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Concert Music List

Michel-Richard Delalande: Concert de Trompettes, Trois Caprices

Against The Day (book cover)

Eloisa to Abelard

In these deep solitudes and awful cells,
Where heav'nly-pensive contemplation dwells,
And ever-musing melancholy reigns;
What means this tumult in a vestal's veins?
Why rove my thoughts beyond this last retreat?
Why feels my heart its long-forgotten heat?
Yet, yet I love! — From Abelard it came,
And Eloisa yet must kiss the name.

Dear fatal name! rest ever unreveal'd,
Nor pass these lips in holy silence seal'd.
Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise,
Where mix'd with God's, his lov'd idea lies:
O write it not, my hand — the name appears
Already written — wash it out, my tears!
In vain lost Eloisa weeps and prays,
Her heart still dictates, and her hand obeys.

Relentless walls! whose darksome round contains
Repentant sighs, and voluntary pains:
Ye rugged rocks! which holy knees have worn;
Ye grots and caverns shagg'd with horrid thorn!
Shrines! where their vigils pale-ey'd virgins keep,
And pitying saints, whose statues learn to weep!
Though cold like you, unmov'd, and silent grown,
I have not yet forgot myself to stone.
All is not Heav'n's while Abelard has part,
Still rebel nature holds out half my heart;
Nor pray'rs nor fasts its stubborn pulse restrain,
Nor tears, for ages, taught to flow in vain.

Soon as thy letters trembling I unclose,
That well-known name awakens all my woes.
Oh name for ever sad! for ever dear!
Still breath'd in sighs, still usher'd with a tear.
I tremble too, where'er my own I find,
Some dire misfortune follows close behind.
Line after line my gushing eyes o'erflow,
Led through a sad variety of woe:
Now warm in love, now with'ring in thy bloom,
Lost in a convent's solitary gloom!
There stern religion quench'd th' unwilling flame,
There died the best of passions, love and fame.

Yet write, oh write me all, that I may join
Griefs to thy griefs, and echo sighs to thine.
Nor foes nor fortune take this pow'r away;
And is my Abelard less kind than they?
Tears still are mine, and those I need not spare,
Love but demands what else were shed in pray'r;
No happier task these faded eyes pursue;
To read and weep is all they now can do.

Then share thy pain, allow that sad relief;
Ah, more than share it! give me all thy grief.
Heav'n first taught letters for some wretch's aid,
Some banish'd lover, or some captive maid;
They live, they speak, they breathe what love inspires,
Warm from the soul, and faithful to its fires,
The virgin's wish without her fears impart,
Excuse the blush, and pour out all the heart,
Speed the soft intercourse from soul to soul,
And waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole.

Thou know'st how guiltless first I met thy flame,
When Love approach'd me under Friendship's name;
My fancy form'd thee of angelic kind,
Some emanation of th' all-beauteous Mind.
Those smiling eyes, attemp'ring ev'ry day,
Shone sweetly lambent with celestial day.
Guiltless I gaz'd; heav'n listen'd while you sung;
And truths divine came mended from that tongue.
From lips like those what precept fail'd to move?
Too soon they taught me 'twas no sin to love.
Back through the paths of pleasing sense I ran,
Nor wish'd an Angel whom I lov'd a Man.
Dim and remote the joys of saints I see;
Nor envy them, that heav'n I lose for thee.

How oft, when press'd to marriage, have I said,
Curse on all laws but those which love has made!
Love, free as air, at sight of human ties,
Spreads his light wings, and in a moment flies,
Let wealth, let honour, wait the wedded dame,
August her deed, and sacred be her fame;
Before true passion all those views remove,
Fame, wealth, and honour! what are you to Love?
The jealous God, when we profane his fires,
Those restless passions in revenge inspires;
And bids them make mistaken mortals groan,
Who seek in love for aught but love alone.
Should at my feet the world's great master fall,
Himself, his throne, his world, I'd scorn 'em all:
Not Caesar's empress would I deign to prove;
No, make me mistress to the man I love;
If there be yet another name more free,
More fond than mistress, make me that to thee!
Oh happy state! when souls each other draw,
When love is liberty, and nature, law:
All then is full, possessing, and possess'd,
No craving void left aching in the breast:
Ev'n thought meets thought, ere from the lips it part,
And each warm wish springs mutual from the heart.
This sure is bliss (if bliss on earth there be)
And once the lot of Abelard and me.

Alas, how chang'd! what sudden horrors rise!
A naked lover bound and bleeding lies!
Where, where was Eloise? her voice, her hand,
Her poniard, had oppos'd the dire command.
Barbarian, stay! that bloody stroke restrain;
The crime was common, common be the pain.
I can no more; by shame, by rage suppress'd,
Let tears, and burning blushes speak the rest.

Canst thou forget that sad, that solemn day,
When victims at yon altar's foot we lay?
Canst thou forget what tears that moment fell,
When, warm in youth, I bade the world farewell?
As with cold lips I kiss'd the sacred veil,
The shrines all trembl'd, and the lamps grew pale:
Heav'n scarce believ'd the conquest it survey'd,
And saints with wonder heard the vows I made.
Yet then, to those dread altars as I drew,
Not on the Cross my eyes were fix'd, but you:
Not grace, or zeal, love only was my call,
And if I lose thy love, I lose my all.
Come! with thy looks, thy words, relieve my woe;
Those still at least are left thee to bestow.
Still on that breast enamour'd let me lie,
Still drink delicious poison from thy eye,
Pant on thy lip, and to thy heart be press'd;
Give all thou canst — and let me dream the rest.
Ah no! instruct me other joys to prize,
With other beauties charm my partial eyes,
Full in my view set all the bright abode,
And make my soul quit Abelard for God.

