Serene Falcon

O, Venice Is A Fine City, Wherein A Rat Can Wander At His Ease

August 11th, 2008 at 3:00 am (Literature, Other, Places)

The Wind in the Willows was not my initiation into reading — the first book I was observed reading happened to be Of Mice and Men : and on review it is to be sincerely doubted that any seven-year-old would understand more than half of that — yet this was the most important book of my childhood; and nothing, absolutely nothing, can overstate the incredible importance of this work to all true English men and women. Roughly the same significance as held the Bible in the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries.

 
The wayfarer was lean and keen-featured, and somewhat bowed at the shoulders; his paws were thin and long, his eyes much wrinkled at the corners, and he wore small gold ear rings in his neatly-set well-shaped ears. His knitted jersey was of a faded blue, his breeches, patched and stained, were based on a blue foundation, and his small belongings that he carried were tied up in a blue cotton handkerchief.

When he had rested awhile the stranger sighed, snuffed the air, and looked about him.

‘That was clover, that warm whiff on the breeze,’ he remarked; ‘and those are cows we hear cropping the grass behind us and blowing softly between mouthfuls. There is a sound of distant reapers, and yonder rises a blue line of cottage smoke against the woodland. The river runs somewhere close by, for I hear the call of a moorhen, and I see by your build that you’re a freshwater mariner. Everything seems asleep, and yet going on all the time. It is a goodly life that you lead, friend; no doubt the best in the world, if only you are strong enough to lead it !’

‘Yes, it’s THE life, the only life, to live,’ responded the Water Rat dreamily, and without his usual whole-hearted conviction.

‘I did not say exactly that,’ replied the stranger cautiously; ‘but no doubt it’s the best. I’ve tried it, and I know. And because I’ve just tried it — six months of it — and know it’s the best, here am I, footsore and hungry, tramping away from it, tramping southward, following the old call, back to the old life, THE life which is mine and which will not let me go.’

‘Is this, then, yet another of them ?’ mused the Rat. ‘And where have you just come from ?’ he asked. He hardly dared to ask where he was bound for; he seemed to know the answer only too well.

‘Nice little farm,’ replied the wayfarer, briefly. ‘Upalong in that direction’ — he nodded northwards. ‘Never mind about it. I had everything I could want — everything I had any right to expect of life, and more; and here I am! Glad to be here all the same, though, glad to be here ! So many miles further on the road, so many hours nearer to my heart’s desire !’

His shining eyes held fast to the horizon, and he seemed to be listening for some sound that was wanting from that inland acreage, vocal as it was with the cheerful music of pasturage and farmyard.

‘You are not one of US,’ said the Water Rat, ‘nor yet a farmer; nor even, I should judge, of this country.’

‘Right,’ replied the stranger. ‘I’m a seafaring rat, I am, and the port I originally hail from is Constantinople, though I’m a sort of a foreigner there too, in a manner of speaking. You will have heard of Constantinople, friend ? A fair city, and an ancient and glorious one. And you may have heard, too, of Sigurd, King of Norway, and how he sailed thither with sixty ships, and how he and his men rode up through streets all canopied in their honour with purple and gold; and how the Emperor and Empress came down and banqueted with him on board his ship. When Sigurd returned home, many of his Northmen remained behind and entered the Emperor’s body-guard, and my ancestor, a Norwegian born, stayed behind too, with the ships that Sigurd gave the Emperor. Seafarers we have ever been, and no wonder; as for me, the city of my birth is no more my home than any pleasant port between there and the London River. I know them all, and they know me. Set me down on any of their quays or foreshores, and I am home again.’

‘I suppose you go great voyages,’ said the Water Rat with growing interest. ‘Months and months out of sight of land, and provisions running short, and allowanced as to water, and your mind communing with the mighty ocean, and all that sort of thing?’

‘By no means,’ said the Sea Rat frankly. ‘Such a life as you describe would not suit me at all. I’m in the coasting trade, and rarely out of sight of land. It’s the jolly times on shore that appeal to me, as much as any seafaring. O, those southern seaports ! The smell of them, the riding-lights at night, the glamour !’

‘Well, perhaps you have chosen the better way,’ said the Water Rat, but rather doubtfully. ‘Tell me something of your coasting, then, if you have a mind to, and what sort of harvest an animal of spirit might hope to bring home from it to warm his latter days with gallant memories by the fireside; for my life, I confess to you, feels to me to-day somewhat narrow and circumscribed.’

‘My last voyage,’ began the Sea Rat, ‘that landed me eventually in this country, bound with high hopes for my inland farm, will serve as a good example of any of them, and, indeed, as an epitome of my highly-coloured life. Family troubles, as usual, began it. The domestic storm-cone was hoisted, and I shipped myself on board a small trading vessel bound from Constantinople, by classic seas whose every wave throbs with a deathless memory, to the Grecian Islands and the Levant. Those were golden days and balmy nights ! In and out of harbour all the time — old friends everywhere — sleeping in some cool temple or ruined cistern during the heat of the day — feasting and song after sundown, under great stars set in a velvet sky ! Thence we turned and coasted up the Adriatic, its shores swimming in an atmosphere of amber, rose, and aquamarine; we lay in wide land-locked harbours, we roamed through ancient and noble cities, until at last one morning, as the sun rose royally behind us, we rode into Venice down a path of gold. O, Venice is a fine city, wherein a rat can wander at his ease and take his pleasure ! Or, when weary of wandering, can sit at the edge of the Grand Canal at night, feasting with his friends, when the air is full of music and the sky full of stars, and the lights flash and shimmer on the polished steel prows of the swaying gondolas, packed so that you could walk across the canal on them from side to side! And then the food — do you like shellfish ? Well, well, we won’t linger over that now.’

He was silent for a time; and the Water Rat, silent too and enthralled, floated on dream-canals and heard a phantom song pealing high between vaporous grey wave-lapped walls.

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All Fiction Is Wish-Fulfilment

July 29th, 2008 at 6:30 pm (Literature, Manners not Morals, Self, To Know Know Know Him)

Sprawled on the carpet, Jamie was nibbling his lower lip in a thoughtful rapture.
“Wot’cha doing ?” enquired Paul. Whilst glad he was actually doing something, and not staring inwardly; the ever-active Paul mistrusted the contemplative impulse: noting that Jamie, unusually for him had been reading the Sunday literary supplements and scribbling away for the last hour. His pretty little brother had given up on others’ critical theory when he was ten, not just on literature.

“Making a game..” Jamie murmured in soft distraction; then shaking his platinum head explained: “One creates ten titles with synopsis-blurbs for well typical modern books — fiction’s gonna be the easiest ‘The crap we read now‘ to be Trollopian…” not that Jamie had hardly read Trollope in his young life… “then lists ten adjectives commonly used in such heated minds as write blurbs to describe the protagonist; and ten adjectives used to encapsulate such rot. The others than have to match up the correct two adjectives to each book to win. Remember: All fiction is wish-fulfilment. The skill of the author lies mostly in how they can disguise this truth. Modern authors can barely even try; which is why their heroes and heroines are all brilliant, multi-skilled, sexy geniuses.”

After a while he handed Paul his first list, “Knock yourself out.” he said cheerfully.

 
I. Miss Jazzy Queening it Down The Gap. — The adventures of a mixed race Black/Puerto Rican drag-artiste hustling in Times Square to fund his sex-change operation.

II. The Potting-Shed in Autumn. — In the garden of a country-house in 1935 an ageing gardener, once an Oxford graduate, recalls how he came to the ruin of his dreams and his present status, and considers the tapestry of life represented by the denizens of Maddingleigh Hall from the servants’ quarter to the Osterley-Browns, the wealthy but corrupt family who now own the land.

III. The Gash of Time. — A Scotswoman’s vigorous fight for self-improvement against the opposition of family, friends, children and all the menfolk she ever meets. Until at last she gains a doctorate in Council Studies, makes the largest fortune in Scottish history as a successful businesswoman, and finally becomes the first woman first minister of Scotland’s Parliament.

IV. The Seabirds of Yalta. — Charlie Werner, troubled maverick of the SIS, has five days to stop Walter Schellenburg’s most daring plot of all: to assassinate the Big Three at their meeting in 1945. Facing the sinister ex-lawyer Ulrich von Kartoffeltopf, now SS Brigadeführer and confidante of Himmler, he has only the beautiful Larissa, once secretary to Yagoda, only allowed to buy her life by fulfilling the most dangerous of all missions, and Una, ‘The Lovely Valkyrie’, a Prussian aristocrat playing a double game, and ‘Dutch’ O’Murphy, a tough wise-cracking US Master-Sergeant, eager and willing to pay off old scores. These four are pitted against Otto Skorzeny and an elite band of assassins formed from a company of the surviving parachutists of Crete sworn to dark and mystical oaths which have to do with revenge on traitors responsible for the near débâcle and the random recovery of ancient objects of great occult power. Can they protect the leaders of the Free World, or is there a traitor in their own ranks ? How will they pair off into bed ? And in what order ?

V. The Bread-and-Butter Pudding Club. — Polly, Gail, Rosie and Miriam all want their men to settle down and take things seriously: they form a pact with the rest of the girls in the firm and it’s a side-splitting race to see who becomes pregnant first.

VI. The End of the Pier. — July 1914: The Twelve Joeys, a struggling party of Pierrots and Pierrets work the South Coast during the splendid Summer. What will Autumn bring ?

VII. Riding A Rainbow. — Dainty vowed never to be dependent on anyone after her parents split up; now a brilliant success as the best marketing executive in the tough world of publishing ever, she wants a child. But at 26 she has to act fast. Who shall she choose as the father ? Josh, her live-in lover of three years, genius research scientist, but irresponsible and feckless; Rudy, the sweet gentle impoverished motorcycle courier, only 19 but living in a communal squat in Brixton; or Simon, suave multi-millionaire business entrepreneur who will give her a life of perfection, but demand marriage as the price ? Dainty has to make the most difficult decision of her life.

VIII. Dead of Day. — A serial killer is murdering women, all of whom are young, clever and excessively attractive: can the J9 team, a crack police squad formed to foil these crimes — oldish gaffer, young female second-in-command, black male, computer genius, black female, several gays of either sex, ordinary plods with combat skills — work out why he uses these criteria in time before he slays another six victims ?

IX. The Holy Ball. — Latvia in the early fourteenth century is a grim and dangerous place, ruled by the cruel Sword-Brethren. Some men fight in rebellion, others knuckle under: but all, ultimately are depressed. A group of their wives however refuse to yield, and defy the imperialistic oppressors and their hypocritical Church by inventing football. The infuriated rulers must strike back and destroy the game and all memory of it, or it will spell the end of all their anti-democratic power. Inspiringly, after the massacre one girl escapes and, abjuring all else, spends every moment of an immensely long and minutely detailed mediæval life travelling to every country in Europe, Africa, and Asia to secretly spread the knowledge of this inspiring game, with it’s promise of ultimate liberation, amongst all disaffected peasants.

