Terra Nostra - pg. 316

"There are no avbsolute ideals, Senor, only secular prizes for a life of action."

Terra Nostra - pg. 310

"I know well these dangers; they are the menace of a too-enlightened soul; they lurk about me here, in this chamber, in these galleries, in this chapel; I know them all too well, Guzman; they are the dangers of the man who possesses both wisdom and power, irreconcilable gifts; I wish I were a brute like my murdering and warring ancestors who lie outside there in my crypt and chapel; to exercise power unaware; what relief; Guzman, what profound peace, if only it could be so; the accumulation of time has added knowledge, doubt, skepticism, and the weakness of tolerance to the original deposit of power; that is the danger, can you not realize it?; I exorcise that danger with words, penitence, reason, and delirium; with sins, to the end of being pardoned ..."

Terra Nostra - pg. 291

La Senora, again transformed into a bat, flew several times from the crypts to her bedchamber, carrying each time in her mutilated phalanges a bone and an ear, a nose and an eye, a tongue and an arm, until from the parts stolen from the tombs she had formed upon the bed an entire figure of a man.

Terra Nostra - pg. 260

"Senora: we are not alone. We are not the only ones."

Terra Nostra - pg. 257

.... the time of one man never coincides perfectly with that of other men; we are separated not only by years but by the unsynchronized and unique rhythm of our lives, my precious Inesilla, my beloved Ines; to live is to be different, only death is identical, only death are we identical;...

Terra Nostra - pg. 253

Brother Julian remembered his lost friend, the Chronicler; he would have liked at this moment to say to him: "Let others write the history of events that are apparent: the battles and the treaties, the hereditary conflicts, the amassing and dispersion of authority, the struggles among the estates, the territorial ambition that continues to link us to animality; you, the friend of fables, you must write the history of the passions, without which the history of money, labor, and power is incomprehensible."

To Do List

• Chapter 5 - Draft Revision
• Terra Nostra
  

To Do List

• Follow-up Charlotte (done)
• Chapter 4 revised draft
  
• Follow up Fall Schedule (done)
• Terra Nostra
  

To Do List

• ATM Machine
• Teaching Demo
• Conclusion
  

2666

Terra Nostra - pg. 233

One night, he thought, a single night, perhaps the last night. He was writing rapidly, the fever of his imagination adding to that of his body, made seasick by the dancing candle stub suspended before his eyes, its wax dripping upon the wrinkled parchment: a soul of wax, that I am, a soul of wax on which the continual motion of the world is imprinted, idea after idea. For the only thing that does not change is change itself, and not, as my most exalted Senores would have it, the stability that so consoles them on a medallion, in a sonnet or a palace, allowing them to believe that, everything considered, the world will end wit them, that the world does not move, that the world will respect what is, without concern for what might be.

To Do List

• Conclusion Revision
• Terra Nostra

To Do List

• Conclusion proofread
• Calling Enterprise
• Emailing the topic
• Making teaching slides
• Terra Nostra
  

Terra Nostra - pg. 195

"Quiet, Guzman, let me delight in this my hour of power by edging toward heresy, both punishable and unpunishable; punishable because it destroys a certain order of the Faith, that which through the chance and accidents of politics according to St. Paul, a persistently subtle coalescence of compromise and intransigence, has triumphed; unpunishable, truly, because heresy collects and recalls all the rich and varied spiritual impulses of our Faith, the faith that it never denies, but on the contrary multiplies, its magnificent opportunities to be and to convince. Pelagius, the conquered, is as much a Christian as Augustine, the conqueror: Origen, the castrated debtor, as much a Christian as Thomas Aquinas, the seraphic creditor. And if the heretical theses had triumphed, today's saints would be heretics and the heretics the saints, and none, because of it, less Christian. ..."

Terra Nostra - pg. 192

"Write, Guzman; the last act of the creation was simply that, the last, not the culminating act, but an act of carelessness, of tedium, of lack of imagination; is it conceivable that the Father, being omnipotent, would have directly created this odious mockery we men are? If it were so, He would not be God, or He would be the most cruel of gods ... or the most stupid. So realize that since it is we, and not God, who are the ones to give God a name, we who write His name, our sinful pride makes us believe and repeat that God created us in His image and likeness. Understand, Guzman, what I wish is to purify totally the essence of God by freeing the Father Creator from the supreme sin, the creation of men; we cannot be His work, we cannot, no ... Allow me to free God from the supreme sin that we attribute to Him: the creation of man."

Epiphany#34

When a person doesn't talk as opposed to ignore someone, the silence brings truth to their conversation.

