I sat down again with the photo and looked it over. Dark hair parted loosely in the middle and drawn back loosely over a solid piece of forehead. A wide cool go-to-hell mouth with very kissable lips. Nice nose, not too small, not too large. Good bone all over the face. The expression of the face lacked something. Once the something might have been called breeding, but these days I didn't know what to call it. The face looked too wise and too guarded for its age. Too many passes had been made at it and it had grown a little too smart in dodging them. And behind this expression of wiseness there was the look of simplicity of the little girl whho still believes in Santa Claus.
Monday, September 29, 2008
The High Window - pg. 17
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Terra Nostra - pg. 732
In your imagination were superimposed other smoky images that supplanted those flashing across the screens of this walnut and brocade office in this palace of tezontle and granite that had been erected on the very site of the temple of Huitzilopochtli, the bloody hummingbird magus, and in the same plaza that had served as the seat of Aztec power: a vast Catholic cathedral erected upon the ruins of the walls of serpents, the houses of the Spanish conquistadors built on the site of the wall of skulls, a municipal palace whose foundations were laid upon the conquered palace of Moctezuma with its courtyards of birds and beasts, its chambers of albinos, hunchbacks, and dwarfs, and its rooms lined with silver and gold: the images of a tenacious struggle against all fatalities, in spite of all their defeats. Your poor people; without moving from where you stood you could re-create here on those blinking screens and outside, beyond the thick curtains of the office, on the enormous plaza of broken stone established over the slime of the dead lagoon, all the struggles against the victories of the powerful, against the fatalisms imposed upon Mexico in the name of all historic and gegraphic and spiritual destinies; television screen and plaza: peoples subjected to the power of Tenochtitlan, torn from their burning coastal lands, their fertile tropical valleys, from poor pasturing plains, from high, cold forests, to nourish the insatiable gaping jaws of Aztec theocracy, its terrible fiestas of a dying sun and the war of the flowers; screen and plaza: an invinicible dream, alive in the eyes of the slaves, the good founding god, the Plumed Serpent, will return from the East, he will restore the Golden Age of peace, labor, and brotherood; screen and plaza: from the houses that walk upon the water on the day predicted for the return of Quetzalcoatl descended the masked gods on horseback, carrying fire in their fingernails and ashes between their teeth, to impose a new tyranny in the name of Christ, a God bathed in blood, a people branded like cattle, slaves of the large estates, prioners chained in the depths of a gold mine that fed the transitory grandeur of Spain, in the end, beggars both conqueror and conquered, the haughty conquistador and the fallen Prince; screen and plaza: a tenacious dream, executioner and victim, Spanish and Indian, white and copper, a new people, a brown race, we shall preserve what our own fathers attempted to destroy, an orphan people of an unknown father and a blemished mother, sons of La Chingada, the queen of all bitches, we shall sav e the best of two worlds, a truly new world, New Spain, the Christian Saviour redeemed by the sins of history, the Plumed Serpent liberated by the distance of the legend, a people of mixed blood, founders of a new, free community; the father forgiven, the mother purified; screen and plaza: a green, white, and red flag, a victorious people vanquished by their liberators, a republic of rapacious Creoles, greedy leaders, fattened clergy, plumed tricorns, parading cavalry, shining swords, useless laws, proclamations, and speeches; an avalanche of empty words and cardboard medals buries the same ragged, enslaved people eternally bound to peonage, subjected to tazes, given in sacrifice; screen and plaza: foreign flags, the Stars and Stripes, the Napolenoic tricolor, the two-headed Austrian eagle, the crowned Mexican eagle, a land invaded, humiliated, mutilated; screen and plaza: an invincible dream, to give one;s life to vanquish death, there is no materiel with which to combat the Yankees in Churubusco and Chapultepec, the French burn all the villages and hang all their inhabitants, a dark, tenacious Indian, fearsome because he possesses all dreams and nightmares of a people, confronting a blond and dubious prince, fearful because he possesses all the ills and illusions of a dynasty; screen and plaza: the victorious people once again vanquished, their flags fallen, the barefoot soldier returns to the great estates, the wounded soldiers to the sugar-cane mill, the fleeing Indian to be stripped of his property, to extermination; oppressors from within replace those from without ; pkaza and screen: plumed hats, gold galloon, and the waltz, the ever present dictatos seated on a gunpowder throne before a theater backdrop; the learned despot and his court of aged Comtian Positivists, rich landowners, and pomaded generals; plaza and screen: the dream more stringent than the powder, the facade falls under machine-gun fire, bayonets rip