« Quand j’aurai inspiré le dégoût et l’horreur universels, j’aurai conquis la solitude. »

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When I have inspired universal disgust and horror, I will have conquered solitude.

… odd that in both the relatively close together (Numbers 20 & 22) stories of Moses and Aaron at the rock at Meribah, and of Balaam and his ass, God is found punishing servants who have apparently properly followed his commands.

Steve Hoffman Music Forums/ records with tight spindle hole. Comment:

The problem here is usually there’s no chamfer to the spindle hole. (A slight angle around the rim of each end of the hole) Instead of using a steel screwdriver, try a plain old plastic body click-top ball point pen, insert it, and rotate it a few times at a very shallow angle. That way you’re not cutting up the hole, you’re just swaging a slight chamfer.

Chamfer:

a transitional edge between two faces of an object. A form of bevel, it is created at 45° angle to two adjoining right-angled faces

Swage:

A tool, used by blacksmiths and other metalworkers, for cold shaping of a metal item.

Interesting observation. “You can always tell when a man is writing his own name. He has a special way of moving.” (Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye.)

Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things. Sorrentino states, with a little hostility, what I’ve been telling myself about Ezra Pound (pp.197):

They “come to the conclusion” that Pound, after all, is more an influence and teacher and guiding light than he is a poet. That’s what they say in these “reviews.”

“uniting the separate but in such fashion as will retain the sense of separation” (the architecture of prisons and casinos, gather but keep isolated) –why the fragmentary will stick out as positive in the arts– no false attempts at unity

Du Bord against art on the grounds that it is simply the most realistic part of something essentially unreal — a representation of an escape that quells the need for actual escape–; against that, Kundera, that the novel is the essence of the spirit of play Du Bord was after in “real (political) life”? (the novel, not at all political, or a form of political joking, is a part of real life.)

…is there a comparison with plato here, “banishing homer”. both use artistic means to disparage great artists while asserting the pre-eminence of political (over artistic) life.

…also (and this doesn’t diminish anything) much of this can be parsed out of Shakespeare –being “all clothes” — world is a stage– seeming and being, and so on.

(it doesn’t diminish anything yet one will think: instead of undertaking political activity, why not just read Shakespeare? do only that)

… the artist aware of the spectacle he makes of himself. (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, aware of, worried about, the image of the saint they were making)

It would be an interesting thing were you to write at the same time as you think, and if you could describe all the time and all that is in the time that you type and think in, a la a seismograph of words, “but you cannot.”

So what is written thought contains thought that is the crystalization of thought before and after it. Written thought, for one thing, is the result of the thought of a person at work, and not the thought of a person idle or distracted, not the thought of a person concentrating on a work or on a state that is other than that which is involved in writing.

Written thought is, for example, not the thought of a person working at another tool (or is it). Written thought is not the same as the one concentrating on their love, or on their being.

Written thought is the thought, if it can be called that, of a person at work with a tool of a certain kind. (Or not: it is some remembered thought, or it is not thought at all that is involved

Perhaps I’d meant to say, an element of written thought is that it is the sort of thought one does while handling a tool, while of course not all writing is of that kind.

I think of Henry Miller as having once written something in this connection but it’s common experience: of thinking of great things to write that disappear when one sits down to write — when one is in the presence of the tool, which generates its own order of thoughts. Possibly?

awareness while reading … [1] of things not pertaining to reading (ambient sounds and air temperature, cold feet, uncomfortable chair, people entering room, etc.); [2] of things pertaining to reading but are not reading (hands on the page, turning the pages, knowing to turn the pages); [3] of things comprehended through reading [4] of being distracted by (1) as well as by associations produced by (3)

–what is reading — must it involve comprehension– can one comprehend one’s reading without being aware of it– for example, read and understand but have one’s mind somewhere else–

“understanding exaggeration” (why do we do it, and why does the unexaggerated truth not communicate the true extent of what’s we’ve experience –when we’re mugged by three guys, it must be five– the kid so smart he got straight a’s must have got them all in college level classes as well– and so on

Pale King, a couple mentions of ‘neon’ in section 22, long one.

