Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things - pg. 104

She's one of those bright, lovely, intelligent people who should have never been born.

Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things - pg. 101

Not that she disliked the poems, she simply didn't remember them as a kind of genre poem she had read before; that seems fair enough, and certainly possible, considering the book. I know this book and it had those poems in it, all about Being Alive In The Fresh Air And Living With Your Woman And Eating Good Food And Smoking Pot And Watching Your Woman Getting Dinner Ready The Way Her Simple Skirt Molds Itself To Her Full Hips Outside The Voices Of The Children As The Evening Comes Down On The Mountains Fuck You America You Can't Change This. With a lot of Mexican friends (Spanish friends that is, in the great Southwest), and Indians drinking tokay and muscatel. Plenty of battered, dusty VW buses in evidence too. But the poet had gone away, gone to the Coast, I think.

Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things - pg. 91

Bunny was studying psychology. Along came Guy, cap over his eye, drunk and disorderly. She was a mark for him. Oh, she'd done a little wild-oat sowing in college... But mark of doom was not on them. I don't know how she met Guy, but we'll imagine it was in Provincetown, after Labor Day. The dunes, the sea, the wind. Guy told her about his dreams of death and within the hour she was blowing him. Guy's penis kept getting soft and she thought she was doing something wrong. That was even better - she would have to work, hard, to give Guy all her love and understanding. This isn't heartless of me, though it may seem so. These are people born to decent families, the fact of their helplessness is a human fact, i.e., don't tell me that you have to know what happened to Guy in the garage one day? Or, what secret terrors Bunny was exposed to when she was eleven, ....

Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things - pg. 60

The artist is a contemporary pariah because everybody understand what he is, and what he is doing, and thinks he should go straight to hell....... Do you think that an artist selects his theme? It is all simple obsession, which is why no professional reviewer will tolerate for a moment a deviation from what he takes letters to be. The artist gets on the maniac nag, rides him into the flames. Goes mad. Rots in obscurity. Destroys his gifts by finally selling them and himself. "Consumes himself in bitterness." Blows his brains out. Or pretends that nothing fazes him and dies over and over in his imagination, doing his best not to smash those close to him. Or writes, like Hemingway, a book of weary, desperate bitterness, Across the River and into the Trees, delightedly assaulted by the corps of hacks, whom he placated, with what staggering cynicism, with his last book, The Old Man and the Sea. And won the Nobel Prize, and lost his mind, and blew his head off. Nothing strange about that.

Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things - pg. 37

Lou was one of those men who confused passing happiness or misery with th sources of art. The world is full of them. When one disaster or ecstasy is over, they turn to another. The war in Vietnam has spawned a thousand poets. They think their rage and impotence will make the poem. They think their rage and impotence will make the poem. It is a banal truism that all the occasional poet needs to write a poem is an occasion.

Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things - pg. 16

The problem is ... to realize that assuaged desire does not sate, or still, the mind's hilarious complexities. Those who do not understand this are at a loss to comprehend the true anguish of the flesh - that in imagination we die, and die, and die again... Love is no comforter, the poet said. Rather a nail in the skull. However read, that sits true. It is a nail in the skull. Or: rather to have a nail in the skull. What anodyne to ease that agony? While the body heaves and shudders the imagination staggers through the sweet wind off the ocean, straining to recall the precise contours of the youthful face its earlier acrobatics played over.

Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things - Opening

WHAT IF THIS YOUNG WOMAN, who writes such bad poetry, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkable long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings? It is an old story. Then she asks you what you think of the trash you have just read - her latest effort. She is not unintelligent and she is - attractive. A use of the arts perhaps more common than any other in this time. Aphrodisia. Powerful as Spanish fly or the scent of jasmine. The most delicate equivocation about the poem, the most subtle relaxation of critical acumen, will hasten you to bed with her. The poem is about a dream she had. In it she is a little girl. Again. Most of her poems are about dreams. In them she drowns in costume, or finds herself flying naked. At the end of the dream she is trapped. Well, critic, tell her the poem has the clear and unmistakable stink of decay to it. Tell her. Is seeing, finally, the hair glossy between her thighs so important will you lie? About art?

Partially funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Illinois Arts Council.

Dalkey Archive Press
1817 North 79th Avenue
Elmwood Park, IL. 60635 USA
First Published by Pantheon Books, 1971
First paperback edition, 1991

Spanish Lit. Galaxy. Systems of Prose, Lit. Engineering

Rulfo and Carpentier----> García Márquez, Fuentes, Roa Bastos, Vargas Llosa

Borges----> Arreola, Monterroso, Bioy Casares, Cortázar, Menen Desleal

Arlt (?)------> Bolaño, Aira, Cabrera Infante and all the folletinesque authors

Cela -for his character-(?) or Benet -for his prose-(?)-----> Javier Marías, Andrés Trapiello, Eduardo Lago

mucho gracias senhor Nihilo.

a thought...

Writing a Novel is about creating a system of ignorance of a subtle kind...

Gilbert Sorrentino on Bay Area

Stanford requires the same teaching load to be borne by everybody, scholar, artist, or nitwit, so that's too bad. But I still have enough time to work. As for mellowing out, as you put it, California--at least the Bay Area--is so utterly antithetical to me that I find myself, at all times, struggling against its cuteness, its apathy, its general air of paralysis, its relentless small-townishness, so that it's hard to imagine being mellowed out while in the throes of battle. I don't quite know what it is about the place but the entire Bay Area, with the source of infection being, of course, that citadel of provincialism, San Francisco, has the air of an amateur stage production set in sinister natural surroundings. I had a student some time ago who said that the sun out here gave her the creeps. I'd agree, but with elaboration, that is, the sun shining on a street crafts-exhibition, complete with wine and local "performers." Now that is hell on earth.