Ah, think at least thy flock deserves thy care,
Plants of thy hand, and children of thy pray'r.
From the false world in early youth they fled,
By thee to mountains, wilds, and deserts led.
You rais'd these hallow'd walls; the desert smil'd,
And Paradise was open'd in the wild.
No weeping orphan saw his father's stores
Our shrines irradiate, or emblaze the floors;
No silver saints, by dying misers giv'n,
Here brib'd the rage of ill-requited heav'n:
But such plain roofs as piety could raise,
And only vocal with the Maker's praise.
In these lone walls (their days eternal bound)
These moss-grown domes with spiry turrets crown'd,
Where awful arches make a noonday night,
And the dim windows shed a solemn light;
Thy eyes diffus'd a reconciling ray,
And gleams of glory brighten'd all the day.
But now no face divine contentment wears,
'Tis all blank sadness, or continual tears.
See how the force of others' pray'rs I try,
(O pious fraud of am'rous charity!)
But why should I on others' pray'rs depend?
Come thou, my father, brother, husband, friend!
Ah let thy handmaid, sister, daughter move,
And all those tender names in one, thy love!
The darksome pines that o'er yon rocks reclin'd
Wave high, and murmur to the hollow wind,
The wand'ring streams that shine between the hills,
The grots that echo to the tinkling rills,
The dying gales that pant upon the trees,
The lakes that quiver to the curling breeze;
No more these scenes my meditation aid,
Or lull to rest the visionary maid.
But o'er the twilight groves and dusky caves,
Long-sounding aisles, and intermingled graves,
Black Melancholy sits, and round her throws
A death-like silence, and a dread repose:
Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene,
Shades ev'ry flow'r, and darkens ev'ry green,
Deepens the murmur of the falling floods,
And breathes a browner horror on the woods.

Yet here for ever, ever must I stay;
Sad proof how well a lover can obey!
Death, only death, can break the lasting chain;
And here, ev'n then, shall my cold dust remain,
Here all its frailties, all its flames resign,
And wait till 'tis no sin to mix with thine.

Ah wretch! believ'd the spouse of God in vain,
Confess'd within the slave of love and man.
Assist me, Heav'n! but whence arose that pray'r?
Sprung it from piety, or from despair?
Ev'n here, where frozen chastity retires,
Love finds an altar for forbidden fires.
I ought to grieve, but cannot what I ought;
I mourn the lover, not lament the fault;
I view my crime, but kindle at the view,
Repent old pleasures, and solicit new;
Now turn'd to Heav'n, I weep my past offence,
Now think of thee, and curse my innocence.
Of all affliction taught a lover yet,
'Tis sure the hardest science to forget!
How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense,
And love th' offender, yet detest th' offence?
How the dear object from the crime remove,
Or how distinguish penitence from love?
Unequal task! a passion to resign,
For hearts so touch'd, so pierc'd, so lost as mine.
Ere such a soul regains its peaceful state,
How often must it love, how often hate!
How often hope, despair, resent, regret,
Conceal, disdain — do all things but forget.
But let Heav'n seize it, all at once 'tis fir'd;
Not touch'd, but rapt; not waken'd, but inspir'd!
Oh come! oh teach me nature to subdue,
Renounce my love, my life, myself — and you.
Fill my fond heart with God alone, for he
Alone can rival, can succeed to thee.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;
"Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;"
Desires compos'd, affections ever ev'n,
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to Heav'n.
Grace shines around her with serenest beams,
And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden dreams.
For her th' unfading rose of Eden blooms,
And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes,
For her the Spouse prepares the bridal ring,
For her white virgins hymeneals sing,
To sounds of heav'nly harps she dies away,
And melts in visions of eternal day.

Far other dreams my erring soul employ,
Far other raptures, of unholy joy:
When at the close of each sad, sorrowing day,
Fancy restores what vengeance snatch'd away,
Then conscience sleeps, and leaving nature free,
All my loose soul unbounded springs to thee.
Oh curs'd, dear horrors of all-conscious night!
How glowing guilt exalts the keen delight!
Provoking Daemons all restraint remove,
And stir within me every source of love.
I hear thee, view thee, gaze o'er all thy charms,
And round thy phantom glue my clasping arms.
I wake — no more I hear, no more I view,
The phantom flies me, as unkind as you.
I call aloud; it hears not what I say;
I stretch my empty arms; it glides away.
To dream once more I close my willing eyes;
Ye soft illusions, dear deceits, arise!
Alas, no more — methinks we wand'ring go
Through dreary wastes, and weep each other's woe,
Where round some mould'ring tower pale ivy creeps,
And low-brow'd rocks hang nodding o'er the deeps.
Sudden you mount, you beckon from the skies;
Clouds interpose, waves roar, and winds arise.
I shriek, start up, the same sad prospect find,
And wake to all the griefs I left behind.

For thee the fates, severely kind, ordain
A cool suspense from pleasure and from pain;
Thy life a long, dead calm of fix'd repose;
No pulse that riots, and no blood that glows.
Still as the sea, ere winds were taught to blow,
Or moving spirit bade the waters flow;
Soft as the slumbers of a saint forgiv'n,
And mild as opening gleams of promis'd heav'n.

Come, Abelard! for what hast thou to dread?
The torch of Venus burns not for the dead.
Nature stands check'd; Religion disapproves;
Ev'n thou art cold — yet Eloisa loves.
Ah hopeless, lasting flames! like those that burn
To light the dead, and warm th' unfruitful urn.

What scenes appear where'er I turn my view?
The dear ideas, where I fly, pursue,
Rise in the grove, before the altar rise,
Stain all my soul, and wanton in my eyes.
I waste the matin lamp in sighs for thee,
Thy image steals between my God and me,
Thy voice I seem in ev'ry hymn to hear,
With ev'ry bead I drop too soft a tear.
When from the censer clouds of fragrance roll,
And swelling organs lift the rising soul,
One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight,
Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight:
In seas of flame my plunging soul is drown'd,
While altars blaze, and angels tremble round.

While prostrate here in humble grief I lie,
Kind, virtuous drops just gath'ring in my eye,
While praying, trembling, in the dust I roll,
And dawning grace is op'ning on my soul:
Come, if thou dar'st, all charming as thou art!
Oppose thyself to Heav'n; dispute my heart;
Come, with one glance of those deluding eyes
Blot out each bright idea of the skies;
Take back that grace, those sorrows, and those tears;
Take back my fruitless penitence and pray'rs;
Snatch me, just mounting, from the blest abode;
Assist the fiends, and tear me from my God!