X. Fresh Meat — Horror: an especial group of Sûreté investigators put together an alarming collection of facts. All over the globe, butchers return home to find their families gone: there are no clues, except the abductors left several hundred kilos of sausages sitting in each living room. Marvel as the authorities take several weeks before something clicks and they call in what sausages remain for forensic examination.

 
 
1. Feisty
2. Strong
3. Fiercely-independent
4. Fiercely-intelligent
5. Loveable
6. Tragic
7. Adorable
8. Enduring
9. Bright
10. Tough-minded

a) life-enhancing
b) wise
c) gentle-fable
d) brilliant
e) hilarious
f) astounding
g) amazing
h) witty
i) assured
j) mythic

 
Paul read this in silence. “Some of your sodding preoccupations are present;”
Jamie smirked.
“I wouldn’t talk about ‘Lovely Valkyries’ much if I were you.” he continued sourly.
Jamie bit him. At least he tried to. Certain subjects were taboo.

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Sure Of Hand

June 12th, 2008 at 5:00 am (Art, High Germany, Literature, Other, Self)

Jamie has this gift also, the gift of the compelling eye — which is not to be confused with the evil eye, nor yet witchcraft — which suggests to the unwary and lesser-willed the pure unreason of unobedience [ I wish I had it... ]

She believed profoundly in herself and in the suggestions of her own imagination. So fixed and unalterable was that belief that it amounted to positive knowledge, so far as it constituted a motive of action. In her strange youth wild dreams had possessed her, and some of them, often dreamed again, had become realities to her now. Her powers were natural, those gifts which from time to time are seen in men and women, which are alternately scoffed at as impostures, or accepted as facts, but which are never understood either by their possessor or by those who witness the results. She had from childhood the power to charm with eye and hand all living things, the fascination which takes hold of the consciousness through sight and touch and word, and lulls it to sleep. It was witchery, and she was called a witch. In earlier centuries her hideous fate would have been sealed from the first day when, under her childish gaze, a wolf that had been taken alive in the Bohemian forest crawled fawning to her feet, at the full length of its chain, and laid its savage head under her hand, and closed its bloodshot eyes and slept before her.

I was fond of F. Marion Crawford’s The Witch of Prague as a child, and though he wasn’t prone to incident in his unelaborate plotting, few could deny the beauty of his descriptive, suggestively so, powers.

The man introduced him into a spacious hall and closed the door, leaving him to his own reflections. The place was very wide and high and without windows, but the broad daylight descended abundantly from above through the glazed roof and illuminated every corner. He would have taken the room for a conservatory, for it contained a forest of tropical trees and plants, and whole gardens of rare southern flowers. Tall letonias, date palms, mimosas and rubber trees of many varieties stretched their fantastic spikes and heavy leaves half-way up to the crystal ceiling; giant ferns swept the polished marble floor with their soft embroideries and dark green laces; Indian creepers, full of bright blossoms, made screens and curtains of their intertwining foliage; orchids of every hue and of every exotic species bloomed in thick banks along the walls. Flowers less rare, violets and lilies of the valley, closely set and luxuriant, grew in beds edged with moss around the roots of the larger plants and in many open spaces. The air was very soft and warm, moist and full of heavy odours as the still atmosphere of an island in southern seas, and the silence was broken only by the light plash of softly-falling water.

He who has won woman in the face of daring rivals, of enormous odds, of gigantic obstacles, knows what love means; he who has lost her, having loved her, alone has measured with his own soul the bitterness of earthly sorrow, the depth of total loneliness, the breadth of the wilderness of despair. And he who has sorrowed long, who has long been alone, but who has watched the small, twinkling ray still burning upon the distant border of his desert—the faint glimmer of a single star that was still above the horizon of despair—he only can tell what utter darkness can be upon the face of the earth when that last star has set for ever. With it are gone suddenly the very quarters and cardinal points of life’s chart, there is no longer any right hand or any left, any north or south, any rising of the sun or any going down, any forward or backward direction in his path, any heaven above, or any hell below. The world has stood still and there is no life in the thick, black stillness. Death himself is dead, and one living man is forgotten behind, to mourn him as a lost friend, to pray that some new destroyer, more sure of hand than death himself, may come striding through the awful silence to make an end at last of the tormented spirit, to bear it swiftly to the place where that last star ceased to shine, and to let it down into the restful depths of an unremembering eternity. But into that place, which is the soul of man, no destroyer can penetrate; that solitary life neither the sword, nor pestilence, nor age, nor eternity can extinguish; that immortal memory no night can obscure. There was a beginning indeed, but end there can be none.

Here also is one of his pretty short stories: For The Blood Is The Life

 
As to Prague itself, it was no doubt a fine city, from when it was the capital of the Old Reich to the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; yet I do have some distance from all things Czech: excessive nationalism from when they first began their interesting practice of throwing people out of high windows and set off the most devastating war in modern history; a wry humour allied to a smug morosity similar to that of my own people which insisted on striving for barren independent democracy; and, of course, the depraved vengefulness which sped possibly the most unspeakable atrocities on Germans of any nation which had been under the nazi control ( after an occupation which was as collaborative as most [ they supplied superb weaponry with all their noted craftsmanship and the occupation was not as grim as in, say, Poland ] ) — here’s one link, but I’ve read far, far worse… If the Russians were dreadful, they were restrained compared to some of the smaller regimes which were to become their future puppets. Besides, they honoured the Grand Tradition by chucking Jan Masaryk — ghastly son of a still ghastlier father — out of a window…

 
Still Art has nothing to do with politics, and Bohemia even in it’s despicable guise of the late scarcely lamented Czechoslovakia had some severely unknown artists:
here’s a site devoted to Tavik František Šimon

 
with pages upon his confreres such as Hugo Böttinger

 
Mucha is naturally well-known, yet Golden Age Comic Stories blog has some nice examples of his work on the 8th June entry — for some reason I cannot link directly to posts there; this blog has a large resource of illustrative fantasy ranging from the fascinating to the banal [ I have to say I despise classical comic book 'art' and such genre; and find it generally as debased and weak-minded as say it's successors in film such as Star Wars or Star Trek ].

 
Finally, here’s another Perchta…

[ Although I have to preface this by pointing out that the painting above the snippet, Vincent Neumann's Witch on a Broom --- reffing to above mention of Bohemian witches... --- is uncannily reminiscent of Auld Scotia right up to the present time. Go into any Edinburgh pub. ]

 
The White Lady von Rosenberg
Perchta von Rosenberg, known as the White Lady, lived in the Český Krumlov castle in the 15th century. Her father, Ulrich II. von Rosenberg married her off against her will and without love to the Moravian lord Johann von Lichtenstein who was cruel to Perchta all her life. When Johann was dying he had Perchta called in and asked her for forgiveness. She refused, and her husband cursed her. Since then, the soul of the White Lady von Rosenberg has had to roam the Rosenberg castles and tends to appear before significant events. White gloves on her hand bear good tidings, whereas black gloves are a sign of impending disaster. Tales of the White Lady is a theme for many authors.

This is from the Tales & Legends bit of the site of Český Krumlov Castle.

Apart from the fact I find the notion of forgiveness unmanly and fairly inexplicable, the trouble here is that under no rational or irrational standard can forgiveness be demanded, and why this poor girl should have to expiate her lack of pity for the brutish lout who had injured her is totally beyond me.

 
I blame christianity.

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“Art Knows No Borders !”

April 2nd, 2008 at 9:00 pm (Generalia, Literature, Music, Self, To Know Know Know Him, Videos)

Temporary ill-health precludes any capacity for thought greater than that which lesser beings need for the selection for their choice of president ( something which in any case is more decided on the grossest sentiment rather than pure reason, of course: otherwise the leading Democrat candidates might not have the appearance of sinister liars, and the leading Republicans — as they were — that of shifty dolts ), therefore a short mélange of diverse items stored in draft without any unifying theme….

Thoughts Too Deep For Words Dept.:

A comment recently dropped on a computing blog:

I think christina aggulara is like more of the new version of veronica lake.She is realy insanely beautiful and i myself are doing a biography of Veronica lake.

 
Let Them Eat Cake:

Wedding Cake of the Gothic Crows

 
Eng Lit:

A blog with an amusing satire, Hometown

 
Music:

From the wiki on Turbo-Folk, that relentless mystical musical experience which expresses the yearning for the ideal life as perceived by the ordinary man:

However, turbo-folk was equally popular amongst the South Slavic nations during the brutal wars of the 1990s, reflecting perhaps the common cultural sentiments of the warring sides. When a Muslim market seller in Sarajevo was asked why in the midst of a Serb shelling of the city he illegally sold CDs by turbo-folk superstar Ceca, a wife of the notorious Serbian warlord Arkan, he offered a laconic retort: “Art knows no borders!”

Two by Atomik Harmonik — for frailer spirits, less is more is something particularly applicable to hearty polkas, but they go nuts on this in the Balkans.

 
Finally, to combat near delirium, amongst other discoveries of things unknown, I read up on Neodymium Magnets: which are very powerful for their size, and can disrupt floppy disks ( who the hell still uses floppy disks ? ), computer monitors, fingers, credit cards, and heart pacemakers. Jamie is conducting experiments with just one of these listed in unwitting conjunction with an elderly grouch of a neighbour.

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For Love Of Marie-Jeanne

March 25th, 2008 at 3:30 am (Literature, Other, Royalism, The King of Terrors, War)

Ivanov Seven is an excellent boys’ book by Elizabeth Janeway, and regards a mid-19th century recruit into the Russian army who is fortunate enough to return home to the hills with a charming little howitzer named Katya for his very own > which is the sort of souvenir no-one could resist; particularly a Prussian ornate cannon that is antique bronze inscribed:

Anyway, during the royalist war in the Vendée against the brutish scum of the French Republic, there was another notable piece with a sweet name. She was a bit bigger, but just as lovable.

Really, the only engaging with life which makes the curious matter of existence endurable is to destroy republicans… And maybe, to collect cannon. Not only for that good purpose, but just because… I find myself unable to believe God created us in order that we might worship Him — although He would have every right so to do if He so Chose ( that’s the arbitrary and unfettered bit that is the essence of power; which we must try to mirror, howsoever unsuccessfully here on earth, at least for His equally arbitrarily Chosen lieutenants… ) — and His reasons for creation must remain a mystery, but fighting on the right side each time consoles us at least during each such struggle.

