Haven't you heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning, ran to the marketplace, and shouted unceasingly: "I seek God! I seek God!"? Since many of those who did not believe in God happened to be standing around there, he was the cause of great laughter. "Did he get lost, then?" said one. "Has he lost his way like a child?" said another. "Or is he hiding? Is he scared of us? Did he go for a boat ride? Did he emigrate?" They all shouted and laughed together.
The madman sprang into their midst and transfixed them with his gaze. "Where has God gone/" he cried, "I'll tell you where! We've killed him--you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done this? How could we have drunk up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to erase the whole horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this Earth from its sun? Now where is it going? Where are we moving? Away from all suns? Aren't we falling constantly? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in every direction? Is there still an above and a below? Aren't we wandering as if through an endless nothing? Isn't empty space breathing upon us? Don't lanterns have to be lit in the morning? Don't we yet hear the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Don't we yet smell the divine rot?--For gods rot too! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him!
Showing posts with label text. Show all posts
Showing posts with label text. Show all posts
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
text: leonard cohen
I was about to email this to Asa, but then I figured this was just as good.
GIFT
___You tell me that silence
is nearer to peace than poems
but if for my gift
I brought you silence
(for I know silence)
you would say
___This is not silence
this is another poem
and you would hand it back to me.
(Leonard Cohen)
GIFT
___You tell me that silence
is nearer to peace than poems
but if for my gift
I brought you silence
(for I know silence)
you would say
___This is not silence
this is another poem
and you would hand it back to me.
(Leonard Cohen)
Monday, March 31, 2008
Text: Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm
This seems long... I don't know if there's a better way for me to post it...
From Holy the Firm, by Annie Dillard:
The works of God made manifest? Do we really need more victims to remind us that we're all victims? Is this some sort of parade for which a conquering army shines up its terrible guns and rolls them up and down the streets for the people to see? Do we need blind men stumbling about, and little flamefaced children, to remind us what God can--and will--do?
... How many tons of sky can I see from the window? It is morning: morning! and the water clobbered with light. Yes, in fact, we do. We do need reminding, not of what God can do, but of what he cannot do, or will not, which is to catch time in its free fall and stick a nickel's worth of sense into our days. And we need reminding of what time can do, must only do; churn out enormity at random and beat it, with God's blessing, into our heads: that we are created, created, sojourners in a land we did not make, a land with no meaning of itself and no meaning we can make for it alone. Who are we to demand explanations of God? (And what monsters of perfection should we be if we did not?) We forget ourselves, picnicking; we forget where we are. There is no such thing as a freak accident. "God is at home," says Meister Eckhart, "We are in the far country."
We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all. We sleep to time's hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if we ever wake, to the silence of God. And then, when we wake to the deep shores of light uncreated, then when the dazzling dark breaks over the far slopes of time, then it's time to toss things, like our reason, and our will; then it's time to break our necks for home.
---------------- more:
There are no events but thoughts and the heart's hard turning, the heart's slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times. The god of today is a tree. He is a forest of trees or a desert, or a wedge from wideness down to a scatter of stars, stars like salt low and dumb and abiding. Today's god said: shed. He peels from eternity always, spread; he winds into time like a rind. I am or seem to be on a road walking. The hedges are just where they were. There is a corner, and a long hill, a glimpse of snow on the mountains, a slope planted in apple trees, and a store next to a pasture, where I am going to buy the communion wine.
How can I buy the communion wine? Who am I to buy the communion wine? Someone has to buy the communion wine. Having wine instead of grape juice was my idea, and of course I offered to buy it. Shouldn't I be wearing robes and, especially, a mask? Shouldn't I make the communion wine? Are there holy grapes, is there holy ground, is there anything here holy? There are no holy grapes, there is no holy ground, nor is there anyone but us. I have an empty knapsack over my parka's shoulders; it is cold, and I'll want my hands in my pockets. According to the rule of St. Benedict, I should say, Our hands in our pockets. "All things come of thee, O lord, and of thine own have we given thee." There must be a rule for purchasing communion wine. "Will that be cash, or charge?" All I know is that when I go to this store--to buy eggs, or sandpaper, broccoli, wood screws, milk-- I like to tease a bit, if he'll let me, with the owner's son, two, whose name happens to be Chandler, and who himself likes to play in the big bin of nails.
And so, forgetting myself, thank God: Hullo. Hullo, short and relatively new. Welcome again to the land of the living, to time, this hill of beans. Chandler will have, as usual, none of it... And I'm out on the road again walking, my right hand forgetting my left. I'm out on the road again walking, and toting a backload of God.
Here is a bottle of wine with a label, Christ with a cork. I bear holiness splintered into a vessel, very God of very God, the sempiternal silence personal and brooding, bright on the back of my ribs. I start up the hill.
