like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat

finished extremely loud and incredibly close a couple of days ago and loved it. i had been looking forward to reading this after finishing everything is illuminated at the beginning of fall semester. commence customary text-quoting sequence....now.

i started inventing things, and then i couldn't stop, like beavers, which i know about. people think they cut down trees so they can build dams, but in reality it's because their teeth never stop growing, and if they didn't constantly file them down by cutting through all of those trees, their teeth would start to grow into their own faces, which would kill them. that's how my brain was.

'well, if people like me are a dying breed, then what's going to happen to your business?' 'we'll become specialized,' he said, 'like a typewriter shop. we're useful now, but soon we'll be interesting.'

i needed to do something, like sharks, who die if they don't swim, which i know about.

the eyes that can't take in all of the change

was i walking up the ladder or down?

the books had been buried, so i hid this time behind a group of trees, i imagined their roots wrapped around books, pulling nourishment from the pages, i imagined rings of letters in their trunks

how could anything less deserve to be destroyed?

i understand, now, the tragedy of my childhood. it wasn't the bombing.it was that i never once liked a photograph of myself. i couldn't.

it's like new york is a miniature replica of new york, which is nice, because you can see what it's really like, instead of how it feels when you're in the middle of it.

it started so simply, with such good and simple intentions

i finished reading dave eggers' you shall now our velocity today on the plane. travel, grief, searching, loss, being an outsider. what more could i ask for? i'm glad i finally picked it back up again.

i'm falling more in love with the idea of knowing the what, and reading a book to learn the why. a detective novel of sorts, with all the pieces laid out, and a gradual accumulation not of evidence, but of explanation.

already i don't want to leave. did you feel that air? it's different. it's african air. it's like mixed with the sun more. like our air isn't mixed as well with the sun. here they mix it perfectly. the sun's in the wind, the sun's in your breaths.

friendships, even temporary ones like this, were based on proximity and chance, and so rarely made any sense at all.

it wasn't a dull pain; it was acute, almost sweet

it's irrelevant. who cares how many universes or planes there are when they don't intersect? [. . .] but what i wanted, really, was every option, simultaneously. not in some parallel and irrelevant universe, but here.

but you're talking behind seven layers of denial and justification

as we walked under the infrequent streetlights we had two and three shadows, as one light cast our shadow up and the other down, sometimes overlapping. the lights didn't know what they were doing. the lights knew nothing.

we come and then we create things that will happen. . . half thought, half actual. it's a staging ground.

you have to forget about momentum and start again, and again, and again, and again.

at that moment i was sure. that i belonged in my skin. that my organs were mine and my eyes were mine and my ears, which could only hear the silence of this night and my faint breathing, were mine, and i loved them and what they could do. . .i was sure that was how people drowned; not with a fight, not with thrashing but with thoughts of rest.

i can't be alone with my head, Hand. i fear it. my own head! there was a time when i wanted and loved time alone with my mind. now i dread it [. . .] all the while i was caressing every wall of my head. i was wandering around my head, teary with joy, wistful even, loving the surfaces, the many rooms, the old rooms and empty rooms [. . .] but slowly these empty rooms were filled. filled with things so wretched and brutal that you could not have conceived of them at thirteen. and soon you find there are too many rooms, too many occupied rooms, too few empty ones. i walk through my corridors and i open doors and now it's so hard to find a room unoccupied or not full of screaming clouds.

it's too much to walk around with this skin and this blood - it all hisses at me. i sink into my blood and it hisses at me.

the idea was to solve the problems of the world via removal, withdrawal, starting with me.

why all of this? i want this cleared away. i have no use for this shit anymore. it's sending me back. . . i need less memory. no memory. i need

he looked at me like a father would, when a father knows his son needs a mother.

instrumental in traveling is the participation in it, the belief in progress, the witnessing of passage.

the only motion i knew was relative motion, the only speed that truly felt like speed was when i was speeding past things.

soft curves and such green. i had never lived anywhere with this kind of drama.

i couldn't think of anything i'd done in six months that brought me anywhere new or proved in any way i'd been there, that i'd been taking air from the world and using it to any justifiable end.

knew what was what, knew that none of it really meant anything, or meant everything but in a way we wouldn't ever really understand.

everything was wrong all at once.

this was very real. this was our lives, the whole of our relatively straightforward lives, concluding savagely on this bizarre note, someone splicing onto our happy safe wisconsin lives the wrong, bloody ending.

