The Unnamable - pg. 64

In their shoes I'd be content with my knowing what I know, I'd demand no more of me than to know that what I hear is not the innocent and necessary sound of dumb things constrained to endure, but the terror stricken babble of the condemned to silence. I would have pity, give me quittance, not harry me into appearing my own destroyer.

Destroyer: Shooting Rockets (From the Desk of Night's Ape)

"Caution: Hot Ashes!" -- the girl says to her first kiss.
They stuck eternity inside a bird's fist just to watch it fly!
Just to make it go!
Just to let things slip away!

Don't ask me how I know, I just do...
Night Surgeon dons his robes to take apart a fellow amateur!

You may have heard it said one gives what one gets
Well, I didn't go out into the world just to be stung by a rich man's hornets...

Who amongst us has left these things undone,
And who let these animals into my kingdom?

A blind doe learns to work the rig...
A once-thin man turns into a pig...

The endless groves wherein my soul pukes the night away...

The problem as I see it --
I was messed up on a tangent that was wrong.
They mix 'em strong and I was partial to the feeling.
It is a terrible feast we've been stuffing our face on...
A terrible breeze from the East comin' on...

It bears the scent of our one hundred first kills...

You love her. You leave her.
You try to achieve a breadth of vision that she has from the start.
I got Street Despair carved into my heart...
I got Street Despair carved into my heart...

My dear, didn't you hear, a chorus is a thing that bears repeating.
The problem, as I see it is girls stay away from that shit!

Saw you in Swan Lake -- you were great!
Saw you down in Strathcona Square, devouring an After Eight
(who cares! I didn't mean it!)

For the third encore, you saw yourself in half... It was just you and your raft and this
crummy requiem...shooting rockets

Run or fly --
At some point I had to ask why..
I had to show you
a world not tethered to
Disasters but this would prove impossible...
I snuck a look inside your skull
and said --
Don't look now but Gretchen's seeing red again!"

The truth is a thing to coax out of its shell...
The truth is -- "On this, you and I are going to tangle"
Off, treacherous bliss!! Off!

First you come in all sweet
And then on tiger's paws you retreat
into a darkened nether shadow region.

And It'd be true what they say, were they to say --
"Why, yes, I dig the scourge!" It'd be true what they say, were they to say --
"Why, yes, I dig the scourge!"

It's not that I quit...
It's not that my poems are shit
In the light of the privilege of dreams...
"Alive", she cried once. Now "Alive," she screams...

Shooting rockets

Praise be the delightful muezzin, tending his flock
And
Praise be those alabaster hands running amok on your body..
They love you in spite of your lame scene...
We live in darkness. The light is a dream, you see...
We live in darkness. The light is a dream, you see...
We live in darkness. The light is a dream

Shooting rockets
Shooting rockets
Shooting rockets
Shooting rockets
Shooting rockets
Shooting rockets

The Unnamable - pg. 53

How happy I should be to submit to this evidence and to the execution upon me of the sentence it entails.

The Unnamable - pg. 32

But I am there to be pained, that is what my tempters have never grasped. What they all wanted, each according to his particular notion of what is endurable, was that I should exist and at the same time be only moderately, or perhaps, I should say finitely pained. They have even killed me off, with the friendly remark that having reached the end of my endurance I had no choice but to disappear. The end of my endurance!

To Do List

• The Unnamable
• Review of Journal paper
• Homegrown
  

The Unnamable - pg. 9

One starts things moving without a thought of how to stop them. In order to speak. One starts speaking as if it were possible to stop at will. It is better so. The search for the means to put an end to things, an end to speech, is what enables the discourse to continue.

Dictionary: ensorcell

en·sor·cell /ɛnˈsɔrsəl/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[en-sawr-suhl]

–verb (used with object)

to bewitch: The beauty of the moon ensorcelled them.

Also, en·sor·cel.

The Unnamable - Opening

Where now? Who now? When now? Unquestioning. I, say I. Unbelieving. Questions, hypotheses, call that on. Can it be that one day, off it goes on, that one day I simply stayed in, in where, instead of going out, in the old way, out to spend day and night as far away as possible, it wasn't far.

Translated from the French by the author

Malone Dies - Closing

Lemuel is in charge, he raises his hatchet on which the blood will never dry, but not to hit anyone, he will not hit anyone, he will not hit anyone any more, he will not touch anyone any more, either with it or with it or with it or with or


or with it or with his hammer or with his stick or with his fist or in thought in dream I mean never he will never


or with his pencil or with his stick or


or light light I mean


never there he will never


never anything


there


any more

Malone Dies - pg. 97

All is pretext, Sapo and the birds, Moll, the peasants, those who in the towns seek one another out and fly from one another, my doubts which do not interest me, my situation, my possessions, pretext for not coming to the point, the abandoning, the raising of the arms and going down, without further splash, even though it may annoy the bathers. Yes, there is no good pretending, it is hard to leave everything. The horror-worn eyes linger abject on all they have beseeched so long, in a last prayer, the true prayer at last, the one that asks for nothing. And it is then a little breath of fulfillment revives th dead longings and a murmur is born in the silent world, reproaching you affectionately with having despaired too late. The last word in the way of viaticum. Let us try it another way. The pure plateau

Malone Dies - pg. 70

A thousand little things to report, very strange, in view of my situation, if I interpret them correctly. But my notes have a curious tendency, as I realize at last, to annihilate all they purport to record. So I hasten to turn aside from this extraordinary heat, to mention only it, which has seized on certain parts of my economy, I will not specify which. And to think I was expecting rather to grow cold, if anything!