Terra Nostra - pg. 157

... and the Christ was laughing, a sovereign laughter that resounded above all the doubts, all the desires, all the anger, all the terror, and all the humiliations of the Liege frozen like a statue, looking almost like another of the thirty sepulchers in this crypt, while the figures in the painting rotated, showing an infinite variety of forms.

Carlos Fuentes

Carlos Fuentes gave me company and saved me today.

Terra Nostra - pg. 140

Here am I, he said to himself (to him), master of your sleep, master of your unconscious body, even if only to see you in sleep as you can never see yourself. If the value of a man is determined by the price promised for his murder, you, Sire, are of no value: no one would pay me to kill you. If I wish to murder you, it must be done without spilling a single drop of your blood or collecting a single maravedi. But you, if you knew my desire, how much would you pay for my death, Sire? And so our roles are reversed, for although you are everything, no one would give me anything for your death; whereas I am nothing, but for my death, to avoid your own, you would give everything.

Terra Nostra - pg. 139

He turned from the third man and lay down - he, the dreamer, the second man, the actual Senor, the prisoner of the profound sleep induced by Guzman's potions - face down among the rocks; he opened his arms in a cross and begged forgiveness; but his dominion over measurable time had ended; he knew he would remain there forever, prostrate, mouth agape, breathing uselessly, prisoner of his palace of shattered rocks, until the swallows built their nests in his open palms, until the falcons and eagles, in a false and unbelievable spirit of love for the species, no longer dived to strike: he, too, would be an eagle - a conquered eagle, an eagle of stone. "One wolf does not bite another." El Senor murmured in the prayer in his dream; he did not doubt the dark instinct of the relationships which in this jail of rapacious birds led him to think of other, of vulpine threats. Eagle and wolf, he murmured, wolf and lamb, swallow and eagle, spiritual lover and libertine, devout Christian and bloodthirsty criminal, punctilious student of the truth and unscrupulous manipulator of the lie, I am but one of you: a Spanish gentleman.

To Do List

• Last Chapter Revision
• Philly., Baltimore Area College List
  

Terra Nostra - pg. 123

You are thinking Divinity before Creation. You see a solitary transparency surrounded by the black rays of that temptation to create: God imagines Adam, then declares himself insufficient. Unlike the sickly fire in your chimney, your brain is aflame, you imagine a piece of wood that would burn forever once it was lighted. Yes, that would be the material gift of grace, the practical equivalent to your divinity; then grace and creation would be one, and their name would be knowledge. Then, surely, master of gnosis, you would be God and God would be unnecessary since you could yourself convoke a new order, as God, unique, arrogant (and dangerously saddened to know He was insufficient, compelled), once did.

Terra Nostra - pg. 116

"But this." the student Ludovico intervened, "would presuppose a world without God, since in the world you have each imagined, a world without power or money, with no prohibitions, with no pain or death, each man would be God, and God therefore would not be possible. He would be a lie, because His attributes would be those of every man, woman, and child: grace, immortality, and supreme good. Heaven on earth, my friend monk? Earth without God, then, since God's proud and secret place is a heaven without earth."

Terra Nostra - pg. 105

"...But time is always a disappointment; foreseen, it promises
us only the certainty of death; recaptured, it makes a mockery of
freedom."

Terra Nostra - pg. 74

"It is sad that you will not live as long as I, senor caballero; a great pity that you cannot penetrate my dreams and see me as I see myself, eternally prostrated at the foot of tombs, eternally present at the death of Kings, insanely wandering through the galleries of palaces yet to be constructed, mad, yes, and drunk with grief before a loss that only the combination of rank and madness can support. I see myself, dream of myself, touch myself, senor caballero, wandering from century to century, from castle to castle, from crypt to crypt, mother of all Kings, wife of all Kings, surviving all, finally shut up in a castle in the midst of rain and misty grasslands, mourning another death befallen in sunny lands, the death of another Prince of our degenerate blood; I see myself dry and stopped, tiny and tremulous as a sparrow, dressed like an ancient doll, in a loose gown of torn and yellowed lace, toothless, whispering into indifferent ears: 'Do not forget the last Prince, and may God grant us a sad but not odious memory ...'

Destroyer: Mercy (We Had the Right)

"Mercy..."
is the word we tore from the Book of Languages.
"Mercy..."
One possible display of necessary changes.
Too bad we couldn't speak
about our right to be weak
back when we had the right.
We had the right.

Revolutions, do your thing.
Is the Great Matter-of-Fact still being true for you?
Revolutions won't defend us
from a life of love and a country madness
native to the country I'm thinking of.

