Looking For A Little Romanticism? (Or An English Student's Wet Dream)

Orpheus and Eurydice

An excerpt out of China Miéville's collection of short stories entitled Looking For Jake, from the selfsame tale

When Orpheus looked back, Jake, it wasn't stupid. The myths are slanderous. It wasn't the sudden fear that she wasn't there that turned his head, it was the threatening light from above. What if it was not the same, out there? It's so human, to turn and catch the eye of your companion on a return journey, to share a moment's terror that everything you know will be changed.

To get a sense of the original tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, read it in Bulfinch, here.

Volte-Face

My apologies for the abrupt, melodramatic post left yesterday exonerating me from posting for a time. Unfortunately I've been prone to this sort of abrasive reaction of late, my patience giving in to transitory frustrations, due to recent events. As usual, a few 'swift kicks' of advice, and reality, have made me realize how foolish, daft and rash this choice is for me.

On the literary front, as school is approaching imminently, my books for various classes are arriving deus ex machina by mail. Only a few days ago, Northrop Frye's Double Vision, a collection of Brocken Brown stories, and McLuhan's Laws of Media came via snail-mail. In one day I managed to read Frye's Double Vision, chiefly because his clear, spiritual vision was a breath of fresh, holy air. As well, a collection of short stories by China Miéville was finally released yesterday, August 30th, called Looking For Jake. I look forward to Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys in September.

The Two Aspects of Self

Another tidbit of wisdom from Bergson's Time and Free Will:

Not all our ideas, however, are thus incorporated in the fluid mass of our conscious states. Many float on the surface, like dead leaves on the water of a pond: the mind, when it thinks them over and over again, finds them ever the same, as if they were external to it. Among these are the ideas which we receive ready made, and which remain in us without ever being properly assimilated, or again the ideas which we have omitted to cherish and which have withered in neglect.

Pass The Courvoisier

A sore retreat I think is in order today, not due to Jeremy's raucous birthday party last night at Chester's, but after enduring a haze of ecclesiastical drawl this morning. It had to be THE worst day of church I've ever borne, the message a theological gargle and babble in my head, worse than any ignoramus's opinion. The chagrin in my head is worse than any hangover alcohol might impart, and to sit quietly while the preacher blathered, leaving me with a migraine. To think of the things I could've been doing while I sat in musty pews, every part slipping out of kilter as my mettle turned into dross, horrified as I saw centuries of wisdom liquidated before my very eyes. Someone get me a drink, please!

On States of Consciousness (Before Coffee)

A curious, deep set of lines I read this morning before I depart for work:

[...] but states of consciousness, even when successive, permeate one another, and in the simplest of them the whole soul can be reflected. We may therefore surmise that time, conceived uder the form of a homogeneous medium, is some spurious concept, due to the trespassing of the idea of space upon the field of pure consciousness [...] we shall see that time, conceived under the form of an unbounded and homogeneous medium, is nothing but the ghost of space haunting the reflective consciousness.

From Henri Bergson's Time and Free Will, the last work unrelated to school that I will read for an extended period. Next on my list: Sidney's Defence of Poesy and Stella and Astrophil.

Tic Tac Toe

A long time it's been since I last posted. I've been busy these erstwhile days - switched departments at work from periodicals to cash, regular cameos at Viv's place, and today we went to the CNE. On the book front I haven't sat down to read in half a week, too tired after going hither and thither with my fiancée - though I am eyeing Henri Bergson's Time and Free Will. For a short while, a few days, I tried reading The Romance of the Rose but I just wasn't in the mood for medieval allegory. Some scampering tonight, too, as a derelict York finally released the booklist after a week long delay.

Drivin' Along In My Automobile (My Baby Beside Me At The Wheel)

After two days of willy-nilly runs to and fro, settling paperwork in Oakville, Mississauga and Brampton, we finally have our new car. What is most amazing, in retrospect, is how swift and easy it occured - as though moved by the hand of Providence. Viv and I visited the dealership on Tuesday, deliberated on Wednesday, bid on Thursday, and drove away Friday night, everything resolved in slightly over half a week. Yet I never felt like we moved haphazardly, as though consumed with the kind of Doppler effect our minds experience after a series of exuberant snap decisions. Instead it was exhilarating, since it was our first car purchased together.