The world is changing. The landscape begins to respond as a current upwells. It is starting to clack with itself, though nothing moves in space and there's no wind. It is starting to utter it's infinite particulars, each overlapping and lone, like a hundred hills of hounds all giving tongue. The hedgerows are blackberry brambles, white snowberries, red rose hips, gaunt and clattering broom. Their leafless stems are starting to live visibly deep in their centers, as hidden as banked fires live, and as clearly as recognition, mute, shines forth from eyes. Above me the mountains are raw nerves, sensible and exultant; the trees, the grass, and the asphalt below me are living petals of mind, each sharp and invisible, held in a greeting or glance full perfectly formed. There is something stretched or jostling about the sky which, when I study it, vanishes. Why are there all these apples in the world, and why so wet and transparent? Through all my clothing, through the pack on my back and through the bottle's glass I feel the wine. Walking faster and faster, weightless, I feel the wine. It sheds light in slats through my rib cage, and fills the buttressed vaults of my ribs with light pooled and buoyant. I am moth; I am light. I am prayer and I can hardly see.
Each thing in the world is translucent, even the cattle, and moving, cell by cell. I remember this reality. Where has it been? I sail to the crest of the hill as if blown up the slope of a swell. I see, blasted, the bay transfigured below me, the saltwater bay, far down the hill past the road to my house, past the firs and the church and the sheep in the pasture: the bay and the islands on fire and boundless beyond it, catching alight the unraveling sky. Pieces of the sky are falling down. Everything, everything, is whole, and a parcel of everything else. I myself am falling down, slowly, or slowly lifting up. On the bay's stone shore are people among whom I float, real people, gathering of an afternoon, in the cells of whose skin stream thin colored waters in pieces which give back the general flame.
Christ is being baptized. The one who is Christ is there, and the one who is John, and the dim other people standing on cobbles or sitting on beach logs back from the bay. These are ordinary people--if I am one now, if those are ordinary sheep singing a song in the pasture.
The two men are bare to the waist. The one walks him into the water, and holds him under. Christ is coiled and white under the water, standing on stones.
He lifts from the water. Water beads on his shoulders. I see the water in balls as heavy as planets, a billion beads of water as weighty as worlds, and he lifts them up on his back as he rises. He stands wet in the water. Each one bead is transparent, and each has a world, or the same world, light and alive and apparent inside the drop: it is all there ever could be, moving at once, past and future, and all the people. I can look into any sphere and see people stream past me, and cool my eyes with colors and the sight of the world in spectacle perishing ever, and ever renewed. I do; I deepen into a drop and see all that time contains, all the faces and deeps of the world and all the earth's contents, every landscape and room, everything living or made or fashioned, all past and future stars, and especially faces, faces like the cells of everything, faces pouring past me talking, and going, and gone. And I am gone.
For outside it is bright. The surface of things outside the drops has fused. Christ himself and the others, and the brown warm wind, and hair, sky, the beach, the shattered water--all this has fused. It is one glare of holiness; it is bare and unspeakable. There is no speech nor language; there is nothing, no one thing, nor motion, nore time. There is only this everything. There is only this, and its bright and multiple noise.
I seem to be on a road, standing still. It is the top of the hill. The hedges are here, subsiding. My hands are in my pockets. There is a bottle of wine on my back, a California red. I see my feet. I move down the hill toward home.
You must rest now. I cannot rest you. For me there is, I am trying to tell you, no time.
----------------------and, because I just noticed this:
How can people think that artists seek a name? A name, like a face, is something you have when you're not alone. There is no such thing as an artist: there is only the world, lit or unlit as the light allows. When the candle is burning, who looks at the wick? When the light is out, who needs it? ...
What can any artist set on fire but his world? What can any people bring to the altar but all it has ever owned in the thin towns or over the desolate plains? What can an artist use but materials, such as they are? What can he light but the short string of his gut, and when that's burnt out, any muck ready to hand?
... So must the work be also, in touch with, in touch with, in touch with; spanning the gap, from here to eternity, home.
From Holy the Firm, by Annie Dillard:
The works of God made manifest? Do we really need more victims to remind us that we're all victims? Is this some sort of parade for which a conquering army shines up its terrible guns and rolls them up and down the streets for the people to see? Do we need blind men stumbling about, and little flamefaced children, to remind us what God can--and will--do?
... How many tons of sky can I see from the window? It is morning: morning! and the water clobbered with light. Yes, in fact, we do. We do need reminding, not of what God can do, but of what he cannot do, or will not, which is to catch time in its free fall and stick a nickel's worth of sense into our days. And we need reminding of what time can do, must only do; churn out enormity at random and beat it, with God's blessing, into our heads: that we are created, created, sojourners in a land we did not make, a land with no meaning of itself and no meaning we can make for it alone. Who are we to demand explanations of God? (And what monsters of perfection should we be if we did not?) We forget ourselves, picnicking; we forget where we are. There is no such thing as a freak accident. "God is at home," says Meister Eckhart, "We are in the far country."