No, fly me, fly me, far as pole from pole;
Rise Alps between us! and whole oceans roll!
Ah, come not, write not, think not once of me,
Nor share one pang of all I felt for thee.
Thy oaths I quit, thy memory resign;
Forget, renounce me, hate whate'er was mine.
Fair eyes, and tempting looks (which yet I view!)
Long lov'd, ador'd ideas, all adieu!
Oh Grace serene! oh virtue heav'nly fair!
Divine oblivion of low-thoughted care!
Fresh blooming hope, gay daughter of the sky!
And faith, our early immortality!
Enter, each mild, each amicable guest;
Receive, and wrap me in eternal rest!

See in her cell sad Eloisa spread,
Propp'd on some tomb, a neighbour of the dead.
In each low wind methinks a spirit calls,
And more than echoes talk along the walls.
Here, as I watch'd the dying lamps around,
From yonder shrine I heard a hollow sound.
"Come, sister, come!" (it said, or seem'd to say)
"Thy place is here, sad sister, come away!
Once like thyself, I trembled, wept, and pray'd,
Love's victim then, though now a sainted maid:
But all is calm in this eternal sleep;
Here grief forgets to groan, and love to weep,
Ev'n superstition loses ev'ry fear:
For God, not man, absolves our frailties here."

I come, I come! prepare your roseate bow'rs,
Celestial palms, and ever-blooming flow'rs.
Thither, where sinners may have rest, I go,
Where flames refin'd in breasts seraphic glow:
Thou, Abelard! the last sad office pay,
And smooth my passage to the realms of day;
See my lips tremble, and my eye-balls roll,
Suck my last breath, and catch my flying soul!
Ah no — in sacred vestments may'st thou stand,
The hallow'd taper trembling in thy hand,
Present the cross before my lifted eye,
Teach me at once, and learn of me to die.
Ah then, thy once-lov'd Eloisa see!
It will be then no crime to gaze on me.
See from my cheek the transient roses fly!
See the last sparkle languish in my eye!
Till ev'ry motion, pulse, and breath be o'er;
And ev'n my Abelard be lov'd no more.
O Death all-eloquent! you only prove
What dust we dote on, when 'tis man we love.

Then too, when fate shall thy fair frame destroy,
(That cause of all my guilt, and all my joy)
In trance ecstatic may thy pangs be drown'd,
Bright clouds descend, and angels watch thee round,
From op'ning skies may streaming glories shine,
And saints embrace thee with a love like mine.

May one kind grave unite each hapless name,
And graft my love immortal on thy fame!
Then, ages hence, when all my woes are o'er,
When this rebellious heart shall beat no more;
If ever chance two wand'ring lovers brings
To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs,
O'er the pale marble shall they join their heads,
And drink the falling tears each other sheds;
Then sadly say, with mutual pity mov'd,
"Oh may we never love as these have lov'd!"

From the full choir when loud Hosannas rise,
And swell the pomp of dreadful sacrifice,
Amid that scene if some relenting eye
Glance on the stone where our cold relics lie,
Devotion's self shall steal a thought from Heav'n,
One human tear shall drop and be forgiv'n.
And sure, if fate some future bard shall join
In sad similitude of griefs to mine,
Condemn'd whole years in absence to deplore,
And image charms he must behold no more;
Such if there be, who loves so long, so well;
Let him our sad, our tender story tell;
The well-sung woes will soothe my pensive ghost;
He best can paint 'em, who shall feel 'em most.

-- Alexander Pope

[Notes: I'm putting an excerpt from this poem at the start of my dissertation, the idea is to work the quote as a supplication to the Heavens, to make gods in bringing out the charms of that otherworldly domain ... ]

Shostakovich's Symphony No.5

Paranormal it might seem that the moment I turned up the volume the temperature which had been on a gradual decline in this room suddenly went up.

The Voyeur - pg. 22

Today especially, success would be a matter of imagination.

Concert Music Playlist

• Violin Concerto - Alban Berg
• Violin Concerto - Arnold Schoenberg
• Piano Concerto - Arnold Schoenberg
  

The Voyeur - pg. 15

To give those five fingers something to do, he gripped them around the handle of the little suitcase he had been holding in his other hand. It was an ordinary enough suitcase, but its solid manufacture inspired confidence: it was made of a very hard, reddish-brown fiber, the corners reinforced with some material of a darker, almost chocolate color. The handle, fastened with two metal clasps, was made of a softer, imitation-leather material. The lock, the two hinges, and the three big rivets at each of the eight corners looked like copper, as did the clasps of the handle, but even slight wear had already revealed the real composition of the four rivets on the bottom: copper-plated babbit metal, which was obviously what the other twenty rivets were made of - and doubtless the rest of the fittings as well.

Ballad of big nothing...

mofo's been dead for two years already...

The Voyeur - pg. 7

The pier, which seemed longer than it actually was as an effect of perspective, extended from both sides of this base line in a cluster of parallels describing, with a precision accentuated even more sharply by the morning light, a series of elongated planes alternately horizontal and vertical: the crest of the massive parapet that protected the tidal basin from the open sea, the inner wall of the parapet, the jetty along the top of the pier, and the vertical embankment that plunged straight into the water of the harbor. Te two vertical surfaces were in shadow, the other two brilliantly lit by the sun - the whole breadth of the parapet and all of the jetty save for one dark narrow strip: the shadow cast by the parapet. Theoretically, the reversed image of the entire group could be seen reflected in the harbor water, and, on the surface, still within the same play of parallels, the shadow cast by the vertical embankment extending straight toward the quay.

mp3: Spin The Wink - Cum Laude - The Velvet Teen

Spin The Wink

Eva The Fugitive - Closing

Is it possible to believe in a life that rejects itself? I think I recognize this possibility unconsciously. And, precisely, with reflections from the zone in which the senses multiply there is something that Eva brought me one day into my life.
Surely her warmth lingers on.

SANTIAGO DE CHILE, 1930

Eva The Fugitive - pg. 100

In any case, blind under my lamplight, I apologize to the magic carpet that more than once has raised me among presences not altogether alive but more than radiant. And which the alcohol of each night does not chase away, nor that of each dream in which I have harbored some desire, some anguish, something hated, something loved, something beautiful or something horrible, something living or something dead.

Eva The Fugitive - pg. 100

And above all, Eva is it not true that nothing ever happens except in dreams?