Ode To Jameson

Dear Jameson, come back to me
this is not without reason
the words pouring themselves on
memories in a shot-glass
look, Jeremy's got a fancy one!
and Elizabeth's moving in on you
little drops of piss always love you

spirits lit up the whole scene
you came out electric-yellow
because Green didn't become you
the suit I wore had flaming cuts
but Jeremy's got a fancy one!
and Elizabeth's moving in on you
little drops of piss always love you

you go away, oh why?
was that old-Irish in you, killing you?
red-birches went up, out of her spine,
leaves that were burning; burning my head
but, Jeremy's got a fancy one!
and Elizabeth's moving in on you
little drops of piss always love you!

James Wood

It's true. "Remember, I grew up with Bellow," Wood says. "If you love Bellow, you love exuberance and stylistic showing off. That is exactly my complaint against someone like Rushdie. It's not style, it's all noise. He doesn't hit the drums like Moon hits them."

Journey To The End Of The Night - pg. 124

It is hard to take a reasonable view of people and things in the tropics because of the aura of colour which envelopes them. Things and colours are in a haze. A little sardine tin lying open at noon in the middle of the road throws off so many different reflections that in one's eyes it takes on the importance of an accident. You've got to be careful. It's not only the human beings who are hysterical down in those parts; things get involved in it too. Life doesn't become even barely tolerable until nightfall and even then the darkness is seized almost at once by swarm of mosquitoes, - not one or two or several score, but billions of them. To pull through under such conditions becomes a veritable feat of self-preservation. A carnival by day, a cauldron at night, it's the war again in petto.

Journey To The End Of The Night - pg. 114

... one may as well realize that in everyday life at least a hundred people thirst for your miserable life in the course of a single ordinary day - all those people, for instance, whom you annoy by being ahead of them in the Underground queue; all the people who pass by your apartment and haven't one of their own; all those who whold like you to hurry up and come out of the lavatory so that they can go in there themselves; your children too, and a host of others. It goes on all the time. One gets accustomed to it. On board ship this friction is more easily noticeable, so it's more annoying.

Journey To The End Of The Night - pg. 74

Because I was in love with Musyne, I imagined that that was going to give me the courage I lacked, all because she was so pretty, so musical and sweet, the little darling! Love is like alcohol; the more intoxicated and incapable you are, the stronger and quicker-witted you think yourself, and the surer you are of your rights.

Journey To The End Of The Night - pg. 70

Proust, who was half a ghost himself, with extraordinary determination became immersed in the Infinite, in the misty futility of the functions and formalities which twine about the people of society, that vacuum full of phantom desires, of uncertain fools always awaiting their Watteau, irresolute, smut-fingering seekers after unlikely isles of amorous enchantment. But Madame Herote, who came of sound, popular stock, was held firmly to earth by stupid, healthy, definite desires.

Journey To The End Of The Night - pg. 68

It's harder to lose the wish to love than the wish to live. One spends one's time in this world killing and adoring, and one does both together. "I hate you! I adore you!" You defend yourself and have a good time and pass on life to some biped in the next century, frantically, at all costs, as if to be continued were a tremendously pleasant thing, as if, after all, that could make one live forever. Whatever happens, one has to make love, as one has to scratch.

Journey To The End Of The Night - pg. 66

Being a soldier for nothing was a new idea. So new that Goethe, in spite of his being Goethe, when he came to Valmy, got a shock at the sight of it. In the presence of those ragged, impassioned troops, who had come there of their own free will to be ripped to pieces by the King of Prussia in defense of this brand-new fiction of patriotism, Goethe felt that he still had a great deal to learn. 'From that day', he proclaimed magnificently, in his own inimitable style, 'a new epoch commences.' I should damn well think it does! After that, as the idea worked so well, they started to turn out heroes in series, and they cost less and less as the system became more and more perfect. Everyone's done the same. Bismarck, the two Napoleons, Barres, as well as the bold Elsa. Flag worship promptly replaced divine worship, an old cloud already punctured by the Reformation and condensed a long time ago into Episcopal coffers. In the old days the fanatic fashion was 'Jesus for ever!' and 'Burn the heretics!' Still, the heretics after all were rare and of their own choosing. But now, i our time, immense hordes are roused by the cry: ' To the stake with all gutless sissies, fibreless hacks and innocent bookworms. Millions, face right!' Those who do not want to spitcher or assassinate anybody, the stinking pacifists, take, seize and quarter them.

Journey To The End Of The Night - pg. 59

But when one's weak, the thing that gives one strength is stripping those one fears of the slightest prestige that one may still tend to accord them. One must teach oneself to see them as they are, as worse than they are, that is; one should look at them from all points of view. This detaches you, sets you free and is much more of a protection than you can possibly imagine. It gives you another self, so that there are two of you together.
Their actions no longer have that foul mysterious power over you, weakening you and wasting your time, and their foolishness is no more pleasing to you or useful to your own intimate development than that of the lowest swine.

mp3: A.A. Bondy: Vice Rag

Vice Rag

The cover art for the album is beautiful. It has a look of a cave painting. Symbols and shapes are all too familiar but they seem like a trick to a larger inherently unknowable hieroglyph that is hidden under it.

