I forget sometimes.
I forget songs.
I forget songs that shudder punch me in the heart.
The little surprises you encounter when rifling through your sister's phone whilst gently freezing in an unheated car as Scotland makes its first attempt at snow this end of the year.
Dead and Flowers (Detail)
'I have always aspired to a more spacious form
that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose
and would let us understand each other without exposing
the author or reader to sublime agonies.
In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
a thing is brought forth which we didn’t know we had in us,
so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out
and stood in the light, lashing his tail.
That’s why poetry is rightly said to be dictated by a daimonion,
though it’s an exaggeration to maintain that he must be an angel.
It’s hard to guess where that pride of poets comes from,
when so often they’re put to shame by the disclosure of their frailty.
What reasonable man would like to be a city of demons,
who behave as if they were at home, speak in many tongues,
and who, not satisfied with stealing his lips or hand,
work at changing his destiny for their convenience?
It’s true that what is morbid is highly valued today,
and so you may think that I am only joking
or that I’ve devised just one more means
of praising Art with the help of irony.
There was a time when only wise books were read,
helping us to bear our pain and misery.
This, after all, is not quite the same
as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics.
And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.
People therefore preserve silent integrity,
thus earning the respect of their relatives and neighbors.
The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.
What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.
Berkeley, 1968'
(translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Lillian Vallee)
Ars Poetica?
It's been a while.
...
Here's some Grizzly Bear:
And a reminder of their supremacy:
This goddamn band.
What is breathing?
Where does it come from?
There are sensates within these walls, too. #WeAreTheGlobalCluster pic.twitter.com/uU3qfY9sM3— Netflix US (@netflix) June 29, 2017
I wasn't sure at first.
Now i physically can't turn it off.
in the road
'The capital city. Arrowroot. Water-bur. Colts. Hail. Bamboo grass. The round-leaved violet. Club moss. Water oats. Flat river-boats. The mandarin duck.
—The Pillow Book of Sei ShΕnagon
The sky. And the sky above that. The exchange of ice between mouths. Other people's
poems
My friend says we never write about anything we can get to the bottom of. For him, this
is a place arbored with locust trees. For me, it's a language for which I haven't quite
found the language yet.
The dewy smell of a new-cut pear. Bacon chowder flecked with thyme. Roasted duck
skin ashine with plum jam. Scorpion peppers.
Clothes on a line. A smell of rain battering the rosemary bush. The Book Cliffs. Most
forms of banditry. Weathered barns. Dr. Peebles. The Woman's Tonic, it says on the
side, in old white paint.
The clink of someone putting away dishes in another room.
The mechanical bull at the cowboy bar in West Salt Lake. The girls ride it wearing just
bikinis and cowboy hats. I lean over to my friend and say, I would worry about
catching something. And he leans back to say, That's really the thing you'd worry
about? We knock the bottom of our bottles together.
How they talk in old movies, like, Now listen here. Just because you can swing a bat
doesn't mean you can play ball. Or, I'll be your hot cross if you'll be my bun. Well,
anyway, you know what I mean.
Somewhere between the sayable and the unsayable, poetry runs. Antidote to the river
of forgetting.
Like a rosary hung from a certain rearview mirror. Like the infinite rasp of gravel
under the wheel of a departing car.
Gerard Manley Hopkins's last words were I'm so happy, I'm so happy. Oscar Wilde
took one look at the crackling wallpaper in his Paris flat, then at his friends gathered
around and said, One or the other of us has got to go. Wittgenstein said simply, Tell all
my friends, I've had a wonderful life.'
Poetic Subjects
Fuck and yes.
Note to self: Get the rest of the manga, you cretin.
On repeat.
That high-pitched mosquito buzz?
That's me screaming at an inhuman pitch.
But don't worry, it'll stop eventually.
Y'know, when i crumble off this mortal coil like a goddamn Skeksi!
'Isabella's father sprouted wings when he was already over fifty. He did not draw great profit from them: with fear and vertigo he took a few lessons from his daughter, and he twisted an ankle in landing. The wings wouldn't let him sleep, they filled his bed with feather and down, and he found it difficult to put on his shirt, jacket, and coat. They also were a hindrance when he was behind the counter in the store, and so he had them amputated.'
