Enough quotation.

I've told you about the funeral my parents attended this weekend; I'll tell you again. She had grace, according to my mother, in a holy way - like a sweet liquid she was, when she was poured on you. My parents' age, and married to my father's old law professor. She had lukemia, and she'd gone from being nearly dead to nearly fully live and healthy, thanks to a bone marrow transplant, from her daughter, to like a eighty percent survival.

And eighty percent, in my imagination, was unduly pessimistic. She was getting better and better, and then a spider bit her, or she got an infection some other, stupid, accidental way. Nobody noticed, until, late, she seemed out of her head, saying strange things, funny things, and she got dashed to the hospital. And there, they probed her, and tested her, and examined her, and there wasn't much time left, and her liver had already conked out, and some other organ I don't remember.

So there she was, knowing she was dead, two hours beforehand. But this is the beautiful part: she lay there, holding her husband's hand, going over his appointments for the next week, also reviewing his obligations that weren't written down, also teasing him on his shortcomings, and his need for a wife, and in her very last minutes laughing, at him. And then she was gone.

My mother also remembers, when my father was in law school, how she, the same woman, how she decided one spring it would be cute to have bread baskets made of bread, so she had all the students' wives come over, and make bread with her, and roll it into strips, and weave it into baskets, only she forgot to glaze it before putting it away in the attic for spring, and it grew the thickest, greenest, lushest mold you ever saw, up there, and the occasion had to do without it, and I have no doubt she laughed it off.

And today, I spoke with a few people who are biking through Virginia, from somewhere far south up to somewhere north, 250 miles if you take the straightest shot possible on our little back roads, and in their spandex shorts and funny-shaped sunglasses and with their digital cameras and lightweight tenspeeds, they were the cutest things, and I could feel my happiness in you bleed, and spray, and spread, onto them, onto each one as I waved, or smiled at them, or spoke to them.

And I wish your camera had been with me: between the blue mountains, looking like an approaching wave, and the sky full of light, and the yellowest, yellowest grass, and the purple flowers wearing their color shameless as a hound dashing into the bushes, and the red, shy, but red, and full, flowers scattered in amongst them, life may be brutal and you might have to stomp on your neighbor to have your head stick out, but goodness is it ever nice to see the crown in the crowd, like a soaring eagle, wings translucent against the sun.

Okay, I can't resist quoting:
Когда ты смотришь так серьёзно -
Малыш, я тебя люблю.
Когда ты робко меня целуешь -
Малыш, ты меня волнуешь,
Но не могу, не могу, извини, не могу.
Песня летит над волнами,
Летит как цунами,
Но корабль на горизонте - плывёт
Что же случилось с нами,
Что случилось с нами -
Этот вопрос мне покой не даёт. [read, listen] _
respond? (4)
11:32:33 PM, Tuesday 22 June 2004

I float; my body is full of flowers, flowers with fingers giving me acute, acute caresses, sparks, jewels, quivers of joy, dizziness, such dizziness. Music inside of one, drunkenness. Only closing the eyes and remembering, and the hunger, the hunger for more, more, the great hunger, the voracious hunger, and thirst.

You are so terribly nimble, so clever. I distrust your cleverness. You make a wonderful pattern, everything is in its place, it looks convincingly clear, too clear. And meanwhile, where are you? Not on the clear surface of your ideas, but you have already sunk deeper, into darker regions, so that one only thinks one has been given all your thoughts, one only imagines you have emptied yourself in that clarity. But there are layers and layers -- you're bottomless, unfathomable. Your clearness is deceptive. You are the thinker who arouses most confusion in me, most doubt, most disturbance.

I see myself wrapped in lies, which do not seem to penetrate my soul, as if they are not really a part of me. They are like costumes.

--Anais Nin, [reference, thanks to Miss Wurzel Tod for the link]


But in that case we never get to the end of our work! -- Of course not, for it has no end.

--Ludwig Wittgenstein, Zettel, 447 [reference] _
respond? (2)
07:54:16 AM, Tuesday 22 June 2004

Belated concern.

petit Gemellus nuptias Maronillae
et cupit et instat et precatur et donat.
adeone pulchra est? immo foedius nil est.
quid ergo in illa petitur et placet? tussit.