the curtain and men in wide sombreros with cartridge belts strapped across their chests appear from behind it, the burning eyes of Morelos, the harsh voices of Sonors, the callused hands of Durango, the dusty feet of Chihuahua, the broken fingernails of Yucatan, a shout breaks one mask, a song the next, a laugh shatters a third mask that hid our true face behind the other two, on a bullet-pocked adobe wall appears the authentic face, bare, previous to all histories because it has been dreaming through the centuries, waiting for the time of its history: flesh indistinguishable from bone, inseparable, grimace from smile; tender fortitude, cruel compassion, deadly friendship, immediate life, all my times are one, my past, right now, my future, right now, my present, right now, not indolence, not nostalgia, not illusion, not fatality: I am the people of all histories, and I insist only -- with force, tenderness, cruelty, compassion, brotherhood, life and death -- that everything happen instantly, today:: my history, neither yesterday nor tomorrow: I want today to be my eternal time, today, today, today, today I want love and the fiesta, solitude and communion, Paraidse and Hell, life and death,, today, not another mask accept me as I am, my wound inseparable from my scar, my weeping from my laughter, my flower from my knife; screen and plaza: no one has waited so long, on one has dreamed so long, no one has so struggled against the fatality, the passivity, the ignorance other have invoked a to condemn him, as this supernatural people who a long time ago shold have died of the natural causes of injustice and the lies and scorn oppressors have heaped upon the wounded body of Mexico; screen and plaza: all for this?, you ask yourself, so many millenia of struggle and suffering and rejecting oppression, so many centuries of invincible defeat, a people risen time and time again from its own ashes, only to end like this: the same ritual extermination of their origins, the same colonial suppression of their beginnings, the happy lie at the end ... again?
Terra Nostra - pg. 727
"...No, in the end we are all the children of Mexico, because only by hatred can one measure of its love. Bells are tolling on the hill. Can you hear them, Maxl? Can you understand they are attempting to overcome the roar of the Mexican sun, the weeping of guns, the sighs of prayers, and the trembling of that dry land? Give me back the body of my beloved."
Terra Nostra - pg. 726
"We have left our homes and we must pay the price of such prodigious behavior. Exile is marvelous homage to our origins."
Terra Nostra - pg. 717
"The color of each field indicates the kind of a bird that can be hunted there. In addition, these are the actual feathers of the birds that inhabit each sector of the jungle. The quetzal, the hummingbird, the macaw, the golden pheasant, the wild duck, and the heron. Each area is irregular, do you feel it?, except for the center. That is regular; it has a perfect circumference. That is the forbidden part of the jungle. There are no feathers there;no one can derive sustenance there; there nothing can be haunted and killed to satisfy the hunger of the body; there dwell the masters of words, signs, and enchantments. Their kingdom is the field of dead spiders that I join with glue to the object you call cloth. And the limits of the cloth are those of the known world. One can go no farther. But one would like to go further. The tips of the arrows all point outward. Toward the unknown world. They are a limit; they are also invitation. The frontier between the hearth and the marvelous. This is what the Indian woman told me in her tongue as she handed me this offering the first time I came to this land."
Terra Nostra - pg. 715
She throws her shawl over her shoulders, feigning sudden cold; a shudder ascends to her ears; translucent porcelain. Then she laughs as if she were imitating herself; she repeats the boisterous laughter of a lost occasion, but now the laugh is not crystalline or audacious as it doubtlessly was once, in the time she is attempting to recover. What doubtlessly was once, in the time she is attempting to recover. What you hear now is a parody of another laugh, chained and broken: the difference between the fullness of a wave and the fragility of glass. Then, only for an instant, you imagine that the Old Woman's voice is for you what the sound of the drum is for her.
The High Window - pg. 5
I went in. The room beyond was large and square and sunken and cool and had the restful atmosphere of a funeral chapel and something the same smell. Tapestry on the blank roughened stucoo walls, iron grilles imitating balconies outside high side windows, heavy carved chairs with plush seats and tapestry backs and tarnished gilt tassels hanging down their sides. At the back a stained-glass window about the size of a tennis court. Curtained french doors underneath it. An old musty, fusty, narrow-minded, clean and bitter room. It didn't look as if anybody ever sat in it or would ever want to. Marble-topped tables with crooked legs, gilt clocks, pieces of small statuary in two colors of marble. A lot of junk that would take a week to dust. A lot of money, and all wasted. Thirty years before, in the wealthy close-mouthed provincial town Pasadena, then was, it must have seemed like quite a room.
