Don Quixote - pg. 636

Cide Hamete, the chronicler of this great history, begins this chapter with the words I swear as a Catholic Christian ..., to which his translator says that Cide Hamete swearing as a Catholic Christian when he was a Moor, which he undoubtedly was, meant only that just as the Catholic Christian, when he swears, swears or should swear the truth, and tell the truth in everything he says, so too he was telling the truth, as if he were sweraing as a Catholic Christian, when he wrote about Don Quixote, especially when he told who Master Pedro was, as well as the soothsaying monkey whho had amazed all those towns and villages with his divinations.

Don Quixote - pg. 604

"...In truth, now I realize that all the pleasures of this life pass like shadows and dreams, or wither like the flowers in the field. O unfortunate Montesinos! O gravely wounded Durandarte! O luckless Belerma! O weeping Guadiana, and you unhappy daughters of Ruidera, who show in your waters the numbers of tears shed by your beautiful eyes!"

[Chasm story in The Savage Detectives in which Ulises Lima fell inside the cave]

Imaginary wonders of the world ...

There are many ways to look at a thing. The most pressing and habit-forming would be to look at it with the slight nudge and thrust of its memories. Or maybe to reject its shape, its form, its way of coming in your way day after day, to reject its existence completely and replace it with a new vision of the thing. Completely new. Still being represented by the concrete block of that thing that you come across but destroy it in a creative way that makes up for that new vision. This is sounds like a call for indulging in delusions of one's mind. But most of the reinforcements and experiences that shape this thing are rooted not in the actual physicality of the thing but in the many different ways our mind has been affected by it. This whole thing projecting it self on the mind is a very specific barrier of habit and our past. This is how the whole things connect us, keep us grounded, make us safe from being disoriented. But to reject it and transplant a new vision in its place requires an act of faith, requires something more than auto-suggestion perhaps. To really channel the powers of imaginary onto what it means to be in the actual painted with the glue of ironic detachment top keep this magnificent moment of visionary impulse intact in place of the destroyed reality. This is an act of faith, as act of daring, a way to escape the boundaries and explore what is truly possible.

Epiphany#64

an emotional response to something is directly proportional to the level of blindness to the truth of that thing.

Don Quixote - pg. 582

"O thou, more fortunate than all those who live on the face of the earth, for thou dost not envy nor art thoou envied, and thou sleepest with a tranquil spirit, and thou art not pursued by enchanters, nor art thou alarmed by enchantments! Thou sleepest, I say it again and shall say it a hundred times more, without jealousy of thy lady keeping thee continually awake, nor thoughts of how to pay the debts thou owest, nor what thou must do to feed thyself and thy small, anguished family for another day. Ambition doth not disturb thee, nor doth the vain pomp of the world trouble thee, for the limits of thy desires extendeth not beyond caring for thy donkey; thou hast placed care for thine own person on my shoulders, a weight and a burden that nature and custom hath given to masters. The servant sleepeth, and the master standeth watch, thinking of how he may sustain him, and improve him, and grant him favors. The anguish of seeing the sky turning to bronze and not giving succor to the earth with needed dew doth not afflict the servant but the master, who must sustain in barrenness and hunger the one who served in fertiliy and plenty."

Don Quixote addressing to Sancho Pannza who is sleeping

The Obscene Bird of Night - Opening

MÍSIA RAQUEL RUIZ (Mistress Raquel Ruiz, that is) shed many tears when Mother Benita called up to tell her that Brigida had died in her sleep. Then she calmed down a little and asked for more details.

TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH
BY HARDIE ST. MARTIN
AND LEONARD MADES


This is a Borzoi Book
Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Copyright 1973 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.,

AUTHOR'S NOTE
Since this novel first appeared in Spanish, I have made certain cuts and changes which are incorporated into the English-language edition, and which will be used in any further editions of the book.
José Donoso
1973

The Spanish edition of this book was written with the help of a Guggenheim Foundatioon fellowship.

Assistance for the translation of this book was given by the Center for Inter-American Relations.

Manufactured in the United States of America
FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

Salman Rushdie's new book..