 
The soldiers reassembled in large numbers, till, with Bonchamps’ division, there were close on forty thousand, but destitute of powder; the army spent the night before La Châtaigneraie, which had been re-occupied by the Republicans. At daybreak the town was found to have been evacuated, all the Blues having fallen back on Fontenay. The Catholic Army marched forward without delay and towards noon reached Pissotte, three-quarters of a league from Fontenay; the Blues, to the number of ten thousand, with upwards of forty pieces of cannon, were drawn up in battle array before the town. The priests were asked to give the men absolution before the battle. “We have no powder, boys“, the generals said to them; “Come on and recapture Marie-Jeanne with your cudgels, as you did at first. See who can run fastest, for we cannot stop to fire this time.” M. de Lescure was in command of the left wing; his men showing a disposition to hang back, he was obliged to ride on alone forty paces ahead of them; then, pulling up, he called out “Vive le Roi !” He was instantly greeted with six rounds of grapeshot, for the enemy had aimed at him as though he was the bullseye on a target; by a veritable miracle he was not wounded, though his clothes were riddled, his left spur shot away, and also a large piece of his boot from the right calf. Turning round he called out to the men, “You see, boys, the Blues cannot shoot. On with you ! Forward !” The men, carried away with enthusiasm, rushed forward at such a pace that my husband had to break into a quick trot in order to keep at their head. Just then the peasants, catching sight of a mission cross, fell on their knees around it, though within range of the cannon. More than thirty balls passed over their heads. At that point there were only MM. de Lescure and de Baugé on horseback. The latter would have had my husband bid them go on. “No, let them finish their prayers first“, he answered quietly. At length they sprang up and rushed upon the enemy. Meanwhile M. de Marigny fired off the few charges we had with good effect. M. de la Rochejaquelein had put himself at the head of the cavalry with MM. de Dommaigné and de Beaurepaire; they all displayed the utmost gallantry, while Henri distinguished himself by a judgment beyond his years. After repulsing the Repub­lican cavalry, instead of pursuing it, he fell upon the flank of the enemy’s left wing, which till then had been maintaining the fight with some success, and by so doing placed the victory beyond a doubt. I wish I could give further details with regard to the circumstances of this battle, but I can only say what I know for certain.

The Blues, appalled by the desperate onslaught of the Vendeans, were completely routed in three quarters of an hour. The left wing, under the command of M. de Lescure, reached the gate of the town, and he himself was the first to enter, but his men, to begin with, had not the courage to follow him. MM. de Bonchamps and Forest, spying him from a distance, dashed forward to join him ; it was high time, for he was alone and in a very perilous situation. The three officers together were rash enough to penetrate into the town, though the streets were still crowded with over four thousand Blues, who, paralysed with terror, fell on their knees and began begging for quarter. When they had reached the square they separated and took three different streets, likewise thronged with armed volunteers, to whom they cried, “Surrender, down with your arms ! Vive le Roi ! We will do you no harm.” Scarcely had he parted from M. de Lescure, however, than M. de Bonchamps was wounded. One of the soldiers, after laying down his musket and crying for quarter like the rest, picked it up again as soon as he had passed, and fired, shooting him through the arm and fleshy part of the breast and inflicting four wounds upon him : luckily our troops were just then crowding into the town in the wake of their generals. Bonchamps’ men in their fury closed in on the street and slaughtered about sixty Blues who were in it, so that the guilty one should not escape their vengeance.

As for M. de Lescure, he had the greatest pleasure a man can experience ; on leaving M. de Bonchamps and Forest he had taken the Street of the Prisons, which he caused.to be thrown open, to the cry of Vive le Roi, and flung himself into the arms of M. de la Marsonniere and the two hundred and forty prisoners confined along with him. This officer and several of the men were to have been guillotined the following morning; he had shown at his examination a nobility and greatness of character worthy of the highest praise. M. de Lescure had hastened to deliver them for fear they should be mas­sacred by the Blues, and having done so flew at once to another prison in which were confined the relations of émigrés and other suspected persons, to the number of over two hundred. They had viewed the battle from afar and barricaded themselves on the inside for fear of being butchered by the patriots. M. de Lescure knocked repeatedly, crying, “Open, in the King’s name !” Immediately the doors flew open, while the prison rang with cries of Vive le Roi ! All the captives embraced M. de Lescure, but without recognizing him, even though a great many were relations or friends of his ; after telling them his name he left them, to engage in the pursuit of the patriots like all the other officers.

Forest had taken the street leading to the Niort road, and accordingly found himself at the very head. Every­one’s chief concern was to recapture Marie-Jeanne, the idol of the army, while the Blues, who were aware of this, used every endeavour to save her. They were already well over a league from the town. Forest had pushed forward so far that he found himself in the midst of over a hundred gendarmes ; fortunately he had the horse, saddle and weapons of a gendarme he had killed in a previous engagement, besides which, he was not dressed like a peasant and had no white cockade, and as at that time most of the Republican regiments were full of new recruits not yet in uniform, the Blues took him for one of their own men. “Comrade,” said one of them, clapping him on the shoulder, “there is a reward of twenty-five thousand francs for those who save Marie-Jeanne; she is in danger; let us turn back and prevent her from being taken.” All the Blues promptly turned back, whereupon Forest began to play the hero, declaring that he must be the foremost, and so gradually worked his way forward till he found himself leading, some way ahead, and followed only by the two boldest. When he was only a short distance from our men, he turned round with a cry of Vive le Roi ! and killed the two Blues who were following him, while the Vendeans, recognizing him, fell upon the enemy and captured Marie-Jeanne who was defended by some foot. To bring the history of this gun to a conclusion, I will add that she was brought back by the soldiers in triumph to La Vendée, where, in all the villages, the women came out to meet her, embracing her and covering her with flowers and ribbons.

Memoirs of the Marquise de La Rochejaquelein [ trans : Cecil Biggane ]

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Ingleside B: Ah, But You Shudder

March 13th, 2008 at 2:36 pm (Literature, Melancholy, Other, Poetry)

It is absurd for fond parents to think to enlist great interest from strangers in the writhing or passive tenants of the cradle. Except in theory, this undeveloped bud must be a blank to nearly all but Father ( sometimes ), Mother and nurse always. No baby can suggest to the mind that strange thrill of parental wonder until it is your own, your firstborn. To be a Father ! That is a holy name, a sweet relation, a thought full of surprise at first. So it is by the cradle in your own nursery that you must be supposed to be sitting if these musings are to find an echo in your heart. It is the evening hour; you have come in from a parish round, or from a day in the counting-house; you pass the nursery door; the curtains are drawn across the window ; there is a mellow glow and dance of firelight in the room; the nurse has gone downstairs for her mistress’s hot water; you steal in and take your seat by the cradle or the cot. Such quiet, soft breathing, such a passive tiny hand outside the counterpane: so helpless and dependent a creature; the parted lips a full-drawn Cupid’s bow; the scant silky hair; the flushed round cheek,—so soft when you stoop to kiss it,—the little clutching thumbs, and slight twitching movements of the tiny dimpled hand ; the pretty noise and motion, sucking in his dreams. Yes, there is plenty of beauty in the sight to the interested watcher. You crave soon to touch the wee passive hand; to feel its soft tendril-closing about your coarse big fore-finger, to kiss the white smooth forehead. And you pass from wonder at the little newcomer, which has settled down so confidingly and securely as a life-inmate with you, to musings about it, about its future. What will that Future be ? Oh what strange store of experiences lies before this unconscious little traveller, asleep in its bark while storms rage around it in the weary world ! What meanest thou, 0 sleeper ? — while we are casting out our bales, of joy, and health, and gladness, and blithe spirits, to be sucked in by the hungry sea. What meanest thou, 0 sleeper ? And yet, ah, sleep on ! For who can tell what life will bring, in the coming years, to thee ? What sadnesses — ( you think of these, you will notice, rather than of the joys, which come seldom, and less certainly, and fleet sooner ) — what disillusions as life goes on; what blights, and frosts, and winds, and insects, ready for the sheets of blossom ! What strong agonies; what silent aches; and, far worse than these wholesome bitters of sorrow, — what experiences of sin; stains on the white unwritten page; marring worms in the unfolding bud. But what will be the completed story, when God writes “Finis” on the last page of the earth-portion of the everlasting history, which has here begun ? What flower will open from the bud ; resulting in what fruit, meet for the Master’s table?
Ah, you shudder to think how fond Mothers and Fathers have watched by the cots and stooped over to kiss the lips of an Absalom, — a Nero, — a Judas. A monstrous growth, and no flower of beauty or fruit of use, has sprung from such tender buds. Those little pearls, which gave such interest and anxiety in the cutting, have turned out to be serpents’ teeth, yea ” sharper than a serpent’s tooth,” before now. — Hush ! such thoughts shall not have place by this innocent dear slumberer. Yet let them; for God has made it very much your responsibility, ( He tells us so, however mys­terious it must be now to us ), whether an angel of light or an angel of darkness shall finally develop out of that tender bud.

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Ingleside A: Eternal Right And Order

March 13th, 2008 at 2:35 pm (Literature, Melancholy, Other, Poetry)

Two posts from ‘Ingleside and Wayside Musings‘: My copy has no titlepage, yet Google informs that this was written by the Rev. I. R. Vernon. Whatever, the influence of Carlyle is rather manifest — even perhaps partaking of Carlyle’s own influence to style, the surprising Jean-Paul Richter — allied to the natural fervency of the impassioned Victorian preacher…

 
STARS : These seem to me even as the quiet thoughts of Heaven; and some similes and meditations may well therefore be linked with them to introduce this hum­ble cluster of musings, a con­stellation of lesser lights, no doubt, which, however, I would hang somewhere, if I may, between earth and heaven ; stars, I would have them, abiding in the one, but still looking down upon the other. Thoughts re­moved from earth, but not alien from it: orbs watching and shining down upon the turmoil and the jostling, but taking no feverish or heated part in it: — this is the charac­ter which I would have my constellations to bear, however minute be their twinkle. Mild light, let them give, scarce perceived through the haze; light clear and vivid through the frost; light luminous and large now and then, and making a narrow quiet trembling path upon some restless ocean underneath. Stars with all the jewel-lights of dew-drops on a hoary autumn lawn; jasper; sapphire; a chalcedony ; an emerald ; beryl; jacinth; amethyst; opals ; pearls ; all hues of diamonds, and

“One star, the chrysolite.”

