A thing all but inexplicable in that landscape.

Can't stop watching Fringe. Here's a bucket of quotes thrown at you from All The Pretty Horses. It's lovely... lots of Spanish and cussing in it but a true cowboy tale. Fun. I find that the prose style is almost just like The Road -- you don't see speech marks, ever (so Faulkner) and McCarthy's got plentiful 'tree terminology' as  I like to coin it (didn't have half a clue what a nopal was before reading McCarthy, and seeing as Chrome underlines it in red, squiggly lines, it's not too familiar to the educated society either). Reading this makes me miss horse riding. Powerful animals, they are.

What he loved in horses was what he loved in men, the blood and the heat of the blood that ran them. All his reverence and all his fondness and all the leanings of his life were for the ardenthearted and they would always be so and never be otherwise.

The boy who rode on slightly before him sat a horse not only as if he’d been born to it which he was but as if were he begot by malice or mischance into some queer land where horses never were he would have found them anyway. Would have known that there was something missing for the world to be right or he right in it and would have set forth to wander wherever it was needed for as long as it took until he came upon one and he would have known that that was what he sought and it would have been.

Love the quote above, true determination and valor.

They rode out on the high prairie where they slowed the horses to a walk and the stars swarmed around them out of the blackness. They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing.

I can feel the darkness described above.

They were drowned, shot, kicked by horses. They perished in fires. They seemed to fear only dying in bed.

The Good Book says that the meek shall inherit the earth and I expect that's probably the truth. I aint no freethinker, but I'll tell you what. I'm a long way from bein convinced that it's all that good a thing.

Ayn Rand could fully support the quote above, ha!

They pulled the wet saddles off the horses and hobbled them and walked off in separate directions through the chaparral to stand spraddle legged clutching their knees and vomiting. The browsing horses jerked their heads up. It was no sound they’d ever heard before. In the grey twilight those retchings seemed to echo like the calls of some rude provisional species loosed upon that waste. A thing smirking deep in the eyes of grace itself like a gorgon in an autumn pool.

Quote above: disgust at fellow dirty humans... horses feel it too!

“You ever get ill at ease? said Rawlins. About what? I dont know. About anything. Just ill at ease. Sometimes. If you're someplace you aint supposed to be I guess you'd be ill at ease. Should be anyways. Well suppose you were ill at ease and didnt know why. Would that mean that you might be someplace you wasnt supposed to be and didnt know it?

Shrouded in the black thunderheads the distant lightning glowed mutely like welding seen through foundry smoke. As if repairs were under way at some flawed place in the iron dark of the world.

...nation and ghost of nation passing in a soft chorale across that mineral waste to darkness bearing lost to all history and all remembrance like a grail the sum of their secular and transitory and violent lives.

Absolutely love the one above.

Blood and longing

Going to read All the Pretty Horses ... now. Just spent a pocket
of time watching Fringe (S1E4) and conducting Mozart's Symphony
41, Allegra Vivace in the small space of my study.

41

Was obliged to write about Coachella and Pottermore ages ago but I really can't be fussed with it  now but in summary:

Best of Saturday - The Black Keys
Best of Sunday - Bon Iver (and Laura too of course)

Was also meant to write about The Day the Earth Stood Still - familiar story but acting details and screenplay - especially screenplay - could do with heaps of work to genuinely succeed as a special movie, not just the 'usual'.

More on movies tomorrow, I'm debilitated...

Those matters will take care of themselves; the young people will find a way

I've finished Emma! I can truthfully say I've loved it. It is probably my favourite Jane Austen novel to date (the one I've understood clearest, admittedly). I love Emma, despite her bossiness. "I wonder what will become of her," her friends said, and I'm delighted with the way the book ended. A well deserved 381 page break from The Road! Speaking of The Road, after Emma I'll be swiftly moving on -- or should I say  back -- to Cormac McCarthy again... so I'll be saying farewell to posh England and witty women who through parties all day long and eventually end up married, and a hello to a familiar desolate American and blood and guts.