A blog link to check back later: http://buddyhead.typepad.com/medication/2007/07/aa-bondy---amer.html

Journey To The End Of The Night - pg. 48

She bothered me with her things of the spirit, which she never stopped talking about. The soul is the body's pride and pleasure when in health, but it is also a desire to be rid of the body when one is ill or things are going badly. You choose either the one attitude or the other, whichever suits you best at the particular moment, and that's all there is to it! While you are free to choose between both, all is well. But for me there was no choice; my course was settled. I was up to the neck in reality and could see my own death following me, so to speak, step for step. I found it very difficult to think of anything except a fate of slow assassination which the world seemed to consider the natural thing for me.
During this sort of protracted death agony, in which your brain is lucid and your body sound, it is impossible to comprehend anything but the absolute truths. You need to have undergone such an experience to have knowledge forever after of the truth or falsity of the things you say.

Journey To The End Of The Night - pg. 50

Thus it was in the neighbourhood of Lola's backside that a message from a new world came to me. And she hadn't only a fine body, my Lola, - let us get that quite clear at once; she was also graced with a piquant little face and grey-blue eyes, which gave her a slightly cruel look, because they were set a wee bit on the upward slant, like those of a wildcat.

Journey To The End Of The Night - pg. 31

The chief commissariat officer, keeper of the hatred of the whole regiment, was for the time being lord of creation. You're a rogue if you talk of the future; it's the present that counts. To invoke posterity is to declaim to an audience of maggots. At night in those war villages, the adjutant herded his human cattle in readiness for the great slaughterhouses that had just been opened. The adjutant was king! The King of Death! Adjutant Cretelle! Just so. Nobody was stronger than he - and no one was even as strong as he was, except some adjutant of theirs on the other side.

Rhapsody on a Windy Night

Twelve o'clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations
Its divisions and precision,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.

Half-past one,
The street-lamp sputtered,
The street-lamp muttered,
The street-lamp said, "Regard that woman
Who hesitates toward you in the light of the door
Which opens like a grin.
You see the border of her dress
Is torn and stained with sand,
And you see the corner of her eye
Twists like a crooked pin."

The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.

Half-past two,
The street-lamp said,
"Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter,
Slips out its tongue
And devours a morsel of rancid butter."
So the hand of the child, automatic,
Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.
I could se nothing behind that child's eye.
I have seen eyes in the street
Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
And a crab one afternoon in a pool,
An old crab with barnacles on his back,
Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.

Half-past three,
The lamp sputtered,
The lamp muttered in the dark.
The lamp hummed:
"Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smooths the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and eau de Cologne,
She is alone
With all the nocturnal smells
That cross and cross across her brain."
The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices,
Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars.

The lamp said,
'Four o'clock,
Here is the number on the door.
Memory!
You have the key,
The little lamp spreads a ring on the stair.
Mount.
The bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall,
Put your shoes at the door, sleep, prepare for life.'

The last twist of the knife.

Journey To The End Of The Night - pg. 20

The greatest defeat, in anything, is to forget, and above all to forget what it is that has smashed you, and to let yourself be smashed without ever realizing how thoroughly devilish men can be. When our time is up, we people mustn't bear malice, but neither must we forget: we must tell the whole thing, without altering one word, - everything that we have seen of man's viciousness; and then it will be over and time to go. That is enough of a job for a whole lifetime.

Gilbert Sorrentino - new writer

Absolutely have to check out: Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things. It's only 288 pages.

from a blog on John Barth

Jacob Horner’s reason for living in The End of the Road is predicated upon following the dicta of a mysterious Doctor, with the series of instructions being woefully misunderstood and employed in an insensitive manner that even Horner doesn’t seem to see. Consider, for example, the way that Barth describes this moment in which Jacob Horner shares dinner with the Morgans:

Since there were only four chairs in the kitchen, Rennie and the two boys and I ate at the table while Joe ate standing up at the stove. There would have been no room at the table for one of the sling chairs, and anyhow it did not take long to eat the meal, which consisted of steamed shrimp, boiled rice, and beer for all hands. The boys — husky, well-mannered youngsters — were allowed to dominate the conversation during dinner; they were as lively and loud as any other bright kids their age, but a great deal more physically co-ordinated and self-controlled than most. As soon as we finished eating they went to bed, and though it was still quite light outside, I heard no more from them.

Who is this guy? Is this really a sad domestic situation or is Jacob Horner more concerned with externalizing every situation he comes across? We have all sorts of general details about who this family is and what the dinner entails, but why can’t Jacob Horner pinpoint anything about them? Why the strange comparative qualifiers compared to other boys? Why the concern for the boys’ conversation? These are the questions that pop up when reading a Barth novel.

Journey To The End Of The Night - pg. 4

"You said it, fathead; I am an anarchist! And to prove it, there's a sort of social prayer I've written. You can tell me this minute what you think of it. 'Wings of Gold' it's called." And I recited it to him:

"A God who counts the minutes and the pence, a desperate God, sensual and grunting like a pig. A pig with wings of gold which tumbles through the world, with exposed belly waiting for caresses, lo, 'tis he, behold our master! Embrace, embrace!"

painter in your pocket...

And I'm reminded of the time that I was blinded by the sun.
It was a welcome change from the sight of you hanging
like a willow off the arm of yet another visionary
prophetess east van punk.