The Mirror Maker
(The Great Mutation)
(Page 22)
'JOURNALIST: I see. Now tell me, there are rumors abroad concerning your, let us say, matrimonial behavior . . . only rumors, let's be clear about it, I personally have never seen anything objectionable, but as you know, people will gossip . . .
SPIDER: Are you alluding to the fact that we eat the male? Is that all? But of course, certainly. It's a sort of ballet; our males are rather skinny, timid, and weak, they aren't even all that good at making a proper web. When they are overcome by desire, they venture onto our web step by step, uncertain, hesitant, because they too know how it will end up. We wait for them: we don't take the initiative, the game is clear to both parties. We females like the males as much as flies, if not more. We like them in every sense of the word, as husbands (but only for the minimum indispensable length of time) and as food. Once they have fulfilled their function, they lose all appeal except that of fresh meat; and so, in a single stroke, we fill our stomach and matrix.
JOURNALIST: Do the marriages always end like this?
SPIDER: Not always.'
- Five Intimate Interviews: IV
(Page 41)
Rating: 4/5
Primo, Charlie and me.
An early evening re-read with the queen of futuristic slayers.
Before the deluge that is.
Why do you want me to cower inside, Scotland, why?
Yes.
Okay, sure, i definitely got shivers but my shields are up, people.
I will not be hurt again.
I refuse to pick a favourite.
Choke is issued with a warning:
'If you're going to read this, don't bother.
After a couple pages, you won't want to be here. So forget it. Go away. Get out while you're still in one piece.
Save yourself.
There has to be something better on television. Or since you have so much time on your hands, maybe you could take a night course. Become a doctor. You could make something out of yourself. Treat yourself to a dinner out. Color your hair.
You're not getting any younger.
What happens here is first going to pis you off. After that it just gets worse and worse.'
...
I should have listened.
Chuck and I, we just don't get along.
I find him to be all shock and no substance.
And it's not even that shocking.
Angela Carter's made me blush harder and with more eloquence than Palahniuk will ever be capable of*.
Sometimes though, sometimes he comes out with a quote i can walk away with and that's probably why i keep giving him second chances:
' "The only frontier you have left is the world of intangibles. Everything else is sewn up too tight."
Caged inside too many laws.
By intangibles, she meant the Internet, movies, music, stories, art, rumors, computer programs, anything that isn't real. Virtual realities. Make-believe stuff. The culture.
The unreal is more powerful than the real.
Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it.
Because it's only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die.
But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.'
Choke
(Page 159-160)
*I love her. I love her. I love her. And i will never stop professing that love.
'Crowds had gathered beneath the television monitors. Clark decided that whatever they were looking at, he couldn't face it without a cup of tea. He assumed it was a terrorist attack. He bought a cup of Earl Grey at a kiosk, and took his time adding the milk. This is the last time I'll stir milk into my tea without knowing what happened, he thought, wistful in advance for the present moment...'
Station Eleven
(Page 233)
Rating: 3.5-4/5
'The hovel on the Ferry stood, or, rather, leaned at a bibulous angle on a narrow street cut across at an oblique angle by another narrow street, all the old wooden homes like an upset cookie jar of broken gingerbread houses lurching this way and that way, and the shutters hanging of their hinges and windows stuffed with old newspaper, and the snagged picket fence and raised voices in unknown tongues and howling of dogs who, since puppyhood, had known of the world only the circumference of their chain. Outside the parlour window were nothing but rows of counterfeit houses that sometimes used to scream.'
American Ghosts & Old World Wonders
(Lizzie's Tiger)
(Page 4)
'I killed the car. And at once provoked such sudden, resonant quiet as if, when I switched off the ignition, I myself brought into being the shimmering late afternoon hush, the ripening sun, the very Pacific that, way below, at the foot of the cliff, shattered its foamy peripheries with the sound of a thousand distant cinema organs.'
- (The Merchant of Shadows)
(Page 66)
'In Burgundy, in the Middle Ages, they held a Feast of Fools that lasted all through the dead days, that vacant lapse of time during which, according to the hairy-legged mythology of the Norsemen, the sky wolf ate up the sun. By the time the sky wolf puked it up again, a person or persons unknown had fucked the New Year back into being during the days when all the boys wore sprigs of mistletoe in their hats. Filthy work, but somebody had to do it.'