Today I discovered an extra, delightful thing while perusing the new Library of America catalogue: novelist Charles Brockden Brown.

Plus I hope our cat, Cleta isn't commiting a spree of masochistic Christmas-themed murders because she's killed two turtledoves. There are no pear-trees, nor partridges in the area, fortunately.

ADDENDUM: The game is on. Our second eldest cat, Smokey, it seems, is coveting position of top bird-killer in the house. Recently, I caught her in the back yard about to tear apart her prize, a sparrow. I always thought senior cats lost their feline instinct for killing creatures in their golden years, but I guessed wrong. Some old felines never stop. They're just waiting for the right opportunity to give the younger generation their comeuppances.

Blazing Saddle, Or Back In The Saddle Again

A few nights ago Blazing Saddles was played on television, though I forget the channel. An entertaining, hilarious spoof of those 'ole John Wayne-esque westerns nonetheless. It is a great curious , if not serendipitous coincidence that I saw this movie and now it lends its name as an apt title. Yesterday, Viv and I made a generous offer to buy a new (used) car - our first car together, a 2001 Sunfire - and the dealership accepted it. Now we need to scamble to gather the appropriate insurance paperwork, a cheque and scrawling my John Hancock across myriad forms. When all is said and done, indeed, we will ride off into the sunset--err, Sunfire.

I had intended to post this great news at the stroke of midnight, however, a midnight snack called me away, quite literally. My fiancée and her brother had a mix-up with some pizza deliveries which invariably led to there being TWO pizzas at her place. With parents off on vacation she beseeched me nigh to midnight to come over for pizza. So I dashed off to her place for two hours. I've since returned home, after digressing from my blog entry to wrap it up. Work starts in seven and a half hours, leaving me with five and a half hours of sleep time on the clock.

I'll think about sleeping after this song's over - Sex Is Not The Enemy by Garbage - some of the lyrics blaring into my ear: "A revolution is the solution, a revolution is the solution, I don't feel guilty no matter what they're telling me, I won't feel dirty and buy into the misery, I won't be shamed because I believe that love is free, it fuels the heart and sex is not the enemy."

Addendum: It's nearly 3 o'clock and I can't sleep. Wide awake. Damnit.

It Was A Very Local Earthquake (Isn't It Ironic, Don't You Think?)

I offer here an iconic, comedic passage From Lord Dunsany's Chu-bu and Sheemish:

It was a very local earthquake, for there are other gods than Chu-bu or even Sheemish, and it was only a little one as the gods had willed, but it loosened some monoliths in a colonnade that supported one side of the temple and the whole of one wall fell in, and the low huts of the people of that city were shaken a little and some of their doors were jammed so that they would not open; it was enough, and for a moment it seemed that it was all; neither Chu-bu nor Sheemish commanded there should be more, but they had set in motion an old law older than Chu-bu, the law of gravity that that colonnade had held back for a hundred years, and the temple of Chu-bu quivered and then stood still, swayed once and was overthrown, on the heads of Chu-bu and Sheemish. (51-52)

The joke is on the gods, who each wished for a local earthquake to strike fear into, and thus win over, the hearts of the idolatrous locals. While inadvertantly effecting the opposite, vexing their high thrones of worship and reducing themselves to mere pittances for the anonymous narrator.

You can read the complete short story here.

"Perchance They Were Busy Even Then Arming For Armageddon"

Today I was delighted when a book I ordered a week ago arrived in store - a Dover collection of short stories from another one of my typical forgotten, yet influential authours: Lord Dunsany, one of the grand masters of fantasy. The book, Wonder Tales: The Book of Wonder and Tales of Wonder, is a jumble of 33 tales based on two older, 1912 and 1916 respective, publications. I have read enough testimonials about his everlasting influence on twentieth century writers - from Lovecraft and Tolkien to Gaiman and Mieville - to ascribe great importance to his writings. You can read for yourself the testimonies of two remarkable writers: Lovecraft and Gaiman. Lovecraft said: "[Dunsay's] rich language, his cosmic point of view, his remote dream-worlds, and his exquisite sense of the fantastic, all appeal to me more than anything else in modern literature." Or, if you need more proof of Dunsany's everlasting influence, bear witness to Neil Gaiman, who writes in his Acknowledgements page in Stardust: "I owe an enormous debt to Hope Mirrlees, Lord Dunsany, James Branch Cabell and C.S. Lewis, wherever they may currently be, for showing me that fairy stories were for adults too." I make a big deal about this authour, among countless others, because I hold true that we need a sense of an authour's influences to value where a writer is taking us with his or her writing, now and later. Neither does it hurt to keep a mental chronicle of literary history, lest we forget and risk losing this knowledge to the abyss of time. If my understanding is correct Dunsany's language imbued a liveliness, or vigour into fantastic literature, making it fun, as well as relevant to us. His language alone elevates fairy stories to the point we can no longer call them children's stories, but appreciate them as full-fledged, adult-worthy stories. You can see his influence, especially, in the rise of the realm of Faerie in several award-winning modern fantasy writers e.g. Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, 2005 Hugo Award Winner, or Neil Gaiman, Hugo, Bram Stoker and World Fantasy Award Winner.