The High Window - Opening
The house was on Dresden Avenue in the Oak Noll section of Pasadena, a big solid cool-looking house with burgundy brick walls, a terra cotta tile roof, and a white stone trim. The front windows were leaded downstairs. Upstairs windows were of the cottage type and had a lot of rococo imitation stonework trimming around them.
Copyright 1942 by Raymond Chandler
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passage in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. Manufactured in the United States of America. Published simultaneously in Canada by The Ryerson Press.FIRST EDITION
the high window
the high window
The Simple Art of Murder
There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
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 things go, just to let things slip away. Don't ask me how I know, I just do. Night's surgeon dons his robes to take apart a fellow amateur. Oh, I've heard it once said that one gives what one gets. Well, I didn't go out into the world just to be stung by a rich man's hornets. And who amongst us has left these things undone? 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... bearing 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've got Street Despair carved into my heart. I've got Street Despair carved into my heart! My dear, didn't you hear, a chorus is a thing that bears repeating? And 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 your last encore you sawed 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: 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. Hey, are they still serving that piss? Shooting Rockets... 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...
Monday, September 22, 2008
Anton Rubinstein
"Russians call me German, Germans call me Russian, Jews call me a Christian, Christians a Jew. Pianists call me a composer, composers call me a pianist. The classicists think me a futurist, and the futurists call me a reactionary. My conclusion is that I am neither fish nor fowl – a pitiful individual”
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Terra Nostra - pg. 710
History was a gigantic puzzle; it had left only a few broken pieces in El Senor's transparent hands. He closed his eyes and attempted to determine how the trinitarian heresies that broke the primary unity of Christianity, the secrets recounted here in this very bedchamber by Ludovico, fitted with the key pieces of Tiberius's curse: the Cabala, the Zohar, the Sephirot, the magic number of three, and he imagined that, independent of the will of Tiberius, an invisible plot, a stratagem woven of sand and water, was being delineated throughout the confines of the Mediterraneum; a shared destiny, incarnate always in three persons, three movements, three stages, it could be read on the sheer rock faces of the island of Capri, in the meaningless meeting of the Nile and the hunger-filled alleys of Alexandria, in the spectral community of the Citizens of Heaven in he Palestine desert, in the caves and the palace on the Adriaic coast, in the illusory Venetian Theater of Memory, in this new scar of the Hebrew, Latin, and Arabic world represented by his own palace, monastery, and sepulcher, what secret thought joined the words and acts of Tiberius Caesar, the phantom of Agrippa Postumus, and the rebel slave Clemens; the invisible elect of the desert, the one-eyed magus of the Porta Argentea, and the waves of the heretics Felipe had combated in the overcast lands of Flanders?; what ruling idea inspired the construction of these edifices, at once solid and spectral, the palace of Diocletian, the Theater of Memory of Valerio Camillo, the Spanish necropolis of the King Felipe?; what identical prophecies were murmured by the voices of a Roman despot, an Egyptian fratricide, and a Greek magus?; what atrocious and ineradicable mark of the origin of humanity was signaled in those parallel histories separated by centuries and oceans, those of the two brothers and a sister - the benefactor, the murderer, and the incestuous woman - in the sands of the Egyptian river and in the jungles of the new world?; is that what the three youths marked by a cross on their backs and disfigured by hexadigitalism were enaacting in this palace: a further act of the representation of the beginning, a painful return to the memory of the first dawn, to the terrible acts of the founding of the city upon earth? Ariadne gave a thread to Perseus in the labyrinth: El Senor dreamed of a woman with tattooed lips, present in Alexandria and Spalato, absent in Capri, Palestine, and Venice, and again present here in Spain and in the Spanish domains beyond the seas - before they were conquered.