Malone Dies - pg. 34

And perhaps there is none, no morrow any more, for one who has waited so long for it in vain. And perhaps he has come to that stage of his instant when to live is to wander the last of the living in the depths of an instant without bounds, where the light never changes and the wrecks look all alike. Bluer scarcely than white of egg the eyes stare into the space before them, namely the fullness of the great deep and its unchanging calm.

[This could be taken as an alternate-reading of The Road's premise.]

Malone Dies - pg. 16

I say living without knowing what it is. I tried to live without knowing what I was trying. Perhaps I have lived after all, without knowing. I wonder why I speak all of this.

Hunter S. Thompson Book Ad. (NYTIMES)

Malone Dies - Opening

I shall soon be quite dead at last in spite of all. Perhaps next month. Then it will be the month of April or of May. For the year is still young, a thousand little signs tell me so. Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps I shall survive Saint John the Baptist's day and even the Fourteenth of July, festival of freedom.

Translate from the French by the author

Molloy - Closing

So that at first I did not know what it wanted. But in the end I understood this language. I understood it, I understood it, all wrong perhaps. That is not what matters. It told me to write the report. Does this mean I am freer now than I was? I do not know. I shall learn. Then I went back into the house and wrote, It is midnight. The rain is beating on the windows. It was not midnight. It was not raining.

Molloy - pg. 166

Certain questions of a theological nature preoccupied me strangely. As for example.

1. What value is to be attached to the theory that Eve sprang, not from Adam's rib, but from a tumour in the fat of his leg (arse)?
2. Did the serpent crawl, or as Comestor affirms, walk upright?
3. Did Mary conceive through the ear, as Augustine and Adobard assert?
4. How much longer are we to hang about waiting for antichrist?
5. Does it really matter which hand is employed to absterge the podex?
6. What is one to think of the Irish oath sworn by the natives with the right hand on the relics of the saints and the left on the virile member?
7. Does nature observe the sabbath?
8. Is it true that the devils do not feel the pains of hell?
9. The algebraic theology of Craig. What is one to think of this?
10. Is it true that the infant Saint-Roch refused suck on Wednesdays and Fridays?
11. What is one to think of the excommunication of vermin in the sixteenth century?
12. Is one to approve of the Italian cobbler Lovat who, having cut off his testicles, crucified himself?
13. What was God doing with himself before the creation?
14. Might not the beatific vision become a source of boredom, in the long run?
15. Is it true that Judas' torments are suspended on Saturdays?
16. What if the mass for the dead were read over the living?

Molloy - pg. 132

Does this mean I shall one day be banished from my house, from my garden, lose my trees, my lawns, my birds of which the least is known to me and the way all its own it has of singing, of flying, of coming up to me or fleeing at my coming, lose and be banished from the absurd comforts of my home where all is snug and neat and all those things at hand without which I could not bear being a man, where my enemies cannot reach me, which it was my life's work to build, to adorn, to perfect, to keep? I am too old to lose all this, and begin again, I am too old! Quiet, Moran, quiet. No emotion, please.

Magic Mountain

At magic mountain
Nobody sings today
Nobody speaks today
Close my eyes
And hope to see
Weeks go by like a day
In a lowland

I live up on magic mountain
No one leaves magic mountain

At magic mountain
Nothing changes
Everything stays the same
Cross my heart
And hope to live
All the time
With a little fever

I stay here on magic mountain
No one leaves magic…

My heart hears you sing
My heart hears you speak
But I never make it in the flatlands
I must stay on magic mountain

Molloy - pg. 102

I went up to my room again, drew back the curtains on a calamitous sky and lay down. I could not understand what was happening to me. I found it painful at that period not to understand. I tried to pull myself together. In vain, I might have known. My life was running out, I knew not through what breach.

Molloy - pg. 92

To work, even to play on Sunday, was not of necessity reprehensible, in my opinion. It all depended on the state of mind of him who worked, or played, and on the nature of his work, of his play, in my opinion.

Genesis - Book One

“. . . . Me next to sleep, all that is left of Eden,"
-The one who speaks is not remarkable
In the great city, circa 1930,
His state is not uncommon in the world,
0, by no means, sleepless and seeking sleep
As one who wades in water to the thighs,
Dragging it soft and heavy near the shore;
For now his body's lapse and ignorance
Permits his heavy mind certain loose sleeves,
Loose sleeves of feeling drawing near a drowse:
He knows of dark and sleep the unity,
He knows all being's consanguinity,
All anguish sinks into the first of seas,
The sea which soothes with softness ultimate
-Thus he descends,
***************and coughs, coughs!
*******************************the old cold comes, "
Jack-in-the-box, the conscious mind snaps up!
-He wakes,
*******his fuzzed gaze strains the dark,
And at the window's outline looks, in shock,
To see a certain whiteness glitter there,
Snow! dragging him to the window
With hurried heart. The childhood love still lives in him,
Like a sweet tooth in grown-up married girls,
December's white delight, a fourth year wish,
The classic swan disguised in modern life,
Freedom and silence shining in New York!
But, standing by the window, sees the truth,
Four stories down the blank courtyard on which
The moonlight shines, diagonal and pale
-And high, the moon's half-cut and glittering shell
Shines like the ice on which electric shines-
Says to himself, "How each view may be false!"
And then the whole thing happens all over again,
Waking, walking to the window, looking out,
Seeking for snow in May, a miracle
Quick in the dozing head's compelled free mix
-He sees the snow which is not snow, but light,
The moonlight's lie, error's fecundity
Fallen from the dead planet near the roof-

Absolute dark and dream space fall on him,
And he through dark and space begins to fall,
At first afraid, then horrified, then calm.
Then the wide stillness in which dream belief
Begins, prepared for all. And he begins
Once more to tell himself all that he knows
Over and over and over and over again,
All of the lives that have come close to his,
All of his life, much mixed in memory
Many a night through which he cannot sleep,
Many a year, over and over again!

