Text Fetishism

love note for lj

n3cr0phelia — Mon, 14 May 2012 02:46:58 GMT

Livejournal, I love you.

I've met some of my closest friends here at a time in my life when it mattered most... (not that it doesn't matter anymore.)
In my teens, out of high school and starting college, I found myself inspired, challenged and loved by people that inspire me still, even if from the vague mists of memory.
I say I met you when it mattered most because it was then that I was most lonely and building the framework for the person I've become (and continue to become).

I know it's been years and years, that I don't talk to many of you as often as I did (if ever at all), but I feel I need to acknowledge it, even if none of you are reading this.

But I want to thank you.

For your support throughout my angst, as I embarrassed myself with absurd theories, shared either too much information or too much of the inconsequential.
I deny none of it - though I've removed those entries.

I also removed the entries containing my creative work (though I still have little outbursts at si6nifi3r) because I decided to publish some of it.

And here it is:

The reason why I have to post about it here (though I'm posting about it pretty much everywhere) is because, if not for you, I may have not built up the confidence to share something as intimate with the whole world.

Through your comments and reactions, I've seen how my words mean something to you, how they stop being mine and becoming yours,
how my dreams and thoughts and feelings fail, fail, fail to be contained and
e x p l o d e,
but only from my point of view, when you read them.

This out of context quote is appropriate:

" A text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the 'message' of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash."

Roland Barthes, from "Death of the Author" - click and read, if so you desire.

Though this is one of the essays that blew my mind when I was much younger, fresh and begging for paradigm shifts (and which, I also mention briefly in SLF), this quote was underlined by thingsiveunderlined on tumblr.

I probably underlined it, as well.

My creative pieces, they just come out, and I never consider a reader during the process, which is why they are so undeniably sincere.
But my first readers ("audience"), when it mattered, and when I didn't even realize what was happening, were you.

Back to the initial purpose, though. The book,

So to speak, this is just one more promo link for SLF, but thank you, livejournal friends.
I owe it to you more than anyone, and whether this book becomes popular or not, I am extremely satisfied with it because it turned out just the way I wanted it.

You can buy it on amazon, but I recommend buying it on createspace instead.

Use this coupon code: SM3AUVDT and get a 3$ discount (on createspace only, for the hard copy).

You can purchase the Kindle version at amazon. You can also check for previews at the product page.

The Triumph of Time

n3cr0phelia — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 01:44:11 GMT

Circumstances led me back to where I belong.

(And I don't mean here, I'm at si6nifi3r nowadays...)

I mean lost in poems like this one (which, right now, is a distraction).

I was going to copy only some of my favorite stanzas, but no.
Read it all.

Before our lives divide for ever,
While time is with us and hands are free,
(Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever
Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea)
I will say no word that a man might say
Whose whole life's love goes down in a day;
For this could never have been; and never,
Though the gods and the years relent, shall be.

Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour,
To think of things that are well outworn?
Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower,
The dream foregone and the deed forborne?
Though joy be done with and grief be vain,
Time shall not sever us wholly in twain;
Earth is not spoilt for a single shower;
But the rain has ruined the ungrown corn.

It will grow not again, this fruit of my heart,
Smitten with sunbeams, ruined with rain.
The singing seasons divide and depart,
Winter and summer depart in twain.
It will grow not again, it is ruined at root,
The bloodlike blossom, the dull red fruit;
Though the heart yet sickens, the lips yet smart,
With sullen savour of poisonous pain.

I have given no man of my fruit to eat;
I trod the grapes, I have drunken the wine.
Had you eaten and drunken and found it sweet,
This wild new growth of the corn and vine,
This wine and bread without lees or leaven,
We had grown as gods, as the gods in heaven,
Souls fair to look upon, goodly to greet,
One splendid spirit, your soul and mine.

In the change of years, in the coil of things,
In the clamour and rumour of life to be,
We, drinking love at the furthest springs,
Covered with love as a covering tree,
We had grown as gods, as the gods above,
Filled from the heart to the lips with love,
Held fast in his hands, clothed warm with his wings,
O love, my love, had you loved but me!

We had stood as the sure stars stand, and moved
As the moon moves, loving the world; and seen
Grief collapse as a thing disproved,
Death consume as a thing unclean.
Twain halves of a perfect heart, made fast
Soul to soul while the years fell past;
Had you loved me once, as you have not loved;
Had the chance been with us that has not been.

I have put my days and dreams out of mind,
Days that are over, dreams that are done.
Though we seek life through, we shall surely find
There is none of them clear to us now, not one.
But clear are these things; the grass and the sand,
Where, sure as the eyes reach, ever at hand,
With lips wide open and face burnt blind,
The strong sea-daisies feast on the sun.

The low downs lean to the sea; the stream,
One loose thin pulseless tremulous vein,
Rapid and vivid and dumb as a dream,
Works downward, sick of the sun and the rain;
No wind is rough with the rank rare flowers;
The sweet sea, mother of loves and hours,
Shudders and shines as the grey winds gleam,
Turning her smile to a fugitive pain.

Mother of loves that are swift to fade,
Mother of mutable winds and hours.
A barren mother, a mother-maid,
Cold and clean as her faint salt flowers.
I would we twain were even as she,
Lost in the night and the light of the sea,
Where faint sounds falter and wan beams wade,
Break, and are broken, and shed into showers.