(on my ipod)

The Mahabharata - pg. 398

Duryodhana, who was stretched on the ground in intense agony, when he heard Krishna say this, went into a paroxysm of rage. He half raised himself on his arms in spite of the excruciating pain, and exclaimed: "Wretch! Son of a slave! Was not your father Vasudeva Kamsa;s slave? You have no business to sit or move with princes. You speak like a shameless wretch. I saw you instigate Bhima to aim his blow at my thigh! Do you think I did not see you, making as though casually talking to Arjuna pointing to your thigh, but really indicating to Bhima that he should strike me on the thighs, disregarding the laws of single combat? Till then, it had been equal battle. You have neither pity nor shame. Did you not contrive the death of the grandsire Bhishma through stratagem? You advised Shikandin to be placed in front when attacking Bhishma, knwoing that the grandsire would scorn to fight a woman, and would let himself be mortally wounded without resistance. You brought about the end of Dronacharya through making Dharmaputra utter a falsehood. You were the father of that deadly lie that issued from Yudhishthira's mouth, and made Dronacharya throw his bow away. Did you not look on without protest, and rejoice, when that wretch Dhrishtadyumna attacked and killed the acharya who had stopped fighting, throwing away his weapons, and settled down in yoga posture for meditation on the Supreme? Was it not you who wickedly contrived to make Karna hurl the fatal spear at Ghatotkacha instead of reserving it for Arjuna as he had all along resolved to do? O great sinner, surely it was you who instigated Satyaki to butcher Bhurisravas when his right arm had been foully cut off and he stopped fighting and spread his arrows for a seat for holy meditation. It was you who brought about the death of Karna by indicating Arjuna to attack him in a cowardly manner when he was engaged in lifting his chariot wheel which had sunk and stuck in the mud in the field of battle. Oh worthless man, sole cause of our destruction, made it appear as if the sun had set, and made Jayadratha, the Sindhu king, believe that the day was over and he was past danger, and thus he was slain when he was off his guard."

Journey To The End Of The Night - Opening

Alright, so here we are at the Book Club 2007 part-deux. Finally.

"IT ALL BEGAN JUST LIKE THAT. I HADN'T SAID ANYTHING. I HADN'T said a word. It was Arthur Ganate who started me off. Arthur, who was studying medicine the same as me, a pal of mine. What happened was that we met on the Place Clichy. After lunch. He seemed to want to talk to me. So I listened. "Don't let's stay out here," he said. "Let's go inside." So I went along in with him.

Translated from the French by
John H. P. Marks

New Directions Book are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions publishing Corporation,
333 Sixth Avenue, New York 10014.

TWELFTH PRINTING

The Mahabharata - pg. 383

"You brahmanas, abandoning the legitimate functions of your varna and taking to the kshatirya profession of arms, have brought ruin to the princes. If you brahmana had not gone astray from the duties belonging to you by birth, the princes would not have been led to this destruction. You teach that non-killing is the highest dharma and that the brahmana is supporter and the nourisher of that dharma. Yet, you have rejected that wisdom which is yours by birth, and shamelessly undertaken the profession of killing. It was our misfortune that you descended to this sinful life."
Bhima taunting Drona

nothing to say...

I took my customary stroll outside at the university main: The Greens, went all the way to check if the library was open by any chance. The lights were on in the glassed stairwells and in a few windows but most of the building was already in the darkness: closed at 5pm. I thought I would get the Apples and Oranges, a novella by Guy Davenport that Nihilo was raving about. It happened to be an early evening en-shadowed by wandering clouds and faint gusts of general wet breeze. Everything was wet, appearing fresh out of the consistent drizzle of the last three days. The fountain at the library corner was on and I had Destroyer on my iPod:

"Some people call me 'Angel' on their deathbed, in a dream.
That's right, the Czar's father thought things could've gone differntly
last night, but they didn't...

And I couldn't bear to follow you there, where trauma exists in the sky.
20th Century Masters welcome these disasters, and so do I.
But, no!
Oh baby, please don't go up into it!"

The Mahabharata - pg. 351

When Dhritarashtra heard Sanjaya relate the success of Arjuna,he exclaimed: "Oh Sanjaya! When Janardana came to Hastinapura seeking a settlement, I told Duryodhana that it was a great opportunity and he must not lose it. I told him to make peace with his cousins. 'Kesava has come to do us a good turn. Do not disregard his advice,' I said. But Duryodhana heeded not. What Karna and Duhsasana said seemed to him better advice than mine. The Destroyer entered his mind and he sought his own ruin. Drona deprecated war, so also did Bhishma, Bhurisravas, Kripa and others. But my obstinate son would not listen. Impelled by inordinate ambition, he got entangled in anger and hatred, and invited this ruinous war."

Hiroshima Mon Amour

Madame Bovary (Provincial Life) - pg. 12

He got into the habit of going to the cafes, and had a passion for dominoes. To shut himself up every evening in the dirty public room, to push about on marble tables the small sheep-bones with black dots, seemed to him a fine proof of his freedom, which him in his own esteem. He was beginning to see life, the sweetness of stolen pleasures; and when he entered, he put his hand on the door-handle with a joy almost sensual.

The Thin Red Line

I found an interesting quote from The Thin Red Line that reminded me of Karna/Arjuna dynamic from The Mahabharata.

[last lines]
Private Edward P. Train: [voice over] Where is it that we were together? Who were you that I lived with? The brother. The friend. Darkness, light. Strife and love. Are they the workings of one mind? The features of the same face? Oh, my soul. Let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made. All things shining.

Mutual Appreciation -

Between my work and writing a short-story that has come out so bad in the first-person singular that I have to ditch it and have to start it from scratch, I am thinking of Andrew Bujalski's brilliant film Mutual Appreciation. It is a great set-piece on 20-somethings. I was thinking specifically the bar scene when one character had his first show and only a dozen people showed up, the developing triangle of feelings between three friends and the scene where one of the character was made to dress like a girl. Definitely requires a second screening preferably in Brooklyn this time.