But now a voice begins, strange in the dark,
As from a worn victrola record, needle
Which skims and whirrs, a voice intoned
As of a weak old man with foreign accent,
Ironic, comic, flat and matter of fact,
With alternation measured, artificial,
*************************moaned,
And yet with sympathy, simpatico
************************* as if
A guardian angel sang!
Then other voices,
Bodiless in the dark, entered in chorus:
"He must tell all, amazed as the three Magi
When they beheld the puking child! All is
Not natural! That's Life, the Magi too
Might have remarked to one another, Life
Full of all things but what one would expect-"

And he who listened said then to himself,
"A daemon, a daemon, no doubt: who else?
Such as was heard by Socrates, perhaps,
Or an angel, the angel who struggled with Jacob,
If Jacob lived, if angels also live—“

Gnome

Spend the years of learning squandering

Courage for the years of wandering

Through a world politely turning

From the loutishness of learning

Molloy - pg. 41

And if all muck is the same muck that doesn't matter, it's good to have a change of muck, to move from one heap to another a little further on, from time to time, fluttering you might say, like a butterfly, as if you were ephemeral.

Molloy - pg. 39

What I liked in anthropology was its inexhaustible faculty of negation, its relentless definition of man, as though he were no better than God, in terms of what he is not.

Molloy - pg. 32

Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. To hell with it anyway. Where was I.

Molloy - pg. 30

The pale gloom of rainy days was better fitted to my taste, no, that's not it, to my humour, no, that's not it, I had neither taste nor humor, I lost them early on. Perhaps, what I mean is that the pale gloom, etc., hid me better, without its being on that account particularly pleasing to me.

Molloy - pg. 14

Doubtless I shall speak of them later, when the time comes to draw up the inventory of my goods and possessions. Unless I lose them between now and then. But even lost they will have their place, in the inventory of my possessions. But I am easy in my mind, I shall not lose them.

Destroyer: Shooting Rockets (From The Desk Of Night;s Ape)

"Caution: Hot Ashes!" -- the girl says to her first kiss.
They stuck eternity inside a bird's fist just to watch it fly!
Just to make it go!
Just to let things slip away!

Don't ask me how I know, I just do...
Night Surgeon dons his robes to take apart a fellow amateur!

You may have heard it said one gives what one gets
Well, I didn't go out into the world just to be stung by a rich man's hornets...

Who amongst us has left these things undone,
And who let these animals into my kingdom?

A blind doe learns to work the rig...
A once-thin man turns into a pig...

The endless groves wherein my soul pukes the night away...

The problem as I see it --
I was messed up on a tangent that was wrong.
They mix 'em strong and I was partial to the feeling.
It is a terrible feast we've been stuffing our face on...
A terrible breeze from the East comin' on...

It bears the scent of our one hundred first kills...

You love her. You leave her.
You try to achieve a breadth of vision that she has from the start.
I got Street Despair carved into my heart...
I got Street Despair carved into my heart...

My dear, didn't you hear, a chorus is a thing that bears repeating.
The problem, as I see it is girls stay away from that shit!

Saw you in Swan Lake -- you were great!
Saw you down in Strathcona Square, devouring an After Eight
(who cares! I didn't mean it!)

For the third encore, you saw yourself in half... It was just you and your raft and this
crummy requiem...shooting rockets

Run or fly --
At some point I had to ask why..
I had to show you
a world not tethered to
Disasters but this would prove impossible...
I snuck a look inside your skull
and said --
Don't look now but Gretchen's seeing red again!"

The truth is a thing to coax out of its shell...
The truth is -- "On this, you and I are going to tangle"
Off, treacherous bliss!! Off!

First you come in all sweet
And then on tiger's paws you retreat
into a darkened nether shadow region.

And It'd be true what they say, were they to say --
"Why, yes, I dig the scourge!" It'd be true what they say, were they to say --
"Why, yes, I dig the scourge!"

It's not that I quit...
It's not that my poems are shit
In the light of the privilege of dreams...
"Alive", she cried once. Now "Alive," she screams...

Shooting rockets

Praise be the delightful muezzin, tending his flock
And
Praise be those alabaster hands running amok on your body..
They love you in spite of your lame scene...
We live in darkness. The light is a dream, you see...
We live in darkness. The light is a dream, you see...
We live in darkness. The light is a dream

Shooting rockets
Shooting rockets
Shooting rockets
Shooting rockets
Shooting rockets
Shooting rockets

Crime and Punishment

Don Quixote - pg. 737

They say that in the actual original of this history, one reads that when Cide Hamete came to write this chapter, his interpreter did not translate what he had written, which was a kind of complaint that the Moor had concerning himself for becoming involved in a history as dry and limited as this one, for it seemed to him he always had to talk of Don Quixote and Sancho, not daring to wander into other digressions and episodes that were more serious and more entertaining; and he said that to have his mind, his hand, and his pen always fixed on writing about a single subject and speaking through the mouths of so few persons was an insupportable hardship whose outcome did not redound to the benefit of the author; in order to circumvent this difficulty, in the first part he had used the device of some novels, such as The Man Who Was Recklessly Curious and The Captive's Captain, which are, in a sense, separate from the history, although the other matters recounted there are events that occurred to Don Quixote himself, which he could not fail to write down. He also thought, as he says, that many readers, carried away by the attention demanded by the deeds of Don Quixote, would pay none at all to the novels, and pass them over entirely or read them with haste or with annoyance, not realizing the elegance and invention they contain, which would be readily apparent if they come to light on their own, not depending on the madness of Don Quixote or the foolishness of Sancho.

