic as truly true gaelic gaels who speak in true gaelic gaelic about the truly gaelic language. i hereby declare this feis to be gaelically open! up the gaels! long live the gaelic tongue!
many’s the story and the tale of a story they had about him. they said he was a priest in scotland, that he went he went a few steps out of the way and was put out of the church. other people said that he killed a man in a pub when he was young and came to the rosses when on the run. everyone had his own story.

boris vian – escupiré sobre vuestra tumba

ken follet – a world without end

hugh collins – autobiography of a murderer

timothy mo – the redundancy of courage

the nightmare skeletons of someone else’s dream
i’d rather be a tyrant than a martyr (martyrant, tyrant-martyr)
their appearance was that of wild men from the outer reaches.

javier marías – the infatuations

the school dunce is made a minister and the layabout turns banker; the coarsest, ugliest boy in class enjoys a wild success with the best-looking women; while the most simple-minded student becomes a venerated writer and candidate for the nobel prize… the most tedious and ordinary of fans manages to get close to her idol and ends up marrying him; the corrupt, thieving journalist passes himself off as a moralist and a champion of honesty; the most distant a pusillanimous of heirs; the very last on the list and most disastrous, ascends to the throne; the most annoying, stuck-up, scornful woman is adored by the masses whom she crushes and humiliates from her leader’s podium and who should, by rights, loathe her; the greatest imbecile and the greatest rogue gain a landslide victory from a population mesmerized by baseness or perhaps driven by a suicidal desire to be deceived; the murderous politician, when the tables turn, is liberated and acclaimed as a hero and a patriot by the crowd who had, untill then, concealed their own criminal tendencies; and an out-and-out yokel is appointed ambassador or president of the republic and made prince consort if love is involved, and love always tends to be idiotic and foolish. we are all waiting or looking out for that golden opportunity, sometimes it depends solely on how much effort you invest in getting what you wish for, how much enthusiasm and patience you put into each objective, however megalomaniac and preposterous that might be.
may every second seem long to him, may he count them 1 by 1.
he seemed calm and, at the same time, very focused, the way many actors are just before they go on stage, that is, they put on an artificial calm, which they need if they are not to run away and go home and watch television.
sudden wave of uncertainty
anything anyone tells you becomes absorbed into you, becomes part of your consciousness, even if you don’t believe it or know that it never happened and that its pure invention, like novels and films,… and although [he] had followed the old precept of keeping the ‘true’ story untill last and telling me the ‘false’ story first, that rule is never enough to erase the initial or previous version. you still heard it and, although it might be momentarily refuted by what comes afterwards, which contradicts and gives the lie to it, its memory endures, as does our own credulity while we were listening, when, not knowing that it would be followed by denial, we mistook it for the truth. everything that has been said to us resonates and lingers, if not when we’re awake, then as we drift off to sleep or in our dreams, where the order of things doesn’t matter, and it remains there tossing and turning and pulsating as if it were someone who had been buried alive or perhaps a dead man who reappears because he didn’t actually die… what has been said continues to watch us and occasionally revisits us, as ghosts do, and then it never seems enough, we recall even the longest conversation as having been all too brief and the most thorough explanation as being full of holes; we wish we had asked more questions and listened more closely and paid more attention to non-verbal signs, which are slightly less deceiving than verbal ones.
the truth is always a tangled mess

margaret atwood – a handmaid’s tale

falling in love, i said. falling into it, we all did it then, one way or another. how could he have made such light of it? sneered even. as if it was trivial for us, a frill, a whim. it was, on the contrary, heavy going. it was the central thing, it was the way you understood yourself; if it never happened to you, not ever, you would be like a mutant, a creature from outer space. everyone knew that.
falling in love, we said; i fell for him. we were falling women. we believed in it, this downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely. god is love, they said once, but we reversed that, and love, like heaven, was always just around the corner. the more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in love, abstract and total. we were waiting, always, for the incarnation. that word, made flesh.

turgenev – fathers and sons

on the sleigh, besides sophia lvovna, big volodya, and little volodya, there was still another person – margarita alexandrovna, known as rita, a cousin of madame yagich, a very pale woman, over thirty, with black eyebrows and wearing pince-nez; she smoked cigarettes continually even in the bitterest frosty weather: there was always cigarette ash on her knees and on the front of her dress. she spoke through her nose, drawling out each word, a coldhearted woman who could drink any amount of liqueurs and brandy without getting drunk, and she liked telling anecdotes with double-entendres in a tasteless way. at home she read serious magazines from morning to night, while strewing cigarette ash all over them and eating frozen apples.

fatima bhutto – the shadow of the crescent moon

jm coetzee – shooldays of jesus

uno-dos-tres: is this just a chant we learn at school, the mindless chant we call counting; or is there a way of seeing through the chant to what lies behind and beyond it, namely the realm of the numbers themselves – the noble numbers and their auxiliaries, too many to count, as many as the stars, numbers born out of the unions of noble numbers? we, my husband and i and our helpers, believe there is such a way. our academy is dedicated to guiding the souls of our students towards that realm, to bringing them in accord with the great underlying movement of the universe, or, as we prefer to say, the dance of the universe.

to bring the numbers down from where they reside, to allow them to manifest themselves in our midst, to give them body, we rely on the dance. yes, here in the academy we dance, not in a graceless, carnal, or disorderly way, but body and soul together, so as to bring the numbers to life. as music enters us and moves us in dance, so the numbers cease to be mere ideas, mere phantoms, and become real. the music evokes its dance and the dance evokes its music: neither comes first. that is why we call ourselves the academy of music and dance.

he is not on close terms with his soul. what he knows about the soul in general, what he has read, is that it flits away when confronted with a mirror and therefore cannot be seen by the one who owns it, the one whom it owns. unable to see his soul, he has not questioned what people tell him about it: that it is a dry soul, deficient in passion. his own, obscure intuition – that, far from lacking in passion, his soul aches with longing for it knows not what – he treats it sceptically as just the kind of story that someone with a dry, rational, deficient soul will tell himself to maintain his self-respect.

so he tries not to think, to do nothing that might alarm the timid soul within. he gives himself to the music, allowing it to enter and wash through him. and the music, as if aware of what is up, loses its stop-start character, begins to flow. at the very rim of consciousness the soul, which is indeed like a little bird, emerges and shakes its wings and begins its dance.

joshua w. cotter – nod away

the malahat review 174, spring 2011

hemmingway – to have and have not

richard braughtigan – the abortion

karen blixen – shadows on the grass

sweet scents, incense and perfumes are drear to my heart, says the prophet. but the glory of women is dearer. the glory of women is dear to my heart but the glory of prayer is dearer.
death follows the happy man like a stern master
the unfortunate like a servant
who is ever ready to receive his master’s cloak and mask
hurricane lamps with us
i dream today more than i ever did as a child or young girl, and in my present dreams things stand out more clearly than ever, and more to be wondered at.

enrique vila-matas – paris no se acaba nunca

* mallarme
“si no vendo más aquí, me iré al extranjero.” qué fantástica amenaza! es como si ahora la estuviera viendo decir eso: con una sonrisa infantil, casi jugando. pero lo que ha dicho es terrible, todos lo sabemos. y al mismo tiempo es poético. terrible y poético. como el extranjero.
proscrita andarás sin lágrimas ni tumba
y navegarás cerca del tiempo ido y allí,
más allá y hacia lo lejos,
con los ojos frente a lo Nunca Visto,
en dirección a Circe,
bella muerta,
allá donde, rebasando en silencio
las ciudades sin sol, me encontrarás.
seré la destrozada nave que tocará
la playa de la amiga en vano celebrada.

breyten breytenbach – the true confessions of an albino terrorist

on summer days when you were cleaning your corridor you could see through the grill clouds passing along the blue highway above the yard wall facing you: boats on their way to a dream…
you wake and in the dark you write a poem to the man who held up a flower by way of transmitting the it, the only-all
the street of flying chairs
muttering nuns
i am the writer, like launching a black ship on a dark sea.
the silence of desperate men lying in narrow cubicles breathing their bitterness and their imprisonment

lorca – poet in new york

burst into an aurora of tobacco and low yellow

sherwood king – if i day before i wake (the lady from shanghai)

russel andrews – gideon

miller’s creek road was bumpy, twisting, and narrow. it was not paved, although the flinty, rust-coloured native soil – known as chirt – was as unforgiving as stone.
amandasat down at the computer and fired it up… her finger flew over the keyboard as she sent off an instant message.

angelika schrobsdorff – the men

in autumn 1944 the german liberatos left pell-mell and the russian liberators entered pell-mell
they looked like automata

armistead maupin – tales of the city

federico andahazi – the anatomist

in those days (renaissance), everyone was infused with the spirit of leonardo: the artisan was an artist, the artist a scientist, the scientist a warrior, and the warrior an artisan. knowledge meant knowing how to make something with your own hands.
in the so-called catalogue of witches and harpies, this precise definition could be found:
she who causes another ill; she who shows evil intent; she who casts sidelong looks; she who stares into the eyes unabashed; she who goes out at night; she who nods off during the day; she who is sad; she who laughs excessively; she who is distracted; she who is devout; she who is easily frightened; she who is courageous and stern; she who goes to confession often; she who never goes to confession; she who defends herself; she who accuses by pointing with the index finger; she who has knowledge of distant events; she who knows the secrets of art and science; she who speaks many languages.
inés de torremolinos – the black mass:
if leaping flames are lit for me
or hemlock down my gullet poured
or if i’m hanged from judas´ tree
yes, even then my joy endures
for i declare myself to be
the world´s most whorish whore of whores

john o’hara – sermons and soda-water

emily brontë – wuthering heights

john denver – take me home

you can hitch your wagon to the stars, but you cant haul corn or hay if its wheels aren’t on the ground – mordercai pinkey horton
dad always had responsibilities, a great many of them. his sister and brother had them too, but his dad expected him, as the oldest son, to bear the brunt of it. when dad came home on his first army furlough, he had to wrestle grandpa in the living room to prove he was a man. it was the discipline of the old country. sometimes i feel like dad tried to visit that past on me. there were times around the dinner table when i’m certain dad was taking the role of his father and casting me as himself as a boy, and that old, formative story was re-enacted in ways neither of us could understand of prevent.
we were middle americans. but somehow i thought a mistake had been made. i wasn’t supposed to be there; i was supposed to be somewhere else. someone somewhere had given me the wrong itinerary and i was lost in america. i was sure that if i thought about it long enough, id figure it out.
we were right below the tree line

mayra montero – the last night i spent with you

i don’t know if i’ve mentioned that the light in this part of the caribbean has a consistency different from all others. it enters people through the pores and then shines from the inside out, its the only way to explain it, its like an inner light that betrays everything, reveals everything.

cormac mccarthy – all the pretty horses

that night he dreamt of horses in a field on a high plain where the spring rains had brought up the grass and the wildflowers out of the ground and the flowers ran all blue and yellow far as the eye could see and in the dream he was among the horses running and in the dream he himself could run with the horses and they coursed the young mares and fillies over the plain where the rich bay and their rich chestnut colours shone in the sun and the young colts ran with their dams and trampled down the flowers in a haze of pollen that hung in the sun like powdered gold and they ran he and the horses out along the high mesas where the ground resounded under their running hooves and they flowed and changed and ran and their manes and tails blew off of them like spume and there was nothing else at all in that high world and they moved all of them in a resonance that was like a music among them and they were none of them afraid horse nor colt nor mare and they ran in that resonance which is the world itself and which cannot be spoken but only praised.
“aaah, my heavy sausage!” she hollered loudly, her voice interrupted by deep and heavy moans. “stop it! you are killing me… i’m dying. oh, my darling billy goat… i love you. you are doing it so good. come on, dear heart, gold piece of my soul!… ouch you damned son of a whore! you dog! don’t stop it now… you’re tearing me apart! oh, forgive me, my sweet friend… have pity upon me… i… can… no… longer… bear… it!”

john r. jewitt – narrative of capture and confinement at nootka (white slaves of maquinna)

fougeret de monbron – the amorous adventures of margot and the scarlet sofa

one day we were visited by an entire band of soldiers whose passions were as hot as their purses were empty. they had liberally sacrificed to bacchus and thereupon decided to bestow their adoration upon the ladies of venus
madame thomas proved to me with her eulogy for the old gentleman that our servants are but spies who make themselves judges of our morals and who are the more dangerous because they lack the power of discrimination and never see our good deeds. they are twice as malicious if they are unable to find our weaknesses and imperfections.

flann o’brien – at swim-two-birds

i will relate, said finn. till a man has accomplished 12 books of poetry, the same is not taken for want of poetry but is forced away. no man is taken till a black hole is hollowed in the world to the depth of his 2 oxters and he put into it to gaze from it with his lonely head and nothing to him but his shield and a stick of hazel. then must 9 warriors fly their spears at him, one with the other and together. if he be spear-holed past his shield, or spear-killed, he is not taken for want of shield-skill. no man is taken till he is run by warriors through the woods of erin with his hair bunched-loose about him for bough-tangle and briar-twitch. should branches disturb his hair or pull it forth like sheep-wool on a hawthorn, he is not taken but is caught and gashed. weapon-quivering hand or twig-crackling foot at full run, neither is taken. neck-high sticks he must pass by vaulting, knee-high sticks by stooping. with the eyelids to him stitched to the fringe of his eye-bags, he must be run by finn’s people through the bogs and the marsh-swamps of erin with 2 odorous prickle-backed hogs ham-tied and asleep in the seat of his hempen drawers. if he sink beneath a peat-swamp or lose a hog, he is not accepted by finn’s people. for 5 days he must sit on the brow of a cold hill with 12-pointed stag-antlers hidden in his seat, without food or music or chessmen. if he cry out or eat grass-stalks or desist from the constant recital of sweet poetry and melodious irish, he is not taken but is wounded. when pursued by a host, he must stick a spear in the world and hide behind it and vanish in its narrow shelter or he is not taken for want of sorcery. likewise he must hide beneath a twig, or behind a dried leaf, or under a red stone, or vanish at full speed into the seat of his hempen drawers without changing his course or abating his pace or angering the men of erin. 2 young fosterlings he must carry under the armpits of his jacket through the whole of erin, and 6 arm-bearing warriors in his seat together. if he be delivered of a warrior or a blue spear, he is not taken. 100 head of cattle he must accommodate with wisdom about his person when walking all erin, the half about his armpits and the half about his trews, his mouth never halting from the discoursing of sweet poetry. 1000 rams he must sequester about his trunks with no offence to the men of erin, or he is unknown to finn. he must must swiftly milk a fat cow and carry milk-pail and cow for 20 years in the sear of his drawers. when pursued in a chariot by the men of erin he must dismount, place horse and chariot in the slack of his seat and hide behind his spear, the same being stuck upright in erin. unless he accomplishes these feats, he is not wanted of finn. but if he do them all and be skilful, he is of finn’s people.
sweeny the thin-groined it is
in the middle of the yew;
life is very bare here,
piteous christ it is cheerless. grey branches have hurt me
they have pierced my calves,
i hang here in the yew-tree above,
without chessmen, no womantryst. i can put no faith in humans
in the place they are;
watercress at evening is my lot,
i will not come down. as i made the fine throw at ronan
from the middle of the hosts,
the fair cleric said that i had leave
to go with the birds. i am sweeny the slender-thin,
the slender, the hunger-thin,
berries crimson and cresses green,
their colours are my mouth. i was in the centre of the yew
distraught with suffering,
the hostile branches scourged me,
i would not come down. though my flittings are unnumbered,
my clothing today is scarce,
i personally maintain my watch
on the tops of mountains. o fern, russet long one,
your mantle has been reddened,
there’s no bedding for an outcast
on your branching top. nuts at terce and cress-leaves
fruits from an apple-wood at noon,
a lying-down to lap chill water –
your fingers torment my arms.
as to amusements, i mean what the world call as such, we have none; but the place swarms with them, and cards and dancing are the professed business of almost all the gentle inhabitants of huntingdon. we refuse to take part in them, or to be accessories to this way of muthering our time, and by so doing have acquired the name of methodists.
that’s right, you know, remarked furriskey, a rat’s bones are very weak. very soft, you know. the least thing will kill a rat.

graham greene – our man in havana

‘pardon me,’ a voice whispered out of the shadows, ‘has this guy really won a hundred and forty thousand bucks?’
‘yes, sir, i have won them,’ dr hasselbacher said firmly before womold could reply, ‘i have won them as surely as you exist, my almost unseen friend. you would not exist if i didn’t believe you existed, nor would those dollars. i believe, therefore you are.
‘what do you mean i wouldn’t exist?’
‘you exist only in my thoughts, my friend. if i left this room…’
‘you’re nuts.’
‘prove you exist, then.’
‘what do you mean, prove? of course i exist. i’ve got a first-class business in real estate: a wife and a couple of kids in miami: i flew here this morning by delta: i’m drinking this scotch, aren’t i?’ the voice contained a hint of tears.
‘poor fellow,’ dr hasselbacher said, ‘you deserve a more imaginative creator than i have been. why didn’t i do better for you than miami and real estate? something of imagination. a name to be remembered.
there are many countries in our blood, aren’t there? but only 1 person.

mona lisa schulz – awakening intuition

successful as we may be at blocking intuition most of the time, there are times when the message seeps through, sneaks through our defences and our reluctance to hear it. illness, disease, and other troubles create a hole through which we get information in spite of ourselves. the information comes through these apertures.
temporal lobe function is important to both visual and auditory experiences, what we see and hear, as well as to dreams and intense emotions. it also assigns meaning and significance to our experiences. it tells us how we feel about something and what we ought to do about it.
the temporal lobe also plays a vital role in memory formation, one of the critical elements of the intuition network. it contains the hippocampus, which helps for verbal memory (memories in the brain) and plays an important role in dreaming, and the amygdala, which constructs memories you cant put into words, which is known as body memory.
some investigators believe the temporal lobe is sensitive to low electromagnetic energy frequencies, the currency in which intuitive information is believed to be transmitted and received. the temporal lobe neurons fire when they come into contact with low-frequency electromagnetic energy that can penetrate brain tissue.
… walking into the garden and saying, ‘gee, these weeds are too big.’ it would be much wiser to say, ‘my flowers need to be bigger.’
emotions and illness
for more than 2000 years humans have observed that certain emotions appear to be related to certain organs in the body. in chinese medicine, for instance, the heart is equated with fire, and its associated emotions are joy and happiness. the liver and gallbladder are equated with wood and are related to the emotions of frustration and anger. the lungs and large intestine are equated with metal and have to do with worry and grief. the spleen and stomach are associated with earth and with overthinking, over-worrying, or ruminating. is it just a coincidence that cows, the original ruminators, have an auxiliary stomach?
* velcro vs teflon
food is intimately associated in human culture with love. we all tend to use it as a substitute or a metaphor for love… in a woman’s brain, the areas having to do with food and sex are extremely close together, almost superimposed on each other in the hypothalamus. in men, they’re separate and farther apart. for a man, there’s food, and then there’s sex. for a woman, there’s foodsex.
people with chronic and severe depression can in fact eventually become disconnected from the language of emotions; they have to be taught to understand it again.
* marcia linehan 1993 recognising emotions
we have to move with the emotion.
if you don’t move with your emotion, the emotion will go into your body and move the cells of your organs instead, possibly in the pattern of illness.
all at once i knew many things, some of them quite paradoxical. i knew that there was a force in the universe – call it god or give it another name – that made things happen in my life in a way i couldn’t control, but that i was simultaneously endowed with the power to influence what happened to me. i knew that my life contained an infinite variety of possibilities, but that there were limitations in the world that i would have to live with, too. i knew that i couldn’t become overly attached to one certain identity, or it might be taken away from me. and i knew that i had to live more for the moment and, above all, to get in touch with my life’s purpose to anchor me to the world and the life i loved and the universe that i now sensed as being of a whole, with all things in it part of each other and of me.
* poet may sarton
as most of us go about the day-to-day business of living, our facade protects us from the more difficult, less pleasant aspects of the world and the human beings we share it with, such as all the constant, sometimes necessary hypocrisy that permeates human dealings. in fact, people who lose their facades find this very difficult to bear; they cant listen to others tell even little white lies, watch the games they play, or observe their manipulations and machinations without having a strong negative reaction. while this sort of greater honesty might seem like a good thing, it can actually make life in some ways more difficult and painful, because it sets you apart and can make you seem irritable and antagonistic
* spock and counselor troi
* alexithymia

carlos isla – el tigre de santa julia

un demonio llamado jesús
* poeta salvador díaz mirón

ruth goodman – how to be a tudor

* thomas moulton – this is the myrrour or glasse of helth
haply as i roamed me in the church of paul’s… there walked up and down by me in the body of the church a gentleman, fair dressed in silk, gold and jewels, with 3 or 4 sevants in gay liveries all broidered with sundry colours, attending upon him.
one of the many advantages of the apprenticeship system that people at the time commented on was the propensity for teenagers to behave better for other people than they did for their parents, and the willingness of non-parental authority figures to exert firm discipline.
some fyne gloves
* the jew of malta, doctor faustus, the spanish tragedy
i, as a redhead, clearly exhibit an imbalance biased towards the yellow bile or choleric humour, which is both hot and dry in nature, and this gives me, i am still to this day regularly informed, a hot temper. those with dark, sallow complexion are prone to introspection and sadness, being dominated by black bile – the cold, dry, melancholic humour, according to these ideas.
* thomas nashe – anatomy of absurdity (1589)

jeanette winterson – the gap of time

mimi was sitting with her knees up, bare legs, her eyes like fireflies
* thoreau – walden
the written wor(l)d

john irving – a widow for one year

being afraid you’ll look like a coward is the worst reason for doing anything.

joseph heller – catch as catch can

the human mind is a great city in which the individual is always lost. he spends his lifetime groping, trying to locate himself.
the boy listened solemnly, too impressed to reply.
we’re still strangers when we die, the man continued, lost in a great big city.
baseball was a game that was called the great american pasttime and was played on a square infield that was called a diaond. baseball was a very patriotic and moral game that was played with a bat, a ball, 4 bases and 17 men and yossarian, divided up into 1 team of 9 players and 1 team of 8 players and yossarian. the object of the game was to hit the ball with a bat and run around the square of bases more often than the players on the opposing team did. it all seemed kind of silly to yossarian, since all they played for was the thrill of winning.
and all they won was the thrill of winning.
and all that winning meant was that they had run around the square of bases more times than a bunch of other people had. if there was more point to all the massive exertions involved than this, yossarian missed it. when he raised the question: better at what? it turned out that all you were better at was running around a bunch of
she was a plain woman and a complete stranger to him but he knew he could very easily fall in love with just such a woman.
modesty remains my most flamoyant characteristic.

john fowles – the magus

* film quiai des brumes
i rejected my own age, yet could not sink back into an older. so i ended like scirion, a mid-air man.
love is the mystery between 2 people, not the identity.
2 young faces, suddenly old, facing each other.
a gardenia in his buttonhole
“utram bibis? aquam an undam?”
which are you drinking? the water or the wave?
only one method of communication is not dependant on time. some deny that it exists. but there are many cases, reliably guaranteed by reputable and scientific witnesses, of thoughts being communicated at precisely the moment they were conceived. among certain primitive cultures, such as the lapp, this phenomenon is so frequent, so accepted, that it is used as a matter of everyday convenience, as we in france use the telegraph or telephone.
not all powers have to be discovered; some have to be regained.
this is the only means we shall ever have of communicating with mankind in other worlds. sic itur ad astra.
this potential simultaneity of awareness in conscious beings operates as the pantograph does. as the hand draws, the copy is made.
the writer of this pamphlet is not a spiritualist and is not interested in spiritualism. he has for some years been investigating telepathic and other phenomena on the fringe of normal medical science. his interests are purely scientific. he repeats that he does not believe in the ‘supernatural’; in rosicrucuanism, hermetism, or other such aberrations.
he maintains that already more advanced worlds than our own are trying to communicate with us; and that a whole category of noble and beneficial mental behaviour, which appears in our societies as good conscience, humane deeds, artistic inspiration, scientific genius, is really dictated by half-understood telepathic messages from other worlds. he believes that the muses are not a poetic fiction; but a classical insight into scientific reality we moderns should do well to investigate.
and now it was millions, trillions of such consciousnesses of being, countless nuclei of hope suspended in a vast solution of hazard, a pouring out not of photons, but nöons, consciousness-of-being particles.
in what americans call “a man’s world”. that is, a world governed by brute force, humourless arrogance, illusory prestige and primeval stupidity… men love war because it allows them to look serious. because they imagine it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them. in it they can reduce women to the status of objects. that is the great distinction between the sexes. men see objects, women see the relationship between objects. whether the objects need each other, love each other, match each other. it is an extra dimension of feeling we men are without and one that makes war abhorrent to all real women – and absurd. i will tell you what war is. war is a psychosis caused by an inability to see relationships. our relationship with our fellow men. our relationship with out economic and historical situation. and above all our relationship to nothingness. to death.
fish-woman-bird
the subject of our 1953 experiment belongs to a familiar category of semi-intellectual introversion. although excellent for our purposes his personality pattern is without subsidiary interest. the most significant feature of his life-style is negative: its lack of social content.
the motives for this attitude springs from an only partly resolved oedipal complex. the subject shows characteristic symptoms of mingled fear and resentment of authority, especially male authority and the usual accompanying basic syndrome: an ambivalent attitude towards women, in which they are seen as both desired objects and as objects which have betrayed him, and therefore merit his revenge and counter-betrayal.
time has not allowed us to investigate the subjects specific womb and breast separation traumas, but the compensatory mechanisms he had evolved are so frequent among so-called intellectuals that we may posit with certainty a troubled period of separation from the maternal breast, possibly due to the exigences of the military career of the subjects father, and a very early identification of the father, or male, as separator – a role which doctor conchis adopted in our experiment. the subject has then never been able to accept the initial loss of oral gratification and maternal protection and this has given him his auto-erotic approach to emotional problems and life in general. the subject also conforms to the adlerian descriptions of siblingless personality traits.
the subject has preyed sexually and emotionally on a number of young women. his method, according to doctor maxwell, is to stress and exhibit his loneliness and unhappiness – in short, to play the little boy in search of the lost mother. he thereby arouses repressed maternal instincts in his victims which he then proceeds to exploit with the semi-incestuous ruthlessness of this type.
in the usual way the subject identifies god with the father figure, aggressively rejecting any belief in him.
he has careerwise continually placed himself in situations of isolation. his solution of his fundamental separation anxiety requires him to cast himself as the rebel and outsider. his unconscious intention in seeking this isolation is to find a justification for his praying on women and also for his withdrawal from any community orientated in directions hostile to his fundamental needs of self-gratification.
the subject’s family, caste, and national background have not helped in the resolution of his problems. he comes of a military family, in which there were a large number of taboos resulting from a strongly authoritarian paternal regime. his caste in his own country, that of the professional middle-class, zweimann’s technobourgeoisie, is of course marked by an obsessional adherence to such regimes. in a remark to doctor maxwell the subject reported that “all through my adolescence i had to lead 2 lives.” this is a good layman’s description of environment-motivated and finally consciously induced para-schizophrenia – “madness as lubricant”, in karen horney’s famous phrase.
on leaving university the subject put himself in the one environment he would not be able to tolerate – that of an expensive private school, the social transmitter of all those paternalistic and authoritarian traits the subject hates. predictably he then felt himself forced both out of the school and out of his country, and adopted the role of expatriate though he insured himself against any valid adjustment by once again choosing an environment – the school on phraxos – which was certain to provide him with the required elements of hostility. his work there academically barely adequate and his relationship with his colleagues and students poor.
to sum up he is behaviourally the victim of a repetition-compulsion that he has failed to understand. in every environment he looks for those elements that allow him to feel isolated, that allow him to justify his withdrawal from meaningful social responsibilities and relationships and his consequent regression into the infantile state of frustrated self-gratification. at present this autistic regression takes the form mentioned above, of affaires with young women. although previous attempts at an artistic resolution have apparently failed, we may predict that further such attempts will be made and that there will be the normal cultural life-pattern of the type: excessive respect for iconoclastic avant-garde art, contempt for tradition, paranoic sympathy with fellow rebels and non-conformers in conflict with frequent and depressive and persecutory phases in personal and work relationships.
as doctor conchis has observed in his the mid-century predicament: the rebel with no specific gift for rebellion is destined to become the drone; and even this metaphor is inexact, since the drone has at least a small chance of fecundating the queen, whereas the human rebel-drone is deprived even of that small chance and may finally see himself as totally sterile, lacking not only the brilliant life-success of the queens but even the humble satisfaction of the workers in the human hive. such a personality is reduced to mere wax, a mere receiver of impressions; and this condition is the very negation of the basic drive in him – to rebel. it is no wonder that in middle age many such failed rebels, rebels turned self-conscious drones, aware of their susceptibility to intellectual vogues, adopt a mask of cynicism that cannot hide their more or less paranoiac sense of having been betrayed by life.
…
i dissent from the view that the subject is without significance outside the matter of our experiment. in my view one may anticipate in 20 years time a period of considerable and today almost unimaginable prosperity in the west. i repeat my assertion that the threat of a nuclear catastrophe will have a healthy effect of western europe and america. it will firstly stimulate economic production; it will secondly ensure that there is peace; it will thirdly provide a constant sense of real danger behind every moment of living, which was in my opinion missing before the last war and so contributed to it. although this threat of war may do something to counteract the otherwise dominating role that the female sex must play in peacetime society dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure, i predict that breast-fixated men like the subject will become the norm. we are entering an amoral and permissive era in which self-gratification in the form of high wages and a wide range of consumer goods obtained and obtainable against a background of apparently imminent universal doom will be available, if not to all, then to an increasingly large majority. in such an age the characteristic personality type must inevitably become auto-erotic and, clinically autopsychotic. such a person will be for economic reasons isolated, as for personal ones the subject is today, form direct contact with the evils of human life, such as starvation, poverty, inadequate living conditions, and the rest. western homo sapiens will become homo solitarius. though i have little sympathy as a fellow human being for the subject, his predicament interests me as a social psychologist, since he has developed precisely i would expect a man of moderate intelligence but little analytical power, and virtually no science, to develop in our age. if nothing else he proves the total inadequacy of the confused value judgments and pseudo statements of art to equip modern man for his evolutionary role.
the prince and the magician
once upon a time there was a young prince, who believed in all things but 3. he did not believe in princesses, he did not believe in islands, he did not believe in god. his father, the king, told him that such things did not exist. as there were no princesses or islands in his fathers doaines, and no sign of god, the young prince believed his father.
but then, one day, the prince ran away from his palace. he came to the next land. there, to his astonishment, from every coast he saw islands, and on these islands, strange and troubling creatures whome he dared not name. as he was searching for a boat, a man in full evening dress approached him along the shore.
‘are those real islands?’ asked the young prince.
‘of course they are real islands,’ said the man in evening dress.
‘and those strange and troubling creatures?’
‘they are all genuine and authentic princesses.’
‘then god also must exist!’ cried the prince.
‘i am god,’ replied the man in full evening dress, with a bow.
so the young prince returned home as quickly as he could.
‘so you’re back,’ said his father, the king.
‘i have seen islands, i have seen princesses, i have seen god,’ said the prince reproachfully.
the king was unmoved.
‘neither real islands, nor real princesses, nor a real god exist.’
‘i saw them!’
‘tell me how god was dressed.’
‘god wore a full evening dress.’
‘were the sleeves of his coat rolled back?’
the prince remembered that they had been. the king smiled.
‘that is the uniform of a magician. you have been deceived.’
at this, the prince returned to the next land, and went to the same shore, where once again he came upon the man in full evening dress.
‘my father the king has told me who you are,’ said the young prince indignantly. ‘you deceived me last time, but not again. now i know that those are not real islands and real princesses, because you are a magician.’
the man on the shore smiled.
‘it is you who are deceived, my boy. in your father’s kingdom there are many islands and many princesses. but you are under your fathers spell, so you cannot see them.’
the prince returned pensively home. when he saw his father, he looked him in the eyes.
‘father, is it true that you are not a real king, but only a magician?’
the king smiled, and rolled back his sleeves.
‘yes, my son, i am only a magician.’
‘then the man on the shore was god.’
‘the man on the shore was another magician.’
i must know the real truth, the truth beyond magic.’
‘there is no truth beyond magic,’ said the king.
the prince was full of sadness.
he said, ‘i will kill myself.’
the king by magic caused death to appear. death stood in the door and beckoned to the prince. the prince shuddered. he remembered the beautiful but unreal islands and the unreal but beautiful princesses.
‘very well,’ he said, ‘i can bear it.’
‘you see, my son,’ said the king, ‘you too now begin to be a magician.’
i felt like a green young dog in pursuit of a cunning old hare; every time i leapt i bit brown air.