Your love of shit knows no bounds!
Trust me this spells
the premature end of us!

Seize the sun.
I assume we are done with it.
This natural living will do you in...
The Nature of Giving means
I won't owe you anything,
and you won't owe me anything.
You won't owe me anything.

"Mercy..."
is the word we tore from the Book of Languages.
Too bad it went unspoken;
our beloved right to be broken...

Back when we had the right.
We had the right.
We had the right systems.
We had the right.

Cosmos - Closing

I went back to Warsaw and my parents - warfare with my father was resumed - and to other things, problems, difficulties and complications. Today we had chicken and rice for lunch.

Cosmos - pg. 157

I looked all round. What a spectacle. Mountains projecting themselves blindly into the expanse of the sky, on which centaurs, swans, ships, lions with shining manes, were navigating and below a ballet of hills and woods enveloped in tremulous whiteness. Oh, the moon, a dead sphere shining with borrowed light; its second-hand, weakened, nocturnal glow was as contaminating and poisonous as an illness. And the constellations were unreal, artificial, imposed; they were the obsessions of the luminous sky.

Cosmos - pg. 135

All it had left behind was a solar void, a kind of sunny emptiness exposed by the tense brilliance coming from behind a mountain as from a hidden source and inflaming the lilac sky that was now shining as if for itself and was no longer in communication with the earth.

Ignatyevo Forest

The last leaves' embers in total immolation
Rise into the sky; this whole forest
Seethes with irritation, just as we did
That last year we lived together.

The path you take's reflected in our tear-filled eyes,
As bushes are reflected in the murky flood-lands.
Don't be difficult, don't touch, don't threaten,
Don't offend the forest silence by the Volga.

You can hear the old life breathing:
Clumps of mushrooms growing in damp grass -
Though gnawed to the very core by slugs,
They still inflame the skin.

All our past is like a threat -
Look, I'm coming, watch, I'll kill you!
The sky shivers and holds a maple, like a rose, -
May it burn still stronger - right into your eyes.

Cosmos - pg. 112

My throat contracted. What was I to call what was happening to me? Was it a return to the interior? A return to my own horribleness, my own dirt, my crime, my imprisonment in myself, my self-condemnation?

Cosmos - pg. 98

We turned a corner, and came to towering walls and pinnacles, contorted piles of rock and deep chasms, peaceful rounded eminences, summits or peaks, craggy crests and vertical precipices to which the bushes clung, then rocks on heights and below them meadows descending into silence, an incomprehensible, motionless, universal silence, such a powerful silence that the noise of our minute, advancing carriage seemed to exist quite apart from it. This landscape continued for sometime, and then a new element imposed itself, a nude or chaotic or shining, sometimes heroic, element, made up of chasms and abysses, solid rock, variations on the theme of overhanging cliffs, ascending and descending rhythms of trees and vegetation, wounds and scars and landslides; idylls floated towards us, sometimes soft and gentle and sometimes hard and crystalline. There were all sorts of different things - marvelous distances, enchanting convolutions, space captured and stretched, aggressive or yielding space, space twisting or bending, striking up or down. Gigantic, motionless movement.

Cosmos - pg. 96

(though at the same time I coolly noted through half-closed eyes the curious fact that, though the sparrow was receding, its existence was by no means undermined by the process of recession, it was merely receding, and that was all).

Cosmos - pg. 89

It was still hanging, just as it had been when Fuchs and I found it. I examined the little dried-up ball, which was becoming less and less like a sparrow every day. Strange, I wanted to laugh, but better not. But I didn't really know what I wanted to do, because after all I had not come here only to look at it. I could not think what the right thing to do was, perhaps I ought to greet it with an appropriate gesture, or say something, but no, better not, that would be exaggerating, going too far .... How dappled with sunshine the black earth was. And look at that worm there. The round trunk of a pine-tree. If I came here bringing my hanging of the cat with me, it's certainly no trivial matter, but something I have done to myself. Amen, amen, amen. The edges of the leaves were curling, that was the effect of the heat. Who had dropped that old tin here, and what was inside it? Oh, ants, of course, I hadn't noticed them. Oh, that's enough, let's be off. What a good thing you've associated your hanging of the sparrow, that has made something quite different of it. Why different? Don't ask. Let's be off. What's that bit of paper over there?

Cosmos - pg. 34

It was nearly five o'clock. The gravel lay hot in the sun-shine and the grass had dried up round the young trees, which cast no shadow. Overhead great white clouds drifted in the pitiless blue. The house looked at me through its two rows of windows on the ground floor, and the glass glittered in the sun.