the only infallible truth of our lives is that everything we love in life will be taken from us.

everyone in the world knew more than us, about everything, and this i hated then found hugely comforting.

i would know that in any city, at an hour like this, there are people sleeping. that most people are sleeping. but that in any city, in any cluster of people, there are a few people who are awake at this hour, who are both awake and dancing, and it's here that we need to be. that if we are living as we were this week, that we had to be awake with the people who were still dancing.

and i then would have the idea, seeming gloriously true for a flickering moment, that we all should have a near-death experience weekly, twice weekly-how much we'd get done! the clarity we'd know!

nothing we did ever resembled in any way what we'd envisioned. maybe we couldn't help but make a mess everywhere we went

always we learned things and forgot them. almost nothing could be learned for good.

i was so sick of my name it pained me.

-every story, Hand, is sadder than ours.
-every last one.

how much disbelief, collectively, must be suspended, to allow for tourism?

-but still there will be retribution. i have had mine. and we all are punished. it happens first within our minds and then in the physical world.
-no. there will be retribution. i have had mine. and we all are punished. it happens first within our minds and then in the physical world.

but Will, your life has been lived a hundred times. a thousand times. it's not all that great, really. don't take it so seriously. don't handle it so delicately.

i want none of my own thoughts anymore. i want to donate my head.

i am tingling for the world. but i was already raw. i didn't realize how raw. then we planned this trip and i thought i could do more, that i could do better. but now i want to see the end.

i live again. love is implicit in every connection.

we want the world smaller and bigger and just the same but advancing.

only intermittently did the world give us tasks, in quick beautiful bursts, that we had to complete and feel electric and roaring while doing so.

your destiny daily is determined by the failings of the world

you are usually there but you have to always be present [. . .] i wanted something to happen so my choices would be fewer, so my map would have a route straight through, in red.

no, they made it sound okay. it's like a density thing. apparently they wanted that density of soul. the density is desirable. apparently they see the soul the opposite as we do, where it's the lightest thing, this wispy ghost thing. they think of it like a mountain. like a mountain each of us carries around, and you want your mountain strong and dense, because that means your family has lived lives of great experience. but the trick i guess is to find a way to move around.

i planned nothing well. i dreaded being back in chicago, or memphis, wherever - the stasis, the slow suffocation of accumulation.

advice so rarely finds its intended audience

on adoration

there is something about picking up a new book, spine still completely intact. unbent, undamaged, unexplored. a page yet to be turned, only the slightest inclination of what is yet to come, the first utterances still unknown. there is something inexplicably comforting about starting anew, fresh hopes with preconceived expectations neither of which are ever reconciled.

then a few days pass, a few weeks if you're diligent, and before you know it the charm is gone. the corners are bent, some pages catch a little differently and the cover isn't all that it used to be. by this point you have already forgotten what it was like to lovingly open the pages and begin to explore, desperately searching for something you can never quite pinpoint, something of which you cannot preemptively conceive. this early notion of what was to come was more shaped by your own transference of expectation than of the reality of what you were to face.

one day, likewise, you are going to start to see my creases, the lines left from reckless days come and gone which may have been flattened out under the pressure of something greater, graver... but whose mark is still impossible to miss, ever present like a scar on the character of who i am, corrupting what might have at first appeared ideal. the novelty will fade and the discordant nature of these two conceptions, what was and what will be, unequivocally and diametrically opposed, will tear whatever semblance of cohesion that may be remaining apart. the deference will be gone, the object pushed from the foreground into an uneasy, forgettable backdrop of a memory, condemned to a bookshelf of skeletons and unstable spines, slowly coming apart at the seams. despite the wear of the impeding drop in interest, the tear of ever-growing distance, gaps and disconnects, let this be the one i don't forget. the one i don't have to shelve. let your hands turn the pages with care again and again until they become a part of your touch, always opening back up to those passages you treasure.

at the moment

and then there is you.

i don't know if you even read this

i can't think of anything clever

a picture is worth a handful of words

i spent a little bit of time on my favorite tumblr earlier today and it has been a while since i had a post like this, so here goes. the first is my favorite. anything from perks makes me think of mindy and andrew, plus it is one of my favorite lines.

for you, but also for me, just like everything else.

and, of course...

on analogous experiences

music is like literature. my first reason? i can't get enough of either. second reason? people enjoy it in the same way they enjoy literature. they want to talk about it, but at the same time the experience can be intensely private. either way, it evokes an emotional response that is hard to pinpoint or to recreate.

i have a reason for bringing this up, i promise. i just put up blonde redhead lyrics in my status, and felt a little pretentious doing so. give me a break, i just walked out of a faulkner class. i was going for something a little bit abstract. so sue me.