Better start planning my recovery book after McCarthy -- I wouldn't mind reading another Austen but I think I'll save that for next year... an Austen per year, that sounds about right!



Below are just two lovely quotes I'd read from the remainder for the book, from where I'd last dropped off. Usually there would be more, but I suppose I'd been

It was a clear thing he was less in love than he had been. Absence, with the conviction probably of her indifference, had produced this very natural and very desirable effect.

It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively, without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind;—but when a beginning is made—when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt—it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.

Well, the next book I shall read is entitled All The Pretty Horses and is part of The Border Trilogy, which is nice because I've been intending (rather subconsciously, I discover) to begin reading a trilogy, or a sequence of books, lat least.

Below is another cute Star Wars picture (just for fun):

22

I've been playing lots of guitar lately and would like to pay homage to the two 22-year old wonderful ladies that  have inspired me most in strumming those six strings. Taylor for her lovely songs that encouraged me to actually go out and buy and self-teach myself the guitar, and Laura for her delicately empowering melodies plucked hauntingly and soulfully. Below are my favourite guitar-songs of theirs, some that I used to play much, and a few that I just love.

                          Laura                                                     Taylor

                Alas I cannot swim                                      Safe and Sound

                   Blackberry Stone                                        White Horse 

     Goodbye England (covered in snow)                    Come in with the rain

                          Sophia                                             Should've said No

                     Hope in the air                                            Our Song

                      Devil's Spoke                                              I'd Lie

Reserved

More Emma quotes:

Where the wound had been given, there must the cure be found if anywhere; and Emma felt that, till she saw her in the way of cure, there could be no true peace for herself.

You are very fond of bending little minds; but where little minds belong to rich people in authority, I think they have a knack of swelling out, till they are quite as unmanageable as great ones.

She meant to take her in the carriage, leave her at the Abbey Mill, while she drove a little farther, and call for her again so soon, as to allow no time for insidious applications or dangerous recurrences to the past, and give the most decided proof of what degree of intimacy was chosen for the future.

"And then, her reserve—I never could attach myself to any one so completely reserved." "It is a most repulsive quality, indeed," said he. "Oftentimes very convenient, no doubt, but never pleasing. There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person." "Not till the reserve ceases towards oneself; and then the attraction may be the greater. But I must be more in want of a friend, or an agreeable companion, than I have yet been, to take the trouble of conquering any body's reserve to procure one. . . Such a dread of giving a distinct idea about any body, is apt to suggest suspicions of there being something to conceal.

The quote above reminds me a bit of myself, being reserved.



All young people would have their little whims. Quote above: I want to remember it.

A mind lively and at ease can do with seeing nothing and can see nothing that does not answer.

I do not know whether it ought to be so, but certainly silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly.—It depends upon the character of those who handle it.

Silly things are not always silly. Silly, isn't it?

When you wake up

Ooh, new skin! I'll see how this works. I've invested quite a sum of time on editing this so there will be no hasty return to my previous lovely skin despite any problems I may find with this one.

Deeply looking forward to a solid 75 minutes of reading Emma in tomorrow's English period.

And that should be all!



See you.

P.S. I recently found out that Dr. Seuss was an anti-semite and supporter of the American - Japanese internment. Below is a racist cartoon he drew for the Picture Magazine before straightening himself out and writing Horton Hears a Who! as an 'apology' for his earlier predicaments, and also as a dedication to a Japanese friend.

One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other

Hi, readers. This site will be going on a minor construction in its translation to becoming an actual Blogger blog under the predicament that I'm afraid there are no readers. I'd like to write for a larger audience. This blog skin disconnects itself with the larger Blogger community, so I end up writing to myself in a tiny internet realm, I'm afraid. If I realize I prefer things this way, I'll switch the skins around -- otherwise, expect a new skin soon!