Films

THE GREAT ECSTASY OF WOODCARVER STEINER/HOW MUCH WOOD COULD A WOODCHUCK CHUCK?/LA SOUFRIERE by werner herzog (last i checked, there was a dvd with these three shorts on it)
THE GRAND ILLUSION by jean renoir
PAPER MOON by peter bogdanovich
TEOREMA by pier paolo pasolini
ALMANAC OF FALL by bela tarr
HOOP DREAMS by steve james
HIGH SCHOOL by frederick wiseman
LAND OF SILENCE AND DARKNESS by werner herzog
THE FALLS/THE SHORT FILMS OF PETER GREENAWAY by peter greenaway (2-disc set, all the shorts are worth it, esp. A WALK THROUGH H)
IF..../O LUCKY MAN!/BRITANNIA HOSPITAL by lindsay anderson (the mick travis trilogy)
THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE by krzysztof kieslowski
MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER by robert altman
SHERMAN'S MARCH by ross mcelwee
BALLAD OF A SOLDIER by grigori chukhrai
KNIFE IN THE WATER by roman polanski (you may have seen it, but i say this because the dvd includes a number of pretty fantastic shorts)
THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET by jan kadar and elmar klos
RICHARD PRYOR LIVE IN CONCERT by jeff margolis
A ZED AND TWO NOUGHTS by peter greenaway
THE DEATH OF A BUREAUCRAT by tomas gutierrez alea
GATES OF HEAVEN/VERNON, FLORIDA/THE THIN BLUE LINE by errol morris (3-disc set)
FOX AND HIS FRIENDS by rainer werner fassbinder
SAFE by todd haynes
BRIEF ENCOUNTER by david lean
STALKER by andrei tarkovsky
LIQUID SKY by slava tsukerman
LISZTOMANIA by ken russell
THE HAPPINESS OF THE KATAKURIS by takashi miike
TETSUO: THE IRONMAN by shinya tsukamoto
FATA MORGANA/LESSONS OF DARKNESS by werner herzog (should be on the same disc)
THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by john schlesinger
L'ARGENT by robert bresson
THE SEVENTH CONTINENT by michael haneke
TAPEHEADS by bill fishman
SHADOWS OF OUR FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS by sergei parajanov
THE BABY OF MACON by peter greenaway
MATEWAN by john sayles
BEST BOY by ira wohl
COTTON COMES TO HARLEM by ossie davis
SEVEN BEAUTIES by lina wertmuller
FALLEN ANGELS by wong kar-wai
THE NINTH CONFIGURATION by william peter blatty
JULIEN DONKEY-BOY by harmony korine
DOG STAR MAN by stan brakhage (just rent the criterion set and watch it all. i like EYE MYTH and BLACK ICE and THE DELICACIES OF MOLTEN HORROR SYNAPSE in particular. oh, and MOTHLIGHT of course)
NASHVILLE by robert altman
TITICUT FOLLIES by frederick wiseman
THE HOLY MOUNTAIN by alejandro jodorowsky
ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE by james william guercio
BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA by sam peckinpah
NOSTALGHIA by andrei tarkovsky
LA JETEE/SANS SOLEIL by chris marker
A BOY AND HIS DOG by l.q. jones
GRAY'S ANATOMY by steven soderbergh
LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD by alain resnais
SHAME by ingmar bergman
BLOOD OF A POET/ORPHEUS/TESTAMENT TO ORPHEUS by jean cocteau
AU HASARD BALTHAZAR by robert bresson
PUTNEY SWOPE by robert downey, sr.
ON THE SILVER GLOBE by andrzej zulawski
UNDERGROUND by emir kusturica
FIREWORKS by takeshi kitano
SWEET MOVIE by dusan makavajev
SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS by elia kazan
WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? by mike nichols
NAKED by mike leigh
LANDSCAPE IN THE MIST by theo angelopoulos
SWEET SIXTEEN by ken loach
SATYRICON by federico fellini
LOVE AND ANARCHY by lina wertmuller
THE ELEMENT OF CRIME by lars von trier
THE OUTSIDER by bela tarr

Cosmos - pg. 77

She was lying. No, she was not. It was both truth and falsehood. Truth because it accorded with the facts, falsehood because the significance of what she said - as I already knew - depended not on its truth but on the fact that it came from her, like the look in her eyes or her perfume.