"allow me to show you the way which I adore you...equus by nature, timid creature, ready to run away"

(video for equus by blonde redhead, off of misery is a butterfly)

then, i started going through my tweetdeck, seeing all the updates i missed during class, and of course clicked on about a dozen links leading to new videos, music, and blogs. so, i've spent the last half hour listening to the new kid cudi/ratatat/mgmt collaboration, watching part of the new air video, more cool kids videos than i care to admit (thanks funfunfunfest) and reading a few opinions pieces about obama's speech today.

oh, and let's not forget the live video of passion pit that they posted on pitchfork. it took me back to a moment in time. back to south by southwest. if i were benjy, sleepyhead is my equivalent of "she smelled like trees," or if i were quentin, my honeysuckle, my past, my memory.

but here's the problem - sleepyhead doesn't provoke thought like equus does. however, i was equally moved. so, all of you music snobs out there, how pretentious are your literary tastes? do you enjoy vonnegut or palahniuk less just because more people read him and because he is more accessible? or do you enjoy faulkner or joyce better just because it isn't attainable and comprehensible for anyone who picks it up? there is beauty and merit in both. if only everyone empirically and rationally considered that.

long live anything that engages me, elicits a train of thought, or just makes me swoon.

everything seems simple until you think about it

not the most exciting first update back in the states, but here it is. i loved this book, and i can't wait to the see the movie. it makes me happy, and breaks my heart, all at the same time.

each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. through each moment i can see infinite moments lined up, waiting.

i am a trick, an illusion of the highest order, so incredible that i am actually true.

and yet, i am always going, and she cannot follow.

everything is in the future for him.

actually, i know everything and nothing.

here we are. here and now, finally now.

i'm sorry. i didn't know you were coming or i'd have cleaned up a little more. my life, i mean, not just the apartment.

i'm sleeping the thin dreamy sleep of six in the morning.

actually, i don't believe this; things happen the way they happened, once and only once.

the same as you. it is the same. we are the same. . .a translucent moment. i didn't understand, and then i did, just like that. i watch it happen.

i was busy but miserable at twenty. twenty was nothing special. nothing springs to mind.

but sometimes you tell me something and i feel like the future is already there, you know? like my future has happened in the past and i can't do anything about it. 'thats called determinism,' i tell her. 'it haunts my dreams.'

her pragmatism and her romantic feelings about jesus and mary are, at thirteen, almost equally balanced. a year ago she would have said god without hesitation. in ten years she will vote for determinism, and ten years after that clare will believe that the universe is arbitrary, that if god exists he does not hear our prayers, that cause and effect are inescapable and brutal, but meaningless.

but i dont want to just believe it, i want it to be true.
after an hour or so has passed i too am gone and there is only a blanket and a book, coffee cups, and clothing, to show that we were there at all.

i love it when little puzzle pieces drop into place like this.

i feel the wheels passing over the asphalt, but somehow we seem to be motionless, and the world moves around us at forty-five miles per hour. i close my eyes. it makes no difference. i open them. my heart is pounding.

there's something knowing and crusel in clare's laugh, and it seems to me that this moment is the demarcation, a sort of no-man's-land between clare's childhood and her life as a woman.

an afternoon can be like a day to me; an el ride can be an epic journey. today is interminable.

causation only runs forward. things happen once, only once. if you know things. . .i feel trapped, most of the time. if you are in time, not knowing. . .you're free.

as i wrap my hair in a towel i see myself blurred in the mirror by steam and time seems to fold over onto itself and i see myself as a layering of all my previous days and years and all the time that is coming and suddenly i feel as though i've become invisible. but then the feeling is gone as fast as it came and i stand still for a minute and then i pull on my bathrobe and open the door and go on.

running is many things to me : survival, calmness, euphoria, solitude. it is proof of my corporeal existence, my ability to control my movement through space if not time, and the obedience, however temporary, of my body to my will. as i run i displace air, and things come and go around me, and the path moves like a filmstrip beneath my feet.

smiles in an exhausted but warm sort of way, as though she is a brilliant sun in some other galaxy.

people are suddenly quiet and into this quit comes a long, slow, low note that fills the space, that connects to no known piece of music but simply exists, sustains.

well, you're lucky to have a great dad who loves something besides money.

my coordination is softening from the whiskies

praise means nothing to mama, she doesn't believe it. only criticism can flush her cheeks and catch her attention. if i were to say something disparaging she would remember it always.

we swing higher and higher, passing each other, sometimes in synch and sometimes streaming past each other so fast it seems like we're going to collide, and we laugh, and laugh, and nothing can ever be sad, no one can be lost, or dead, or far away: right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection, or steal the joy of this perfect moment.