The loves and hours of the life of a man,
They are swift and sad, being born of the sea.
Hours that rejoice and regret for a span,
Born with a man's breath, mortal as he;
Loves that are lost ere they come to birth,
Weeds of the wave, without fruit upon earth.
I lose what I long for, save what I can,
My love, my love, and no love for me!

It is not much that a man can save
On the sands of life, in the straits of time,
Who swims in sight of the great third wave
That never a swimmer shall cross or climb.
Some waif washed up with the strays and spars
That ebb-tide shows to the shore and the stars;
Weed from the water, grass from a grave,
A broken blossom, a ruined rhyme.

There will no man do for your sake, I think,
What I would have done for the least word said.
I had wrung life dry for your lips to drink,
Broken it up for your daily bread:
Body for body and blood for blood,
As the flow of the full sea risen to flood
That yearns and trembles before it sink,
I had given, and lain down for you, glad and dead.

Yea, hope at highest and all her fruit,
And time at fullest and all his dower,
I had given you surely, and life to boot,
Were we once made one for a single hour.
But now, you are twain, you are cloven apart,
Flesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart;
And deep in one is the bitter root,
And sweet for one is the lifelong flower.

To have died if you cared I should die for you, clung
To my life if you bade me, played my part
As it pleased you--these were the thoughts that stung,
The dreams that smote with a keener dart
Than shafts of love or arrows of death;
These were but as fire is, dust, or breath,
Or poisonous foam on the tender tongue
Of the little snakes that eat my heart.

I wish we were dead together to-day,
Lost sight of, hidden away out of sight,
Clasped and clothed in the cloven clay,
Out of the world's way, out of the light,
Out of the ages of worldly weather,
Forgotten of all men altogether,
As the world's first dead, taken wholly away,
Made one with death, filled full of the night.

How we should slumber, how we should sleep,
Far in the dark with the dreams and the dews!
And dreaming, grow to each other, and weep,
Laugh low, live softly, murmur and muse;
Yea, and it may be, struck through by the dream,
Feel the dust quicken and quiver, and seem
Alive as of old to the lips, and leap
Spirit to spirit as lovers use.

Sick dreams and sad of a dull delight;
For what shall it profit when men are dead
To have dreamed, to have loved with the whole soul's might,
To have looked for day when the day was fled?
Let come what will, there is one thing worth,
To have had fair love in the life upon earth:
To have held love safe till the day grew night,
While skies had colour and lips were red.

Would I lose you now? would I take you then,
If I lose you now that my heart has need?
And come what may after death to men,
What thing worth this will the dead years breed?
Lose life, lose all; but at least I know,
O sweet life's love, having loved you so,
Had I reached you on earth, I should lose not again,
In death nor life, nor in dream or deed.

Yea, I know this well: were you once sealed mine,
Mine in the blood's beat, mine in the breath,
Mixed into me as honey in wine,
Not time, that sayeth and gainsayeth,
Nor all strong things had severed us then;
Not wrath of gods, nor wisdom of men,
Nor all things earthly, nor all divine,
Nor joy nor sorrow, nor life nor death.

I had grown pure as the dawn and the dew,
You had grown strong as the sun or the sea.
But none shall triumph a whole life through:
For death is one, and the fates are three.
At the door of life, by the gate of breath,
There are worse things waiting for men than death;
Death could not sever my soul and you,
As these have severed your soul from me.

You have chosen and clung to the chance they sent you,
Life sweet as perfume and pure as prayer.
But will it not one day in heaven repent you?
Will they solace you wholly, the days that were?
Will you lift up your eyes between sadness and bliss,
Meet mine, and see where the great love is,
And tremble and turn and be changed? Content you;
The gate is strait; I shall not be there.

But you, had you chosen, had you stretched hand,
Had you seen good such a thing were done,
I too might have stood with the souls that stand
In the sun's sight, clothed with the light of the sun;
But who now on earth need care how I live?
Have the high gods anything left to give,
Save dust and laurels and gold and sand?
Which gifts are goodly; but I will none.

O all fair lovers about the world,
There is none of you, none, that shall comfort me.
My thoughts are as dead things, wrecked and whirled
Round and round in a gulf of the sea;
And still, through the sound and the straining stream,
Through the coil and chafe, they gleam in a dream,
The bright fine lips so cruelly curled,
And strange swift eyes where the soul sits free.

Free, without pity, withheld from woe,
Ignorant; fair as the eyes are fair.
Would I have you change now, change at a blow,
Startled and stricken, awake and aware?
Yea, if I could, would I have you see
My very love of you filling me,
And know my soul to the quick, as I know
The likeness and look of your throat and hair?

I shall not change you. Nay, though I might,
Would I change my sweet one love with a word?
I had rather your hair should change in a night,
Clear now as the plume of a black bright bird;
Your face fail suddenly, cease, turn grey,
Die as a leaf that dies in a day.
I will keep my soul in a place out of sight,
Far off, where the pulse of it is not heard.

Far off it walks, in a bleak blown space,
Full of the sound of the sorrow of years.
I have woven a veil for the weeping face,
Whose lips have drunken the wine of tears;
I have found a way for the failing feet,
A place for slumber and sorrow to meet;
There is no rumour about the place,
Nor light, nor any that sees or hears.