We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all. We sleep to time's hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if we ever wake, to the silence of God. And then, when we wake to the deep shores of light uncreated, then when the dazzling dark breaks over the far slopes of time, then it's time to toss things, like our reason, and our will; then it's time to break our necks for home.
---------------- more:
There are no events but thoughts and the heart's hard turning, the heart's slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times. The god of today is a tree. He is a forest of trees or a desert, or a wedge from wideness down to a scatter of stars, stars like salt low and dumb and abiding. Today's god said: shed. He peels from eternity always, spread; he winds into time like a rind. I am or seem to be on a road walking. The hedges are just where they were. There is a corner, and a long hill, a glimpse of snow on the mountains, a slope planted in apple trees, and a store next to a pasture, where I am going to buy the communion wine.
How can I buy the communion wine? Who am I to buy the communion wine? Someone has to buy the communion wine. Having wine instead of grape juice was my idea, and of course I offered to buy it. Shouldn't I be wearing robes and, especially, a mask? Shouldn't I make the communion wine? Are there holy grapes, is there holy ground, is there anything here holy? There are no holy grapes, there is no holy ground, nor is there anyone but us. I have an empty knapsack over my parka's shoulders; it is cold, and I'll want my hands in my pockets. According to the rule of St. Benedict, I should say, Our hands in our pockets. "All things come of thee, O lord, and of thine own have we given thee." There must be a rule for purchasing communion wine. "Will that be cash, or charge?" All I know is that when I go to this store--to buy eggs, or sandpaper, broccoli, wood screws, milk-- I like to tease a bit, if he'll let me, with the owner's son, two, whose name happens to be Chandler, and who himself likes to play in the big bin of nails.
And so, forgetting myself, thank God: Hullo. Hullo, short and relatively new. Welcome again to the land of the living, to time, this hill of beans. Chandler will have, as usual, none of it... And I'm out on the road again walking, my right hand forgetting my left. I'm out on the road again walking, and toting a backload of God.
Here is a bottle of wine with a label, Christ with a cork. I bear holiness splintered into a vessel, very God of very God, the sempiternal silence personal and brooding, bright on the back of my ribs. I start up the hill.
The world is changing. The landscape begins to respond as a current upwells. It is starting to clack with itself, though nothing moves in space and there's no wind. It is starting to utter it's infinite particulars, each overlapping and lone, like a hundred hills of hounds all giving tongue. The hedgerows are blackberry brambles, white snowberries, red rose hips, gaunt and clattering broom. Their leafless stems are starting to live visibly deep in their centers, as hidden as banked fires live, and as clearly as recognition, mute, shines forth from eyes. Above me the mountains are raw nerves, sensible and exultant; the trees, the grass, and the asphalt below me are living petals of mind, each sharp and invisible, held in a greeting or glance full perfectly formed. There is something stretched or jostling about the sky which, when I study it, vanishes. Why are there all these apples in the world, and why so wet and transparent? Through all my clothing, through the pack on my back and through the bottle's glass I feel the wine. Walking faster and faster, weightless, I feel the wine. It sheds light in slats through my rib cage, and fills the buttressed vaults of my ribs with light pooled and buoyant. I am moth; I am light. I am prayer and I can hardly see.
Each thing in the world is translucent, even the cattle, and moving, cell by cell. I remember this reality. Where has it been? I sail to the crest of the hill as if blown up the slope of a swell. I see, blasted, the bay transfigured below me, the saltwater bay, far down the hill past the road to my house, past the firs and the church and the sheep in the pasture: the bay and the islands on fire and boundless beyond it, catching alight the unraveling sky. Pieces of the sky are falling down. Everything, everything, is whole, and a parcel of everything else. I myself am falling down, slowly, or slowly lifting up. On the bay's stone shore are people among whom I float, real people, gathering of an afternoon, in the cells of whose skin stream thin colored waters in pieces which give back the general flame.
Christ is being baptized. The one who is Christ is there, and the one who is John, and the dim other people standing on cobbles or sitting on beach logs back from the bay. These are ordinary people--if I am one now, if those are ordinary sheep singing a song in the pasture.
The two men are bare to the waist. The one walks him into the water, and holds him under. Christ is coiled and white under the water, standing on stones.
