an octopus starts around 36th min.. Next. (“What is the spirit with which she writes this?)

Idea that were I ever to make the conversion from being an essentially “comic figure” to being an essentially “religious figure” –not to understand myself as a figure, but let us just say– if I were to become a person who could laugh at himself–; then I believe that would have to occur in a foreign language, that I would have to learn to think in a language other than English, which is something, I would add, almost impossible for me to conceive of.

(This very post, for example, would be of an entirely different character were I able to write it in French, by which of course I also mean something different from if it were merely translated into French.) (This would “indeed be a miracle of the order of the birth of Isaac,” if I were to speak in another tongue. “Indeed”, I would become a person who laughs easily, which would be like speaking another language.)

Whereas to become a tragic “figure”, I would need still more prolonged periods of silence and utter desocialization –would need to finish even less of my sentences. (Silence sometimes interrupted by music but never by speech. I could open the “hatch” of silence but not be permitted to disembark from the scuttled destroyer.)

Desocialization: perhaps that is the name of the herbal purgative that would get the “incurable actor and comic” out of my, at times, rather serious seeming (but only seeming) person. That would get the “figure” out. The real seriousness and toughness would get in through some such silent vow. Or perhaps a series of health tests is all that would be required to prevent me from thinking I am only a voice, that my body is the mere shell or cradle of the voice, the voice being the comedian, the voice being also the “grand figure” that will thunder because it alone knows what’s right and best in this instance, a voice that, in reality, is unattached to both intelligence and common sense and cannot be made to learn another language.

*

To be that religious figure, that is, to be a member of a religion, perhaps my thought is, I would need to be an “immigrant”, confront life on another’s terms, confront life where the norms are not my norms, where I’m a stranger, if I could change my language I could change my thinking, etc. Yet “my body would rather starve than speak another language.” Similarly, when I have experienced things in immigrant-fashion (let us say, when I have tried something “new”) instead of really encountering and participating in that new thing, I or retreat or burrow inward, where things remain old and familiar, despite the novel surroundings.

Very much so: as if God spoke only Spanish or French and I’m troubling over English and the things I say or don’t say in it. (Anything in Spanish, say, being more right than saying the right thing in English, which isn’t understood at all in the sacred places open to me.)

“Never again violence against children. May a child never again have to suffer like this. I pray for him continuously. Do not despair,” (x)

27 avril…..Revu une dernière fois le portrait de Joséphine de Prud’hon. Ravissant, ravissant génie ! Cette poitrine avec ses incorrections, ces bras, cette tête, cette robe parsemée de petits points d’or, tout cela est divin. La grisaille est très apparente et reparaît presque partout.

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Reading A Strange Commonplace closely made me extra sensitive to mentions of polka dot scarfs. There are two such mentions in Raymond Chandler’s A Long Goodbye, (although these are black polka dots and not the blue polka dots of Strange Commonplace and they are constructed of unstated material while Strange Commonplace’s were made of silk).

Page numbers are from The Library of American Edition of Chandler’s works “Later Novels & Other Writings.” The first passage refers to the very beautiful Eileen Wade, who is the wife of depressive writer of popular romances Roger Wade, the second to the unbalanced associate of Dr. Verringer, “Earl”, the most obvious common thread between them being that they are both fairly dangerous individuals.

490. “She was slim and tall in a white linen tailormade with a black and white polka-dot scarf around her throat. Her hair was the pale gold of a fairy princess. There was a small hat on it into which the pale gold hair nestled like a bird in its nest. Her eyes were a cornflower blue, a rare color, and the lashes were long and almost too pale.”

533. “Earl was a cowpoke tonight, and it had been a cowpoke who brought Roger Wade home the time before. Earl was spinning a rope. He wore a dark shirt stitched with white and a polka-dot scarf knotted loosely around his neck. He wore a wide leather belt with a load of silver on it and a pair of tooled leather holsters with ivory-handled guns in them.”

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writing on foggy window “Paris” in the love of Jeanne Ney (Jeane strikes out)/ writing “bill” in dusty window in Kill Bill (Beatrix rubs out)

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“The sophistry that undid me is common to the majority of men, who deplore their lack of strength when it is already too late to make use of it. Virtue is only difficult through our own fault. If we chose always to be wise we should rarely need to be virtuous. But inclinations which we could easily overcome irresistibly attract us. We give in to slight temptations and minimize the danger. We fall insensibly into dangerous situations, from which we could easily have safe-guarded ourselves, but from which we cannot withdraw without heroic efforts which appall us. So finally, as we tumble into the abyss, we ask God why he has made us so feeble. But, in spite of ourselves, He replies through our consciences: ‘I have made you too feeble to climb out of the pit, because I made you strong enough not to fall in.'”

Rousseau, Confessions, Book II.

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enfrentamientos armados —