'we can be quiet together, and pretend - since it is only the beginning - that we have all the time in the world.'
'and every day we shall have less. and then none.'
'would you rather, therefore, have had nothing at all?'

every day the ideas come more reluctantly, as though they know i will starve them and stunt their growth. . .the compelling thing about art - or making anything, i suppose - is the moment when the vaporous, insubstantial idea becomes a solid there, a thing, a substance in a world of substances.

we look at the paintings, but they aren't really paintings, they're poems, poems somehow given physical manifestation.

i find it difficult to withstand the pity in her gaze.

somewhere out there behind the sodium vapor chicago glare there are stars
i inhabit sleep firmly, willing it, wielding it, pushing away dreams, refusing, refusing. sleep is my lover now, my forgetting, my opiate, my oblivion. . .sleep erases all differences: then and now; dead and living. i am past hunger, past vanity, past caring.

and when i was young i didn't understand, but now, i know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird.

it's dark, now, and i am very tired. i love you, always. time is nothing.

'hmm. okay. once upon a time-'
'when was that?'
'all times at once. a long time ago, and right now.'
'both?'
'yes, always both.'

when i woke up this morning i had an urge to come here. it was like a flash of lust" an assignation with my old lover, art.
i sip my coffee and try to feel time rever, try to erase the difference between now and then. it is only my memory that holds me here. time, let me vanish.

always again.

writing is a private thing. it's boring to watch, and its pleasures tend to be the most intense for the person who's actually doing the writing.

he saw reality, and thought it was a dream

a few passages from c.s. lewis' perelandra.

---

one can't put the difference into words

the old footing is not easy to recover

the picture of the fruit you have not found is still, for a moment, before you. and if you wish - if it were possible to wish - you could keep it there. you could send your soul after the good you had expected, instead of turning it to the good you had got. you could refuse the real good; you could make the real fruit taste insipid by thinking of the other

nothing is great or small, save by position

it surprised him that he could experience so extreme a terror and yet be walking and thinking - as men in war or sickness are surprised by how much can be borne: 'it will drive us mad,' 'it will kill us outright,' we say; and hen it happens and we find ourselves neither mad nor dead, still held to the task

either something or nothing must depend on individual choices. and if something, who could set bounds to it?

ransom had been perceiving that the triple distinction of truth from myth and of both from fact with purely terrestrial - was part and parcel of that unhappy division between soul and body which resulted from the fall

the terrible silence went on. it became more and more like a face, a face not without sadness, that looks upon you while you are telling lies, and never interrupts, but gradually you know that it knows, and falter, and contradict yourself, and lapse into silence.

all in a moment of time he perceived that what was, to human philologists, a merely accidental resemblance of two sounds, was in truth no accident. the whole distinction between things accidental and things designed, like the distinction between fact and myth, was purely terrestrial. the pattern is so large that within the little frame of earthly experience there appear pieces of it between which we can see no connection, and other pieces between which we can.

and then, without any apparent movement of the will, as objective and unemotional as the reading on a dial, there had arisen before him, with perfect certitude, the knowledge 'about this time tomorrow you will have done the impossible'

except for the song it was all very still

nay, the very beauty of it lay in the certainty that it was a copy, like and not the same, an echo, a rhyme, an exquisite reverberation of the uncreated music prolonged in a created medium.

we have learned better than that, and know it more, for it is waking that understands sleep and not sleep that understands waking

'i do not call it the beginning,' said tor the king. 'it is but the wiping out of a false start in order that the world may then begin

as soon as we think we see one it melts away into nothing, or into some other plan that we never dreamed of, and what was the centre becomes the rim, till we doubt if any shape or plan or pattern was ever more than trick of our own eyes

all the best intentions

this could be my last cigarette
no, this could be my last regret
i sat and watched the matches burn down
down down down down to my fingertips
i sat and thought of you
a thought or two and i, and i can't resist.