- (In Pantoland)
(Page 102)
The legend of my birth begins with my dad in the midst of reading Angela Carter's novella, Love.
...
We were fated, Ms Carter and I.
Fated.
Rating: 4/5
A bonus Charles:
Who i currently refer to as: Monster Munch.
Equals doesn't tread new science fiction ground but the philosophy remains a constant:
All's forbidden and all are lost to wanting
Combine this with breathtaking cinematography, two actors graced with subtlety and a score to shred your insides and you've got a tale as old as time told gut-wrenchingly well.
30/31
'Moon marked and touched by sun
my magic is unwritten
but when the sea turns back
it will leave my shape behind.
I seek no favor
untouched by blood
unrelenting as the curse of love
permanent as my errors
or my pride
I do not mix
love with pity
nor hate with scorn
and if you would know me
look into the entrails of Uranus
where the restless oceans pound.
I do not dwell
within my birth nor my divinities
who am ageless and half-grown
and still seeking
my sisters
witches in Dahomey
wear me inside their coiled cloths
as our mother did
mourning.
I have been woman
for a long time
beware my smile
I am treacherous with old magic
and the noon's new fury
with all your wide futures
promised
I am
woman
and not white'
A Woman Speaks
'She suddenly dropped her bantering tone and looked me straight in the face. I at once felt ill-at-ease, and began to fidget. Even to-day I cannot get used to people who stare at you while they are talking, or come very close to make quite sure that you are listening. My only thought then is to escape from such proximity. I go on saying "Yes", while gradually edging away; their insistence and indiscretion enrage me. What right have they to try to corner me?'
Bonjour Tristesse
(Page 91)
Rating: 3.5/5
'Winter always was my favourite season. Is this yet winter? I do not know. There is some technical definition, something based on calendars and the position of the sun, but I think one simply becomes aware that the tide of seasons has irrevocably turned; that the animal in us smells winter. Disregarding the imposed grid of our chronology, winter is something inflicted upon our half-world, something taken away from the land by the cold and cooling sky and the low and lowering sun, something that permeates the soul, and enters the mind through the nose, between the teeth and across the porous barrier of the skin.'
A Song of Stone
(Page 3)
'We each contain the universe inside our selves, the totality of existence encompassed by all that we have to make sense of it; a grey, ridged mushroom mass ladled into a bony bowl the size of a smallish cooking pot.'
- (Page 165)
Iain Banks' writing always puts me in mind of the beating of weathered wings.
Rating: 4/5
Ps. Would you look at all those filthy, fluffy toes. Ridiculous.
'The lack of emotional connection with other people has the odd effect of making you feel separate and alien ‑ as if you are observing the human race from somewhere else; unattached and unwelcome. [...] People scurry around, doing their little jobs and raising their little families and shouting their meaningless emotions to the world, and all the while you just watch from the sidelines, bewildered. This drives some sociopaths to feel superior, as if the whole of humanity were simply animals to be hunted or put down; others feel a hot, jealous rage, desperate to have what they cannot."
I Am Not A Serial Killer
(Page 51)
Rating: 3.5/5
Oft accused of being a creeper due to my love of all things supernatural and gore-filled, i was expecting much more from the first in Dan Wells' John Cleaver series.
Give me blood and demons and fucking pandemonium.
But please don't give me Holden Caulfield with a butcher knife.
It's just too goddamn whiny.
Charlie puts more fear into me.
(Genuinely.
I've got the scratch marks on my shoulder to prove it.
The cat knows how to lunge.)
This won't stop me from probably reading at least the next book in the series, Mr Monster and most definitely watching the movie.
Christopher Lloyd is a good enough reason to watch just about anything.
Suck it, haters.
'The raven cawed from the edge of the clearing.
"You want me to follow you?" asked Shadow. "Or has Timmy fallen down another well?" The bird cawed again, impatiently. Shadow started walking towards it. It waited until he was close, then flapped heavily into another tree, heading somewhat to the left of the way Shadow had originally been going.
"Hey," said Shadow. "Huginn or Muninn, or whoever you are."
The bird turned, head tipped, suspiciously, on one side, and it stared at him with bright eyes.
"Say 'Nevermore'," said Shadow.
"Fuck you," said the raven.'
American Gods
(Page 172-173)
Rating: 4/5
The first time in the history of ever that i've signed a petition and the thing's actually happened.
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