Wallace’s conversation without interlocutors, conversations where it doesn’t quite matter whose speaking beyond what they say, continues to contribute to this notion of literature becoming this expressed interior conversation

Du Bord…. Awareness as ‘doubling’ (Was Agee ‘doubling’?) ‘double entendre’ of as the world turns, twin buildings he fatefully confuses… Foot and hat. (concordance of 22…)

sometimes shows itself as an unfinished worked stylistically as well as structurally — passages that are not quite at full strength.

Contrasting Pale King with the Mezzanine… idea that Baker condensed something experienced many times into one experience of lavish detail…. Wallace, while nodding to the existence of detail, remains faithful to the experience of observation rather than to the thing observed– you will observe something different the first time you experience it than you will the second or hundredth time…

a “calculus of writing” whereby the always changing subject of experience is presented over the always changing object

Metafiction. idea, there is no metafiction here. Wallace really is trying to write a true and meaninful memoir insofar as the legal notice will allow. But the presence of the legal notice (like a gravitational body?) distorts the straightforward presentation of fact.

unfinished works as a topic do intentionally unfinished works (a cezanne painting) differ from unintentionally unfinished works (the Pale King) (are the Trial, The Pale King and A Man without Qualities similar types of unfinished works.)

Like Ulysses’ Cyclops chapter (also elsewhere in Wallace) the technique of interlarding narrative bits with historical/ informative bits. (sect.36) (does maybe War and Peace set that precedent)

Pale King as unfinished response to Infinite Jest — to vice or evil of distraction (the Entertainment) a failure to deal courageously with boredom against the virtue or benefit of focus (The Tax Return, The Mindless Task requiring thought) which is to deal courageously with boredom.

[Is Pale King, like an Infinite Jest, a Hamlet reference?] (x) –no

Today read of a camera prototype which automatically edits out the undramatic moments, about the exact opposite of my own ideal. Of what does the undramatic consist? (However: is drama itself a camera of this type? is the stage a frame intended to emphasize that — things do change — life does occasionally happen?) Might more stable societies require that kind of assurance?

Proposition, that one’s talkative self and writing self are not to be understood as united, under the verbal, but to be at odds, for sharing the same source, and depleting it, the one from the other.

(I would say though: political commentators, for example, seem to write as they speak, and it will seem their speaking does not exhaust the font of their writing. For another sort, having spoken is having expressed, so why express again in writing?)

There’s an invisible machinery behind the content of a blog, by which the content is made available — invisible to readers. Now, at least, finally, visible to writers.

Already known… Again it seems that the literary practices of the early 20th century project the technological changes of the latter half.

philosophy appears to the subject to be writing first of all but writing that arises from the very core of the subject and an attempt to reach to the very peripheries of whatever it, (they, he…) might have to do with

fiction appears to the subject to be also writing but with its perspective shifted to the peripheries of all the subject might have to do with, with all his experience, looking to see if that experience has a subject, if that subject has a core (subject meaning the writer himself, herself)

behind this I the ego appears shifting– where the “clever English gentleman author” is only ever entirely within himself — entirely within Henry Fielding– who is writing Rings of Saturn?

“two man parade”

Idea that one should stop resisting that one is a “cutie-pie” and find a way out of the wilderness for cutie pies

“beneath the veneer of the other’s ideology is one’s own realized ideal.”

A page that won’t turn in my Spanish book (the thumb of my right hand on the corresponding side of the soft cover book) –a page in the glossary of the elementary Spanish dual language reader. I am on the R‘s but need to get to the S‘s so as to look up sigilosamente. My thumb is currently holding on (down) —

If I slide my thumb down the side too far I will likely wind up in the T‘s. If I don’t slide it down enough my thumb presses on the page without achieving anything, without having “slid” […] I will be looking at my thumb on the side of the book