He lifts from the water. Water beads on his shoulders. I see the water in balls as heavy as planets, a billion beads of water as weighty as worlds, and he lifts them up on his back as he rises. He stands wet in the water. Each one bead is transparent, and each has a world, or the same world, light and alive and apparent inside the drop: it is all there ever could be, moving at once, past and future, and all the people. I can look into any sphere and see people stream past me, and cool my eyes with colors and the sight of the world in spectacle perishing ever, and ever renewed. I do; I deepen into a drop and see all that time contains, all the faces and deeps of the world and all the earth's contents, every landscape and room, everything living or made or fashioned, all past and future stars, and especially faces, faces like the cells of everything, faces pouring past me talking, and going, and gone. And I am gone.
For outside it is bright. The surface of things outside the drops has fused. Christ himself and the others, and the brown warm wind, and hair, sky, the beach, the shattered water--all this has fused. It is one glare of holiness; it is bare and unspeakable. There is no speech nor language; there is nothing, no one thing, nor motion, nore time. There is only this everything. There is only this, and its bright and multiple noise.
I seem to be on a road, standing still. It is the top of the hill. The hedges are here, subsiding. My hands are in my pockets. There is a bottle of wine on my back, a California red. I see my feet. I move down the hill toward home.
You must rest now. I cannot rest you. For me there is, I am trying to tell you, no time.
----------------------and, because I just noticed this:
How can people think that artists seek a name? A name, like a face, is something you have when you're not alone. There is no such thing as an artist: there is only the world, lit or unlit as the light allows. When the candle is burning, who looks at the wick? When the light is out, who needs it? ...
What can any artist set on fire but his world? What can any people bring to the altar but all it has ever owned in the thin towns or over the desolate plains? What can an artist use but materials, such as they are? What can he light but the short string of his gut, and when that's burnt out, any muck ready to hand?
... So must the work be also, in touch with, in touch with, in touch with; spanning the gap, from here to eternity, home.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
the scaffolding of life...
"With a terrifying lucidity she had the vision of her corpse and she drew her hands over her body to go to the depths of this idea which, although so simple, had but just come to her - that she bore her skeleton in her, that it was not a result of death, a metamorphosis, a culmination, but a thing which one carries about always, an inseparable specter of the human form - and that the scaffolding of life is already the symbol of the tomb"
-Pierre Louÿs, Aphrodite
(This was quoted in my reading on gay and lesbian family-making. Go FGSS.)
-Pierre Louÿs, Aphrodite
(This was quoted in my reading on gay and lesbian family-making. Go FGSS.)
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Trauma
This isn't one of our sources, but that's OK. It's a book I'm reading for class called 'Trauma and Recovery' by Judith Herman. It has a lot of great text from people who have been through traumatic experiences. Much of it could be useful, I think.
Holocaust Survivor Primo Levi:
"For living men, the units of time always have a value. For us, history had stopped."
"We have learnt that our personality is fragile, that it is in much more danger than our life; and the old wise ones, instead of warning us 'remember that you must die', would have done much better to remind us of this greater danger that threatens us."
Other victims of trauma:
"I saw my father kicking the dog across the room. That dog was my world. I went and cuddled the dog. He was very angry. There was a lot of yelling. He spun me around and called me a whore and a bitch. I could see his face really nasty, like someone I don't know. He said he'd show me what I'm good for if I think I'm such a great piece. He put me against the wall. Things went white. I couldn't move. I was afraid I'd break in two. Then I started to go numb. I thought: you are really going to die. Whatever you've done, that's the sentence."
"I would do it by unfocusing my eyes. I called it unreality. First I lost depth perception; everything looked flat, and everything felt cold. I felt like a tiny infant. Then my body would float into space like a balloon."
"I recapture that moment precisely when my helplessness is so bottomless that anything is preferable. Thus, I unscrew my head from my body as if it were the lid of a pickle jar. From then on I would have two selves."
"Sometimes I feel like a dark bundle of confusion. But that's a step forward. At times I don't even know that much."
"I am icy cold inside and my surfaces are without integument, as if I am flowing and spilling and not held together anymore. Fear grips me and I lose the sensation of being present. I am gone."
"Did I truly wish to open the Pandora's box under my father's bed? ... Could I reconcile myself without bitterness to the amount of my life's energy that had gone into the cover-up of a crime? ... I believe many unexpected deaths occur when a person finishes one phase of life and must become a different sort of person in order to continue. The phoenix goes down into the fire with the best intention of rising, then falters on the upswing. At the point of transition, I came close to dying along with my other self."
This text is eerily reminiscent of the Kafka/Boy named crow story, and I think we could easily integrate them.
Holocaust Survivor Primo Levi:
"For living men, the units of time always have a value. For us, history had stopped."
"We have learnt that our personality is fragile, that it is in much more danger than our life; and the old wise ones, instead of warning us 'remember that you must die', would have done much better to remind us of this greater danger that threatens us."