Brahms Piano Concerto No.1 in D. Minor
Attended a wonderful performance on last friday. To my overly amateurish tastes, it sounded a little edgy rawer than what I had come to expect from a Brahms piece. Looking forward to check out the Arthur Rubinstein interpretation.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
Terra Nostra - pg. 697
The slave Clemens, this very morning, was thrown from the heights of the cliffs into the sea, where a crew of sailors awaited his fall to beat him to death with oars and gaffs. I did not attend the spectacle; I am surfeited with blood; enough, enough, I feel nauseated ...
Terra Nostra - pg. 612
"My art is unsigned, Sire, and thus does not represent as affirmation of stupid individualism but an act of creation: in it matter and spirit are reconciled, and both not only live together but actually live. And before my act, they did not. You see magic in what is new, Senor. I see only what gives life to elusive spirit and inert matter: imagination. And imagination is what changes, not spirit or matter in themselves, rather the manner in what changes, not spirit or matter in themselves, rather the manner in which their union is imagined. My painting has already been here, in this chapel. It has been seen. It has seen. It is fitting now that it see and be seen in other places."
Terra Nostra - pg. 578
He laughed again, and struck his fist against his chest. "I shall declare that my reason has returned. I shall keep my secret. I shall accept that everything I have seen is a lie. I shall try to convince no one."
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Terra Nostra - pg. 578
He laughed again, and struck his fist against his chest. " I shall declare that my reason has returned. I shall keep my secret. I shall accept that everything I have seen is a lie. I shall try to convince no one."
Terra Nostra - pg. 577
THE FREE SPIRIT
From province to province they advanced, at a pace that others attributed to the assistance of the Devil; they devastated the lands, destroyed churches, and burned monasteries; at their head was a young, blond heresiarch, his hair bound into three crowning golden bands, his back bared to show the sign of the elect, his feet unshod so as to astound with his twelve toes, his face painted white to glow in the night - to some, the prophet of the human millennium; to others, the Antichrist; for some, a teacher telling of a land without hunger, without oppression, without prohibitions, without false gods or false popes or false kings; entire families joined with him, apostatized monks, wpmen disguised as men, highwaymen, prostitutes, ladies of great breeding who had renounced their wealth to find salvation in poverty but ho in truth were only seeking nights of pleasure with him, with the young heresiarch, here called Tanchelm, in other places, Eudes de l'Etoile, names that others gave gave him, Baldwin, Frederick, Charlemagne, he who had no name, accompanied always by two coffins and a bling beggar who on occasion spoke for him, he stirring up the multitudes of poor who followed after him, only the poor shall achieve the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of Heaven is here upon earth, seize it, each of you is Christ, Paradise is here, dissolve the monsteries, take the nuns for your women, set the monks to work, in truth I say to you: let the monks and nuns grown the vine and the wheat that sustains us, chop down the door of the rich man, and we will sup with him, persecute the clergy, let every priest hold us in such fear that he will hide his tonsure even if it is covered under cow's dung, march day and night, through all the land, from Louvain to Haarlem, from Bruges to St.-Quentin, from Ghent to Paris, though they slit our throats and throw us into the Seine, Paris is our goal, there where thought is pleasure and pleasure thought, the capital of the third age, the scene of the final battle, the last city, there where the persuasive Devil inculcated in a few wise men a perverse intelligence, Paris, fountain of all wisdom, let us march with our standards, and our candles burning in the l ight of day, we will flagellate ourselves in the streets, we shall make love in the open, the pain and the delight of the flesh,, hurry, we have but thirty-three and a half days to complete our crusade, that is the holy cipher for our processions, the number of the days of Christ upon the earth, but sufficient time to sweep away the corrupt Church of the Antichrist in Rome, there is no authority ours, our life, our experience, let us recognize nothing except that, follow me, I am but one of you, I am not the leader, do as I do, seduce women, they belong to each of us, weavers, needle sellers, rascals, beggars, Turlupins, the poorest of the poor, the same as I, nothing is mine, everything belongs to us aall, there is no sin, there was no Fall, take possession, with me, of the visible empire preparing for the end of the world, preached the young heresiarch to the accompaniment of the blng beggar;s flute, be free, the knowing man is in himself heaven and purgatory and hell, the man of free spirit does not know sin, take everything for yourself, nothing is sinful except what you imagine to be so, return with me and my blind father to the state of innocence, let us take off our clothes, take each other by the hand, kneel, swear, obediennce only to the free spirit, dissolve all other vows, matrimony, chastity, priesthood, God is free, therefore everything was created to be shared, freely, by all, everything thhe eye can see or desire, stretch out your hand and take, go into the inns, refuse to pay, beat him who would ask you for payment, be charitable, but if charity is deinied you, take it by force, women, food, money ... the hordes of Flanders, Brabant, Holland, Picardy, at their head the beggar kings, a youth with a cross upon his back, and a blind flautist: the end of the world ...