-__ ……………………….
.-| ……………………….
. ;-_) ……………………….
.–.-`.–.\ ……………………….
.–.-` ;-_- –\ ……………………….
.–.-` ;-_.–._.( ……………………….
.–.-` ;-_.–.- -. \ ……………………….
.–.-` ;-_.–.- -_.. -‘) ……………………….
……………..–.-` ;-_.–.- -_.. -‘-| C in summer south of the
Istrian Peninsula………………………..South of the lakes the
μεταδίδωμι……..hough………………….the current is tidal
………………………………………………………..tid al reversing
κέχρηται……shinkansen……………………with the tides
…………………………………………………………..in the Red
………………………………………………………….. the Red
………………………………………………………….. SEA

-__ ……………………….
.-| ……………………….
. ;-_) ……………………….
.–.-`.–.\ ……………………….
.–.-` ;-_- –\ ……………………….
.–.-` ;-_.–._.( ……………………….
.–.-` ;-_.–.- -. \ ……………………….
.–.-` ;-_.–.- -_.. -‘) ……………………….
.–.-` ;-_.–.- -_.. -‘-|C……………………….
Istrian Peninsula ……………………in summer south of the
Istrian Peninsula………………………..South of the lakes the
μεταδίδωμι……..hough………………….the current is tidal
………………………………………………………..tid al reversing
κέχρηται……shinkansen……………………with the tides
…………………………………………………………..in the Red
………………………………………………………….. the Red
………………………………………………………….. SEA

Came across this funny passage in The Phaedo the other day and was reminded of Winesburg OH and of Hands. Phaedo 89b (the one stroking the hair is Socrates):

He stroked my head and gathered the hair on the back of my neck into his hand—he had a habit of playing with my hair on occasion—and said, “Tomorrow, perhaps, Phaedo, you will cut off this beautiful hair.”

“I suppose so, Socrates,” said I.

“Not if you take my advice.”

“What shall I do then?” I asked.

“You will cut it off today, and I will cut mine, if our argument dies and we cannot bring it to life again.”

Wing Biddlebaum (aka Adolf Myers) was the teacher-character in Winesburg who got in trouble for caressing the head and shoulders of young boys:

“Adolph Myers was meant by nature to be a teacher of youth. He was one of those rare, little-understood men who rule by a power so gentle that it passes as a lovable weakness. In their feeling for the boys under their charge such men are not unlike the finer sort of women in their love of men.

And yet that is but crudely stated. It needs the poet there. With the boys of his school, Adolph Myers had walked in the evening or had sat talking until dusk upon the schoolhouse steps lost in a kind of dream. Here and there went his hands, caressing the shoulders of the boys, playing about the tousled heads. As he talked his voice became soft and musical. There was a caress in that also. In a way the voice and the hands, the stroking of the shoulders and the touching of the hair were a part of the schoolmaster’s effort to carry a dream into the young minds. By the caress that was in his fingers he expressed himself. He was one of those men in whom the force that creates life is diffused, not centralized. Under the caress of his hands doubt and disbelief went out of the minds of the boys and they began also to dream.”

“The turn”: pet the cat, read a few pages, shoo the cat off to his own bed, reach behind me to turn off the light, then “turn” onto my left side, facing back of the couch, after which I am soon fast asleep. As I performed the operation this time, it clicked how exactly this resembled the operation of the previous night, an “eternalreturnality” becoming pronounced, so that the couch back had a resemblance to a box corner, a box that straddled the whole of the past two days.

About two thirds of the way through Infinite Jest now, reconsidering my view of complexly — that maybe I was right the first time — that it is in fact an instance of a non-poetic or non-thematic repetition in a work that does otherwise include such thematic repetitions (“squeak”, “head”, maybe “spider”…), consequently: still potentially of interest for considering the difference between a word that is merely repeated and a word that is repeated for thematic reasons.