The Emperor Abul-Fath Jalaluddin Muhammad, King of Kings, known since his childhood as Akbar, meaning “the great,” and latterly, in spite of the tautology of it, as Akbar the Great, the great great one, great in his greatness, doubly great, so great that the repetition in his title was not only appropriate but necessary in order to express the gloriousness of his glory—the Grand Mughal, the dusty, battle-weary, victorious, pensive, incipiently overweight, disenchanted, mustachioed, poetic, over-sexed, and absolute emperor, who seemed altogether too magnificent, too world-encompassing, and, in sum, too much to be a single human personage—this all-engulfing flood of a ruler, this swallower of worlds, this many-headed monster who referred to himself in the first-person plural—had begun to meditate, during his long, tedious journey home, on which he was accompanied by the heads of his defeated enemies bobbing in their sealed earthen pickle jars, about the disturbing possibilities of the first-person singular—the “I.”

Destroyer: Entering White Cecilia

Cruising the magnetic strip
I seize the ship, I wanted it
To be me that is with you
Sight unseen, shot through with meaning
I ran to the door, looked around
I fell to the floor just to see what was down there

You little chorus of angels
Howling "What gives?" and
"Hey, what is with you?
Just look around at how the other half lives"
So you did
They appear undecided

Entering White Cecilia
Entering White Cecilia

What's eating you tonight, who cares?
There's a bunch of them
So what if you saw one of them going
La la la

Cruising the magnetic strip
I seize the ship, I wanted it
To be me that is with you
Sight unseen, shot through with meaning
You ran to the door, fell to the ground
You had a feeling about what was down there

Entering White Cecilia
Entering White Cecilia

What's eating you tonight, who cares?
There's a bunch of them
So what if you heard one of them going
La la la

Don Quixote - pg. 553

"...I left my home, mortgaged my estate, left behind my comfort, and threw myself into the arms of Fortune so that she may carry me wherever she chooses. I have desired to revive a long-dead knight errantry, and for many days, stumbling here, falling there, dropping down in one place and standing up in another, I have fulfilled a good part of my desire, helping widows, protecting maidens,, favoring married women, orphans, and wards, which is the proper and natural work of knights errant; because of my many worthy Christians deeds, I have deserved to be published in almost all or most of the nations in the world. Thirty thousand copies of my history have been printed, and thirty thousand thousand times more are on their way to being printed if heaven does not intervene. Briefly then, to summarize everything in a few words, or in only one, I say that I am Don Quixote of La Mancha, also known as the Knight of the Sorrowful Face, and although praising oneself is vile, I am obliged perhaps to sing my own praises, which is understandable since there is no one present to sing my own praises, which is understandable since there is no one present to do it for me; and so, Senor, neither this horse nor this lance, this shield nor this squire, nor all of my armor, nor my sallow face and extreme thinness: none of this should surprise you now, for I have told you who I am and the profession I follow."

East Coast vs. West Coast

Someone told me last night at a bar that I am more of an east coast guy.

campaign poster

Don Quixote - pg. 543

By this time a thousand different kinds of brightly colored birds began to warble in the trees, and with their varied and joyous songs they seemed to welcome and greet the new dawn, who, through the doors and balconies of the Orient, was revealing the beauty of her face and shaking from her hair an infinite number of liquid pearls whose gentle liquor bathed the plants that seemed, in turn, to send forth buds and rain down tiny white seed pearls; the willows dropped their sweet-tasting manna, the fountains laughed, the streams murmured, the woods rejoiced, and the meadows flourished with her arrival.

Don Quixote - pg. 510

"We have come to the church, Sancho."

Sergeant Dale Cooper...

"This morning, I will practice an extra twenty minutes of yogic discipline, after which the pain is banished to a cul-de-sac in a remote suburb of my conscious mind."

To Do List

• Dissertation draft revision
• Don Quixote
  

Don Quixote - pg. 479

the most perceptive character in a play is the fool, because the man who wishes to seem simple cannot possibly be a simpleton.

Don Quixote - pg. 455

The wounds on a soldier's face and bosom are stars that guide others to the heaven of honor and the desire to win glory, and it should be noted that one writes not with gray hair but with the understanding, which generally improves with the years.