and the lights, they dim like i knew they would
when it gets dark i start to think of you
'cause friends don't even compare to you
i just want something i can hold on to
when times get bad, my habit just got worse

this could be my last cigarette
no, this could be my last regret
i sat and watched the matches burn down
down down down down to my fingertips
i sat and thought of you
a thought or two and i, and i can't resist.

and the lights, they dim like i knew they would
when it gets dark I start to think of you
'cause friends don't even compare to you
i just want something I can hold on to
when times get bad, my habit just got worse

1, 2 i love the way you kiss me
you know we're never gonna get it right
i need something to hold me
i need something for the winter time
we sat inside the headlights
you laughed about the life i talked about the dreams
and now i know you're on your way
you're leaving with all the best intentions
and you're all buttoned up
slam the door
you leave the car
you take a walk i used to walk you on
i walk i used to oh

when it gets dark i start to think of you
'cause friends don't even compare to you
i just want something i can hold on to
when times get bad, my habit just got worse

this could be my last cigarette
this could be my last cigarette
this could be my last cigarette

hell is other people

last night, i couldn't sleep. i started and finished this book after i finally got off the computer

'who really knows? i could have dreamed all this'

favorite passage is from his interview with clarence darrow

'the presence of those cameras finally acknowledges,' he said to me, ' that justice systems anywhere, anytime, have never cared whether justice was achieved or not. like roman games, justice systems are ways for unjust governments - and there is no other sort of government - to be enormously entertaining with real lives at stake.

i also started another c.s. lewis book that i forgot i hadn't read it yet - till we have faces.

also, i am itching to see another show....and since i love listing things, here are three lists. everything is better in threes.

bands i really want to see again

mgmt
person l
mae
the rocket summer
jacks mannequin
all-american rejects
passion pit
band of horses
conor oberst and the mystic valley band
manchester orchestra
death cab for cutie
natalie portman's shaved head
portugal. the man
forgive durden

bands i really, really, really want to see for the first time

jimmy eat world
girl talk
incubus
fun
fleet foxes
brand new
crystal castles
pretty lights
broken social scene
sunny day real estate
jeremy enigk
lady gaga
blonde redhead
les savy fav

in an ideal world?

the format
the starting line
something corporate
be your own pet
neutral milk hotel
this is me smiling
taking back sunday (circa 2004)

we must be guided by circumstances

i finally finished that hideous strength today. i need to type up my favorite quotes from the first two books in the series, so look for perelandra and out of the silent planet soon. definitely worth reading, i was just taking it way too slow. enjoy.

---

youth and age touch only the surface of our lives

isn't seeing believing?
it may be - for children or beasts.

the sadness that came over him had novelty in it

her actual state of mind was one she could not analyze. her expectation was strung up to the height; something that would have been terror but for the joy, and joy but for the terror, possessed her - an all-absorbing tension of excitement and obedience. everything else in her life seemed small and commonplace compared with this moment.

...that when you mean well, he always takes you to have meant better than you knew. it will not be enough for always. he is very jealous. he will have you for no one but himself in the end. but for tonight, it is enough.

[one] who could enjoy things for their own sake

have you ever noticed, said dimble, that the universe, and every little bit of the universe, is always hardening and narrowing and coming to a point?. . .you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren't quite so sharp; and that there's going to be a time after that point when there is even less room or indecision and choices are even more momentous. good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse.

i'm afraid there's no niche in the world for people that won't be either pagan or christian. just imagine a man who was too dainty to eat with his fingers and yet wouldn't use forks!

now the suspicion dawn upon her that there might be differences and contrasts all the way up, richer, sharper, even fiercer, at every rung of the ascent.

in its light you could understand them; but from them you could know nothing of it. there was nothing, and never had been anything, like this. and now there was nothing except this. yet also, everything had been like this; only by being like this had anything existed.

words take too long. to be aware of all this and to know that it had already gone made one single experience.

it was well that both men had some knowledge of poetry. the doubling, spilitting, and recombining of thoughts which now went on in them would have been unendurable for one whom that art had not already instructed in the counterpoint of the mind, the mastery of doubled and trebled vision.

they could not bear that it continue. they could not bear that it should cease.

they were laughing again, but it was a different kind of laughter. their love for one another became intense. each, looking on all the rest, thought, i'm lucky to be here. i could die with these.