For some reason today”ran around” instead of following my usual route. A reflection that: a day will come when I will not have,, or cannot use legs –will not have las piernas— so how nice, how exceptional, how rewarded I was, how grateful I should feel, to have observed this afternoon les jambs, my legs, on the one hand, rising and falling beneath me (if that’s descriptive of what legs do when one runs) on the other hand, transferring me through space at around the same rate that I would suppose such a raising and lowering would suggested. Even to be supported by ones legs is, if not quite a luxury, even still “pure bliss”. Etonnant. Tres supurbe. Let me not forget what I’ve had in being healthy, I thought. If I should become Job, let me not forget. (As Job didn’t.) (Person tried to tell me today to thank god for what is good, a logic I smiled at but resisted as being, at best, half the story.) (Remember the lord in the days of your youth: remember there was a time when you had it good.) The contrast of heavy athletic respiration and doleful sighs.

How to characterize the text in quotations in An Octopus? As Bad Writing? As Non-poetry? The writing one needs in some way, but is tired of? (If I were to write something that’s only half good, could I make it entirely good by putting the poor portions in quotes?) As Found text? What would be the effect of removing the quotations?… The idea that these are “reverse” or “anti” quotations — (you quote something worthwhile said by Shakespeare, but you reverse quote the things you can’t escape saying. Things said by Reagan you quote, things said by you and I you reverse quote). Maybe these reverse quote are a sort of admission of failure of the artist: I can’t escape saying certain things yet I can still in someway excuse or isolate it with a quote. (I want to say that Walt Whitman, the poet, is closer to Walt Whitman, the subject of his poem, than is Saul Bellow is to his Moses Herzog, but is it so? Is it the reverse? The many devices Bellow uses to convey different levels and kinds of expressed thought: thoughts, spoken thoughts, thoughts spoken in letters, in papers…)… Are these the “finger flexions” (f.f) of David Foster Wallace (B.I #48)…? Perhaps we have punctuation where once we had accentuation: punctuation now both a logical and (explcitly) rhythmic tool.

……q……g
.au………..ra
lia…..P……vel
swin…ang…ines
ging..siron.. sand
rawnbenthicspal..
r… p…………. * *
d….. a …….* *
r……. p….. * *
i………. e… * *
h…………. r. * *
* * * * * * * *
Soda-l….eguard..
.staffq……….gord..
.sh.au…………rair..
lia……b…….vel
swin…ang…ines
o.iang inesvai r

Been thinking that “complexly” in Infinite Jest was an example of a non-poetic repetition of a word; that unlike the word “nothing” in King Lear, for example, the repetition of which contributes to a undercurrent or subtext of meaning, I’d say, “complexly” was just a word that Wallace found useful and maybe over-used a touch.

However this passage from the Eschaton chapter has got me reconsidering that and thinking that complexity is an important theme of a work which is complicated itself. This and other passages in the segment at least suggest that complexity and the fascination with it –and being overwhelmed by it– is baked into the rest of what Hal has been going through with respect to drugs — is “marijuana thinking”:

Troeltsch says he for his own part wouldn’t be just sitting and lying there if any of the Little Buddies under his personal charge were out there getting potentially injured, and Hal reflects that he does feel a certain sort of intense anxiety, but can’t sort through the almost infinite-seeming implications of what Troeltsch is saying fast enough to determine whether the anxiety is over something about what he’s seeing or something in the connections between what Troeltsch is saying and the degree to which he’s absorbed in what’s going on out inside the fence, which is a degenerative chaos so complex in its disorder that it’s hard to tell whether it seems choreographed or simply chaotically disordered.

.v v iR v v
..e a …..,,,,.v a v
hl……………..,,,,,a i
..Limbs. of the. horse
..e. c …………,,,,,.v a
.m h ……….,,,,,.i r
.o iA aIva i r
..

Pale of Settlementl…………………………………..
o…………………………….e…………………………………
l…… coign ……………p……………………………….
.d ………………………….A……………………………..
k l….marla malecón ………………………….
e….a……………..….a…………………………..
y….t……………..….l…………………………..
H Ghan Du Mu…………………………..
e….….os…………………………..
p

.v v iR v v
..e a …..,,,,.v a v
hl……………..,,,,,a i
..Limbs. of the. horse
..e. c …………,,,,,.v a
.m h ……….,,,,,.i r
.o iA aIva i r
..