Gustave Flaubert

"the artist must raise everything to a higher level: he is like a pump; he has inside him a great pipe that reaches down into the entrails of things, the deepest layers. he sucks up what was lying there below, dim and unnoticed, and brings it out in great jets to the sunlight."

The Thin Red Line

Japanese Soldier: Are you righteous? Kind? Does your confidence lie in this? Are you loved by all? Know that I was, too. Do you imagine your suffering will be any less because you loved goodness and truth?

The Mahabharata - pg. 324

Drupada's forces suffered heavy punishment at Drona's and blood flowed in streams on the battlefield. Drona, then, again turned his attention to Yudhishthira. The Pandavas stood and answered Drona's attacks with showers of arrows. Satyajit made a charge on Drona's car and there was a fierce combat in which Drona's figure assumed grimness of the Destroyer. Many a warrior was slain by him in succession. Vrika, a prince of Panchala, as well as Satyajit, fell dead.

The Mahabharata - pg. 311

"Princes," said Bhishma addressing the assembled chiefs, "Arjuna's arrows were indeed my head required to be supported on. This pillow gives me satisfaction. Now, I must lie thus until the sun turns north. My soul will not depart till then. When I pass away, those of you who may be alive then, may come and see me."

The Mahabharata - pg. 309

"You are not fighting, Arjuna, as you should!" exclaimed Krishna, and jumped down in a rage from the chariot and, taking up his discus, he advanced towards the grandsire.
Bhishma saw Vasudeva approaching.
"Hail, O Lotus-eyed One!" he cried. "Blessed am I to be separated from the body by you! Come, come!"
Arjuna jumped down from the chariot and, rushing forward overtook and held Krishna, casting both his arms round him. "Stop, Krishna," he cried. "Do not break your pledge. You have promised not to use weapons in this battle. This is my work. I shall not fail. I shall send my arrows and kill the beloved grandsire myself. Pray, mount the car and take the reins."

The Mahabharata - pg. 302

At that moment, the other Pandavas also joined Arjuna, but the grandsire was able to hold his own against all five until the sunset and the battle was suspended for the day, and the warriors of both sides, weary and wounded, retired to their tents for rest and for having their injuries attended to. After this, for an hour, soft music was played, soothing the warriors to their rest. That hour was spent, says the poet, without a word about war or hatred and was an hour of heavenly bliss, and it was a glad sight to see. One can see herein what the great lesson of the Mahabharata is.

September Book List

1. Berlin Alexanderplatz - Alfred Doblin
2. The Shadow Lines - Amitav Ghosh
3. Little, Big - John Crowley
   
4. Hamlet - some guy
5. Mr. Palomar - Italo Calvino
6. Pedro Paramo - Juan Rulfo
   

The Mahabharata - pg. 257 - (Karna speaks)

"What you have said, dear mother, is contrary to dharma. If I swerve from the path of duty, I shall have done myself much more hurt than any that an enemy might inflict on me in the battle-field. You deprived me of all that was my birthright as a khshatriya when you threw me, a helpless babe, into the river; and now, you talk to me of my duties as a kshatriya. You denied me the motherly love which blesses all life and now, thinking of your other children's good, you tell me this story. If I now join the Pandavas, will not the world proclaim that I have done so out of fear? I have eaten the salt of Dhritashhtra's sons, won their confidence as their champion and enjoyed all the consideration and kindness they showed me; and now you want me - when the battle is about to be joined - to be untrue to my salt and go over to the Pandavas. The sons of the Dhritarashtra look on me as the ark which will enable them to cross the deluge of war. I have myself urged them into this war. How can I desert them? Could there be blacker treachery and baser ingratitude? What in life, or beyond it, would be worth a price like that? Mother dear, I must discharge my debt - aye, with life, if necessary: otherwise. I shall be no better than a common thief purloining my food all these years. I shall surely use all my powers against your sons in this coming war. I cannot deceive you. Please forgive me."
"But yet," continued he, "I cannot have my mother plead completely in vain. Part Arjuna to me. Either he or myself must die in this war. I will not kill your other sons, whatever they may do unto me. Mother of warrior sons, you will still have five sons. Either I or Arjuna will survive this war, and with the other four sons, you will still have five."
When Kunti heard her first-born speak this firmly adhering to the kshatriya code, her heart was full of tumultuous and contrary feelings and, without trusting herself to speak, she embraced him and departed in silence.
"Who can go against what has been ordained?" she thought. "He has, at least, offered not to harm four of my sons. That is enough. May God bless him", and she returned home.

Gravity's Rainbow (first edition) Cover

Madame Bovary (Provincial Life) - Opening

We were in class when the headmaster came in, followed by a new boy, not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a large desk. Those who had been asleep woke up, and every one rose as if just surprised at his work.

With a translation by Eleanor Marx Aveling
and Paul de Man

Copyright 2005 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

All rights reserved,
Printed in the United States of America.
First Edition.
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd. Castle House,
75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

The Mahabharata - pg. 226

"Dhananjaya, why did you choose thus unwisely, preferring me alone and unarmed to my full equipped and heroic forces?" asked Krishna to Arjuna with a smile, when they were alone. Arjuna answered: "My ambition is to achieve glory even like yours. You have the power and prowess to all the princes of the land and their hordes in battle single-handed. I too feel I can do it. So, I desire that I should win the battle with you driving my chariot unarmed. I have desired this for long and you have today fulfilled my wish."
Vasudeva smiled again and pronounced this benediction: "Are you trying to compete with me? May you succeed," for he was pleased with Arjuna's decision.
This is the sacred story of how Krishna became Partha's charioteer.

