Saint-Expuréry

"To love is not to look at one another but to look together in the same direction."

Pamuk

"I am now going to speak of the meaning of that weight: that weight is what a person creates when he shuts himself up in a room and sits down at a table or retires to a corner to express his thoughts—that is, the weight of literature."


~ORHAN PAMUK New Yorker Issue of 2006-12-25 and 2007-01-01


I haven't had much to say here~

However, I've been trying to catalogue some of my dreams here- at this blog- which I will try to post to, once or twice a week.
http://blog.myspace.com/epithymy

Next week- some discussion of books read, including Sylvia Beach.

colbert

The Arcades Project Walter Benjamin

Phantasmagoria is the intentional correlate of immediate experience. M3a, 4

Experience is the outcome of work; immediate experience is the phantasmagoria of the idler. M1a,3




If you would like more pictures of passages: http://www.santm.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=7380&g2_page=2

and more: http://www.parisbestlodge.com/passages.html

and a little more:
http://paris.contexttravel.com/static/passages.php?sess=ct&PHPSESSID=15a34471cda15533ae8fda95efd

choiseul

The Arcades Project Walter Benjamin


Boredom began to be experienced in epidemic proportions during the 1840's. Lamartine is said to be the first to have given expression to the malady. It plays a role in a little story about the famous comic Deburau. A distinguished Paris neurologist was consulted one day by a patient whom he had not seen before. The patient complained of the typical illness of the times: weariness of life, deep depressions, boredom. "There's nothing wrong with you," said the doctor after a thorough examination. "Just try to relax-find something to entertain you. Go see Deburau some evening and life will look different to you." "Ah, dear sir," answered the patient, "I am Dedrau." D3a, 4

vivienne

The Arcades Project Walter Benjamin

The father of Surrealism was Dada; its mother was an arcade. Dada, when the two first met, was already old. At the end of 1919, Aragon and Breton, out of antipathy to Montparnasse and Montmarte, transferred the site of their meeting with friends to a café in the Passage de l'Opéra. Construction of the Boulevard Haussman brought about the demise of the Passage de l'Opéra. Louis Aragon devoted 135 pages to this arcade; in the sum of three digits rides the number nine- the number of muses who bestowed their gifts on the newborn Surrealism. C1, 3

verdeau

The Arcades Project Walter Benjamin

Arcades are houses or passages having no outside-like the dream. L1a, 1

The street conducts the flâneur into a vanished time. For him, every street is precipitous. It leads downward--if not to the mythical mothers, then into a past that can be all the more spellbinding because it is not his own, not private. Nevertheless, it always remains the time of a childhood. But why that of the life he has lived? In the asphalt over which he passes, his steps awaken a surprising resonance. The gaslight that streams down on the paving stones throws an equivocal light on this double ground. M1, 2

panoramas

From The Arcades Project Walter Benjamin

The interest if the panorama is in seeing the true city- the city indoors. What stands within the windowless house is the true. Morever, the arcade, too, is a windowless house. The windows that look down on it are like loges from which one gazes into its interior, but one cannot see out these windows to anything outside. (what is true has no windows; nowhere does the true look out to the universe.) Q2a, 7

incarnadine

My internal question for today: Do assassins get issued 1099's?

I like W. He would be someone I would go to dinner with and get into a lot of debates about literature and writing. Or maybe I should just shut up and listen to him. I don't know if he is real or made up. I have imagined a few "friends" in my life, I have notebooks filled with the fragmented details of their lives. I wonder if I imagined a lover if I would also have to imagine our fights. Because it would be wholly unrealistic for me to be in a romantic relationship with someone without having fights, or least have debates; it would be completely uncharacterstic of me for this not to happen. Let's just say I have an incarnadine temper.

discordant

My internal question for today: Should I write a novel just for the hell of it? But what genre? Maybe I'll write a character-driven, faux-memoir in witty, discordant aphorisms with concurrent timelines as an extended metaphor for cladistic taximetrics. Or maybe I should write a "how to" book: "How to Avoid Marriage".

Why, do you ask, would I write a novel, since I do not care about publishing it nor do I care if anyone reads it? Well, I read this interview with author, Caitlin Kiernan, and I came across this line about her writing experience: "It was like having to spend every day sitting in front of a mirror, vivisecting my own brain." I thought to myself, "Hell, I do that everyday. If I wrote a novel, at least I would feel as though I had something to show for it." It would be parallel to getting a B.A. degreee for all the hours of sitting in a classroom letting someone dictate about what is worth knowing.

Ingurgitate

My mind restlessly ingurgitates library books faster than I can check them out.

My internal question for today: Why is it when one is described as prolific, it is considered a good thing?


Perhaps the secret of great writers is a love which flings opens the doors to let thoughts and feelings rush in.

http://www.powells.com/review/2007_01_08