I rest my case. In case you were wondering, the title comes from a line in Miss Cubbidge and the Dragon of Romance.

Colour Out of Space

I had some downtime with no obligations after work yesterday, which I enjoyed as much as I could after a bus ride home. A nap on the couch, talking with my fiancée over the phone. These are a few of the things I managed to accomplish Sunday night, though accomplish isn't exactly an apt word as, say, do. Instead of the regular 4 - 9:30 shift, I was scheduled for the morning shift 10:45 to 4:00 that left me with a free afternoon, though to call it free is misleading when hemmed in is how I spent it. When I am neither working nor able to visit Vivian, I keep to the house - the backyard being the extent of going outside - like a monk with his books. Unfortunately, I live in Mississauga, which is one of those suburban cities where one needs to fork out money, have close friends, and/or own a bicycle to enjoy themselves. I have naught of these three, to my chagrin, so I spend much time indoors at home reading books - an expense that costs no more than the (discounted) cover price - when I am not with my fiancée. As I am recently without a car, living in a city with a lackadaisical transit system, and without a large income, you can guess how easy it is to become immobile. Besides, I have never minded being left out of the rat race for leisure, recreation and luxury that is growing in Mississauga - never a part of it to start. A worthier sacrifice is a future for Vivian and I, something far more important to me than wasting hard-earned cash at clubs, movies, bars, restaurants with trivial (often work-related) cliques. I have a relationship with my friends, which I consider to be very close-knit, developed friendships - outside of the high-school clique mentality that people continue to follow even in the workplace.

Wow. I never meant to write most of what I just wrote. Truth be told, I was planning to write a boring, literary entry on allegory, inspired by Lovecraft's short story The Colour Out of Space. Oh well. It's late, I have a long day awaiting me starting in 6 hours, so I ought to get to bed.

The Two Deaths of Christopher Martin

"Weapons. I have things that I can use."

Intelligence. Will like a last ditch. Will like a monolith. Survival. Education, a key to all patterns, itself able to impose them, to create. Consciousness in a world asleep. The dark, invulnerable centre that was certain of its own sufficiency.

William Golding, Pincher Martin (163)

An excellent, surreal, labyrinthine novel - an allegory to assert boldly the value of our Free Will against all odds. Harkening to Shakespeare's King Lear, Freud's psychoanalysis, Bergson's Creative Evolution, Time and Free Will, Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, the Bible, even a bit of dream vision, to discover the quintessence that makes us human.

The Divine Secrets of the Bedraggled Fatherhood

Sweltering weather, it seems, is bedraggling our minds in Ontario this summer. This blog topped the 1,000 hit mark recently, which truly boggles the mind. Who reads this blog outside of a coterie of friends? Evidently readership is greater than I think.

Aside from awaking stiff as a rock this morning from playing baseball yesterday, I have no reason to complain. Similar to the day I sought my fiancée's parents' for their blessing and permission to marry Vivian, today brought nothing but good tidings. I got a pre-approval for $10,000 ($15,000 if parents co-sign) to finance a new automobile, I got praise on my first cash training shift for being able to handle my own (without needing another cashier to supervise as wonted), and I got to come home and relax after work today - even sneaking in an afternoon nap.