For all these are to be found on —

“Heaven’s star-sprinkled floor,”

which is our canopy.
Stars. Ay, you must wait for the quiet hours, when work is done, before you can find them ; they will not make their presence known in the busy day. Above the dust and the heat and the turbulence, they watch on, indeed, in grave contemplation ; but they are withdrawn behind a screen of light from that carefulness and trouble about many things which goes on beneath their shining. Stars are ever lovely ; stars watching, with their haunting eyes, over still lakes and sleeping mountains; over hushed autumn forests and vast prairies; over interminable miles of sand, and over hedge-patterned fields, and twinkling homesteads, and nestling farms ; over the great unquiet sea, and over the heaped dead in a battle-field; over a mounded churchyard, and over a dance in a garden ; — they are lovely, and perhaps as it were most at home, over all the scenes of quiet, and innocent gladness, and repose.
But they have to me a special charm, a charm of incon­gruity and yet of peculiar fitness, when I see them steal out one by one, or in faint clusters, into the dusking sky above the streets of a great City. They come — not with any scorn or sarcasm, — come in their sublime ethereal stillness to look upon the thronged streets, and the glittering wares, and the squalid back lanes; gay Regent Street; noisy Cheapside ; sedate Paternoster Row ; murky Seven Dials ;-— not with any touch of sarcasm, oh no ; — rather with a hint of hope-in-sadness ; still more, with a revelation, a message from God; a voice without speech or language speaking down through the smoke and the foul exhalations and the clang and clash and roar, — telling of what-not that is high and pure, and ethereal and peaceful ? Of infinity, amid that which is finite ; of calm, amid that which is an endless perturbation ; of rest, to weary toil; of peace, where there are many distractions ; of nobility, amid a whirl of mean­nesses and low aims ; of Heaven to that which, having Earth’s unloveliness, is shut out from all her beauty, except that of the clouds and the sky,
Still above these lower clouds and this blue atmosphere, they abide and watch, and are speechlessly eloquent; when the roar dies into a murmur, and the murmur into a few hours’ broken hush, while the sin-burdened, sorrow-laden, toiling, laughing, weeping City sleeps ; over all, those grave eyes are watching. There are the casinos, with their frantic revelry, and heat, and glare; there are the dens of vice and infamy; there is the murderer with his hand raised over his victim; there are the lonely wanderers in the street, or the the rows of dark, dumb, blind houses; there is a jumble of sleeping and waking, of laughing and sobbing, of living and dying, while over all —

“Starry tears are trembling on the mighty Midnight’s face.”

And above this close-packed speck on the world’s plains, where there is neither elbow-room nor air-room, and where acres are worth millions, there is reminding, but not mockery, in the prodigal exhibiting of infinite Space, with which —

“The night reveals Her hollow gulfs of stars.”

0 money-absorbed men in London; in Manchester; in Liverpool; in Glasgow; wheresoever; 0 nation of shop­keepers, more bent than ever now on earning this name ; 0 grave and honest men, shrewd and practical, yet ever looking down, looking down; ever in a whirl of busy life, ever set to the grindstone of money-making; — gradually growing more and more to be mere dull drudges in the heavy cart laden with this world’s short-lived but exacting wants and whims, requirements and conventionalities; 0 lofty spirits, in danger of ever-growing and even eternal lessening and degradation: — it is for you that those Stars are set in the heaven, above your Offices and Warehouses ; it is for you that they come from their radiant chamber when Night empties your counting-houses, and out in the streets you cannot elude them ; it is for you that they look down between the houses, over the roofs, over the courts, glittering like to fruit through the gaunt solitary tree here and there ; penetrating with their great gracious eyes your very being; — and oh, if you would listen, — and not still look only on or down, still absorbed, still absorbed; — if you would look up, — what a heart-stirring sermon you might gather from their silence ! what a lesson of vastness, contrasted with the ever-increasing pettiness of your lives ! What infinity, compared with your ends, which are growing more and more utterly finite! What a speech of Eternity, what silent bell-music, stealing over the jangling voices of Time !
How ? say you the necessities of business must make an artificial code of morality, at variance with, and that must supersede, the everlasting principles of Right ? Has not —

“The intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven,”

a word to say about this ? As you emerge from the hot glaring office, and stand apart from the stream of men — ( in that recess, say, by St. Michael’s Church, Cornhill ), and look up, above the Temple-like Royal Exchange, and see those eternal Watchers; the abysses of black-blue between them ; and, across this, cast, like a light mist or scarf, the untold billions of the Milky Way; do not flimsy sophistries exhale ? can expedient Wrong ( profitable for this moment ) endure that glittering picture of eternal Right and Order ?

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Stand Fast, Koshchei, Who Made All Things As They Are

March 12th, 2008 at 2:30 am (Literature, Other, Poetry)

When this bright bee had departed as the other had done before him, then Toupan moved his wings, and he made ready to overlook the work of Koshchei: and in the instant that Toupan moved, the worlds in that part of the universe were dislodged and ran melting down the sky. It was Gauracy who swept all the fragments together and formed a sun immeasurably larger than that which he had lost, and an obstreperous mad conflagration which did not in anything conform with the handiwork of Koshchei.
And Gauracy then shouted friendlily to Toupan, “Now is the hour of thy release, O Toupan ! now is the hour of the return of the Old Ones, now is the hour that Koshchei falls !”
Toupan answered: “The hour of my release is not yet come. But this is the hour of my overlooking.”
Then Gauracy bellowed, as he swept yet other worlds into the insatiable flaming of his dreadful sun, “I kindle for you a fine light to see by !”
And now the gods who were worshipped in those worlds which remained, these also cried out to Kosh­chei. For now, in the intolerable glare of Gauracy’s malefic sun, they showed as flimsy and incredible inven­tions. And the gods knew, moreover, that, if ever the last remaining bee were freed from the cross, the dizain of the Pleiades would be completed, and Toupan would be released, and the power of the Old Ones would return; and that a day foretold by many prophets, the day upon which every god must shave with a razor that is hired, would be at hand; and that, with the falling about of this very dreadful and ignominious necessity, the day of the divine contentment of all gods in any place would be over, for ever.
Meanwhile the eyes of Toupan went forth, among the Star Warriors and the Wardens of the Worlds. It was They who, under Koshchei, had shaped the earths and the waters, and who had knit together the mountains, and who had fashioned all other things as they are. It was They who had woven the heavens, and who had placed the soul of every god within him. They were the makers of the hours and the creators of the days and the kindlers of the fires of life, and They were powers whose secret and sustaining names were not known to any of the gods of men. Yet now the eyes of Toupan went among the Star Warriors and the Wardens of the Worlds, and Toupan regarded them one by one; and wheresoever the old eyes of Toupan had rested there remained no world nor any Warden watching over it, but only, for that instant, a very little spiral of thin sluggish vapour.
And those of them who were not yet destroyed cried piteously to Koshchei, who had devised Them and who had placed Them in Their stations to keep eternal watchfulness over all things as they are.
Now there is no denying that, in the manner of artists, Koshchei had cleared his throat, and had fidgeted a little, in the while that Toupan was overlooking Koshchei’s handiwork. But when the Wardens and the Star Warriors cried out to him for aid, then Koshchei, lifting never a finger, said only:
“Eh, sirs, have patience ! For I made all things as they are; and I know now it is my safeguard that I made them in two ways.”

James Branch Cabell : The Silver Stallion — Chapter 16.

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“You Are Beautiful, My Manufactured Love, But It Is Only Svengali Talking To Himself…”

March 1st, 2008 at 10:30 am (Literature, Melancholy, Self, Videos)

With the Fall of Stage6 the honours of providing elderly films through a much more cumbersome model fall to Veoh for the time being. [ Five minute previews are given, but to see all, the Veoh software has to be installed and then one either clicks to watch immediately via the application or downloads the video to watch later : this application makes it extremely easy to lose whatever one is viewing, enabling one to have to start over from the beginning and re-enjoy anything one had not missed --- besides which, .avis really are no match for .divx... ]

I have fairly strong feelings on the House of Barrymore, despite the fact they were/are undoubtedly perfectly pleasant people in private life; yet John of that Ilk is here far more restrained and more thoughtful than in his usual performances.. And indeed, more than any of his extended family.

Trilby has been underrated since the reaction to Victorianism in the 1920s — Michael Sadleir’s strictures in his preface to Murger’s Vie de la Boheme being particularly scathing — but it was of it’s slightly interesting time — mid-nineteenth century France — and it can be read simply as a tragedy for each individual fulfilling their destiny. There are wide differences between the book and film of course: in the first, it is Svengali actually singing through Trilby, and his love for her, although probable, is scarcely manifest; in the film he rather unlocks her singing through the same uncanny genius and loves her inordinately — yet vainly since she is merely his creation. Further in the novel, his death prostrates her to mortal illness, the psychic link of control having been shattered; whereas in this film, she merely passes as soon as humanly possible.

Having been privileged to read the especial UNEXPURGATED version, like all du Maurier’s work wistful tristeness is the overlaying key, which as a melancholic he carried out with exemplary zeal, I should say it’s rather like once popular music played on a barrel organ in a minor key in a pretty courtyard with flowers fading as autumn comes.

Actually, the word UNEXPURGATED was undoubtedly purposed to catch the eager unwary into hopes that it would be imbecile to imagine du Maurier could or would ever satisfy > it just meant that his rancorous portrayal of Jimmy Whistler as a youth was included.

Svengali — 1931

Some immensely varying, and in a way disturbingly so, visualisations of Marian Marsh’s interpretation of Trilby:

 
“Ich habe Geliebt und Gelebet ! *

***

Here are a couple of Tod Slaughters thrown in both with very poor quality:
The Face at the Window
Sweeney Todd : The Demon Barber of Fleet Street the sound is peculiarly misaligned, but with awful video and agonizing sound it still beats listening to Sondheim… Then again, what does not ?

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And God Said, “Let There Be Blood”

February 28th, 2008 at 9:00 am (Animals, High Germany, Literature, Places, Self, Spengler)

Lingering self-respect has oftimes preserved me — ‘gainst all temptations — from the more egregious effects of the zeitgeist of sentimentality: a modest pride holds in that I have never ever seen either It’s A Wonderful Life or The Wizard Of Oz, f’rinstance. Now, Upton Sinclair was a notable story-teller, but a Hemingwayesquely poor writer — ‘What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke ?‘ as Gore Vidal wrote of his native land — and his themes here are rather trite; bad capitalists… bad religion… exploiters… the family saga genre… so it’s rather unlikely I shall bother to watch There Will Be Blood. Having a nearly all-male crew probably clinches it — single sex movies suck as much as single sex communities… However the title is awfully good — especially considering the vast importance of titling and it’s common neglect — so I tried to find from whence it came.

The Boston Globe attributed it to Byron:

Tears Like Mist

It makes good on the film’s title, which may be taken from Lord Byron. “The king-times are fast finishing,” he said. “There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist. But the peoples will conquer in the end. I shall not live to see it, but I foresee it.”

This is pretty painful stuff even for Byron, who ever veered precariously betwixt plodding doggerel and occasionally splendid fustian, and rarely hit the rocks of glorious lyricism. And as with Marx — But Hubbard’s superb record for inaccuracy of statement clouded any of his positive remarks with a fog of doubt. to quote Stewart H. Holbrook on a notable capitalist of the latter’s era — it’s not easy to ascertain the finished construct of the promised Paradise: presumably it will include peace, love, harmony, compulsory gender and racial equality, an incredible amount of daily uplift though one way communication, and a total absence of thought. Or, let us say, no class whatsoever.