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Plats - Opening
The apartment blocks cycle past, the sun, diffused stucco dust in taupe haze, descend in a continuous track from the moment that dawn raced over this whole city, revealing unpainted crevices, reflected faces, evaporating damp reserves, sinking quickly, satisfied. She rotates north slightly, east on to Idaho, to tread back toward the dawn, but first toward the entropic dusk while the sun slides between her shoulderblades and she dives beneath the asphalt to meet day where the city sleeps, to illuminate the space between her sleeping body and her disintegrating character. Her hands cradle her eyes, apartment blocks cycle past and rise away from the road when she bows her head and rests her elbows on her knees to stare at nude stockings through chinks in her fingers, and she sinks.
From the Ground Publications
Monday, September 15, 2008
Almost Crimes -
You're like the missile kind
Little kingdoms in your chest
I told you we make it, it's all for another
(But on all that mess)
I told you we make it, its all for a more than now
This is how they wear their all
But we'd look better if we wed
I told you we'd make it, I'm all for another
(I bet bleeding comes down lightly)
I told you we'd make it, I'm up for another
(I bet mouths suggest)
Help piss love before you leave
Demonstrations lack caress
I wanted to stay there, I couldn't
(I fought it, naked boys dream so silent)
I know that it makes sense, but I got know way in here
(children sleep with dicks)
The Yukon keeps me up all night
Complications seize your best
I told you I want it, I know that from you
(I bet bleeding comes down lightly)
I waited, I waited, it's late night and she's waiting at home
(I bet mouths suggest)
We got love and hate it's the only way
I think it's almost crime
I think it's almost time
Sunday, September 14, 2008
DFW
DFW
it's about your face
in the red light: the traces
of last night - warmth,
a forgotten itch, sideways
and slick - it's sadness
really you wear
last night on your eyebrows
warming up to a
memory about a red dress
sighing in your mind
because it's forgotten already
but it's important to you
you try again you say
never the one to let it
rest in your hands
but to throw it all
in red-dawn, red eyes
sighs, mind races
towards forgotten places
and you decide to rest
in its wake under the stars
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
The New Novel
Here then is the charter of the New Novel as general supposition circulates it:
- The New Novel has codified the laws of the future novel.
- The New Novel has made a tabula rasa of the past.
- The New Novel seeks to eliminate man from the world
- The New Novel aims at a perfect objectivity.
- The New Novel, difficult to read, is addressed only to specialists.
something to happen
that it's not enough
when big glorious horrible yuks
get the morning drizzle
in your coffee and slurp
the world refulgent in blue
the brain-numbed, be very dumb
afraid of all the splendor
it creates as the word fucks
seeks out every hole
in your argument
neatly wrapped around
wishing a bit of luck
wearing that suit
head out the door
never to make the central promise
come back to haunt you
last night when you dreamt
about fishes in a sea of piss
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Terra Nostra - pg. 538
There is no word that is not laden with forgetfulness and memories, colored with illusions and failures; nevertheless, there is no word that is not the bearer of imminent renovation; each word we say simultaneously announces a word we do not know because we have forgotten it and a word we do not know because we desire it.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Terra Nostra - pg. 528
"This morning I was translating the Cabalist, ibn-Gabriol, and he says: 'Unity is not the root of totality, for Unity is but one form and totality is both form and matter; three is the unity of totality, that is to say that Unity represesnts form, and the number 2, matter.'"
Terra Nostra - pg. 520
And God wept, saying: "I am the Most Ancient of the ancients. There is no one who knew my youth."
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Terra Nostra - pg. 483
"Look at the sky: every star has its time."
"All those times live side by side, in the same sky."
"There is a different time."
"Will you learn to measure it?"
"All times live within a single dead space."
"There history ends."
Terra Nostra - pg. 477
"We are thee, we shall always be three. Life. Death. And the memory that blends them into a single flower of three petals."