I have hidden my soul out of sight, and said
"Let none take pity upon thee, none
Comfort thy crying: for lo, thou art dead,
Lie still now, safe out of sight of the sun.
Have I not built thee a grave, and wrought
Thy grave-clothes on thee of grievous thought,
With soft spun verses and tears unshed,
And sweet light visions of things undone?

"I have given thee garments and balm and myrrh,
And gold, and beautiful burial things.
But thou, be at peace now, make no stir;
Is not thy grave as a royal king's?
Fret not thyself though the end were sore;
Sleep, be patient, vex me no more.
Sleep; what hast thou to do with her?
The eyes that weep, with the mouth that sings?"

Where the dead red leaves of the years lie rotten,
The cold old crimes and the deeds thrown by,
The misconceived and the misbegotten,
I would find a sin to do ere I die,
Sure to dissolve and destroy me all through,
That would set you higher in heaven, serve you
And leave you happy, when clean forgotten,
As a dead man out of mind, am I.

Your lithe hands draw me, your face burns through me,
I am swift to follow you, keen to see;
But love lacks might to redeem or undo me;
As I have been, I know I shall surely be;
"What should such fellows as I do?" Nay,
My part were worse if I chose to play;
For the worst is this after all; if they knew me,
Not a soul upon earth would pity me.

And I play not for pity of these; but you,
If you saw with your soul what man am I,
You would praise me at least that my soul all through
Clove to you, loathing the lives that lie;
The souls and lips that are bought and sold,
The smiles of silver and kisses of gold,
The lapdog loves that whine as they chew,
The little lovers that curse and cry.

There are fairer women, I hear; that may be;
But I, that I love you and find you fair,
Who are more than fair in my eyes if they be,
Do the high gods know or the great gods care?
Though the swords in my heart for one were seven,
Should the iron hollow of doubtful heaven,
That knows not itself whether night-time or day be,
Reverberate words and a foolish prayer?

I will go back to the great sweet mother,
Mother and lover of men, the sea.
I will go down to her, I and none other,
Close with her, kiss her and mix her with me;
Cling to her, strive with her, hold her fast:
O fair white mother, in days long past
Born without sister, born without brother,
Set free my soul as thy soul is free.

O fair green-girdled mother of mine,
Sea, that art clothed with the sun and the rain,
Thy sweet hard kisses are strong like wine,
Thy large embraces are keen like pain.
Save me and hide me with all thy waves,
Find me one grave of thy thousand graves,
Those pure cold populous graves of thine
Wrought without hand in a world without stain.

I shall sleep, and move with the moving ships,
Change as the winds change, veer in the tide;
My lips will feast on the foam of thy lips,
I shall rise with thy rising, with thee subside;
Sleep, and not know if she be, if she were,
Filled full with life to the eyes and hair,
As a rose is fulfilled to the roseleaf tips
With splendid summer and perfume and pride.

This woven raiment of nights and days,
Were it once cast off and unwound from me,
Naked and glad would I walk in thy ways,
Alive and aware of thy ways and thee;
Clear of the whole world, hidden at home,
Clothed with the green and crowned with the foam,
A pulse of the life of thy straits and bays,
A vein in the heart of the streams of the sea.

Fair mother, fed with the lives of men,
Thou art subtle and cruel of heart, men say.
Thou hast taken, and shalt not render again;
Thou art full of thy dead, and cold as they.
But death is the worst that comes of thee;
Thou art fed with our dead, O mother, O sea,
But when hast thou fed on our hearts? or when,
Having given us love, hast thou taken away?

O tender-hearted, O perfect lover,
Thy lips are bitter, and sweet thine heart.
The hopes that hurt and the dreams that hover,
Shall they not vanish away and apart?
But thou, thou art sure, thou art older than earth;
Thou art strong for death and fruitful of birth;
Thy depths conceal and thy gulfs discover;
From the first thou wert; in the end thou art.

And grief shall endure not for ever, I know.
As things that are not shall these things be;
We shall live through seasons of sun and of snow,
And none be grievous as this to me.
We shall hear, as one in a trance that hears,
The sound of time, the rhyme of the years;
Wrecked hope and passionate pain will grow
As tender things of a spring-tide sea.

Sea-fruit that swings in the waves that hiss,
Drowned gold and purple and royal rings.
And all time past, was it all for this?
Times unforgotten, and treasures of things?
Swift years of liking and sweet long laughter,
That wist not well of the years thereafter
Till love woke, smitten at heart by a kiss,
With lips that trembled and trailing wings?

There lived a singer in France of old
By the tideless dolorous midland sea.
In a land of sand and ruin and gold
There shone one woman, and none but she.
And finding life for her love's sake fail,
Being fain to see her, he bade set sail,
Touched land, and saw her as life grew cold,
And praised God, seeing; and so died he.

Died, praising God for his gift and grace:
For she bowed down to him weeping, and said
"Live"; and her tears were shed on his face
Or ever the life in his face was shed.
The sharp tears fell through her hair, and stung
Once, and her close lips touched him and clung
Once, and grew one with his lips for a space;
And so drew back, and the man was dead.