Don Quixote - pg. 437

One curses her and calls her unpredictable, inconstant, and immodest, another condemns her as forward and flighty; one absolves and pardons her, another judges and censures her; one celebrates her beauty, another denounces her nature; in short, all despise her, and all adore her, and the madness goes so far that there are some who complain of her disdain but never spoke to her, and some even lament their fate and feel the raging disease of jealousy though she never gave anyone reason to feel jealousy because, as I have said, her sin was discovered before her desire. There is no hollow rock, no bank of a stream, no shade of a tree, that is not occupied by a shepherd telling his misfortunes to the air; the echoes repeat the name of Leandra wherever it can be sounded; the mountains ring with the name of Leandra, the streams murmur Leandra, and Leandra has us all bewitched and enchanted, hoping without hope and fearing without knowing what it is we fear.

Don Quixote - pg. 430

For myself, I can say that since I became a knight errant I have been valiant, well-mannered, liberal, polite, generous, courteous, bold, gentle, patient, long-suffering in labors, imprisonments, and enchantments, and although only a short while ago I saw myself locked in a cage like a madman, I think that with the valor of my arm, and heaven favoring me, and fortune not opposing me, in a few days I shall find myself the king of some kingdom where I can display the gratitude and liberality of my heart.

Don Quixote - pg. 412

Fictional tales must engage the minds of those who read them, and by restraining exaggeration and moderating impossibility, they enthrall the spirit and thereby astonish, captivate, delight, and entertain, allowing wonder and joy to move together at the same pace; none of these things can be accomplished by fleeing verisimilitude and mimesis, which together constitute perfection in writing.

Front Page...

Destroyer: Crystal Country

So This is Crystal Country,
where refugees flee like I fly...
into forests of your eyes...
Hey, I saw full-on Night there...
She said - "You'll always be alone,"
and she was right, there...
She said you'll always be alone,
and she was right there rummaging through the eastern townships...
Just wait, here comes the comeback you've always hated...

Somewhere an olive branch is being planted
in honor of a dancers body and, granted,
you could take This as a sign that there is life outside the mine,
and maybe things are looking up but, Buttercup,
the form insists on rupture and therefore we break...
Ok?

So This is Crystal Country,
and, like refugees flee I fly...
into the forests of your eyes...
Hey, I saw full-on Night there...
She said - "You'll always be alone,"
and she was right, there...
She said you'll always be alone,
and she was right there rummaging through the western townships...
where they're staging a play called Comeback...
The only line is - "Don't go..."

Somewhere an olive branch is being planted
in honor of a dancers body and, granted,
I know things have never looked This good but -
somehow - indulge your life at sea for now...

Cause when a breeze is blowing,
it's just Crystal Country showing us
that everything must break to be beautiful
and, honey, that's what I meant when I called and said -
"This is fucked"...

Destroyer: Leaves Form A Thread

Susan, the truth is
Sipping sherry, branded by moonlight’s
just a game people are playing tonight
Seriously, terror advances
So..
Sorry if you should find me
Thinking of only the things that I need
I’ve been living in America, churches of greed
It’s sick
Nah, it’s cool
You go
I’ll stay
Perfectly at home with this dread
Dark leaves form a thread
So, should you still want me
You can find me down at the café
A little bit too busy being served
Sworn enemy of the waitresses there
A late September sunlight travels through her hair
It wants to be... seen
Nah, it’s cool
You go
I’ll stay
Perfectly at home with this dread
Dark leaves form a thread

Alain Robbe-Grillet

died yesterday...

April In Paris

To Do List

• Chapter 3
• Don Quixote
• Crab Nebula

'Round Midnight

Don Quixote - pg. 379

"Oh, Señor Dulcinea of Toboso, pinnacle of all beauty, summit and crest of discernment, archive of grace and wit, depository of virtue, and, finally, ideal of all goodness, modesty, and joy in the world! What can thy grace be doing now? Can thy thoughts be turned into thy captive knight, who hath willingly faced so many dangers for the sake of serving thee? Oh, giveth me news of her, thou three-faced luminary! Perhaps with envy of her brilliance thou art looking at her now, or perhaps she strolleth along a gallery in one of her sumptuous palaces, or leaneth against a balustrade and considereth how, while protecting her modesty annd greatness, she canst soften the anguish that this my heart sufferet for her sake, and reward my grief with glory, and lighten my care, and, finally, grant life to my death and recompense for my services. And thou, O sun, who even now must be making haste to saddle thy steeds, and climb the heavens, and, see my lady, I pray thee when thou seest her to greet her on my behalf, but be thou certain not to kiss her face when thou seest and greetest her, for then I shall be more envious of thee than thou wert of that fleet ingrate who madest thee to perspire and race across the plains of Thessaly or along the banks of the Peneus, for I do not remember precisely where thou rannest then so envious and enamored."