robert graves – claudius the god

first there are the scoundrels with stony hearts… next come the virtuous men with equally stony hearts… the third class are the virtuous men with the golden hearts… and last and most rarely found are the scoundrels with golden hearts… it is the scoundrels with the golden hearts who make the most valuable friends in time of need. you expect nothing from them. they are entirely without principle, as they themselves acknowledge, and only consider their won advantage. but go to them when in desperate trouble and say, ‘for gods sake do so-and-so for me,’ and they will almost certainly do it – not as a friendly favour but, they will say, because it fits in with their own crooked plans; and you are forbidden to thank them.
the heart of the populace lies in its belly
the invading shepherd kings
surrounded by marshes… the inhabitants of that part of the country called marsians
the carthaginians traded in britain
it would be well to give here in brief an account of the main features of druidism, a religion which seems to be a fusion of celtic and aboriginal beliefs. i cannot guarantee that the details are true, for reports are conflicting. no druidical lore is allowed to be consigned to writing and a terrible fate is threatened to those who reveal even the less important mysteries. my account is based on the statements of prominent apostates from the religion, but these include no druidical priests. no consecrated druid has ever been persuaded to reveal the inner mysteries even under torture. the word ‘druid’ means ‘oak-man’, because that is their sacred tree. their sacred year begins with the budding of the oak and ends with the falling of its leaves. there is a god called tanarus whose symbol is the oak. it is he who with a flash of lightening generates the mistletoe on the oak-tree branch, which is the sovereign remedy against witchcraft and all diseases. there is also a sun-god called mabon whose symbol is a white bull. and then there is lug, a god of medicine, poetry, and the arts, whose symbol is the snake. these are all, however, the same person, a god of life-in-death, worshipped in different aspects, like osiris in egypt. as osiris is yearly drowned by a god of waste waters, so this triple deity is yearly killed by the god of darkness and water, his uncle nodons, and restored to life by the power of his sister sulis, the goddess of healing who corresponds to isis. nodons manifests himself by a monstrous wave of water, 12 feet high, that at regular intervals comes running up the mouth of the severn, chief of the western rivers, causing great destruction to crops and huts as far as 30 miles inland. the druidical religion is not practised by the tribes as such, for they are fighting units commanded by kings and noblemen, but by the 13 secret societies, named after various sacred animals, the members of any 1 of which belong to a variety of tribes; because it is the month in which one is born – they have a 13 month year – which decides the society to which one is to belong. there are the beavers, and the mice, and the wolves, and the rabbits, and the wild cats, and the owls, and so on, and each society has a particular lore of its own and is presided over by a druid. the arch-druid rules over the whole cult. the druids take no part in fighting, and members of the same society who meet in tribal battles on opposite sides are pledged to run to each others rescue.
the mysteries of the druidical religion are concerned with a belief in the immortality of the human soul, in support of which many natural analogies are offered. one of these is the daily death and daily rebirth of the sun, another is the yearly death and yearly rebirth of the leaves of the oak, another is the yearly cutting of the corn and the yearly springing up of the seed. they say that man when he dies goes westward, like the setting sun, to live in a certain sacred islands in the atlantic ocean, until the time shall come for him to be born again. all over the island there are sacred altars known as ‘dolmens’
waters of sulis
marsh-ophthalmia disease
iliad:
his princess parts with a prophetic sigh,
unwilling parts, and oft reverts her eye
that streamed at every look; then, moving slowly
sought her own palace and indulged her woe.
frankly i cannot blame silius for being deceived by her: she deceived me daily for 9 years. remember that she was very beautiful; and you can assume she doctored his wine. naturally he tried to comfort her, and before he realised what was happening, they were lying in each other’s arms on the couch, mixing the words ‘love’ and ‘liberty’ with kisses and sighs
you know how it is when one talks of liberty.
everything seems beautifully simple.
one expects every gate to open and every wall to fall flat.

will self – tough, tough toys for tough, tough boys

titanic man blues
in the distance a single peak raised its white-capped head.
the terrors/the fates
* henri charrier (dustin hoffmann film)

various – a day saved

joe millard – the good the bad the ugly

alessandro baricco – ocean sea

i have seen an infinity of things that are invisible from the shores of the sea. i have seen what desire really is, and fear. i have seen men fall apart and turn into children. and then change again and become ferocious beasts. i have seen marvellous dreams dreamed, and i have listened to the most beautiful stories of my life, told by ordinary men, a moment before they threw themselves into the sea to vanish forever.

jhumpa lahiri – interpreter of maladies

mrs. das gazed out another window, at the sky, where nearly transparent clouds passed quickly in front of one another.
…when it started to rain. it came slapping across the roof like a boy in slippers too big for him and washed mrs. dalal’s lemon peels into the gutter. before pedestrians could open their umbrellas, it rushed down collars, pockets, and shoes.
what does sexy mean? it means loving someone you don’t know.
eventually she pressed her foot on the brake pedal, manipulated the automatic gear shift as if it were an enormous, leaky pen, and backed inch by inch out of he parking space.
her soliloquies mawkish, her sentiments maudlin, malaise dripped like a fever from her pores.

alejo carpentier – the lost steps

he saw the world as a battlefield where enlightenment, represented by the printed word, was engaged in a struggle to the death with the dark forces of benightedness, the breeding-ground of every form of cruelty among those who lived without benefit of university, music, and laboratory. evil, in his mind, was personified in this guerillo…
when a man fights it should be to defend his home
dawn in the jungle is far less beautiful, from the point of view of colour, than sunset. above a soil that exhales an age-old moisture, above water that divides the earth, above vegetation shrouded in mist, the dawn slips in with the grayness of rain, in a vague clarity that never seems to forecast a clear day. hours must elapse before the sun, now high, freed by the treetops, can shed a clear ray through the myriad leaves.
sometimes, after centuries of existence, the leaves dropped from one of these tress, its lichens dried up, its orchids were extinguished. its wood aged, acquiring the texture of pink granite, and it stood erect, its monumental skeleton in silent nakedness revealing the laws of an almost mineral architecture, with symmetries, rhythms, balances of crystallised forms. washed by the rain, unmoved by the tempests, there it stood several centuries longer until one day a ray of lightning finally cast it down into the shifting lower depths. thereupon the colossus, unshaken since prehistoric times, crashed, groaning in all its splinters, hurling branches left and right, riven, all carbon and celestial fire, crushing and burning all that lay at its foot. a hundred trees died with it, crushed, uprooted, shivered, bringing down with them lianas that shot upward like bowstrings as they snapped. it came to its end in the age-piled humus of the jungle. from the earth emerged roots so vast, so interwoven that 2 separate streams suddenly found themselves made one by the work of those hidden ploughshares, which emerged from their darkness destroying nests of ants, opening craters that became the instant objective of the ant-eaters, with their threadlike viscous tongues.
for rosario the idea of being far away from some famous place where life could be lived to the full did not exist. the centre of the universe for her, who had crossed frontiers without change of language, who had never dreamed of the ocean, was where the sun at midday shone on her from overhead.

carson mccullers – the ballad of the sad café

now, the beloved can be of any description. the most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. a man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of cheehaw one afternoon 2 decades past. the preacher may love a fallen woman. the beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else – but this does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. a most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. a good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.
it is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. almost everyone wants to be the lover. and the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. the beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. for the lover is for ever trying to strip bare his beloved. the lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.
marvin macy left town that day, and no one saw him go, or knew just where he went. on leaving he put a long curious letter, partly written in pencil and partly with ink, beneath miss amelia’s door. it was a wild love-letter – but in it were included threats, and he swore that in his life he would get even with her. his marriage had lasted for 10 days. and the town felt the special satisfaction that people feel when someone has been thoroughly done in by some scandalous and terrible means.
the jockey drew up the left corner of his mouth in a stiff jeer. his eyes lowered to the food spread out on the table, but instantly he looked up again. before the rich man was a fish casserole, baked in a cream sauce and garnished with parsley. sylvester had ordered eggs benedict. there was asparagus, fresh buttered corn, and a side dish of wet black olives. a plate of french-fried potatoes was in the corner of the table before the jockey. he didn’t look at the food again, but kept his pinched eyes on the centre-piece of full-blown lavender roses.
sylvester turned to the rich man. ‘if he eats a lamb chop, you can see the shape of it in his stomach an hour afterwards. he cant sweat things out of him any more.

sean mclachlan – outlaws of missouri

lisa st aubin de terán – the tiger

and even the malandros, who lived by waylaying lonely travellers, instinctively let him pass, with his fat hands and his thin purse, because he had the shadow of murder in his eye, and he wasn’t worth dying for.
fruits and seeds had wizened on the trees.
a few, not many, with intestines of the calibre of drainpipes, returned day after day, week after week, with signs of positive relish as they spotted some new favourites falling into their billycans. these ones would wait at the back of the crowd after they had got their share and try to beg or barter for more. luis aguirre, whose job it was to supervise the sweeping of the street after the dispensary was closed, and to ensure exactly the right number of buckets of water and creosote were swilled over the cobbles and dirt, could hear them asking, ‘could i have the little pink slugs you’ve got on top there?’ occasionally, an innocent, ‘i wonder if you would swap my braised frogs for your fried lizards,’ would cause the hapless boy or girl to drop the dish and run, leaving the entire contents to the breadline gourmets.
i am in tilsit, where the stones have killed witches.
they threw taunts at his cold stare, stones at his strange bones. they would have thrown more, but no sooner had they begun than this man with the arctic eyes turned round and faced them, and they were afraid and stopped. luicen said nothing, he just stared, and the light from his eyes fixed the gangling children to the spot.

paulo coelho – like the flowing river

lord protect our doubts, because doubt is a way of praying. it is doubt that makes us grow because it forces us to look fearlessly at the many answers that exist to 1 question. and in order for this to be possible…
lord protect our decisions, because making decisions is a way of praying. give us the courage, after our doubts, to be able to choose between one road and another. may our yes always be a yes and our no always be a no. once we have chose our road, may we never look back nor allow our soul to be eaten away by remorse. and in order for this to be possible…
lord protect our actions, dreams, give us enthusiasm…
* the importance of meditating without a cat
a warrior of light who trust too much in his intelligence will end up underestimating the power of his opponent.
it is important not to forget that, sometimes, strength is more effective than strategy. when we are confronted by a certain kind of violence, no amount of brilliance, argument, intelligence, or charm can avert tragedy.
that is why the warrior never underestimates brute force. when it proves too violent, he withdraws from the battlefield until his enemy has exhausted himself.
however, to be clear about one thing: a warrior of light is never cowardly. flight might be an excellent form of defence, but it cannot be used in when one is very afraid.
… okaku kakuzo says in his book on the japanese tea ceremony: we see evil in others because we know the evil in ourselves. we never forgive those who wound us because we believe that we would never be forgiven. we say the painful truth to others because we want to hide it from ourselves. we show our strength, so no one can see our frailty. that is why, whenever you judge your brother, be aware that it is you who is in the dock.

charles bukowski – tales of ordinary madness

ernie was like a mechanic: he liked to fix things on paper. the bullfights were a drawing-board of everything: hannibal slapping the elephant ass over mountain or some wino slugging his woman in a cheap hotel room. and when hem got in to the typer he wrote standing up. he used it like a gun. a weapon. the bullfights were everything attached to anything. it was all in his head like a fat butter sun: he wrote it down.
* al purdy – lives in canada and grows his own grapes which he squeezes into his own wine…
* steve richmond, doug blazek, brown miller, harold norse
Dreams of the Room

lynne reid banks – the return of the indian

james morris – spain

contents: isle barataria, plural spain, lady of elche, sol y sombra, aliens, wild spain, the soldiers, christ the king, four cities, barber’s basin, envoi: state of being
go further up the hill, though, through the maze of lanes and cave-terraces, and presently you will find those tunnels getting dirtier and darker, and crumblier, and more lair-like, until at last, in the ashen slopes high above town, some wild covey of slum children will come swooping out of a crack in the ground, so wolfish, swift and swart that you will turn on your heels instinctively, and fall headlong down the hill again.
for the moorish way of life was not confined to any conquering elite. the moors impregnated the whole of society with their manners, so that even now it is easy to imagine the black tents of the bedouin pitched, as they once were, around the walls of toledo. during the centuries of the occupation, all spain was bi-lingual – even the christian princes of the north spoke arabic to each other, and decked themselves in moorish fineries.
badajoz means pax augusta
there are 7,500 holy relics inside the escorial, including the sacred wafer which, so augustus hare darkly tells us, ‘bled at gorcum when trampled on by zwingelian heretics’.
speak cleanly! law, morality, and decorum alike forbid blasphemy.
in 1968 eighteen million foreign tourists went to spain – during the year, that is to say, well over half the people who stood on spanish soil were foreigners.

chuck palahniuk – fugitives and refugees

in hot weather street bands used to march through the city…
* on hot weather street, bands used to march to the city…

roberto bolaño – the third reich

* freidrich dürrenmatt – traps
in the room ingeborg is asleep with the florian linden novel tangled in the sheets. softly i set it on the night table, though not before a sentence catches my eye. florian linden (i imagine) says: “you say you’ve commited the same crime several times. no, you’re not crazy. that happens to be the very nature of evil.”
“man, clarita, pass it back,” complained the lamb.
as if we were wrenching her from a beautiful and heroic dream, the maid looked at us and without getting up reached out her arm with the joint between her fingers, she had thin arms dotted with small circles lighter than the rest of her skin.
the lamb winked at me nd sat on the bed, behind the maid, miming sex in a way that was doubly silent because even his ear to ear smile was turned not toward me or clarita’s back but toward… a kind of realm of stone… a silent zona (with raw staring eyes) that had surreptitiously established itself in the middle of my room… say, from the bed to the wall where the photocopies were tacked.
* german literature – celan, trakl, heinrich mann, jünger, böll
not a soul was on the beach so early in the morning, but i heard voices from another balcony, an argument in french. who but the french raise their voices before 7!
goëthe:
and untill you have possessed
dying and rebirth,
you are but a sullen guest
on the gloomy earth

und so lang du das nicht hast,
dieses: stirb und werde!
bist du nu rein trüber gast
auf der dunklen erde.

martin amis – the information

he awoke at 6, as usual. he needed no alarm clock. he was already comprehensively alarmed.
a car in the street. why? why cars? this is what an artist has to be: harassed to the point of insanity or stupefaction by first principles.
he’ll still be in bed, not like the boys and their abandonment, but lying there personably, and smugly sleeping.
in hanks and handfuls (hair)
she left. she left slowly, her presence reluctantly receding from him. when it was there no longer his head dropped suddenly like a weight. it hung, at right angles to the sheen of his paisley waistcoat. having dropped about 45 degrees… which is a lot, on some scales, by some reckonings. for example, bernard’s star, as it is called, crosses 10.3 seconds of arc per year. this is a quarter of the jupiter pinpoint – about a sixth of a degree: per year. yet no other heavenly body shows so great a proper motion. this is why it is called the runaway star… and just by dropping his head like that richard was changing his temporal relationship with the quasars by thousands and thousands of years. he really did. because the quasars are so far away and getting further away so fast. this is to put difficulties in context. the context of the universe.
gina was mother earth. bipolar, sublunar, circumsolar.
all this crap about third-class poets and seventh-rate novelists and eleventh-eleven dramatists…
what goes around comes around. i’m okay: you’re okay. we don’t take nobody nobody sent. chicago, he knew, was the eighth biggest city on earth. cities are machines. no other city he had ever been to said to you, as chicago said to you, this is a machine. i am a machine.
* kulturfilmen
quap
and he was driving in the city, which takes part of the mind and plugs it in somewhere else, into the city and the city’s sticky streets.

bruce chatwin – in patagonia

on my right was a lady novelist. she said the only subject worth tackling was loneliness. she told a story of an international violinist, struck one night on tour in a mid-western motel. the story hinged on the bed, the violin and the violinist’s wooden leg.
sonny urquhart was a hard stringy man with blond hair swept back and parted in the centre. he had moles on his face and a big adam’s apple. the back of his neck was criss-crossed with lines from working hatless in the sun. his eyes were watery blue, and rather bloodshot.
in the 1860s w.h. hudson came to the rio negro looking for the migrant birds that wintered around his home in la plata. years later he remembered the trip through the filter of his notting hill boarding house and wrote a book so quiet and sane it makes thoreau seem a ranter.
once you get a drunk gaucho in the saddle, he wont fall off and his horse will get him home. but this presupposes a dangerous moment while you seat him. naitane thought this moment was approaching. the youngest gaucho was bright red in the face, propping himself against the bar on his elbows. his friends watched to see if his legs would hold. all had knived stuck into their waistbands.
their leader was a scrawny rough in black bombachas and a black shirt open to his navel. his chest hair was covered with a fuzz of ginger hair and the same ginger bristles sprouted all over his face. he had a few long, sharp, brown teeth…
rolf mayer, a gaucho with german and indian blood, did the butchery. he was lean and silent with mighty scarlet hands. he was dressed all over in chocolate brown and never took off his hat. he had a knife made from a bayonet with a yellowing ivory pommel. he laid each sheep on a trestle, and began undressing the carcass until it lay, pink and sheeny, legs in the air, on the white inner lining of its own fleece. then he slipped the knife point in where the skin stretches tight over the belly and the hot blood spurted over his hands. he enjoyed that. you could tell he enjoyed it by the way he lowered his eyelids and stuck out his lower lip and sucked the air through his teeth.
on november 11th a war-party of tehuelche indians attacked ‘throwing dust in the ayre, leaping and running like brute beasts, having vizzards on their faces like dog’s faces, or else their faces are dogs’ faces indeed’
he was not a clever man but a wise man. he was a self-centred bachelor, who avoided complications and did little harm to anyone. his standards were edwardian but he knew how the world changed; how to be one step ahead of change, so as not to change himself. his rules were simple: keep liquid…
* pigaferra
* primaleon of greece, amadis of gaul
the knight primaleon sails to a remote island and meets a cruel and ill favoured people, who eat raw flesh and wear skins. in the interior lives a monster called the grand patagon, with the ‘head of a dogge’ and the feet of a hart, but gifted with human understanding and amorous of women….
the straight of magellan is another case of nature imitating art. a nuremburg cartographer, martin beheim, drew the south-west passage for magellan to discover. his premise was entirely reasonable. south america, however peculiar, was normal compared to the Unknown Arctic Continent, the antichthon of the pythagoreans, marked FOGS on mediaeval maps. in this upside-down-land, snow fell upwards, trees grew downwards, the sun shone black, and sixteen-fingered antipodeans danced themselves into ecstasy. we cannot go to them, it was said, they cannot come to us. obviously a strip of water had to divide this chimerical country from the rest of creation.
spring him from jail
some years ago she knew ernesto guevara, at the time an untidy young man pushing for a place in society.
‘he was very macho,’ she said, ‘like most argentine boys, but i never thought it would come to that.’

the city kept reminding me of russia – the cars of the secret police bristling with aerials; women with splayed haunches licking ice-cream in dusty parks; the same bullying statues, the pie-crust architecture, the same avenues that were not quite straight, giving the illusion of endless space and leading out into nowhere.

peter carey – the chemistry of tears

‘and where might my plans be understood?’
‘in furtwangen.’
who had ever heard of such a comic place?
his washing-machine contraption is ridiculous. for arnaud to show that thing to me is an offence. i, who have been on friendly terms with men of science and genius, must listen while he explains the washing machine to me, again and again, so i am now doomed to carry the parts in my head untill i die.

arturo barea – la forja

es curioso ver la dificultad que todos los animales tienen para andar hacia atras
hay que ir a buscar el agua con burros a 3 kilometros del pueblo, a un barranco – que es una grieta en el campo – que se pierde a lo lejos, caminos de la sierra.
son pájaros de mal agüero.
los otros pájaros que hay son los murciélagos. vienen al aterdecer y empiezan a volar por las calles del pueblo y a tropezar con las paredes porque son blancas. los chicos los cazamos con el mantel, o con un trapo blanco atado entre dos palos que se extienden por encima de la cabeza. los murciélagos pegan contra la tela y entonces se juntan los dos palos y se le coge dentro. después se les clava por las alas a la pared. tienen unas alas como una tela de paraguas peluda, que se rompe sin echar sangre, como un pingajo, y el cuerpo parece el de un ratón, pero con un hociquillo de cerdo y orejas puntiagudas como el demonio. cuando se arropan en sus alas, parecen viejas envueltas en su mantón, y cuando duermen colgados de las vigas, parecen los niños pqueñitos que traen cigüeñas en el pico. cuando los han clavado a la pared, los hombres encienden un pitillo y los hacen fumar. el murciélago se emborracha con el humo y hace gestos raros con la nariz y con la tripa, y los ojillos se llenan de agua. nos reímos mucho. pero cuando les veo así, clavados a la pared, borrachos de humo, me dan lástima y les encuentro algo de niño colgando de las mantillas con la tripilla al aire. una vez les quise explicar lo que en el colegio me habían enseñado: que los murciélagos se comían los insectos del campo; pero se reiron de mucho y me contaron que eran unos bichos muy malos que, cuando la gente está dormida, le chupan la sangre, mordiéndola detrás de la oreja. una muchacha se murió así; bueno, no se murió. se fue quedando blanca, blanca, sin sangre, y nadie sabía lo que tenía, hasta que una noche le encontraron un murciélago en la cama y en la oreja una gotita de sangre. quemaron el murciélago y las cenizas se las dieron a la chica en ayunas, mezclandas con vino. y se puso buena. por eso matan todos los murciélagos que pueden.
pero después, cuando se cansaron de martirizarle, un mozo le arrancó de la pared de un manotón y el pobre bicho se quedó caído en la reguerita de peidras, moviendo las alas de trapo, rotas, y haciendo gestos con su hociquillo, y yo no pude creer que fuera capaz de matar a nadie.
tierras de vino
por último entramos en grupo cerrado, los bolsillos llenos de piedras, con tablas de la valla encendidas.
cuando yo le escuchaba me parecía esta vida una vida maravillosa de niño, un juego. sabía hablar de los hombres y de las cosas despacio, con la lentitud inexorable del castellano viejo acostumbrado a ver pasar las horas con la tierra plana delante de él y forzado a buscar la ciencia en la hierba que se mueve, en el insecto que salta.
en la primavera se llena de flores por todas partes. en las paredes, en los árboles y en la taza salen campanillas blancas y moradas con pistilos amarillos. salen amapolas rojas y naranja. naces unas rosas de un rojo muy fuerte pero que son muy dificiles de coger porque tienen pichos como cuernos. cuando llueve, se llena el jardín de caracoles. salen millares. nunca he comprendido de dónde salen y dónde se meten. hay lagartos verdes de un palmo de largo y desde la ventana de la oficina vemos cruzar las ratas del tamaño de gatitos. la iglesia está llena de ratas. ahora en el otoño los árboles se empiezan a poner amarillos y las hojas se amontan en el jardín. cuando se anda por él suena como papeles. después, cuando llueve, se pudren y el piso del jardín está siempre blando como una alfombra. los árboles son muy viejos y muy grandes y tienen pájaros a cientos. todos los pájaros del barrio, prque aquí no entran los chicos. sólo entro yo y una cura muy viejo que lleva muchos años en la iglesia y que le gusta sentarse en el jardín a rezar en su brevario. en el invierno se sienta en el sol y muchas veces se duerme.
¡misterios! ¡todos son misterios en la religión! se paseaba un santo por la orilla del mar y estaba un niño en la playa. tenía una concha, la llenaba de agua del mar y la vertía un un hoyo en la arena.
-niño, que haces? preguntó el santo.
-voy a verter el mar en este hoyo – contestó el niño.
-eso es imposible – le dijo el santo-, cómo quieres que quepa el agua del mar en un hoyo tan pequeño? es imposible.
-más imposible es averiguar por qué dios es uno y trino – contestó el niño-, y tú te empeñas en averiguarlo.
en esto comprendió el santo que hablaba con un ángel que le había enviado el señor.
se refugia de nuevo en la llama de la lámpara, blanca, roja, amarilla y negra de humo.

orhan pamuk – the black book

overcoat. button. kettle.
old ramadan nights
* ibn arabi – existentialiist 700 years before
i was imitating the man who was nothing more than the sum total of all those people i was imitating.
* trini lopez singer
* 55 days at peking
‘what’s this for?’ galip asked, pointing at the small and simple lamp base.
‘that’s a table leg,’ said the man.
‘what does this snow signify?’ he asked. ‘what does it augur?’
it dawned on him that he’d fallen in love with the girl at that magic moment when they had sat down together with the book open before him, his hand on the edge of one page and hers on the other.
so what was this story they were reading? it was a very old story, about a boy and a girl born into the same tribe. the girls name was beauty, the boys name love; born on the same day, they had taken their lessons from the same teacher, wandered along the edges of the same pool, and fallen in love. years later, when the boy asked for the girls hand, the elders set him a task: if he wished to marry beauty, he was to travel to the land of the hearts and return with a certain alchemical formula. so the boy set out on his journey, which was long and arduous: he fell down a well and was enslaved by a painted witch; the thousands of faces and images he found swirling inside a second well reduced him to a strange drunkenness; he became infatuated with the daughter of the emperor of china, because she looked like his true love; he climbed out of wells to be locked up in castles; he followed and was followed; he struggles through bitter winters, travelled great distances, seizing upon every sign and clue he found along the way; he immersed himself in the mystery of letters; he listened to other people’s stories and told others his own. at long last, poetry, who had been following him all along in disguise, came to him and said, ‘you are your beloved, and your beloved is you; cant you see this?’ that is when the boy in the story remembered how he had falled in love with the girl – when they were studying with the same teacher and reading from the same book.
the book they had read together told the story of a sultan named king jubilant and a young beauty named eternal, and though the sultan was utterly bewildered, you have already guessed that the lovers in this story too would turn out to have fallen in love while reading a 3rd love story. the lovers in the 3rd story would have fallen in love while reading a 4th, and the lovers in the 4th while reading a 5th.
gazing through the purple exhaust fumes at the pavement opposite…

paul sayer – the comforts of madness

no, i knew no one, least of all this newly cut, not dead man.
anna remained silent as she turned the car into an area of woodland. then i was struck by an amusing thought: was all this simply an elaborate charade? were we to meet accomplices of hers who would drag me from the car, cover me with leaves and soil that i might be claimed by the earth, weathered and eaten by insects, acids, moonlight?
i, the clayboots, the old rock that littered the ward, was no longer among them, frustrating them in their work; and now they would appear an iota more modern, my place available for a more hopeful place.
anna shuddered, hugged herself, and her breath was a white flame on the cold air.
the house with its many small rooms, heavy wide doors, angled windows, mirrors and paintings , seemed to be absorbing me in some way, pressing in on me, constricting , trying to digest me, always watchful. at night i would lie awake and listen to the winter wind scratching around in the woodland outside, lifting the dead leaves, making the trees crackle like fire, and i would wonder if i should ever leave the place alive. in my dreams i began to see them reaching for me, probing inside my skull with their clever fingers, teasing at my innards, producing a wayward organ by some trick, some sleight of hand which did not require incision of my flesh. and they would talk to me and baffle me with indecipherable conundrums.
eventually most began to tire and drop into the brights plastic-covered chairs, unable to muster more than a jaded irritability. i look at their faces framed by the hard, gaudy chairs – pale, blank, like almonds on a mosaic.

eoin mcnamee – resurrection man

a siege moon
james had a photograph of his own father which he kept in his wallet. he was standing with other men in his shift at the docks. they were leaning on their shovels, smoking and stroking their long moustaches like some grim interim government of the dead.
drizzle falling from a vigilante sky
there is something about an institutional corridor which lends itself to raw fear.
do you know what sensory deprivation is? you end up floating in a tank. you cant hear or see nothing. nobody can stick it for more than an hour or 2. they start to have hallucinations. there’s madness under the skin but you know that, victor. that’s what i want hacksaw to feel in his cell. i want him to have visions. spinning bright lights when he shuts the eyes. staring out the window at the sun till it becomes a wheel of fire in the fucking wilderness? because that’s when i reckon he’s going to break down and name you, am i right?
hoarse and alien, something directed from the fringes of a mob…
there had been no further knife killings and he had been avoiding coppinger. they passed each other in the lobby with no sign of recognition. there was dark talk about the circles coppinger was moving in. he had become the centre of rumour and his actions were discussed with the kind of hostility normally reserved for immigrant indians and chinese in the city. see how dirty. ryan thought that coppinger had achieved the burning belief of a despised prophet.
the ballysillan warder asked him casually one day if he knew mcclure. hiding his interest, victor said that he did. the man nodded as if victor had produced credentials. they talked about mcclure briefly. it seemed that he had presented himself to the warder as someone devoted to combating roman catholic infiltration of government positions. victor hid his smile of approval. it was mcclures style. fitting himself to the secret fear, the hidden desire. victor had seen him change his character 4 or 5 times a day, moving through a series of cold and dexterous personalities. mcclure realised that people needed to confide those dangerous thoughts. they had to have a companion to guide them through the strange architecture of their loathing. someone to share its lonely grace.
‘ryan?’ it was coppinger. his voice had an echoing quality on the phone as though he were standing in a large, frigid space.
droll lads so they are
it was the first sign of a legend taking shape, a dark freight in the soul of the city
she had to search in her own past to find anything approaching the way she saw him now. her family had belonged to a small baptist church down a side street near the promenade. the women frowned on make-up. they wore hats and carried small patent handbags as though these were the credentials of a careful belief. the plain inside of the church seemed worked down to the bare structure. the men wore black suits. they wanted god to see them as attached and dependable. it had been strange therefore to file in one sunday morning to see a different minister in the pulpit. he was younger than the usual man, with a pocked face and hair combed back. he gripped the wooden edge as though it was a struggle with satanic powers just to be standing there. his face spoke of remorseless struggle. when he spoke to say that their minister was ill and unable to attend his voice was ravaged and wintry. after the ceremony no one mentioned him and he had never returned.
it was this quality she saw in victor, the way he looked at her flat like it was a wilderness, a wind-blasted place.
on the way to tomb street he had bought a naggin of powers whiskey.

a.e. van vogt – the voyage of the space beagle

outer shell of wolfram carbide
remember man has also left his imperishable imprint on his own galaxy. in the process of rejuvenating dead suns, he has lighted fires in the form of novae that will be seen a dozen galaxies away. planets have been led from their orbits. dead worlds have come alive with verdure. oceans now swirl where deserts lay lifeless under suns hotter than Sol.

victor headley – yardie

the atmosphere was hot and smokey in the basement room. the set always played a revival selection in the early morning hours, to allow the dancers to cool off after the heavy dancehall music.
* the whip – tune
* the abyssinians
* satta massagana
shots whistled close… too close. the dull impact of large bullets against the walls and the scream of shattered glass… shadows passed in front of the window… dark shapes with barrels threateningly pointing towards the house. D. felt the familiar tightening of the stomach, the dry throat… thoughts racing through his brain. Then the shrill sound of an approaching siren, very near, right behind the shot-riddled door. D. waited, tense as a bow-string, frantically trying to figure a way out of the trap. there had to be a way out, there always was. the siren wailed persistently, covering all other noises and drilling through D.’s mind. suddenly, the door exploded in a cloud of dark smoke… but the siren didn’t stop… D. jumped up, ready to make a run for it, his last run. he opened his eyes and recognised the poster of the grinning dreadlocked child on the bedroom wall. the doorbell was ringing…
blowing air from between his parched lips, D. wiped the beads of sweat from his brow and got up. unsteadily, he made his way to the door. he saw sticks’ scarred profile through the peephole. he opened up, let him in, and put the lock back on.
‘how you love ring people’s bell so, man,’ D. muttered, stepping into the living room.
‘den nah you tell me fe come check you, don?’ sticks laughed.
all the same, D. was glad he had been awakened from the nightmare. he sat on the sofa straightening his thoughts.
‘look like you did have a rough night.’
thick, white smoke flew up the pipe, enveloping D. in a cloud. a few more pulls and D. leaned back in the chair, the pipe still in his hand. the frown on his face had been replaced by a frozen half-grin.

gary snyder – the practice of the wild

“whoever told people that ‘mind’ means thoughts, opinions, ideas, and concepts? mind means trees, fence posts, tiles, and grasses,” says dogen (the philosopher and founder of the soto school of japanese zen) in his funny cryptic way.

patrick macgill – moleskin joe

from the start you’ve striven; you’re striving still-
no road runs straight to the top of the hill!
bitter the buffet, the stress and strain,
yet threshing removes the chaff from the grain!
and god, for the work, when judging the same,
gives much for the job, but more for the aim.
~wayside wisdom
help me to crook an elbow, joe?
“can i speak as man to man?” carroty inquired.
“man to man be hanged!” roared the ganger. “when you speak to me, you’ve got to speak as if you are talkin’ to the Lord Almighty. man to man! and a damned nipper too!”
black obscurity bundled itself into angles, recesses and unfathomable corners, as if cloaking something fell and hideous.
“what should he have done?”
“get married to the girl if she returned his love.”
“he did,” said davis, “and regretted it ever afterwards.”
“but he should have considered this beforehand,” said the priest.
“they never considered, not, anyway, at that period of the world’s history.” the face of davis had not changed. “the life then, father! careless, unmoral, gallant, french. the sinful young men were the fashion then. nothing was too good for them. promiscuity, adultery, was exuberant life force seeking an outlet. funk saw sin with kindly eyes. young men were going to die. young girls gave them their bodies; old women gave them their blessing. medals for the war-babies! free medical treatment for the prostitutes!”
doin’ 3 months’ hard because he trusted his pal, that red-haired limb of the devil, tom jones.
pig-iron and sclattergruff are out o’t, said moleskin. they love work so much that they could lie beside it all day and look at it.
and did the rest of the journey at a pace that was funereal.
i’ve been talkin’ through my hat
in the distance a star-flecked leaden blue expanse told of the waterworks. now and then a breeze rose from nowhere, flipped him coldly on the face and passed.