Don Quixote - pg. 729

"They can dress me," said Sancho, "however they want; no matter what clothes I wear I'll still be Sancho Panza."

Molloy - Opening

I am in my mother's room. It's I who live there now. I don't know how I got there. Perhaps in an ambulance, certainly a vehicle of some kind.



Copyright 1955, 1956, 1958 by Grove Press, Inc.

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieved system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.


Published by Grove Weidenfeld
A division of Wheatland Corporation
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003-4793

ISBN 0-8021-5091-8

Library of Congress Cataloge Card Number 59-13886

Manufactured in the United States of America

Printed on acid-free paper

First Black Cat Edition 1965

Translated from the French by
Patrick Bowles
in collaboration with the author

Don Quixote - pg. 713

Regarding matters that concern and pertain to this adventure and its memorable history

Really and truly, all those who enjoy histories like this one ought to show their gratitude to Cide Hamete, its first author, for his care in telling us its smallest details and clearly bringing everything, no matter how trivial, to light. He depicts thoughts, reveals imaginations, responds to tacit questions, clarifies doubts, resolves arguments; in short, he expresses the smallest points that curiosity might ever desire to know. O celebrated author! O fortunate Don Quixote! O famous Dulcinea! O comical Sancho Panza! Together and separately may you live an infinite number of years, bringing pleasure and widespread diversion to the living.

A.A. Bondy: No Man Shall

With a long lag runnin'
Upon the silver grass
And there is no future
Remember not your past

And the horses runnin',
Horses runnin' free
And you need not wonder
Of how it came to be

And Lord, I get so high
At the speed of sound I spin
Then I come down, I come down
Come down, I come down
Turn around and do it all again

And the song you're singin'
It has always been
Down through the ages
Has been echoin'

That no man can own you
No man can own you, see
If in your dreams you really
Dreams you really be

Oh
And Lord, I get so high
At the speed of sound I spin
Then I come down, I come down
Come down, I come down
Turn around and do it all again

To Do List

• Form Sign (Summer Registration)
• Interview
• Dissertation Revision
  

Warlock - Closing

Yet now and then the tiny black figure on the black horse would stand out clearly against the golden, flower speckled earth, until, at last, a dust devil rose in a gust of wind. Rising high and leaning across his path, it seemed to envelop him, and, when it had passed and blown itself apart, Blaisdell too was finally lost to sight.

Passenger

• Jackson: I forgot something
• Girl: Was it important?
  

Warlock - pg. 396

"Don't touch me!" she said. "I am tired of dead men!"

Moby Dick

Warlock - pg. 388

The human animal is set apart from other beasts by his infinite capacity for creating fictions.

Warlock - pg. 349

It is a Saturday night, and very quiet outside my window. I remember when a Saturday night was a matter of dread in Warlock -- I remember the wildness, the shouts and laughter, the brawling, the shooting that would all too often punctuate and bring a bloody climax to the night. Is not this what we wanted? McQuown is dead; I have to remind myself of that. Is not that too what we wanted? Yet I am aware of the dissatisfaction on every hand. It is finished, but not finished. It is not right, but I cannot express what I feel. It is an uneasy peace in Warlock.

A.A. Bondy: Rapture

I don't wanna talk about Jesus
Just wanna see his face
The trees are swinging
Like hangin' men
And I just wanna see his face

And rapture, sweet rapture
Won't you lay your hands on me
For I am blind

Mary, take that silver dagger
Put it to my throat
You see that levy,
It's a-bound to break
Put the children in the boat

And rapture, sweet rapture
Won't you lay your hands on me

And rapture, sweet rapture
Won't you lay your hands on me

Warlock - pg. 330

He started down the boardwalk. He flexed his shoulders a little to relieve the tight strain there. He stretched his wounded, aching, sweating hand to try to loosen it. His skin prickled. He wondered, suddenly, that he had no plan. But he had only to walk the streets of Warlock as a deputy must do, as was his duty and his right.

V. S. Pritchett

The fewer novels or plays you write – because of other parasitic interests – the fewer you will have the ability to write

The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me

"the withness of the body" --Whitehead

The heavy bear who goes with me,
A manifold honey to smear his face,
Clumsy and lumbering here and there,
The central ton of every place,
The hungry beating brutish one
In love with candy, anger, and sleep,
Crazy factotum, dishevelling all,
Climbs the building, kicks the football,
Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city.

Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,
That heavy bear who sleeps with me,
Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,
A sweetness intimate as the water's clasp,
Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope
Trembles and shows the darkness beneath.
--The strutting show-off is terrified,
Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,
Trembles to think that his quivering meat
Must finally wince to nothing at all.

That inescapable animal walks with me,
Has followed me since the black womb held,
Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,
A caricature, a swollen shadow,
A stupid clown of the spirit's motive,
Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,
The secret life of belly and bone,
Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown,
Stretches to embrace the very dear
With whom I would walk without him near,
Touches her grossly, although a word
Would bare my heart and make me clear,
Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed
Dragging me with him in his mouthing care,
Amid the hundred million of his kind,
the scrimmage of appetite everywhere.

To Do List

• Open Loop/Closed Loop Rate Control Algorithms
  
• TCP
• Algorithms, Data Structures
• Revision 802.11n/b/e
  

TedG

Altman is a sort of Moses in this environment, trying every escape he can imagine.

Our Youth

Of bricks ... Who built it? Like some crazy balloon
When love leans on us
Its nights ... The velvety pavement sticks to our feet.
The dead puppies turn us back on love.