Don Quixote - pg. 368

"Certainly, Señor Captain, the manner in which you have recounted this remarkable tale has been equal to the unusual and marvelous events themselves. The story is rare and strange, full of extraordinary incidents that astonish the listener; we have so liked hearing it that we would enjoy listening to it all over again, even if it took until tomorrow morning."

Don Quixote - pg. 348

As for what you have said regarding becoming my wife if you reach Christian lands, I give you my word as a good Christian that you will, and you should know that Christians keep their promises better than Moors. May Allah and His mother, Marien, bless and keep you Senora.

(lol)

Dust Bowl (Liner Notes)

This bunch of songs ain't about me, and I ain't a going to write about me, 'cause every time I start to do that, I find that I ran out of material.

They are 'Oakies' songs, 'Dust Bowl' songs, 'Migratious' songs, about my folks and my relatives, about a jillion of 'em, that got hit by the drouth, the dust, the wind, the banker, and the landlord, and the police, all at the same time... and it was these things all added up that caused us to pack our wife and kids, into our little rattletrap jallopies, and light out down the Highway -- in every direction, mostly west to California...

To Do List

• Form Signatures - Monday
• Dissertation Conclusion - Sunday
• Dissertation Handoff - Monday
• Matlab Plotting Saturday
  

List of Latin American Authors

1. Macedonio Fernández
2. Juan Emar
3. Felisberto Hernández
4. Maria Luisa Bombal
5. Pablo Palacio
6. Arqueles Vela
7. Rafael Arevalo Martinez
8. Martín Adán
9. Gilberto Owen
10. Enrique Labrador Ruíz
11. Jaime Torres Bodet
12. Rosamel del Valle
13. Francisco Tario
14. Julio Garmendia

The Savage Detectives in Texas Department of Criminal Justice

The Crab Nebula - pg. 6

No one and nothing will dissuade him -- your saliva would be better used to water your garden -- he will not reconsider his decision. Crab has chosen madness. Rest assured that this is no sudden brainstorm. Brainstorms are just so much wind. This is a long-cherished project., well ripened. After years of reflection and daily exercise of his intelligence, Crab has discovered that madness is indeed his only real defense against both mediocrity and boredom (which live together). He will not restate here the rigorous reasoning that led to this discovery; that would in itself conflict with his newfound principles. Suffice it to say that death lies at both ends.

The Crab Nebula - Opening

Given a choice between deafness and blindness, Crab would lose his hearing on the spot, without a moment's hesitation. Yet he values music far more than painting. And this is not Crab's only contradiction, as we shall see. If he then had to choose between his right eye and his right hand, he would opt for the latter. He would sooner keep his left hand than his right eye, and he would preserve his right hand at the expense of his left eye. But ask him to choose between both eyes and both hands, he who claimed to prefer either of his hands to either of his eyes, and he will gladly give up both hands in order to retain both eyes.

Publication of this translation was assisted by a grant from the French Ministry of Culture.
1993 by Les Editions de Minuit Translation copyright 1997 by the University of Nebraska Press. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. The paper in this book meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI ZZ39.48-1984. Ser in Font Company Vendome & Bitstream Maritime symbols by Tseng Information Systems. Book design: Richaard Eckersley.


Translated by
Jordan Stump and
Eleanor Hardin

Don Quixote - pg. 287

I search for life in dread death,
in fearful disease for health,
in dark prison for liberty,
escape in a sealed room,
in a traitor, loyalty.
But my own fate from whom
I ne'er hope for the good
has with just heaven ruled:
if the impossible I demand,
for me the possible is banned.