To Do List

• Prj1: Random Algo. , route-based channel assignment, SetupQ code
• Prj2: Lit. Survey complete with 3 more papers to go
  

mp3: The Books - Tokyo

The Books found sounds in Tokyo

Raj Kamal Jha, Amitav Ghosh - New Authors

• Raj Kamal Jha - If You Are Afraid Of Heights
• Shadow Lines - Amitav Ghosh

12 "best" Novels according to Khushwant Singh on India's 60th Independence Day

1. House for Mr. Biswas - V. S. Naipaul
2. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
3. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
4. God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
5. The Shadow Lines - Amitav Ghosh
6. Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri
   
7. Cuckold - Kiran Nagarkar
8. The Hero's Walk - Anita Rau Badami
9. The Trotter-Nama: A Chronicle - I. Allan Seely
10. Chinnery's Hotel - Jaysinh Birjepatil
11. Filming: A Love Story - Tabish Khair
12. The Assassin's Song - M. G. Vassanji

Note: Amitav Ghosh is the guy-to-check-out first.

The Mahabharata - pg. 205

But, Arjuna was no ordinary man but a great soul and a true hero who felt that his duty as a strong, brave man was to help others to rise above their weakness. Knowing that nature had endowed him with courage and bravery at birth, and that he owed them to no special exertions on his part, he had the true humility of the really great and he did what he could to put courage into Uttara and make him worthy of his lineage.
This was Arjuna's characteristic nobility. He never abused his strength and power. One of his many names Bibhatsu, which means one who shrank from doing an unworthy act, and he lived up to it.

The Waste Land - Closing

                                          I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon - O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
                      Shantih shantih shantih

The Waste Land - V

V. What the Thunder said

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountain
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

The Waste Land - Opening

I. The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Copyright 1930, 1958, 1962, 1964 by T. S. Eliot
Copyright 1934, 1936 by Harcourt Brace Johanovich, Inc.
Published by arrangement with Faber and Faber Ltd.

The Lover - pg. 117 - Closing

Years after the war, after marriages, children divorces, books, he came to Paris with his wife. He phoned her. It's me. She recognized him at once from the voice. He said, I just wanted to hear your voice. She said, It's me, hello. He was nervous, afraid, as before. His voice suddenly trembled. And with the trembling, suddenly, she heard again the voice of China. He knew she'd begun writing books, he'd heard about it through her mother whom he'd met again in Saigon. And about her younger brother, and he'd been grieved for her. Then he didn't know what to say. And then he told her. Told her that it was as before, that he still loved her, he could never stop loving her, that he'd love her until death.

Neauphle-le-Château-Paris
February-May 1984

The Lover - pg. 107

The wind has ceased, and under the trees there's the supernatural light that follows rain. Some birds are shrieking at the tops of their voices, crazy birds. As they sharpen their beaks on it, the cold air rings with an almost deafening clamor.

The Lover - pg. 104

It was a mistake, and that momentary error filled the universe. The outrage was on the scale of God. My younger brother was immortal and they hadn't noticed. Immortality had been concealed in my brother's body while he was alive, and we hadn't noticed that it dwelt there. Now my brother's body was dead, and immortality with it. And the world went on without that visited body, and without its visitation. It was a complete mistake. And the error, the outrage, filled the whole universe.

The Lover - pg. 99

He looks at her. Goes on looking at her, his eyes shut. He inhales her face, breathes in her breath, the warm air coming out of her. Less and less clearly can he make out the limits of this body, it's not like other bodies, it's not finished, in the room it keeps growing, it's still without set form, continually coming into being, not only there where it's visible but elsewhere too, stretching beyond sight, toward risk, toward death, it's nimble, it launches itself wholly into pleasure as if it were grown up, adult, it's without guile, and it's frighteningly intelligent.

The Lover - pg. 67

She's slim, tall drawn in India ink, an engraving. People stop and look in amazement at the elegance of this foreigner who walks along unseeing. Like a queen. People never know at first where she's from. And then they think she can only be from somewhere else, from there. Because of this she's beautiful. She's dressed in old European clothes, scraps of brocade, out-of-date old suits, old curtains, old oddments, old models, moth-eaten old fox furs, old otterskins, that's her kind of beauty, tattered, chilly, plaintive and in exile, nothing suits her, everything's too big, and yet it looks marvelous. She's made in such a way, face and body, that anything that touches her shares immediately and infallibly in her beauty.

Zen thought of the day...

Everything in life eventually goes away, lost in time forever. (Let it be with dignity and grace.)

That's a trivial thing, i.e., stating the obvious. What Zen is all about is to stress the unlearning aspect of the thought. To know something so deeply is to be able to discard it easily. [courtesy TedG on Guy Maddin's film]

The Lover - pg. 44

Now evening comes. He tells me I'll remember this afternoon all my life, even when I've forgotten his face and name. I wonder if I'll remember the house. He says, Take a good look at it. I do. I say it's like everywhere else. He says yes, yes, it's always the same.