john berger – lilac and flag

the sand was twice as heavy as usual. with his feet wet and water trickling down his neck and his right shovelling shoulder a little stiff, he thought of zsuzsa. he thought, as men have always done under rough conditions, of her warmth and softness, of how she was the opposite of shifting wet sand in squalls of rain
whatever happens, brother-in-law, don’t forget, zsuzsa cant read.
meaning what?
always give her a second chance.
i’m going to disappear, said zsuzsa, on their way down to the city.
she put herself behind sucus and pressed her body hard against his.
walk! she ordered.
she moved each of her legs with his, and clung very close to him. anyone approaching would have seen the silhouette of a single figure.
she’s gone! she whispered.
sucus was burning with desire.
as an old woman, i know. burning is the word. his zizi felt as if it would spurt blood if it weren’t cooled. and his blood felt as if it were boiling. this was happening inside his body. outside his body it was worse. at his age, time is very long and it’s length breeds a terrible impatience. he felt he would be swallowed up by time if he didn’t have her.
where can we go? he muttered over his shoulder. go on walking, big one, she’s gone!
zsuzsa’s desire was different from his. nothing threatened to swallow her up. she didn’t have to cross any open space to arrive where she wanted to be with sucus. she didn’t have to leave her forest. the forest was her nature. she wandered about in it, she lay down in it, she looked up from it into the sky. she knew the calls of many of its animals, but not all. and she believed sucus was in the forest. all she had to do was to find where he was hiding. he was never in the same spot. and he was never far. what she wanted most to do was to uncover him and cover him and uncover him again. most berries are hidden y leaves, some are protected by thorns. her desire was to find in her forest, close to the ground, the cluster of sucus. since she never had to leave the forest, it didn’t matter how long it took.
it was often difficult on rat hill to tell the difference between what was falling down and what was going up.

leo tolstoy – resurrection

deathbed letter
where love is, god is strider
nekhlyudov, like all people, consisted of 2 persons. one was spiritual, seeking benefit for himself only if it would be a benefit to others; the other was animal, seeking benefit only for himself, and for that benefit prepared to sacrifice a whole world of benefit to others.
one thing is obvious: he is not an outrageous villain, he is the most ordinary person imaginable – anyone can see that – and the only reason he is what he is is that he happened to find himself in the circumstances that create people like that. so, surely it is obvious that, if we don’t want there to be any boys like this, we should strive to get rid of the conditions which encourage the development of such miserable creatures.
but what are we doing? we seize one lad who happens to get caught, knowing full well there are thousands of others who don’t get caught, and we put him in prison, exposed to conditions of complete idleness or back-breaking, senseless hard labour in the company of others who are no different, people who have collapsed and fallen by the wayside in life, and then we send them away from moscow to siberia to mix with individuals who are utterly depraved.
we may want to eliminate the conditions that give rise to such people, but not only are we not doing anything about it, we are actively encouraging the institutions in which they occur. everybody knows which institutions – the plants and factories, workshops, bar-rooms, pubs and brothels. not only are we not eliminating such institutions, we regard them as essential, we encourage them, we regulate them.
so, we are bringing up not one individual but millions of people, and then we catch one of them and imagine we have achieved something and protected ourselves, and we think nothing else needs to be done, now that we have sent him away from moscow to siberia.
the service began.
the service involved the priest dressing up in a special outfit of strangely uncomfortable brocade, cutting up bread and handing out bits of it round on a dish, then putting them into a chalice with wine, while all the time reciting various names and prayers. meanwhile the deacon first of all read out an incessant stream of different slavonic prayers, then sang them through turn and turn about with a choir of convicts, the prayers being difficult to understand and made worse so by being read and sung too quickly. the main content of the prayers consisted of a desire for the welfare of the sovereign emperor and his family…

and it never occurred to any of the participants, from the governor and priest down to maslova, that the same jesus whose name had been wheezily repeated so many times by the priest in the weirdest imaginable words of praise had proscribed everything that had been going on there, not only proscribed the senseless, verbose and blasphemous mumbo-jumbo performed by the priest and master over the bread and wine, but also proscribed in the clearest possible terms the idea of some people calling others their teachers and masters, and also worship in temples, since every person should worship alone in isolation, and proscribed the temples themselves, saying that he had come to destroy them, and that people should worship not in a temple but in spirit and in truth, though he mainly proscribed any sitting in judgement, imprisonment, humiliation, torture or execution, all of which went on there, and proscribed all forms of violence, saying that he had come to set prisoners free.

it never occurred to any of the participants that everything done there had been the grossest blasphemy and a mockery of the same christ in whose name everything had been done.

lapsing into french
as far as he could tell, the criminals could be divided into 5 categories:
one of theses, the first, consisted of totally innocent people, victims of a miscarriage of justice… about 7%
the second category consisted of persons sentenced for crimes committed under exceptional circumstances: when provoked, for example, or in a fit of jealousy, or while drunk, etc., crimes which those wielding judgement and punishment would surely have committed themselves in similar circumstances… more than half.
the third category consisted of people punished for doing things they saw as perfectly natural or positively good, but which were considered to be crimes by people who knew nothing about them, the men who made the laws. this category included dealers in bootleg liquor, smugglers and trespassers picking herbs or collecting firewood in huge forests privately owned or belonging to the crown. marauding highlanders came under this heading, along with unbelievers who went about robbing churches…
the fourth category consisted of men criminalised only because in moral terms they stood head and shoulders above average numbers in the community. such were the religious dissidents; such were the poles and circassians, freedom fighters for independence; such were the politicals – socialists and strikers condemned for opposing the authorities. as far as he could judge, the proportion of these people, some of the finest elements in society, was very large.
the fifth and final category was made up of persons far more sinned against by society than sinning against it. they were the outsiders, stultified by continual oppression and temptation… who seemed to have been systematically reduced by their living conditions to a level on which actions deemed to be crimes become inevitable… this class included a large number of thieves and murderers…
his eyes took un the countryside that was gliding by – orchards and woods, yellowing rye-fields, strips of oars still green and black furrows in dark-green flowering potato-beds. it all shone with a kind of glaze: green was greener, yellow was yellower, black was blacker.
imagine a problem in psychology: to find a way of getting people in our day and age – christians, humanitarians, nice, kind people – to commit the most heinous crimes without any feeling of guilt. there is only one solution – doing just what we do now: you make them governors, superintendents, officers or policemen…

miguel de unamuno – niebla

cruzaba las nubes, águila refulgente, con las poderosas alas perladas de rocío, fijos los ojos de presa en la niebla solar, dormido el corazón en dulce aburrimiento al amparo del pecho forjado en tempestades; en derredor, en silencio que hacen los rumores remotos de la tierra, y allá, en lo alto, en la cima del cielo, dos estrellas mellizas derramando bálsamo invisible. degarró el silencio en chillido estridente que decía: “La Correspondecia!…” y vislumbró Augosto la luz de un nuevo día.
trae leche, Domingo; pero tráela pronto- le dijo a su criado no bien éste le hubo abierto la puerta.
sí señór mío, yo soy anarquista, anarquista místico
al servirle la comida, su fiel Liduvina se le quedó mirando.
“qué miras? pregunto Augosto.
“me parece que hay mudanza.
“de dónde sacas eso?
“el señorito tiene otra cara.
“lo crees?
“naturalmente! y qué, se arregla lo de la pianista?
“Liduvina! Liduvina!
“tiene usted razón, señorito; pero me interesa tanto su felicidad!
“quién sabe qué es eso?
“es verdad.
y los dos miraron al suelo, como si el secreto de la felicidad estuviese debajo de él.
arrancole del soliloquio un estallido de goce que parecía brotar de la serenidad del cielo. un par de muchachas reían junto a él, y era su risa como el gorjeo de dos pájaros en una enramada de flores.
y esa naturalidad suya, es inocencia o es malicia? pero acaso no hay nada más malicioso que la inocencia, o bien, más inocente que la malicia.

jesus carrasco – intemperie

una ola extraña y minúscula recorre su frente como una lija de babas que le rasca la piel dolorida.
cruzaron por un sembrado yermo y salieron a un nuevo camino por el que avanzaron hacia el oeste. la pérdida repentina del norte hizo al chico pensar que su discurrir no tenía rumbo y que, el viejo, más que buscar pastos, sólo parecía interesado en deambular. el lo que a él respectaba, se alejaban del pueblo.
tenía lamparones en la camisa y jirones colgando como cerdas en las bocas de las piernas
julio era el mejor mes para atrapar a la cría de la perdiz
sequía
el asno bufó por los ollares como un niño enfadado hasta terminar de soltar todo el dolor que le había provocado la pedrada.
todos nadarían ahítos en sus riquezas
la luna creciente bañaba la alberca con tono azulados y en un momento vio la párpados húmedos del viejo y cómo algunas lágrimas corrían por sus pómulos de calavera

jason webster – duende

mira si yo te camelo, te camelo de verdad
jalar – eat
parné – money

brian waddington – snapshots

c. s. foster – the happy return

melissa p. – one hundred strokes of the brush before bed

david w. frasure – pájaros azules

paul bowles – let it come down

roberto bolaño – la literatura nazi en américa

* tablada – haikus
‘el primero de los cuentos trata sobre un libanés que llega a buenos aires e intenta invertir en un negocio fiable sus ahorros. el libanés se enamora de una carnicera argentina y juntos deciden montar un restaurante especializado en carnes de todo tipo. todo les va bien hasta que comienzan a aparecer los familiares pobres del libanés. finalmente la carnicera soluciona todos los problemas liquidando uno por uno a los libaneses, auxiliada por su pinche de cocina apodado monito, con que sostiene una relación extramarital. el cuento termina con una escena bucólica: la carnicera, su marido y monito se van a pasar un dia al campo y preparan un asado bajo los cielos libérrimos de la patria.

fritjof capra – the tao of physics

rene descartes who based his view of nature on a fundamental division into 2 separate and independent realms; that of mind (res cogitans), and that of matter (res extensa). the ‘cartesian’ division allowed scientists to treat matter as dead and completely separate from themselves, and to see the world as a multitude of different objects assembled into a huge machine. such a world view was held by isaac newton who constructed his mechanics on its basis and made it the foundation of classical physics. from the 2nd half of the 17th century to the end of the 19th century, the mechanistic newtonian model of the universe dominated all scientific thought. it was paralleled by the image of a monarchical god who ruled the world from above by imposing his divine law on it.
the electromagnetic spectrum:
cosmic rays
gamma rays
x-rays
light waves
radar
radiowaves
fully realised human beings, in the words of chuang tzu, ‘by their stillness become sages, by their movement kings’.
heraclitus of epheus, the greek taoist said ‘everything flows’
the soto or ‘gradual’ school (of zen) avoids the shock methods of rinzai and aims at the gradual maturing of the zen student… it advocated ‘quiet sitting’ and the use of one’s ordinary work as 2 forms of meditation.
we have come to recognise probability as a fundamental feature of the atomic reality which governs all processes, and even the existence of matter. subatomic particles do not exist with certainty at definite places, but rather show ‘tendencies to exist’, and atomic events do not occur with certainty at definite times and in definite ways, but rather show, ‘tendencies to occur’.
henry stapp – ‘the observed system is required to be isolated in order to be defined, yet interacting in order to be observed.’
it is interesting that the germ of the theory of relativity was contained in a paradox which occurred to einstein when he was only 16. he tried to imagine how a beam of light would look to an observer who travelled along with it at the speed of light.
relativity theory has shown that space is not 3 dimensional and time is not a separate entity. both are intimately and inseparably connected to form a 4 dimensional contiuum which is called ‘space-time’.
hinduism holds that all shapes and structures around us are created by a mind under the spell of maya, and it regards our tendency to attach deep significance to them as the basic human illusion.
maya – ‘mind only’
in a broad sense, the bootstrap idea, although fascinating and useful, is unscientific… science, as we know it, requires a language based on some unquestioned framework. semantically, therefore, an attempt to explain all the concepts can hardly be called ‘scientific’.
when a monk asked tozan, who was weighing some flax, ‘what is buddha?’ tozan said ‘this flax weighs 3 pounds’. and when joshu was asked why bodhidharma came to china, he replied, ‘an oak tree in the garden’.

arturo berea – la ruta

¿tu sabes que soy judía? mi nombre verdadero es miriam. mi padre es platero. cincela la plata con un martillo pequeñito. mi abuelo era platero y el suyo también. mis dedos son la herencia de generaciones de hombres que han manejado y tocado el oro y la plata.
los españoles son malos conquistadores – dijo -, pero son buenos colonizadores. el español tiene una adaptabilidad peculiar. puede adoptar todas las características del mundo que le rodea y sin embargo mantener su personalidad intacta. la consecuencia es que a la larga absorbe el pueblo que ha invadido.
marinero, sube al palo
y dile a la madre mía
si se acuerda de aquel hijo
que en áfrica tenía
* una murena
atracaba el barco, se fijaba la pasarela y comenzaban a desembarcar. la mayoría de ellos, campesinos y jornaleros de toda españa. llegaban los andaluces con sus chaquetillas cortas de dril blanco o caqui, a menudo en mangas de camisa, los pantalones sujetos con un trozo de cuerda o una soga. solían ser delgados y erectos, morenos, flacos, con tipo agitanado, los ojos negros abiertos en una mezcla de aprensión y curiosidad, charloteando rapidísimos en un chorro de obscenidades.
llegaban los hombres de las masetas de castilla y de las altas sierra, taciturnos, pequeños de estatura, huesudos, requemados de sol, aire, escarchas y nieves, con sus pantalones de pana negra, atados con una cuerda en la boca sobre los calzoncillos de punto largos y espesos, que a su vez estaban atados con cintas colgantes sobre gruesos calcetines azules y rojos de confección casera. de vez en cuando, toda la alienación se deshacía: a uno de los reclutas se la habían desatado la cintas de los calzoncillos.
vascos, gallegos y asturianos solían llegar mezlados en el mismo barco – un transatlántico ya catarroso de vejez -, y el contraste entre estos tres grupos era fascinante. los recios y altos vascos, enfundados en sus blusas azules y con la inevitable boina colgada de sus cabezas diminutas, eran serios y silenciosos; cuando a veces hablaban en su lenguaje ininteligible, lo hacían con palabras reposadas y firmes. se sentía la fuerza de su individualidad y de su ancestral cultura. los gallegos solían ser procedented de las aldeas más miserables de la región; la mayoría estaban increíblementesucios, pringosos; frequentemente descalzos. hacíanfrente a la nueva catástrofe que había caído sobre ellos, y que consideraban peor que la miseria de sus hogares, con una resignación de los gallegos, tanto como de la gravedad de los vascos.
de las provincias de mediterráneo llegaban también viejos transatlánticos de panza negra, repletos de reclutas de cataluña, aragón, valencia y alicante. los reclutas de las montañas de aragón y cataluña se diferenciaban en el lenguaje, pero en lo demás eran semejantes: primitivos y rudos, casi salvajes. los catalanes de la costa, en contacto con la civilización mediterránea, eran completamente distintos de sus propios concuidadanos de la montaña. las gentes de levante, con sus blusas negras y sus alpargatas de cintas trenzadas sobre los tobillos, saludables de aspectos, pero linfáticos y un poco fofos, con la promesa ya de una barriga temprana, formaban un grupo aparte.
contemplándoselos, me parecía a mí que un madrileño era menos extranjero lado a lado de un neoyorquino que lo es un vasco de un gallego, cuyos pueblos no están a cien kilómetros de distancia.

s. guzmán-c – vagabond in mexico

h.g. wells – the invisible man – the time machine

daylight found the vicar and his wife, a quaintly-costumed little couple, still marvelling about on their own ground floor by the unnecessary light of the guttering candle.
people down the village heard shouts and shrieks, and looking up the street saw the coach and horses violently firing out its humanity.
“it sounds plausible enough to-night,” said the medical man; “but wait untill to-morrow. wait for the common sense of the morning.”
i have already spoken of the great palaces dotted about among the variegated greenery, some in ruins and some still occupied. here and there rose a white or silvery figure in the waste garden of earth, here and there came the sharp vertical line of some cupola or obelisk. there were no hedges, no signs of property rights, no evidences of agriculture; the whole earth had become a garden.
as i stood there musing over this too perfect triumph of man, the full moon, yellow and gibbous, came up out of an overflow of silver light in the north-east.
i put weena, still motionless, down upon a turfy bole, and very hastily, as my first lump of camphor waned, i began collecting sticks and leaves. here and there out of the darkness round me the morlocks’ eyes shone like carbuncles.

cormac mccarthy – no country for old men

the oxford book of french short stories

emile zola – story of a madman

from then onwards maurin could not do anything that was not interpreted as the action of a madman. as soon as he went out, he became the focus of everyone’s eyes, monitoring his every move and leading to strange interpretations of every word he uttered: nobody more resembles a madman than someone who is perfectly sane. if his foot slipped, if he looked up at the sky, if he blew his nose, people would laugh and shrug their shoulders in pity. street urchins followed him about as though he wee some strange animal. at the end of a month, everyone in belleville knew that maurin was mad, stark, staring mad.
people would whisper extraordinary things about him. one woman said she had met him on one of the outer boulevards walking in the rain without a hat. it was quite true: it had just been blown off his head by a gust of wind. another woman declared that he used to walk round his garden at midnight every night, carrying the sort of candle used in churches and chanting the funeral service. this seemed quite terrifying. the truth was that the woman had seen maurin on one occasion using a lamp to discover the slugs which were eating his lettuces.

joris-karl huysmans – knapsack at the ready

woe is me, i’m full o’ sorrow:
loved only by a little sparrer!

birago diop – an errand

m’bar-the-hyena stopped, lifted his nose, sniffed to the right, sniffed to the left, then resumed his way, a little less hurriedly it seemed. the smell grew stronger, the hyena stopped again, bared his teeth, thrust his nose to the right, to the left, into the air, then turned round and sniffed to the four winds.

raymond carver – will you please be quiet, please?

short stories from the 19th century – selected by david stuart davies

charles dickens – the black veil

occasionally , a filthy-looking woman would make her appearance from the door of a dirty house, to empty the contents of some cooking utensil into the gutter in front or scream after a little slipshod girl who had contrived to stagger a few yards from the door under the weight of a sallow infant almost as big as herself; but scarcely anything was stirring around; and so much of the prospect as could be faintly traced throught the cold damp mist which hung heavily over it presented a lonely and dreary appearance perfectly in keeping with the objects we have described.

anthony trollope – the journey to panama

the waters look cool and sweet, but i own i am afraid of the bourne beyond.
i’m sure i hope everything will be right, said amelia, as she absolutely kissed her enemy.
* the ithmus

guy de maupassant – the necklace

the sight of her little breton maid-of-all-work roused her forlorn repinings and frantic yearnings.

o. henry – one dollar’s worth
now i know you, mexico sam!

ian mcewan – saturday

the crepsucular drug dealers, the ruined old lady with her wild, haunting calls. go away! she’ll shout for hours at a time, and squawk harshly, sounding like some marsh bird or zoo creature.
he steps under the shower, a forceful cascade pumped down from the third floor. when this civilisation falls, when the romans, whoever they are this time round, have finally left and the new dark ages begin, this will be one of the first luxuries to go. the old folk crouching by their pete fires will tell their disbelieving grandchildren of standing naked midwinter under jet streams of hot clean water, of lozenges of scented soaps and of viscous amber and vermilion liquids they rubbed into hair to make it glossy and more voluminous than it really was, and of thick white towels and big as togas, waiting on warming racks.
perowne has a mild fondness, or at least a complete lack of disgust, for institutional food.
the quiet riot
when tiredness itself prevents sleep.

herman melville – billy budd, sailor

a superb figure, tossed up as by the horns of taurus against the thunderous sky, cheerily hallooing to the strenuous file along the spar.
* agamemnon
and this sailor-way of taking christianity, full of transcendent miracles, was received long ago on tropic isles by any superior savage so called – a tahitian, say, of captain cook’s time or shortly after that time. out of natural courtsey he received, but did not appropriate. it was like a gift placed in the palm of an outstretched hand upon which the fingers do not close.
the night so luminous on the spar-deck but otherwise on the cavernous ones below, levels so like the tiered galleries in a coal mine – the luminous night passed away. but, like the prophet in the chariot disappearing in heaven and dropping his mantle to elisha, the withdrawing night transferred its pale robe to the breaking day. a meek shy light appeared in the east, where stretched a diaphanous fleece of white furrowed vapour. that light slowly waxed. suddenly eight bells was struck aft, responded to by one louder metallic stroke from forward. it was 4 o’clock in the morning.

jean rhys – wide sargasso sea

marooned
the black and gilt clock on a shelf struck 4.
his name was disastrous because his godmother thought it such a pretty word.

chris jarmey – thorsons principles of shiatsu

fear [water], anger [wood], joy [fire], pensiveness [earth], and grief [metal].
* ankylosing spondylitis

john williams – butcher’s crossing

the beans were lukewarm and tasteless even without salt, and the hominy grits were mushy and barely warmed through.
the great plain swayed beneath them as they went steadily westward. the rich buffalo grass, upon which their animals fattened even during the arduous journey, changed its colour throughout the day; in the morning, in the pinkish rays of the early sun, it was nearly grey; later, in the yellow light of the mid-morning sun, it was a brilliant green; at noon it took on a bluish cast; in the afternoon, in the intensity of the sun, at a distance, the blades lost their individual character and through the green showed a distinct cast of yellow, so that when a light breeze whipped across, a living colour seemed to run through the grass, to disappear and reappear from moment to moment. in the evening after the sun had gone down, the grass took on a purplish hue as if it had absorbed all the light from the sky and would not give it back.
he walked in such a way that it appeared his very movement was caressing the contours of the ground; and his gaze upon the prairie seemed to andrews as open and free and limitless as the land that occasioned his regard.
the darkness upon his closed eyelids was shot with spears of light that whirled dizzily; he was forced to open them again and observe the trackless and empty way they went.
meat and coffee
the wind slapped into andrews’s face and swept tears from his eyes.
the breeze that had died when the first snowflakes began to fall came up again; it swirled the snow about them, whipping it into their faces, causing them to squint their eyes against its force. andrews’s jaw began to ache; he realised that for some moments he had been clenching his teeth together with all the strength he had; his lips, drawn back over his teeth in an aimless snarl, smarted and pained him as the cold pushed against the tiny cracks and rawness there. he relaxed his jaws and dropped his head, hunching his shoulders against the cold which drove through the thin clothing upon his flesh. he looped the reins about his saddle horn and grasped it with both hands, letting his horse find its own way.
he set the kettle on the fire

ian fleming – james bond, live and let die

* patrick leigh fermor – the travellers tree
in front of his eyes, the rain came down in swift, slanting strokes – italic script across the unopened black cover that hid the secret hours that lay ahead. [end of chapter]
“guess ah jist nacherlly gits tahd listenin’ at yuh,” said the man languidly. “why’nt yuh hush yo’ mouff’n let me ‘joy mahself ‘n peace ‘n qui-yet.”
“is yuh wan’ me tuh go ‘way, honey?”
“yuh kin suit yo sweet self.”
the girl’s naked stomach started slowly to revolve in time with the rhythm. she swept the black feathers across and behind her again, and her hips started to grind in time with the bass drum. the upper part of her body was motionless. the black feathers swirled again, and now her feet were shifting and her shoulders. the drums beat louder. each part of her body seemed to be keeping a different time. her lips were bared slightly from her teeth. her nostrils began to flare. her eyes glinted hotly through the diamond slits. it was a sexy, pug-like face – chienne was the only word bond could think of.
the drums thudded faster, a complexity of interlaced rhythms. the girl tossed the big fan off the floor, held her arms up above her head. her whole body began to shiver. her belly moved faster. round and round, in and out. her legs straddled. her hips began to revolve in a wide circle. suddenly she plucked the sequin star off her right breast and threw it into the audience. the first noise came from the spectators, a quiet growl. then they were silent again. she plucked off the other star. again the growl and then silence. the drums began to crash and roll. sweat poured off the drummers. their hands fluttered like grey flannel on the pale membranes. their eyes were bulging, distant. their heads were slightly bent to one side as if they were listening. they hardly glanced at the girl. the audience panted softly, liquid eyes bulging and rolling.
the sweat was shining all over her now. her breasts and stomach glistened with it. she broke into great shuddering jerks. her mouth opened and she screamed softly. her hands snaked down to her sides and suddenly she had torn away the strip of lace. she threw it into the audience. there was nothing now but a single black g-string. the drums went into a hurricane of sexual rhythm. she screamed softly again and then, her arms stretched before her as a balance, she started to lower her body down to the floor and up again. faster and faster. bond could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough. he felt his own hands gripping the tablecloth. his mouth was dry.
no sensayuma. “da guy ain’t got no sensayuma.”
the man deliberated. he looked up at leiter. he had small close-set eyes as cruel as a painless dentist’s.

gunter grass – crabwalk

i’ve never felt comfortable with people who stare at one spot untill it smoulders, smokes, bursts into flame.
* b&w film – night fell over gotenhaufen

cees nooteboom – roads to santiago

reyezuelos, little kings
* ronald fraser – blood of spain
further along, a classic scene of two spanish gentlemen having lunch. one of them is a charles aznavour type with eyelashes so long a child could sit on them, the other is more of a visigoth (here all races and pedigrees have been preserved through the ages), upright, stern and silent, surrounded by the trappings of everyday spainish life, their huge jug of wine, their joint of mutton, their black cigarettes with which they smoke the meat, and eventually their black, harsh coffees and large balloon glasses of syrupy anís, voluminous enough for a fair-sized goldfish. one of them talks and gesticulates, the other listens, the children cry papá! – accentuating the last syllable so as not to confuse him with the pope – and i can see all of us sitting here in the infinite expanse of the spanish continent.
ever heard of sigüenza, san baudelio, el burgo de osma, albarracín, santa maria de la huerta?
on zurbarán (artist) on re-reading my notes – so far as i can decipher them now – one thing always comes to the fore: the matter, the fabric, what in dutch we call de stof.
* the order of calatrava, the oldest in spain, founded by cistercian monks in 1158 to drive out the moors
* johan brouwer – de schatten van medina-sidonia (the treasures of medina-sidonia) a bizarre book by a dutch about spanish civil war retitled: in de schaduw van de dood (in the shadow of death)
wada lubim, guadalupe, hidden water. the black madonna goes by an arabic name.
the inhabitants of guadalupe were hieronymites, late disciples of that wondrous and contradictory saint who was portrayed an infinite number of times, as cardinal and doctor of the church, as hermit in the wilderness, as self-chastiser, as translator. among his attributes are a skull, a lion and a cardinal’s hat, yet he was never cardinal and the lion is legend (he is held to have taken a thorn out of the beast’s paw). and there were those who doubted his saintliness, for all the beating of his breast with a stone. “he did well thus to use that stone,” pope sixtus observed. “without it he would never have been numbered among the saints.” the genius who translated vulgate was possessed of an irascible temperament and an ego uncrushable by any stone. he was a savage polemicist and as such wielded a virulent pen, he was one of the greatest philologists of antiquity, a masterful stylist, patron saint of all translators who came after him, someone to be invoked by those wrestling with infernal problems of the alchemical process whereby the gold of one language is transmuted into the gold of the other
* valery larbaud – sous l’invocacation de saint jerome (1946)
… the hieronymites have almost died out, there are but a few left, and those only in spain. monastic orders tend to disappear like rare birds. their feathers were white and brown, chiaoscuro, brown scapulars on white tunics.
the fall of the (roman) imperium was followed by a witches’ ball. marauding germanic tribes, the unaccountable momentum of people streaming over the pyrenees. alani, suevi, vandals; plague and famine, the first martyrs, persecution of christians, then the emergence of the visigothic kings and their conversion, and again christianity.
this village hangs in the valley like an eyrie (large nest of eagle)
sefarad (jewish name for spain)
the trails of brother hare and sister salmon
this time it is only the women. just women! it’s as if they want to kick off the world with their fiery heels
* l.p. harvey – islamic spain
tierras pobres, tierras tristes,
tan tristes que tienen alma
(written in arabic calligrahy in alhambra:
so close are the hard and the flowing
that you cannot tell which of the two is streaming-
each time i arrived at the wrong hour for the church and the right hour for the butcher.
the galician countryside is the setting of fairy tales and fables, witches and wizards, of sudden apparitions and enchanted forests, roaming spirits and celtic mists, even if you walk in the gathering gloom of nightfall for just an hour or 2 you will be caught in an illusion, the path is not a path, the bushes are horses, the voice i hear comes from another world.
granite… when it rains it gleams and comes alive.

robert graves – i, claudius

franz kafka – the castle

carson mccullers – the heart is a lonely hunter

then one day the greek became ill. he sat up in bed with his hands on his fat stomach and big, oily tears rolled down his cheeks.
‘god, i’m thirsty,’ jake said. ‘i feel like the whole russian army marched through my mouth in its stocking feet.’
everybody said miss minner had sold her brains to a famous doctor for ten thousand dollars, so that after she was dead he could cut them up and see why she was so smart.
the spanish teacher had travelled once in europe. she said that in france the people carried home loaves of bread without having them wrapped up. they would stand talking on the streets and hit the bread on a lamp post. and there wasn’t any water in france only wine.
in the quiet, secret night he was by herself again.
the rain was silver on the windowpanes and the sky was wet and cold and grey.
they will all be full of words and long dreams from the heart.
across the room willie was playing his harp. buddy and highboy were listening. the music was dark and sad. when the song was finished willie polished his harp on the front of his shirt. ‘i so hungry and thirsty the slobber in my mouth done wet out the tune.’
‘us should have left before the dew dried’

nicholas freeling – valparaiso

laurie lee – a moment of war

the czechs scribbled pamphlets and passed them to each other for correction; while the russians seemed to come and go mysteriously as by tricks of the light.
[talking of guns] i have five at home, said ulli [the dutchman], for ducks on the water. if i’m knowing here they’re needing, i am bringing all of them with me.
…guns crackling and chattering in all directions, whole long arcs of tracer bullets looped across the sky in a brilliant skein of stars.
we saw dark walls, a few posters, wet flags, sodden snow. sleet blew from a heavy sky. i had known spain in the bright, healing light of the sun, when even its poverty seemed coloured with pride.
* invergordon, scapa flow
this was a spain stretched dead on a slab, a frozen cadaver, where, for all our early enthusiasms, we seemed to have come too late, not as defenders but as midnight scavangers.
what was i doing in these spanish mountains, anonymous of purpose
largo caballero

henry miller – plexus

* andreyev
* the lost continent of mu
* lafcadio hearn
you just grouse
* the diary of a futurist
* my life as an echo
when you get off the train you walk leisurely down pennsylvania avenue, as if you were taking a stroll. you’ll meet 3 dogs. the first 2, theyll be fake dogs.
one lingers before the verbal structures which palpitate like living houses.
she sees only what she is talking about, whether it’s fog, cats, idiots, remote cities, floating islands or floating kidneys.
france? maybe. maybe not. 40 million frenchmen was a lot to swallow in one dose. if anything, i preferred spain…

raymond carver – cathedral

miljenko jergovic – sarajevo marloboro

dunjaluk (bosnian word meaning all over the word)
for some people ‘all over the world’ is just the distance between marijindvor and bascarsija, and for other’s five continents and seven seas. you end up happy or you don’t – and that’s all
it was a sign that truth wasn’t worth very much

hermann hesse – the prodigy

on the square before the mill stood large and small presses, carts, baskets, sack full of fruit, tubs, vats and barrels, whole mountains of pulp, wooden leavers, wheelbarrows and other empty vehicles. the presses were active, and gave off a series of creaks, moans and crunching noises. most of them were green lacquered and the green with the yellow-brown of the pulp, the colour of the apple baskets, the bright green river, the barefoot children and the clear autumn sunlight gave an impression of joy, zest for life and plenty to all the onlookers. the crunching up of the apples was a rough and appetizing sound. no one who strolled up and heard it could resist seizing hold of an apple and biting at it. the juice, fresh and sweet, flowed from the nozzle in a thick, reddish-yellow stream, laughing in the sun; whoever came up and saw the sight, soon asked for a glass to try a sample; then he would stand there with his eyes watering as he felt its sweetness and comfort coursing through him. and the sweet apple juice filled the air around with its cheerful, strong delicious smell. it is the best smell of the whole year, the very essence of ripeness and harvest, and it is good to get into one’s nostrils before the oncoming winter for then you remember with gratitude a host of good and wonderful things: gentle may rain, rippling sunshine, cool autumn-morning dew, tender spring sunlight, shining summer heat, glowing white and rose-red blossom, the ripe red brown gleam of the fruit trees before the fruit is gathered and among it all the beauty and pleasure the year’s cycle has brought with it.
these were good days for everybody. the wealthy and superior folk, in so far as they condescended to appear in person, weighed their large apples in their hands, counted their dozen or more sacks, drank samples of cider from a silver beaker and let it be known that there was no drop of water in their cider. the poor people could only provide a single sack of fruit. they sampled the juice in glasses or earthenware dishes and added water, but they were not a whit less proud or cheerful about it. those who, for any reason, were unable to produce any cider themselves, went along to neighbours or acquaintances, from one press to another, were given a glass of it to drink, pocketed an apple and showed by their connoisseur remarks that they too understood their part in this business.

partick suskind – pigeon

and nowhere did he succeed in getting a firm clam on things, in establishing a new fixed point that might support and orient him. hardly was the straw hat on his right in focus, when a bus dragged his gaze down the street to his left, only to hand it over a few yards farther on to a white convertible sports car, which then drove it back along the street to the right, where in the meantime the straw hat had disappeared; his eye roamed frantically among the throng of passers-by, among the throng of hats, got snagged on a rose swaying on a totally diifferent hat, wrenched itself away, and finally fell back to the edge of the step, but once again could not rest there, strayed away, fidgeted from point to point, from spot to spot, from line to line…

raymond carver – fires

* celine, katherine anne porter, isaac babel, walter van tilburg clark, hortense calisher, curt harnack, robert penn warren – blackberry winter, william gass
the mosque in jaffa:

i lean over the balcony of the minaret.
my head swims.
a few steps away the man who intends
to betray me begins by pointing out
key sights-
market church prison whorehouse
killed, he says.
words lost in the wind but
drawing a finger across his throat
so i will get it.
he grins.
the key words fly out –
turks greeks arabs jews
trade worship love murder
a beautiful woman.
he grins again at such foolishness.
he knows i am watching him.
still he whistles confidently
as we start down the steps
bumbling against each other going down
commingling breath and bodies in the narrow spiralling dark.
downstairs, his friends are waiting
with a car. we all of us light cigarettes
and think what to do next.
time, like the light in his dark eyes,
is running out as we climb in.