they felt themselves taking their places in the ordered rhythm of the universe, side by side with punctual seasons and patterned atoms. . .under the immense weight of their obedience their wills stood up straight and untiring like caryatids.

it was also strong like a mountain; its age was no mere morass of time where imagination can sink in reverie, but a living, self-remembering duration which repelled lighter intelligences from its structure as granite flings back waves, itself unwithered and undecayed but able to wither any who approach it unadvised.

before the other angels a man might sink: before this he might die, but if he lived at all, he would laugh. . .unquenchable laughter

it was like the first beginning of music in the halls of some king so high and at some festival so solemn that a tremor akin to fear runs through young hears when they hear it

but the realisation that he had forgotten trouble him more than it would have troubled another. it was like the first cold breath of winter - the first little hint of a crack in that great seconday self or mental machine which he had built up to carry on the business of living

nothing but nonsense syllables would occur to his mind

if i take a step in any direction, he thought, i may step over a precipice

christianity was a fable. it would be ridiculous to die for a religion one did not believe. this man himself [christ], on that very cross, had discovered it to be a fable, and had died complaining that the god in whom he trusted had forsaken him - had, in fact, found the universe a cheat. but this raised a question that mark had never thought of before. was that the moment at which to turn against the man? if the universe was a cheat, was that a good reason for joining its side? supposing the straight and normal was utterly powerless, always and everywhere certain to be mocked, tortured, and finally killed by the crooked, what then? why not go down with the ship? he began to be frightened by the very fact that his fears seemed to have momentarily vanished. they had been a safeguard . . .they had prevented him, all his life, from making mad decisions like that which he was now making.

this, combined with an inarticulate want for the human companionship to which he was accustomed, gradually plunged him into depression. sorrow such as only animals know - huge seas of disconsolate emotion with not one little raft of reason to float on - drowned him fathoms deep. in his own fashion he lifted up his voice and wept.

often the man knows with perfect clarity that some still possible action of his own will could yet save him. but he cannot make this knowledge real to himself.

increasingly, his actions had been without motive. he did this and that, he said thus and thus, and did know why. his mind was a mere spectator. he could not understand why that spectator should exist at all.

he half saw: he wholly hated.

as he now saw, one might as well have thought one could buy a sunset by buying the field from which one had seen it.

but now that it's so very nearly time for me to go, all this begins to feel like a dream. a happy dream, you understand: all of it, even the pain. i want to taste every drop. i feel as though it would be dissolved if i talked much.

---

as for me, it's nothing new just another two years

but he understood at last what dumbledore had been trying to tell him. it was, he thought, the difference between being dragged into the arena to face a battle to the death and walking into the arena with your head held high. some people, perhaps, would say that there was little to choose between the two ways, but dumbledore knew - and so do i, thought harry, with a rush of fierce pride, and so did my parents - that there was all the difference in the world.

i remember when i read this in the fall, and this passage really struck me. it still does. children's fiction or not, it is always the simplest words that really resonate the most.

dreamlike in clarity

i finished out of the silent planet today, which is about all i have accomplished... with the exception of a lot of tivo and tv. yesterday was cinco de mayo, so jess and i hit up trudy's for the obligatory margaritas. strawberry, frozen, with salt. always. i didn't really know what to expect for this book, but it really blew me away in a very unexpected manner. i guess i had been anticipating a kind of sirens of titans-esque escapade, which is true in some regards...but not in others. my love for lewis is just reaffirmed, again and again and again.

---

he felt for him that sort of distaste we feel for someone whom we have admired in boyhood for a very brief period and then outgrown

you stop where you like and go on when you like. as long as it lasts you need consider no one and consult no one but yourself

and then, you see, i'm a don. and don in the middle of a long vacation is almost a non-existent creature, as you ought to remember

since he was now so far away- about a mile away, though perfectly clear like something seen through the wrong end of a telescope

like many men of his own age, he rather underestimated than overestimated his own courage; the gap between boyhood's dreams and his actual experience of the War had been startling, and his subsequent view of his own unheroic qualities had perhaps swung too far in the opposite direction. he had some anxiety lest the firmness of his present mood should prove a short-lived illusion; but he must make the best of it.

as if some demon had rubbed the heaven's face with a dirty sponge, the splendour in which they had lived for so long blenched to a pallid, cheerless and pitiable grey.

things do not always happen as a man would expect. the moment of his arrival in an unknown world found Ransom wholly absorbed in a philosophical speculation.