Don Quixote - pg. 202

LETTER FROM DON QUIXOTE TO DULCINEA OF TOBOSO

Supreme and most high lady:
He who is sore wounded by the sharp blade of absence, he whose heart-strings are broken, most gentle Dulcinea of Toboso, sendeth thee wishes for the well-being he doth not have. If thy beauty scorneth me, if thy great merit opposeth me, if thy disdain standeth firm against me e'en though I possess a goodly portion of forbearance, I shall not be able to endure this affliction, which is both grievous and long-lasting. My good squire, Sancho, will recount the entire tale to thee, O ungrateful beauty! O my beloved enemy! regarding the state in which I findeth myself for thy sake: if it be thy desire to succor me, I am thine; if not, do as thou pleaseth, for by ending my life I shall have satisfied both thy cruelty and mine own desire.

Thine until death,
THE KNIGHT OF THE SORROWFUL FACE

Don Quixote - pg. 172

The donkey and Rocinante, Sancho and Don Quixote, were left alone; the donkey, pensive with bowed head, twitching his ears from time to time, thinking that the tempest of stones had not yet ended and was still falling around his ears; Rocinante, lying beside his master, for he too had fallen to the ground in the shower of stones; Sancho, in his shirt-sleeves and afraid of the Holy Brotherhood; Don Quixote, grief-stricken at seeing himself so injured by the very people for whom he had done so much good.

To Do List

• Matlab sums
• Chapter 3 editing
• Don Quixote
  

Destroyer: Crystal Country

So This is Crystal Country,
where refugees flee like I fly...
into forests of your eyes...
Hey, I saw full-on Night there...
She said - "You'll always be alone,"
and she was right, there...
She said you'll always be alone,
and she was right there rummaging through the eastern townships...
Just wait, here comes the comeback you've always hated...

Somewhere an olive branch is being planted
in honor of a dancers body and, granted,
you could take This as a sign that there is life outside the mine,
and maybe things are looking up but, Buttercup,
the form insists on rupture and therefore we break...
Ok?

So This is Crystal Country,
and, like refugees flee I fly...
into the forests of your eyes...
Hey, I saw full-on Night there...
She said - "You'll always be alone,"
and she was right, there...
She said you'll always be alone,
and she was right there rummaging through the western townships...
where they're staging a play called Comeback...
The only line is - "Don't go..."

Somewhere an olive branch is being planted
in honor of a dancers body and, granted,
I know things have never looked This good but -
somehow - indulge your life at sea for now...

Cause when a breeze is blowing,
it's just Crystal Country showing us
that everything must break to be beautiful
and, honey, that's what I meant when I called and said -
"This is fucked"...

Don Quixote - pg. 93

This is the body of Grisostomo, who was unique in intelligence, unequaled in generosity, serious without presumption, merry without vulgarity, and, finally, first in everything it means to be good and second to none in everything it means to be unfortunate. He loved deeply and was rejected; he adored and was scorned; he pleaded with a wild beast, importuned a piece of marble, pursued the wind, shouted in the desert, served ingratitude, and his reward was to fall victim to death in the middle of his life, which was ended by a shepherdess whom he attempted to immortalize so that she would live on in memory...

Woody Guthrie...

Don Quixote - pg. 84

"That is true," said Don Quixote, "and please continue, the story is very good, and you, my good friend Pedro, tell it with a good deal of grace."

Destroyer: Your Blood

I went for you in military times and, then, I waited well into the 2300s.
I made my way through the Union Street design kids.
They were alright.
They were on fire.
They harbored an elementary desire to do good works.
I bought 'em all, I bought 'em all!
I made donations to The Plague, and The Fall and The Old Grey Mare in her stall!

Endangered Ape, a couple years in Solitary never really hurt anyone.
Distinguished colleagues, dead music-writers' brides - I apologize.
They were alright.
They were on fire.
They harbored an elementary desire to do good works.
I bought 'em all, I bought 'em all!
I made donations to The Plague, and The Fall and The Old Grey Mare in her stall.

I don't know, I guess I'm doing alright.
Tabitha takes another stab at becoming light.
She never wants to go.
Always want to stay illuminated.

Ride towards the dawn, Quicksilver on the side of nothing.
Never had a chance.
Never had to choose Your Blood versus Your Blues.

... Clay...

Glory, O Mighty One whom the shadows fear!
May the whitest turtledoves immolate you!
Since because of you the forest is in the pollen
and thought in the sacred semen!
Glory, O Sublime One who is existence,
because of whom there are always futures in the eternal uterus!
Your mouth tastes of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge,
and when you wrung out your hair you extinguished hell!