The Voyeur - pg. 5

There was the sound of an electric bell. The engines started up again. The ship began to make a turn that brought it gradually closer to the pier. The coast rapidly extended along the other side: the squat lighthouse striped black and white, the half-ruined fort, the sluice gates of the tidal basin, the row of houses on the quay.

To Do List

• Writing first draft of proportional fairness paper
• Running Matlab code to verify network capacity model data
• The Voyeur
  

The Voyeur - Opening

It was as if no one had heard.
The whistle blew again - a shrill, prolonged noise followed by three short blasts of ear-splitting violence: a violence without purpose that remained without effect. There was no more reaction - no further exclamation - then there had been at first; not one feature of one face had even trembled.


Alain Robbe-Grillet
The Voyeur
Translated by Richard Howard
GROVE PRESS INC. NEW YORK

Eva The Fugitive - pg. 94

But is this love? I believe firmly that my hand was guided by the presentiment that I had to lose her. What more could have happened after all that? I have seen her come from the netherlands or from the penumbra in which float things and beings of invisible or subterranean life. have seen her approach my lamp without the mediation of any sentiment other than the search for firm ground, disputable and uncertain though it might be. On the other hand I felt that Eva was in me all that mattered, and I discounted any necessity to see her as anything else, that is to say, to see her as a woman, for example, as a person of mere flesh and blood. It is in this way that her shadow holds in these pages a strict similarity to the Eva that appeared suddenly in my life and the Eva who seemed on the verge of entering a space that, in spite of everything, I must not, nor do I wish to, determine.

Eva The Fugitive - pg. 89

I see a world in the distance, in a dream white in color. In the center of that world there is something that belongs to me. The knowledge that there is something of mine that is for the moment not within my reach, I know that I owe it to a dream or to a death. The truth is that there is in me a dream or a death. But it is through this experience that I have awakened in a land nourished, indeed, neither by dreams nor deaths, but by oblivion. How can I make you understand, my friend, that when my life is separated from Eva's, a night heavy with prison bars closed in behind.
Etc.

Eva The Fugitive - pg. 74

For what purpose? I understand perfectly how difficult her passage is (life is not always a dream) and with what anguish she is forever chasing material existence and extinguishing certain fires to reach a state of sheer oblivion.

Eva The Fugitive - pg. 72

Disarmed and happy to hold her close to me, I saw her lying at my side again. Her desire was a small lamp in the darkness of my breast.

Eva The Fugitive - pg. 69

Going home is like the beginning of a drama always to be renewed. It is because for us love moans in every bed in the world. Through the windows everybody has seen us abandon Paradise.

Eva The Fugitive - pg. 67

I believe in the vigilance of certain flames, not extinguishable at will, whose flicker gives man a sense of truth, the true image of what occurs at all hours in his terrified consciousness.

Eva The Fugitive - pg. 65

I observed that it is possible for Eva to live absolutely outside herself. In the way she thinks about certain things, and in the horror with which she discovers certain facts she manages to conceal from me her ill-fated star. And the truth is that her awareness becomes more and more intricate. She invents oceans and vast ships of angels who overrun the world. Her head can create the darkest fantasy without any outside intervention.

Eva The Fugitive - pg. 60

Life comes in large gusts of air, and one is drawn into the dance. I see that her country is filled with fiery cities, large factories, trains in the throes of panic, streets teeming with people, etc. I see her pass with her head bowed, still in dream, but attentive to a rhythm that possesses her. "Eva in life!" I exclaim. Her solitude is sustained by a useless and frightening radiance we associate with drugs. It is possible that until love returns ... What can men do with an empty body? And she passes. Passes among people and things, withdrawn into herself.

To Do List

• Chapter 1 and 2
• Running Qualnet simulation for VoIP paper
• Proportional Fairness Idea write-up
  

Eva The Fugitive - pg. 50

When she says "I see," she expresses what cannot be seen by simple sight. It is as if one were hearing a "there will be" or "and then." But the seeing state in her is like that of one in contact with a thought that is about to explode.

Eva The Fugitive - pg. 42

She seems more beautiful - if that is possible - and converses and joins at times in the music of the birds. Then she leaves the street, and the crowd lets her pass through in the midst of beautiful songs. Eva glides through the crowd and a dove alights on her shoulder, and the night falls upon the heart of the world.

Eva The Fugitive - pg. 40

Eva repeated dreamily a poem that begins more or less like this:

I see the day
Only through my night
It is a small soft noise
From a land out of sight

I understand once more that a human being consists of an infinite number of reflections. There is in you, Eva, a kind of "small, soft, noise," which guides you, for instance, along a path that at certain hours, and often, as I suppose, leads you only into a labyrinth. Eva passes the better part of the rest of the day in a maze of poetry, which releases me from any need to comment on this fact. In any case, I could not help telling myself that a very shady tree was preventing me from seeing her entry into that death zone. And moreover, in the name of the most beautiful kind of despair I could not reject this thought.

Manifesto of Surrealism

But we, who have made no effort whatsoever to filter, who in our works have made ourselves into simple receptacles of so many echoes, modest recording instruments who are not mesmerized by the drawings we are making, perhaps we serve an even nobler cause.

mp3: Bombay Bicycle Club

Not something special but a great hook nonetheless.

Cancel on Me - Bombay Bicycle Club

Sibylline

sib·yl·line /ˈsɪbəˌlin, -ˌlaɪn, -lɪn/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[sib-uh-leen, -lahyn, -lin] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation

–adjective

1.	of, resembling, or characteristic of a sibyl; prophetic; oracular.

2.	mysterious; cryptic.

Also, si·byl·ic, si·byl·lic

Earthly Powers - Anthony Burgess

Delcat Link

Manifesto of Surrealism

Man proposes and disposes. He and he alone can determine whether he is completely master of himself, that is, whether he maintains the body of his desires, daily more formidable, in a state of anarchy. Poetry teaches him to. It bears within itself the perfect compensation for the miseries we endure. It can also be an organizer, if ever, as the result of a less intimate disappointment, we contemplate taking it seriously. The time is coming when it decrees the end of money and by itself will break the bread of heaven for the earth! There will still be gatherings on the public squares, and movements you never dared hope participate in. Farewell to absurd choices, the dreams of dark abyss, rivalries, the prolonged patience, the flight of the seasons, the artificial order of ideas, the ramp of danger, time for everything! May you only take the trouble to practice poetry. Is it not incumbent upon us, who are already living off it, to try and impose what we hold to be our case for further inquiry?