Other victims of trauma:
"I saw my father kicking the dog across the room. That dog was my world. I went and cuddled the dog. He was very angry. There was a lot of yelling. He spun me around and called me a whore and a bitch. I could see his face really nasty, like someone I don't know. He said he'd show me what I'm good for if I think I'm such a great piece. He put me against the wall. Things went white. I couldn't move. I was afraid I'd break in two. Then I started to go numb. I thought: you are really going to die. Whatever you've done, that's the sentence."
"I would do it by unfocusing my eyes. I called it unreality. First I lost depth perception; everything looked flat, and everything felt cold. I felt like a tiny infant. Then my body would float into space like a balloon."
"I recapture that moment precisely when my helplessness is so bottomless that anything is preferable. Thus, I unscrew my head from my body as if it were the lid of a pickle jar. From then on I would have two selves."
"Sometimes I feel like a dark bundle of confusion. But that's a step forward. At times I don't even know that much."
"I am icy cold inside and my surfaces are without integument, as if I am flowing and spilling and not held together anymore. Fear grips me and I lose the sensation of being present. I am gone."
"Did I truly wish to open the Pandora's box under my father's bed? ... Could I reconcile myself without bitterness to the amount of my life's energy that had gone into the cover-up of a crime? ... I believe many unexpected deaths occur when a person finishes one phase of life and must become a different sort of person in order to continue. The phoenix goes down into the fire with the best intention of rising, then falters on the upswing. At the point of transition, I came close to dying along with my other self."
This text is eerily reminiscent of the Kafka/Boy named crow story, and I think we could easily integrate them.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Annie <3 Kafka on the Shore
I'm about halfway through and am utterly in love. Preliminary stuff I liked:
"I switch off the light and leave the bathroom. A heavy, damp stillness lies over the house. The whispers of people who don't exist, the breath of the dead. I look around, standing stock-still, and take a deep breath. The clock shows three p.m., the two hands cold and distant. They're pretending to be noncommittal, but I know they're not on my side. It's nearly time for me to say good-bye. I pick up my backpack and slip it over my shoulders. I've carried it any number of times, but now it feels so much heavier." (11)
"I'm free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can't really understand what it means. All I know is I'm totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who's lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free? I don't know, and I give up thinking about it." (44)
"But I'm scared, and my teeth won't stop chattering. Try as I might I can't get them to stop. I stretch out my hands and look at them. Both are shaking a bit. They look like somebody else's hands, not my own. Like a pair of little animals with a life all their own. My palms sting, like I grabbed onto a hot metal bar." (71)
"Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through, is now like something from the distant past. We're so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about every day, too many new things we have to learn. New styles, new information, new technology, new terminology...But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone." (98) <--This is something I'd really like to pursue...but not memories on an individual level, but rather on a human level...what things get "stuck" in the consciousness of all human existence, even when no individual consciousnesses are alive to remember them?
Hope you all are enjoying your breaks!
"I switch off the light and leave the bathroom. A heavy, damp stillness lies over the house. The whispers of people who don't exist, the breath of the dead. I look around, standing stock-still, and take a deep breath. The clock shows three p.m., the two hands cold and distant. They're pretending to be noncommittal, but I know they're not on my side. It's nearly time for me to say good-bye. I pick up my backpack and slip it over my shoulders. I've carried it any number of times, but now it feels so much heavier." (11)
"I'm free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can't really understand what it means. All I know is I'm totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who's lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free? I don't know, and I give up thinking about it." (44)
"But I'm scared, and my teeth won't stop chattering. Try as I might I can't get them to stop. I stretch out my hands and look at them. Both are shaking a bit. They look like somebody else's hands, not my own. Like a pair of little animals with a life all their own. My palms sting, like I grabbed onto a hot metal bar." (71)
"Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through, is now like something from the distant past. We're so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about every day, too many new things we have to learn. New styles, new information, new technology, new terminology...But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone." (98) <--This is something I'd really like to pursue...but not memories on an individual level, but rather on a human level...what things get "stuck" in the consciousness of all human existence, even when no individual consciousnesses are alive to remember them?
Hope you all are enjoying your breaks!
Nakata's wish
It's not that I'm dumb. Nakata's empty inside. I finally understand that. Nakata's like a library without a single book. It wasn't always like that. I used to have books inside me. For a long time I couldn't remember, but now I can. I used to be normal, just like everybody else. But something happened and I ended up like a container with nothing inside.
Nakata doesn't have anybody. Nothing. I'm not connected at all. I can't read. And my shadow's only half of what it should be.