the love of knowledge is a kind of madness

nothing could be more disgusting than the one impression; nothing more delightful than the other. it all depended on the point of view.

a pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. you are speaking. . .as if the pleasure were the one thing and the memory another. it is all one thing.

and how could we endure to live and let time pass if we were always crying for one day or one year to come back - if we did not know that every day in a life fills the whole life with expectation and memory and that these are that day?

there i drank life because death was in the pool

he had no idea what might be coming next, but he was determined to carry out his programme

'yes,' he said dully to the [alien]. 'that is my world.' it was the bleakest moment in all his travels

but while he was speaking it dawned upon Random that the odious figures were intended as an idealization of humanity

i do not understand. they are our great speakers and singers. they have more words and better. no one learns the speech of my people, for what we have to say is said in stones. . .and all can see them. no one learns the [another creature's] speech for you can change their knowledge into any words and it is still the same.

all keep the mines open; it is a work to be shared. but each digs for himself the thing he wants for his work. what else would he do?

all three species were represented. they seemed to have no uneasy feelings towards each other, though there were some differences of the kind that occur in a railway carriage on earth. he learned more. . .in this one night than he had learned during the whole of his life on the strange planet hitherto.

through his knowledge of the creatures and his love for them he began, ever so little, to hear it with their ears.

the darkness in your own mind filled you with fear.

a bent person can do more evil than a broken one.

for the later stages of the adventure - well, it was aristotle, long before kipling, who taught us the formula, 'that is another story'

i merely analyze them out of a whole living memory that can never be put into words, and no one in this world will be able to build up from such scraps quite the right picture.

there are two scenes that i wish you could have worked into the book; no matter - they are worked into me.

on secondhand book stores

so, i went to half-price books sunday night after i got back here in austin. it has kind of become a tradition for me every time i make my way back home...i've always finished all the books i brought with me, can't live without finding this one particular book (which i could afford to buy along the dozen others i want to read), or need something new to bring with me on a trip in place of an old friend that i've read over and over (i.e. candide, narnia, we the living, etc.). this trip was kind of all of the above.

i walked in, family in tow since we had just had dinner across the road, with the promises rolling of my lips - i'm just looking for two books, i'll be in and out. of course, i get sucked in and search for a million different things. i walked away with the following


in the religious studies section. i'm obsessed with c.s. lewis and with mythology...so what more could i ask for? i don't really know what to expect from this one, but i won't start it until i get back from my trip.


these three are actually the ones i was really wanting to find, along with the next one. half-price didn't have out of the silent planet, but two really cool fifth edition copies of the second and third books in the series, so i picked them up. i wish i had a complete set all in the same edition, but after checking two other locations, i ended up buying a currently print of the first one. i'm already halfway through it. i might finish the series before i leave saturday.

a friend recommended this to me, and we seem to share similar tastes about a lot of things. maybe if we lose touch, this will stay with me at least. i'm trying to be optimistic however. i'm two chapters into this, as well, and it is great so far. i'm definitely not disappointed.

my favorite find of the night. it is really a coffee-table size book, full of images that either c.s. lewis took, his friends took, pictures of him or his friends, or pictures of places that he references or that influenced his work. i'm in love. this is the union of so many things i love about life, all in concert with one another in this amazing, tangible form. i really need to spend a day outside somewhere, taking it all in. love it.


i picked this book up in the clearance section (along with two other photography books that i'm too lazy to search for on amazon to include in this blog) simply because of the author's biographical excerpt inside the front cover. "Here Emily Kimbrough - the most ardent adoptive Greek since the Emperor Hadrian- is back among the people she knows and loves so well." That alone, along with the $1.00 price tag made it a necessary purchase. Oh witty classicists...

these last two were essential. I need to learn as much italian as possible before saturday...we'll see how that goes. the latin/spanish background definitely helps with vocabulary, but i know i'm going to make silly mistakes, like with my ch/c and v/w sounds. we'll see. this will be my little cheat sheet while i'm there. i read the whole greek island guidebook cover to cover (okay, i skipped the ionians...so shoot me. there's no way i could make it there, and i didn't want to know what i would be missing) between last night and today. all 580-odd pages. i'm so excited, and such a nerd...i know. reading the little greek phrases made it all come back to me so quickly...i forgot how much i learned the last time around.

well, time for dinner, then cinco de mayo celebrations. until next time.