It matters not whether there is a certain disproportion between this defense and the illustration that will follow it. It was a question of going back to the sources of poetic imagination and, what is more, of remaining there. Not that I pretend to have done so. It requires a great deal of fortitude to try to set up one's abode in these distant regions where everything seems at first to be so awkward and difficult, all the more so if one wants to try to take someone there. Besides, one is never sure of really being there. If one is going to all that trouble, one might as well stop off somewhere else. Be that as it may, the fact is that the way to these regions is clearly marked, and that to attain the true goal is now merely a matter of the travelers' ability to endure.

Eva The Fugitive - pg. 39

Now between Eva and myself there no longer exists any sort of absence.

Guardian Spirit of the Waters -- Odilon Redon

Nabokov on Joyce and Proust

Lectures on Literature, Vladimir Nabokov (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1982), pg. 217:

One essential difference exists between the Proustian and the Joycean methods of approaching their characters. Joyce takes a complete and absolute character, od-known, Joyce-known, then breaks it up into fragments and scatters these fragments over the space-time of his book. The good rereader gathers these puzzle pieces and gradually puts them together. On the other hand, Proust contends that a character, a personality, is never known as an absolute but always as a comparative one. He does not chip it up but shows it as it exists through the notions about it of other characters. And he hopes, after having given a series of these prisms and shadows, to combine them into an artistic reality.

Eva The Fugitive - pg. 33

"There was a time when I loved the cascades of the deep night, all red, and a rain of fine angel blood. The color red. The color of a heart in the throes of despair, and an empty hand that extinguishes death. And the red horses speed, tormented, across the sky. Until finally the ocean bleeds its foam, and boats come and go like those thoughts that have a way of haunting us and in whose presence we do not trust ourselves to set the empty page on fire. Surely we are living at the edge of a precipice. The frozen waters reflect our image like small dots that we are not willing to see completely, in place that we are not anxious to locate. It is toward these distant red spaces that we have to direct the best and worst in us. But we are afraid of the rather heavy windlash, the oozing blood; we fear the great red flower of possibilities. For once, my delirious reailty is no more than a monologue rambling about a woman who has something to do with my existence and about a night when wine was the ultimate coral that my dream extracted from the brilliant heart of the sea."

Stasis Horror

"...William S. Burroughs refers to as ‘stasis horror.’ It’s a condition of excessive fixity that freezes and stops life; del Valle detects asphyxia at work in the reduction of things, living moments, to flat representations or conventional elements, props and characters, in a conformist work of art."

-- Michael Cisco

Eva The Fugitive - pg. 30

Our morning encounter ended in the Restaurant Martini. There I noticed that Eva was totally unaware of the people around us. I observed that her thought was wavering between strange sensations; in fact, I detected a definite anger that shaped (her lips looked as if they were about to bleed) into a tune from the Persian Market, I think - and something that seemed to me to become the reflection of herself; its meaning evaded me completely.

Eva The Fugitive - pg. 30

I felt as if I was walking among hundreds of passersby, one of whom was going to say to me suddenly: "Tomorrow the sky will depart." That's how life is, full of such sparks, even if we do not want to believe it.

Eva The Fugitive - pg. 28

Could it be that the star of your life dwelt in the woods or in some city that exists only in a dream?

Eva The Fugitive - pg. 27

Does man turn his back on his own memories?

Eva The Fugitive - pg. 24

What extreme toils do these spiders undertake; they become not only spoken words but tongues around the fire, and what is the dream that is hovering over them? And don't tell me that one of these days they will give me a mental breakdown, when already they represent an impending asphyxia. For otherwise they would not be the unexpected but inflexible vehicle of thoughts not yet wrenched from the abyss. From all this we may infer that these thoughts are neither its personification nor its precise impact but that they are the very center of things, a point as undesirable as it is unreachable. Therefore there is no problem in recognizing the imminence of this thing that with the best conditioning of the world is preparing to enter at last into the dream.

La Bateau ivre - Closing

I can no more, bathed in your langours, O waves,
Sail in the wake of the carriers of cottons,
Nor undergo the pride of the flags and pennants,
Nor pull past the horrible eyes of the hulks.

La Bateau ivre

I have seen the low-hanging sun speckled with mystic horrors.
Lighting up long violet coagulations,
Like the performers in very-antique dramas
Waves rolling back into the distances their shiverings of venetian blinds!

Le Bateau ivre - Opening

Comme je descendais des Fleuves impassibles,

Je ne me sentis plus guidé par les haleurs :

Des Peaux-Rouges criards les avaient pris pour cibles

Les ayant cloués nus aux poteaux de couleurs.

As I was floating down impassible Rivers

I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers :

Gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets

Nailing them naked to coloured stakes.

Le Manifeste du Surréalisme (1924)

Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express -- verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner -- the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.

Eva The Fugitive - Opening

...Because all around me there is something whose beat is a persistent idea about to explode as my detection takes me through the first gates of a sense of great panic, an almost indesturctible layer of foam that is not, as one might expect, a barrier but the very passageway, unavoidable though difficult of access.

(Eva y La Fuga)


translated, with an introduction by
ANNA BALAKIAN

This translation has been published with the
kind permission of Therese Dulac Gutierrez.
Copyright by Monte Avile Editores, C.A.

University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press
Oxford, England

Copyright 1990 by The Regents of
the University of California


Printed in the United States of
America

Concert Play List

• Piano Concerto in G Minor, OP. 33 - Antonin Dvorak
• String Quartet Pieces - Dimitry Shostakovich
• Symphony No.5 and 9 - Dimitry Shostakovich (Leonard Bernstein conducting)
• String Quartet In D Minor, OP. 76 No. 2 - Joseph Haydn
• Swedish Rhapsodies - Hugo Alfven
• Rhapsodie Espagnol - Maurice Ravel
  

To Do List

• Compare Data with P_Idle Data
• Summarize work on Throughput Fairness
• VoIP Call Admission Control Flow Diagram
  

The Savage Detectives - Closing

FEBRUARY 15

What's outside the window?