the current

these fish have no eyes
these silver fish that come to me in dreams,
scattering their roe and milt
in the pockets of my brain.

but there’s one that comes-
heavy, scarred, silent as the rest,
that simply holds against the current,

closing its dark mouth against
the current, closing and opening
as it holds to the current

milan kundera – the book of laughter and forgetting

kafka – the czech word for jackdaw
the idiocy of the guitar is eternal
over the last 200 years the blackbird has abandoned the woods for the city – first in great britain at the end of the eighteenth century, then several decades later in paris and the ruht valley. throughout the nineteenth century it captured the cities of europe one after the other. it settled in vienna and prague around 1900, and journeyed eastwards to budabest, belgrade, and istanbul.
globally, the blackbird’s invasion of the human world is beyond a doubt more important than the spaniard’s invasion of south america or the resettlement of palestine by the jews. a change in the relationship of one species to another (fish, birds, people, plants) is a change of a higher order than a change in the relationship of one or another group within the species.
the male glance has often been described. it is commonly said to rest coldly on a woman, measuring, weighing, evaluating, selecting her – in other word, turning her into an object.
what is less commonly known is that a woman is not completely defenceless against that glance. if it turns her into an object, then she looks back at the man with the eyes of an object. it is as though a hammer had suddenly grown eyes and stared up at the worker pounding a nail with it.
the man rapes, the woman castrates
she could not understand why the salty liquid that flows from our eyes is exalted and poetic, and the liquid we excrete from our bladders is repellent
* french lit – rabelais, diderot – jaques le fataliste, laurence sterne

adam thorpe – ulverton

the shadow of the corn [the curse of the corn doll]
thy work en’t over ater job be done. ’tis jus begun, then. thee makes a gate, an it begun when the first man swings her ope an shut for cattle. thy work goes on till the article be broke up, which if thy work be carried out proper won’t be till long ater thee be dead and buried. ’tis what he says to i, my firsest day.
an he crosses hisself till i thought he’d wrick his wrist, old abraham.
some of the mob talked with those in withy field and ley dean: they said men left their ploughs in the stitch and joined us: about twenty in all. they carried one stick apiece that were cut from the hedgerows and had two mattocks.
waggoners, and shepherds, & reapers, and paupers, and jobbers of every fowl & four-legged beast one might imagine, and well-diggers, & mealy mealmen and ruby-cheeked farmers
there has been a pamphlet circulating over the beer-pots that wd drain the bloom from your loveliness.
in chittagong it had, with a baleful simplicity, either blazed or poured: the consolation lay in that very certainty, where the ground at your feet puffed into clouds or splashed one’s puttees brown
dart, the blacksmith’s assistant with flared nostrils and decidedly undarting intelligence
butterflies, as if dazed by the sudden removal of a favourite haunt, dallied above our heads and Ernest, the schoolteacher, his little moustache wet with exertion, managed to net an Admiral that blazed in his chloroform bottle like a blown coal.
the breezes were cool… on that scarp
the bell tolled a death-knell; and slow and dull and remorseless it sounded across the downs. each man cocked an ear, paused in his delicate work
* fogbourne – swindon
* ilk

jonathan safran foer – everything is illuminated

“anna, i am going to marry that one in the pink hat” // “to whom are you going to marry her?” // “to me.”
from space, astronauts can see people making love as a tiny speck of light. not light, exactly, but a glow that could be mistaken for light – a coital radiance that takes generations to pour like honey through the darkness of the astronaut’s eyes.

sebastian faulks – a week in december

* surrealist paul eluard
holding her face in her hands and shaking with laughter while her long black hair tumbled down over her breasts. “all this, hass, for a disembodied voice in a desert?”
* Everything I Know About Life I Learned From Not Listening – real or imagined art work?
arabs, persians, indians, africans and asians joined together in freedom. islam was not defined by race or nation or colour. it was never a nationality, always a community of belief. [[and turks??]]
* michael drayton – elizabethan sonnet: since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part

jd salinger – raise high the roof beaf, carpenters + seymore: an introduction

the old man adjusted the pad and pencil on his lap with the greatest care, then sat for a moment, pencil poised, in obvious concentration, his grin diminished only a very trifle. then the pencil began, very unsteadily, to move. an ‘i’ was dotted. and then both pad and pencil were returned personally to me, with a marvellously cordial extra added wag of the head. he had written, in letters that had not quite jelled yet, the single word ‘Delighted’. the matron of honour reading over my shoulder, gave a sound faintly like a snort, but i quickly looked over at the great writer and tried to show by my expression that all of us in the car knew a poet when we saw one, and were grateful.
the matron of honour stared at me, openly, for a moment – and not really rudely, for a change, unless children’s stares are rude.
* chinese and japanese poetry translators: witter bynner, lionel giles, rh blyth
* chinese poet – tang li, lao ti-kao

cormac mccarthy – blood meridian

the following evening as they rode up onto the western rim they lost one of the mules. it went skittering off down the canyon wall with the contents of the panniers exploding soundlessly in the hot dry air and it fell through sunlight and through shade, turning in that lonely void until it fell from sight into a sink of cold blue space that absolved it forever of memory in the mind of any living thing that was
by midnight there were fires in the street and dancing and drunkenness and the house rang with the shrill cries of the whores and rival packs of dogs had infiltrated the now partly darkened and smoking yard in the back where a vicious dogfight broke out over the charred racks of goatbones and where the first gunfire of the night erupted and wounded dogs howled and dragged themselves about until glanton himself went out and killed them with his knife, a lurid scene in the flickering light, the wounded dogs silent save for the pop of their teeth, dragging themselves across the lot like seals or other things and crouching under the walls while glanton walked them down and clove their skulls with the huge copperbacked beltknife. he was no more than back inside the house before new dogs were mutting at the spits.
he watched the kid and he watched the enormous sun where it sat boiling on the edge of the desert. any roadagent or gambler would have known that the first to speak would lose but shelby had already lost it all.

george macdonald fraser – flashman

charles nicholl – the fruit palace

betsy lerner – the forest for the trees

editorial rejection euphemisms:
not right for our list (get it out of here)
pacing problems (boring)
exhaustive (academic/boring)
somewhat heavy-handed (preachy)
not without charm (too precious)
nicely written but ultimately unsatisfying (plotless)
under-developed characters (totally stock)
nice sense of place (is this about anything?)
not enough tension (mind-numbingly slow)
feels familiar (yet another road-trip/coming-of-age/ugly-duckling/dysfunctional-family novel)
entertaining (overwritten)
crowded marketplace (not another!)
& too special (which of course means it wont sell)

wei hui – shanghai baby

mo yan – the republic of wine

emmanuel bove – my friends

the swing-doors beat against the air. my feet slipped on the glazed tile floors, as they would in a pine forest. magazines were sticking to the damp window-panes of a kiosk. it was so draughty that people could not open their newspapers. although it was daylight the lights were on in the ticket office. the railway officials seemed to be rather like policemen.
* juan salvador gaviota (jonathon livingstone seagull)

robert m pirsig – lila

henry miller – sexus

i will enslave the world – by the magic of words… et cetera ad nauseam
i dream a new blazingly magnificent world which collapses as soon as the light is turned on. a world that vanishes but does not die, for i have only to become still again and stare wide-eyed into the darkness and it reappears. …there is then a world in me which is utterly unlike any world i know of. i do not think it is my exclusive property – it is only the angle of my vision which is exclusive, in that it is unique. if i talk the language of my unique vision nobody understands; the most colossal edifice may be reared and yet remain invisible. the thought haunts me. what good will it do to make an invisible temple?
drifting with the flux…
when one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. friends are at their best in moments of defeat
we are on the beach and the moon is scudding through the clouds.
the head turned slowly on the almost indistinguishable stem

peter carey – theft

did you shar har last yar? no? then you shant shar har this yar.
light and silky as a wish beside me
better to know SFA about the kookaburras
with his spinnaker up

graham green – the comedians

the quarrel simmered on, like stock for tomorrow’s soup.
the women in their best dresses of electric blues and acid greens.
* 1940s tune – the wednesday after the war
* a nightingale sang

bruno schulz – the street of crocodiles (penguin classics)

luxuriant tongues of fleshy greenery
and, as if taking advantage of her sleep, the silence talked, the yellow, bright evil silence delivered its monologue, argued, and loudly spoke its vulgar maniacal soliloquy.
turning their backs on him they adopted arrogant poses, shifting their weight from foot to foot, making play with their frivolous footwear, abandoning their slim bodies to the serpentine movements of their limbs and thus laid siege to the excited onlooker whom they pretended to ignore behind a show of assumed indifference.
occasionally someone would rush into the empty rooms pierced by that devilish ringing under the glowing lamps, take a few hesitant steps on tiptoe, and stop abruptly as if looking for something. the mirrors took him speechlessly into their transparent depths and divided him in silence between themselves.
i understood then why animals have horns; perhaps to introduce and element of strangeness into their lives, a whimsical or irrational joke. and idée fixe, transgressing the limits of their being, reaching high above their heads and emerging suddenly into light, frozen into matter palpable and hard.
we are alone in the whole square, you and i, i said softly, because the inflated globe of the sky resounded like a barrel.
you and i, he repeated with a sad smile. how empty is the world today!
we could have divided it between us and renamed it, so open, unprotected, and unattached was the world. on such a day the messiah advances to the edge of the horizon and looks down on the earth.
musicians on the rostrum dipped their moustaches in mugs of bitter beer and sat around idly, deep in thought. their violins and nobly shaped cellos lay neglected under the voiceless downpour of the stars. from time to time one of them would reach for his instrument and try it, tuning it plaintively to harmonise with his discreet coughing. then he would put it aside as if it were not yet ready, not yet measuring up to the night, which flowed along unheeding. and then as the knives and forks began to clank softly above the white tablecloths, the violins would rise alone, now suddenly mature although tentative and unsure just a short while before; slim and narrow-waisted, they eloquently proceeded with their task, took up again the lost human cause, and pleaded before the indifferent tribunal of stars, now set in a sky on which the shapes of the instruments floated like water signs or fragments of keys, unfinished lyres or swans, an imitatory, thoughtless starry commentary on the margin of music.
and so we walked off under the stars, anticipating with half-closed eyes the ever more splendid illuminations. ah, the cynicism of such a triumphant night! having taken possession of the whole sky, it now played dominoes in space, lazily and without calculation, indifferently losing or winning millions.
we are at the roots now, and at once everything becomes dark, spicy, and tangled like in the depth of a forest. there is a smell of turf and tree rot; roots wander about, entwined, full with juices that rise as if sucked up by pumps.
here are the great breeding grounds of history, factories of plots, hazy smoking rooms of fables and tales. now at long last one can understand the great and sad machinery of spring. ah, how it thrives on stories, on events, on chronicles, on destinies! everything we have ever read, all the stories we have heard and those we have never heard before but have been dreaming since childhood – here and nowhere else is their home and motherland. where would writers find ideas, how would they muster the courage for invention, had they not been aware of these reserves, this frozen capital, these funds salted away in the underworld? what a buzz of whispers, what persistent purr of the earth! continuous persuasions are throbbing in your ears. you walk with half-closed eyes in a warmth of whispers, smiles, and suggestions, importuned endlessly, pinpricked a thousand ties by questions as though by delicate insect proboscides
the butterflies flew past, as if racing one another, then rejoined their partners, dealing out a flight like cards, whole packs of colourful shimmers
skeins of whispers
what do i look like? sometimes i see myself in the mirror. a strange, ridiculous, and painful thing! i am ashamed to admit it: i never look at myself full face. somewhat deeper, somewhat farther away i stand inside the mirror a little off centre, slightly in profile, thoughtful and glancing sideways. our looks have stopped meeting. when i move, my reflection moves too, but half-turned back, as if it did not know about me, as if it had got behind a number of mirrors and could not come back. my heart bleeds when i see it so distant and indifferent. it is you, i want to exclaim; you have always been my faithful reflection, you have accompanied me for so many years and now you don’t recognize me! oh, my god! unfamiliar and looking to one side, my reflection stands there and seems to be listening for something, awaiting a word from the mirrored depths, obedient to someone else, waiting orders from another place.
we gave a wide berth to his fur coat lined with polecat skins. the fur coat breathed. the panic of small animals sewn together and biting into one another passed through it in helpless currents and lost itself in the folds of fur.

norman berdichevsky – spanish vignettes

first players of barca were predominantly english and swiss residents of the city, many of them prominent businessmen who missed the recreational pasttime of their home country – and for quite a few years, local residents referred to the team as los ingleses!
dr flemming popular for bullfighters (penecilin)
moment of truth
la piel contra la piedra
gypsies – a warrior caste who fled muslim rule and prejudice, migrated out of india (north east punjab). arrived in spain in 1425 zaragoza, aragon. also by sea via barcelona in 1447, and over the pyrenees
* buñuel – land without bread
africanismo espanol
sheikh mustafa
foreigners live in “golden ghettoes”
hitler made a pilgrimage to personally convince franco of an alliance. he travelled to spain and met with the spanish dictator at hendaye on the french spanish border on 23 october 1940. the meeting was set for 3pm, but franco arrived an hour late, putting the fuhrer under psychological pressure. the two dictators argued for 9 hours and franco was able once again to promise to enter the war only when it was “convenient” for spain. finally, after being kept waiting for another hour while franco took an after-dinner siesta, hitler had to leave with a worthless piece of paper, stating that spain would decide the time of her entry into the war.
phoenicians
bay of biscay (pais vasco)
* chanson de roland
auto-de-fé
maketos/belarri motx (those with stumpy ears) basque
ibiza, sardinia, sicily (phoenecian-carthaginian settlements)
cadiz (gadir), tartessos (tarsis)
enlightened kings and caliphs
al-andalus (land of the vandals)
mexico received more than 20,000 spanish refugees
native population of the peninsular began to speak the “vulgar” latin they heard from the roman soldiers with the local pronounciation of their previous language. to this was added the germanic speech of the invading visigoths, who crossed the pyranees in the 5th century upon the collapse of the empire.
rey de las espanyas
judezmo (judeo-espanyol), spanyolit
lorca: cordoba!
distant and alone.
black pony, big moon,
olives in my saddlebag
although i may know these roads,
i’ll never reach cordoba.
through the plains, through wind,
black pony, red moon,
with death watching me
from cordoba’s towers
ay! what a long road
ay! my brave pony
ay! death awaits me
before arriving at cordoba!
distant and alone.

james clavell – tai-pan

plenipotentiary
thee be finished, lad.
‘beg pardon.’… ‘champagne be proper belch water, baint it?’
dirty turtledung
heart a violent machine
[steam engine] sailed to hk from uk – against all the sea’s disgust and the wind’s contempt
mantilla [flamenco]
kankana
querulous

ian fleming – thunderball

it had reduced him to something lower in the scale of existence than a handful of grass in the mouth of a tiger
the orange, carefully sliced into symmetrical pigs by some ingenious machine

fransisco goldman – the art of political murder

chafas cerotes hijos de la gran puta
(chafa= military officer)
(cerotes= little pieces of shit)
* ana lucia escobar
* claudia mendez

subcomandante marcos – libro de zapatistas

somos la piedra
que viaja en la piel
de la iguana we are the stone
that travels on the skin
of the iguana

the love you withhold is the pain that you carry
you only lose what you cling to
“try not to be a cunt” – Buddha

jack kerouac – dharma bums

tea:
the first sip is joy
the second sip is gladness
the third sip is serenity
the fourth sip is madness
the fifth sip is ecstasy
equally coming a buddha
laughter is solemn

john steinbeck – cannary row

the stove in the palace flop-house: it was the gold tooth of the palace. fired up, it warmed the big room. it’s oven was wonderful and you could fry an egg on its shiny black lids.
‘it has always seemed strange to me, ‘said doc. ‘the things we admire in men – kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling – are the concomitants of failure in our system. and those traits we detest – sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest – are the traits of success. while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.’

mo yan –

a fox cannot hide its tail
a writer cannot hide his personality

gao xinjiang – soul mountain

in moonlight thick as soup
i ride out to buy incense
for luo dajie who burnt to death
for dou sanniang who died in a rage
sanniang picked beans
but the pods were empty
she married master ji
but master ji was short
so she married a crab
the crab crossed a ditch
trod on an eel
the eel complained
it complained to a monk
the monk said a prayer
a prayer to guanyin
so guanyin pissed
the piss hit my son
his belly hurt
so i got an exorcist to dance
the dance didn’t work
but still cost heaps of money

2015 ^ SPAIN ^

j.m. coetzee – elizabeth constello

i mean what i mean!
* rilke – the panther
* ted hughes – jaguar / 2nd glance
the salmon and the river weeds and the water insects interact in a great, complex dance with the earth and the weather. the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. in the dance, each organism has a role: it is these multiple roles, rather than the particular beings who play them, that participate the dance.

richard ellmann – the trail of oscar wilde

mo yan – the republic of wine

fabrications of the idle literati

carlos casteneda – the fire from within

all living beings are struggling to die –
what stops death is awareness
genaro was always recommending to me that i learn to write with the tip of my finger instead of a pencil so as not to accumulate notes.
upholding realisations – don’t worry if you can’t. such realisations are a dime a dozen.

martin amis – god’s dice

karen blixen (isak dinesen) – from the ngong hills

i had seen a herd of elephant travelling through the dense native forest… pacing along as if they had an appointment at the end of the world.
* last chapter of the book of job (infinite imaginations)

robert pirsig – zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance

1) statement of the problem
2) hypothesis as to the cause of the problem
3) experiments designed to test each hypothesis
4) predicted results of the experiments
5) observed results of the experiments
6) conclusions from the results of the experiments
many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who have offered the products of their brains on this alter for purely utilitarian purposes. were an angel of the lord to come and drive all the people belonging to these two categories out of the temple, it would be noticeably emptier. (a. einstein, 1918)
scientifically produced antiscience – chaos – like the archer, discovering that although he has hit the bull’s eye and won the prize, his head is on a pillow and the sun is coming in the window. lateral knowledge is knowledge that’s from a wholly unexpected direction.
the art of pronouncing it wrong is an act of caring.
in each case there is a beautiful way of doing it and an ugly way of doing it, both an ability to see what ‘looks good’ and an ability to understand the underlying methods to arrive at the ‘good’ are needed. both classic and romantic understandings of Quality are needed.
Quality isn’t something you lay on top of subjects and objects like tinsel on a christmas tree. real quality must be the source of the subject and object; the cone from which the tree must start.
gumption – describes exactly what happens to someone who connects with Quality. he gets filled with gumption.
maybe the national park service should set just one pile of beer cans in the middle of all that lava and then it would come to life. the absence of beer cans is distracting.
* h.d.f kitto – the greeks
plato finds it necessary to separate ‘horse’ from ‘horseness’ and say that horseness is real and fixed and true and unmoving, while the horse is a mere unimportant transitory phenomenon. horseness is a pure idea.
* the bendable river

javier marías – when i was mortal

tom wolfe – bonfire of vanities

he took off his jacket and jammed it down, give-a-shit, on a coatrack hook.
felix, the shoeshine man, was humped over, stropping sherman’s right shoe, a new and lingwood half-brogne, with his high-shine rag.
the hive buzzed with with the sheer ecstasy of being in this mellow rosy stuffed orbit. hack hack hack, the horse laugh of inez bavarrdage rose somewhere. so many bouquets of people. grinning faces… boiling teeth…
ny slang – whaddya whaddya?… no kidding!
howja do? hehwaya? (how are you?)
sherman pulled the revolver of his resentment out of his waistband and braced for the worst.

andrés caicedo – liveforever

he was sitting in the perfect position of a mystic, focusing all his powers on the largest bush… do you understand me when i say that bárbaro was wasting all the vital energy of his 17 years on a simple attempt to move this bush by force of will?
the bush reared from pale red to flame black, shook its branches wildly and moved forward several centimetres. another tremor and it folded in on itself the better to draw itself up and charge like an enraged boar straight at bárbaro. i did not baulk. bárbaro managed to give a yell of triumph before realising the plant was not going to stop at his feet – in fact it was already upon him, it knocked him over and, with a bound, planted itself in his belly. my friend threw his arms and legs wide and went completely limp, rivers of pleasure murmuring as his entrails gave up their sap to feed the plant, causing it to bring forth heavy, pink moonflowers that (many years later, people would say) brought intoxication and illumination.

g.k. chesterton – the man who was thursday

the suburb of saffron park lay on the sunset side of london, as red and rugged as a cloud of sunset
‘the gentlemen are up there, sare’ he said.
‘they do talk and they do laugh at what they talk?
they do say they will throw bombs at ze king.
if this is true then the whole bally lot of us on the anarchist council were against anarchy!
* greybeards at play

jeet thayil – narcopolis

god & dog & dice & day
‘i am a jealous god and there is no other god beside me’ he told the angel, and by doing so indicated that there were indeed other gods, or why would he be jealous? as long as there is jealousy, how can there be freedom? and if god is not free how can man expect to be?

herman hesse – demian

* (intro) blick ins chaos (glance into chaos)
this god of both old and new testaments is certainly an extraordinary figure but not what he purports to represent. he is all that is good, noble, fatherly, beautiful, elevated, sentimental – true! but the world consists of something else besides. and what is left over is ascribed to the devil, this entire slice of world, this entire half is suppressed and hushed up. in exactly the same way they praise god as the father of all life but simply refuse to say a word about our sexual life on which it’s all based, describing it wherever possible as sinful, the work of the devil. i have no objection to worshipping this god jehovah, far from it. but i mean we ought to consider everything sacred, the entire world, not merely this artificially separated half! thus alongside the divine service we should also have a service for the devil. i feel that would be right. otherwise you must create for yourself a god that contains the devil too and in front of which you needn’t close your eyes when the most natural things in the world take place.
my sexuality, a torment from which i was in constant flight, was to be transfigured into spirituality and devotion by this holy fire.
* abraxas – the godhead
europe conquered the whole world only to lose her own soul

raymond queneau – exercises in style

haruki murakami – iq84

“i was reborn” “you were reborn”
“because i died once” – “you died once”
“on a night when there was a cold rain falling”
“why did you die?”
“so i would be reborn like this” “you would be reborn”
“more or less, in all sorts of forms”

2015 ^ back from mexico ^ (UK)

malcolm lowry – under the volcano

a horse with a rider on it “so drunk he was sprawling all over his mount, his stirrups lost… the horse reared wildly… the man, who seemed to be falling straight backwards at first, miraculously saved himself only to slip to one side like a trick rider, regained the saddle, slid, slipped, fell backwards – just saving himself each time… m. laurelle thought suddenly, this maniacal vision of senseless frenzy, but controlled, not quite uncontrolled, somehow almost admirable. this too, obscurely, was the consul…
he suspected at times that he was not a writer so much as being written, and with panic he realised that self-identity was as elusive as ever
* quahnahuac

eric newby – traveller’s tales

omitted: travellers who, although illustrious, seemed either boring or condescending, a common 19th century trait
frank tatchell (sussex vicar) happy traveller
kingslake – eöthen
borrow – bible in spain
butler – alps and sactuaries
doughty – arabia deserta
anson – voyage around the world
bates – naturalist on the amazons
wallace – malay archipelago
john halt – haitian proverb: if work is such a good thing, how come the rich haven’t gobbled it all up for themselves?
charles doughty – the sun, entering as a tyrant upon the waste landscape, darts upon us a torment of fiery beams, not to be remitted till the far-off evening.
* peter flemming – little ease
* james kirkup – standing in the shafts of moonlight
* redmond o’hanlon
claude jean allouez – we were forced to accustomed ourselves to eat a certain moss growing upon the rocks. it is a sort of shell-shaped leaf which is always covered with caterpillars and spiders; and which, on being boiled, furnishes an insipid soup, black and viscous, that rather serves to ward off death than to impart life.
merriwether lewis – the object of your mission is to explore the missouri river, and such principal streams of it, as, by its course and communication with the waters of the pacific ocean.

daniel pinchbeck – 2012, the return of quetzakoatl

* austrian writer thomas bernhard, the master of ceaseless complain
* cheesefoot head (crop circle)
death by astonishment
mushroom talks: “the mushroom which you see is the part of my body given to sex thrills and sunbathing… my my true body is a fine network of fibres through the soil”. these mycelial networks “may cover acres and have far more connections than the number in a human brain”… “you as an individual and humanity as a species are on the brink of a formation of a symbiotic relationship with my generic material that will eventually carry humanity and earth into the galactic mainstream of the higher civilizations” – thus spoke the fungus.
the visitors exhorted one abductee, over and over again, to “eat only cow things”.
* argüelles – the telektonon prophecy
kundalini, the ‘serpent power’, is an occult energy that resides in the body, according to yogic text. in most people, kundalini is ‘asleep’ at the base of the spine, but when it begins to awaken, it travels upwards, passing through various chakra centres, burning out impurities and creating massive changes often accompanied by illness and dangerous, even life-threatening, physical symptoms. according to sat chakranirupana, 500 years ago by bengali yogi puranada.
rudolf steiner proposed that thought and language and creative aspects of being, tools for transforming reality.
evola – the modern world knows of women who wish to be emancipated materially and socially from man but not of men who feel they want to be emancipated inwardly and spiritually from women.

david mitchell – ghostwrittern

a headace dug its thumbs into my temples
even i can’t see into the hole where his conscience should be. outside this hole, his mind is cold, clear and cruel.
the ocean boomed its indifference
then you have the oddball (underground) lines, like shakespeare’s oddball plays.
there’s something doom-laden about the northern line. it’s station names: morden, brent cross, goodge street, archway, elephant and castle, the resurrected mornington crescent.
a city is a sea you lose things in. you only find things other people have lost.
alfred altogether (altogether alfred)
coffee is fine for the body, but tea is the drink of the soul.

james clavell – shögun

we’re not the first ones to reach the japans. remember all the stories, eh? we’re rich if we keep our wits. we have trade goods and there’s gold there – there must be, where else could we sell our cargo? not there in the new world, hunted and harried! they were hunting us and the spaniards knew we were off santa maria. we had to quit chile and there was no escape back through the straight – of course they would be lying in wait for us, of course they would! no, here was our only chance and a good idea. our cargo exchanged for spices and gold and silver, eh? think of the profit – thousandfold, that’s usual. we’re in the spice islands. you know the riches of the japans and cathay. you’ve heard about them forever. we all have. why else did we all sign on? we’ll be rich, you’ll see!
stories always sped from the bed to the ballad.
if truth’s known, they curdle my piss too.
don’t forget japmen’re are six-faced and have three hearts… a false heart in his mouth for all the world to see, another in his breast to show his very special friends and his family, and the real one, the true one, the secret one, which is never known to anyone except himself alone, hidden only god knows where.
macao to nagasaki by the black ship
the barefoot haries
the peace of a bolted oak door
alone for a rock of time
sumus omnes in manu dei (we are all in the hands of god)
cunning as a fox-kami
you must have been completely dreadful in your previous life.
ears to hear with and the eightfold fence
we call corsairs ‘wako’
10 deep, 10 slow, 10 deep, 10 slow, send your mind into the void. there is no past or future, hot or cold, pain or joy – from nothing, into nothing.
‘my back teeth’re floating from so much cha’
hands sought sword hilts impotently.
empty-bellied dogs… long-eared and safe-tongued.
men… need to share secrets, but we women only reveal them to gain an advantage
half-truths and honey and poison
the sudden death-dealing blow that summarised up all hara-gei

robert valerio – traversías en barcos de papel

ya no veo nada. el encatamiento me ha cegado el tercer ojo
un caballo analfabeto
“y si algun día se encuentra un método para recuperar el sonido perdido, el sonido que absorben los objetos?” … los libros de mi abuelo, saturados de voces, podrian desbordarse de un momento a otro.

richard rodriguez – days of obligation, argument with my mexican father

in the european description of indians – that (they) wait around to be ‘discovered’. europe discovers, india beckons… india sits atop her lily pad through centuries, lost in contemplation of the horizon. and, from time to time, india is discovered.
poor mexico, so far from god, so close to the u.s.
* jeanatte macdonald – san franscisco (scat jarr)
america has long imagined itself clean, crew-cut, ingenuous. we are odourless, colourless, accentless, orderly people, put upon and vulnerable to the foreign.
aliens are carriers of chaos… mexicans obviously their language full of newts and cicadas.
the cat is somewhere – asleep in a puddle of sun.
my nostalgia is for a time when i felt myself free from nostalgia.
joaquín murrieta… stole horses, beautiful horses. he was like the wind stealing clouds. he kept the blackest horse for himself. they said his heart was as black as his chin.
we’ve stolen california from the mexicans. and they stole it from the spaniards. and they stole it from the indians.
* sig christopherson
cowboy macbeth
i had always been intellectually arrogant. in LA, i yearned to become glamorous enough to be humble. in the manner of the angels.
what i needed from the classroom was a public life. the earliest necessity for any student is not individually but something close to the reverse.
the famous activists of the 1960’s were secular jews who heralded a messianic future. but the true fathers of woodstock, of sit-ins, and of rock pastoral were the dark-robed puritan fathers.
as latin america turns protestant, north america experiences the dawning of the catholic vision – ‘the global village’ … and now the united states is being evangelized by the latin americans who have themselves been evangelized by the protestant north.
-priests told jokes to cover the embarrassment of collecting money; priests told jokes to cover the embarrassment of life, for priests had the power to forgive sins.

eligio stephen gallegos – the personal totem pole

1st base of the spine, middle of perineum. connect to earth and nature
2nd below the navel, gut belly. passions and emotion
3rd solar plexus. power to act, cleanly, deliberately, effectively
4th heart. love, compassion, community
5th throat. communication and expression
6th third eye. intellect and intuition
7th top of the head. relationship with spirit
each animal is alive, in the moment, a vehicle for growth.
we are taught not to accept our existence as valid unless we can describe or explain it. this is perhaps one of the social introjects that is most devastating to our individual wholeness.
the intellect is only one of the windows available for viewing reality. no less important are imagery and feeling
when she became scottie dog she said: it’s like i’m falling from space, going around in circles in a dark cone-like tunnel. there’s a lot of fear. it’s almost like i won’t stop falling and falling, going around in circles. it’s almost like maybe a time tunnel. now it’s a little girl falling maybe 4 or 5 years old. maybe it’s me. it’s got pigtails. i don’t remember wearing pigtails. she’s hurting and nobody understands. she thinks she’s been bad and she doesn’t understand why everybody whispers and won’t answer her questions… everybody seems to want to wrap her in… in cotton.

li hongzhi – falun gong

cultivtion of xinxing and transformation of de (virtue) is development of gong potency (gongli)
(gong) generated outside the body, and it begins in the lower half of the body… grows upwards in a spiral shape and forms completely outside one’s body. upon reaching the crown of the dead it then develops into a gong column. the height of this gong column determines the level of a person’s gong. the gong column exists in a deeply hidden dimension, making it difficult for an average person to see it.
some people see a large eye through their third eye, and they think it is the buddha’s eye. it is actually their own eye.
… i usually open the third third eye for people at the level of wisdom eyesight.
Pangmen zuodao – Side Door Awkward Ways
Niwan Palace – daoist pineal gland

samuel taylor coleridge – rime of the ancient mariner

the sun came up upon the left
out of the sea came he!
and he shone bright, and on the right
went down into the sea.

benjamin franklin – autobiography

-(no taste buds) has been a convenience to me in travelling, where my companions have been sometimes very unhappy for want of a suitable gratification of their more delicate, because better instructed, tastes and appetites.

by my rambling digressions i perceive myself to be grown old.
(in london) i drank only water; the other workmen, near 50 in number, were great guzzlers of beer. // they wondered to see… that the water american was stronger than themselves, who drank strong beer!
my companion at the press drank every day a pint before breakfast, a pint at breakfast with his bread and cheese, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint in the afternoon about 6 o’clock, and another when he had done his day’s work… and thus these poor devils keep themselves always under.
quoting dryden: ‘whatever is, is right. though purblind man sees but a part of the chain, the nearest link: his eyes not carrying to the equal beam, that poises all above
man buys an axe, wants whole surfaces as shiny as the edge. smithy says ok but you turn the wheel. the man is tired and wants to stop. ‘no’, said the smith, ‘turn on, turn on; we shall have it bright by and by; as yet, it is only speckled.’ ‘yes’, says the man, ‘but i think i like a speckled axe best’.
while a party is carrying on a general design, each man has his particular private interest in view.
as soon as a party has gain’d its general point, each member becomes intent upon his personal interest; which, thwarting others, breaks the party into divisions, and occasions more confusion.
‘at any other time, friend hopkinson, i would lend to thee freely,; but not now, for thee seems to be out of thy senses.
* litera scripta manet – the written word remain
wet as water could make us.

aldous huxley – after many a summer dies the swan

* fingal, ossian, napoleon’s favourite poets

charlie chaplin – autobiography

writers are nice people but not very giving; whatever they know they seldom impart to others; most of them keep it between the covers of their books. scientists might be excellent company, but their mere appearance in a drawing room mentally paralyses the rest of us. painters are a bore because most of them would have you believe they are philosophers more than painters. poets are undoubtedly a superior class and as individuals are pleasant, tolerant and excellent companions. but i think musicians in the aggregate are more cooperative than any other class

idris shah – reflections

laziness in adolescence is rehearsal for incapacity in old age
pull down the clouds and squeeze out the rain

laozi – dao de jing

poem 67:
everywhere, they say the way, our doctrine
is so very like detested folly
sima qian: kongzi went off and said to his students: i know that birds can fly and fish can swim and beasts can run. snares can be set for things that run, nets for those that swim and arrows for whatever flies. but dragons! i shall never know how they ride the wind and cloud up into the sky. today i saw laozi, what a dragon!