Where we are. Sometimes
The brick arches led to a room like a bubble, that broke when you
entered it
And sometimes to a fallen leaf.
We got crazy with emotion, showing how much we knew.


The Arabs took us. We knew
The dead horses. We were discovering coffee,
How it is to be drunk hot, with bare feet
In Canada. And the immortal music of Chopin


Which we had been discovering for several months
Since we were fourteen years old. And coffee grounds,
And the wonder of hands, and the wonder of the day
When the child discovers her first dead hand.


Do you know it? Hasn't she
Observed you too? Haven't you been observed to her?
My, haven't the flowers been? Is the evil
In't? What window? What did you say there?


Heh? Eh? Our youth is dead.
From the minute we discover it with eyes closed
Advancing into mountain light.
Ouch ... You will never have that young boy,


That boy with the monocle
Could have been your father
He is passing by. No, that other one,
Upstairs. He is the one who wanted to see you.


He is dead. Green and yellow handkerchiefs cover him.
Perhaps he will never rot, I see
That my clothes are dry. I will go.
The naked girl crosses the street.


Blue hampers ... Explosions,
Ice ... The ridiculous
Vases of porphyry. All that our youth
Can't use, that it was created for.


It's true we have not avoided our destiny
By weeding out the old people.
Our faces have filled with smoke. We escape
Down the cloud ladder, but the problem has not been solved.

Book Of Genesis - 13:16

And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered.

Book Of Genesis - 9:11

And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth.

Book Of Genesis - 8:20

And Noah builded an altar unto the LORD; and took of every clean beat, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

Book Of Genesis - 4:9

And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?

Book Of Genesis - 3:22

And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

Book Of Genesis - 3:19

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Book Of Genesis - 3:5

For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

Book Of Genesis - 1:4

And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from darkness.

Language-Mesh (Sprachgitter)

Eye's roundness between the bars.

Vibratile monad eyelid
propels itself upward,
releases a glance.

iris, swimmer, dreamless and dreary:
the sky, heart-grey, must be near.

Athwart, in the iron holder,
the smoking splinter.
By its sense of light
you divine the soul.

(If I were like you. If you were like me.
Did we not stand
under one trade wind?
We are strangers.)

The flagstones. On them,
close to each other, the two
heart-grey puddles:
two
mouthsfull of silence.

A.A. Bondy: How Will You Meet Your End

I'm gonna keep that diamond in my mind

For there's hell upon the breeze
There's hell upon the breeze
Six riders ride

They say I must be the devil's child
And the hell upon the breeze
Six riders ride

And all my days I been the losin' kind
And the hell upon the breeze
Love, it ain't mine

Killed my daddy and took his .45
He was no good, though
He was no good
He had to die

Lightning hits the church, the women cry
And the hell upon the breeze
No God in sight

Six riders stand upon the ridge tonight
O Lord, they have found me
My time is nigh

Warlock - pg. 301

"You," Cade said, and paused for a long time. His dirty teeth scraped on his lower lip. "You are," he said, "a yellow-belly suck-up." He grinned and hitched at his belt. "You are a pure yellow, pissant, chicken-livered, coyote-bred, no-cojones son of a bitch. I say that's what you are. I say--"

Warlock - pg. 274

"...When I get up to the Gate they will look at the records, like they do. They will scream to see mine. But I will say to them that I was made the way I was, but I did a decent thing in my life. And I don't know that there are so many decent things done that they can sniff at it.. I can say I did this, and by God I did my best, and it was a good thing. I can say I had a reason to be, and I don't see many around me that have. I can say I had a reason for being alive that was mine, and that was worth something, and --"

-- Tom Morgan

Warlock - pg. 248

Hate can burn itself out in the first light of day as readily as love can.

[Journals of Henry Holmes GoodPasture]

Errors

Jealousy. Whispered weather reports.
In the street we found boxes
Littered with snow, to burn at home.
What flower tolling on the waters,
You stupefied me. We waxed,
Carnivores, late and alight
In the beaded winter. All was ominous, luminous.
Beyond the bed's veils the white walls danced
Some violent compunction. Promises,
We thought then of your dry portals,
Bright cornices of eavesdropping palaces,
You were painfully stitched to hours
The moon now tears up, scoffing at the unrinsed portions.
And loves adopted realm. Flees to water,
The coach dissolving in mists.

A wish
Refines the lines around the mouth
At these ten-year intervals. It fumed
Clear air of wars. It desired
Excess of core in all things. From all things sucked
A glossy denial. But look, pale day:
We fly hence. To return if sketched
In the prophet's silence. Who doubts it is true?

Two Scenes

I
We see us as we truly behave:
From every corner comes a distinctive offering.
The train comes bearing joy;
The sparks it strikes illuminate the table.
Destiny guides the water-pilot, and it is destiny.
For long we hadn't heard so much news, such noise.
The day was warm and pleasant.
"We see you in your hair,
Air resting around the tips of mountains."


II
A fine rain anoints the canal machinery.
This is perhaps a day of general honesty
Without example in the world's history
Though the fumes are not of a singular authority
And indeed are dry as poverty.
Terrific units are on an old man
In the blue shadow of some paint cans
As laughing cadets say, "In the evening
Everything has a schedule, if you can find out what it is."

Warlock - pg. 242

Curley looked back at the oncoming dust. It was a big posse. The gray stopped and would go no more, and he sighed and dismounted, shot the horse through the head, and sat down on the slack, warm haunch to wait in the sun. "Boy," he said again, "why would you do such a thing?" His hand fumbled once more after his mouth organ which he had left behind him.