Geology In:

“In a new survey of the sub-seafloor off the U.S. Northeast coast, scientists have made a surprising discovery: a gigantic aquifer of relatively fresh water trapped in porous sediments lying below the salty ocean. It appears to be the largest such formation yet found in the world.”

“The water probably got under the seabed in one of two different ways, say the researchers. Some 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, toward the end of the last glacial age, much of the world’s water was locked up in mile-deep ice; in North America, it extended through what is now northern New Jersey, Long Island and the New England coast. Sea levels were much lower, exposing much of what is now the underwater U.S. continental shelf. When the ice melted, sediments formed huge river deltas on top of the shelf, and fresh water got trapped there in scattered pockets. Later, sea levels rose. Up to now, the trapping of such “fossil” water has been the common explanation for any fresh water found under the ocean.

But the researchers say the new findings indicate that the aquifer is also being fed by modern subterranean runoff from the land. As water from rainfall and water bodies percolates through onshore sediments, it is likely pumped seaward by the rising and falling pressure of tides, said Key. He likened this to a person pressing up and down on a sponge to suck in water from the sponge’s sides.”

“Terrestrial fresh water usually contains less than 1 part per thousand salt, and this is about the value found undersea near land. By the time the aquifer reaches its outer edges, it rises to 15 parts per thousand. (Typical seawater is 35 parts per thousand.)”

Proust: “Tels les Verdurin donnaient des dîners (puis bientôt Mme Verdurin seule, après la mort de M. Verdurin) et M. de Charlus allait à ses plaisirs sans guère songer que les Allemands fussent — immobilisés, il est vrai, par une sanglante barrière toujours renouvelée — à une heure d’automobile de Paris.”

Andreas Mayor: “So it was that the Verdurins gave dinner-parties (then, after a time, Mme Verdurin gave them alone, for M. Verdurin died) and M. de Charlus went about his pleasures and hardly ever stopped to reflect that the Germans — immobilised, it is true, by a bleeding barrier perpetually renewed– were only an hour by car from Paris.”

relying on one subversion of stare decisis to support another …

… But the main thing for June is to attack a la Balzac and be serious. (Not to attack Balzack but to attack a la Balzac!)/ June is named The Month of Balzac for the extraordinary industry that will brought to bear during that month (Balzac, it is said, having been a person of the most extraordinary industry himself)….

In fact, when June faces the Hammers and Furnaces of The Month of Balzac; when June faces that welter of winches, that terror of tilt walls, with its pistons and jets, with its suffocating aromas of weldments and glues, there may not be much of June left, we must sadly report: a blasted fragment of a corner of a calendar day will be what’s left of that formerly erstwhile month known as June.

(That calendar as if put through a calender will be what’s left of what was known of that month; wisp of a shadow of a cloud that had appeared on one of the days of that month, is all that will remain of that month.) June may yet emerge from beneath the magma waves of the Month of Balzac, it is thought, but it will be a changed, a haggard and a molten month; it will have days filled with gaping holes, be an airless space, the days will be like rags upon the light, it will be a fetid asteroid field where once existed Planet Month, a noman’s land of an entire twelfth of our time, cratered, strewn with barbed wire air!

These assuredly will be the tragic consequences when we bring to bear the Industry of Balzac upon that slurry pit which will soon be formerly known as June (a great pit of coal ash now will it be, positioned adjacent to the brilliant solar mountain of July, Mont July, we shall call it! A tremendous shining summit! What a month shall be July, when after all our labor we found ourselves upon the mountain!) From every pore of my body I do espy a grimy smoking gas, delicious exhaust of the Month of Balzac, this is how much labor I can feel myself putting forward!

“Earth hasn’t always had plate tectonics and it hasn’t always progressed at the same pace,” Brown said. “It’s gone through at least two periods of acceleration. There’s evidence to suggest that tectonics also slowed to a relative crawl for nearly a billion years. In each case, we found a connection with the relative abundance — or scarcity — of glacial sediments.” ***