john reed – insurgent mexico

* pancho villa was a roosevelt rough rider and fought in cuba
* carillo puerto

mariano azuela – the underdogs (los de abajo)

jack kerouac – dharma bums

om mani pahdme hum. amen the thunderbolt in the dark void.
walking on water wasn’t made in a day
* after me, the deluge

isaac asimov – foundation and earth

franz kafka – carta al padre

xiao qian – blood red september

j.m. coetzee – waiting for barbarians

john muir – songs of a sourdough

byron – don juan

keats, ts eliot, rilke

letters of van gogh

elsie lincoln benedict – how to analyse people

jonathan raban – passage to juneau

top heavy with stacked pots and deck-cranes, the crab (boats) were the most prone to capsize. in arctic weather, when spray froze instantly on anything it touched, and the sea stuck to the boats in great dollops, like leaden glue, the crews would have to be on 24 hour duty, smashing ice out of the rigging with baseball bats.
coast guards advise against steering into the roll (?)
* doxology
byron – roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!
tennyson – break, break, break, on thy cold grey stones, o sea!
… its species dying out in catastrophic numbers, the polluted ocean held up a looking glass to the heedless, stupid face of humankind. // silvery, partial images like these danced continually on the surface of the water, changing places, dissolving into each other, reigning for a moment, then suddenly losing their sharpness. i thought it might be possible to think of the sea as the sum of all the reflections it had held during its history.
the sea was smooth as a pool of molasses
* the meeting of bouvard and peauchet
pu maevatau – the expert navigator… will make his bearer the ocean … the ocean is a place, not a space; its mobile surface full of portents clues and meanings.
macwhurr – if i did not know you, jukes, i would think you were in liquor.
the 6 degrees of freedom – pitch, roll, sway, heave, surge, yaw.
philip larkin – the small hushed waves’ repeated fresh collapse conjuring a multitude of small hushed lives going to their deaths.
both r. l. stevenson, a scot, and elias carnetti, a bulgarian and venetian, observed that the englishman has a deep-rooted habit of thinking of himself as the captain of a ship at sea.
sea terms: bitter end, taken aback, plane sailing, aloof (a-luff), by the board, tide you over, lose your bearings, by and large.
* mr gradgrind made sissy jupe define a horse
the vast labyrinth intricacies of the class system had helped to compensate for england’s chronic absence of breathing space. in club or pub, drawing room or lounge, miles of distance could yawn between people once someone opened his mouth and spoke in an accent inappropriate to the setting.
* working class writers like alan sillitoe and stan barstow
-the plane bounced and slewed on the boils and whirlpools of unstable air.
flights of histrionic rapture had become, in the late 20th century, a soothing therapeutic wallpaper for cruise ship passengers. compared to the tropical excitements of the carribean or the mexican coast, the inside passage worked like a course of prozac with its calm seas, muted colours, and diffuse, angled lighting. what it chiefly offered was emptiness on a luxurious scale – mile after mile of indistinguishable gray rock, grey water, and sludge-green forest, not a house or road in sight. in an overcrowded world, simple absence of population was enough to render this a compelling tourist attraction; and cruise ships, floating cities with their own shopping malls, lingered greedily over these long empty reaches.

j.m. coetzee – diary of a bad year

(on terrorism) why should our rulers, normally phlegmatic men, react with sudden hysteria to the pin-pricks of terrorism when for decades they were able to go about their every day business unruffled, in full awareness that in a deep bunker somewhere in the urals an enemy watched and waited with a finger on a button, ready if provoked to wipe them and their cities from the face of the earth?
demosthenes: whereas the slave fears only pain, what the free man fears most is shame.
the two dimensions, the individual dimension and the economic dimension – that is how alan sees the world, the individual dimension being nobody’s business but your own and the economic dimension being the big picture.
the story of tony blair could have come straight out of tacitus. an ordinary little middle-class boy with all the correct attitudes (the rich should subsidize the poor, the military should be kept on a tight rein, civil rights should be defended against the inroads of the state), but with no philosophical grounding and little capacity for introspection, and with no inner compass save personal ambition, embarks on a voyage of politics, with all its warping forced, and ends up an enthusiast for entrepreneurial greed and the sedulous monkey of masters in washington, turning a dutifully blind eye (see no evil, hear no evil) while their shadowy agents assassinate, torture and ‘disappear’ opponents at will.
what cartesian nonsense to think of birdsong as pre-programmed cries uttered by birds to advertise their presence to the opposite sex, and so forth! each bird-cry is a full-hearted release of the self into the air, accompanied by such joy as we can barely comprehend. i! says each cry: i! what a miracle! singing liberates the voice, allows it to fly, expands the soul.
* stravinsky’s rite of spring
* antjie krog – south african poetess
* mendelssohn’s on wings of songs
inappropriate, i noted, has come to replace bad or wrong in the speech of people who wish to express disapproval without seeming to express moral judgement (to such people, moral judgement in itself is to be shunned as inappropriate.
you are a bit of a dreamer, juan. a dreamer but a schemer too. we are both schemers… i am a schemer because i would be devoured alive if i wasn’t, by the other beasts of the jungle. and you are a schemer because you pretend to be what you are not.
* javier marías – written lives (essay on photos of writers)

penguin book of zen poetry

* baso desciple of ejo
dogen:
four and fifty years
i’ve hung under the sky with stars
now i leap through –
what shattering!
haiku: 5-7-5:
ta ta tetey ta
tetey tetey tetey ta
ta tetey ta ta
* wabi (poverty) sabi (isolation)

ernesto sabato – the tunnel

‘why, the society of psychoanalysts, castel’ he answered, drilling me with those penetrating eyes freudians consider necessary to their profession, and also looking as if he were asking himself, ‘what new kind of madness is this guy up to now?’
‘as if somebody stranded in a desert suddenly moved with great speed to a different location. you understand? the speed is really unimportant; the person is still in the same desert.’ // he smoked and meditated a moment longer, as if i were not there. then he added: ‘although i’m not sure that’s exactly it. i don’t have a gift for metaphor.’
how many times had that dammed split in my consciousness been responsible for the most abominable acts? while one part of me strikes a pose of humaneness, the other part cries fraud, hypocrisy, false generosity. while one incites me to insult a fellow human being, the other takes pity on him and accuses me of the very thing i am denouncing, while one urges me to see the beauty of the world, the other points out its sordidness and the absurdity of any happiness.
russian novels – just when you begin to recognise a man called alexandre, he’s called sacha, then stachka, and later sachenka, and suddenly something pretentious like alexandre alexandrovitch bunine and later simply alexandre alexandrovitch.
happiness is encircled with pain.

2014 ^ happy shopper notebook ^ (MEXICO)

gaito gazdanov – the spectre of alexander wolf

* emotional pneumothorax?

freud for beginners

anal stage – i make the world! this is my gift! the child learns to voluntarily control its bowels… ‘holding on’ or ‘letting go’ are deeply pleasurable. but praise or blame is still up to parents. excremental function is bound up with social ideas of order, cleanliness – and disgust.

mao for beginners

* dr dinwiddie – experimental scientist on lord maccartney’s 1793 mission to meet qianglong
mao: “your dogma is less useful than excrement. we see that dog excrement can fertilize the fields, and man’s can feed the dog. and dogmas? they can’t fertilize the fields, nor feed the dog. of what use are they? (on abstract marxism)

ivar goncharov – oblomov

“where are you off to?” oblomov asked suddenly.
“you say nothing, sir, so why should i stand here for nothing?” zakhar said in a hoarse whisper, having lost his voice, so he claimed, riding to hounds with the old master, when a strong gust of wind had blown into his throat.
to do them justice, however, it is only fair to say that if you were to measure their love by degrees, it would never reach boiling point. although such people are said to love everybody and are therefore supposed to be good-natured, they do not really love anybody and are good-natured simply because they are not ill-natured.
“oh, damn you all!” zakhar burst out furiously, addressing himself to the articles on the floor. “who ever heard of having lunch before dinner?”
“good heavens”, he said, “what can this mean? someone’s going to die: the tip of my nose keeps itching.”
“goodness,” his wife cried, throwing up her hands, “no one’s going to die if the tip of the nose is itching. someone’s going to die when the bridge of the nose is itching. really, my dear, you never can remember anything! you’ll say something like this when strangers or visitors are in the house, and you will disgrace yourself!”
you read about the french and the english being always busy working, just as if they had nothing but business in mind. they travel all over europe, and even in asia and africa, and not on business, either: some draw or paint, some excavate antiquities, some shoot lions or catch snakes. if they don’t do that, they sit at home in honourable idleness, have lunches and dinners with friends and ladies – that is what all their business amounts to!

edgar allen poe – the narrative of arthur gordon pym of nantucket

when they had concluded their harangue (for it was clear they intended their jabbering for such), one of them who seemed to be the chief stood up in the prow of his canoe, and made signs for us to bring our boats alongside of him.

stefan zweig – chess

a human being, an intellectual human being who constantly bends the entire force of his mind on the ridiculous task of forcing a wooden king into the corner of a wooden board, and does it without going mad!

herta müller – always the same snow and always the same uncle

later, my grandmother said to me, “you can’t imitate freshly fallen snow, you can’t rearrange snow so it looks undisturbed. you can rearrange earth,” she said, “sand, even grass, if you take the trouble, water rearranges itself because it swallows everything including itself and closes over once it has swallowed. and air”, she said, “is always arranged, because you can’t see it.”

elio vittorini – conversations in sicily

we’re lucky to read as children. and doubly lucky to read books about old times and old countries, books of history, books of journeys, and, in a special way, a thousand and one nights. you can even remember what you’ve read as if you’ve somehow lived it yourself, and then you have the history of men and all the world inside you, together with your own childhood: persia when you are seven years old, australia when you are eight…
together in the nude tomb of wine.
i tried and took a sip between my lips and the wine seemed good, by itself, just that sip between my lips, but even so i couldn’t drink it; all the human past in me told me it was not something living, pressed from the summer and the earth, but a sad, sad thing, a phantom pressed from the caverns of centuries. and what else could it be in a world always wronged? generation after generation had drunk, had poured out its pain in wine, sought nudity in wine, and one generation drank from another, from the nudity of the squalid wine of past generations, and from all the pain that had been poured out.

amin maalouf – balthasar’s odyssey

something that cost tears can’t be repaid with mere salt water.
i know my words are bound to end up in oblivion. our whole existence borders on oblivion. but we need at least a semblance, an illusion of performance if we are to do anything at all.

peter carey – illywhacker

i like to think it was on this night, with her ugly brown uniform and heavy brogues shucked off on to the floor, that phoebe revealed herself as a beauty. it had occurred to no one that she might be.
“the wheel”, jack said, “seems an easy thing when you have it, but if you don’t have it then how would you ever know you needed it? flying is an easier thing to imagine. you can see a magpie doing it. but tell me badgery, where is an animal, or a bird, with wheels?”
“there is a snake”, i said, “that makes itself into a wheel and chases you.
… i did not know what the tie represented, but the camel-hair coat, the military moustache, the way in which cane and gloves were held, all indicated that i was in the presence of an Imaginary Englishman.
my big mistake in life was to make a product that had not previously existed. you see, these fellows at the bank are only there for two reasons. the first is that they’ve got no imagination. they lack every bloody thing you need to make a quid. so what you need, when you approach them, is something they can understand without thinking.
i showed him, most important of all, the sort of city it was – full of trickery and deception. if you push too hard against it you will find yourself leaning against empty air.

fritz mühlenweg – big tiger and christian

“we shall observe the confusing variations of the road,” said big tiger
“there’s lots to worry about,” replied good fortune. “but in mongolia it’s no use planning ahead. things happen as they must.
a lengthy exchange of courtesies took place, for naidang had the polished manners of a man of the world. he inquired not only after their health and the health of their livestock, but he also asked: “are you cold? are you tired? are you tremulous? are you suffering from any other discomforts?”
“how many honourable sons have you got?”, asked good fortune amiably.
“i am burdened with two useless louts.”
“i had a glimpse of your lily-fair daughter.”
“that female is unfortunately not the only one; i have a second daughter whom i have married into a family now impoverished.”
the grass was yellow. where it ceased a merry little brook came out as if hurrying to meet the world. but the world all around was desert, and the little brook could not turn back. it ran just a little way, then divided, like the end of a rope, into a several ragged fringes.
“does a robber need virtues?” asked christian, surprised.
“he needs them more than other people,” explained moonlight.
“he will never be a great robber unless he knows where something is to be got – that’s his instinct. he must be the first in a fight – that’s his courage. he must be the last to retreat – that’s his sense of duty. he must share the booty justly – that’s his goodness. but the most difficult requirement in a robber is that he should never attempt the impossible – that is his wisdom.
“we do not dare… accept our ten thousand thanks”
“you squander your heart… you are like the midday sun.”
“forgive me, but i cannot thank you. words are such poor, empty sounds.”
“47: a chapter in which the crisis is gradually approaching
i’ve got a sart here (uighur) “whose as swift as a spirit. if camel lice could fly he’d bring them down like snowflakes in winter.

max frisch – homo faber

it was the first time i had seen the films myself (none of them cut yet), well aware that they were full of repetitions, inevitably; i was amazed how many sunsets there were, three in the tamauppas desert alone, anyone would have thought i was travelling in sunsets, ridiculous; i felt downright ashamed of what the young technician must think of me , hence my impatience…

robert louis stevenson – the pavilion on the links

i got out my revolver, and, having drawn the charges, cleaned and reloaded it with scrupulous care. next i became preoccupied about my horse. it might break loose, or fall to neighing, and so betray my camp in the sea-wood. i determined to rid myself of its neighbourhood; and long before dawn i was leading it over the links in the direction of the fisher village.
i offered him my hand
‘excuse me,’ said he, ‘it’s small, i know; but i can’t push things quite so far as that. i don’t wish any sentimental business, to sit by your hearth a white-haired wanderer, and all that. quite the contrary: i hope to god i shall never again clap eyes on either one of you.’
‘well, god bless you, nothmour!’ i said heartily.
‘oh yes,’ he returned.

umberto eco – the name of the rose

we no longer have the learning of the ancients, the age of the giants is past!
deus qui est sanctorum splendor mirabilis. iam lucis orto sidere.
the god that is the wondrous splendour of saints. already the light of the day is gone.
the monks gathered around, laughed, and jorge became infuriated: ‘you are drawing these brothers of mine into a feast of fools. i know that among the franciscans it is the custom to curry the crowd’s favour with nonsense of this kind, but such tricks i will say to you what is said in a verse i heard from one of your preachers: turn podex carmenn extulit horridulum (the arsehole’s song is highlighted by horridulum)
“but why doesn’t the gospel ever say that christ laughed? … legions of scholars have wondered whether christ laughed….”
the very knowledge that the abbeys had accumulated was now used as barter goods, cause for pride, motive for boasting and prestige; just as knights displayed armour and standards, our abbots displayed illuminated manuscripts.
the recovery of the outcasts demanded reduction of the privileges of the powerful, so the excluded who became aware of their exclusion had to be branded as heretics, whatever the doctrine. and for their part, blinded by their exclusion, they were not really interested in any doctrine. this is the illusion of heresy. everyone is heretical, everyone is orthodox. the faith a movement proclaims doesn’t count: what counts is the hope it offers. all heresies are the banner of a reality, an exclusion.
untill then i had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. now i realised that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves. in the light of this reflection, the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. it was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialogue between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be rules by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors.
“the other skull must be in another treasury”, william said, with a grave face. i never understood when he was jesting. in my country, when you joke you say something and then you laugh very noisily , so everyone shares in the joke. but william laughed only when he said very serious things, and remained very serious when he was presumably joking.

herman melville – bartleby

“prefer not to”, echoed i, rising in high excitement, and crossing the room with a stride. “what do you mean? are you moonstruck? i want you to help me compare this sheet here – take it,” and i thrust it towards him.
“i would prefer not to,” said he.
… he said, in a flutelike tone.

antal szerb – journey by moonlight

“saint michael archangel, defend us in our struggles; be our shield against the wickedness of satan and his snares. as god commands you, so we humbly beseech you; and you who command the heavenly armies, with the strength of the lord deliver unto eternal damnation satan and all the evil spirits who lead us into danger.
the lawyers dazzled one another with their skill in sliding down the very steepest sentences without falling off, while the powerful financiers said little, listening suspiciously, their silence saying more eloquently than any words: “count me out”.

axel munthe – the story of san michele

twice his couraged failed him, rome never saw him again.
henri murger’s ‘vie de boheme’ was gone, but his mimi was still there, very much so, smilingly strolling down the boulevard st. michel on the arm of almost every student.
monkeys love to make fun of us, but the slightest suspicion that we are making fun of them irritates them profoundly.
the bear had 12 men’s strength and 1 man’s cunning. the wolf had 12 men’s cunning and 1 man’s strength. the bear liked clean fighting. if he met a man and the man went up to him and said: “come let us have a fight, i am not afraid of you”, the bear only knocked him down and scrambled away without doing any harm. the bear never attacked a woman, all she had to do was to show him she was a woman and not a man.
god created all the animals except the wolf, who was begotten by the devil.
the dogs lost their power of speech when it was given to a man, but they could understand every word you said to them
* zaccharias schweinfuss – die leichenbegleiter (corpse carrier)
guiless blue eyes of a child
(dog’s eye) “i have smelt many things in my life”, said the eye, “but i have never forgotten your own particular smell, i like it so much better than the smell of anyone else… “never mind what you say, snub-nosed little monster,” said tom loftily. “i never saw such a sight, it almost makes one ashamed of being a dog! a champion poodle like me does not growl at a sausage, but you had better hold your black tongue lest it should drop out of your ugly mouth altogether”.

ödön von horváth – youth without god

“first report of the club:”
“nothing special to report”
-he had no eyes now, and yet i could not escape his stare

alberto méndez – blind sunflowers

-when something can not be explained, offering a plausible explanation is the same as lying.

william s. burroughs – junky

jack kerouac – big sur

so i investigate the scroll of the valley but i’m singing ‘man is a busy little animal, a nice little animal, and his thoughts about everything, don’t mount to shit’

john updike – brazil

‘i, too, felt the falsity of her attempt on endear herself to my daughter, and it helped end our romance. everything can be forgiven of a woman but awkwardness; that clings to the mind.
(car factory) the machines made machines of men
tristão

jean m auel – land of the painted caves

madro man, grandfa, the one who was first among those who serve the mother
garnering favours
she now walks the next world / i wonder if he still walks this world
the young zelandoni stood with his mouth agape. ‘you’ll catch flies that way; the trademaster said, grinning.
the whole summer was proving to be an exciting one that would fill many long slow winter days with meat for discussion, and stories for seasoning.

jack black – you can’t win

yegg

jack london – call of the wild / white fang

white fang, lip-lip, grey beaver, mit-sah, old one-eye, blessed wolf.

david malouf – johnno

the library had its own people. you never saw them anywhere else in the city, except there, or on the buttoned-leather couches at the school of arts. old men with watery red-rimmed eyes and no collar to their shirt.
(my father) had an eye for the ‘particular fault’ in a boxer that made every fight for him an aristotelian tragedy, though he would never have recognised it as such.
i hated fights and couldn’t leave them alone. they had a brutal simplicity. there was always a winner; there was always somebody, hunch-shouldered, dancing out bloody-nosed to shake hands, whose final weakness had been exposed to us all – the loser.
the fight itself was a ritual in which the loser fought heroically against his own weakness, against a fate that was already decided.
a sense of humour of my sort, he told me, was disgusting, mere bourgeois self-protectiveness, and a sure sign of bad faith!

malcolm x – autobiography

i read, i saw, how the white man never has gone among the non-white peoples bearing the cross in the true manner and spirit of christ’s teachings – meek, humble, and christ-like.
* film, the muslim from america

caitlin thomas – my life with dylan thomas

cockles, sunken cockles, scraped by rough hands from their mud homes, were thrown in the heat of a dry frying pan, rattled to make them spit out the mud and finally spread on home-baked bread with yellow salted butter. more delicious than all the russian caviar…
the awful thing about matrimony: anything is better than the bird in the hand. there is no solution but a change of birds, from caged bird to a wild bird. even if the change is from a bird of paradise to a blackbird. the stimulation is not in the relative quality of the birds, it is in the unknown quantity.

pedro juan gutiérrez – dirty havana trilogy

-it’s as if i’m flying high and then falling all the way from the sun. just like icarus when he goes featherless into the sea. oof – we finished.

he was a twisted guy, with the soul of a soldier, someone whose brain had been well injected with the illusion of his own power. it’s the only way to turn people into mercenaries: by convincing them they’re part of the power structure. when the truth is they’re not even allowed to approach the throne.
it’s the police who have the most in common with criminals. the meeting of extremes.
* beqcuer, benditti, nicanor parra – poetry against hairloss
nothing had changed. i was just as disillusioned and full of rage as before. especially on days when there was a full moon. i don’t know why the full moon makes me so angry. it throws me completely off kilter and i turn into a rabid dog. i’ve tried to fight the idea, but it always proves true. it’s not so crazy. so in the end all i can do is come to terms with it and stop struggling in vain.

antoine de saint-exupery – southern mail / night flight

the tender friendships one gives up, on parting, leave their bite on the heart, but also a curious feeling of a treasure somewhere buried.
one night, in a sahara peopled by stars
‘ah, its you, my old astrologer…’ or when bernis came in: ‘sit down, you prodigal son…’ each was bound to her by a secret, by the soft insight of complicity. the purest of friendships thus acquired the richness of a crime.
why do we call them the departed when, among those that change, they alone are durable.
a white hat lay on a chair – was it hers? what a delightful disorder! not a slovenly disorder, but the meaningful disorder that denotes a presence. the chair, barely stirred, still bespoke the movement: a hand pressed against the table to help the sitter rise – he could picture the gesture. on the table an open book – left by whom? and why? perhaps its last sentence was still echoing in the reader’s head.
i also understood something that had always puzzled me: why plato (or aristotle) places courage on the lowest rung of the virtues. it’s not made up of very pretty feelings: a touch of rage, a tinge of vanity, a lot of stubbornness and a vulgar sportive thrill. above all, the exaltation of one’s physical strength, though this really has nothing to do with it. one folds one’s arms across one’s open shirt and breathes in deeply. yes it’s rather pleasant. when it happens at night, one has the added feeling of having committed some huge tomfoolery. never again shall i be able to admire a man who is only brave.
insomnia – ‘if it keeps you from sleeping, it should stimulate your activity.’
‘if the insomnia of a musician causes him to create beautiful works, it is a beautiful insomnia’.

raymond chandler – pearls are a nuisance

i have an extra suit which will fit you admirably, as we are almost exactly the same size. it is certainly a remarkable omen that two such large men should be associated in the same enterprise.
‘haw’, henry snarled. ‘them guys give me an ache in the back of my lap’
finger man: then i watched him dig up a crumpled pack of cigarettes, spear his mouth with one, strike a match on the counter, after missing twice on his thumbnail, and inhale with a lot of poor nonchalance that he knew wasn’t going over.

italo calvino – under the jaguar sin

his majesty is singing… listen to how his majesty sings

yukio mishima – the sailor who fell from grace with the sea

it had hardly been more than a nap, yet his head was clear, the long pleasure of the night still coiled inside him tight as a spring.
fathers – they stand in the way of our progress while they try to burden us with their inferiority complexes, and their unrealised aspirations, and their resentments, and their ideals, and the weaknesses they’ve never told anyone about, and their sins, and their sweeter-than-honey dreams, and the maxims they’ve never had the courage to live by – they’d like to unload all that silly crap on us, all of it! even the most neglectful fathers, like mine, are no different. their consciences hurt them because they’ve never paid any attention to their children and they want the kids to understand just how bad the pain is – to sympathise!
‘all six of us are geniuses. and the world, as you know, is empty… because to assume for these reasons that we are permitted to do anything we want is sloppy thinking. as a matter of fact, we are the ones who do the permitting. teachers, schools, fathers, society – we permit all those garbage heaps. and not because we’re powerless either. permitting is our special privilege and if we felt any pity at all we wouldn’t be ruthless enough to permit this. what it amounts to is that we are constantly permitting impermissible things. there are only a very few really permissible things: like the sea, for example-‘

2012 ^ jara notebook ^ (HARRINGAY)

orhan pamuk – my name is red

to see is to know without remembering
after beholding the portraits of the venetian masters, we realise with horror… our noses can no longer be a kind of wall that divides our faces, but rather, living and curious instruments with a form unique to each of us.
beauty is the eye discovering in out world what the mind already knows.
* hasan’s whitesheep nation.

tennessee williams – a streetcar named desire

rian malan – my traitor’s heart

bernoldus niemand (nobody) – reggae vibes is cool
slagtersnek, boer rebellion against the british 1806
* herman charles bosman – witty short stories about backcountry boers
‘salt dicks’ – a soutpuel was an englishman with one foot in s. africa and the other in england – a straddle so broad that his cock dangled in the sea.
* black people’s theatre productions woza albert and asinamali
the life of a zululand sugar baron is very sweet
* breyten breytenbach
* joseph lelyveld – move your shadow
* oswald mtshali – poet
hey ‘bra, how you ‘bra – and tell me, ‘bra, is my paranoia showing?
* afro disco – hotstic mabuse, shangaan jive from obed ngobeni, the krhula sisters
* stimela, the big dudes, yvonne chaka-chaka
i can even forgive those witch-burning comrades, because i cannot judge an action that lies so far beyond my own understanding.
we’re in a stronghold of the south african police, discussing security situation with a boer colonel. we’re speaking the tongue of my tribe, a guttural bastard dutch in which the r’s roll like thunder and teh g’s grate like a shovel in cold gravel.
* novelist alan paton, zulu chieftan gatsha buthlezi, petros majozi
* msinga – strange place of contrasts

adolfo bioy casares – the invention of morel

i am in a bad state of mind. it seems that for a long time i have known that everything i do is wrong, and yet i have kept on the same way, stupidly, obstinately
* orduño

tom hodgkinson – how to be idle

alarm clocks (artful contrivances that go off at the wring time and alarm the wrong people)
work kills 2 million people per year: that’s an amount equivalent to 2 september 11th disasters every day. yet i see no ‘war on work’ beng declared by governments.
* stanley coren – sleep thieves
dr johnson’s attitude to tea seems to have more in common with an inner-city crackhead than a zen buddhist.
* flaneur – stroller ir idler
* izaak walton – the compleat angler (1653)
when that first martini hits the liver like silver bullet
beer degree – holding one of these allows you to talk on any subject at great length with total authority.
bad: head in the clouds, starry-eyed, losing grip, not living in the real world, lunatic, airy-fairy, space-cadet, away with the fairies, moonstruck, on another planet.
good: feet on the ground, anchored, down-to-earth, grounded, keeping your head down, get a grip.
to sit beside a fire is to loaf
dr johnson – whoever goes to bed before midnight is a rogue:
wha first shall rise to gang awa,
a cuckold, coward i oun is he!
wha first beside his chair shall fa’,
he is king among us three!
(the first to go to bed is a coward, and whoever falls down drunk is king)
cicero – never less idle then when wholly idle, nor less alone then when wholly alone
* blake – the 4 zoas (1797-1804)
follow your dreams // madcap schemes
dmt gives you ‘chattering elves of hyperspace – mischievous, scampish, truth giving sprites and fairies.
be brave, idleheart!
samuel johnson 1758: the idler, though sluggish, is yet alive, and may sometimes be stimulated to vigour and activity. he may descend into profoundness, or tower into sublimity; for the diligence of an idler is rapid and impetuous.
… a mind vacant of all material of amusement, and not one thought to rub against another.
g.k. chesterton 1909: lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a coloured pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling. this, however, is not generally a part of the domestic apparatus on the premises.

michael frayn – headlong

* bruegels
the only visible creatures of any sort are cows, who lift their heads mournfully as i pass, mumbling, dull, soundless monologues about the bovine condition.
* philip the good – richest ruler in europe, netherlands.
put your trust not in princes… the spaniards and their local hirelings, like all failing regimes, were particularly dangerous to have.
it is not i her but she me
her shoulders are defensively braced. its her social manner; politely ready to be amused.

bob dylan – tarantula

what a drag it gets to be. writing for this chosen few. writing for anyone cpt you, daisy mae, who are not even of the masses… silly eyes (aeroplane in trouble)
with his prayers and his pigfoot, blam de lam! black betty black betty, blam de lam! betty had a loser, blam de lam! i spied him on the oean with a long string of muslims, blam de lam! all going quack quack blam de lam! all going quack quack blam!
sorry to say, but i’m going // to have to return your ring. // its nothing personal, except // that i cant do a thing with //my finger and its already // beginning to smell like an // eyeball! you know, like i like // to look wierd, but nevertheless, // when i play my banjo on stage, i // have to wear a glove. needless // to say, it has started to affect // my playing. please believe me. // it has nothing whatsoever to // do with my love for you… // in fact, sending the ring back // should make my love for you // grow all the more profound…
sand in the mouth o the movie star – a strange man we’re calling Simply That wakes up to find ‘what’ scribbled in his garden, he washes himself with a scrambled egg, puts his glasses in his pants and pulls up his trousers.
went 5 hrs without a drink of water. figger i’m ready for the desert. wana come? i’ll take along my dog. he’s always good for a laugh, pick yuh up at seven.
dear mayor wagner. has anybody ever told you, you look like james arness? i am writing to say that you are my son’s idol. could you please send your schedule and repertoire to him, with an autograph picture, at your earliest convenience. he would appreciate it kindly as that’s all he does is play your records and defend you to his friends. i do hope it’s you that’s reading this and not some secretary.
wander why granpa just sits there and watches yogi bear? wonder why he just sits there and don’t laugh? think about it kid, but don’t ask your mother. wonder why elvis presley only smiles with his top lip? think about it kid, but don’t ask your surgeon.
* fernando lamas
dear puck, traded in my electric guitar for one you call a gut one. you can play it all by yourself – don’t need a band.

albert camus – summer (short stories and essays)

finally, the streets of oran tell us about the two essential pleasures of the local youth: having its shoes shone, and parading these same shoes along the boulevard.
it seems that the oranais are like that friend of flaubert who, on his deathbed, cast a last look at this irreplaceable earth and cried out: ‘close the window, it’s too beautiful!’
you choose to stay alive the moment you do not allow yourself to die of hunger, and you consequently recognise that life has at least a relative value.
medea quote: you have sailed with a furious soul far from your father’s houes, beyond the double rocks of the sea, and you live in a foreign land.
drowned at sea… violently lit cafes where i sought refuge.

anton chekhov – black monk and peasants

zhukovo or lackeyville

anthony burgess – a clockwork orange

poor old dim, masked like peebee shelly, had a good loud smeck at that, roaring like some animal.
so that was dim’s cue and he went grinning and going er er and a a a for this veck’s dithering rot, crack crack, first left fistie then right so that out dear old droog the red.
you can pony that one thing always leads to another. right right right. my stereo was no longer on about joy and i embrace ye o ye millions, so some veck had dealt it the off.
‘never worry about thine only son and heir, o may father,’ i said. ‘fear not. he canst taketh care of himself, verily.’
appy polly loggies… i had something of a pain in the gulliver so had to sleep.
as i am your droog and leader, surely i am entitled to know what goes on, eh?
‘new way?’ i said. ‘what’s this about a new way? there’s been some very large talk behind my sleeping back and no error. let me slooshy more.
‘sings like linnet,’ said the top rozz, sneery. ‘sings the roof off lovely, he does that.’
‘crash your dermott, yid,’ meaning to shut up, but it was very insulting.
is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? deep and hard questions, little 6655321.
grahzny bratchnies – bastards
very long time no viddy, droog, how goes?
gargarin street. flip horrorshow takings there droog, for the having.

ming-may jessie chen and mazharul haque – representation of the cultural revolution in chinese films

four assumptions every historian must make:

an assumption that the world exists and has existed independant of any belief about it
an assumption that perceptions, under certain conditions, provide an accurate impression of reality
an assumption that reality is structured according to most of the concepts by which we describe it
an assumption that our rules of inference are reliable means of arriving at truth about reality or: edward h. carr: history is ‘a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past.’

j.m. coetzee – summertime

how many of the ragged workingmen who pass him in the street are secret authors of works that will outlast them: roads, walls, pylons? immortality of a kind, a limited immortality, is not so hard to achieve after all. hy then does he persist in inscribing marks on paper, in the faint hope that people not yet born will take the trouble to decipher them?
irony is simple like salt: you crunch it between your teeth and enjoy a momentary flavour; when the savour is gone, the brute facts are still there.
europe 19th century. all over the continent you see ethnic or cultural identities being transformed into political identities.

bohumil hrabal – i served the king of england

you could see they’d only been yelling at one another like that to make the beer taste better
within an hour i could tell the old headwaiter was stroking me with his eyes, letting me know he liked me.
when he looked into my eyes, i realised that all he had seen of me was a white tie walking down prikopy, and the headwaiter, who knew everything, looked at me as if to say he knew where i’d got the tie, that i’d borrowed it without permission. and as he looked at me, i sadi silently to myself how do you know all this? and he laughed and replied out lout, how do i know? i served the king of england.
* czech music – dark eyes, the mountains resounded
* maurice chevalier – a real person?
the professor would say, you jackass, you idiot, how did you know that? and i would feel like a tomcat when someone scratches him under the chin.
when aristotle was criticised for plagiarizing plato, he replied that after a cat has sucked the mother dry, he gives her a kick.
you evil, stupid, criminal sons of man
* poem by sandburg – what man is made of
the only true man of the world was one who could become anonymous, who could shed himself.