 
Fortunately though, the probably ever-reliable China Daily gave the definitive origin:

Smite The Waters

The film’s resonantly Old Testament title comes from the seventh chapter of Exodus where God, via Moses, orders Aaron to smite the waters so that “they may become blood; and that there may be blood throughout all the land of Egypt“. In the context of the film this biblical blood is oil, the contaminating element dealt in by its forceful central character.

The Bible is so beautiful…

 
[sarc] And God said, “Let there be Blood.” [/sarc].

***

More importantly, a link from the China Daily went on to better news; in Düsseldorf the police are equipping their dogs with shoes.

Small, Medium And Large

“All 20 of our police dogs — German and Belgian shepherds — are currently being trained to walk in these shoes,” Andre Hartwich said. “I’m not sure they like it, but they’ll have to get used to it.”

The unusual footwear is not a fashion statement, Hartwich said, but rather a necessity due to the high rate of paw injuries on duty. Especially in the city’s historical old town — famous for both its pubs and drunken revelers — the dogs often step into broken beer bottles.

“Even the street-cleaning doesn’t manage to remove all the glass pieces from between the streets’ cobble stones,” Hartwich said, adding that the dogs frequently get injured by little pieces sticking deep in their paws.

The dogs will start wearing the shoes this spring but only during operations that demand special foot protection. The shoes comes in sizes small, medium and large and were ordered in blue to match the officers uniforms, Hartwich said.

It’s rarely one sees police-dogs in Great Britain — nearly as rarely as police-horses — but I hope they institute it here: broken glass on the streets, however, is not rare at all. [ If randomly picking up shards, I've found that one hand can hold a dozen of any size, but not more; and of course, one can only fill one hand... ]

 
I was born in Düsseldorf, and that is why they call me Rolf…

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Like The Roman

February 10th, 2008 at 2:30 am (Literature, Melancholy, Other, The King of Terrors)

From Aldous Huxley’s Chrome Yellow, the Tale of Sir Hercules.

To which one might add, apart from being tedious and silly, democracy carries one internal flaw so massive, it’s professed devotees sedulously avoid ever actually implementing it — People Kinda Suck…

“The infant who was destined to become the fourth baronet of the
name of Lapith was born in the year 1740. He was a very small
baby, weighing not more than three pounds at birth, but from the
first he was sturdy and healthy. In honour of his maternal
grandfather, Sir Hercules Occam of Bishop’s Occam, he was
christened Hercules. His mother, like many other mothers, kept a
notebook, in which his progress from month to month was recorded.
He walked at ten months, and before his second year was out he
had learnt to speak a number of words. At three years he weighed
but twenty-four pounds, and at six, though he could read and
write perfectly and showed a remarkable aptitude for music, he
was no larger and heavier than a well-grown child of two.
Meanwhile, his mother had borne two other children, a boy and a
girl, one of whom died of croup during infancy, while the other
was carried off by smallpox before it reached the age of five.
Hercules remained the only surviving child.

“On his twelfth birthday Hercules was still only three feet and
two inches in height. His head, which was very handsome and
nobly shaped, was too big for his body, but otherwise he was
exquisitely proportioned, and, for his size, of great strength
and agility. His parents, in the hope of making him grow,
consulted all the most eminent physicians of the time. Their
various prescriptions were followed to the letter, but in vain.
One ordered a very plentiful meat diet; another exercise; a third
constructed a little rack, modelled on those employed by the Holy
Inquisition, on which young Hercules was stretched, with
excruciating torments, for half an hour every morning and
evening. In the course of the next three years Hercules gained
perhaps two inches. After that his growth stopped completely,
and he remained for the rest of his life a pigmy of three feet
and four inches. His father, who had built the most extravagant
hopes upon his son, planning for him in his imagination a
military career equal to that of Marlborough, found himself a
disappointed man. ‘I have brought an abortion into the world,’
he would say, and he took so violent a dislike to his son that
the boy dared scarcely come into his presence. His temper, which
had been serene, was turned by disappointment to moroseness and
savagery. He avoided all company ( being, as he said, ashamed to
show himself, the father of a lusus naturae, among normal,
healthy human beings ), and took to solitary drinking, which
carried him very rapidly to his grave; for the year before
Hercules came of age his father was taken off by an apoplexy.
His mother, whose love for him had increased with the growth of
his father’s unkindness, did not long survive, but little more
than a year after her husband’s death succumbed, after eating two
dozen of oysters, to an attack of typhoid fever.

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Juli Sorts Out A Few Odd Matters

February 6th, 2008 at 4:45 am (Correctitude, Literature, Self, To Know Know Know Him)

A small crisis in the Housing Association deftly handled to several people’s satisfaction…

But it was around 11:20 when Russell drifted substantially over to Juli’s desk and coughed lightly to attract her attention as she slowly keyed in data to an Excel worksheet, and tried to remember which action to perform each time she wanted a result. He stood there plump and uneasy in a tannish brown tweed-effect suit, and canary-yellow waistcoat. Then once her attention was eased away from the spreadsheet, he chatted about this and that, polishing his round glasses. Lucy looked up alertly, ever willing to be of assistance.
Russell seemed upset about something, Lucy made him a mug of coffee, as he chatted with Juli about this. She refrained from offering Juli one, having received some haughty regardings of incredulity that made her blood run cold until she realised that Juli held the quite reasonable view that instant drinks were designed for pesticide; she had since given them up herself. Juli brought her own nicer stuff along and made it separately from other people. Just another small thing which endeared her to all.
“Yolanda ?” Juli enquired without much real interest, since other people’s love-lives held no fascination.
“Oh no, Juli: Yolanda’s been fine recently. It’s Happy Valley. One of the houses caught fire last night.”
Juli shuddered. “Wow. Was anybody… ?”
“Ooh no ! But the Tolands were cleared out of everything. And,” his voice broke with a greater self-pity, “they got the police to wake me up at 3:45. I dunno what they thought I could do. Anyway they put them in an hotel for the night, and now I’ve got to find an empty property.”
“Plenty of them about.” Juli answered, purposely obtuse, “Sometimes I reckon what with renovations and court orders, we sometimes have more vacant than occupied.”
“Thank you.” acidly, “No, well, I know what you mean; but that’s not the problem: I mean it’s the Tolandses.”
“I don’t want them as neighbours, so you can understand people’s feelings.” Juli said reasonably.
“I know, if they moved in next to me, I’d move to Turkestan; but that doesn’t help here. I’ve got to shove them as far away from their previous place as possible, and next to people who’ve not heard of them, or are too weak to protest much.”
“Who…” started Lucy.
“A/ They are not going to leave that estate, they’ve got about 80 relations there; and anyway they would rather be there than in a Cathedral Close. B/ Everyone on the estate does know them. C/ They’re not going to lose face from the Collingwoods and Hartleys.”
He groaned. Juli was correct.
“Who… ?” Lucy began again, and was unheard in their ruminations. She had heard of none of these, and only knew a tiny bit of the background: she had early asked — the day she started work — where Happy Valley was.
Juli sniggered: “My name for the Robert Owen Housing Estate. It’s ex-Council, and has got a lot worse since it was privatised. Bloody wasteland of falling panels, pram-pushers in clam-diggers, a cheap supermarket whose manager wants armed mercenaries, and gangs of youths at night.”
“H’how nasty.”
“Oh the drugs help.” she contended optimistically. “Some­­thing’s gotta.”
“Anyway, don’t go there, not unless you’re with a camera-crew in a jeep.”
Instruction seemed a trifle authoritative, especially at so early in a relationship, but Lucy minded no more than she who directed, who basically ever unconsciously chose to command without the slimmest doubt as to her own authority.
She realised the name Juli had coined seemed to have gained universal currency, at least in the office. Especially if Russell, who doubled as Housing Manager for Robert Owen, used it.
Now Juli was proceeding. “Three in the morning. Then it wasn’t a chip-pan. The Hartleys ?”
“Andra, I think: they owe him for the coke franchise, according to the cops. And Evan, young Evan, got in a fist-fight with his nephew Damien, and said he could whistle for his money until they made two grand.”
“Smart lad.”
“Oh I think it was the drink talking,” Russell said tole­rantly, “His dad hit him with a spanner, and broke his little finger; spent ages on his mobile trying to apologise to Andra, the neighbours said, but he wouldn’t take his calls.”
“Andra’s a weird little cunt; but then it’s face again.” grossly misleading Lucy as to the fabulous Mr. Neill’s height. Unlike the popular conception of crime bosses, he was not 5 foot nothing in a hideous and hideously expensive suit, but 6’ 2”, and had allegedly been a paratrooper, and wore sports wear.
Russell looked slightly shocked, possibly at Juli’s lang­uage, but more likely at her plain speaking, because Andra was not a nice person, and for that reason people did not remind others, and least of all himself, of this fact.
“Still, I reckon he won’t want them out of the estate. This was a warning then.”
He looked sceptical: “Well, it was a very small blaze, considering; the Firemen arrived within a few minutes, but that might just have been providence. It won’t be structurally safe though for a bit, so we can’t put them back there. You don’t think he’ll do them over again ?”
“Nope, there’s still the franchise to work: and he won’t give it back to the Hartleys. Too much trouble.”
“Um, you’ve got a point.” reflectively, “Old Hartley’s clinically insane.”
“So was Margaret Thatcher, didn’t stop her. No, I was thinking of the fact none of them can get in a car without gunning it to 60, and that’s in built-up areas. Makes the police work easier. Tell you what: I’ll make a couple of calls to the estate, I may find out where they can go.”
He brightened. “Oh please, Juli. That’d be great.. Uum, to… ?”
“No doubt. On the other hand, I’d better be clear about this. It’ll be our lot picking up the insurance, right ?”

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Universal Doom

January 28th, 2008 at 3:45 am (High Germany, Literature, Melancholy, Other)

Wolfgang Borchert wrote prose-poems rather than short stories, mostly of a despairing and strongly pacifistic tendency, but then he had a bad war, being imprisoned twice by the military for extending his critical faculty on the subject of the war — something not only that many soldiers through the ages have done and shall do, but which was in any case rather prevalent amongst German soldiers. Especially the less enthusiastic on the OstFront.

Stephen Spender, who added so much to the concept of effeteness for English authors, wrote an introduction to the posthumous translations by David Porter: ‘Borchert’s soldiers are the doomed race of the Russian winter of 1941, and of Stalingrad. Nothing existed for them before they went to Russia. They are filled with the sense that if there are other soldiers, they must all feel the same, and be equally passive victims of their time. The Russians are only a background to their own misery and to the German Doom which is regarded as universal doom.‘

Fair enough. Despite passivity not being quite the operative word for a front that was nearly 2000 miles in length, and a 1000 miles in the wild blue yonder.