If I'd been my normal self, I think I would've lived a very different kind of life. Like my two younger brothers. I would have gone to college, worked in a company, gotten married and had a family, driven a big car, played golf on my days off. but I wasn't normal, so that's shy I'm the Nakata I am today. It's too late to do it over. I understand that. It's too late to do it over. I understand that. But still, even for a short time, I'd like to be normal Nakata. Up until now there was never anything in particular I wanted to do. I always did what people told me as best I could. Maybe that just became a habit. But now I want to go back to being normal. I want to be a Nakata with his own ideas, his own meaning. (306-307)
Nakata doesn't have anybody. Nothing. I'm not connected at all. I can't read. And my shadow's only half of what it should be.
If I'd been my normal self, I think I would've lived a very different kind of life. Like my two younger brothers. I would have gone to college, worked in a company, gotten married and had a family, driven a big car, played golf on my days off. but I wasn't normal, so that's shy I'm the Nakata I am today. It's too late to do it over. I understand that. It's too late to do it over. I understand that. But still, even for a short time, I'd like to be normal Nakata. Up until now there was never anything in particular I wanted to do. I always did what people told me as best I could. Maybe that just became a habit. But now I want to go back to being normal. I want to be a Nakata with his own ideas, his own meaning. (306-307)
Kafka walks
I walk on for a while and reach a round sort of clearing. Surrounded by tall trees, it looks like the bottom of a gigantic well. Sunlight shoots down through the branches like a spotlight illuminating the ground at my feet. The place feels special somehow. I sit down int he sunlight and let the faint warmth wash over me, taking out a chocolate bar from my pocket and enjoying the sweet taste. Realizing all over again how important sunlight is to human beings, I appreciate each second of that precious light. The intense loneliness and helplessness I felt under those millions of stars has vanished. But as time passes, the sun's angle shifts and the light disappears. i stand up and retrace the path back to the cabin. (137)
Together you walk along the beach back to the library. You turn off the light in your room, draw the curtains, and without another word climb into bed and make love. Pretty much the same sort as the night before. But with two differences. After sex, she starts to cry. That's one. She buries her face in the pillow and silently weeps. You don't know what to do. You gently lay a hand on her bare shoulder. You know you should say something, but don't have any idea what. Words have all died in the hollow of time, piling up soundlessly at the dark bottom of a volcanic lake. And this time as she leaves you can hear the engine of her car. That's number two. She starts the engine, turns it off for a time, like she's thinking about something, then turns the key again adn drives out of the parking lot. That blank, silent interval between leaves you sad, so terribly sad. Like fog from the sea, that blankness wends its way into your heart and remains there for a long, long time. You touch the warmth with your hand and watch the sky outside gradually lighten. Far away a crow caws. The Earth slowly keeps on turning. But beyond any of those deatils of the real, there are dreams. And everyone's living in them. (299)
Together you walk along the beach back to the library. You turn off the light in your room, draw the curtains, and without another word climb into bed and make love. Pretty much the same sort as the night before. But with two differences. After sex, she starts to cry. That's one. She buries her face in the pillow and silently weeps. You don't know what to do. You gently lay a hand on her bare shoulder. You know you should say something, but don't have any idea what. Words have all died in the hollow of time, piling up soundlessly at the dark bottom of a volcanic lake. And this time as she leaves you can hear the engine of her car. That's number two. She starts the engine, turns it off for a time, like she's thinking about something, then turns the key again adn drives out of the parking lot. That blank, silent interval between leaves you sad, so terribly sad. Like fog from the sea, that blankness wends its way into your heart and remains there for a long, long time. You touch the warmth with your hand and watch the sky outside gradually lighten. Far away a crow caws. The Earth slowly keeps on turning. But beyond any of those deatils of the real, there are dreams. And everyone's living in them. (299)
Nancy-God
Nancy waded out to her own rocks and searched her own pools and let that couple look after themselves. She crouched low down and douched the smooth rubber-like sea anemones, who were stuck like lumps of jelly to the side of the rock. Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and made the minnows into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by holding her hand against the sun, and so brought darkness and desolation, like God himself, to millions of ignorant and innocent creatures, and then took her hand away suddenly and let the sun stream down. Out on the pale criss-crossed sand, high-stepping, fringed, gauntleted, stalked some fantastic leviathan (she was still enlarging the pool) and slipped into the vast fissures of the mountain side. And then, letting her eyes slide imperceptibly above the pool and rest on that wavering line of sea and sky, on the tree trunks which the smoke of steamers made waver upon the horizon, she became with all that power sweeping savagely in and inevitably withdrawing, hypnotised, and the two senses of that vastness and this tininess (the pool had diminished again) flowering within it made her feel that she was bound hand and foot and unablet o move by the intensity of feelings which reduced her own body, her own life, and the lives of all the people in the world for ever, to nothingness. So listening to the waves crouching over the pool, she brooded. (75)
this would almost be better as stage directions...?
this would almost be better as stage directions...?