The Lover - pg. 25

In the books I've written about my childhood I can't remember, suddenly, what I left out, what I said. I think I wrote about our love for our mother, but I don't know if I wrote about how we hated her too, or about our love for one another, and our terrible hatred too, in that common family history of ruin and death which was ours whatever happened, in love or in hate, and which I still can't understand however hard I try, which is still beyond my reach, hidden in the very depths of my flesh, blind as a newborn child. It's the area on whose brink silence begins. What happens there is silence, the slow travail of my whole life. I'm still there, watching those possessed children, as far away from the mystery now as I was then. I've never written, though I thought I wrote, never loved, though I loved, never done anything but wait outside the closed door.

The Lover - pg. 4

Very early in my life it was too late. It was already too late when I was eighteen. Between eighteen and twenty-five my face took off in a new direction. I grew old at eighteen. I don't know if it's the same for everyone, I've never asked. But I believe I've heard of the way time can suddenly accelerate on people when they're going through even the most youthful and highly esteemed stages of life. My ageing was very sudden. I saw it spread over my features one by one, changing the relationship between them, making the eyes larger, the expression sadder, the mouth more final, leaving great creases in the forehead. But instead of being dismayed I watched this process with the same sort of interest I might have taken in the reading of a book. And I knew I was right, that one day it would slow down and take its normal course. The people who knew me at seventeen, when I went to France, were surprised when they saw me again two years later, at nineteen. And I've kept it ever since, the new face I had then. It has been my face. It's got older still, of course, but less, comparatively, then it would otherwise have done. It's scored with deep, dry wrinkles, the skin is cracked. But my face hasn't collapsed, as some with fine features have done. It's kept the same contours, but its substance has been laid waste. I have a face laid waste.

...destroying Myriad Harbor

So, Destroyer's Myriad Harbor that was released as a single on the new The New Porno's album popped up on my iPod. And I was listening to it after a few weeks since I got it the first time and generally had a good time playing it. But now it sounds like Destroyer has written a song so unabashedly narcissistic and reflective of the whole friggin' hipster scene. The basic melody still is good but the lyrics, the whole feel of the song is downright fucked up. Self-indulgent perhaps.

The Mahabharata - pg. 165

The moral of this striking story of Dharmavyadha so skilfully woven by Vedavyasa into the Mahabharata, is the same as the teaching of Gita, that man reaches perfection by the honest pursuit of whatever calling falls to his lot in life, and that this is really worship of God Who created and pervades all. The occupation may be one he is born to in society or it may have been forced on him by circumstances or he may have taken it up by choice but what really matters is the spirit of sincerity and faithfulness with which he does his life's work. Vedavyasa emphasises this great truth by making a scholarly brahmana, who did not know it, learn it from a butcher, who lived it in his humble and despised life.

The Mahabharata - pg. 152

Arvavasu and Parvavasu were both sons of a great scholar. Both of them learnt at his feet and became eminent scholars themselves. But learning is one thing and virtue is quite another. It is true that one should know the difference between good and evil, if one is to seek good and shun evil, but this knowledge should soak into every thought and influence every act in one's life. Then indeed knowledge becomes virtue. The knowledge, that is merely so much undigested information crammed into the mind, cannot instill virtue. It is just an outward show like our clothes and is no real part of us.

The Mahabharata - pg. 122

Krishna was deeply moved and he consoled the weeping Daupadi. He said: "Those who tormented you will be stricken to death in the bloody quagmire of a lost battle. Wipe your eyes. I solemnly promise that your grievous wrongs shall be amply avenged. I shall help the Pandavas in every way. You will become an empress. The heavens may fall, the Himalayas may split in twain, the earth may crumble or the boundless sea may dry up - but, I tell you verily, my words shall stand. I swear this," and Krishna took a solemn vow before Draupadi.
This vow, it will be seen, was in perfect accord with the purpose of the Lord's avatars, as declared in scriptures: "For protecting the righteous, for destroying the wicked and for firmly upholding the law, I am born on earth age after age."

The Mahabharata - pg. 97

The main cause was his fixed resolve to be on amicable terms with his cousins by not opposing their wishes and a friendly invitation to dice could not be summarily turned down, since the etiquette of those days made it a point of honor to accept a game of equal hazard. Out of his very anxiety to foster goodwill, he laid open the field for the poisonous seed of hatred and death. Here is an illustration of the futility of human plans, however well-meant or wise, without divine aid. Our best wisdom is vain against fate, and if destiny is kind, our very follies turn to our advantage.

Train

"I thought we were both below average... together, no, no,... above average when we were together I mean", the flickering flame tried desperately to hold on to the wick. Then the next second, the train pulled over at the station. It got darker. People were sitting like robots inside looking out. There was so much space and the seats were bigger. I didn't get inside but I think I did. I looked around. There were people staring at me, looking sideways studiously ignoring me. I took a seat right at the edge of the door. But then I stood up and got out. The station seemed empty now. There was no one waiting anymore. Perhaps, the train I didn't take was the last one running on the lines tonight. Grainy white tiles on the sidewall had a black slat of burnt wax. It must have been cold to go up and into the city but I did anyway and forgot about the burnt thing on the wall, I saw, the next second.

The Lover - Opening

One day, I was already old, in the entrance of a public place a man came up to me. He introduced himself and said, "I've known you for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you're more beautiful now than then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged."

Translation Copyright 1985 by Random House, Inc., and William Colins Sons & Co. Ltd.

The Mahabharata - pg. 87

Krishna was delighted to hear these words and said: "What else can Arjuna, born of Kunti in the Bharata race, advise? Death comes to all, the hero as well as the sluggard; but the noblest duty of a kshatriya is to be true to his race and faith, and overcoming his foes in righteous battle, to win glory."
Finally Yudhishthira assented to the unanimous opinion that their duty lay in slaying Jarasandha.
This conversation has a curiously modern ring about it and shows that powerful men in ancient days used very much the same specious reasoning as now.