In terms of books, I continue to read Golding's Pincher Martin, nigh to half-way done. A friend at church is reading The (Ethiopian) Book of Enoch, too, so I'm re-reading it for the sake of discussion. That, and there is something about this ancient apocryphal text that titillates the imagination. One particular aspect of the story, including the same tale from the Torah, about the angels or Watchers hankering for the daughters of man and thus begetting the giants or Nephilim has always disturbed me. Perhaps it's postmodern hay-fever, but I've always thought that the tale of the Nephilim and their annihilation to be a perfect parable for our modern world - overtones of racism, genocide, eugenics, power, cannibalism, all the relevant, as well as literary things for our times. Of course, I understand the biblical interpretations of the original story - children of fornication, death and destruction, amok with God's plan for mankind, - but this tale has always bothered me. Take for example: And to Gabriel said the Lord: 'Proceed against the bastards and the reprobates, and against the children of fornication: and destroy the children of the Watchers from amongst men: send them one against the other that they may destroy each other in battle: for length of days shall they not have (1 Enoch 10:9). I know I'm being modern, that I will admit, but in terms of a story, it makes me queasy to fathom it. Assuredly, celestial fornication and divulging divine secrets of the heaven is anathema, everything amounting to excommunication from God's fatherhood, akin to Lucifer, and leading to bloodshed, all in all, not a good thing. I do admit, though, that The Book of Enoch makes much more sense of its gravity, in the case of man relationship with technology, witchcraft, magic, make-up, metallurgy, thaumaturgy, &c and all things that a biblical God regards as intervening between He and his kin. But that's enough for now.

Adieu.

The Winner of Our Discontent

Half a week gone, finally, a new post. I haven't felt much like blogging of late, rather, I've been spending my late nights on the phone with my fiancée [thanks Zelda for the tip], Viv. So far, I worked from 9:30 AM to 9:00 PM two nights this week. There is, frankly, little time left for much else besides the occasional book. I finished reading Gaiman's Stardust not too short after the last post, Sunday, as well as that Shakespeare book, Shadowplay, a book that took me into previously unexplored (rather profound) historical territory. I think Asquith's book deserves a certain amount of praise for her attempt to challenge the common biases, assumptions, and trifles - one being the (pro-) Protestant bias of our historical perspective. If, in the course of my upcoming Advanced Shakespeare course, we are expected to research a theoretical standpoint, I am willing to stake out the much contested territory surrounding New Historicism - I have read Greenblatt and Asquith. However, I digress.

Today I decided that I am going to read Golding's Pincher Martin next. After googling the title, I discovered an interesting article drawing comparisons between Golding and Bergson, a philosopher I became interested in after reading Kazantzakis about two years ago. It was, however, at this moment I realized I did not own a single book by Bergson. For now I must be content with the brief excerpts from Creative Evolution in an anthology called Art In Theory: 1900-2000, An Anthology of Changing Ideas. What caught my attention in the article, in particular, was Bergson's notion of the inter-relationship between free will and time. The book under question is Bergson's Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. Actually, I am looking to obtain a copy, anon.

It is only in seeing consciousness run through matter, lose itself there and find itself there again, divide and reconstitute itself, that we shall form an idea of the mutual opposition of the two terms [intelligence and intuition], as also, perhaps, of their common origin.

On The Shoulder of Giant's Clouds

"What were you shouting about?" asked Yvaine.

"To let people know we were here," Tristran told her.

"What people?"

"You never know," he told her. "Better I should call to people who aren't there than that people who are there should miss us because I didn't say anything."

She said nothing in reply to this.

--Neil Gaiman, Stardust (178)

Sparrows Fly High, Straight To The Mountain Top

I continue to read Gladwell's Tipping Point, though right now I'm taking a break to listen to Kevin Lyttle (currently the single, My Love) and picking out the next book I'll read--it's a toss up between British authors Neil Gaiman (Stardust) or William Golding (Spire or Pincher Martin). An odd assortment, though what short of quirky (or eclectic) isn't wonted, which is not entirely accurate, in sooth, of what is truly on my mind. Until school starts, however, my aim is to keep to my mind busy at all times. On second thought I'm not entirely sure I know what's happening in my own mind, or whether I want to know, period. Then again, I've never been one to reconcile actions to thoughts, content to deal with things as they occur, and make sense later. It's not the kind of attitude that's much of a money-maker. Bad joke, I know, I know. I'm blathering, too. Not much of a post, either. Wish I had a car to go out tonight, for so many reasons, starting to get fed up with sitting at home alone after work every Friday night.

In the end, if you want to get something out of this post, in light of Caribana, check this out.