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The Savage Detectives - pg. 519

Hardly anyone even remembers the visceral realists anymore. Many of them are dead. Others have disappeared and no one knows what happened to them. But some are still active. Jacinto Requinas, for example, is a film critic now and runs the Pachuca film society. He's the one who first got me interested in the group. Maria Font lives in Mexico city. She never married. She writes, but she doesn't publish. Ernesto San Epifanio died. Xochitl Garcia works for Mexico City newspaper magazines and Sunday supplements. I don't think she writes poetry anymore. Rafael Barrios disappeared in the United States. I don't know whether he is still around. Angelica Font recently published her second collection of poetry, only thirty pages long, not a bad book, in a very elegant edition. Luscious Skin died. Pancho Rodriguez died. Emma Mendez committed suicide. Moctezuma Rodriguez is involved in politics. I've heard that Felipe Muller is still in Barcelona, married and with a kid. He seems to be happy. Ulises Lima still lives in Meico City.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 551

In the first, the sheriff and one of his deputies take a prisoner from his cell and lead him far out into the country to kill him. The prisoner knows what's happening and is more or less resigned to his fate. It's a harsh winter, day is dawning, and prisoner and executioners alike are complaining of the cold in the desert. At a certain moment, though, the prisoner starts to laugh, and the sheriff says what the hell's so funny, has he forgotten that he's about to be killed and buried where no one can find him? has he lost his mind? And the prisoner says, and this is the punch line, that he's laughing because in a few minutes he won't be cold, but the lawmen will have to walk back.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 510

I'm a photographer, and for us Lopez Lobo was what Don Delillo is to writers, a phenomenon, a chaser of front-page shots, an adventurer, a man who'd won every prize Europe had to offer and photographed every kind of human stupidity and recklessness.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 467

She doesn't see, she never sees, the fool, the idiot, the innocent, this woman who's come too late, who's interested in literature with no idea of the hells lurking beneath the tainted or pristine pages, who loves flowers and doesn't realize there's a monster in the bottom of the vase, who strolls around the Feria del Libro and drags me around behind her, who smiles at the photographers when they point their cameras at me, who drags my shadow along, and her shadow too, the ignorant, the dispossessed, the disinherited, who will outlive me and is only consolation. Everything that begins as comedy ends as a dirge in the void.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 456

Inaki Echevarne, Bar Giardinetto, Calle Granada del Penedes, Barcelona, July 1994. For a while, Critisim travels side by side with the Work, then Criticism vanishes and it's the Readers who keep pace. The journey may be long or short. Then the Readers die one by one and the Work continues on alone, although a new Criticism and new Readers gradually fall into step with it along its path. Then Criticism dies again and the Readers die again and the Work passes over a trail of bones on its journey toward solitude. To come near the work, to sail in her wake, is a sign of certain death, but new Criticism and new Readers approach her tirelessly and relentlessly and are devoured by time and speed. Finally the Work journeys irremediably alone in the Great Vastness. And one day the Work dies, as all things must die and come to an end: the Sun and the Earth and the Solar System and the Galaxy and the farthest reaches of man's memory. Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragedy.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 454

In a brief moment of lucidity, I was sure that we'd all gone crazy. But then that moment of lucidity was displaced by a supersecond of superlucidity (if I can put it that way), in which I realized that this scene was the logical outcome of our ridiculous lives. It wasn't a punishment but a new wrinkle. It gave us a glimpse of ourselves in our common humanity. It wasn't proof of our idle guilt but a sign of our miraculous and pointless innocence. But that's not it. That's not it. We were still and they were in motion and the sand on the beach was moving, not because of the wind but because of what they were doing and what we were doing, which was nothing, which was watching, and all of that together was wrinkle, the moment of superlucidity. Then, nothing.

Michael Ondaatje - Divisadero

The Savage Detectives - pg. 428

Ulises was crying because he knew nothing was over, because he knew he would have to come back to Israel again. The eternal return? Fuck the eternal return! Here and now! But Claudia doesn't live in Israel anymore, I said. Wherever Claudia lives is Israel, said Norman, no matter what fucking place it is, call it whatever you want, Mexico, Israel, France, the United States, planet Earth.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 407

And that was what I thought as behind me human passions roiled and my eyes counted the stars: that the story I was living was just like Baroja's story and that Spain was still Baroja's Spain, in other words a Spain where chasms weren't barricaded and children were still careless and fell into them, where people smoked and fainted in a rather excessive way, and where the Guardia Civil never showed up when it was needed.

New Writer

• Eva, The Fugitive - Rosamel del Valle Delcat (110 pages)
  
• Voss - Patrick White Delcat (400+ pages)
  

The Savage Detectives - pg. 386

I think it was then that everything ended between Arturo and me. At night we used to write. He was writing a novel and I was writing my journal and poetry and a movie script We would write facing each other and drink lots of cups of tea. We weren't writing for publication but to understand ourselves better or just to see how far we could go.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 373

Belano, I said, the heart of the matter is knowing whether evil (or sin or crime or whatever you want to call it) is random or purposeful. If it's purposeful, we can fight it, it's hard to defeat, but we have a chance, like two boxers in the same weight class, more or less. If it's random, on the other hand, we're fucked, and we'll just have to hope that God, if He exists, has mercy on us. And that's what it all comes down to.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 367

One night I dreamed about the church on Calle Balmes, and I saw that little message, which this time I though I understood: Tempus breve est, Ora et labora. We aren't given much time on this earth. We have to pray and work, not go pushing our luck with soccer pools. That was all. I woke up sure I'd learned my lesson.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 360

Then, humbled and confused and in a burst of utter Mexicanness, I knew that we were ruled by fate and that we would all drown in the storm, and I knew that only the cleverest, myself certainly not included, would stay afloat much longer.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 336

Don Jose Juan says: "Under fearful skies / keening for the only star/ the song of the nightingale." Which is to say, boys, I said, that I saw our struggles and dreams all tangled up in the same failure, and that failure was called joy.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 335

And after screwing, mi general liked to go out into the courtyard to smoke a cigarette and think about post-coital sadness, that vexing sadness of the flesh, and about all the books he hadn't read.