 
Anyway, one of his short stories…

***

They crouch on the stone-cold bridge parapets and on the frost-hard metal railings along the violet-stinking canal. They crouch on the hollowed, gossip-worn area steps. Among the silver paper and autumn leaves at the side of the street, and on the sinful benches in the parks. They crouch, leaning, lolling against the doorless walls of houses, and on the nostalgic walls and moles of the docks.
They crouch in a lost world, crowfaced, shrouded grey-black and croaked hoarse. They crouch and all abandonment hangs down from them like limp, loose, crumpled feathers. Abandoned by the heart, abandoned by women, abandoned by the stars.
They crouch in the dusk and damp of the shadows of houses, shunning the gateways, black as tar and tired of the pavement. They crouch in the early haze of the world’s afternoon, thin-soled and coated grey with dust, belated, daydreamed into monotony. They crouch over the bottomless pit, held by the abyss, sleep-swaying with hunger and homesickness.
Crowfaced ( and how else ? ) they crouch, crouch, crouch and crouch. Who? The crows ? The crows perhaps. But above all human beings, human beings.
At six o’clock the sun turns the city mist and smoke red-gold. And the houses are velvet-blue and soft-edged in the tender light of early evening.
But the crowfaced men crouch pallid-skinned and white-frozen in their hopelessness, in their inescapable humanity, crept deep into their patchwork jackets.
Since the day before one man had been crouching on the dock, smelling himself full of harbour smell and rolling crumbled masonry into the water. His eyebrows hung on his forehead like the fringe of a sofa, despondent but with incomprehensible humour.
And then a young man came along, his arms elbow-deep in his trouser-pockets, the collar of his jacket turned up round his bony neck. The older man didn’t look up, he saw beside him the comfortless mouths of a pair of shoes and up from the water there quivered at him the tossing caricature of a melancholy male figure. Then he knew that Timm was back again.
Well, Timm, he said, there you are again. Through already ?
Timm said nothing. He crouched on the quay wall beside the other man and put his long hands round his neck. He was cold.
So her bed wasn’t wide enough, eh ? the other began softly after many minutes.
Bed ! Bed ! said Timm angrily, I love the girl.
Of course you love her. But tonight she showed you the door again. So the billet was no go. It’s because you’re not clean enough, Timm. A night visitor like that has to be clean. Love alone isn’t always enough. Oh well, anyway, you’re not used to a bed now. Better stay here, then. Or do you still love her, eh ?
Timm rubbed his long hands on his neck and slid deep into his coat collar. She wants money, he said much later, or silk stockings. Then I could have stayed.
Oh, so you do still love her, said the old man, hell, but if you’ve no money !
Timm didn’t say that he still loved her, but after a while he said rather more quietly: I gave her the scarf, the red one, you know. I hadn’t anything else. But after an hour she suddenly had no more time.
The red scarf ? asked the other. Oh, he loves her, he thought to himself, how he loves her ! And once more he repeated: Aha, your beautiful red scarf ! And now you’re back here again and soon it’ll be dark.
Yes, said Timm, it’ll be dark again. And my neck’s miserably cold, now that I haven’t got the scarf. Miserably cold, I can tell you.
Then they both looked at the water in front of them and their legs hung sadly from the quay wall. A launch shrieked, white-steaming, past them and the waves followed, fat and chattering. Then it was still again, only the city hummed monotonously between heaven and earth, and crowfaced, shrouded blue-black, the two men crouched there in the after­noon. When after an hour a scrap of red paper tossed by on the waves, a gay, red piece of paper on the lead-grey waves, then Timm said to the other: But I had nothing else. Only the scarf.
And the other answered: And it was such a wonderful red, d’you remember, eh, Timm ? Boy, was it red !
Yes, yes, Timm mumbled dejectedly, it was that. And now my neck’s damn well freezing, my friend.
How’s this, thought the other, he still loves her and was with her for a whole hour. Now he won’t even be cold for her. Then, yawning, he said: And the billet’s a goner, too.
Lilo’s her name, said Timm, and she likes wearing silk stockings. But I haven’t got any.
Lilo ? exclaimed the other, don’t tell me that, man, she’s never called Lilo.
Of course she’s called Lilo, replied Timm indignantly. D’you suppose I can’t know one called Lilo ? I even love her, I tell you.
Timm slid angrily away from his friend and drew his knee up to his chin. And he held his long hands round his skinny neck. A web of early darkness laid itself on the day and the last rays of the sun stood lost on the sky like a lattice. Lonely, the men crouched over the uncertainties of the coming night and the city hummed, big and full of seduction. The city wanted money or silk stockings. And the beds wanted clean visitors at night.
I say, Timm, began the other and was silent again.
What is it ? asked Timm.
Is she really called Lilo, eh ?
Of course she’s called Lilo, Timm shouted at his friend, she’s called Lilo, and she said when I have anything, I’m to go back.
I say, Timm, his friend managed after a while, if she’s really called Lilo, then you certainly had to give her the red scarf. If she’s called Lilo, in my view, then she can have the red scarf. Even if the billet’s no go. No, Timm, forget the scarf, if she’s really called Lilo.
The two men looked across the misty water away to the mounting twilight, fearless, but without courage, reconciled. Reconciled to quay walls and gateways, reconciled to homeless-ness, to thin soles and empty pockets, reconciled. Inescapably idled away into indifference.
Thrown high, startlingly, on the horizon, blown hither from who knows where, crows came tumbling, their song and their dark feathers filled with the presentiment of night, reeling like inkspots across the chaste tissue paper of the evening sky, tired with living, croaked hoarse, and then, unexpectedly, a little further off, swallowed by the twilight.
They gazed after the crows, Timm and the other man, crow-faced, shrouded blueblack. And the water smelt full and mighty. The city, a wild towering of cubes, window-eyed, began to twinkle with a thousand lamps. They gazed after the crows, the crows, long since swallowed, gazed after them with poor, old faces, and Timm, who loved Lilo, Timm, who was twenty, said:
The crows, man, they’re all right.
The other man looked away from the sky straight into Timm’s wide face, floating pale-frozen in the half-dark. And Timm’s thin lips were sad lines in his wide face, lonely lines, twenty-year-old, hungry and thin from too much bitterness too soon.
The crows, said Timm’s wide face softly, this face made up of twenty bright-dark years, the crows, said Timm’s face, they’re all right. They fly home at night. Just home.
The two men crouched there, lost in the world, small and dejected in face of the new night, but fearlessly familiar with its frightful blackness. The city, million-eyed and sleepy, glowed through soft, warm curtains at the night streets emptied of noise, their pavements deserted. They crouched there hard by the depths, leaning over like tired rotten poles, and Timm, the twenty-year-old, had said: The crows are all right. The crows fly home at night. And the other babbled stupidly to himself: The crows, Timm, hell, Timm, the crows.
There they crouched. Dumped there by life, the alluring, the lousy. Dumped on the quay and the corner. On pier and pontoon. On mole and hollowed cellar-steps. Dumped by life on the dust-grey streets between silver paper and fallen leaf. Crows ? No, human beings ! Do you hear ? Human beings! And one of them was called Timm and he’d loved Lilo for a red scarf. And now, now he can’t forget her again. The crows, the crows croak their way home. And their croaking hung comfortless on the evening.
But then a launch stuttered, foam-mouthed, past them, and its scattered red light crumbled quivering in the harbour haze. And the haze was red for seconds. Red as my scarf, thought Timm. Infinitely far off, the launch chugged away. And Timm said softly: Lilo. Again and again: Lilo Lilo Lilo Lilo Lilo.

Wolfgang Borchert : The Crows Fly Home at Night

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To Be In Hell Is To Drift

January 22nd, 2008 at 11:00 am (Literature, Other)

Don Juan: …And I, my friend am as much a part of Nature as my own finger is a part of me. If my finger is the organ by which I grasp the sword and the mandoline, my brain is the organ by which Nature strives to understand itself. My dog’s brain serves only my dog’s purposes; but my own brain labors at a knowledge which does nothing for me personally but make my body bitter to me and my decay and death a calamity. Were I not possessed with a purpose beyond my own I had better be a ploughman than a philosopher; for the ploughman lives as long as the philosopher, eats more, sleeps better, and rejoices in the wife of his bosom with less misgiving. This is because the philosopher is in the grip of the Life Force. This Life Force says to him “I have done a thousand wonderful things unconsciously by merely willing to live and following the line of least resistance: now I want to know myself and my destination, and choose my path; so I have made a special brain – a philosopher’s brain – to grasp this knowledge for me as the husbandman’s hand grasps the plough for me. And this” says the Life Force to the philosopher “must thou strive to do for me until thou diest, when I will make another brain and another philosopher to carry on the work.”

The Devil: What is the use of knowing ?

Don Juan: Why, to be able to choose the line of greatest advantage instead of yielding in the direction of the least resistance. Does a ship sail to its destination no better than a log drifts nowhither ? The philosopher is Nature’s pilot. And there you have our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.

George Bernard Shaw : Don Juan in Hell

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Absolutely

January 21st, 2008 at 12:30 am (Correctitude, Literature, Other)

We confidently use words like might, truth, justice. They are words signifying something great. But what that ’something’ is we cannot conceive. We say that God ‘fears’, that God is ‘angry’, that God ‘loves’.

Immortalia mortali sermone notantes ~ Denoting immortal things in mortal speech
[Lucretius ]

But they are disturbances and emotions which in any form known to us find no place in God. Nor can we imagine them in forms known to him. God alone can know himself; God alone can interpret his works. And he uses improper, human, words to do so, stooping down to the earth where we lie sprawling.

Take Prudence; that consists in a choice between good and evil; how can that apply to God ? No evil can touch him. Or take Reason and Intelligence, by which we seek to attain clarity amidst obscurity; there is nothing obscure to God. Or Justice, which distributes to each his due and which was begotten for the good of society and communities of men; how can that exist in God ? And what about Temperance ? It moderates bodily pleasures which have no place in the Godhead. Nor is Fortitude in the face of pain, toil or danger one of God’s qualities: those three things are unknown to him. That explains why Aristotle held that God is equally as free from virtue as from vice. ‘Neque gratia neque ira teneri potest, quod quae talia essent, imbecilla essent omnia‘ ~ ‘He can experience neither gratitude nor anger; such things are found only in the weak’.

Michel de Montaigne : An Apology for Raymond Sebond

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By Many Arrows

January 16th, 2008 at 10:45 pm (Literature, Melancholy, Other)

Truth of intercourse is something more difficult than to refrain from open lies. It is possible to avoid falsehood and yet not tell the truth. It is not enough to answer formal questions. To reach the truth by yea and nay communications implies a questioner with a share of inspiration such as is often found in mutual love. Yea and nay mean nothing; the meaning must have been related in the question. Many words are often necessary to convey a very simple statement; for in this sort of exercise we never hit the gold; the most that we can hope is by many arrows, more or less far off on different sides, to indicate, in the course of time, for what target we are aiming, and after an hour’s talk, back and forward, to convey the purport of a single principle or a single thought. And yet while the curt, pithy speaker misses the point entirely, a wordy, prolegomenous babbler will often add three new offences in the process of excusing one. It is really a most delicate affair. The world was made before the English language, and seemingly upon a different design. Suppose we held our converse, not in words, but in music; those who have a bad ear would find themselves cut off from all near commerce, and no better than foreigners in this big world. But we do not consider how many have “a bad ear” for words, nor how often the most eloquent find nothing to reply. I hate questioners and questions; there are so few that can be spoken to without a lie. “Do you forgive me ?” Madam and sweetheart, so far as I have gone in life I have never yet been able to discover what forgiveness means. “Is it still the same between us ?” Why, how can it be ? It is eternally different; and yet you are still the friend of my heart. “Do you understand me ?” God knows; I should think it highly improbable.