Kitchen table
Whenever she "thought of his work" she always saw clearly before her a large kitchen table. It was Andrew's doing. She asked him what his father's books were about. "Subject and object and the nature of reality," Andrew had said. And when she said heavens, she had no notion what that meant. "Think of a kitchen table then," he told her, "when you're not there."
So now she always saw, when she thought of Mr. Ramsay's work, a scrubbed kitchen table. It lodged now in the fork of a pear tree, for they had reached the orchard. And with a painful effort of concentration, she focused her mind, not upon the silver-bossed bark of the tree, or upon its fish-shaped leaves, but upon a phantom kitchen table, one of those scrubbed board tables, grained and knotted, whose virtue seems to have been laid bare by years of muscular integrity, which stuck there, its four legs in air. Naturally, if one's days were passed in this seeing of angular essences, this reducing of lovely evenings, with all their flamingo clouds and blue and silver to a white deal four-legged table (and it was a mark of the finest minds to do so), naturally one could not be juged like an ordinary person. (23)
So now she always saw, when she thought of Mr. Ramsay's work, a scrubbed kitchen table. It lodged now in the fork of a pear tree, for they had reached the orchard. And with a painful effort of concentration, she focused her mind, not upon the silver-bossed bark of the tree, or upon its fish-shaped leaves, but upon a phantom kitchen table, one of those scrubbed board tables, grained and knotted, whose virtue seems to have been laid bare by years of muscular integrity, which stuck there, its four legs in air. Naturally, if one's days were passed in this seeing of angular essences, this reducing of lovely evenings, with all their flamingo clouds and blue and silver to a white deal four-legged table (and it was a mark of the finest minds to do so), naturally one could not be juged like an ordinary person. (23)
Lily's Painting
Perhaps to be put in the first person:
The jacmanna was bright violet; the wall staring white. She would not have considered it honest to tamper with the bright violet and the staring white, since she saw them like that, fashionable though it was to see everything pale, elegant, semitransparent. Then beneath the colour there was the shape. She could see it all so clearly, so commandingly when she looked: it was when she took her brush in hand that the whole thing changed. It was in that moment's flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who so often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child. Such she often felt herself--struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to say: "But this is what I see; this is what I see," and to clasp some miserable remnant of her vision to her breast, which a thousand forces did their best to pluck from her. And it was then too, in that chill and windy way, as she began to paint, that there forced themselves upon her other things, her own inadequacy, her insignificance, keeping house for her father off the Brompton Road, and had much ado to control her impulse to fling herself (thank Heaven she had always resisted so far) at Mrs. Ramsay's knee and say to her--but what could one say to her? "I'm in love with you?" No, that was not true. "I'm in love with this all," waving her hand at the hedge, at the house, at the children. It was absurd, it was impossible. So now she laid her brushes neatly in the box, side by side. (19)
The jacmanna was bright violet; the wall staring white. She would not have considered it honest to tamper with the bright violet and the staring white, since she saw them like that, fashionable though it was to see everything pale, elegant, semitransparent. Then beneath the colour there was the shape. She could see it all so clearly, so commandingly when she looked: it was when she took her brush in hand that the whole thing changed. It was in that moment's flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who so often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child. Such she often felt herself--struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to say: "But this is what I see; this is what I see," and to clasp some miserable remnant of her vision to her breast, which a thousand forces did their best to pluck from her. And it was then too, in that chill and windy way, as she began to paint, that there forced themselves upon her other things, her own inadequacy, her insignificance, keeping house for her father off the Brompton Road, and had much ado to control her impulse to fling herself (thank Heaven she had always resisted so far) at Mrs. Ramsay's knee and say to her--but what could one say to her? "I'm in love with you?" No, that was not true. "I'm in love with this all," waving her hand at the hedge, at the house, at the children. It was absurd, it was impossible. So now she laid her brushes neatly in the box, side by side. (19)
Mr. Ramsay's Boots
"What beautiful boots!" she exclaimed. She was ashamed of herself. To praise his boots when he had asked her to solace his soul; when he had shown her his bleeding hands, his lacerated heart, and asked her to pity them, then to say, cheerfully, "Ah, but what beautiful boots you wear!" deserved, she knew, and she looked up expecting to get it, in one of his suddden roars of temper, complete annihilation.