bret easton ellis – less than zero

on the way to ma maison, he (father) puts the top of the 450 down and plays a bob seger taper, as if this was some sort of wierd gesture of communication.
i didn’t like beastman! and i ask the film stundent, ‘didn’t it bother you the way they kept dropping characters out of the film for no reason at all?’ ‘kind of, but that happens in real life…’
but you don’t need anything. you have everything, i tell him. rip looks at me. ‘no i don’t.’ ‘what?’ ‘no i don’t’ there’s a pause and then i ask, ‘oh shit rip what don’t you have?’ ‘i don’t have anything to lose.’

bei dao – waves

… ‘some people seem to think they aren’t as deep as before’, // ‘a hole in the ice is deep’.
the train attendant opened the door … and yelled something indistinct.
* feng deying – bitter herb
horse king – a popular name for buddha, whose divinity is manifested in his third eye.

mian mian – candy

he fried up some rice for me, with lots of different things in it, even apples.
* sergei esenin – soviet poet
we were both in low spirits, sleeping, arguing, drinking water, and throwing up all day long.
if you want to get high, there are plenty of ways to do it, but don’t go using just any old drug without thinking about it. for instance, you can put fisherman’s friend into your espresso. this is a trick we impoverished chinese kids came up with. you have to do it regularly, but it can throw you into the realm of imagination in a hurry.
the only genuine moments we experience at clubs are when we go to the toilet. in other words, the most trivial thing is the most real.
out of the blue, sui ning announced that he was going back south to get our dog. i said, it’s only a dog. it’s a child that will never grow up. it’s like an idiot-
* other banned authors like mian mian – wei hui, willy wo-lap lam
* xu xing – ‘modernist’ writer

ivan klíma – my first loves

now and then a fish unexpectedly smacked against the surface
‘if we are taught that pot comes from the verb to pit, then what’s the origin of shot? or can’t you answer it?’
der mann musshinaus ins feindliche leben – man has to go out into a hostile world
i longed for her sincerity, i was sincere to her, too, otherwise i couldn’t live, otherwise we’d pass each other like ships in the night.

don delillo – white noise

‘we have to boil our water’, steffie said. ‘why?’ ‘it said it on the radio.’ ‘they’re always saying boil your water,’ babette said. ‘it’s the new thing. like turn your wheel in the direction of the skid.’
they were watching him with something like awe. nearly seven straight hours of serious crying. it was as though he’d just returned from a period of wandering in some remote and holy place, in sand barrens or snowy ranges.
maybe when we die, the first thing we’ll say is, ‘i know this feeling. i was here before.’
the supermarket is full of elderly people who look lost among the dazzling hedgerows.
* albert apeer-spandau – the secret diaries

jeanatte winterson – the passion

i asked him why he was a priest, and he said if you have to work for anybody an absentee boss is best.
most of these (new) recruits aren’t seventeen and they’re asked to do in a few weeks what vexes the best philosophers for a lifetime; that is, to gather up their passion for life and make sense of it in the face of death.
every moment you steal from the present is a memory you have lost forever. there’s only now.
the traveller always wants home to be just as it was. the traveller expects to change, to return with a bushy beard or a new baby or tales of a miraculous life where the streams are full of gold and the weather is gentle.
i’m afraid of the Dark. you, you walk so cheerfully, whistling your way, stand still for 5 minutes. stand still in the Dark in a field or down a track. it’s then you know you’re there on sufferance. the Dark only lets you take one step at a time. step and the Dark closes round your back. in front, there is no space for you untill you take it. Darkness is absolute. walking in the Dark is like swimming underwater except you can’t come up for air.
she knew her husband should have been the one, but he had no grave. how like him, she thought, to be as absolute in death as he was in life.
* sarpi, that venetian priest and diplomat who said he never told a lie but didn’t tell the truth to everyone.
snow doesn’t look cold, it doesn’t look like it has any temperature at all. and when it falls and catch those pieces of nothing in your hands, it seems so unlikely that they could hurt anyone. seems so unlikely that simple multiplication can make such a difference.
george III who addresses his upper chamber as ‘my lords and peacocks’. who can fathom the english and their horse radish?

colette – gigi

* (cat called saha)

chekhov – death of a civil servant (the early stories 1883-1888)

… he entered his name mechanically, without taking off his uniform he lay down on the sofa, and… died (the end)

john updike – rabbit run

he now and then touches with his hand the rough bark of a tree or the dry twigs of a hedge, to give himself the small answer of texture.
the child’s sleep is so heavy, he fears it might break the membrane of life and fall through to oblivion

the divine madman drukpa kunley

way up in the vast vault of the young night sky, the strong light of the white full moon extinguishes creatures’ darkness.
all those who have achieved a human body and can say, ‘i always keep my next death in mind’, they will find the sacred path of buddhas.
the lama offered a prayer to the donkey: ‘donkey, most pitiful of beasts! rarely finding grass or water, overloaded, overburdened, we pray to your beaten backside for the blessings of your bend shoulder’. // the lamas were outraged. ‘pray to our lama, not the donkey!’ they shouted. // ‘your lama was reborn as this donkey’, the lama informed them. ‘what nonsense!’ they told him. ‘when your lama was travelling through tibet china and mongolia’, the lama hastened to explain, ‘he over-loaded his pack horses, and the result of that karma was rebirth as a donkey’. and as if to verify this, the donkey’s eyes filled with tears.
tsewong paldzom… had all the designs of a dakini
‘ah! these wretched tibetans!’ the son raged. ‘they come here demanding our hospitality, murder their benefactors, and calmly lock up their victims’ corpses to rot’. and he broke open the door of the storeroom. to his surprise he found a pleasant odour permeating the place and the corpse transformed into rainbow light, except for the big toe on the right foot. // at that moment the lama returned and bit the ear of the old woman’s son who had disobeyed his instruction and opened the door prematurely. the unfortunate son was struck dumb, but eventually he found his tongue and praised the lama with thanksgiving and devotion. // ‘whether you’re grateful or not is irrelevant,’ the lama told him. ‘your mother is now living in a Pure Buddha Land, and that is the important thing.’
‘bring me a stick!’ he ordered. taking the stick he began to beat the corpse, chanting: ‘don’t sleep, old woman! get up! get up! // arise from this mess of misery! / you came into this world without purpose // and you are leaving it the way you came! … // without your precious clothes that once hid your shame // nauseating fluids dribble out of you! // don’t lie there, old woman! walk on! // walk down the path of release!
when the lama drukpa kunley arrived in shar kuzangling, the inhabitants confabulated: we should try and bring our demon face to face with drukpa kunley
through his own buouyancy and benevolance his face spread throughout the land of bhutan, and all men and women, monks and laymen, recognised his power and revered him. by virtue of this faith and devotion they became ready vessel for the buddha’s ambrosia.
‘where are you from and where are you going?’ they asked him. ‘i come from behind me and i’m going on ahead’, he smiled.
and my name is crazy dragon, kunga legpa // no vagabond begging food and clothes // but rejecting my home and my family // i wander on never ending pilgrimage.

MURIÓ LA ABUELA — R.I.P.B.L (Rest In Pure Buddha Land)

arthur schnitzler – dream story

woe to him who dares lay hands on me.

lu yu – the classics of tea

do not pick on the day that has seen rain nor when clouds spoil the sky. pick tea only on a clear day. all there is to making tea is to pick it, steam it, pound it, shape it, dry it, tie it and seal it. tea has a myriad of shapes. if i may speak vulgarly and rashly, tea may shrink and crinkle like a mongol’s boots.
on the question of what water to use, i would suggest tea made from mountain streams is best, river water is alright, but well-water tea is quite inferior… water from slow-flowing streams, the stone-lined pools or milk-pure springs is the best of mountain water. never take tea made from water that falls in cascades, gushes from springs, rushes in torrent or that eddies and surges as if nature were rinsing its mouth. over usage of all such water to make tea will lead to illness of the throat.

ai qing – black eel 艾青 – 黑鳗

with one pull we get gold …. heave-ho! // with another we get silver …. heave-ho! // with a third we get treasure …. heave-ho! // to use as piss-pots for our master …. heave-ho! // the south wind blows // the wine is strong, strong // the wine i drink, drink // the chicken is fine, fine // facing the south i sit, sit // my wife keeps me company // massaging her feet, feet // i call her baby, baby.

j.d. salinger – franny and zooey

* the way of the pilgrim
* max müller – sacred books of the east (victorian indiologist)
he wore a frown behind his cigar, as though the stunning lightning effects had been ‘created’ by a stage director whose taste he considered more or less suspect.
* huineng 惠能 – chinese zen chen 禅

ralph ellison – invisible man

i rushed from the house, extremely agitated, but determined to get away from my hot thoughts into the chill air.
the floor became impatient and smashed up to meet me.
why, you could cause us the greatest humiliation simply by confronting us with something we liked. not all of us, but so many. simply by walking up and shaking a set of chitterlings (bacon) or a well-boiled hog maw at them during the clear light of the day. what consternation it would cause! and i saw myself advancing upon bledsoe, standing bare of his false humility in the crowded lobby of men’s house, and seeing him there and him seeing me and ignoring me and me enraged and suddenly whipping out a foot or two of chtterlings, raw, uncleaned and dripping sticky circles on the floor as i shake them in his face, shouting: “bledsoe, you’re a shameless chitterling eater! i accuse you of relishing hog bowels! ha! and not only do you eat them, you sneak and eat them in private when you think you’re unobserved! you’re a sneaking chitterling lover! i accuse you of indulging in a filthy habit, bledsoe! lug them out there, bledsoe! lug them out so we can see!
there are many things about people like mary that i dislike. for one thing, they seldom know where their personalities end and yours begins. they usually think in terms of “we”.
* don’t come early in the morning, neither in the heat of day. but come in the sweet cool of the evening and wash my sins away.

jules verne – 20,000 leagues under the sea

“one last question, captain nemo”. // “ask it, professor”. // “you are rich?” // “immensly rich, sir; and i could, without missing it, pay the national debt of france”.
there grew sponges of all shapes, pediculated, foliated, globular, and digital. they certainly justified the names of baskets, cups, distaffs, elk-horns, lion’s-feet, peacock’s-tails and neptune-gloves, which have been given to them by the fishermen, greater poets than the savants.
“when i have mixed this honey with the paste of the artocarpus”, said he, “i shall be able to offer you a succulent cake”. // “upon my word”, said conseil, “it will be gingerbread”. // “never mind the gingerbread”, said i; “let us continue our interesting walk”.
(seals) if properly taught, they would be of great service as fishing-dogs.

chuck palahniuk – rant

“the big reason why folks leave a small town,” rant used to say, “is so that they can moon over the idea of going back. and they reason they stay put is so they can moon about getting out”. rant meant no one is happy, anywhere.
(eyes) to the left if they’re remembering information, to the right if they’re lying.
beginning with santa claus as a cognitive exercise, a child is encouraged to share the same idea of reality as his peers. even if that reality is potentially invented and ludicrous, belief is encouraged, with gifts that support and promote the common cultural lies. // the greatest consensus in modern society is out traffic system. the way a flood of strangers can interact, sharing a path, almost all of them travelling without incident. it only takes one dissenting driver to create anarchy.
me and death, separated at birth.

thomas de quincy – confessions of an english opium eater

* jean-jacques rousseau – confessions
it had been my intention originally to proceed to westmore-land, both from the love i bore to that country, and on other personal accounts. accident, however, gave a different direction to my wanderings, and i bent my step towards north wales.
a man who talks nonsense, even though ‘with no view to profit’, is not altogether the most agreeable partner in a dispute, whether as opponent or respondent.
whereas different men throw their feelings into different channels, and most are apt to show their interest in the concerns of the poor, chiefly by sympathy, expressed in some shape or other, with their distresses and sorrows, i, at that time, was disposed to express my interest by sympathising with their pleasures. the pains of poverty i had lately seen too much of; more than i wished to remember: but the pleasures of the poor, their consolations of spirit, and their reposes from bodily toil, can never become oppressive to contemplate.
in less than a minute his mother had him in her arms with his face looking upwards. ‘what is the meaning,’ she exclaimed, in sudden affright, ‘of this strange repose settling upon his features?’
tintinnabulous – characterised by or pertaining to bell-ringing
* thomas quincy (the father) – a short tout in the midland counties of england, performed in the summer of 1772. together with an account of a similar excursion, undertaken sep. 1774
* giusseppina grassini (1773-1850) an italian contralato who performed in london many times early in the century. she was admired for her beauty and acting skill and singing voice. rumour she was napoleon and wellington’s mistress
* sir thomas browne (1605-1682): even that vulgar musicke which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me so feep a fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of my maker; there is something in it of Divinity more than the eare discovers… it is a sensible fit of that Harmony, which intellectually sounds in the eares of god, it unties the ligaments of my frame, takes me to pieces, dilates me out of my selfe, and by degrees, me thinks, resolves me into heaven.
* jonas hanway – essay on tea (1775)
the death-watch beetle makes a noise like a watch ticking. popular superstition had it that the noise foretold death.

jiang rong – wolf totem

on the mongolian grassland, herds of horses were made up of a dozen or more families, large and small, and each family was led by what was known as a “son horse”. these horses, whose flowing manes reached their knees, sometimes even touching the ground, were a head taller than the other horses in the family, valiant males that were true leaders and fearless killers. whenever they encountered wolves, the son horses formed the heard into a circle, with females and young horses on the inside, males on the outside, while they remained on the margins to fight the enemy head-on, manes flying, flared nostrils snorting, rearing up on their hind legs, a flesh-and-blood mountain suspended above the wolves. when such a horse came thundering down, it crushed the wolves’ heads and torsos with its enormous hooves. and if a wolf turned tail and ran, the horse lowered its head and gave chase, fiercely kicking out and nipping at its flanks. the largest and most ferocious of these horses had been known to pick up wolves with their teeth and fling them into the air, waiting for them to hit the ground before stomping them to death. even the most savage wolves were no match for son horses, which kept vigil over their herds, day and night. they protected their families not only against wolf packs but also against lightning strikes and wildfires, minimising injuries to mates, offspring, and the very old and always leading them to safety.
“wolves are scary”, yang remarked. “this little bastard’s eyes aren’t even open and he’s already a tyrant”.
the old man’s face darkened. “please don’t talk about such things as glory. the greater the go=lory, the deeper my sins. this cannot happen again…”
the cub was filling out, its belly tight as a drum after every meal, like a fat, squinty-eyed laughing buddha. he was growing faster than an autumn mushroom, and was already half a snout longer than the puppies he was with.
riding a tiger (or wolf) was bad enough; getting off was worse.
he suddenly saw how intriguing his situation had become – for here was a man with wolfish characteristics, a dog with a wolfish nature, and a genuine wolf all living together on the grassland.
the swans had changed into blue evening wear, which turned the yellow spot on the crowns of their head a cold purple. their graceful, curved necks looked like bright question marks, questioning heaven, questioning earth, questioning the water, questioning people, questioning all living creatures on earth.
fortunately, we’ve got plenty of mountain onions in the yurt. wild onions and wild eggs, a true, and absolutely delicious wildwood meal. yang ke, you go peel the onions; chen zhen, you break open the eggs; zhang jiyuan, you get a basket of dried dung. i’ll do the cooking.
current government policy has developed into the stage of ‘one country, two systems’, but deeply rooted in the han consciousness is still ‘many areas, one system’. it doesn’t matter if it is farmland or pastureland, forest or river, city or countryside; all they want to do is mix them up and create a ‘unified’ flavour.

eleanor mccallie cooper and william liu – grace (an american woman in china, 1934-1974)

east is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet
we went to the apartment wednesday afternoon. it is in the french concession and is a darling place.
our flat is so small there’s no place to stick the children away, so they are always underfoot.
the hundred flowers movement in the spring of 1957 had something in common with the prague spring of 1968
* novel – villette – lucy snowe – foreign teacher in brussles.

kurt vonnegut – the sirens of titan

to be punctual meant to exist as a point, meant that as well as to arrive somewhere on time. constant existed as a point – could not imagine what it would be like to exist in any other way
american philosopher kings
some of the president’s comments at the time bear repeating – and it should be remembered that the president gave the word ‘progress’ a special flavour by pronouncing it ‘prog-erse’. he also favoured the words ‘chair’ and ‘warehouse’, pronouncing them cheer and wirehourse.
-“yah”, said the woman. “you said you had a very unhappy childhood and made everybody listen to how unhappy it was. how your father never even threw a ball to you once – any kind of ball. half the time nobody could understand you, but evey time somebody could understand you, it was about how there never was any kind of ball.
there is a riddle about a man who is locked in a room with nothing but a bed and a calendar, and the question is: how does he survive? that answer is: he eats dates from the calendar and drinks water from the springs of the bed.
UWTB – Universal Will To Become – is what makes universes out of nothingness – that makes nothingness insist on being somethingness.
the planet mercury sings like a crystal goblet. it sings all the time… there are creatures in the deep caves of mercury (harmoniums). the song their planet sings is important to them, for the creatures are nourished by vibrations. they feed on mechanical energy. the creatures cling to the singing walls of their caves. in that way, they eat the song of mercury.
connecting the winston sea, the niles sea, the rumfoord sea, and the kazak pools are the three great rivers. these rivers, with their tributaries, are moody – variously roaring, listless and torn.
an explosion on the sun had separated man and dog. a universe schemed in mercy would have kept man and dog together.

andre dubus III – house of sand and fog

when we toasted our health, each man, including powat, attempted to tap his cup beneath those of the others, which is a true sign of respect in persia. “man nokarentam,” we say, meaning i am your servant. and of course each man wants to honour another more than himself, if it is truly deserved, so he will not allow his cup to stay higher when they touch; he will instantly lower his cup to the bottom of the other man;s as if to say: “no, i am your servant”. but the other will sometimes insist by lowering his again and more than once i have seen grown men lower their cups in this fashion, each after the other all the way down to the floor, then stand to fistfight over who respects whom the most.
i pegged her right away for the kind of person who couldn’t live with herself for not doing the right thing, but also the kind who could never say no, so they really wanted you to lie to them so they wouldn’t have to do the right thing.
if there is no snake at your feet, do not lift rocks at the side of the road (persian saying)
lester u. burdon looks… at me once more, his lips open beneath his moustache, as if this piece of information must enter his mouth as well as his ears.

slavomir rawicz – the long walk

reindeer and sledges! dozens of them. reindeer, two, three, and even four to a sled in line ahead, driven by little brown men, barely 5 feet tall with smooth mongaloid faces, the nomadic ostyaks, the primative herdsmen of the siberian steppes.

avi steinberg – running the books

* rosseau
to speak was to interrupt him

c’hien chung shu – fortress beseiged 围城

we think its funny to watch a kitten go around in circles chasing its tail, but when a puppy follows suit and turns hectically around after that stubby tail, then it isn’t funny any more.
fang never ran into her while in paris, and nowof all times there was no escape from her; the explanation seemed to be that paris was big while the world was small.
he… wished he could have pressed blotting paper against the pale rainclouds to dry them up.
i myself don’t have any talent. all i can do is drink a few swallows of wine. mr fang, i’ll drink two catties of wine with you today.
arm, shoulder or back, depending on which “pattable” happened to be within reach at the time.
you’re so used to duping people with big talk that you even duped yourself into believing it – a very common psychological occurrence.
when a person gets into a high position, he’s apt to get carried away. he didn’t realise that a person’s shortcomings are just like a monkey’s tail. when its squatting on the ground, its tail is hidden from view, but as soon as it climbs a tree it exposes its backside to everyone. nevertheless, the long tail and red bottom were there all the time.
the way chinese adopted foreign names always reminded him of british sow and cow. as soon as their meat got on a menu, they went under a french name.
jou-chia had nothing more to say and pulled a face as long as a beautiful donkey’s.
body builds are divided into five primary elements: wood, water, metal, earth, and fire. ie, wood-shaped is tall and thin; earth-shaped is thick and heavy etc.
* chia tao (779-849)
* su man-shu (1884-1905) poet
* huang tsun-hsien (1848-1905) contemporary issues poet
* ching-hua yüan by li ju-chen (1763-1830) like gulliver’s travels

tom sharpe – wilt (in spanish)

penique
la capacidad de actuar sin vacilación. el valor. la decisión.
* judas el oscuro
sus notas… arrastradas por el viento nocturno y se quedabad pegadas en el barro.

chuck palahniuk – pygmy

occasional male student approach female, request mutual gyrate to demonstrate adequate reproductive partner, fast gyrate to display no cripple. no genetic defect to bequeath offspring. demonstrate coordinated, plenty vital to provision impregnated female. throughout gestation period. provisional subsequent offspring untill matured. females flaunt dermis and hair to depict viable vessel for impregnate, paint face so appear most symmetrical. best likely produce frequent alive births.
hurtle hair backward and over own shoulder
host sister eye bulb
adolf hitler – vilain, emperor, accomplished huckster
vladimir lenin – heroic autocrat, pugnacious visionary
benito mussolini – magnificent chieftain, grand ruler
adolf hitler – relentless avatar, demented prophet
mao tse tung – jolly monarch, good natured king: “the need to shit after eating does not mean that eating is a waste of time”, “if you have to shit, shit! if you have to fart, fart! you will feel much better for it”.

paolo cohelo – the winner stands alone

believing that art is either worth a fortune or worth nothing at all.

truman capote – breakfast at tiffany’s

all wild around the eye
‘gosh, lulamae. kingdom come’.
but its sunday, mr bell. clocks are slow on sundays.
its better to look at the sky than live there. such an empty place; so vague. just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.
i have my family to protect, and my name, and i’m a coward where those institutions enter.
come along, come along, to the darktown strutters’ ball.
for we are the champion kite-fliers who study the wind like sailors.

alexander solzhenitsyn – the gulag archipelago

* maxim gorky’s disgraceful book on slave labour on the white sea canal.
every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself.
* sheinin & brothers tur – spy stories
… everyone was starving in bounteous russia, and everyone was always looking about and asking: “where did all our dear bread get to?”
the white sea folk say of the tide, the water reconsiders, meaning the moment just before it begins to fall. well, of course, it is innapropriate to compare the murky soul of stalin with the water of the white sea.
podkulachnik – a person ailing in the kulaks
the esperantist – a harmful group which stalin and hitler undertook to smoke out.
a district party conference was under way in moscow province… at the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to comrade stalin was called for. of course, everyone stood up (just as everyone had leaped to his feet during the conference at every mention of his name). the small hall echoed with “stormy applause”, rising to an oration, “for 3 minutres, 4 minutes, 5 minutes, the stormy applause, rising to an ovation” continued. but palms were getting sore and raised arms were already aching. and the older people were panting from exhaustion. it was becoming insufferably silly even to those who really adored stalin. however, who would dare be the first to stop? the secretary of the district party committee could have done it. he was standing on the platform, and it was he who had called for the oration. but he was a newcomer. he had taken the place of a man who had been arrested. he was afraid! after all, NKVD men were standing in the hall applauding and watching to see who quit first! and in that obscure, small hall, unknown to the leader, the applause went on – 6, 7, 8 minutes! they were done for! their goose was cooked! they couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! at the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly – but up there with the presidium where everyone could see them? … 9 minutes, 10!… then after 11 minutes the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sad down in his seat. and, oh, a miracle took place! where had the universal, uninhibited, indescribable enthusiasm gone? to a man, everyone stopped dead and sat down. they had been saved! // that, however, was how they discovered who the independent people were. and that was how they went about eliminating them. that same night the factory director was arrested… his interrogator reminded him: “don’t be the first to stop applauding!”
koreans from the far east were sent into exile in kazakhstan – the first experiment in mass arrests on the basis of race.
it would appear that stalin intended to arrange a great massacre of the jews. // but this became the first plan of his life to fail. god told him – apparently with the help of human hands – to depart from his rib cage.
it has always been impossible to learn the truth about anything in our country – now, and always, and from the beginning.
* chekhov – i want to sleep
abakumov – he used to change into civilian clothing and walk around moscow with kuznetsov, the head of his bodyguard, and whenever he felt like it, he would hand out money from the cheka operation funds. does this not smell of old russia – charity for the sake of one’s soul?
as the folk saying goes: if you speak for the wolf, speak against him as well.
to stand up for the truth is nothing! for truth you have to sit in jail!
* sholokhov – the fate of man – “subda cheloveka” // gumilyer – pirate stories.
* russia abroad – berdyayev, lossky // art: rachmaninoff, chaliapin, benois, diaghilev, pavlova, don cossack chorus of jaroff
* v. v. shulgin, navakov- imaginary values
if in order to live it is necessary not to live (this life), then what’s it all for?
all the tsars once in a while, in a fatherly way, exiled without any trial those who had incurred their displeasure.
as is well known, human beings are better and lazier than their rules and instructions.
the principle of the 2nd law of thermodynamics: all differences tend to level out.
like a cow, the war had licked awat four of my years.

there is a subtle charm in the taste of tea which makes it irresistible and capable of idealisation. western humorists were not slow to mingle the fragrance of their thought with its aroma. it has not the arrogance of wine, the self consciousness of coffee, nor the simpering innocence of cocoa.
there are three stages of boiling: the first boil is when the little bubbles like the eye of fishes swim on the surface; the second boil is when the bubbles are like crystal beads rolling in a fountain; the third boil is when the billows surge wildly in the kettle
* yeno 637-713 – founder of southern zen > baso > haikujo

chuck palahniuk – fight club

the charm of travelling is everywhere i go, tiny life. i go to the hotel, tiny soap, tiny shampoos…
you buy furniture. you tell yourself , this is the last sofa i will ever need in my life. buy the sofa, then for a couple of years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got your sofa issue handled. then the right set of dishes. then the perfect bed. the drapes. the rug. then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.
* orrisroot, the wild spanish iris

haruki murakami – hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world

for a guy leading a perfectly normal existence, how many times in the course of a lifetime would the equator be a significant factor?
yet each time i turn down these streets, i can sense strangers behind the facades, holding their breath as they continue pursuits i will never know.
evolution is mighty gruelin’. what do you think the most gruelin’ thing about evolution is?
* volatfil – tableland in ukraine (not real)
all efforts of reason and analysis are, in a word, like trying to slice through a watermelon with sewing needles. they may leave marks on the outer rind, but the fruity pulp will remain perpetually out of reach… of course, there are idle souls out there who seem to enjoy just nibbling away on the rind.
* turgenev – rudin / spring torrents
i have a thing about losers. flaws in oneself open you up to others with flaws. not that dostoevski’s characters don’t generate pathos, but they’re flawed in ways that don’t come across as faults. and whiile i’m on the subject, tolstoy’s characters’ faults are so epic and out of scale, they’re as static as backdrops.
the aged devil sat on a rock by the side of a finnish country road. the devil was ten thousand, maybe twenty thousand years old, and very tired. he was covered in dust, his whiskers wilting. ‘whither be ye gang in sich ‘aste?’ the devil called out to a farmer. // ‘done broke me ploughshare and must to fixe it,’ the farmer replied. ‘not to hurrie,’ said the devil, ‘the sunne stil plays o’erhead on highe, wherefore be ye scurrying? sit ye down and ‘ere m’tale’. the farmer knew no good could come from passing time with the devil…

roberto bolaño – amulet

león felipe would laugh, but not at don pedro garfías
what a melancholy man, he didn’t laugh, he looked at me with those eyes like a lake at sundown, like one of those lakes high in the mountains that nobody visits, those terribly sad and tranquil lakes, so tranquil they don’t seem to belong to this world.
and i opened my mouth, half dead and half asleep, and said, chido, elena, quite uncharecteristically using that awful mexican slang word for great.
i said, arturito’s back, and i painted his return with colours borrowed from the palette of epic poetry.
while arturito was resolved to continue, having entirely assumed the role of hard man, which was partly my creation, and which, in the course of that helpless, airless night, he had accepted like a wafer of bitter flesh.
* barola tacuche
a skull more like a dented bowl than a noble dome.
imagine so much death, all around you; it must have been stupefying.
* vladimir mayakovsky, thomas mann, ezra pound, vachel lindsay, césar vallejo, vicente huidobro, paul eluard, cesare pavese, pier pablo pasolini, giorgio bassani, oliverio girondo, robert arlt, adolfo bioy casares, arno schmidt, witold gombrowicz, paul celan, andré breton, max jacob, jean-pierre duprey, gary snyder, gilberte dallas, rodolfo wilcock, alexandre unik, nicanor parra, ernesto cardenal, carson mccullers, alejandra pizarnik, alfonsina storni, alice sheldon, alfonso reyes, marguerite duras, james tiptree jr., marcel schwob, julio cortazár, jerzy andrecjewski
gligish
* juana de ibarbourou – la rosa de los vientos / las lenguas de diamante

carmen laforet – nada

un gato despeluzando que lamía sus patas al sol. el bicho parecía ruinoso, como todo lo que le rodeaba.
abuela – don jerónimo era un hombre raro; figúrate que quería matar al gato… ya ves tú, porque el pobre animal es muy viejo y vomitaba por los rincones.
* xochipilli – el dios de los juegos y las flores de las aztecas
… pero eso de andar por ahí suelta como un perro vagabundo…
román frotó una cerilla para encander el cigarillo; vi un instante entre las sombras, su cara iluminada por resplendor rojizo y su singular sonrisa, luego lasdoradas herbas ardiendo. en seguida un punto rojo y alrededor otra vez la luz gris – violenta del crespúsculo.
me oyes como quien oye llover, ya lo veo… infelíz! ya te golpeará la vida, ya te triturará, ya te aplastará! entonces me recordarás… oh!
no sabía si tenía necesidad de caminar entre las casas silenciosas de algún barrio adormecido, repirando el viento negro de mar o de sentir las oleadas de luces de los anuncios de colores que teñían con sus focos el ambiente del centro de la ciudad.
ni siquiera el benjamín, de siete años, a quien el cambio de los dientes daba una expresión cómica cuando se reía, y que se llamaba ramón berenguer, como si fuera un antiguo conde de barcelona, se distinguía de sus hermanos más que en estas dos particularidades.
como si yo no supiera que la hermanita no da ni las buenas noches! conque para pedir dinero?
vols una mica d´aiguardent, nena? // – no, gracias. // – que delicadeta ets, noia! // – perdona, noi, pero sé cómo las gastas…
fui destraída todo el camino, pensando en que siempre se mueve uno en el mismo círculo de personas por más vueltas que parezca dar.
parecía tener un talento extraordinario, aunque estaba limitado por su pereza.

oscar lewis – five families

rosa came back in. “i couldn’t bear my hooves any longer they were so cold!”
rosa said, “what do you confess for? only those who eat saints and excrete devils should confess!”
it was a village belief that if a child was punished with the tool he was trying to master or with the pieces of dish he had broken, it would stop him from repeating his mistakes.
“they are so presumptuous that they will lose everything. it would be better to buy a piece of land. if someone digs a hole in thatm you can fill it up with a little earth, but if someone puts a hole in this machine (t.v) what will they do?”
the priest had encouraged him to enter a monestary and guillermo was tempted, but he had been too mischievous a boy to be accepted. he rang the churchbells at the wrong hour, stuffed himself with holy waters, got drunk on holy wine, deliberately misplaced the priest’s bookmark, turned the bible upside down just before mass, and finally was caught parading about in the preist’s robes.
guillermo mentioned his fear of losing his job to a girl named esmarelda, the daughter of a woman who owned a bycicle agency, and the girl gave him a bottle of bewitched water to sprinkle on the doorsill of the factory manager’s office. a week later he was given a permanent job at 35 pesos a day. guillermo believed that from then on the manager was bewitched in his favour.

the vintage book of contemporary chinese fiction

once the brush makes contact with the paper there must not be any breaks untill it lifts off the page at the end. the number of characters is irrelevant, the important thing is for the energy is for the energy to flow from first to last in a single breath.
over on the other side, it is not fashionable to show off and behave like a bully. anybody who wants to climb over other people’s heads and stand on their shoulders is not going to have an easy ride, there are quite a few revolutionaries over there as it happens. all they have to do is get on a platform, summon the crowds, and start a campaign. it would be much easier to build a socialist society in the other world i can assure you!
he lay on his belly in a harvested rice field, groping and sighing as he surveyed the world with bleary, unfocused eyes. // a timid but studious rabbit scampering through the field heard his moans and wondered what philosophical profundities, what breadth of experience, wre implied in these sounds… // the frog spluttered in outrage: ‘the apocalypse is at hand. you at least are an educable young man. look at that sky: it must have gorged itself sick… // and look at the sun: it has lost its brilliance too. it is wavering and will probably fall out of the sky soon.
the article stated that the snake’s egg had once been lined up in the same row with the nightingale’s egg. that is to say, they were from the same district. besides, the same sun had shone on their eggs prior to hatching, which proved that they were members of the same clan.
everyone in the room agreed about one thing: he should not spray his walls black! how could anyone spray his walls and ceiling black? most people would not dare even think of such a thing. he did not just think about it, he actually did it! extraordinary! weird! half-mad! reactionary!
drink makes not man drunk; man makes himself drunk.

ernest hemingway – death in the afternoon

the spanish say ‘el sol es el mejor torero’.
if you have plenty of money, want not to see but to have seen a bullfight and plan no matter whether you like it or not to leave after the first bull, buy a barrera seat so that someone who never had enough money… can make a quick rush from above and occupy your expensive seat as you go out taking your pre-conceived opinions with you.
by september the pastures are pretty well burned up by the heat and the bulls lean and out of condition, unless they have been fed up on grain which makes them fat, sleek and glossy and very violent for a few minutes but unfit for fighting as a boxer that has trained exclusively on potatoes and ale.
but, you say, there is very little conversation in this book. why isn’t there more dialogue? what we want in a book by this citizen is people talking… he drinks too much and cannot punctuate readily and now he has stopped writing dialogue.
then you could walk across the town and to the cafe where they say you get your education learning who owed who money and who chiselled this fish from who and why he told him he could kiss his what and what had children by who and who married who before and after what and how long it took for this and that and what the doctor said.