Destroyer: Libby's First Sunrise

Libby’s first sunrise
You’ve been wasted from the day
of wandering and boozing and sleeping outside
Now the light holds a terrible secret
And now you know-whoa
That this is what you get
You’ve been wandering around
You’ve been fucking around
You’ve been wandering around
You’ve been fucking around - ah
Libby’s first sunrise
You’ve been wasted from the day
of wandering and boozing and sleeping outside
Playing the idiot all of your life
and this is what you get
Master of all you survey, but today
You’ve been wandering around
You’ve been fucking around
You’ve been wandering around
You’ve been fucking around - oh
Libby’s first sunrise
You’ve been wasted from the day
and now you know-whoa
Suffering idiots all of your life
And this is what you get
Now the light holds a terrible secret
The light holds a terrible secret
The light holds a terrible secret
The light holds a terrible secret
Ah, the light…
Oh, the light…
Oh, the light…
Oh, the light…

Warlock - pg. 156

Obviously Blaisdell must enjoy his role as angel with a sword or he would not undertake so dangerous a role, but can he endure to be called a devil?

[Journals of Henry Holmes GoodPasture]

Crab Nebula - Closing

And then Crab sank into silence, slowly, inexorably, vertically, he sank in and eventually disappeared from the gaze of the audience. There was some confusion among the spectators, a moment of uncertainty, of incomprehension, but they quickly settled on the only credible hypothesis: a trapdoor had opened beneath Crab's feet -- of course, there was a trapdoor concealed in the stage -- and, by common agreement, this symbolic burial of the character, replacing the fall of the curtain or the sudden blackout that traditionally signifies the end of a show, was in itself worth the price of admission; with one blow it erased the long days of boredom that had preceded it. (Applause.)

Crab Nebula - pg. 111

Take this hypothesis for what it's worth -- coming from Crab, it should inspire prudence -- but, true or false, we must agree with him that it has at least some basis in truth: Given the fact that it is possible to juxtapose anything with its opposite and thus to arrive at a definition by antithesis -- good as opposed to evil, death as opposed to birth -- should there not exist, in opposition to suicide, something like a deliberate and spontaneous self-generation? A diffuse, floating consciousness, a vague little soul, furtive as a cold draft, which might suddenly decide to incarnate itself, to take shape, to come into the world? This would finally explain why certain men seem so happy to be alive, so thoroughly at ease: they came into existence by choice. They chose the time and place. They gave themselves every advantage.

Crab Nebula - pg. 22

His long practice of solitary meditation has taught him, if nothing else, to distinguish the many forms of silence, which meet with only an unchanging and obtuse insensitivity in the untrained ear. There is, then -- among others -- a string silence, a wind silence, a percussion silence, no more allike than the instruments thus classified, but on occasion their sonorities meld into a symphonic silence in which slow, stately movements, or martial ones, alternate with sprightly little phrases annd silky arabesques, playing on a variety of motifs and rhythms in order to fully express the complexity of the situation, whatever that situation may be.
(Nor does Crab forget the variety of silence derived from floor or soot.)

Destroyer: Introducing Angels

Common scars brought us together
Common scars brought us together
Common scars brought us together
beneath an idiot moon
It comes too soon
Just plant Tulip and watch her bloom
Introducing Angels
Introducing Angels
Common scars brought us together
Common scars brought us together
Prominent scars brought us together
beneath the light of the moon
It’s not too soon
Flower-girl stalks the groom
A degenerate drunk on war,
grace should guide me Misty Poets
Introducing Angels
Introducing Angels

Delivering Newspapers

Who believes in the mask’s weeping?
who believes in the weeping nation?
the nation has lost its memory
memory goes as far as this morning

the newspaper boy sets out in the morning
all over town the sound of a desolate trumpet
is it your bad omen or mine?
vegetables with fragile nerves
peasants plant their hands in the ground
longing for the gold of a good harvest
politicians sprinkle pepper
on their own tongues
and a stand of birches in the midst of a debate:
whether to sacrifice themselves for art or doors

this public morning
created by a paperboy
revolution sweeps past the corner
he’s fast asleep

Arc...

Heart, Heart, if you're beset by invincible
griefs, rise!, withstand contrary-wise
offering up your chest, and against the tricks
of the enemy steel yourself firmly. And should you come out
victorious, dissemble, heart, don't boast,
nor, defeated, should you debase yourself crying
at home. Don't let them matter too much
your joy in success, your sorrow in failure.
Understand that in life alternation rules.

Crab Nebula - pg. 8

Every butterfly on its wings carries precise dose of fairy dust required to make Crab believe, for one brief moment, that the world is as he likes it. But as the effects of the hallucinogen fade, he once again finds himself anxious, melancholy, his cold delirium drags him through apocalyptic landscapes deserted even by the birds -- it seems to him the trees are losing their leaves, the days are growing shorter, that sort of thing, aberrations, and the wind bites at his bones.
(What Crab wants then is a nice bowl of soup in which to soak his frozen feet.)

Destroyer: Blue Flower/Blue Flame

Okay, fine, even the sky looks like wine
And everywhere I turn there’s
a new face in town stuck inside the well
Fresh hells to attend to
Blue flower/blue flame
A woman by another name is not a woman
Don’t know why
Don’t know when
A cathedral sick of the sky again says to it:
“Oh please, not now, will you just look at the time.
It’s standing still.”
Somewhere applause falls dead on the hill-side
Blue flower/blue flame
A woman by another name is not a woman
I’ll tell you what I mean by that
Maybe not in seconds flat, maybe not today
Blue flower/blue flame
A woman by another name is not a woman
I’ll tell you what I mean by that
Maybe not in seconds flat, maybe never
A gray ashen sadness rises like the sun
Oh well, it was time I decided to try this hotel...
Tulip has an inner animal

She’s in it for a good time
I was on the outs for a while, but now things are alright
I gave you a flower because foxes travel light
And a penny for your thoughts was never enough
Your head gets filled with that stuff
Your head gets filled with that stuff

The Sun Also Rises - Closing

“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

Faiz

Destroyer: Helena

Helena, the ramifications are very large tonight.
The stars say: "don't pick a fight, or barge things around."
See, apparently, our bloodlines are botched beyond redemption.
Luckily, you don't believe in redemption.
(This may work in your favor, I'm told.)