Every Man For Himself

I finished reading Everyman yesterday morning, although the edition I completed reading from was different. Instead of a modernised edition (such as the Cawley displayed below), I read an original, Middle English edition from the anthology of Early English Drama. Perhaps a quirky wont of mine, an inner romantic antiquarian in me, but I have a knack for reading and comprehending older English writing much better in its original spelling. Annotations and editor's notes help with translating archaic meanings, which, in turn, help to maintain a sense of the metre's rhythm. This is something I find intrinsically essential to understanding as much, if not adding more meaning to a seemingly basic mystery play. Even heading into my fourth year as an English major, I have yet to find a simple explanation for how I can extrapolate meaning, intuitively (also called 'thin-slicing' by Malcolm Gladwell), from an inexplicable mental sense of rhythm. That's the major difference between an expert and a commoner, one possesses a vocabulary to explain what another takes for granted. I can attest to this, in retrospect, when I think of the essay I wrote on Disgrace, which was a clear-cut example of an allegorical reading.

Gosh. It's starting to show that I'm reading more Malcolm Gladwell, this time, The Tipping Point. I can't help it, his writing, ideas and style are infectious. He's Canadian, too.

A Fallen Star That You Cannot Live Without

It was going to be just another day of work, however, I had to come home from my second job around 7 pm due to what I suspect is exhaustion. My lungs felt contorted like a claddagh knot, wrung tight to the point it was painful to breathe, and a migraine being incised upon my skull. Only now, around 10:40 pm, has the tightness in my lungs begun to abate. Above all these things, I've felt weak, tired and lackadaisical, and still do. I haven't had a reaction as this bad for a long time. I wouldn't be surprised if my body underwent a mild form of anxious shock, a wonted reaction to working too much, all too familiar in light of the past school year. The only medicine the doctor has ever given me to treat my anxiety, which I am reluctant to take, is a mild form of valium called Lorazepam. In the past, I have been prescribed an asthma puffer (I was born with severe asthma, though I outgrew the worst symptoms with age, hence I'm left with the side effects), but I find it unavailing, only usable when it is too late to treat the problem. After-the-fact medicine is not what I need, quite fruitless, nor is going back to the doctor. This problem is not punctual, but only seems to be seasonal, or work related. It seems like one of those apocalyptic signs, a day of sickness, for the whole family--my little nephew, Kamdyn, was taken to the hospital around the time I became ill and since then I haven't heard a word. Still waiting.

In the mean time, I have tomorrow off to rest, aside from a visit to the insurance company as well as Atron to show off my fiancé, err...I mean to let her meet my (mom and I's) co-workers, who, no doubt, have heard countless stories of Vivian and I, but never seen us together.

Since I had to dash off from Atron, I forgot my Asquire book there, so I've taken to reading Everyman for an easy read.

Wheeze.

Pour Your Misery Down On Me

A brief entry before I head off to work (12:30 to 9:00) at Atron. Yesterday, I finally got a copy of Garbage's first, self-titled CD--doled in pink.

Running out of time, listening to Only Happy When It Rains blare out of the computer's speakers before I head out the door.

Cheers.

It's All About The Benjamins

Over the course of the weekend I tried, repeatedly, to sit down and write a decent blog entry. It was a decent weekend filled with excitement, ranging from spending time with my fiancé, seeing the movie Stealth, to witnessing our youngest cat, Cleta, negligently lose her catch--a sparrow--to her older, proweling sister, Smokey, who capitalised on her brief unattentiveness. I continue to read Asquith's Shadowplay with mixed feelings, though it is slowly turning into a love-hate relationship. It reminds me of a comment Dr. J made about Greenblatt over drinks last year: you figure with the learned, brilliant kind of research and knowledge these New Historicism critics/scholars possess they would know better than to make some of the blundering statements or assumptions they make in their books. Asquith, too, falls into this rut on a regular basis. After about 75-100 pages her arguments seem like a rap song; you have a sense of the intellectual rhythm or beat she is blaring into your mind's ear, though she often also flashes a dazzling show of her historical knowledge like it was 'bling-bling'. Just to remind you, of course, that she is 'street' credible (or to make up for her intellectual blunders) with her scholarly historical consciousness. Yep, I just compared a book on Shakespeare to rap music. I MUST be fishing desperately for ideas.