Destroyer: This Night

They led us on...
They said it would be yours...
Tear down the borders, stop patrolling the shores,
let us in...
We wrote a winter song...
Come on, come on, come on, come on...
Don't shelve the opera,
you've been working This long on it...
Twelve years on the Eastside,
and still so house proud...

All the neighbourhood angels,
are humming the psalms (hum along...)
to themselves again...
Oh, they seem to think that when you show up
you'd look good in somebody's arms...

Oh, you should have been a clerk...
You should have stayed a stranger...
You should have just done the work...
But it's too late now, school's out...

Wildcats - you were supposed to go wild...
Butchers - you shouldn't be obsessed with a child...
Now Diorama Pete thinks he just sunk the fleet...
Much like him, you know I live to be cornered. So come on...

Hey, Easterner, open your mouth...
Don't speak in tones...
I know there's beauty in the bones of the dam that burst...
I know you look good in the shadow of the Diamond Monger's thirst,
but get out...

To the west there is an ocean...
There's a mountain on the right...
Now will you walk away
or take the blame for the unfortunately-named
children of This day... Children of This Night...

Destroyer: Trouble in Dreams

Destroyer: the Ballad of a Comeback Kid

Pray for content, settle for free rent,
the tenements recall Rome.
High five, look up, look alive, as the scions of history
guess another mystery wrong.

Recite your lines, and I'll quote scripture.
Everything was fine until membership lost its privileges.
Everyone in town wanted to be around you,
this went on for awhile until they finally found you.

Ever-so-careful, on the strip we cruise,
crippled in someone else's shoes.
Who knew? Mind you,
I never had to stand in line, you did,
for the Ballad of a Comeback Kid.

Watch your step as you step down from the podium,
returned from the war to a hero's welcome, what's more you just had to win.
Blazing new trails, waving goodbye to the audience.
Held captive, the crowd was inactive, it made such perfect sense.

Ever-so-careful on the strip we cruise,
crippled in someone else's shoes.
Who knew? Mind you,
I never had to stand in line, you did.

But you won't, Kelly says she could have.
But you won't, Kelly says she could have.

Like a bat out of hell, time has come for.
Like a bat out of hell, time has come for.
Like a bat out of hell, time has come for you.

Ever-so-careful on the strip we cruise,
crippled in someone else's shoes.
Who knew? Mind you,
I never had to stand in line, you did.
Ever-so-careful, on the strip we cruise,
crippled in someone else's shoes.
Who knew? Mind you,
I never had to stand in line, you did,
for the Ballad of a Comeback Kid.

Don Quixote - pg. 35

"I give thanks to heaven for the great mercy it has shown in so quickly placing before me opportunities to fulfill what I owe to my profession, allowing me to gather the fruit of my virtuous desires. These cries, no doubt, belong to some gentleman or lady in need who requires my assistance and help."

The Bhagavad Gita - Chapter XII

Bhakti Yoga
"I love the one who is beyond 'I' and 'mine,' unperturbed by pain and not elated by pleasure."

The Bhagavad Gita - Chapter XI

Visvarupa Darsana Yoga
"Everywhere I look, there You are."

The Bhagavad Gita - Chapter - X

Vibhuti Yoga
"I am the silence of things secret, the wisdom of the wise."

The Bhagavad Gita - Chapter IX

Rajavidya Rajaguhya Yoga
"I accept with joy whatever I am offered in true devotion: fruit or water, leaf or flower. The gift is love, the dedication of your heart."

To Do List

• Chapter 3
• Troubleshooting Matlab code
• 802.11n review
  

The Bhagavad Gita - Chapter VIII

Akshara Brahma Yoga
"The point is not to hope for a good birth but to aim for a good death."

The Bhagavad Gita - Chapter VI

Dhyana Yoga
"...not simply to know God, but to literally become one with God! This is the profound plan and purpose of creation that is hidden from most people."

The Bhagavad Gita - Chapter IV

Jnana-Karma-Sanyasa Yoga
"Whatever path a person travels to Me is My path.... All paths lead to Me."

The Bhagavad Gita - Chapter III

"Remember, Arjuna, that life in the body and senses is not an end in itself, but only a passing phase. Truly, if the eye does not help one visualize God in everything it sees, it is better to be blind. If the ear drags one into filthy cacophony, it is better to be deaf. The senses should not be instruments that plunge you into muck; they should serve your interests, control your appetites, and help you dwell in Divinity.