An Elegy for Al-Hallaj

An Elegy for Al-Hallaj

by Adonis

Your green poisonous plume,
your plume whose veins are filled with flames,
with the star rising from Baghdad,
is our history and imminent resurrection
in our land - in our repeated death.
Time lay upon your hands.
And the fire in your eyes
is sweeping, reaching the sky.
0, star rising from Baghdad,
laden with poetry and new birth,
0, poisonous green plume.
Nothing is left
for those coming from afar
with the echo and death and ice
in this land of resurrection.
Nothing is left but you and the presence.
0, you the language of Galilean thunder
in this land of discarded skins.
You, poet of the roots and mysteries.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 303

Cuban took his poems and thanked him, and then right away he and Rafael got up, as if in slow motion, like a flash of lightning, or twin flashes, or a flash and its shadow, but in slow motion, and in that fraction of a second I thought: everything is all right, I hope everything will be all right, and I saw myself swimming on a Havanna beach and I saw Rafael by my side, a little distance away, talking to some American journalists, people from New York, from San Francisco, talking about LITERATURE, talking about POLITICS, at the gates of paradise.

Barbara Patterson, in her kitchen, Jackson Street, San Diego, California, March 1981

The Savage Detectives - pg. 322

Do you plan to make revolution with cliches?

The Savage Detectives - pg. 281

And when she left I began to think about Alvaro Damian and the Laura Damian prize, which was finished, and the madmen of El Reposo, where no one has a place to lay his head, and about the month of April, not so much cruel as disastrous, and that's when I knew beyond doubt that everything was about to go from bad to worse.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 280

Sometimes, when I've had too much to drink, I find myself cursing him, him and all those literary types who've forgotten me, and the hired killers waiting for me in the dark, and even the typesetters, lost in glory or anonymity, but then I relax and I can't help laughing. You have to live your life, that's all there is to it. A drunk I met the other day on my way out of the bar La Mala Senda told me so. Literature is crap.

Projects for 2008

1. Start learning Spanish
2. Finish three short-stories
3. Continue researching for the novel: some writing, taking notes, long distance calls, 90's ptv, microfilmed news stories
4. Go to Buenos Aires for Christmas
   

The Savage Detectives - pg. 196

Rafael Barrios, Café Quito, Calle Bucareli, Mexico City DF, May 1977. Our visceral realist activities after Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano left: automatic writing, exquisite corpses, solo performances with no spectators, contraintes, two-handed writing, three-handed writing, masturbatory writing (we wrote with the right hand and masturbated with the left, or vice versa if we were left-handed), madrigals, poem-novels, sonnets always ending with the same word, three-word messages written on walls ("This is it", "Laura, my love," etc), outrageous diaries, mail-poetry, projective verse, conversational poetry, antipoetry, Brazilian concrete poetry (written in Portugese cribbed from the dictionary), poems in hard-boiled prose (detective stories told with great economy, the last verse revealing the solution or not), parables, fables, theater of the absurd, pop art, haikus, epigrams (actually imitations of or variations on Catullus, almost all by Moctezuma Rodríguez), desperado poetry (Western ballads), Georgian poetry, poetry of experience, neat poetry, apocryphal poems by bpNichol, John Giorno, John Cage (A Year from Monday), Ted Berrigan, Brother Antoninus, Armand Schwerner (The Tablets), lettrist poetry, caligrams, electric poetry (Bulteau, Messagier), bloody poetry (three deaths at least), pornographic poetry (heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual, with no relation to the poet's personal preference), apocryphal poems by the Colombian Nadaístas, Peruvian Horazerianos, Uruguayan Cataleptics, Ecuadorian Tzantzicos, Brazilian cannibals, No theater of the proletariat ... We even put out a magazine ... We kept moving ... We kept moving ... We did what we could ... But nothing turned out right.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 184

Joaquín Font, El Reposo Mental Health Clinic, Camino Desierto de los Leones, on the outskirts of Mexico City DF, January 1977. There are books for when you're bored. Plenty of them. There are books for when you're calm. The best kind, in my opinion. There are also books for when you're sad. And there are books for when you're happy. There are books for when you're thirsty for knowledge. And there are books for when you're desperate. The latter are the kind of books Ulises Lima and Belano wanted to write. A serious mistake, as we'll soon see. Let's take for example, an average reader, a cool-headed, mature, educated man leading a more or less healthy life. A man who buys books and literary magazines. So there you have him. This man can read things that are written for when you're calm, but he can also read any other kind of book with a critical eye, dispassionately, without absurd or regrettable complicity. That's how I see it. I hope I am not offending anyone. Now let's take the desperate reader, who is presumably the audience for the literature of desperation. What do we see? First: the reader is an adolescent or an immature adult, insecure, all nerves. He's the kind of fucking idiot (pardon my language) who committed suicided after reading Werther. Second: he's a limited reader. Why limited? That's easy: because he can only read the literature of desperation, or books for the desperate, which amounts to the same thing, the kind of person or freak who's unable to read all the way through In Search of Lost Time, for example, or The Magic Mountain (a paradigm of calm, serene, complete literature, in my humble opinion), or for that matter, Les Misérables or War and Peace. Am I making myself clear? Good. So I talked to them, told them, warned them, alerted them to the dangers they were facing. It was like talking to a wall. Furthermore: desperate readers are like the California gold mines. Sooner or later they're exhausted! Why? it's obvious! One can't live one's whole life in desperation. In the end the body rebels, the pain becomes unbearable, lucidity gushes out in great cold spurts. The desperate reader (and especially the desperate poetry reader, who is insufferable, believe me) ends up by turning away from books. Inevitably, as part of the regenerative process, he returns slowly - as if wrapped in swaddling cloths, as if under a rain of dissolved sedatives - he returns, as I was saying, to a literature written for cool, serene readers, with their heads set firmly on their shoulders. This is what's called (by me, if nobody else) the passage from adolescence to adulthood. And by that I don't mean that once someone has become a cool-headed reader he no longer reads books for desperate readers. Of course he reads them! Especially if they're good or decent or recommended by a friend. But ultimately, they bore him! Ultimately, that literature of resentment, full of sharp instruments and lynched messiahs, doesn't pierce his heart the way a calm page, a carefully thought-out page, a technically perfect page does. I told them so. I warned them. I showed them the technically perfect page. I alerted them to the dangers. Don't exhaust the vein! Humility! Seek oneself, lose oneself in strange lands! But with a guiding line, with bread crumbs or white pebbles! And yet I was mad, driven mad by them, by my daughters, by Laura Damían, and so they didn't listen.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 161

All poets, even the most avant-garde, need a father. But these poets were meant to be orphans. He never came back.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 153

That's what Arturo Belano was like, a stupid, conceited peacock. And visceral realism was his exhausting dance of love for me. The thing was, I didn't love him anymore. You can woo a girl with a poem, but you can't hold on to her with a poem. Not even with a poetry movement.