"Let no one deceive you, ancient brother, newborn son. Freedom was the shore that man first trod. Paradise was the name of that freedom. Inch by inch, we lost it. Inch by inch, we shall regain it. Let no one deceive you, son, brother. You will never return to this shore. Never again will there be the absolute freedom we knew before the first death. But there will be freedom in spite of death. It can be named. And sung. And loved. And dreamed. And desired. Fight for it. You will be defeated. This is the victory I offer you in freedom's name."
Terra Nostra - pg. 477
"We are thee, we shall always be three. Life. Death. And the memory that blends them into a single flower of three petals."
"Let no one deceive you, ancient brother, newborn son. Freedom was the shore that man first trod. Paradise was the name of that freedom. Inch by inch, we lost it. Inch by inch, we shall regain it. Let no one deceive you, son, brother. You will never return to this shore. Never again will there be the absolute freedom we knew before the first death. But there will be freedom in spite of death. It can be named. And sung. And loved. And dreamed. And desired. Fight for it. You will be defeated. This is the victory I offer you in freedom's name."
Terra Nostra - pg. 475
"Never, my brother, my son, never. Your destiny is to be pursued. To struggle. To be defeated. To be reborn from your defeat. To return. To speak. To remind men of what they have forgotten. To reign for an instant. To be defeated again by the forces of the world. To flee. To return. To remember. An endless labor. The most painful of all labors. Freedom is the name of your task. One word represented by many men."
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Terra Nostra - pg. 468
My double laughed. "You are light and I am shadow. Your sons, men, were born of light. I, from the shadows, was unable to create. Night is nourished from increasing nothingness. You invented men in light and for the light. But even light needs repose, and my kingdom, that of night, shelters man's fatigue. Your sons could be no greater than the sun itself. They, like the sun, would have to sleep, and then I, the demon of dreams, would make them mine, each night, and each night I would cause them to doubt the goodness of their creator, and in the trembling of the night give form to fear, doubt envy, scorn, and greed, night after night, drop by drop, until I poisoned your sons, divided them, seduced them, made them choose between the temptation of the night and the habit of the day. You made a mistake, my poor brother. You made men free. You allowed them to choose. Who would not choose the delightful prohibitions of night over the insipid laws of day?"
Terra Nostra - pg. 463
She peeled off her gloves, I felt her bony, damp, claw-like hands caressing my cheeks, my neck, my chest ...
"Forever, young pilgrim, did you say forever?"
Terra Nostra - pg. 460
I held to my lips, Sire, the heavy cup of gold she offered me; I drank a thick, fermented, intoxicating liquid that was like swallowing fire from a hearth; no more turbid beverage exists, or one more crystalline: it was like drinking fragrant mud, it was like drinking ground crystal.
Destroyer: Death on the Festival Circuit
I mew and crow to fight my way through the snow.
Scratch the surface just to find a second surface.
I begged the merchants, "Please serve a purpose other than treason!"
There must be another reason to play these songs
best known for being bludgeoned into something to own.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Terra Nostra - pg. 454
It was I, the same semblance that was faithfully reproduced by the mirror I had so carefully guarded in my torn doublet. It was I, but as I had seen myself on the night of the phantom: dark, my eyes black, my hair lank and long and black as a horse's mane. It was my pursuer, the one called Smoking Mirror, the Lord of Sacrifices, the avenger, who on the day of creation lost his foot when it was torn from him by the contortions of a mother earth who was breaking apart into mountains, rivers, valleys, jungles, craters, and precipices.