The Bhagavad Gita - Chapter III

Karma Yoga
"Do your worldly duty, but without any attachment to it or desire for its fruit. Keep your mind always on the Divine.... Make it as automatic as your breath or heartbeat."

The Bhagavad Gita - Chapter II

"The downward spiral to one's ruin consists of the following process: Brooding on (or merely thinking about) worldly attractions develops attachments to them. From attachments to sense objects come selfish desires. Thwarted desires cause anger to erupt. From anger arises delusion. This causes confusion of the mind and makes one forget the lessons of experience. Forgotten lessons of experience cloud the reason, which results in loss of discrimination (between Truth and non-Truth, Real and not-Real). Finally, losing the faculty of discrimination makes one veer from life's only purpose, achieving union with the Divinity within. Then, unfortunately, one's life itself is wasted.

"But when you can move about in a world that surrounds you with sense attractions, and yet be free of either attachment or aversion to them, tranquility comes and sits in your heart -- and you are absorbed in the peace and wisdom of the Self within. Serenity, Arjuna, is the point at which all sorrow ends!

The Bhagavad Gita - Chapter II

Sankhya Yoga
"... the cessation of your pain and sorrow will depend on how well you overcome your ignorance of your True Self that lives within you."

Marks Of Identity - Closing

perhaps someone will understand later
what order you tried to resist and what your crime was
INTRODUZCA LA MONEDA
INTODUISEZ LA MONNAIE
INSERT COIN
GELDSTUCK EINWARFEN

Havana--Paris--Saint-Tropez--Tangier
Autumn 1962--Spring 1966

Marks Of Identity - pg. 350

oh my country
my birth among yours and the deep love that
without your asking
for years I have obstinately offered you
let us part like good friends while there is still time
nothing joins us except your beautiful language strained today by sophistry lies angelic hypotheses apparent truths
phrases empty as hollow shells
distilled syllogisms
good words

from A Midusmmer Night's Dream

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold —
That is the madman;
The lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.
The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination,
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy;
Or, in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush suppos'd a bear.

Marks Of Identity - pg. 283

(The images of past time vanish in the air behind the ghostly round of people captured in the family album, in that same garden where you are resting now, in the shade of the same eucalyptus trees: the crisscross and agile ballet of forgotten steps and dead voices. The tranquil and bloodless hecatomb of intense and now exhausted moments; the slippery passage of days that erodes and corrupts everything. You and she alone, in precarious balance, safe from and at the mercy of the inevitable shipwreck.)

Marks Of Identity - pg. 254

"I would like to see Lives Without Aim published in the same collection as The Old Man and the Sea."
"Do you like William Faulkner/'
"He's a fraud. My favorite writers are Maugham and Vicki Baum."
"Are you familiar with Sartre's work?"
"My wife thumbed through one of his books and she says he writes about filth."
"And Kafka?"
"I've never read him."
"What do you think of Robbe-Grillet."
"Who did you say?"
"Are you follower of the nouveau roman?"
"Neither my wife nor I can handle French. Spanish is more than enough for us."
"How long did it take you to write your last novel?"
"Eight days."
"Do you rewrite."
"Never, What's gained in niceties is lost in a lack of spontaneity."
"What narrative technique do you prefer?"
"Technique is another fraud. Cervantes didn't know anything about theories when he wrote Don Quixote."
"Are you working on something new?"
"Yes. I have in mind a novel about the battle of the generations, between fathers and sons, and I'm going to set it in Harlem."
"Oh, you've been to the United States?"
"No, this is the first time I've ever been out of Spain."
"Do you like Paris?"