ernest hemingway – the old man & the sea

‘if the others heard me talking out loud they would think that i am crazy,’ he said, aloud. ‘but since i am not crazy, i do not care.’
he felt the iron go in and he leaned on it and drove it further and then pushed all his weight after it. then the fish came alive, with his death in him, and he rose high out of the water showing all his great length.

neil gaiman – american gods

look at my king all dressed in red, // iko iko all day, // i bet you 5 dollards he’ll kill you dead, // jockamo-feena-nay
we’ll always have peru

mohsin hamid – the reluctant fundamentalist

that core of conviction that gives words their power
the ruins proclaim the building was beautiful – pakistani saying.

alexander solzhenitsyn – the first circle

‘gentlemen, oxygen makes us immortal.’
‘i’m not against oxygen in principle, but why does it always have to be so cold? i like my oxygen warm!’
only cosmic disasters take place in silence – sound is not transmitted in outer space. if a new star should blow up right behind us we wouldn’t even hear it.
‘well, you see, there’s an old chinese proverb: never walk if you can stand still, never stand still if you can sit – but lying down is best of all!’
it was then that he heard their quiet voices through the grating in the back door. they were cursing the government and the tsar, but not cursing the government of the day and not stalin – they were cursing tsar peter the great!! what had he done to them? yet there they were, cursing him up and down!
ivan has been given permission to darn his socks, of which in the past year he has managed to accumulate 12 pairs.
i wear the pride of our national costume – foot cloths
then he crawled under the bus to make sure no one was clinging onto the chassis, although the devil himself would have found it impossible to hang on there for more than a minute.
sometimes it’s the devil himself who takes care of us.
and for a country to have a great writer – don’t be shocked, ill whisper it – is like having another government. that’s why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.
all you do is smother me with polysyllables
the revolving mirrors in his mind began to turn more slowly and in a more co-ordinated fashion.

ernest hemmingway – complete short stories – finca vigía

‘he says opening bottles is what makes drunkards,’ bill explained. ‘that’s right’, said nick. he was impressed. he had never thought of that before. he had always thought it was solitary drinking that made drunkards.
‘adios’, he said, for he spoke beautiful spanish, being a lion of culture. ‘au revoir,’ he called to them in his exemplary french. they all roared and growled in african lion dialect.
‘cette putain guerre,’ – ‘this dirty whore of a war’.

roberto bolaño – la pista de hielo

metí en la mochila los libros y la ropa y me largué con viento fresco.
maravilloso, maravilloso, dijo en catalán. palabras de ese tipo (meravellós, maravellós) si que las entiendo.
nel, majo – su frase farvorita
ole tu madre, dijo el recluta
todo habia sido fruto de figuraciones sin fundamento…
rememoró lo pasado con palabras claras y lúcidas
(en la pared) coraje, canejo!
bernardo sufre una metamorfasis, su viejo cuerpo se divide en dos partes idénticas al cuerpo primigenio. la primera parte escapa hacia el valle lanzando gritos de júbilo. la segunda parte sube pesadamente hacia las alturas de la gran montaña y nunca más se oye hablar de el.

alexander solzhenitsyn – one day in the life of ivan denisovich

however cold it might be, he could never bring himself to eat with his hat on.
in our village, folk say god crumbles up the old moon into stars… the stars fall down now and then. the gaps have to be filled.
everyone was delighted. as delighted as a hare when it finds it can still terrify a frog.
nothing seems to make the authorities madder than zeks kipping quietly after breakfast.
come outside and warm yourselves by the wolf’s sun.

milan kundera – immortality

we don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.
the feeling that she had nothing in common with those two-legged creatures with a head on their shoulders and a mouth in their face.
non-solidarity with mankind.
that strange, kindly man is visiting them again, the one who knows all about them and yet has not heard of the eiffel tower.
that’s well known all over, that the earth is horrible, said the visitor.
goethe is sixty-two and no longer has a single tooth in his head
when lenin proclaimed that he loved beethoven’s appassionata above all else, what was it he really loved? what did he hear? music? or a majestic noise which reminded him of the solemn stirrings in his soul, a longing for blood, brotherhood, executions, justice and the absolute? did he derive joy from the tones, or from the musings stimulated by the tones, which had nothing to do with art or beauty?
a person stubbornly defending the superiority of cats over the other animals is doing basically, the same thing as one who maintains that mussolini was the sole saviour of italy: he is proud of this attribute of the self and he tries to make this attribute (a cat or mussolini) loved by everyone.
paradoxical ideas belong to high culture.
nothing requires a greater effort of thought than arguments to justify the rule of non-thought.
bernard bertrand is hereby declared a complete ass.
as long as we live with other people, we are only what other people consider us to be.
to be absolutely modern means to be the alley of one’s gravediggers.
if you are in the habit of designating your striving with the word ‘fight’, it means that your noble striving conceals the longing to knock someone to the ground.
to vagrants, clochards.
a bas les russes! a bas les bulgares! down with the russians, down with the bulgarians.
oh france, you are the land of form, just as russia is the land of feeling!
in intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self. suffering is the university of egocentricism.
heads held high (and hatless!)
he began to see artists and writers as people passed by ambition rather than gifted with creativity, and he avoided their company.

cormac mccarthy – the road

he unsnapped the throat of his parka
the blind dogs of the sun

umberto eco – the mysterious flame of queen loana

a grey city, sad as a tombstone.
i was chewing fog
because i am a heap // of earth
god persuades moses that he’s god because he says so and that’s that. it begins with false witness.
you have to believe in the bible because it’s inspired by god, but who tells you the bible’s inspired by god? the bible.
the shade of blue that distance is.

alain fournier – le grand meaulines

little libertine

isaac asimov – through a glass, clearly

sometimes she wondered if it was wise to try to train the students into speech that was divorced from individuality and geared only to a mass-average accent and information.
deering was beside himself with a mixture of emotions, or perhaps he would not have said that.
human cultural advances come in spurts… athens of pericles, florence of the medicis, england of elizabeth, spain of the cordoban emirs.
groups, like individuals, will rise to strange heights in answer to a challenge, and vegitate in absence of a challenge. where dr ralson left the paths of sanity, however, was in insisting that such a view amounted to confusing cause and effect. he declared that it was not times of war and dangerous that stimulated ‘cultural spurts’, but rather vice versa. he claimed that each time a group of men showed too much vitality and ability, a war became necessary to destroy the possibility of their further development.
all earth fears an atomic war and would do anything to avoid it; yet all earth fears that an atomic war is inevitable.

new russian writing – womens view

(marina palei – the bloody ward) beside the doctor’s couch the patient’s effects are piled in bashful disharmony on a stool
colour of piglet
(a field…) it resembles the reflection of the sky at the bottom of a lake, and the sky shines above it like a dazzling sea. a blue sea and a green sea, one reflects the other, kissing with sweet abandon.
yalozar, tyasma, andoma, pantoga, megram names that roll around in your mouth like crunchy nuts.
(elena schwartz) the pool drained like a sea with knives in waves.
get up! shame on you, sleeping in common view.
something else that strikes me as weird / that i cant sense my skeleton inside.
(lerissa miller) sometimes you wake up and don’t understand where you are in relation to the door and window.
(julia latynana) it could be said that the state appeared at the time when the kings retained all the advantages of their position while renouncing the inconveniences connected with it.
latest anniversary of their happy regime.

jerome k. jerome – three men in a boat

at this point, mrs poppets knocked at the door to know if we were ready for supper. we smiled sadly at one another, and said we supposed we had better try to swallow a bit.
it is difficult enough to fix a tent in dry weather; in wet, the task becomes herculean. instead of helping you, it seems to you that the other man is simply playing the fool.
objections to paraffin oil as an atmosphere.
i asked him to come and have a drink. he accepted, and we forced our way into the buffet, where we yelled, and stamped, and waved our umbrellas for a quarter of an hour; and then a young lady came and asked us if we wanted anything.
harris, who is of a chummy disposition, offered him a bit of bread and jam. i fancy he must have belonged to some society, sworn to abstain from bread and jam; for he declined it quite gruffly, as if he were vexed at being tempted with it, and he added that it was his duty to turn us off.
the first thing we saw, when we came in view of it, was george’s blazer on one of the lock gates, closer inspection showing that george was inside it.
they see a cow, and you have to leave the boat to chivvy the cow out of their way.
i asked my cousin if she thought it could be a dream, and she replied that she was just about to ask me the same question; and then we both wondered if we were both asleep, and if so, who was the real one that was dreaming, and who was the one that was only a dream; it got quite interesting.
then we all got mad. we took that tin out on the bank, and harris went up into a field and got a big sharp stone…
we beat it flat, we beat it square; we battered it into every form known to geometry.
harris let the sail down, and then we saw what had happened. we had knocked those three old gentlemen off their chairs into a general heap at the bottom of the boat, and they were now slowly and painfully sorting themselves out from each other, and picking fish off themselves; and as they worked, they cursed us – not with a common cursory curse, but with long, carefully-thought-out, comprehensive curses, that embraced the whole of our career, and went away into the distant future, and included all our relations, and covered everything connected with us – good, substantial curses.
id gone out pike-fishing, bless you, never thinking of a trout.
the trout lay scattered in a thousand fragments – i say a thousand, but they may have only been nine hundred. i did not count them.

norman mailer – the fight (ali-forman)

george forman: excuse me for not shaking hands with you, he said in that voice so carefully muted to retain his powers. but you see i’m keeping my hands in my pockets.
the dead are dying of thirst – so goes an old african saying.
old competative archie (moore), never an athlete to overlook an advantage, brought his special paddle to the fray (ping pong), and it was as thick in foam rubber as the rear seat of a cadillac. the sauciest tongue in london could not have given more english to the ball. a professional game hunter once remarked that the most dangerous animal he ever faced in africa was a charging leopard. he thought his eyes were playing tricks for the cat moved like jump cuts in a movie film. that’s how archie’s serve worked. he did not have much of a game beyond that, just lots of foam rubber, but her hardly needed more. the serve was formidably cockeyed. he would invariably beat george (forman).
his eyes in the air as if he sought a vanishing point six feet above the horizon.
president mobutu’s african name: Motubu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga – all powerful warrior, who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake.
-le roi soleil – the sun king. // then i saw the congo, creeping through the black, // cutting through the jungle with a golden tack. // then along that river bank // a thousand miles // tattooed cannibals danced in files // then i heard the boom of the blood-lust son // and a thigh-bone beating on a tin-pan gong // and ‘blood!’ screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors // ‘blood!’ screamed the skullfaced, lean // witch-doctors; // ‘whirl ye the deadly rattle, // harry the uplands // steal all the cattle // rattle rattle, rattle-rattle bing! // boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom!’ // a roaring, epic, rag-time tune // from the mouth of the congo // to the mountains of the moon.
africa is shaped like a pistol, say the people here, and zaïre is the trigger.
bundini seemed too furious to speak. his expression clearly said: beat me to death, but i will not look in the mirror. the robe you describe is not the beautiful one.
‘yeah,’ he said, ‘that’s a bad feeling waiting for night to choke up on you,’ and he looked at the two writers with the blank eyes of a patient who has encountered some reality in the coils of his condition no doctor will ever comprehend.
ali fought the good rat fight of the corner.
he was drunk. it was easy to tell with bundini. the whites of his eyes turned egg-yolk yellow and blooded with webs of red.

2011 ^ soas and 中国 notebook ^ (CHINA AND LONDON)

jack kerouac – lonesome traveller

the moldering in your bones and the eventual fall of you.
turn your shoetops up to the dirty old brown sad ceiling
‘standing on the street corner waiting for no one is power’ sayeth poet gregory corso.
a muscle-bound young man in a cheap grey german suit explaining something wierd to his fat girlfriend.
i was suddenly sorry i was leaving the rather listless but earnest sincerity of the arab world.
quite. my dear fellow, you can’t come into england with 15 bob
paris is a woman but london is an independent man puffing his pipe in a pub

mikhail bulgakov – the master and margarita

‘a hundred per cent!’ affirmed the poet, who loved to use pretentious numerical expressions.
why didn’t i notice what a long story he’s been telling us? thought bezdoming in amazement.
over mustn’t swear at a lunatic!
‘what do you want?’ he did not recognise his own voice. he had spoken the word ‘what’ in treble, ‘do you’ in a bass and ‘what’ had simply not emerged at all.
he had a vision of a palm tree on its elephantine leg.
he was choking with suppressed laughter as ivan, stimulated by the success of his storytelling, hopped about on his haunches, imitating the cat stroking his whiskers with a ten-kopeck piece.
the tongue may hide the truth, but the eyes – never!
wearing check trousers, with a wobbling pince-nez… and an absolutely impossible face!
don’t be afraid, your majesty, the blood has long since drained away into the earth and grapes have grown on the spot.
koroviev pointed at the fat man in the fawn coat, who exhibited violent alarm. ‘who is he? mm! where’s he from? why is he here? were we dying of boredom without him? did we invite him? of course not!’ roared the ex-choirmaster, his mouth twisted into a sarcastic leer. ‘look at him – in his smart fawn coat, bloated with good russian salmon, pockets bulging with currency, and what about our poor comrade here? what about him, i ask you? wailed koroviev, completely overcome by his own oratory.
the moon – golden with its outline of a dragon-horse, floats over the erstwhile poet ivan nikolayich while seeming to stand still.

ryszard kapuscinski – the cobra’s heart

indefatigable nature labours, incessantly reproducing itself, spreading and blooming, even as it sickens, disintegrates, festers and decays.
i am struck by how firmly each race is grounded in the terrain in which it lives, in its climate.
right out in the open, as if a decree had been issued commanding everyone to leave his home at 8am and remain in the street.
all the products of nineteenth century technology were transported into africa’s interior on the heads of its inhabitants.
he has animals in his head, under his skull. it’s not that he sees these animals, that he thinks about them or is afraid of them. no. it’s nothing like that. the animals are literally in his head; they live there, run around, graze, hunt, or just sleep.
the lion is an efficient and formidable hunter for about 20 years. after that he begins to show his age. his muscles weaken, his speed diminishes, his leaps grow shorter. it is difficult for him to chase down a skittish antelope, a swift and vigilant zebra. her walks around hungry, a burden to the pride. it is a dangerous moment for him – the pride does not tolerate the weak and ill, and he can fall prey to it himself. more and more frequently, he feats that the younger ones will bite him to death. her gradually detaches himself from the pride, lags behind, and finally is alone. he is tormented by hunger, but can no longer chase game. he has only one recourse: to hunt humans. such a lion is commonly referred to here as a man-eater, and he terrorises the population.
what causes the elephant to be so admired was that he had no enemies in the animal world. no other beast could conquer him. he could die (in the past) only a natural death. it occurred usually at dusk, when the elephants come to water. they would stand at the edge of a lake or river, reach out far with their trunks, and drink. but the day would come when a tired old elephant could no longer raise his trunk, and to drink clear water he would have to walk father and farther out into the lake. his legs would stick into the muck, deeper and deeper. the lake pulled him into its cavernous interior. he fought for a time, thrashed about, attempted to extricate himself from the bog and get back to the shore, but his own weight was so great, and the pull of the lake’s bottom so paralysing, that finally the animal would lose its balance, fall, and vanish under the water forever. ‘there’ dr patel finished, ‘on the bottoms of our lakes, are the age-old elephant cemeteries.

roberto bolaño – 2666

subjects that had nothing to do with surges of emotion, subjects easy to broach and then drop when they wished to return to the main subject.
the mugs weren’t so modern before, and even if they tried to hurt me, they couldn’t, i didn’t feel their sting.
i was rarely anything soothing about being pestered with questions.
espinza’s laugh as he was lugged by the peasant waiter, a soft chuckle, a discrete laugh, as if the situation want merely ridiculous but also an escape valve for his unspoken sorrows.
the greater the suffering, the smaller the coincidence…
coincidence, if you’ll permit me the simile, is like the manifestation of god at every moment on our planet. a senseless god, making senseless gestures at his senseless creatures.
2. the part about amalfitano
smoke rings – like shooting a zen arrow with a zen bow into a zen pavilion.
imma’s hand, her hard, gnarled hand, roughened by the sun and icy rivers, stroked the freshly clipped top of the hedge as one might stroke a dog’s back.
and so if you suddenly travelled to cities that, according to this theory, didn’t exist, or hadn’t yet had time to put themselves together, the result was the phenomenon known as jetlag, which arose not from your exhaustion, but from the exhaustion of the people who still would have been asleep if you hadn’t travelled. this was something he’d probably read in some science-fiction novel or story and that he’d forgotten having read.
he remembered (but fleetingly, as one remembers a lightning bolt).
i’m telling you between you and me: the human being, broadly speaking, is the closest thing there is to a rat.
treading water in a sea of seeming.
don’t trust anybody, least of all people who smile, since we know they want something from us.
little pieces of fire, little pieces of blazing hell, here on this planet simply to be worshipped.
braille – fate imagined the masseur reading in a dark room and a shudder passed through him. it must be something like happiness, he thought.
sometimes she smiled and you could tell she was a nice, harmless little old lady, but most of the time she had a grave expression on her face, as if she were addressing matters of great importance.
ants were battling spiders on a bed of salt.
4. the part about the crimes
where is it heading, my brief wondering, your immortal journey? man is born into pain, and being born itself means risking death, said the poem. and also: but why bring to light, why educate someone we’ll console for living later? and also: if life is misery, why do we endure it?
if it had been up to her, everyone around her, the shadowy figures on the edges of the photograph, would have disappeared instantly, and so would the room, the prison, jailers and jailed, the hundred-year-old walls of the santa teresa penitentiary, and all that was left would be a crater, and in the crater there would be only silence and the vague presence of the lawyer and haas, chained in the depths.
i could write a treatise on the secret sources of mexican sentimentalism.
5. the part about archimboldi
halt! a soldier’s tobacco is sacred!
again, because it was his favourite subject at the time, the conductor talked about music, or the fourth dimension, it wasn’t exactly clear where one ended and the other began, perhaps, to judge by certain mysterious words of the conductor, the point of union was the conductor himself, in whom mysteries and answers spontaneously coincided.
noise like crumpled pages, noise like burned books… ‘everything is a burned book, my dear maestro. music, the 10th dimension. the fourth dimension, cradles, the production of bullets and rifles, westerns: all burned books’.
did jesus christ, he asked, suspect that someday his church would spread to the farthest corners of the earth? did he ever have an idea of the world?
and streams and hard bread and a thwarted robbery, though ansky doesn’t say how he thwarts it.
at this moment the killer is good, because he’s intrinsically good, and in an idiot, because i’m intrinsically an idiot, and we’re both sentimental, because our culture trends inexorably toward sentimentality. but when the performance is over and i’m alone, the killer will open the window of my room and come tiptoeing in like a nurse and slit my throat, bleed me dry.
but listen. every work that isn’t a masterpiece is, in a sense, a part of a vast camouflage. you’ve been a soldier, i imagine, you know what i mean. every book that isn’t a masterpiece is cannon fodder.
destiny, ungraspable until it became inevitable, was each person’s notion of his own destiny.
‘and what did you think?’ asked the old editor, stopping by an old oak who’s very presence seemed to announce in a threatening tone: here ends the realm of junge and here begins the republic of trees.
corinth – a city the good sisyphus turned into a staging ground of his happy misdeeds, because his charismatic nimbleness of body and intellectual inclination to see every turn of fate as a chess problem or a detective story to unravel, and his instinct for laughter and jokes and jests and cracks and quips and gags and pranks and punchlines and spoofs and stories and gibes and taunts and send-ups and satires, he turned to theft, in other words parting all passerby from their belongings, even going so far as to steal from his neighbor autolycus, also as thief, perhaps with the remote hope that over who steals from as thief is granted one hundred years of forgiveness.
tax collectors (god rot them). scientists, meanwhile, knew that all numbers were only approximate.
‘let’s go!’said peter, looking for his hat to dry his tears. zola.
his hand was as a cold as a snake’s.
i can hardly see any more, said the poor blind woman.
giants never die, she thought, or they die only when they’re very old, so old one doesn’t even notice they’ve died, they just sit at the door of their houses or under a tree and fall asleep and then they’re dead.

rob grifford – china road

in spite of all the change in china, the western world is still stuck in its dangerously outdated, black and white view of the country.
stay out of politics, and you can do anything you want.
if in the us you need money to get power, in china you need power to get money.
for much of china’s population, being chinese is culturally much easier today than it ever was in the past, for this identification, no longer involves commonly accepted standards of behaviour or belief existentially, however, being chinese is far more problematic, for now, it is as much a quest as it is a condition.
the best educated people are often the most pro-government.
sometimes you feel the chinese don’t quite know what to do with their 5000 years of continuous history.
japan did not see itself as the cultural centre of the universe, as china did, so was able to shed skin. china, on the other hand, was forced to change its soul.
the only times when intellectual comment and discussion were possible were when china was not unified (such as during the warring states period)
the way that can we walked is not the true way, the name that cannot be named is not the true name.
there is no absolute spiritual truth. truth, if it even exists, is unknowable.
as with the early church in rome, persecution led to the growth not the death of chinese church.
crackdowns are at odds with the general need to keep the economy growing.
china is a civilisation pretending to be a state.
it seems as though every time someone starts to think outside the box politically, either the state collapses all the people doing the thinking are crushed.
the most disgusting beverage ever squeezed out of a grain of rice the most disgusting beverage ever squeezed out of a grain of rice brits.
brits – relieved to find another group of people as emotionally dysfunctional as themselves.
your baby is very fat, i tell her. she beams back at me with pride..
what do you want most from the west ? i ask mr zhou. he doesn’t hesitate. what do you want? what we want most is respect. he blurts out as though he has waited all his life for a foreigner on a bus to ask him. this question.
a billion and a half people live in europe and north and south america, divided into more than 50 sovereign states. nearly a billion and a half chinese people live in one single sovereign state.
in abandoning the farmers, the communist party has become every bit as venal and corrupt as the nationalist party it rose up to overthrow in the 30s and 40s.

lao she – camel xiangzi

the under-twenties – some of whom have been plying this trade since they were 11 or 12 – rarely become crack pullers later on, because as boys they over-taxed their strength. they may pull all their lives and never make the grade, not even in this trade. as for the over-forties, some have strained their muscles by pulling for 8 or 10 years and are content now to take second place, in the growing awareness that sooner or later they will topple over and die in the road. their pulling posture, their adroit bargaining, their shrewd use of shortcuts or circuitous routes are enough to make them relive past glories and turn up their noses at the younger generation. but these shades of past glories can in no way diminish their dismal prospects, and so they often sigh as they mop their sweat.
riding one horse while looking for another.
in the grip of infatuation he felt bold enough to try again.
so having no profound views on politics or art, he had one strong point: the ability to put his few beliefs into practice in the trivialities of every day life. he seemed to realise that he was not a genius, who would perform earthshaking feats he seemed to realise that he was no genius who would perform earthshaking feats, so he organised his work and family in accordance with his ideals so he organised his work and family in accordance with his ideals. this, though it did society no good, was at least honest and saved him from becoming a hypocrite, so he paid special attention to the small things of life, as if to say that, as long as his household was happy, the rest of society could do as it pleased. at times this attitude filled him with shame, others with satisfaction.
the new year period – there was still 24 hours in a day, but they were different now and could not be spent just anyhow, but time must be occupied in someway with an eye to new year. it was, as if time had suddenly developed consciousness and emotions which compelled people to think along with it and busy themselves according to its wishes.
decent people always get worsted and put in the wrong.
once you’ve seen through yourself there’s no need to despise other people.
when someone gave you money, you were forced to accept, and from then, on you were no longer your own master.
flash of red lightning far away in the north made a bloody gash in the clouds.
conscious only of bone-chilling rivulets running all over him, he was dazed. the only spot of warmth was deep in his heart.
the acceptance of shame is the greatest sacrifice, and the deepest shame is the prelude to resistance.
he felt like screaming and spitting out his heart’s blood.

pang meli natasha chang – bound feet and western dress

the old days when society was divided into 4 classes: scholars, farmers, craftsmen and merchants. scholars, who gave the world thought and order, were at the top. farmers, who tilled the soil and have the world food, followed. then came the craftsmen, who created the tools of livelihood. merchants, who produced nothing but money for themselves, fell at the bottom of society.
the qi – the natural spirit of the characters that a man achieved only by training for years and then discarding all his learning at the correct moment.
the chinese refer to the gradual passage of time over centuries add ‘the transformation of oceans into mulberry orchards’.
laugh, laugh aloud! the mountain ranges north and south have not yet spat out all their jewels, nor the oceans east and west sprinkled all their pearls.
only when a wayfarer’s shinbones and ankles get stung by thorns does he realise how difficult the road is.

richard fariña – been down so long it looks like up to me

i am king fucking montezuma, that’s who, and this is the coin of my kingdom.
blacknesse smiling the smile he had learned in india.
truthsayer, his white shirt without a button down collar, no tie. sew a cross of st george on his back, tie a maiden’s scarf in his sash, point him at the tigris and euphrates. it’s somewhere out there, lad, in the hands off the pagan turks. i know we can count on you.
a given grade of suede.
bury me on a bunny-rabbit sidehill.
searching desperately for something significant to say.
lots of guys got hamstrung and staked out.
he rolled over sluggishly, his night torn open.
he let go, just like that, get apart, arms high in the air, a forefinger holding down his baseball cap, rucksack aflutter.
very excellent tasting in music.
en el cristal del cielo las aguas gaviotas, como un diamante en el vidrio, hacen una raya.
nordeste y sol. la sombra de las aves remotas se desliza por sobre el oro de la playa. ¡oh tristeza de las cosas vagas y errantes, de todo lo que en el silencio se desliza!

charles bukowski – factotum

a man’s soul was rooted in his stomach.

jack kerouac – dharma bums

(the book was mugged off me in paris)

mick jackson – underground man

i have always been very fond of dogs. cats have too high am opinion of themselves and generally make for poor company. are, on the whole, utterly humourless and always wrapped up in their thoughts. some days i reckon all cats are spies.
we are all at sixes and sevens
the only vitality about the poor woman was her tiny chest which pumped laboriously in and out and trawled the room for air.
each lung is in fact a tiny inverted tree with the base of the trunk coming out at my throat. when i breathe in, leaves appear on the branches. when i exhale, the leaves disappear. thus, the seasons are constantly shifting in my ribcage. they come around every second or two. if i am to stay alive it is vitally important that these little trees do not stay barren for too long.
he stuffed his hands deep into his trouser pockets and puffed out his waistcoat, as if i might like to admire his buttons.
football – all in all, though, the ball was given a sound kicking and by the time the last man had run himself into the ground and a truce had been agreed, everyone looked very proud of themselves from head to foot in mud.
from the moment we first feel the smack of life to that moment when we re-enter the deep, black past is but one breath. we are no sooner aloft than we begin to feel gravity’s inevitable pull. we hang there but for a second in all our twisting glory. we feel the air on our bodies, our cold eye snatches at the light. we turn a little, as if on a spit. then we start to fall.
as a boy i imagined that heaven would be something like an attic – for no other reason, i suspect, than it was right at the top of the house and full of discarded things. i assumed that when a man died and became redundant he would be taken up to the attic of the world.
once my cheeks were full of pie but they have slowly hollowed out and every year now my forehead has about it a greater determination.
strange to think that we each carry inside of us a functioning skeleton; that buried deep within the meat of me my own bone-tree patiently waits.
the white smoke went down into me and filled me up and soothed me from top to toe. few men, i think, could manage to fill s pipe and smoke it without becoming more philosophical by several degrees. there is something in the very nature of pipe-smoking which demands it.
i am still fascinated by my every twitch and tremble, by my tear’s slow journey down my cheek. that even as i moulder in a pit of misery some parts of me still coolly observes my every move.
this is doctor… he is the seventh son of a seventh son, you see, so that is his given name.
yawns – we adults his ours behind raised palms and subjected them to such terrible compression as to squeeze all the pleasure out of them.
i recall the fur (rabbit) being peeled back with care (even kindness), as if helping an aged relative off with her coat.
what i momentarily caught hold of was s memory of the womb.
lost – i can’t help but feel that some small piece of me is still trapped in those passage ways… doomed to wonder, exhausted for evermore.
glaring at it with undiluted fury and bringing to boil such quantities of psychic energy that my ears were soon warm as toast… but my efforts were all in vain. three damned jug did not budge a single inch, which was, of course, deeply humiliating. outwitted by as common jug!
the world, one might say, is nothing more than a vast burial ground on which we briefly picnic.
my finger went down until it eventually touched something moist and warm. was that really my box of tricks? was that the terrible fruit?
the moon is, in fact, a hole in the sky. consider.

alan moore and david lloyd – v for vendetta

leader of the lost, // ruler of the ruins
vi very veniversum vivus vici – by the power of truth, i, while living, have conquered the universe
mischiefs and malarkeys
authority, when first detecting chaos at its heels, will entertain the vilest schemes to save its order without justice, without love or liberty, which cannot long postpone their world’s descent into pandemonium.
shadow gallery

joe orton – head to toe

much of the success of the new testament is due to jesus’s personality, but some is undoubtedly the result of careful teamwork.
the crowd showed great emotion when the speeches were over. the day had been carried.
‘comrades’ o’scullion said, ‘let us place his corpse under cover; let us each defend this dead man, and let his presence in our midst render us impregnable’.
these ideas flowered in him; his head almost burst; he did not know where they came from, they were inexhaustible.
i am a blue salmon // i am a dog, i am a stag
i worked for a dwarf. he wore special shoes, though. you’d never have guessed. his name was jelf. earnest jelf.
gombold waited; he at first expected to be freed within a fortnight. when this time expired, he reflected that the magistrate could do nothing until her return to the capital.
i.n.r.i encircled by a crown of thorns, the letters standing for i now represent idiots.
oh dear, the imperfection of my plans has ruined everything. an error of a line has been equivalent to fifty feet in reality.
by the aid of ancient glook i learned modern glook. i don’t speak it well but i am still improving.
do you remember the picnic? what an idyll! if only we had the old days back again. when mother was alive. before the war. before our way of life altered. before father died… and we lost our money and the climate changed unaccountably for the worst.
they found a wallet on the third day containing: an aerial photograph of a woman’s head…
and the grounds completely by yellowish stinkwids and modies. the natives of those parts live entirely on lorikeets, a kinds of radish.
we came to a thick wall of wait-a-bit thorns which refused to yield to our sjamboks
offjenkin had made an attempt to design a sentence that could speak for itself, but had abandoned the idea as too destructive.

pascal

the sole source of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quiet in his room.
i got on a bus and, rather than slipping at once into private concerns, tried to connect imaginatively with other passengers.

puskin

it would scarcely have been possible to guess that the man parked at the curbside opposite a row of large office blocks was doing some word-painting. the only hint was a notepad pressed against the wheel, on which he occasionally scribbled something between long periods of staring.

nietzsche – the realistic painter

‘completely true to nature!’ what a lie: how could nature ever be constrained into a picture? the smallest bit of nature is infinite! and so he paints what he likes about it. and what does he like? he likes what he can paint!
who saw the narrow sunbeam that came out of the south, and smote upon their summits until they melted and mouldered away in a dust of blue rain? who saw the dance of the dead clouds when the sunlight left them last night, and the west wind blew them before it like withered leaves?
we find the works of nature still more pleasant, the more they resemble those of art.

alain de button -.the art of travel

if we are inclined to forget how much there is in the world besides that which we anticipate, then works of art are perhaps a little to blame, for we find in then the same process of simplification or selection at work as in the imagination.
we saw stars// and waves, we saw sand too, // and, despite many crises and unforeseen disasters // we were often bored, just as we are here.
journeys are the midwives off thought.
in the more fugitive, trivial association of the word exotic, the charm of a foreign pace arises from the simple idea of novelty and change: finding camels where at home there had been horses.
what we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.
when you don’t know an englishman’s name, call him john bull.
one of the sheep ambles towards the path and looks curiously at her visitors. humans and sheep stare at one another in wonder. after a moment, the sheep sits down and takes a lazy mouthful of grass, chewing from the side of her mouth as though it were gum. why am i me and she she? another sheep approaches and lies next to her companion, wool to wool, and for a second they exchange what appears to be a knowing, mildly amused glance.
beside (the sublime), man seems merely dust postponed.
and all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountains smoking. and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off… and moses said unto the people, fear not: for god is come to prove you…
at the beginning of the book of job… we hear job was a wealthy, devout man from the land of us. // he had not been a bad man – why therefore had bad things occurred to him? it is one of the most acute questions asked of god in all three books of the old testament. and from a whirlwind inn the desert, a furious god answered job as follows: god draws job’s attention to the mighty phenomenon of nature.

alan moore/ dave gibbons – the watchmen

life’s so fragile, a successful virus clinging to a speck of mud, suspended in endless nothing.
battle not with monsters, lest you become as monster // and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
perched with disconcerting stillness upon its branch for hours, drinking in the darkness through dilated and thirsty pupils – the darkness of mere being
futurology – i would say that a new world is within our grasp, filled with unimaginable experiences and possibilities, if only we want it badly enough. not a utopia… i don’t believe that any species could continue to grow without some adversary… but a society with a more human basis, where the problems that beset us are at least new problems.

che guevara – motorcycle diaries

soon the whole family gathered around the article and all the other items in the paper became objects of olympian contempt
some give the impression they go on living only because it’s a habit they cannot shake
the inca garcilaso de la vega, son of an inca princess and a conquistador, was one of the chroniclers off the conquest
ollantay epic inca drama

qiu xiaolong – red mandarin dress

thirsty illness
the man would be generous with his money like a a sichuan chef with his black pepper
full of joy, the night is short
when the fictional is real, the real is fictional; where there’s nothing, there’s everything.