O brother, the gods were good to you.
Sleep, and be glad while the world endures.
Be well content as the years wear through;
Give thanks for life, and the loves and lures;
Give thanks for life, O brother, and death,
For the sweet last sound of her feet, her breath,
For gifts she gave you, gracious and few,
Tears and kisses, that lady of yours.

Rest, and be glad of the gods; but I,
How shall I praise them, or how take rest?
There is not room under all the sky
For me that know not of worst or best,
Dream or desire of the days before,
Sweet things or bitterness, any more.
Love will not come to me now though I die,
As love came close to you, breast to breast.

I shall never be friends again with roses;
I shall loathe sweet tunes, where a note grown strong
Relents and recoils, and climbs and closes,
As a wave of the sea turned back by song.
There are sounds where the soul's delight takes fire,
Face to face with its own desire;
A delight that rebels, a desire that reposes;
I shall hate sweet music my whole life long.

The pulse of war and passion of wonder,
The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine,
The stars that sing and the loves that thunder,
The music burning at heart like wine,
An armed archangel whose hands raise up
All senses mixed in the spirit's cup
Till flesh and spirit are molten in sunder--
These things are over, and no more mine.

These were a part of the playing I heard
Once, ere my love and my heart were at strife;
Love that sings and hath wings as a bird,
Balm of the wound and heft of the knife.
Fairer than earth is the sea, and sleep
Than overwatching of eyes that weep,
Now time has done with his one sweet word,
The wine and leaven of lovely life.

I shall go my ways, tread out my measure,
Fill the days of my daily breath
With fugitive things not good to treasure,
Do as the world doth, say as it saith;
But if we had loved each other--O sweet,
Had you felt, lying under the palms of your feet,
The heart of my heart, beating harder with pleasure
To feel you tread it to dust and death--

Ah, had I not taken my life up and given
All that life gives and the years let go,
The wine and honey, the balm and leaven,
The dreams reared high and the hopes brought low?
Come life, come death, not a word be said;
Should I lose you living, and vex you dead?
I never shall tell you on earth; and in heaven,
If I cry to you then, will you hear or know?

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Realicey

n3cr0phelia — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 01:27:36 GMT

"'I've seen you before, but only in books.'
'Only in books?' asked Alice.
'Only in books, as you say. Only! Books can never be only; they can only be always.'"

"The book of my life is nowhere to be seen!"

"'The Reality is a subset of the Existence set,
which also contains the Unreality set and the
Nureality set. The three subsets of Existence
correspond exactly to the three subsets of
Alistence, namely: the Real Alice, the
Imagined Alice and the Automated Alice.'

'Celia?' Alice called out, upon reaching the end of the passage. 'Could you please explain these words to me?'"

Jeff Noon, from Automated Alice
(Thanks gimpjesus)

noboquotes ii

n3cr0phelia — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 05:03:33 GMT

Lines from this poem have been swimming through my head for a couple of days and I'd been wanting to read it again - but I've lent it to the one I'm making read it.
So I turned to google and rather not keep it to myself.
I can't read it out of context... without relating it to what it means in the novel, but maybe you who haven't read it can enjoy it in another way.

Because you took advantage of a sinner
because you took advantage
because you took
because you took advantage of my disadvantage
when I stood Adam-naked
before a federal law and all its stinging stars

Because you took advantage of a sin
when I was helpless moulting moist and tender
hoping for the best
dreaming of marriage in a mountain state
aye of a litter of Lolitas

Because you took advantage of my inner
essential innocence
because you cheated me--

Because you cheated me of my redemption
because you took
her at the age when lads
play with erector sets
a little downy girl still wearing poppies
still eating popcorn in the colored gloam
where tawny Indians took paid croppers
because you stole her
from her wax-browed and dignified protector
spitting into his heavy-lidded eye
ripping his flavid toga and at dawn
leaving the hog to roll upon his new discomfort
the awfulness of love and violets
remorse despair while you
took a dull doll to pieces
and threw its head away
because of all you did
because of all I did not
you have to die

Death sentence written by Humbert Humbert for Clare Quilty to read before shooting him.
From Lolita

in reaction to celestialvoid's last post, somewhat.

n3cr0phelia — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 06:31:32 GMT

A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.”

Stephen Crane

The photo is about 3 years old now... I remember posting it at si6nifi3r (or did I?) along with a few other sand scribbles (an act that hypnotized me probably more than it should a regular person) that I watched waves wash away.

I didn't mention the references, but this one was somewhat recalling that poem.

Naboquotes

n3cr0phelia — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:23:22 GMT

"There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction, and, despite John Ray's assertion, Lolita has no moral in tow.
For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm. There are not many such books."

"It is childish to study a work of fiction in order to gain information about a country or about a social class or about the author. And yet one of my very few intimate friends, after reading Lolita, was sincerely worries that I (I!) should be living "among such depressing people."

Vladimir Nabokov
on a book entitled Lolita

some Genet

n3cr0phelia — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 04:02:58 GMT

Again I'm obsessing over Jean Genet, but only when I'm not distracted by whatever else I'm reading at the moment
(which I'll be sharing for sure. I intended to quit posting out of context quotes here as well... but I can't keep them to myself, and I'm sure some of you out there still enjoy them, or so I hope).