Marks Of Identity - pg. 206

The new arrivals of the first layer came dazzled by the completely fabricated myth of Paris and the gaudy varnish of the anemic French culture, avid for love affairs, experiences, and readings and, like Alvaro himself when he first met Dolores, they divided their free time among revivals at the Cinematheque, plays put on by students of the TNP, and lectures on art and literature at the Sorbonne, falling in love with all the blond girls in the Quartier Latin and the Cite Universitaire, happy to be living in a place where love was a possibility, astounded at the wide freedom and independence of French (or German or Scandinavian) women, making an effort to pronounce correctly a language whose classics they devoured in whole series in their desire to fill rapidly the gaps in a narrow, ultra-Catholic upbringing, until the fatal day when they discovered at their own expense the inborn virile pride of the Spanish male, suddenly frightened at the scandalous infidelity of French (or German or Scandinavian) women, who would forget overnight their glowing promises of love and their eternal vows, to fall -- something inconceivable -- into the arms of an Italian student with a touch of fairy about him or those of a solid and exceedingly black scholarship student from Togo or Cameroons, leaving them sunken in the depths of jealousy, wounded self-esteem, and spiteful bitterness, and quickly opening their eyes to the true measure of a French (or German or Scandinavian) woman, so different from the gravity and strength characteristic of the Spanish female, a discovery that dragged along with it the demystification of all remaining values and put French society as a whole in the prisoner's dock.

Marks Of Identity - pg. 166

Land still poor and yet profaned; exhausted and parceled out; centuries old and orphaned still. Look at it, contemplate it. Engrave its image in your retina. The love that unites the two of you can only be said to have been. Is the fault yours or hers? Photographs are enough for you, and memory. Sun, mountains, sea, lizards, stone. Nothing else? Nothing. Corrosive pain. Good-by forever, good-by. Your detour takes you along new roads. You already know that you will never tread her soil again.

...

"all the convents in Spain was not worth the life of a single Republican"

The Bhagavad Gita - Opening

ARJUNA'S ANGUISH
(Arjuna Vishada Yoga)


"Why should I wage a bloody war?...
Death would be better for me!"


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Marks Of Identity - pg. 146

The country has changed and doesn't need us, have you noticed?

Marks Of Identity - pg. 133

Your efforts at reconstruction and synthesis had run up against a serious obstacle. Thanks to the documents and proofs stored away in the folders, you were able to dust off in your memory happenings and incidents that in the past you might have considered lost and which, once rescued from forgetfulness by these means, were able to shed light not only on your own biography, but also on certain obscure and revealing facets of life in Spain (the personal and the collective, the public and the private, joined together harmoniously both the inner search and the outside evidence, the intimate understanding of yourself and the growth of civic awareness in the Taifa kingdoms), but because of your voluntary exile in Paris and your vagabond existence in Europe, that previous communions had dissolved, and when you had been uprooted from your uninviting native soil (the cradle of heroes and conquistadores, saints and visionaries , madmen and inquisitors: the whole Iberian fauna), your own adventures and those of your country had taken divergent directions: you went one way, the bonds that had once linked you to your tribe having been broken, drunk and astonished at that new and incredible freedom of yours; along the other way, your country and that group of friends who were persevering in their noble efforts to change it, paying with their persons the cost that from indifference or cowardice you had refused to pay, coming to their maturity at the price of indispensable mistakes, they were adults, with the concise tampering that you did not have: the harsh experience of jail that you had never known; a strict awareness of the limits of the alienated dignity that you all had. With an empty memory after ten years of exile, how could you reconstruct that lost unity without doing it mischief?

Marks Of Identity - pg. 128

How can it be explained? Often, in phases of depression and anguish (so frequent in you), the death of that unknown person (your father) and the material impossibility of your meeting (except for the accidental and gratuitous link of his fatherhood) gnaw at you inside like the image of a lost chance, the weight of an undone thing, the specter of a treacherous and incurable nostalgia.
You think that in a different country, in a different age, the common history of the two of you would have been something else and, more of less, you would have come to understand each other. Now your communion is reduced to this strict and irreplaceable instant. With the dark muzzles of the rifles before you, you try in vain to capture time.
The volley rang out sharply.

SWEET ROUMANIAN TONGUE

Drew down the curse of heaven on her umbrella
furled and smelling of wet cigarettes,
Jo ran off in rain one pitchy night,
one bloody a.m. found her staring, snoring.
“Why do we all stay up so late?” Jo queried.
“Though I don’t stay up so late as my friends.”
She tripped the little bomb of wasps.
They got her.
Tears for Jo, four, each perfect, waspish.
A silver tongue and piss blond hair
decants a funeral oblation for the mouse.
“She was a rare sight, a winning wonder.
Jo cultivates her toothaches elsewhere.”