charles bukowski – post office

ryszard kapuscinski – travels with herodotus

a journey, after all, neither begins in the instant we set out, nor ends even we have reached our doorstep again. it starts much earlier and is never really over, because the film of memory continues running on inside of us long after we have come to a physical standstill. indeed, there exists something like a contagion of travel, and the disease is essentially incurable.

ken kesey one flew over the cuckoo’s nest

he pulls off his cap, spins it on his finger, and catches it behind his back in his other hand, neat as you please
travels

mersey beat – brian patten room

going to spend all my dreams

hermann hesse- glass bead game

one can only speak about music with a man who has perceived the meaning of the cosmos
music: beginning with rhythm (clapping of hands, tramping, beating of sticks and primitive drums), it was a powerful, tried-and-true device for putting large numbers of people in tune with one another, endangering the same mood, co-ordinating the pace of their breathing and heartbeats, encouraging them to invoke and conjure up the eternal powers, to dance, to compete, to make war, to worship.
journeyers to the east
every symbol and combination of symbols led not hither and yon.

john wain – hurry on down

on his feet, gripping the back of his chair charles sought for a quick devastating reply. a few words so swift and bitter that they would scorch themselves into edith’s mind and live with her, waking and sleeping, until she died.
it was no use of course, speech would never work with these people indeed, it was inconceivable that anything could be got across to them by means of language, unless one overpowered them and left them gagged and bound in the presence of a gramophone record endlessly repeating a short, concise statement. it would have given him pleasure to begin the composition.
he had broken the sacred law of self-effacing, mute compliance – he had made, the phrase ran, an exhibition of himself!
the train was signalled, and fussed into the station

john braine – protest: angry young men

salvation army hymn : the old rugged cross, the old rugged cross. i will cling to the old rugged cross.

justine gardner – sophie’s world

renaissance – they behaved as if the whole world has been reawakened. they became intensely conscious of their epoch.
baroque period, 1600s – irregularity was typical of baroque art, carpe diem seize the day momento mori, remember that you must die.
spanish dramatist calderon, de la barca, 1600s – life is but a dream (play)
ludwig hallberg, scandinavian, jeppe on the mount (play)
spinoza, 1600s – the 1st to apply star, historico-critical interpretation of the bible. we must constantly bear in mind the period it was written in, although i have seen nothing but black crows in my life. it doesn’t mean, there’s no such thing as a white crow, both for a philosopher, and for a scientist, it can be important not to reject the possibility of finding a white crow. hunting for the white crow is science’s principle task.
david hume, 1700s, empiricist – the mind is a kind of theatre with several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, repass, slide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations – we have no underlying ‘personal identity’ like buddha.
romanticism began mid 18th-century till late 19th century after 1850, one can no longer speak of whole, epochs, which, compromise, poetry, philosophy, art, science, and music
coleridge – what if you slept, and what if in your sleep you dreamed, and what if in your dream you went to heaven, and there, you plucked a strange and beautiful flower, and what if when you woke you had that flower in your hand, what then
romanticism – idleness is the ideal of genius, and indolence the virtue of the romantic.
try to imagine that everything that happens to us goes on in someone else’s mind. we are that world. that means we have no soul. we are someone else’s soul soul.
to hegel, history was like a running river. every tiny movement in the water at the given spot in the river is determined by the falls, and eddies in the water high upstream. but these movements are determined, too, by the rocks and bends in the river at the point where you are observing it… you can therefore never claim that any particular thought is correct forever and ever. but the thought can be correct from where you stand.
we are all children of our time.
john rawls said: imagine you were a member of a distinguished council whose task it was to make all the laws for a future society. they are obliged to consider every detail, because as soon as they reach an agreement they will all drop dead. but they will immediately come to life again in the society they have legislated for. the point is that they have no idea which position they will have in society.
when we look up at a star that is thousands of light-years away, we are really travelling thousands of years back in the history of space.

langston hughes, trumpet player,

but softly // as the tune comes from his throat // trouble // mellows to a golden note

earl thompson – tattoo

the boy let most of his pay ride and lived off his sale of cigarettes, drawing only enough to convince the navy he was a frugal sailor with spartan tastes and an eye towards the future.
ron squinted and scowled at the provisional freshman in faded, navy dungarees, and a sweatshirt hacked off at the sleeves worn, for some local reason, inside out.
he had questioned the existence of god from a geographical/geological point of view.

clellon holmes – go

out of what rage and loneliness do we come together?
methodically pouring the only bottle of whiskey out the window into the rain.
as though they were creations of that night, drove them drunk and sober towards the dawn, through a jumble of dreary streets.
i knew you’d turn up eventually, and i dawdled all the way up the street just now, dawdled! but come in, come in!

e.e. cummings – exit the boob (esquire)

you take a coin and one side is fascism (heads perhaps) and the other is communism – but what if it rains?

cervantes – don quixote

to run stark–staring mad

anne frank – diario de anne frank

commission de escondidos

2010 ^ black notebook ^ (BLACKBOYS AND KING’S CROSS)

zola – nana

two o’clock already… i must go… what a bore! // the two old women looked at each other. all three shook their heads without speaking. to be sure, life wasn’t all beer and skittles.
the two rooms looked as if they were inhabited by a pack of mad cats.
but she restrained herself… drawing back like a marquise about to tread on an orange peel…

john krauker – into the wild

ernest hemmingway – fiesta, the sun also rises

this wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. you don’t want to mix emotions up with wine like that. you lose the taste.

john steinbeck – east of eden

he would have admitted climbing the golden stairs and cutting st. peter’s throat with a bowling ball.
we are capable of many things in all directions, of great virtues and great sins. and who in his mind has not probed the black water?
a man’s mind can’t stay in time the way his body does.
it does take a time to get used to a new country. it’s like being born again and having to learn all over.
you bought your thumb on sideways
you know, if chickens had government and church and history, they would take a distant and distasteful view of human joy. let any gay and hopeful thing happen to a man, and some chicken goes howling to the block.
an unbelieved truth can hurt much more than a lie.
lord, how the day passes! it’s like a life – so quickly when we don’t watch it and so slowly when we do.

marina lewycka – a short history of tractors in ukraine.

bullshit. hated this book.

milan kundera – life is elsewhere

he looked at her and thought about how hard it was to leave her. but the world on the other side of the window was still more beautiful. and if he was abandoning a beloved woman for it, that world was even more costly by the price of his betrayed love. // ‘you are beautiful’, he said, ‘but i must betray you.’ he tore himself out of her embrace and moved towards the window.
where man is brought into the world by an egg thrown into the forest.
but i // have tamed // myself // i have stomped // on the throat // of my own song.
the glory of dusty flowers from the hacked-open head of love.

joseph conrad – under western eyes

to a teacher of languages there comes a time when the world is but a plce of many words and a man appears a mere talking animal not much more wonderful than a parrot
nations, it may be, have fashioned their governments, but the governments have paid them back in the same coin.
smouldering cigarette stuck to his lower lip.
who knows what real loneliness is – not the conventional word, but the naked terror? to the lonely themselves it wears a mask. the most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. now and then a fatal conjunction of events may lift the veil for an instant. for an instant only. no human being could bear a steady view of moral solitude without going mad.
razumar assumed an impenetrable expression.
‘and unfathomable mysteries! can you conceive secret places in eternity? impossible. whereas life is full of them. there are the secrets of birth, for instance. one carries them to the grave… and the secret motives of conduct. a man’s most open actions have a secret side to them. that is interesting and so unfathomable! for instance, a man goes out for a walk. nothing more trivial in appearance. and yet it may be monumentous.
as noiseless as a vision.
‘what do you mean by squatted?’ i asked, astonished. ‘this is a very strange detail’.
he looks like yankee, with that goatee hanging down from his chin. a regular uncle sam.
she plunged the fingers of her right hand deep into the mass of nearly white hair, and stirred them there absently.
i would scorn to be a slave even to an idea
everything – sounds, attitudes, movements, and immobility – seemed to be part of an experiment.
i made up my mind that if i found him prosing away there in his feeble voice i should remain but a few minutes.
raged at me like a disappointed devil.
(notes on text)
founding a new religion had best be left to god
the dvorniks do not wish to serve any longer as tools of police violence… the petersburg dvornik is opening his eyes. good morning to you, petersburg dvornik. – trostsky
russia… a land empty, white and open – like a page prepared to be written on by history.
a propos de bottes – without good reason

milan kundera – the joke

i must say it was our differences that endeared me kostka to me and made me enjoy our arguments; i used them as a touchstone of who i was and what i thought.
i resigned myself to its anonymity; in this ostrava exile even cinemas have no names.
your body is a burnt-out sky, and death dreams under cover in its weave.
‘yes, yes.’ i nod, and feel a joyous weight upon my heart. ‘all wood. that is as it should be. in her cottage there must not be a single nail.’ // ‘yes’, the voice goes on. ‘the fence is fashioned of wooden pickets roughly hewn. one still discerns the original shape of the branches in them.’
‘all things of wood are like cats or dogs’, i say. ‘they are more beings than things. i love the world of wood’.
the folk singer reacted in his singing to the colour of the flowers, to the weather, to the sweep of the countryside.
i cant rid myself of the need continually to decipher my own life
an interest so intense only a few days before. all that was left of it now was a mere awareness of interest, an interest translated into the language of a memory, a sense of obligation to lost interest that my reason assured me would certainly return in all its former intensity.
i began to realise that my dream breakfast would remain a dream, and this alarmed me because id made up my mind with childlike obstinacy that a hearty breakfast was the key to success for the entire day. i realised that provincial towns take no account of eccentrics wishing to eat their breakfasts sitting down and that the restaurants would not open until much later.
in my view newspapers have one extenuating attribute: they make no noise.
my mistrust is so entrenched that when someone starts listing his likes and dislikes i am unable to take it seriously, or to put it more precisely, i can accept it only as an indication of the person’s self-image.
i say christians. yet where are they? looking around me, i see nothing but pseudo-christians living exactly like unbelievers. but being a christian means living differently. it means giving up private interests, comforts, and power, and turning toward the poor, and humiliated, and the suffering. but is that what the churches are doing?
jesus – ‘take therefore no thought for the morrow; for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.’
lyrical age, when a man is too great a riddle to himself to be interested in the riddles outside himself and when other people (no matter how dear) are mere walking mirrors in which he is amazed to find his own emotions, his own worth.
drunkards are the most loyal supporters of folk festivals. the last supporters
when it is postponed, vengeance is transformed into something deceptive, into a personal religion, into a myth that recedes day by day from the people involved.
most people deceive themselves with a pair of faiths: they believe in eternal memory (of people, things, deeds, nations) and in redressability (of deeds, mistakes, sins, wrongs). both are false faiths. in reality the opposite is true: everything will be forgotten and nothing will be redressed. the task of obtaining redress (by vengeance or by forgiveness) will be taken over by forgetting. no one will redress the wrongs that have been done, but all wrongs will be forgotten.

roberto bolaño – the savage detectives

horrible things are happening. at night i wake up screaming. i dream about a woman with the head of a cow. its eyes stare at me.
ils y lancent des jets de soupe.
those sad, peaceful lakes, so peaceful they seem otherworldly.
i ordered a coffee and a croissant and a cognac and started to read.
the trouble is i end up falling asleep anywhere, even at work, which is bad for my reputation.
i’ve been visiting you for more than 2 years, man, cant you just try a little harder to remember me? so i made an effort and the next time he came i said how are you mr. álvaro damián, and he smiled but his eyes were still sad, as if he were seeing everything from a vantage point of a great sorrow.
one day i drank 5 coca-colas and suddenly felt sick, as if the sun had suddenly filtered down into my cokes and i’d drunk it without realising. i had a fever. i couldn’t stand it, but i did stand it. i hid behind a yellow rock and waited for the sun to go down and then i curled up in a ball and fell asleep. i kept having dreams all night. i thought they were touching me with their fingers. but dreams don’t have fingers, they have fists, so it must have been scorpions. my burns still stung. when i woke up the sun hadn’t risen yet. i looked for the scorpions before they could hide under the rocks. i couldn’t find a single one! all the more reason to stay awake and worry. and that’s what i did. but then i had to go because i needed to eat and drink. so i got up, i’d been on my knees, and headed for the desert cafe, but the waiter wouldn’t bring me anything.
with my meal they brought two tablets. for the fever, they said. i didn’t take them. my good friend ulises told me to throw them down the hole. but where does that hole lead? to the sewers, said my good friend ulises. how can i be sure? what if it leads to a warehouse? and what if it ends up on huge, wet table, where even the smallest things we throw away are catalogued? i crushed the tablets between my fingers and threw the powder ot the window.
einstein’s impossible rectangle (in a universe here rectangles are unthinkable)
i travelled through andalucia. granada is so pretty, seville is so lovely, cordoba so severe.
then we started to talk about politics, which was a topic that cesárea enjoyed less and less, as if she and politics had gone mad together.
i have my share of readers too, the burnouts, the whipped, the people with little lithium bombs in their heads, rivers of prozac, lakes of epaminol, dead seas of rohypnol, stoppered wells of tranquimazin, my brothers and sisters, those who feed on my madness to nourish their madness.
sucking ir into his lungs like the titan of calle revillagigedo
quim laughed softly. it was a rabbity laugh that hardly disturbed the muscles of his face
he had a strange smell, as if he’d just emerged from a swamp and a desert at the same time. extreme wetness and extreme dryness, the primordial soup and the barren plain.
from very far away came the whisper of a car and muffled laugh, s if the driver had lost his mind.
and then i went over to ulises and touched his arm and he opened his eyes immediately, like he was a goddamn robot i had awakened by activating some hidden mechanism in his faith.
spain hurts me too.

ai we – banana vale

abandoned temple – we stayed with the crippled gods, turning the temple into a temporary sanctuary.
he was pleased and laughed, his laughter spreading out in all directions in the darkness.
at his command, the bus opened its two bright eyes and rushed into the darkness.
the wind gusted and died, gusted and died, like so many heavy sighs.

dostoevsky – devils

the underground man continually asserts his rights to go against reason and common sense, claiming the need to do so reflects our true human nature.
science – today’s canonised law of nature will tomorrow be broken down into something smaller. from this he drew the broader conclusion that the certainties of contemporary science are always illusory, and that reason and common sense are not up to the task of interpreting the physical universe, let alone solving the eternal mysteries of philosophy and religion.
his whole figure seemed to exclaim: ‘cards! me sit down to whist with you! is it consistent? who is responsible for it? who has shattered my energies and turned them to whist? ah, perish, russia!’ and he would majestically trump with a heart.
he needed someone to look after him indeed, for he sometimes behaved very oddly: in the midst of his exalted sorrow he would begin laughing like any simple peasant.
even so, when he was saying goodbye he always scowled, and let one out as though he was getting rid of a personal enemy.
‘once when we were travelling a fellow slipped his hand into my pocket, took my brush, and began brushing his hair with it. kirillov and i only looked at one another, and made up our minds that that was the right thing and that we liked it very much…’
he suddenly raised his head. ‘if family honour and undeserved disgrace cry out among men, then – then is a man to blame?’ he roared suddenly, forgetting himself as before.
i’ve been asleep for the last four years with a storm-cloud hanging over me. may i withdraw at last, pyortr stepanovich?
‘how inexcusably tall you are!’ // mavriky nikilaevitch was tall, but by no means inexcusably so.
‘and in this rain; and such an interesting distance’.
at night without a home i wander and my tongue hangs out by day…
‘it seems, in fact, as though the first (second?) half of man’s life is usually made up of nothing but the habits he has accumulated during the first half’. ‘grand words! you solve the riddle of life!’ said the captain, half cunningly, half in genuine and unfeigned admiration, for he was a great lover of words.
a will – and his skin to be made into a drum, so that the american national hymn might be beaten upon it day and night,
anyone is worthy of an umbrella
music – but at this point augustin too grows fierce; hoarse sounds are heard; there is a suggestion of countless gallons of beer, of a frenzy of self glorification, demands for millions, for fine cigars, champagne, and hostages.
stepan trofimovitch assured me on one occasion that the very highest artistic talents may exist in the most abominable blackguards, and that the one thing does not interfere with the other.
children; bone of your bone
i always imagined there was something higher than meat and drink between us, and – i’ve never, never been a scoundrel!
‘i know something, perhaps’, lembke parried dexterously.
if you make her unhappy, ill kill you with my stick like a dog in a ditch!
‘that’s a nasty and immoral idea and shows the worthlessness of your development. i beg you not to address me again’, the girl rattled off.
‘but i am your uncle; i used to carry you about when you were a baby!’ // ‘i don’t care what babies you used to carry about. i didn’t ask you to carry me. it must have been your pleasure to you to do so, you rude officer’.
‘ new form of social organisation is essential. in order to avoid further uncertainty, i propose my own system of world organisation. here it is’. he tapped the notebook. ‘i wanted to expound my views to the meeting in the most concise form possible, but i see that i should need to add a great many verbal explanations, and so the whole exposition would occupy at least ten evenings, one for each of my chapters’. (there was the sound of laughter). ‘i must add, besides, that my system is not yet complete’. (laughter again). ‘i am perplexed by my own data and my conclusion is a direct contradiction of the original idea with which i start. starting from unlimited freedom, i arrive at unlimited despotism. i will add, however, that there can be no solution of the social problem but mine’.
‘no, you leave me alone, idle young man!’ he cried out at me at the top of his voice.
‘but let me tell you, let me tell you, without the english, life is still possible for humanity, without germany, life is possible, without russians it is only too possible, without science, without bread, life is possible – only without beauty it is impossible. for there will be nothing left in the world. that’s the secret at the bottom of everything, that’s what history teaches!’
‘i don’t want to look upon you as a mouse.’ ‘what’s that, a compliment? but the tea is cold – and that shows that everything is topsy-turvy. bah!’
well that’s an idea; of course all are scoundrels; and since life is a beastly thing for a decent man…

lu xun – diary of a madman

don’t think of all sorts of things – remain quiet, convalescing for a few days, and you’ll be alright.

lu xun – wandering

‘…’ declared siming with emotion after a pause.
chopsticks pattered like rain against the bowls
‘but since loyalty and filial piety are so important, it doesn’t matter too much if she cant write poems…’ ‘that isn’t true. quite otherwise’ weiyuan raised his hands and rushed towards siming, to shake and push him. ‘she’d only be interesting if she could write poems.
still he felt ill at ease, as if short of half his soul; but at once he woke up, put on his autumn hat with a red knot…
as a result, probably, of reading yu dufu’s romantic stories, they constantly referred to themselves as ‘the young unfortunate’ or ‘the outcast’ and sprawling on the big chairs like lazy arrogant crabs, the would sigh, smoke and frown all at the same time.
‘…there must be a cause…’ since my unemployment, just like those great officials who resigned from office and took up buddhism, i had been reading the buddhist sutras. i did not understand buddhist philosophy though, and was just talking at random. (味任意地说）

paul theroux – down the yangtze

the sun pouring honey into the deep cliffs

john steinbeck – of mice and men

dee brown – bury my heart at wounded knee

names: kicking bird, the hawk that hunts walking, sleeping rabbit, stumbling bear, shunka witco (fool dog), tatanka yotanka (sitting bull)
sitting bull: the white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it.
ghost dance – indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy… we need protection and we need it now.
train – iron horse
wolf belly

white tiger – indian book

alex garland – the tesseract

haruki murakami – sputnik sweetheart

fyodor dosoyevsky – netochka nezvanova

leaping into the air with such fervour that he sometimes hit his head against the ceiling and bruised himself quite painfully. bearing the pain like a spartan, he continued to dance.
this madness is stronger than the truth
misfortune, if admitted at all, played only a passive, transient role, essential for the sake of contrast and for the sudden turn of destiny that was to give a happy solution to the ecstatic romances of my brain.

thodore zeldin – an intimate history of humanity

amazed by 3 slavs he captured who carried no arms, just guitars and zithers, and wondered around singing songs of the joys of liberty, open fields and fresh breezes. They said it is normal for people who are strangers to war to devote themselves with fervour to music. They were known as the free-will people
also Tara Sevcenko Ukrainian surf
nobody foresaw the world shortage of respect
dr johnson: ‘when a man is tired of london he is tired of life, for there is in london all that life can afford.’
renaissance florence, known as ‘the new sodom’ was a precursor of san francisco.
curiosity – a remedy for fear & lust of the mind
i love the spider and the nettle, because they are hated
‘art is a battle in which the artist cries with pain before being defeated’ sollers says, ‘literature is the art of battle’.
so far, humans have used 3 strategies to deal with their enemies: fight them, run away or somehow manage to love them. but none of these methods has been particularly successful, and the world is still full of enemies.
ancient chinese warrior song: i arrive all alone // i sit down all alone // i have no regrets that people today do not know me // only the spirit of the old tree, in the south of the city // knows for certain i am an immortal passing by.
grief is humanity’s common enemy
do not utter slander; speak well of people; do not say nasty things; speak favourable
theory of relevance: communication is people interpreting what they observe in the light of their own experience, always being more or less approximate translators, and never wholly certain.
all that is needed is not to allow the readiness to make new discoveries go numb, as it does in most adults.
voltaire… became the model of the literary intellectual, for whom thinking means above all being critical, in the sense of being more forcibly affected by what is wrong than by what is right, having one eye more powerful than the other.
shakespeare was right to call travellers rebels, ‘out of love with their nativity… almost chiding god’ for making them the way they were.
time – it was a tyranny that began as a liberation, as so many other tyrannies have.
never will i subject myself to the hours; the hours are made for man and not man for the hours.
there is nothing malfunctioning in families when fathers do not get what they dream of: rather it is surprising when they do.
the result was unexpected: though fathers lost their rights one by one, it was not the children who won; power over them was largely transferred to teachers, doctors, the courts and social workers.
seeking knowledge for its own sake is another way of avoiding having to decide what one wants it for.
what distinguishes geniuses is the conviction that they will one day find the clue, and emerge from the jungle; they are not frightened of being lost.
churches, as institutions, have been as reluctant as nations to compromise sovereignty.
all the experience of history confirms that sharing the same beliefs has been a preliminary to quarrelling about their interpretation.
justice – humanity’s oldest dream.

haruki murakami – birthday stories

(denis johnson – dundun) you’d think the sky didn’t have any air in it, and the earth was made of paper. rather than moving, we were just getting smaller and smaller.
(lynsa dexson – turning) they turned their heads from side to side examining the boy, like birds, who have an eye to each hemisphere.
(david foster wallace – forever overhead) the pool was a system of movement

alan warner – morvern caller

i rubbed hands on the bum of the chopped-off jeans in a nonplussed way
away crawl under the stone you came from, creeping jesus, i says.
the path from my hired apartment to the beach front was like out the bible under the fierceness of such sun. you followed the dust track past the roman irrigation sluice, leading to the lemon and apricot trees. behind the cypresses the goatherd was tap-tapping and the wee iron bells round the goats’ necks clanged.

franz kafka – metamorphosis and other stories

i see that dogdom is in every way a marvellous institution.
the only strange thing about me is my nature, yet even that, as i am always careful to remember, has its foundations in universal dog nature.
if you have food in your jaws you have solved all questions for the time being.

richard mason – the world of suzy wong

it was in the readiness of the handshake, the blandness of the smile, that seemed to me to declare, ‘im an american, and proud of it, and when you shake hands with me you are not just shaking hands with an individual, but with america itself – with the empire state, and nation-wide television, and general motors, and the american democratic constitution’.

bret easton ellis – american psycho

‘i don’t like evian’, mcdermott says somewhat sadly. ‘it’s too sweet’. he looks so miserable when he admits this that it moves me to agree.
… kimball says, scrunching his features up.
‘hasn’t it occurred to him that his suit might inspire loathing?’ i ask.
‘you’ – she chokes – ‘don’t add up’.

vladimir nabokov – lolita

most of the dandelions had changed from suns to moons
let me follow a train of thought (waiting)
miss beard had been looking for me. ‘what a name for a woman’, i said, and strolled away.
sheep+goat= shoat
i still hear her nasal voices of those invisibles serenading her
one half of a chocolate cake under glass, and several horribly experienced flies zigzagging over the sticky sugar-pour on the ignoble counter.
the snake when he walks holds his hands in his pockets…
the dog started to lope alongside my car like a fat dolphin, but he was too heavy and too old, and very soon gave up.
noticed a number of used glasses growing out of the carpet
i felt suffocated as he rolled over me. i rolled over him. we rolled over me. they rolled over him. we rolled over us.
a quarter of his face gone, and two flies beside themselves with a dawning sense of unbelievable luck.
‘reality’, one of the few words which mean nothing without quotes.

aldous huxley – brave new world

hug me till you drug me, honey; // kiss me till i’m in a coma
soma

george orwell – burmese days

very sweltering is the weather these days, is not? but seasonable for april. not too much you are suffering from the prickly heat, i trust?
here, get some drinks, butler. by god, i could do with a nip of something.
he could never understand why, when there was so clearly a right and wrong opinion about everything, flory always seemed to delight in the wrong one.

henry zhao – the lost boat

swaying like a distant willow in the breeze // close up, like a fast horse resting its hoof // standing up, he strikes a pose to shoot his his arrow // only lying down, one leg will be longer that the other – even black date smiled.
looking at the floor all covered in twitching chicks, he cursed them with sob in his voice, ‘damn that mob of crazy crabs’.
the villagers had long since ceased to take an interest in strangers
his pity for the villagers did not sweep away the shadow of perplexity about himself – like them, he too lived in sort of illusion.
to tell the truth, i don’t much care for the number 5, a truly gloomy numeral.

gao xingjing

people could not comprehend the world, and the existence of the world depended on an individual’s perception of it. if, when a person died, the world, too, became murky, or perhaps no longer existed, then what definite meaning did being alive have?

bao ninh – the sorrow of war

the MIA zil truck
the jungle of screaming souls
the immense dull sea of rain
the thought of his expected end brought a sense of irony
the ones who loved war were not the young men, but the others like the politicians, middle-aged men with fat bellies and short legs.
that slobs gave us a sort of warning: don’t criticise others. be sure of yourself first.
a written sign: ‘leave! leave this place. leave!’
he looked down when he walked, as though afraid of treading on his shadow

john braine – room at the top

he was very thin, though
that fair-haired girl from doncaster with both eyes running down her cheeks.
a sad, refined, rather sexy little foxtrot.
at that moment he was enjoying what a thousand films and magazines had assured him to be righteous anger: his girl had been untrue.

ha jin – waiting

haruki murakami – after dark

franz kafka – the trail

kaminer was only available with his grin, and common humanity forbade any joke about that.
shaking off his mood of abstraction

joseph conrad – heart of darkness

out of touch with truth
they wanted no excuse for being there
i don’t like work, – no man does – but i like what is in the work, – the chance to find yourself. your own reality – for yourself, not for others – what no other man can ever know. they can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.
his head was as bald as the palm of my hand; but his hair in falling seemed to have stuck to his chin, and had prospered in the new locality, for his beard hung down to his waist.
‘the manager thinks you ought to be hanged’. he showed a concern at this intelligence which amused me at first.
when a long time after i heard once more, not his own voice, but the echo of his magnificent eloquence thrown to me from a soul as translucently pure as a cliff of crystal.
‘nurse up my strength’ seemed altogether beside the mark.
there is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies.

2008 ^ horse notebook ^ (NZ, OZ, CN)

nietzsche – thus spoke zarathustra

we have discerned happiness, say the last men, and blink thereby.
no small art is it to sleep; it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day.

fyodor dostoevsky – the brothers karamazov

-you bernard!

chuang tsu – the inner chapters

the whole horse and meaning and things… is strictly noministic; a common name such as ‘horse’ is given to a particular object and extended to all similar to it. when we ask what an object is, we are asking what name fits it.
names have only a conventional relation to the object.
to be dutiful is to be beneficial
while we dream we do not know that we are dreaming, and in the middle of a dream interpret a dream within it; not untill we wake do we know that we were dreaming. only at the ultimate awakening shall we know that this is the ultimate dream… i who call you a dream are also a dream.

david mitchell – cloud atlas

i slumber not

lin yutang – the importance of living

he is most wisely drunk who is half drunk

spike milligan – verse for kids

there was a young soldier called edser
when wanted was always in bed sir
one morning at one
they fired the gun
and edser, in bed sir, was dead sir
-there are holes in the sky
where the rain gets in
but they’re ever so small
that’s why the rain is thin
-what is a bungaloo, dadd?
a bungaloo, son, said i
is a tall bag of cheese
plus a chinaman’s knees
and the leg of a nanny goat’s eye
what shape is a bungaloo, dadd?
the shape, my son, ill explain:
its tall round the nose
which continually grows
in the general direction of spain

jean paul sartre – the age of reason

mathieu – ‘i’m not obstinate, i’m highly strung. i don’t know how to let myself go. i must always think of what is happening to me – its a form of self-protection.’ and he added ironically, as though to himself: ‘i’m a thinking reed.’
sir, you’re a second-rater. // sir, you’re a man of no account.

mikhail lermantov – a hero of our time

‘for my part’, said werner, ‘im convinced of only one thing. that one day, sooner or later, i shall die.’ // now try telling me the soul doesn’t depend on the body.
pechorin – i’m not given to brooding on abstract ideas. it gets you nowhere.
pechorin – i make it a rule never to reject absolutely or to put blind faith in anything.
pechorin and the doctor – we came together a number of times and discoursed very solemnly on abstract ideas until we saw that each of us was pulling the other’s leg. then we looked each other meaningly in the eye… and burst out laughing.

everyman’s library – zen poems

don’t read books!
don’t chant poems!
when you read books you’re eyeballs wither away, leaving bare sockets.

arthur waley – the real tripitaka

logic is, afterall, a weapon of argument and is useless unless it can form a bridge between the minds of people who hold opposing views.

jostein gaarder – maya

the sun isn’t merely a star
the earth isn’t merely a planet
a human being isn’t merely an animal
an animal isn’t merely dust
and ana isn’t dead.
♣1 – there exists a world. in terms of probability this borders on the impossible. it would be far more likely if, by chance, there was nothing at all. then, at least no one would have begun asking why there was nothing.
♣2 – to the impartial eye, the world not only seems an unlikely one-off phenomenon, but a constant strain on reason. if reason exists, that is, if a neutral reason exists. so speaks the voice from within. so speaks joker’s voice.
♣3 – here and now the voice is articulated by the heirs of the amphibians. it is coughed up by the nephews of terrestrial lizards in the asphalt jungle. the question raised by the heirs of the furry vertebraes is whether there is any reason beyond this shameless cocoon which grows and grows in every direction.
♣4 – one asks: what is the chance of something coming into existence out of nothing? or the opposite of course: how great are the odds that something can have existed forever? and either way: is it possible to calculate the odds of cosmic material suddenly one morning rubbing the sleep of ages out of its eyes and waking up to consciousness itself?

john betjeman – the village inn

the village inn, the dear old inn,
so ancient, clean, and free from sin,
the centre of our rural life
where hodge sits down beside his wife
and talks of marx and nuclear fission
with all a rustic’s intuition …
on back street and alley
and chemical valley

john betjeman – slough

come, friendly bombs, and fall on slough
it isn’t fit for humans now,
there isn’t grass to graze a cow,
swarm over, death! //
and get that man with double chin
who’ll always cheat and always win
who washes his repulsive skin
in women’s tears.

fyodor dostoevsky – bobok

the cleverest man is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.
a spanish witticism at the time of the french built their first mad-house: they have shut up all their fools in a special building, in order to make us believe they are wise themselves.
shutting somebody else up in a lunatic asylum doesn’t prove your own sanity.
to be astonished at everything is of course, stupid, and to not be astonished at anything is much more admirable, and for the same reason accepted as good form. but i doubt whether it is so in reality. i think being surprised at nothing is much more stupid than being surprised at everything. more than that: being surprised at nothing is almost the same as respecting nothing. and a stupid man is incapable of respect.

fyodor dostoevsky – the gambler

roulettenburg

aldous huxley – time must have a stop

it takes two people to make a swindle – the swindler and the swindlee
damned light! bloody little rag-and-bone man!
he had a way of leaving spaces between his sentences, so that everything he said was framed, as it were, in a setting of silence.
steps – low rises and broad treads

john lennon – in my own write

im a moldy moldy man // im moldy thru and thru // im moldy moldy man // you would not think it true // im moldy till my eyeballs // im moldy till my toe // i will not dance i shyballs // im such a humble joe
c is for plastic which we can plainly see

dan brown – deception point

gabrielle stepped in, searching the dimly lit niche for a janitor’s key ring or key card. nothing. just brooms and mops.

jrr tolkein – roverandom

psamathos: ‘what do you two want at this time of day? ‘growled psamathos. ‘it’s my favourite time for sleep.’
psamathos got right up out of the sand – he had legs like a rabbit. he stamped and ramped and kicked sand into the air.
‘done by a seaweed wizard. blister and wart him!’ he swore, ‘done by a persian plum-picker, pot and jam him! shoot and hang him!’
sea-dog, space-dog

paul reps – zen flesh, zen bones

house of the flying horse
when banzan was walking through a market he overheard a conversation between a baker and his customer. // ‘give me the best piece of meat you have’ said the customer. // ‘everything in my shop is the best’ replied the butcher. // ‘you cannot find here any piece of meat that is not the best’. // at these words banzan was enlightened.
do not speak! to not even think is the ultimate truth.

murray ball – footrot flats

cat named horse

2015 ^ SPAIN ^

2015 ^ back from mexico ^ (UK)

2014 ^ happy shopper notebook ^ (MEXICO)

2012 ^ jara notebook ^ (HARRINGAY)

2011 ^ soas and 中国 notebook ^ (CHINA AND LONDON)

2010 ^ black notebook ^ (BLACKBOYS AND KING’S CROSS)

2008 ^ horse notebook ^ (NZ, OZ, CN)

2007 ^ eiffel tower notebook ^ (NZ & CN)