In absolute misery and confinement (emotional and physical), Genet mythifies his reality... transforming everything that is unpleasant, ugly, vile or disgusting into the opposite with precise, sincere observations that are descriptions of beauty. I don't think I've read anything in Genet about anything that is less than beautiful.

I should be going inside... new house, luxuries such as my computer desk steps away from my bed have been given up for... "civilization" (versus wilderness). If you want to stay up to date on that, add si6nifi3r, I'm keeping my life out of this one as much as I can.
As you may have observed.
More later.
Maybe.

"Certain acts dazzle us and light up blurred surfaces, if our eyes are sharp enough to see them in a flash, for the beauty of a living thing can be grasped only fleetingly. To pursue it during its changes leads us inevitably to the moment when it ceases, for it cannot last a lifetime. And to analyze it, that is, to pursue it in time with the sight and the imagination, is to view it in its decline, for following the marvelous moment in which it reveals itself, it diminishes in intensity."

"... I remain disturbed in the presence of the person who revealed to me that beauty is the projection of ugliness and that by 'developing' certain monstrosities we obtain the purest ornaments."

"A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness. Some men take pleasure in fantasies whose basic contents are not celestial delights. These are less radiant joys, the essence of which is evil."

"... who cares about the reasons for an attitude that composes a poem?"

"If we are free - available - and without faith, our aspirations escape from us, as light does from the sun, and, like light, can flee to infinity, for the physical or metaphysical sky is not a ceiling."

"Faults sometimes - they are deeds - produce poetry."

Jean Genet, from Miracle of the Rose

machine dream quote

n3cr0phelia — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 23:45:04 GMT

As seen on my tumblr.

from Microserfs by Douglas Coupland.

Su[ck]mmer of BLAH

n3cr0phelia — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 01:56:14 GMT

Hey, elljay.
Please know you are always on my mind and in my heart, and that you are and will always be my favorite.

Lately I feel an overwhelming, pressing, mind-twisting dullness over me,
mixed with anxiety, disappointment and frustration,
so I'm keeping my thoughts, opinions and self to myself.

Hence,
a warning label to friends, lovers, haters (and others):
I am being reclusive. And I miss you.

Here is a comfort poem to fill in some space.

Unrest

A fierce unrest seethes at the core
Of all existing things:
It was the eager wish to soar
That gave the gods their wings.

From what flat wastes of cosmic slime,
And stung by what quick fire,
Sunward the restless races climb!â”
Men risen out of mire!

There throbs through all the worlds that are
This heart-beat hot and strong,
And shaken systems, star by star,
Awake and glow in song.

But for the urge of this unrest
These joyous spheres are mute;
But for the rebel in his breast
Had man remained a brute.

When baffled lips demanded speech,
Speech trembled into birthâ”
(One day the lyric word shall reach
From earth to laughing earth.)â”

When man's dim eyes demanded light,
The light he sought was bornâ”
His wish, a Titan, scaled the height
And flung him back the morn!

From deed to dream, from dream to deed,
From daring hope to hope,
The restless wish, the instant need,
Still lashed him up the slope!

I sing no governed firmament,
Cold, ordered, regularâ”
I sing the stinging discontent
That leaps from star to star!

- Don Marquis

Also. I can't stop listening to this.

phantasmagoria, death drive

n3cr0phelia — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 07:04:25 GMT

Who am I? If this once I were it rely on a proverb, then perhaps everything would about to knowing whom I "haunt."

My image of the "ghost," including everything conventional about its appearance as well as its blind submission to certain contingencies of time and place, is particularly significant for me as the finite representation of a torment that may be eternal. Perhaps my life is nothing but an image of this kind; perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn why I should simply recognize, learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten. This sense of myself seems inadequate only insofar as it presupposes myself, arbitrarily preferring a completed image of my mind which need not be reconciled with time - an idea of irreparable loss, of punishment, of a fall whose lack of moral basis is, as I see it, indisputable.

From Nadja by André Breton.
Best V-Day present ever.

Orlando quotes

n3cr0phelia — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:05:25 GMT

I finally finished Virginia Woolf's Orlando, long after having received it as a birthday gift from losemeontheway maybe two years ago.
(Thanks again, Emily, you were right about everything.
It is now on my top favorite books ever list.)

It's been a while since I transcribed quotes to lj...
because I've been doing it on tumblr instead, actually.

But I didn't forget, and here they are.
Sometimes I felt the need to type whole passages, but refrained and just stuck to the ones that made the most sense out of context. Somewhat...

“No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high.”

“It is all an illusion (which is nothing against it, for illusions are the most valuable and nacessary of all things, and she who can create one is among the world’s greatest benefactors), but as it is notorious that illusions are shattered by conflict with reality, so no real happiness, no real wit, no real profundity are tolerated where the illusion prevails.”

“For if it is rash to walk into a lion’s den unarmed, rash to navigate the Atlantic in a rowing boat, rash to stand on one foot on the top of St. Paul’s, it is still more rash to go home alone with a poet. A poet is Atlantic and lion in one. While one drowns us, the other gnaws us. If we survive the teeth, we succumb to the waves. A man who can destroy illusions is both beast and flood. Illusions are to the soul what atmosphere is to the earth. Roll up that tender air and the plant dies, the colour fades. The earth we walk on is a parched cinder. It is marl we tread and fiery cobbles scorch our feet. By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. ‘Tis waking that kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life - (and so on for six pages if you will, but the style is tedious and may well be dropped).”