[Gemellus is seeking marriage with Maronilla, and longs and pursues and begs and gives gifts. Is she beautiful then? No, there's nothing more foul. So what about her is sought after and pleasing? She coughs.]

[reference]

to cough and spit,
And, with a palsy-fumbling on his gorget,
Shake in and out the rivet.

[reference]

Let us here consider the casus, my dear little cousis (husstenhasstencaffincoffintussemtossemdamandamnacosaghcusagh-hobixhatouxpeswchbechoscashlcarcarcaract)

[reference, explanation]

Бракоразводный процесс.
Судья:
- Истец, почему вы хотите развестись с вашей женой?
Муж:
- Понимаете, она кашляет!
Судья:
- Ну и что? Ведь это не повод для развода.
Муж:
- Ну она все время кашляет!
Судья:
-???
Муж:
- А когда она все время кашляет, то у меня все время выскакивает!

Divorce hearings.
Judge:
-Plaintiff, why do you want to divorce your wife?
Husband:
-She coughs, don't you see?
Judge:
-Well? That's no reason for divorce.
Husband:
-But she coughs all the time!
Judge:
-???
Husband:
-... and whenever she coughs I get shoved out!

[reference]

fui libenter in tua suburbana
uilla, malamque pectore expuli tussim
me grauedo frigida et frequens tussis
quassauit usque, dum in tuum sinum fugi,
et me recuraui otioque et urtica.
quare refectus maximas tibi grates

[I was gladly in your country house close to the city
I drove out a bad cough from my chest...
a chilling cold and frequent cough shook me
continually until I fled into your lap
and I restored myself by rest and Nettle.
Wherefore, having been restored, I give you the greatest thanks]

[reference, translation]

Мне холодно. Прозрачная весна
В зеленый пух Петрополь одевает.

[I am cold. The transparent spring
dresses Petropolis in green fuzz.]

[reference] _
respond? (6)
07:13:37 PM, Monday 21 June 2004

"The most absurd of these episodes occurred on another rainy evening, when James and I chanced to arrive at Windsor long after dark. We must have been driven by a strange chauffeur - perhaps Cook was on a holiday; at any rate, having fallen into the lazy habit of trusting him to know the way, I found myself at a loss to direct his substitute to the King's Road. While I was hesitating, and peering out into the darkness, James spied an ancient doddering man who had stopped in the rain to gaze at us. 'Wait a moment, my dear - I'll ask him where we are'; and leaning out he signalled to the spectator.

"'My good man, if you'll be good enough to come here, please; a little nearer - so,' and as the old man came up: 'My friend, to put it to you in two words, this lady and I have just arrived here from Slough; that is to say, to be more strictly accurate, we have recently passed through Slough on our way here, having actually motored to Windsor from Rye, which was our point of departure; and the darkness having overtaken us, we should be much obliged if you would tell us where we now are in relation, say, to the High Street, which, as you of course know, leads to the Castle, after leaving on the left hand the turn down to the railway station.'

"I was not surprised to have this extraordinary appeal met by silence, and a dazed expression on the old wrinkled face at the window; nor to have James go on: 'In short' (his invariable prelude to a fresh series of explanatory qualifications), 'in short, my good man, what I want to put to you in a word is this: supposing we have already (as I have reason to think we have) driven past the turn down to the railway station (which, in that case, by the way, would probably not have been on our left hand, but on our right), where are we now in relation to...'

"'Oh, please,' I interrupted, feeling myself utterly unable to sit through another parenthesis, 'do ask him where the King's Road is.'

"'Ah - ? The King's Road? Just so! Quite right! Can you, as a matter of fact, my good man, tell us where, in relation to our present position, the King's Road exactly is?'

"'Ye're in it,' said the aged face at the window."


--Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance, and the James is Henry, if it wasn't obvious _
respond? (20)
08:56:14 AM, Thursday 17 June 2004

Rain, as they say, in sheets; and the mountains have disappeared; and the river looks like it's halfway in the next world; and everything quivers and shivers and moves and thrills, and I'm dripping on the keyboard, and all the birds have gone, into a thousand shelters. The drops look like goosebumps, splashing on the deck and railing.

And it falls on the windows like a car wash, and rolls down the glass in waves. _
respond?
06:27:35 PM, Tuesday 15 June 2004