Robert Louis Stevenson : Truth of Intercourse

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Death-Star Of The Revolution

January 12th, 2008 at 10:00 am (High Germany, Literature, Melancholy, Other, The King of Terrors)

Danton: Will the clock not be still ? With every tick it slides the walls closer round me, till they’re as narrow as a coffin. I once read a story like that as a child. It made my hair stand on end. Yes, as a child. What a waste of time fattening me up and keeping me warm! Mere work for the grave-diggers. I feel as if I were rotten already. My dear carcass, I’ll hold my nose and make believe you’re a girl all smelly and sweating after a dance and pay you compliments. We used to have better times together. Tomorrow you’ll be a broken fiddle, with no tune left in you. Or an empty bottle — the wine’s drunk but I’m not; I have to go sober to bed. Lucky people who can still get drunk ! Tomorrow you’ll be a worn-out pair of pants — you’ll be thrown in the wardrobe and the moths will eat you whether you’re stinking or not. — Ah, it’s no good. Dying is a wretched business. It apes birth. Dying, we’re as naked and helpless as new-born infants. We’re given a shroud as a napkin. But it’s no help. We can grizzle in the grave as well as in the cradle. Camille ! He’s asleep. [ Bending over him ] There’s a dream playing between his eyelashes. I’ll not brush the golden dew of sleep from his eyes. [ Stands up and walks to the window. ] I shan’t go alone. Thank you for that, Julie. Yet I’d have liked to die differently, effortlessly, like a falling star, like a note fading away, kissing itself to death with its own lips, like a ray of light burying itself in clear water. The stars are sprayed across the night like shimmering tears; there must be great grief in the eye that shed them.

Georg Büchner : Danton’s Death

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Flogging Molly — The Light of a Fading Star

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Prussian Socialism

December 30th, 2007 at 2:10 am (Correctitude, Literature, Other)

The Biscuit frowned.

“Money !” he said. “Yes. You’re right. What a rotten thing this business of money is. Half the best chaps in the world are crippled for want of it. And the fellows who have got it haven’t a notion what to do with it. Take old Frisby, for instance. Worth millions.”

“I suppose so.”

“And is a bloke with a face like a horse and a spending capacity of about twopence a day. On the other hand, take me. You know me, Berry, old man. Young, enthusiastic, dripping with joie de vivre, only needing a balance at the bank to go out and scatter light and sweetness and — mark you — scatter them good. If I had money, I could increase the sum of human happiness a hundredfold.”

“How ?”

“By flinging purses of gold to the deserving, old boy. That’s how. And here I am, broke. And there is your foul boss, simply stagnant with the stuff. All wrong.”

“Well, don’t blame me.”

“What ought to happen,” said the Biscuit, “is this. If I had the management of this country, there would be public examinations held twice a year, at which these old crumbs with their hoarded wealth would be brought up and subjected to a very severe inquisition. ‘You !’ the Examiner would say, looking pretty sharply at Frisby. ‘How much have you got ? Indeed ? Really ? As much as that, eh ? Well, kindly inform this court what you do with it.’ The wretched man, who seems to feel his position acutely, snuffles a bit. ‘Come on, now !’ says the Examiner, rapping the table. ‘No subterfuge. No evasion. How do you employ this very decent slice of the needful ?’ ‘Well, as a matter of fact,’ mumbles old Frisby, trying to avoid his eye, ‘ I shove it away behind a brick and go out and get some more.’ ‘Is that so ?’ says the Examiner. ‘Well, upon my Sam ! I never heard anything so disgraceful in my living puff. It’s a crying outrage. A bally scandal. Take ten million away from this miserable louse and hand it over to excellent old Biskerton, who will make a proper use of it. And then go and ask Berry Conway how much he wants.’ We’d get somewhere then.”

He contemplated dreamily for a while the Utopia he had conjured up. Then he looked across the room again, and clicked his tongue disapprovingly.

“I’ll swear Hoke swindled you over that mine,” he said. “I can see it in his eye.”

P. G. Wodehouse : Big Money

 
Prolly my favourite Plum novel…

 
This post is dedicated to the Web’s servile anarcho-hyper-capitalist-libertarian Tendency.

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La Belle Sauvage

December 9th, 2007 at 2:00 am (Generalia, Literature, Other, The Enemy)

A month or so back I attended some bookfair and amongst others, purchased this small item for 50p, which I only just decided to look at: 18th century writing being somewhat precious.

This horrific little tale is slightly patronising to uneuropean cultures in the world-set of the time, nevertheless displays a healthier and more cynical view that the hideous idealism and disgusting relativism inseminated by Rousseau and brought to birth by Boas — both of whom have good claim to be in the top ten of most repellent persons evah — which holds sway for now. In the end, one culture, however massively imperfect, can still be decided to be generally better than another; and the nearer to naked nature a culture, the less satisfactory it remains. Anyway the author was evidently having enormous fun in writing it…

More thoughtfully, it does increase the conclusion that, whatever the difficulties, it is worth being a vegan if only for hygenic reasons.

VII. STORY OF TQUASSOUW AND KNONMQUAIHA, TWO HOTTENTOT LOVERS. CONNOISSEUR, numb. 21.

TQUASSOUW, the fon of Kqvuffomo, was Konquer or Chief Captain over the Sixteen Na­tions of Caffraria. He was defcended from N’oh and Hingn’oh, who dropt from the moon; and his power extended over all the Kraals of the Hottentots.

This prince was remarkable for his prowefs and activity : his fpeed was like the torrent, that rufhes down the precipice ; and he would overtake the wild afs in her flight : his arrows brought down the eagle from the clouds; the lion fell before him, and his launce drank the blood of the rhinoceros. He fathomed the waters of the deep, and buffeted the billows in the tempeft : he drew the rock-fifh from their lurking-holes, and rifled the beds of coral. Trained from his infan­cy in the exercife of war, to wield the Haffagaye with dexterity, and break the wild bulls to battle, he was a ftranger to the foft dalliance of love ; and be­held with indifference the thick-lipped damfels of Gongeman, and the flat-nofed beauties of Hauteniqua.

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As High As Haman — Srsly

November 30th, 2007 at 9:20 pm (Animals, Literature, Other)

Following all the versions of the Bible, ranging from King James to the New English, the Rheims-Douai to the Revised Standard, etc., and their translations into different vernaculars, an important gap is being filled by an ongoing internet project into Lolcat, Teh Holiez Bibul, from The Lolcat Church.

This retains all the generous humanity and loveliness of the original jewish screeds.

1 so king n haman n esther b havin tasty foodz.2 tasty foodz wuz gud so king ask esther “wot u want dis time?”

3 esther sez “i can haz life n mi ppl can haz life?4 cuz mi ppl haz been solded into nonlivng n dat not gud. not mind beeng solded 4 work, but not living v bad.”

5 so king askz “hoo wud mayke u ded?6 n esther sez “lol haman” n haman wuz scarded7 king went 4 walkies so haman askded esther for merci

8 but king not happi 2 cum bak n find haman on esthers bed. king ask “u trying to SURPRIZE BUTTSECKS mi wife?” so servents cum 2 tell haman to stfu noob and tuk him awai.9 n one gai sez 2 king “luk at v big rope swing haman builded 4 mordecai” n king sez “lol neck swing 4 haman insted”10 n wen haman wuz swinging from big rpe swing, king b happy agin.
“Esther 7”

***

1 iff i talkd wif teh tungz of manz n angylz, n duzzn haz luff, i are becom liek teh human, knockin down all teh potz n panz frm teh shelf, srsly.2 iff i haz powarz of liek tellin the futurez an, an i gotz all teh missteriez an all teh knowingz an all teh faithz, enuff 2 taek all teh mowntanz awayz, an i duzzn haz luff, i gotz nuffink.3 an evn iff i givez all mai stuffz awai, n iff i delivur mai bodiz to b burnded up, and i duzzn haz luff, i gotz nuffink.

4 luv is pashient n kind, luv haz no jelusniss or showin offz, luv no is stuck-up5 or r00dz. Luv no insistzes on doin it rite, itz not pisst off alla tiem or rezentfluffle.6 luv izzn all happiez about doin it wrong, but is happiez about teh truthz.7 luv putz up wiht all teh stuffz, beelivez all teh stuffz, hoepz for all teh stuffz. Luv putz up wiht all teh stuffz. i sed that areddy.

8 luv no haz endingz. Tellin the futurez, tungz, an alla stuffz u know wil die.9 we haz knowingz a bit, an we haz profacy a bit. We no haz 2 much tho.10 o, wait. wen teh perfict coemz, teh not perfict will dyez, lolol.11 wen i wuz a kitten, i meweded leik a kitten, thinkded liek a kittenz, an I chazed strings liek a kittenz. wen i wuz becomez a cat, i NOT WANT kitten waiz ne moar.12 for nao we see in teh foggy mirorr like when teh human gets out of teh shower, but tehn we see faec tow faec. Nao i haz knowingz just a bit, tehn i will haz all teh knowingz, as i haz been knownz.

13 nao faithz an hoepz an luvs r hear, theses threes, but teh bestest iz teh luvs, srsly.
“1 Corinthians 13”

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This, Too, Was Needed

November 30th, 2007 at 1:00 pm (Literature, Melancholy, Other, Poetry)

Three from Figures of Earth by Cabell:

 
“There is much loss in the world, where men war ceaselessly with sorrow, and time like a strong thief strips all men of all they prize. Yet when the emperor is beaten in battle and his broad lands are lost, he, shrugging, says, ‘In the next battle I may conquer.’ And when the bearded merchant’s ship is lost at sea, he says, ‘The next voyage, belike, will be prosperous.’ Even when the life of an old beggar departs from him in a ditch, he says, ‘I trust to be to-morrow a glad young seraph in paradise.’ Thus hope serves as a cordial for every hurt: but for him who had beheld the loveliness of Freydis there is no hope at all.

“For, in comparison with that alien clear beauty, there is no beauty in this world. He that has beheld the loveliness of Freydis must go henceforward as a hungry person, because of troubling memories: and his fellows deride him enviously. All the world is fretted by his folly, knowing that his faith in the world’s might is no longer firm-set, and that he aspires to what is beyond the world’s giving. In his heart he belittles the strong stupid lords of earth; and they, being strong, plan vengeance, the while that in a corner he makes images to commemorate what is lost: and so for him who has beheld the loveliness of Freydis there is no hope at all.