Instead, Mr. Ramsay smiled. His pall, his draperies, his infirmities fell from him. Ah yes, he said, holding his foot up for her to look at, they were first-rate boots. There was only one man in Enlgand who could make boots like that. Boots are among the chief curses of mankind, he said. "Bootmakers make it their business," he exclaimed, "to cripple and torture the human foot." They are also the most obstinate and perverse of mankind. It had taken him the best part of his youth to get boots made as they should be made. He would have her observe (he lifted his right foot and then his left) that she had never seen boots made quite that shape before. They were made of the finest leather in the world, also. Most leather was mere brown paper and cardboard. He looked complacently at his foot, still held in the air. They had reached, she felt, a sunny island where peace dwelt, sanity reigned, and the sun for ever shone, the blessed island of good boots. Her heart warmed to him. "Now let me see if you can tie a knot," he said. He poopoohed her feeble system. He showed her his own invention. Once you tied it, it never came undone. Three times he knotted her shoe; three times he unknotted it. (153)
Instead, Mr. Ramsay smiled. His pall, his draperies, his infirmities fell from him. Ah yes, he said, holding his foot up for her to look at, they were first-rate boots. There was only one man in Enlgand who could make boots like that. Boots are among the chief curses of mankind, he said. "Bootmakers make it their business," he exclaimed, "to cripple and torture the human foot." They are also the most obstinate and perverse of mankind. It had taken him the best part of his youth to get boots made as they should be made. He would have her observe (he lifted his right foot and then his left) that she had never seen boots made quite that shape before. They were made of the finest leather in the world, also. Most leather was mere brown paper and cardboard. He looked complacently at his foot, still held in the air. They had reached, she felt, a sunny island where peace dwelt, sanity reigned, and the sun for ever shone, the blessed island of good boots. Her heart warmed to him. "Now let me see if you can tie a knot," he said. He poopoohed her feeble system. He showed her his own invention. Once you tied it, it never came undone. Three times he knotted her shoe; three times he unknotted it. (153)
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Spring Break!!!
Hello, everyone!
Writing to remind everyone of what our spring break assignments are, esp. because I've decided to revise them to make this all more egalitarian-like.
1) 2 minute etude: Create a 2 minute performance piece using an object we find over break. We should each look for an object with which we do not have a personal history, but we should each look for something that is very personally evocative. The etude can be a silent physical action, it can be dance, song, text: any or none of these. The important part is for us each to push ourselves to break past the patterns that we've already noticed ourselves falling into in rehearsal, and to commit to the use of the object we each find.
2) Review and even expand upon the two actions we came up with 1: after the grandparents house and 2: based on the text I gave everyone.
3) (THIS IS THE NEW AWESOME ONE). I've decided that a: I'm really busy over spring break and I worry about being the only one looking for text. b: it doesn't make much sense for me to be picking all the text, even if this is just a preliminary round-up. SO, I want us all to look for textual and visual research. I think it'd be best if we each start with the same texts, but of course bringing in additional research is always awesome. The sources I think we should look to first are:
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Murakami)
Kafka on the Shore (Murakami)
Sputnik Sweetheart (Murakami)
To the Lighthouse (Woolf)
Nobody belongs here more than you (July)
All this assignment is is amassing text we think has good performative potential for people who have just died and are trying to get a grasp on themselves/their surroundings. I hesitate to say we should just pick text we like, but because our play is at this point fairly vague it ALMOST boils down to that. So start posting text!
Let's also keep posting on what we think of these assignments, and if there are any ways to specify them/modify them so as to improve upon them.
Hugs!
-Gedney.
Writing to remind everyone of what our spring break assignments are, esp. because I've decided to revise them to make this all more egalitarian-like.
1) 2 minute etude: Create a 2 minute performance piece using an object we find over break. We should each look for an object with which we do not have a personal history, but we should each look for something that is very personally evocative. The etude can be a silent physical action, it can be dance, song, text: any or none of these. The important part is for us each to push ourselves to break past the patterns that we've already noticed ourselves falling into in rehearsal, and to commit to the use of the object we each find.
2) Review and even expand upon the two actions we came up with 1: after the grandparents house and 2: based on the text I gave everyone.
3) (THIS IS THE NEW AWESOME ONE). I've decided that a: I'm really busy over spring break and I worry about being the only one looking for text. b: it doesn't make much sense for me to be picking all the text, even if this is just a preliminary round-up. SO, I want us all to look for textual and visual research. I think it'd be best if we each start with the same texts, but of course bringing in additional research is always awesome. The sources I think we should look to first are:
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Murakami)
Kafka on the Shore (Murakami)
Sputnik Sweetheart (Murakami)
To the Lighthouse (Woolf)
Nobody belongs here more than you (July)
All this assignment is is amassing text we think has good performative potential for people who have just died and are trying to get a grasp on themselves/their surroundings. I hesitate to say we should just pick text we like, but because our play is at this point fairly vague it ALMOST boils down to that. So start posting text!
Let's also keep posting on what we think of these assignments, and if there are any ways to specify them/modify them so as to improve upon them.
Hugs!
-Gedney.
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