Terra Nostra - pg. 452
But then a warm, fine drizzle began to fall that gradually extinguished the fires and the dust of the battered houses, and my fearful eyes were incapable of fixing on details; I wanted to absorb everything, to understand everything, but I was blinded by the plethora of sensations: I allowed myself to be guided by my companions, and all I knew was that as we entered the enormous city in the middle of the lake, we become lost in the labyrinths of of a market as vast as the city itself, for no matter where my bewildered feet led and no matter how far my confused eyes could see, we were completely surrounded by merchants, and a great chatter and confusion I heard among those selling gold and silver and precious stones and feathers and matles and embroidered cloths, and those who in this enormous fair were displaying the skins of ocelots and mountain lions and nutrias, and of jackals and deer, and of other predatory animals, badgers and lynx were importuning Heaven, and the male and female slaves brought there for sale, chained to tall stakes by collars about their necks, were staring at the ground, indifferent to any portents, and merchants were snuffing out with their hands the coals that had fallen upon the fragrant liquidambar tubes like those the old woman had offered me in the white hut at the foot of the rainbow, and upon the cochineal they offered for sale, and beneath the archways they were rapidly covering pottery of all kinds, from great earthen jars to little jugs, all exquisitely adorned in brilliant colors with little figures of ducks and deer and flowers; and there were casks filled with honey and molasses and other sweets, and wood: planks and braces and beams and blocks and benches and boats; and the salt and herb sellers spread hempen cloths over their merchandise; and the dealers in golden grains clasped their merchandise to their breasts, and the golden grains stored in the quills of the geese of this land spilled from the carelessly held containers; and equally frightened were the owners of dark brown-colored grains surely as precious as the gold, for I saw no one more assiduously protecting his property, little bags bursting with his stuff, similar to the beads of a precious rosary; and hurrying through this fair disrupted by the unexpected rain and waves and lightning and fire, in the distance we perceived - and only she stopped our hurried pace - a woman emerging from the haze who also seemed to be clothed in haze, for her rags were dingy white, and her step was hesitant and uncertain, and her weeping profound and lugubrious, and her face invisible behind the curtain of white hair, and her words were one long lament: "Uh, my sons! Oh, my sons! We are lost! Now we must travel far!, Oh, my sons! Where can I take you and hide you?"
Excerpt: Castellanos Moya Interview
MJC: When I was preparing to review Senselessness, I went back to Antigone—the novel’s epigraph is from Antigone—and one of the things that stayed with me this time was Antigone’s railing against her cursed fate. Against Oedipus, who’s the origin of all her troubles. So where does the curse begin, I remember wondering, for the indigenous people of Guatemala? My answer could have taken the fuku route, of course, but at that point I had already read your novel El arma en el hombre, and because of the circular fate of its protagonist, I was thinking of more recent origins. In El arma en el hombre, a soldier nicknamed Robocop is trained by the Americans to fight the guerrillas. Then, after the war is over, Robocop is demobilized and thrown on the street. Given his training, he seems to have no choice but to continue the violence as a criminal. At the end of the novel, after he razes through El Salvador, the Americans capture him and offer him a job as a DEA agent. So perhaps in some of your novels, I remember thinking, the curse of violence begins with the American interventions in Central America and then continues unabated?
HCM: What is the origin of the “curse of violence” for Oedipus, who kills his father without knowing that he is his father, marries his mother without knowing that she is his mother and unleashes the tragedy of his sons? The Gods, of course. There’s nothing one can do against fate, Sophocles tried to tell us. And what is the origin of the “curse of violence” in Latin America? The answer to this question is material for a book. I have no doubts that the politics of domination and plundering of the United States toward Latin America has played an important role in the recycling of violence, but it is not the only element nor do I think it is the historical origin of it. In the specific case of Robocop, my character in the El arma en el hombre, you do see a closing of a cycle: the killing machine created by the United States to fight against communism can later be used as a killing machine against drug trafficking. Power lacks moral or principles. It only has interests.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Terra Nostra - pg. 429
In vain was I born,
In vain I came to this world,
I suffer, but at least I am here,
I have been born upon earth.
Terra Nostra - pg. 426
"You who cleanse our sins and devour our filth, soiling yourself so that the world may be purified, cleanse our sins; here are the whores who were chosen from among humble families of conquered peoples to satisfy our impure desire; tear that desire from our breasts and allow us to do battle without anxiety, our only desire that of serving the gods and their incarnation upon earth, our Lord of the Great Voice. Into the indecent bodies of these women we have emptied our man's weakness and impurity so we may be strong and pure upon the field of battle. Take them. They have fulfilled their time on earth. They have served. But now they serve no purpose. We renounce the flesh to dedicate ourselves to war. Take them. We offer them to you, you who devour filth, on this day of the Smoking Mirror."
Terra Nostra - pg. 423
and when I heard that music I resigned myself; destinies meet in these great stone theaters of the new world; here, in the open air, definitive performances were held, here near the life-giving sun; the pyramids were hands of stone raised to touch the sun, aspiring fingers, mute prayers.
Terra Nostra - pg. 417
I pardoned, I say, Pedro's death. I told myself I would also pardon them mine. The intrusion of one white man in these lands was enough ... no, it was too much.
Terra Nostra - pg. 415
Instead of asking and wasting a question, I stated: "The sun rises every day."