So throw the old furniture in the fire
as the children go barbaric behind the wire.
They're just children.

It's a drag, the way your flag had to come down, with one of the above.
America, so ferociously in bloom.
But pistols at dawn can only work for so long.
Curved appetites took flight when you decided to call the song,
"A Pacific-Northwest Bitch Gets Shown To Her Room."

So throw the old furniture in the fire
as the children go barbaric behind the wire.
They're just children.
And this one goes out, just like the one before,
to the 17th version of "How I Won the War".
"Oh! First Destroyer!
And now the Underground!"
Helena, the ramifications are very large tonight.
The stars say: "don't pick a fight, or barge things around."
Just throw the old furniture in the fire
as the children go barbaric behind the wire.
They're just children.
They're just children.
They're just children.

Epiphany#33

A faded friendship installs irony in its place.

Short story...

One thing I must admit here: I find anger tricky. Anger is a very sincere emotion. We live under the rule of cool, and we are expected to encounter the vicissitudes of the world with a certain degree of irony. Sincerity, as any hipster will tell you, is for awkward teens and people on SSRIs. Think about it—sincerity is gauche, gauche is boring, and boring is rude, so it’s only a matter of ordinary politeness not to take things too seriously.

Short story...

"Whatever we watched was, by definition, good, because we’d watched it, because it had belonged—at least, temporarily—to us. By the time the wider world caught up—which always happened, sooner or later—we’d usually got bored and moved on."

Destroyer: Virgin With a Memory

Was it the movie or the "Making of Fitzcarraldo"
where someone learned to love again?
'I can't remember' is not the same as 'I don't know,'
Virgin with a Memory...

Was it the movie or the "Making of Fitzcarraldo"
where your mother decided to fashion herself
after the sad deity we left on the shelf?
She wanted blood, all she got was sacrifice.
She wanted blood, all she got was sacrifice.
She wanted blood, all she got was sacrifice.

Virgin without a Memory,
now's your chance to be free
of all those favorite bands you ditched for one that's grander:
No Use for a Name to The Make-Up...
it's all the same.
The singer not the song, no!
The singer not the song, no!
The singer not the song, no!

Formative years: wasted.
In love with our peers, we tasted life with the stars.
Anticlimactic as Mars was, still...
A red earth with no way of knowing
this silver colossus exists just to be growing.
A red earth with no way of knowing
this silver colossus exists just to be growing...

Was it the movie or the "Making of Fitzcarraldo"
Where someone learned to love again?
Where someone learned to love again...
Where someone learned to love again...

To Do List

• 802.11e
• 802.11n
• TCP/IP
• Network Theory Markov
  

Warlock - pg. 143

Buck Slavin entered and approached him, with a hand out and his jaw shot out grimly; he was one of the second kind. "Morgan," Slavin said. "This town ought to thank you and the marshal. I thank you."
He shook the proffered hand, without rising. "I thank you for thanking me, Buck. But it was nothing."
"That was fine shooting."
"I was lucky, Buck." he said, solemnly, and shot his jaw out too.

Warlock - pg. 129

"You have been going on about pride like it was a bad thing, and I disagree with you. A man's pride is about the only thing he has that's worth having, and is what sets him apart from the pack. We have argued this before, Judge, and I guess I will say this time that a man that doesn't have it is a pretty poor specimen and apt to take to whisky for the lack. For all whisky is, is pride you can pour in your belly."

Destroyer: New Ways Of Living

Maybe I should have loved you.
Maybe I should have sworn
Not to be born
Of this wretched glove too soon,
But a dragon needs room!
A dragon needs room!
A dragon needs room
To run, run, run, run...

I was a desert in love with extremes.
You married well, a gentlewoman of means who
Kept the word "Destroyer" embroidered on her jeans, too

(La la la)

I wore skins. I didn't care who survived.
The band foretold trends from Spring of '85.
They're calling it "The New Decay"...
Hey, so am I.

(La la la)

Treacherous fop, don't be embarrassed
For looking good at your table on the terrace
That you call home. I'm sold!
Paris, London, Rome's too old for you
And your kind
Explosions want to see what they can find:
New ways of living...

It's you and your kind:
The New Ways of Living!

Warlock - pg. 89

Her scent of lavender water was strong in his nostrils. He was shivering a little, and he stretched, hugely. He had done well enough tonight, he thought; he had given her nothing. He had never given her anything. He saw, indelible in his mind's eye, her tired, hate-filled face. Once there had been good times.

Warlock - pg. 89

She sobbed. She raised a hand to her eyes and then dropped it, as though she were too proud to hide that she was crying. She was ugly when she cried; he remembered that.

Destroyer: An actor will seek revenge

An actor will seek revenge.
I don't know why and I don't know when.
There'll be talk. There'll be action.
Boys demanding satisfaction
From girls. Oh, you'd hate to play a girl!
An actor will seek revenge...

He came on too strong.
He was weird and he was wrong.
A bloodless cop at dawn
Throwing everybody out.
The kids twist and shout until the womb fucking wrecks it!