“Her ankle was broken. She could not rise. But there she lay content. (…) ‘I have found my mate,’ she murmured. ‘It is the moor. I am nature’s bride,’ she whispered, giving herself in rapture to the cold embraces of the grass as she lay folded in her cloak in the hollow by the pool. ‘Here I will lie. (A feather fell upon her brow.) I have found a greener laurel than the bay. My forehead will be cool always. These are wild birds’ feathers - the owls, the nightjars. I shall dream wild dreams. My hands shall wear no wedding ring,’ she continued, slipping it from her finger. ‘The roots shall twine about them.’”

“‘Madam,’ the man cried, leaping to the ground, ‘you’re hurt!’
‘I’m dead, Sir!’ she replied.

A few minutes later, they were engaged."

...and how should I begin?

n3cr0phelia — Sun, 03 May 2009 03:43:28 GMT

...

And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

...

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

...

It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”

You know this one.
Or not. But you should.

[this is the way the...]

n3cr0phelia — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 07:13:17 GMT

You may not believe me,
(though some who know [me] better might believe me)
but as I'm reading through some texts for my American Transcendentalists final
(Emmerson, particularly),
at this moment (as I was typing it onto my lj client, because for me, I always feel something more when I write it... hence my compulsion to take notes rather than listen, my need to quote)
I was moved (again) in such a way that feelings seep out of my body and I need to cry.

I know it may just be my vision of things... of the world and the present.
But I'm reading Whitman's preface to Leaves of Grass and some of Emmerson's essays... most, though universal about mankind, more specifically about the American "race."
A very idealistic planning out of what it is to be, in my opinion, a perfect human being.
In touch with everyone and everything around them... the poet, according to Emmerson (and Whitman and lots of other poets before them) obviously being more in touch with the Universe and hence, the seer, and the one who professes or expresses the beauty and truth of what he sees that most are unable to see.
Because he cannot be the latter without being the first, yet he can be the first without being the last.

And what these poets saw was mostly projections (real or possible) of beauty and perfection... and hope.
Such hope, without a doubt, that humankind (Americans mostly) would become as what they projected in their poetry... just, courageous, free and trusting of themselves and others.
So not what I perceive humankind to be...
More like the fictional, ideal humankind... and the people I love and admire, but not people in general.

I first read The Oversoul when I was 16 (and those of you in my friends list here on lj back then surely witnessed what sprang forth from that - not that you'd remember, anyway...) for one of the first lit courses I took and couldn't remember what it was about, but what I felt.
For some moments, I felt loved.
I felt secure in the world.
The Oversoul is a warm, fuzzy blanket to sink into on a cold night that makes everything be well.

I'm reading it again, and I feel it again...
It's still a warm fuzzy blanket that makes everything seem better... but I feel there's a hailstorm outside it.

I think we, as the human race... as one... are so non-continual... so disjointed... so selfish and wrapped up in our individual selves.

Maybe it's just my mood right now.

And maybe it's just my lack of contemporary reading, but how is the poet regarded today, in a collective sense?

Thinking about my "specialty" again... I think one of the topics that I keep coming across over and over again throughout my studies (as a topic of personal interest) is the figure of the poet.
Spanning from bits of classical to early 20th century. Western (blame the UPR).
Perhaps because I relate to it... not in mastery, but sensibility.

I've read Song of Myself a few times before... maybe it was because I read Emmerson as a starter, but tonight (and not before) it seems absolutely effervescent to me.
I literally felt it bubbling on my skin because it's that uplifting.

But I think of it in terms of history... and nationality... and see this Americanism twisted out of context and made into something else.
It is liberating to feel invincible, limitless... even if just spiritually. And ideally.
But reading into the past, this projected Utopian dream... makes me be a little disappointed in the present.
Because I do not trust my "brothers and sisters" and have reasons not to.

Whitman writes, "Men and women and the earth and all upon it are simply to be taken as they are, and the investigation of their past and present and future shall be unintermitted and shall be done with perfect candor. Upon this basis philosophy speculates ever looking toward the poet, ever regarding the eternal tendencies of all toward happiness never inconsistent with what is clear to the senses and to the soul."

So if we speculate looking towards the poet... and regard the eternal tendencies of all toward happiness never inconsistent with what is clear to the senses and to the soul... it makes me wonder.

What comes after?
A Wasteland (to use one example).

To summarize how I feel, I'll contrast this:

"Words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of divine energy. Words are also actions, actions are a kind of words. "
- Emmerson

"Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

(...)

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."

- T.S. Eliot.

(Quite the premature buzzkill, I know. Sorry.)

My paper is about none of this, I just wasted like 40 minutes thinking and writing about it, and it's 3 am, so I better get back to work.
Or take a nap.

Here's some quotes.

"The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression."

"...poetry was all written before time was."

"... though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. (...) Language is fossil poetry."

"Milton says, that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods, and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl."

"Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Always our being is descending into us from we know not whence."