I've been reading Emma and she reminds me of the type of woman I could have turned into. Bossy, know-it-all little lady that occasionally spews out something rather profound and worth remembering. Here are the quotes so far. Number 3 is lovely; woman independence at its prime.

I hope it may be allowed that if compassion has produced exertion and relief to the sufferers, it has done all that is truly important. If we feel for the wretched, enough to do all we can for them, the rest is empty sympathy, only distressing to ourselves.

It is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable, old maid! The proper sport of boys and girls; but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as anybody else.

I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry. Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! but I never have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall. And, without love, I am sure I should be a fool to change such a situation as mine. Fortune I do not want; employment I do not want; consequence I do not want: I believe few married women are half as much mistress of their husband's house, as I am of Hartfield; and never, never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and always right in any man's eyes as I am in my father's.

A man always imagines a woman to be ready for anybody who asks her.

A line (above) I must remember to throw at my brother.

The older a person grows, Harriet, the more important it is that their manners should not be bad—the more glaring and disgusting any loudness, or coarseness, or awkwardness becomes. What is passable in youth, is detestable in later age.

I lay it down as a general rule, Harriet, that if a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. If she can hesitate as to 'Yes,' she ought to say 'No' directly. It is not a state to be safely entered into with doubtful feelings, with half a heart.

So, Emma should tone down her primal instincts regarding Harriet's well being and focus a tad more on herself instead.

It's a funny book, though, at times. A nice recovery after The Road and Liquidation.

And here's another cute Skywalker twin picture:



Did I ever mention that my twin and I were Luke and Leia for Halloween, in a year far, far away? 

Well now you know.

Hummed of mystery

Well, I've just finished The Road and had a good cry.
Halfway through it ceased to be as comforting as I'd found it, as the terrible stories of post-apocalyptic American increasingly flitted in and out of the novel.

Nonetheless, the journey ended with a sliver of hope and faith in life itself.

In the nights in their thousands to dream the dreams of a child's imaginings, worlds rich or fearful such as might offer themselves but never the one to be.

Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.

Not all dying words are true and this blessing is no less real for being shorn of its ground.

Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was?

All the trees in the world are going to fall sooner or later. But not on us. How do you know? I just know.

No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.

The thin drum of rain on the metal roof and the slow darkness falling over everything.

The one above reminds me of “How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home” from As I Lay Dying.

Listen to me, he said, when your dreams are of some world that never was or some world that never will be, and you're happy again, then you'll have given up. Do you understand? And you can't give up, I won't let you.

What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.

People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didnt believe in that. Tomorrow wasnt getting ready for them. It didnt even know they were there.

He tried to think of something to say but he could not. He'd had this feeling before, beyond the numbness and the dull despair. The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds.Things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. More fragile thanhe would have thought. How much was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality. Drawing down like something trying to preserve heat. In time to wink out forever.

So be it. Evoke the forms. When you've nothing left make ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.

 

Cannot wait to move on to a more delightful book.

This the day to shape the days upon

I have commenced the reassuring journey of reading The Road.

It is a bitter book but lovely... it tells the story of a father and son travelling through burned America, with only each other to maintain company and warmth. The story wears the livery of a classic old-American tale.

It is not a book to read cursorily. Its language is stunningly truthful; the love McCarthy has spun into each lyrical passage is palpable: the words flow like liquid poetry.

The writing style resembles Faulkner (but nowhere near as complicated, blessedly).
I cannot quench my inexorable need to finish this book: it possesses, like in a capsule, the bedrock of nostalgic sentiments.

Anyway; here are the quotes below (so far):

“Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that. You forget some things, dont you? Yes. You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.”

“Like the great pendulum in its rotunda scribing through the long day movements of the universe of which you may say it knows nothing and yet know it must.”

It's snowing, the boy said. He looked at the sky. A single gray flake sifting down. He caught it in his hand and watched it expire there like the last host of christendom.

He thought if he lived long enough the world at last would be lost. Like the dying world the newly blind inhabit, all of it slowly fading from memory.

He said the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril and all else was the call of languor and of death.