Pitchfork snippet on The Sea and Cake's EP 'Glass'

I can't conceive of a single viable situation in which somebody would stumble home, pour a bowl of cereal, take off their pants, and say, "Man, I just really need to hear some of that effin' Glass EP right now."

-- Pitchfork

The Mahabharata - pg. 34

Mandavya was not angry with the king. He went straight to Dharma, the divine dispenser of justice, who was seated on his throne, and asked him, "What crime have I committed to deserve this torture?"
Lord Dharma who knew the great power of the sage, replied in all humility "O sage you have tortured birds and bees. Are you not aware that all deeds, good or bad, however small, inevitably produce their results sooner or later?"
Mandavya was surprised at this reply of Lord Dharma and asked, "When did I commit this offense?"
Lord Dharma replied, "When you were a child"
Mandvya then pronounced a curse on Dharma: "This punishment you have decreed is far in excess of the deserts of a mistake committed by a child in ignorance. Be born, therefore, as a mortal in the world."

August Book List (revised)

• Mahabaharta - C. RajgopalAchari
  
• Journey To The End Of The Night - Louis Ferdinand-Celine
  
• Hamlet - some guy
  
• Marcovaldo - Italo Calvino
  
• The Lover - Marguerite Duras
  
• The Divine Comedy - Dante Alighieri
  
• The Waste Land - T. S. Eliot

The Mahabharata - pg. 59

They met Bhagavan Vyasa on the way. All of them bowed before him and received encouragement and wise counsel from him. When Kunti told him of the sorrows that had befallen on them. Vyasa intoned: "No good man is good enough to live in virtue at all times, nor is any sinner bad enough to exist in one welter of sin. Life is a tangled web and there is no one in the world who has not done both good and evil. Each and everyone has to bear the consequences of his actions. Do not give way to sorrow." Then they put on the garb of Brahmanas, as advised by Vyasa, went to the city of Ekachakra and stayed there in a Brahmana's house, waiting for better days.

Ukigusa: Floating Weeds

a thought...

embrace (with open arms) which you can't escape

not a New Author

Amzon Link: The Lover by Marguerite Duras

Only 128 pages!

The Mahabharata - pg. 16

Consumed with grief and rage, and kept alive only by the passion for revenge, Amba went to the Himalayas and practiced rigorous austerities to get the grace of Siva, now that all human aid had failed her. Siva appeared before her and granted her a boon, that in her next birth she would slay Bhishma.
Amba was impatient for that rebirth which would give her her heart's desire. She made a pyre and plunged into the fire - pouring out the flame in her heart into the scarcely hotter blaze of the pyre.

The Mahabharata - pg. 11

He vowed with upraised arm to the father of the maiden: "I shall never marry and I dedicate myself to a life of unbroken chastity." And as he uttered these words of renunciation the gods showered flowers on his head, and cries of "Bhishma," "Bhishma" resounded in the air. "Bhishma" means one who undertakes a terrible vow and fulfills it. That name became the celebrated epithet of Devavrata from that time. Then the son of Ganga led the maiden Satyavati to his father.

The Mahabharata - Opening

GANAPATI, THE SCRIBE

Bhagavan Vyasa, the celebrated compiler of the Vedas, was the son of the great sage Parasara. It was he who gave to the world the divine epic of the Mahabharata.

C. RAJAGOPALACHARI
2006
BHARATIYA VIDYA BHAVAN
Mumbai - 400 007
48th Edition

Mr. Palomar - Opening

The sea is barely wrinkled, and little waves strike the sandy shore. Mr. Palomar is standing on the shore, looking at a wave. Not that he is lost in contemplation of the waves. He is not lost, because he is quite aware of what he is doing: he wants to look at a wave and he is looking at it.

A Harvest/HBJ Book 1983
A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book
Harcourt Brace Johanovich, Publishers
San Diego New York London

Marcovaldo - pg. 121 - Closing

The hare was a bit farther on, invisible; he scratched one ear with his paw, and escaped, hopping away.
Is he here? There? Is he a bit farther on?
Only the expanse of snow could be seen, white as this page.

mp3: Office link

Office Blog Link

Marcovaldo - pg. 96

But the bubbles continued to glisten, multi-hued and fragile and so light that one puff, whoosh, and they were gone; and soon, in the crowd, the alarm died as it had flared up. "Radioactive my foot! It's soap! Soap-bubbles like kids blow!" And a frantic gaiety seized them. "Look at that one! And that! And that!" because they saw some enormous ones, of incredible dimensions, flying over, and as these bubbles grazed each other, they merged, they became double and triple, and the sky, the roofs, the tall buildings, through these transparent cupolas, appeared in shapes and colors never seen before.
From their smoke-stacks the factories had begun belching forth black smoke, as they did every morning. And the swarms of bubbles encountered the smoke-clouds and the sky was divided between currents of black smoke and currents of rainbow foam, and in the eddying wind they seemed to fight, and for a moment, only one moment, it looked as if the tops of the smoke-stacks were conquered by the bubbles, but soon there was such a mixture - between the smoke that imprisoned the rainbow foam and the globes of soap that imprisoned a veil of grains of soot - that you couldn't understand anything. Until, at a certain point, after seeking and seeking in the sky, Marcovaldo couldn't see the bubbles any longer, but only smoke, smoke, smoke.