"We live succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime, within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every particle is equally related; the eternal ONE."

"The sign and credentials of the poet are, that he announces that which no man foretold."

Ralph Waldo Emmerson

"There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius. The poet sees for a certainty how one not a great artist may be just as sacred and perfect as the greatest artist… "

"The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he breathes into any thing that was before thought small it dilates with the grandeur and life of the universe. He is a seer... he is complete in himself... the others are as good as he, only he sees it and the do not. He is not one of the chorus he does not stop for any regulation... he is the president of regulation."

"The known universe has one complete lover and that is the greatest poet. He consumes an eternal passion and is indifferent which chance happens and which possible contingency of fortune or misfortune persuades daily and hourly his delicious pay.
His love above all love has leisure and expanse... he leaves room ahead of himself. He is no irresolute or suspicious lover... he is sure... he scorns intervals. His experience and the showers and thrills are not or nothing.
Nothing can jar him... suffering and darkness cannot - death and fear cannot. To him complaint and jealousy and envy are corpses buried and rotten in the earth... he saw them buried. The sea is not surer of the shore or the shore surer of the shore of the sea than he is of the fruition of his love and of all perfection and beauty."

"A great poem is no finish to a man or woman but rather a beginning."

"I help myself to material and immaterial,
No guard can shut me off, no law prevent me."

"All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier."

"See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,
Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that."

Walt Whitman

Moby Dick quotes

n3cr0phelia — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:15:11 GMT

"... Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope."

"Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death.
Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air.
Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being.
In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me."

Ishmael

"...you were kicked by a great man, and with an ivory leg, Stubb. It's an honour, I consider it an honour.
In old England the greatest lords think it great glory to be slapped by a queen, a made garter-knights of; but, be it YOUR boast, Stubb, that ye were kicked by old Ahab, and made a wise man of."

Flask

"Perhaps they were (whales as scarce as hen's teeth);
or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity;
takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him;
every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it.
In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like Crammer's sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over.

There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship;
by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God.
But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror.
Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever.
Heed it well, ye Pantheists"

Ishmael

nausea

n3cr0phelia — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:46:13 GMT

I try to keep it secret when I'm reading something not related to what I should be reading (even from myself),
as if I were cheating on my subject(s) still.
But I've found that this guilt complex is inevitable.

I'm slowly getting the books I requested at paperbackswap in the mail, among which is Sartre's Nausea.

The introduction is also a brief introduction to existentialism.
viktor_exhumed gave a report for his thesis workshop a few weeks ago on a poem (that I absolutely don't remember, and didn't read through the whole thing) where I kind of recall that he reached some conclusions about the poet that were from a somewhat existentialist point of view.

I was telling him about it yesterday.
I'm posting some quotes here.
You know. To share.

Jaspers has written: "The non-rational is found in the opacity of the here and now... in the actual empirical existence which is just as it is and not otherwise." Why is it not otherwise? Why is it at all? What is this is-ness? Isn't it simply nothing, or rather Nothingness, the unknowable, indispensable Void? What could be more absurd, "non-rational," meaningless? The mind of man, which he did not ask to be given, demands a reason and a meaning - this is its self-defining cause - and yet it finds itself in the midst of a radically meaningless existence. The result: impasse. And nausea.

Man, beginning in the loathsome emptiness of his existence, creates his essense - his self, his being - through choices that he freely makes. Hence his being is never fixed. He is always becoming, and if it were not for the contingency of death, he would never end. Nor would philosophy.

From the introduction by Hayden Carruth.

And some nauseous quotes:

"This is what I have to avoid, I must not put strangeness where there is none. I think that is the big danger in keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything. You continually force the truth because you're always looking for something."

"Perhaps it was a passing moment of madness after all. There is no trace of it anymore. My odd feelings of the other week seem ridiculous today. I can no longer enter into them."

I think this also speaks for the blogger generation.
More later. (Or not really.)

poem of the day

n3cr0phelia — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:48:19 GMT

If I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.

What if I look upon a man
As though on my beloved,
And my blood be cold the while
And my heart unmoved?
Why should he think me cruel
Or that he is betrayed?
I'd have him love the thing that was
Before the world was made.

W. B. Yeats

anagrammed sisters

n3cr0phelia — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 03:40:21 GMT

For losemeontheway, my new friend.

"'And who are you?' Alice asked, rather impatiently.
'Why, I'm you, of course,' the voice answered.
'But that's impossible,' replied Alice, full of indignation, 'because I'm me.'
'That leaves only one possibility,' said the voice: ' I must be you as well.'
...

Alice was quite taken back by the resemblance. Why, for a whole second, Alice didn't know which girl she truly was!

'I'm your twin twister,' the statue said.
'But I haven't got a twin sister,' replied Alice, quite mishearing.
'I didn't say twin sister, I said twin twister. You see, Alice, when you named me Celia, all you did was twist the letters if your own name around into a new spelling. I'm your anagrammed sister.'"

From Automated Alice by Jeff Noon

(The book was a gift from gimpjesus.)

sleepy hollow quote

n3cr0phelia — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 01:27:12 GMT

Reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow for Sharp's class tomorrow.
Actually, no.
I'm listening to a download from Gutenberg (heads up, Mari. And possibly, Viktor. The rest of you, don't ask.)

