rumination in utility belt; let's wing it, only wingier

[fflo]

Here's Rob's fresh advice. It's what I want, and it scares me. And I'd rather he say this kind of thing than anything that seems to tell me to be reasonable:

CANCER (June 21-July 22): The counsel I'm about to offer is not given lightly. If you choose to heed it, it could wreak discomfort and disorder, at least initially. And you'll have to pump yourself up with more courage than you're used to feeling. Still, I'm convinced it's the right thing for you to hear; I believe that any breakdown it might engender will ultimately lead to a breakthrough. So here's the advice, courtesy of Franz Kafka: "Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."

What could be easier? Break it down; break on through to the other side. Break dance. Break time. Break fast.


like a little vacation
like a little old song that I want to hear
like a big libation
like a flattering sentence whispered in my ear
that's what i want
-- Vic Chesnutt


Word is next week is National Postcard Week. I'd like to say I'll post ya'll one good one a day for the holiday week, but MR's scanner is down during the construction in the building, so other means necessary. We'll see.


I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same kind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear.
-- George Eliot, in a letter to Georgiana Burne-Jones

(George to Georgiana.)


Henry James on George Eliot: She had a low forehead, a dull grey eye, a vast pendulous nose, a huge mouth full of uneven teeth and a chin and jawbone 'qui n'en finissent pas'... Now in this vast ugliness resides a most powerful beauty which, in a very few minutes, steals forth and charms the mind, so that you end, as I ended, in falling in love with her. Yes, behold me in love with this great horse-faced bluestocking.

I never got into Henry. I disliked Portrait of a Lady, and that's the only novel of his I've read, though I've seen two movie versions of Washington Square and one of The Bostonians. I see by the ol' wiki-p that his criticism is Important. And that, speculation is, he may've never actually gotten it on with anybody.

I don't know what I think about what he said about George. I'm not thinking about it.


Despite the lure of a follow-up conversation with one of my two library babes concerning V, which I took out the other day, I'm gonna leapfrog George's The Lifted Veil to next-up, soon as the babes procure it for me. Yes. Less of a puzzle now; more something that comes in through the pores.


And so much for early to bed tonight, again. But, you know, it's an easy time to be in the moment, the staying up late time. Late enough, and it's almost automatic. And now, fading, I shall slip off easily.

Comments

Re: aghast

[fflo.livejournal.com]

truly! well, i'll be.

even portrait of a lady?

Re: aghast

[(Anonymous)]

not even. that one most dearly, cuz first.

Re: aghast

[fflo.livejournal.com]

perhaps i was too young? sometimes i think i was too young to read much of anything when i was 20-ish. certainly i wasn't ready for your favorite poet.

and, as sprig5 says above, a personal endorsement can do a lot toward prompting a revisitation. i think henry's gonna have to wait a while, though.

"daisy miller" was the first thing of his i read. and the wikipedia piece had me thinking i wasn't tuned to something potentially transporting, with stuff like this:

"To be completely great," Henry James wrote in an early review, "a work of art must lift up the heart," and his own novels do this to an outstanding degree… More than sixty years after his death, the great novelist who sometimes professed to have no opinions stands foursquare in the great Christian humanistic and democratic tradition. The men and women who, at the height of World War II, raided the secondhand shops for his out-of-print books knew what they were about. For no writer ever raised a braver banner to which all who love freedom might adhere. --Edward Wagenknecht (1983)

i'm remembering now this time i told friends who were saying how much they like henry miller that i didn't, but i was thinking henry james, and didn't realize until after the whole conversation that there was a good reason we didn't seem to be talking about the same kind of writing.

wonder if o has something to say on hj here.

Re: aghast

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

sadly, about henry james, virtually nothing. i should try henry again sometime. the last time i tried, i didn't get very far.