“He that has willed to look upon Queen Freydis does not dread to consort with serpents nor with swine; he faces the mirror wherein a man beholds himself without self-deceiving; he views the blood that drips from his soiled hands, and knows that this, too, was needed: yet these endurings purchase but one hour. The hour passes, and therewith passes also Freydis, the high Queen. Only the memory of her hour remains, like a cruel gadfly, for which the crazed beholder of Queen Freydis must build a lodging in his images, madly endeavoring to commingle memories with wet mud: and so for him who has beheld the loveliness of Freydis there is no hope at all.”

Freydis heard him through, considerately. “But I wonder to how many other women you have talked such nonsense about beauty and despair and eternity,” said Freydis, “and they very probably liking to hear it, the poor fools! And I wonder how you can expect me to believe you, when you pretend to think me all these fine things, and still keep me penned in this enclosure like an old vicious cow.”

“No, that is not the way it is any longer. For now the figure that I have made in the world, and all else that is in the world, and all that is anywhere without this enclosure of buttered willow wands, mean nothing to me, and there is no meaning in anything save in the loveliness of Freydis.”

Dom Manuel went to the door of the enclosure then to the windows, sweeping away the gilded tonthecs and the shining spaks, and removing from the copper nails the horseshoes that had been cast by Mohammed’s mare and Hrimfaxi and Balaam’s ass and Pegasus. “You were within my power. Now I destroy that power, and therewith myself. Now is the place unguarded, and all your servitors are free to enter, and all your terrors are untrammeled, to be loosed against me, who have no longer anything to dread. For I love you with such mortal love as values nothing else beside its desire, and you care nothing for me.”

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The Best Insult Evah !

November 15th, 2007 at 3:00 am (Correctitude, Literature, Other)

Kyril Bonfiglioli wrote only five books, including the Mortdecai Triology, — and I think these slightly decline as they go — yet to have any excellent comedic writing in the last half of the last century is rather rare, and at the top of his form he was brilliant.

 
Sometimes the wire recorder was on, sometimes not. Probably another was on all the time, inside one of the briefcases. I got the impression that they were becoming very bored with the whole thing, but I was by then so sleepy with food and liquor and exhaustion that I could only concentrate with difficulty. Much of the time I simply told them the truth — a course Sir Henry Wotton ( another man who went abroad to lie ) recommended as a way of baffling your adversaries. Another chap once said, ‘If you wish to preserve your secret, wrap it up in frankness.’ I wrapped, profusely. But you know, playing a sort of fugue with truth and mendacity makes one lose, after a while, one’s grip on reality. My father always warned me against lying where the truth would do; he had early realized that my memory — essential equipment of the liar — was faulty. ‘Moreover,’ he used to say, ‘a lie is a work of art. We sell works of art, we don’t give them away. Eschew falsehood, my son.’ That is why I never lie when selling works of art. Buying them is another matter, of course.

…

‘Tell me, Mr. Mortdecai,’ said one of them in an offhand, casual way as they rose to go, “what did you think of Mrs. Krampf ?’
‘Her heart,’ I said bitterly, ‘is like spittle on the palm that the Tartar slaps – no telling which way it will pitch.’
‘That’s very nice, Mr. Mortdecai,’ said one, nodding appreciatively, ‘that’s M. P. Shiel, isn’t it ?’

…

The sheriff came in and gave us back the contents of our pockets, including my Banker’s Special. The cartridges were in a separate envelope. He was no longer urbane, he hated us now very much.
‘I have been instructed,’ he said, like a man spitting out fishbones, ‘not to book you for the murder you committed yesterday. There is a cab outside and I would like for you to get into it and get out of this county and never come back.’ He shut his eyes very tightly and kept them shut as though hoping to wake up in a different time stream, one in which C. Mortdecai and J. Strapp had never been born.
We tiptoed out.
The deputies were in the outer office, standing tall, wearing the mindless sneers of their kind. I walked up close to the larger and nastier of the two.
‘Your mother and father only met once,’ I said carefully, ‘and money changed hands. Probably a dime.’

Kyril Bonfiglioli : Don’t Point That Thing At Me

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In The Mind Of Odin

November 12th, 2007 at 2:00 am (Correctitude, Literature, Odin, Other)

In the ancient days there went three men upon pilgrimage; one was a priest, and one was a virtuous person, and the third was an old rover with his axe.
As they went, the priest spoke about the grounds of faith.
‘We find the proofs of our religion in the works of nature,’ said he, and beat his breast.
‘That is true,’ said the virtuous person.’The peacock has a scrannel voice,’ said the priest, ‘as has been laid down always in our books. How cheering !‘ he cried, in a voice like one that wept. ‘How comforting !‘
‘I require no such proofs,’ said the virtuous person.
‘Then you have no reasonable faith,’ said the priest.
‘Great is the right, and shall prevail !‘ cried the virtuous person. ‘There is loyalty in my soul; be sure, there is loyalty in the mind of Odin.’
‘These are but playings upon words,’ returned the priest. ‘A sackful of such trash is nothing to the peacock.’
Just then they passed a country farm, where there was a peacock seated on a rail; and the bird opened its mouth and sang with the voice of a nightingale.
‘Where are you now ?‘ asked the virtuous person. ‘And yet this shakes not me ! Great is the truth, and shall prevail !‘
‘The devil fly away with that peacock !‘ said the priest; and he was downcast for a mile or two.
But presently they came to a shrine, where a Fakeer performed miracles.
‘Ah !’ said the priest, ‘here are the true grounds of faith. The peacock was but an adminicle. This is the base of our religion.’ And he beat upon his breast, and groaned like one with colic.
‘Now to me,’ said the virtuous person, ‘all this is as little to the purpose as the peacock. I believe because I see the right is great and must prevail; and this Fakeer might carry on with his conjuring tricks till doomsday, and it would not play bluff upon a man like me.’
Now at this the Fakeer was so much incensed that his hand trembled; and, lo ! in the midst of a miracle the cards fell from up his sleeve.
‘Where are you now ?‘ asked the virtuous person. ‘And yet it shakes not me !‘
‘The devil fly away with the Fakeer !‘ cried the priest. ‘I really do not see the good of going on with this pilgrimage.’
‘Cheer up !‘ cried the virtuous person. ‘Great is the right, and shall prevail !‘
‘If you are quite sure it will prevail,’ says the priest.
‘I pledge my word for that,’ said the virtuous person.
So the other began to go on again with a better heart.
At last one came running, and told them all was lost: that the powers of darkness had besieged the Heavenly Mansions, that Odin was to die, and evil triumph.
‘I have been grossly deceived,’ cried the virtuous person.
‘All is lost now,’ said the priest.
‘I wonder if it is too late to make it up with the devil ?‘ said the virtuous person.
‘Oh, I hope not,’ said the priest. ‘And at any rate we can but try. But what are you doing with your axe ?‘ says he to the rover.
‘I am off to die with Odin,’ said the rover.

 
Robert Louis Stevenson : Faith, Half Faith, and No Faith At All

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We Ourselves

November 11th, 2007 at 10:36 pm (Correctitude, Literature, Melancholy, Other)

If there is a dark and hostile power which traitorously fixes a thread in our hearts in order that, laying hold of it and drawing us by means of it along a dangerous road to ruin, which otherwise we should not have trod — if, I say, there is such a power, it must assume within us a form like ourselves, nay, it must be ourselves; for only in that way can we believe in it, and only so understood do we yield to it so far that it is able to accomplish its secret purpose. So long as we have sufficient firmness, fortified by cheerfulness, to always acknowledge foreign hostile influences for what they really are, whilst we quietly pursue the path pointed out to us by both inclination and calling, then this mysterious power perishes in its futile struggles to attain the form which is to be the reflected image of ourselves. It is also certain, Lothair adds, that if we have once voluntarily given ourselves up to this dark physical power, it often reproduces within us the strange forms which the outer world throws in our way, so that thus it is we ourselves who engender within ourselves the spirit which by some remarkable delusion we imagine to speak in that outer form. It is the phantom of our own self whose intimate relationship with, and whose powerful influence upon our soul either plunges us into hell or elevates us to heaven.

E. T. A. Hoffmann : The Sandman

 

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Beloved Of The Gods

November 3rd, 2007 at 12:45 am (Literature, Other, The King of Terrors)

Kennaston stood by the couch of Tiberius Cæsar as he lay ill at Capreæ. Beside him hung a memorable painting, by Parrhasius, which represented the virgin Atalanta in the act of according very curious assuagements to her lover’s ardor. Charicles, a Greek physician, was telling the Emperor of a new religious sect that had arisen in Judea, and of the persecutions these disciples of Christus were enduring. Old Cæsar listened, made grave clucking noises of disapproval.

“It is, instead, a religion that should be fostered. The man preached peace. It is what my father before me strove for, what I have striven for, what my successors must strive for. Peace alone may preserve Rome: the empire is too large, a bubble blown so big and tenuous that the first shock will disrupt it in suds. Pilate did well to crucify the man, else we could not have made a God of him; but the persecution of these followers of Christus must cease. This Nazarene preached the same doctrine that I have always preached. I shall build him a temple. The rumors concerning him lack novelty, it is true: this God born of a mortal woman is the old legend of Dionysos and Mithra and Hercules, a little pulled about; Gautama also was tempted in a wilderness; Prometheus served long ago as man’s scapegoat under divine anger; and the cult of Pollux and Castor, and of Adonis, has made these resurrection stories hackneyed. In fine, Charicles, you have brought me a woefully inartistic jumble of old tales; but the populace prefers old tales, they delight to be told what they have heard already. I shall certainly build Christus a temple.”

So he ran on, devising the reception of Christ into the Roman pantheon, as a minor deity at first, and thence, if the receipts at his temple justified it, to be raised to greater eminence. Tiberius saw large possibilities in the worship of this new God, both from a doctrinal and a money-making standpoint. Then Cæsar yawned, and ordered that a company of his Spintriæ be summoned to his chamber, to amuse him with their unnatural diversions.

But Charicles had listened in horror, for he was secretly a Christian, and knew that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. He foresaw that, without salutary discouragement, the worship of Christus would never amount to more than the social fad of a particular season, just as that of Cybele and that of Heliogabalus had been modish in different years; and would afterward dwindle, precisely as these cults had done, into shrugged-at old-fashionedness. Then, was it not written that they only were assuredly blessed who were persecuted for righteousness’ sake ? — Why, martyrdom was the one certain road to Heaven; and a religion which is patronized by potentates, obviously, breeds no martyrs.

So Charicles mingled poison in Cæsar’s drink, that Cæsar might die, and crazed Caligula succeed him, to put all Christians to the sword. And Charicles young Caius Cæsar Caligula — Child of the Camp, Father of Armies, Beloved of the Gods — killed first of all.

James Branch Cabell : The Cream of the Jest

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