little glimpses

that's part of my problem. i can't always let go of the past. sometimes i dwell on the great things, or at least the things i build up in my mind to have been great, mostly as a way of filling a void of similar experiences in the here and now. at least i realize what i'm doing, that's progress, right?

still waiting.

directions

"If you want to be happy, be"

-Leo Tolstoy

post-it notes and recollections

i'm having a really dull, unproductive day. i just spent the last fifteen minutes looking for the cds with my pictures from greece...i told dr. fries i would burn her a copy, but i can't find them. i'm usually not this disorganized, but i don't see a point in tidying up when i will be moving out in a few days. i should probably be packing if i'm not doing work...oh well.

i just picked up one of my textbooks for bronze age archaeology to start marking it up for my final (which is open note, open book) and there were still a few stray post-it notes in the text from earlier this semester. considering the conversation i had today, it seems like maybe this is contrived, but it isn't. it is funny the little signs you find in your life, sometimes.

these are the little reminders i leave myself, but this semester ive been too busy to keep up with writing, so what would make sense at the time is lost to chronological ambiguity.

as far as the double shadow, i remember that bit...i just can't place it during a particular time of the year. i was walking to the caf, headphones on, between the christian center and murrah. i was looking down, like i had been tending to do...trying to remain anonymous, not having the confidence to look up and make eye contact with anyone anymore. looking at the ground, i noticed that i had two shadows besides me, both my own...one fainter than the other. maybe it was the way the sun was coming from behind me, i dont know. i distinctly remember thinking that not only was this strange, it was fitting. one part of me, less real than another...neither of the shadows truly representing who i am. i feel like ive been a shadow of myself for the past couple of years. up until a handful of weeks ago, i would say this was still true. something has changed though, for the better, and i dont think i can say the same anymore.

the camera note is either about needing to keep a camera with me at all times, which i do now after a few missed moments, or lamenting the fact that i didnt have a DSLR for a couple of weeks this semester. either way, its irrelevant now thank goodness.

everyone else on campus has their relationships, organizations, habits, roommates, routines...and here i was jumping back into this semester unprepared and out of the loop. the whole in medias res thing again. i'm always catching things in the midst of something else, one foot in the past, one foot hestitantly moving closer to the future, what comes next.

the rest, well...ill leave them up to you. irony, synchronicity, reality. which of the three is really worthwhile?

sorry that i'm taken aback

i woke up with the sun today...what a great way to start off the daunting day i have ahead of me. i'm back in jackson now, wasting time until i have to take my greek test this afternoon. i should start studying for my latin final, or my roman legacy final for that matter, since i have to take both tomorrow, but i'm still sitting here on my bed, fighting sleep. i keep throwing out the word surreal to try and describe the last few days, but i don't think there is any one adjective that can truly encapsulate what i have experienced. unlike the last few weeks that have been full of all-nighters and scrambling to put together term papers, my lack of sleep this past week has been punctuated by experiences i never would have expected. i'm trying to let myself be more spontaneous, live more in the moment, and it is hard...but worthwhile. i used to calculate every moment of every day, trying to thwart the unexpected with thought-out reason and definitive answers and plans so that i didn't have to face whatever chance, fortune, fate (whatever you believe in) threw my way. articulating that makes me feel like i was trying to be a stoic...a hyper-productive stoic, but still, that makes me sound like i could be in league with seneca, or someone of the like.

i can feel the weight of my sleep deprivation right behind my eyes, struggling to remain alert...but i feel the weight of my actions and the bigger issues at hand in my (insert some cliche here...heart, chest, soul).


beyond the rescue, invisible children, road trips and this growing sense of community, something else really unexpected came my way yesterday as well. i love beginnings, even if they are in medias res, and the excitement they incite. this quote reminds me a lot of my dear you (though i swear it was written before i ever read this) from a little while ago. those days are long past, but on the conceptual level it still rings true. i wish i could have some consistency in my life, but the thrill of starting something new and uncertain is more than enough. i just need to stop being so damn awkward. i can't help it...i can get a bit flustered when i have a bit of a crush.
i am in the mood for this is me smiling. obviously, i am "so excited to sleep"...but they feel like a good complement to the tone of the day.

mean everything to nothing

"i try to write through a lens rather than on top of a soapbox. "
- andy hull, manchester orchestra

so true. here are the three videos ive posted from this album so far (again)... i know the links are dead in the old posts, but this should work for all of them. i can't wait for the other eight :)