-- Laura Jáuregui, Tlalpan, Mexico City DF, May 1976

The Savage Detectives - pg. 138

I was sitting right here, waiting for Alberto Moore and his sister, and all of a sudden these three nuts surround me, sitting down one on each side of me, and they say Luisito, let's talk poetry, let's analyze the future of Mexican poetry, something like that. I'm not a violent person and of course I got nervous. I thought: what are they doing here? how did they find me? what scores have they come to settle? This country is a disgrace, it must be said, and so is Mexican literature, it must also be said.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 124

I got in and before I could close the door Ulises stepped on the gas. I heard a shot or something that sounded like a shot. They're shooting at us, the bastards, said Lupe. I turned around and through the back window I saw a shadow in the middle of the street. All the sadness of the world was concentrated in that shadow, framed by the strict rectangle of the Impala's window. It's firecrackers, I heard Belano say as our car leaped forward and left behind the Fonts' house, the thugs' Camaro, Calle Colima, and in less than two seconds we were on Avenida Oaxaca, heading north out of the city.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 104

DECEMBER 21

Nothing to report. Life seems to have ground to a halt. Every day I make love to Rosario. While she's at work, I write and read. At night I make the rounds of the bars on Bucareli. Sometimes I stop in at the Encrucijada and the waitresses serve me first. At four in the morning Rosario comes home (when she's working the night shift) and we eat something light in our room, usually food that she brings from the bar. Then we make love until she falls asleep, and I begin to write.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 85

"Don't be an ass, García Madero. Alberto has friends in the police. How else do you think he runs his rackets? All the whores in Mexico City are controlled by the police."

The Savage Detectives - pg. 74

And now, some differences between queers and faggots. Even in their sleep, the former beg for a twelve-inch cock to plow and fertilize them, but at the moment of truth, mountains must be moved to get them into bed with the pimps they love. Faggots, on the other hand, live as if a stake is permanently churning their insides and when they look at themselves in the mirror (something they both love and hate to do with all their heart), they see the Pimp of Death in their own sunken eyes. For faggots and queers, pimp is the one word that can cross through unscathed through the realms of nothingness (or silence or otherness). But then, too, nothing prevents queers and faggots from being good friends if they so desire, from neatly ripping one another off, criticizing or praising one another, publishing or burying one another in the frantic and moribund world of letters.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 72

Ernesto San Epifanio had said that all literature could be classified as heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. Novels, in general, were heterosexual, whereas poetry was completely homosexual; I guess short stories were bisexual, although he didn't say so.
Within the vast ocean of poetry he identified various currents: faggots, queers, sissies, freaks, butchers, fairies, nymphs, and philenes. But the two major currents were faggots and queers. Walt Whitman, for example, was a faggot poet. Pablo Neruda, a queer. William Blake was definitely a faggot. Octavio Paz was a queer. Borges was a philene, or in other words he might be a faggot one minute and simply asexual the next. Ruben Dario was a freak, in fact, the queen freak, the prototypical freak..... Freaks, according to San Epifanio, were closer to madhouse flamboyance and naked halucination, while faggots and queers wandered in stagger-step from ethics to aesthetics and back again.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 44

When I was about to go into the courtyard, I turned around and Quim Font was still there, laughing quietly to himself and looking at the magnolias.

The Savage Detectives - pg. 15

I looked at her blankly, although the truth, like a lone and flagging swimmer, was gradually making some headway in the black sea of my ignorance. She stared back at me. Her eyes were hard and flat. And there was something about her that distinguished her from every other human being I'd known up until then: she always (wherever you were, whatever the circumstances, no matter what was happening) looked you straight in the eye. Brigida's gaze, I decided then, could be unbearable.

Ficus Elastica

-- Stephen Bush

The Savage Detectives - pg. 9

It occurred to me that I'd had too much to drink and hadn't eaten in hours, and I wondered whether the alcohol and hunger must be starting to disconnect me from reality. But then I decided it didn't matter. If I'm remembering right (though I wouldn't stake my life on it), it so happens that one of the visceral realists' poetry-writing tenets is a momentary disconnection from a certain kind of reality.

The Savage Detectives - Opening

NOVEMBER 2

I've been cordially invited to join the visceral realists. I accepted, of course. There was no initiation ceremony. It was better that way.


TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH BY NATASHA WIMMER

Distributed in Canada by Douglas and McIntyre Ltd.
Printed in the United States of America
Originally published in 1998 by Editorial Anagrama, Spain, as Los detectives salvajes
Published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
First American edition, 2007

A Rabbi on Talmud

“Rabbi,” the man said, “Explain the Talmud to me.”

“Very well,” he said. “First, I will ask you a question. If two men climb up a chimney and one comes out dirty, and one comes out clean, which one washes himself?”

“The dirty one,” answers the man.

“No. They look at each other and the dirty man thinks he is clean and the clean man thinks he is dirty, therefore, the clean man washes himself.”

“Now, another question:
If two men climb up a chimney and one comes out dirty, and one comes out clean, which one washes himself?”

The man smiles and says, “You just told me, Rabbi. The man who is clean washes himself because he thinks he is dirty.”

“No,” says the Rabbi. “If they each look at themselves, the clean man knows he doesn’t have to wash himself, so the dirty man washes himself.”

“Now, one more question.
If two men climb up a chimney and one comes out dirty, and one comes out clean, which one washes himself?”

“I don’t know, Rabbi. Depending on your point of view, it could be either one.”

Again the Rabbi says, “No. If two men climb up a chimney, how could one man remain clean? They both are dirty, and they both wash themselves.”

The confused man said, “Rabbi, you asked me the same question three times and you gave me three different answers. Is this some kind of a joke?”

“This is not a joke, my son. This is Talmud.”