A boulevardier might say -
"Tomorrow's another day."
Alright, yes, but it's also just another mess!
Crime and Punishment - no, that's not what I meant!

An actor will seek revenge.
I don't know why and I don't know when.
There'll be talk. There'll be action.
Boys demanding satisfaction
From girls. Oh, you'd hate to be a girl!
An actor will seek revenge
Upon the ones who fed him those ridiculous lines
Saying - "What we really need now is an emotional history
Of the Lower Eastside, cause it was wild! It was wild!"
Oh no, here we go again...

(Ba da, ba da, ba da, ba da... Ba da, ba da, ba da, ba da da ba da!)

Destroyer: It's gonna take an airplane

It's gonna take an airplane
To get me off the ground.
I don't blame anyone who isn't sticking around,
Cause when you stick around (when you stick around!)
People like to put things in the ground.
Now, in my
Evil empire, I
Am going to be a star in the night sky
Above. "So you think this is love?"
Yes, I guess so,
At least something to make it from...

Dressed like a dream dreamt by Lola magazine,
Baby you were born to be seen.
And art's just the start!
Now step inside the Widowmaker
And listen to your heart!
Always 'the play', never 'the thing'...

(Submarines don't mind spending their time in the ocean...)

Eric Rohmer

It's a beautiful day outside but all I want to do is to have a few bottles of Malbec and watch an Eric Rohmer flick.

Warlock - pg. 54

I suppose our troubled consciences are assuaged by the thought that we have assumed a makeshift authority for a makeshift situation, and a temporary one.

--Journals of Henry Holmes GoodPasture

Warlock - pg. 38

Gannon turned to face his brother. "I guess I will be staying in town, Billy," he said.

Warlock - pg. 30

5. Gannon Sees a Showdown
STANDING beside his brother at the bar of the Glass Slipper, John Gannon looked from one to another around him - at Pony Benner's mean, twisted little face; at Luke Friendly, who could, at least be dismissed as a blowhard and braggart; at the sour, cruel, dark features of Jack Cade, whom he had always feared; at Calhoun, with whom he had learned to be merely careful, as with a rattlesnake out of striking distance; at Curley Burne, who, with Wash Haggin, had been his friend, whose droll, easy manner of speech he had once tried to copy, and whose easy gait he had seen that Billy was copying now. He looked at Abe McQuown's keen, cold- red-bearded face. Once, when he had been Billy's age, he had admired Abe more than he ever had any other man.

Warlock - pg. 27

A group of miners came in, in their wool hats and faded blue clothes and heavy boots, two of them sporting red sashes - heavy, pale, bearded men. It was difficult to tell one from the other among them, but they were trade.

Warlock - pg. 17

"Well, I guess I'll go have myself a drink of whisky."

(!!)

Warlock - pg. 13

2. Gannon Comes Back
Warlock lay on a flat, white alkali step, half encircled by the Bucksaw Mountains to the east, beneath a metallic sky. With the afternoon sun slanting down on it from over the distant peaks of the Dinosaurs, the adobe and weathered plank-and-batten, false-fronted buildings were smoothly glazed with yellow light, and sharp-cut black shadows lay like pits in the angles out of the sun.

Warlock - pg. 4

Abe McQuown is a red-bearded, lean, brooding fellow, who has about him an explosive aura of power and directionless determination. He has protruding green eyes, which, it is said, can spit fire, or freeze a man at fifty feet; is of medium height, almost slight, with long arms, and walks with a curious, backward-leaning gait, like a young cadet, with hands resting upon his concho belt, his beard tipped down against his chest, and his green eyes darting glances right and left. Yet there is about him a certain paradoxical shyness, and a certain charm, and in conversation with the man it is difficult not to think him a fine fellow.

Warlock - Opening

PREFATORY NOTE

This book is a novel. The town of Warlock and the territory in which it is located are fabrications. But any relation of the characters to real persons, living or dead, is not always coincidental, for many are composites of figures who live still on a frontier between history and legend.
The fabric of the story, too, is made up of actual events interwoven with invented ones; by combining what did happen with what might have happened, I have tried to show what should have happened. Devotees of Western legend may consequently complain that I have used familiar elements to construct a fanciful design, and that I have rearranged or ignored accepted facts. So I will reiterate that this work is a novel. The pursuit of truth, not of facts, is the business of fiction.

1. Journals of Henry Holmes Goodpasture
August 25, 1880

DEPUTY CANNING had been Warlock's hope. During his regime we had come to think, in man's eternal optimism, that progress was being made toward at least some mild form of Law & Order in Warlock. Certainly he was by far the best of the motley flow of deputies who have manned our jail.

This book is for my son Tad

Wester Literature Series


Warlock by Oakley Hall was originally published by Viking Press in 1958. The 1996 University of Nevada Press edition is published by arrangement with the author.

The paper used in this book meets the requirements of American National Standards for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper for Printed Library, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Binding materials were selected for strength and durability.


University of Nevada Press, Reno, Nevada 895577 USA
Copyright 1958, 1986 by Oakley Hall
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America

New Writer

Oakley Hall - Warlock

`Round midnight

Symphony#5 In D Minor, Op. 47

is a work of genius and it never lays an easy welcome in your way. I think after listening to it quite a few times in last six months, I might have just found my way in.

Don Quixote - pg. 672

"... I contemplate her in the manner proper to a lady who possesses the qualities that can make her famous throughout the world, to wit: she is beautiful without blemish, serious without arrogance, amorous but modest, grateful because she is courteous, courteous because she is well-bred, and, finally, noble because of her lineage, for when coupled with good blood, beauty shines and excels to a greater degree of perfection than in beautiful women of humble birth."