Cosmos - pg. 12

We waited on the top step, my head was still buzzing with the journey, the clatter of the train, the events of the day before, the crowds, the fumes, the din. The noise in my head was deafening. I was startled by a strange deformity in the decent, domesticated, blue eyed face of the woman who opened the door. Her mouth seemed to be excessively prolonged to one side, though only to an infinitesimal extent, perhaps about a millimetre, but when she spoke this imparted a darting or gliding, almost reptilian, motion to her upper lip. There was a repellent coldness, like that of a frog or snake, about those lateral movements of her mouth, but in spite of that the woman warmed and excited m, for there was a kind of obscure transition leading straight to her bed, to gliding, creeping sin. Also her voice surprised me. I don't know what I expected to come from that mouth of hers, but the voice with which she spoke was that of the ordinary, stoutish, middle-aged, domestic servant that she was. Next I heard it from inside the house.

Cosmos - Opening

I
BUT let me tell you about another, even more curious adventure.

English translation copyright 1967
by MacGibbon & Kee Limited

All Rights Reserved

First published in 1965 in Polish by the Intytut
Literati (Kultura), Paris, France, copyright 1965
by Witold Gombrowicz

First Printing

Manufactured in the United States of America


WITOLD
GOMBROWICZ / COSMOS

English version by
ERIC MOSBACHER

Grove Press, Inc. / New York

Terra Nostra - pg. 70

You believe that time always advances. That all is future. You want a future; you cannot imagine yourself without it. You do not want to provide any opportunity to those of us who require that time disintegrate and then retrace its steps until it come to the privileged moment of love and there, only there, stop forever.

Terra Notra - pg. 58

WHO ARE YOU?

Weary waves caress your bare feet. Gulls skim across the water and you can believe it is their tranquilizing chatter that awakens you. You can also imagine that the warmth of the sand where you lie is that of your own body, that it had awaited you, was held for you alone: the darkest convolution and the most recent wound in your consciousness tell you you have been here before. You touch your burning throat and raise your head from the sand.

Terra Nostra - pg. 52

I closed my eyes and remembered similar profanations in the past; I imagined that this monstrous din and nauseating stench might have accompanied earlier scenes: the French crusaders in Hagia Sophia, where they had sat a whore upon the throne of the Patriarch and drunk from the sacred ciboria, all the while singing obscene rondelets; and I recalled the taking of the temple of Jerusalem by Christian horsemen who rode through the sacred nave of blood up to their knees; but that was the blood of infidels, Bocanegra.

Arcadia

LADY CROOM: Do not dabble in paradox, Edward, it puts you in danger of a fortuitous wit. Thomasina, wait in your bedroom.

Terra Nostra - pg. 29

"...Now you must explain the things I don't understand. Why has the city changed so? What do the lights without fire mean? The carts without oxen? The women's painted faces? The voices without mouths? The Books of Hours pasted to the walls? The pictures that move? The empty clothelines hanging from house to house? The cages that rise and descend with no birds inside them? The smoke in the streets rising from Hell? The food warmed without fire, and snow stored in boxes? Come, take me in your arms again and tell me all these things."

Deatroyer: On the back of the vulture, I'll go

I memorized the moves of a great culture.
It gave way to the vulture and me.
So, I decided to be through with the assassins and the kids,
and kill for the thrill of silencing.

Yes, throw yourselves away,
don't save yourselves.
Throw yourselves away,
don't save yourselves.

Father tried to find her,
but she's not there.
Guess I lost those tracks in the City of Despair.
And, winding round the fact that things fall apart,
have a heart sister!
Don't you know you started to?

Yes, throw yourselves away,
don't save yourselves.
Throw yourselves away,
don't save yourselves.

In a theater of impatience,
records cause culture
as records break records.
On the back of the vulture,
I'll go to the heart of the sun.
We have set the controls for one

Shhh...

Just like days of old,
bad horses still get sold.
Mistakes get made, I mean we blaspheme.
Like mad eagles who think they've made the same one's extinct,
girl, you've got another thing
coming.

So, throw yourselves away,
don't save yourselves.
Throw yourselves away,
don't save yourselves.

In a theater of impatience,
records cause culture
as records break records.
On the back of the vulture,
I'll go to the heart of the sun.
We have set the controls for one.
I'll go to the heart of the sun.
We have set the controls for one.

Lucknow: Memories of a City -pg. 119

The Imam's trials and tribulations inspired faith in a universal nemesis ensuring justice for oppressed souls. In popular belief he was Ram of Ayodhya carrying his crusade into the wilderness; his brother Abbas personified Lakshman, devoted, energetic and brave; his sister Zainab and wife Um-i-Kulsoom were cast in the image of Sita, caring, dutiful and spirited. Yazid, the Umayyad ruler and Hussains's persecutor, was Ravan, greedy, corrupt, ambitious, cruel and ruthless.