Terra Nostra - pg. 414
I swam with the upsurging water, lessening now in force. The water did not overflow the top of the well, but leveled a few inches below its rim. My hands touched dry land, my fingers dug in, and I pulled myself up until I could see over the edge of the well. A red sun and a gray sky: these were the first things I saw. A sun the color of the blood, blazing in its own fire, bathed in the purple of its rebirth. It, as I, had just emerged. It edged upward in a metallic sky, a sky as flat as the chalky white ground where my nighttime executioners stood staring in amazement, watching me emerge from the well filled by the rushing waters at the very instant the sun was born anew.
Terra Nostra - pg. 408
Scarcely had the though passed my mind when all the perfumes and colors floated from the flowers and birds, fruit and dew, and formed an enormous rainbow before my eyes. At the slightest touch, the forest of ferns parted to open a path for me. The spider's thread led me to the foot of the rainbow, which was guarded by birds I had not seen before, like small peacocks but without their air of vanity: tame and beautiful birds with green feathers and long tails.
Terra Nostra - pg. 402
Warriors surround my prison. Again and again I think upon this singular irony. I, the man without memory, occupy the place of the Lord of Memory. I, the stranger arrived from the sea, am the founder. I, naked and dispossessed, am the young chieftain. I, the last of men, am the first.
Now my mirror will kill me. My fate will be to watch myself grow old and immobile in this fleeting reflection.
Terra Nostra - pg. 397
Everything the ancient had spoken until now seemed pure fantasy and legend until there words made me a participant in that fantasy and a prisoner of that legend: "What will you give us now?"
Monday, September 1, 2008
Terra Nostra - pg. 388
The old man pondered a moment and then said that all abundant things that chaotically proliferate or multiple decline; on the other hand, those things that rise toward oneness live again, and this is the difference between gods and men, for men believe that more is better, bit the gods know that less is better.
Terra Nostra - pg. 371
Troubled, I rose to my feet; my mortal reasoning was crumbling; it was inconceivable that any living being could be born in the land of death, or that the beasts of death could give birth to life in the ports of the Beyond, whether it be Paradise or Hell: such absurdity was equally foreign both to science and to legend.
Terra Nostra - pg. 355
He told me then how one must believe in that other land beyond the ocean. How when the sun sinks in the west every night, it is not devoured by the earth or miraculously reborn in the east at dawn, but has circled around the earth, which must be round like the sun and the moon, for his old eyes had never seen flat bodies in the heavens, only spheres, and our earth would not be the monstrous exception.
Terra Nostra - pg. 345
poor solitary and defeated Senora, she seems to be following the road of all our Queens: to be devoured by a Time with a body, a gullet, teeth, claws, scruffy hide, and hunger; they're opening a path for him now, Senor; he's guided by eyes that can see and by his own divining hands, Senor; here comes the flautist, no, no one knows where he came from, or when, or how, or why, only that the page deems him indispensable for the incomprehensible ceremony taking place upon the bed where our Senor has in the past been treated by Guzman for all his premature ills, and where ill, unmoving, he has been able to watch other ceremonies, divine ceremonies, ...
Terra Nostra - pg. 339
And I do not love her, a husband, a confessor, to God; no woman interests me if as I make love to her I do not stain another man's honor; no woman interests me if my love does not liberate her. I shall never love any woman forever, I love her only to make her a woman, and Ines is already a woman, Ines does not belong to El Senor, who deflowered her; El Senor is master only of this palace of death; I nes is the only one who loves me because she is already mistress of herself, and if my logic is correct I cannot love her, for then someone like myself would come to take her from me; I shall insult the honor of other men, nut no man shall insult mine, for I shall have none, no honor and no sentiments; and if a scrubbing girl, a novitiate, a Queen, or a Superior should bear my child it will not be mine, it will be the child of nothingness and I shall condemn it to nothingness; I shall devour my children, castrate them, stab them to death; the nourishment of the ordinary man, honor and fatherland, hearth and power, is forbidden me; I have no nourisshment butwomen and their offspring; I shall eat the cunt of the women and the heart of the children, and Don Juan will be free; he will sow disorder, he will inflict passion where passion seemed dead, he will break the chains of divine and human law; Don Juan will be free so long as a slave to law, power, hearth, honor, or fatherland exists upon this earth, and be captive only when the world is free ... never.
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