Most of it is caricaturesque description (and narration, too) but this is cute.

"I profess not to know how women's hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration. Some seem to have but one vulnerable point, or door of access; while others have a thousand avenues, and may be captured in a thousand different ways. It is a great triumph of skill to gain the former, but a still greater proof of generalship to maintain possession of the latter, for man must battle for his fortress at every door and window. He who wins a thousand common hearts is therefore entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero."

the faerie reel

n3cr0phelia — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:15:38 GMT

I'm cleaning up my myspace blog because...
because.
I don't know why I used to write in it the first place, probably reaching out for... anything.

Anyway, I transcribed this poem from Niel Gaiman's Fragile Things long ago and posted it.
I googled it, it's not online.
So if you don't own the book, here's a freebie.

The Faerie Reel

If I were young as I once was, and dreams
and death more distant then,
I wouldn't split my soul in two, and keep
half in the world of men,
So half of me would stay at home, and
strive for Faerie in vain,
While all the while my soul would stroll up
narrow path, down crooked lane,
And there would meet a fairy lass and
smile and bow with kisses three,
She'd pluck wild eagles from the air and
nail me to a lightning tree
And if my heart would run from her or
flee from her, be gone from her,
She'd wrap it in a nest of stars and then
she'd take it on with her
Until one day she'd tire of it, all bored
with it and done with it
She''d leave it by a burning brook, and off
brown boys would run with it and
stretch it long and cruel and thin,
They'd slice it into four and then they'd
string with it a violin.
And every day and every night they'd
play upon my heart a song
So plaintative and so wild and strange that
all who heard it danced along
And sang and whirled and sank and trod and
skipped and slipped and reeled and rolled
Until, with eyes as bright as coals, they'd
crumble into wheels of gold....

But I am young no longer now; for
sixty years my heart's been gone
To play this dreadful music there, beyond
the valley of the sun.
I watch with envious eyes and mind, the
single-souled, who dare not feel
The wind that blows beyond the moon,
who do not hear the Fairy Reel.
If you don't hear the Fairy Reel, they will
not pause to steal your breath.
When I was young I was a fool. So wrap
me up in dreams and death.

textual mirrors of discovery

n3cr0phelia — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 22:21:17 GMT

"In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without the book, he would perhaps never have perceived in himself."

Marcel Proust, The Past Recaptured
from Autobiography: Toward a Poetics of Experience

Old English for y'all

n3cr0phelia — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 22:35:56 GMT

ƿis līf is lǣne, and ƿēos woruld drēoseƿ and fealleƿ.

This life is temporary, and this world declines and falls.

This is a practice reading sentence from my Old English grammar book, I thought it was beautiful.

book quote [of the... week?]

n3cr0phelia — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 00:55:45 GMT

The critic lives at second hand. He writes about. The poem, the novel, or the play must be give to him; criticism exists by the grace of other men's genius. (...)
The true critic is servant to the poet; today he is acting as master, or being taken as such. He omits Zarathustra's last, most vital lesson: "now, do without me."

In that great discourse with the living dead which we call reading, our role is not a passive one. Where it is more than reverie or an indifferent appetite sprung of boredom, reading is a mode of action. We engage in the presence, the voice of the book. We allow it entry, though not unguarded, into our inmost. A great poem, a classic novel, press in upon us; they assail and occupy the strong places of our consciousness. The exercise upon our imagination and desires, upon our ambitions and most covert dreams, a strange, bruising mastery. Men who burn books know what they are doing. The artist is the uncontrollable force: no Western eye, since Van Gogh, looks on a cypress without observing in it the start of flame.

George Steiner, "Humane Literacy."
From Language and Silence.

undead, undead

n3cr0phelia — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 22:51:43 GMT

Bauhaus, among the post-Punk bands associated with the inception of 'Goth' musical and sartorial styles in the late 1970s in Britain did not celebrate Dracula in their first single, but the actor: 'Bela Lugosi is Dead' and, of course, undead as well.

From Gothic by Fred Botting.

WTF?

The book is about the history, development and some analyses of Gothic Literature.
So... that mention was unexpected, unnecessary, and awesome.

Percy Shelley should be my boyfriend.

n3cr0phelia — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 15:46:21 GMT

"Fun I love, but too much fun is, of all things, the most loathesome."
- William Blake

"A poet participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one; as far as relates to his conceptions, time and place and number are not."
- my dead boyfriend Shelley

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty; that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
-Keats

Paul Auster quote

n3cr0phelia — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 15:55:50 GMT

In one of his books, Auster quotes the psychiatrist Oliver Sachs's belief that it is a sign of sanity to make an internal narrative of your life. Indeed, as Auster knows, although he has never been in therapy himself, the construction or reconstruction of such a narrative is the premise of psychoanalytic healing. When a writer makes up fictional narratives, is that also a sign of psychic health, I ask.

"I doubt it. I think writers are probably a little damaged. For artists of any kind I suppose, but particularly for people who make up stories, reality isn’t enough. You need to interpret reality; you need to make your own reality. I really admire people who are content to be in the world as it is and find that enough. But it’s not enough for writers. Something is wrong with us I believe."

More later. Maybe.