Idea about Crying of Lot 49: that a metafictional reading is potentially appropriate; that (though, no, I don’t know what this means, or how to take this further) the book is itself the “Varo tower” or its tapestries that Oedipa seeks escape from, (it’s being erected, woven, as we read, perhaps too); and the ending (maybe the mere fact that it ends) constitutes such an escape.

Tarco, I say, after whom the city of Tarquinia is named, who, on account of his sagacity from boyhood, is said by the myth-tellers to have been born with grey hair. Strabo 5.2.2

Τάρκωνα, ἀφ᾽ οὗ Ταρκυνία ἡ πόλις, ὃν διὰ τὴν ἐκ παίδων σύνεσιν πολιὸν γεγεννῆσθαι μυθεύουσι.

“Gilberte appartenait, ou du moins appartint, pendant ces années-là, à la variété la plus répandue des autruches humaines, celles qui cachent leur tête dans l’espoir, non de ne pas être vues, ce qu’elles croient peu vraisemblable, mais de ne pas voir qu’on les voit, ce qui leur paraît déjà beaucoup et leur permet de s’en remettre à la chance pour le reste. Comme l’éloignement rend les choses plus petites, plus incertaines, moins dangereuses, Gilberte préférait ne pas être près des personnes au moment où celles-ci faisaient la découverte qu’elle était née Swann.” (Albertine Disparue, II, 210)

Scott Moncrieff: “Gilbert belonged, during these years at least, to the most widespread variety of the human ostrich, the kind which buries its head in the hope not of not being seen, which it considers hardly probable, but of not seeing that other people see it, which seems to it something to the good and enables it to leave the rest to chance. As distance makes things smaller, more uncertain, less dangerous, Gilberte preferred not to be near other people at the moment when they made the discovery that she was by birth a Swann.”

“L’embellie de l’économie française se confirme”….L’embellie

Shapes: a shape, a concrete poem, which tries to resemble in words a physical pile (of mail, of clothes, of desk clutter) but has hyperlinks, a la “cangue”, suggestive of a subconcious fears, desires, states…

“Talking of a penurious gentleman of our acquaintance, Johnson said, ‘Sir, he is narrow, not so much from avarice, as from impotence to spend his money. He cannot find in his heart to pour out a bottle of wine; but he would not much care if it should sour.'” (Boswell, Life of Johnson.)

Nous avions dépassé le tropique du Capricorne, et le détroit de Magellan s’ouvrait à moins de sept cent milles dans le sud. (Verne) détroit / Detroit/ Detroit River . . . ‘

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three projects: (1) a person who constantly looks things up begins to grow sores and lumps on his head; (2) something factual: what are the limits of self-awareness? (Can I feel the blood in my left toe when I have an itch on my left forearm?) [holdd it forget that that could be one of the lumps]. … Pain in my knees, pain of the lumps, when the pain there is relieved, feels like a kind of “reaching up” of my upper calves […] hang on one second3 [interdextrousness of physical parts and of “consciousness” to be considered] conjoining of calves and thighs through inner nerves and pain

*

Joyce’s work (unlike Beckett’s) insulated against the moment of his writing them (to some extent also against the historical fact that he is writing them) it’s stated

If the black bag is not a black cloud over the green blue stained waves of the steps, then the black bag is the black sail that holds the wind and moves me forward… An Arm Outstretched

the hand sidles over the page as the pencil follows the hand’s arc…

The Statue of Las Vegas: “the surface that isn’t level with itself”

Wiki:

Ecolab, Inc., is a St. Paul, Minnesota based sanitation supply company founded in 1923. It was named “Economics Laboratory” before its name was changed to Ecolab in 1986.

Dysphemism, antonym to euphemism. Epicedium, funeral song, dirge.

6. [6.]
ἐς δὲ τὰ ἔσχατα νουσήματα αἱ ἔσχαται θεραπεῖαι ἐς ἀκριβείην, κράτισται.

Etymologies: Normal / ordinary / Standard. Mediocre indicates “halfway up a mountain” and, ornery is an american contraction arising out of ‘ordinary.’

“Oh! je portais ma pauvreté fièrement. Un homme qui pressent un bel avenir marche dans sa vie de misère comme un innocent conduit au supplice, il n’a point honte.” Balzac, The Shagreen Skin (120). (Translate).

………………………..[…] Then Pierre felt that deep in him lurked a divine
………..unidentifiableness,that owned no earthly kith or kin. Yet was
………..this feeling entirely lonesome and orphan-like. Fain, then,
………..for one moment, would he have recalled the thousand sweet
………..illusions of Life; though’ purchased at the price of Life’s Truth; so
………..that once more he might not feel himself driven out an infant
………..Ishmael into the desert, with no maternal Hagar to accompany
………..and comfort him.

Cette clémence dont on fait une vertu se pratique tantôt par vanité, quelquefois par paresse, souvent par crainte, et presque toujours par tous les trois ensemble.

This leniency, ascribed to virtue, is practiced at times through vanity, sometimes through sloth, often through fear, and nearly always through the three of them together.

[16]

the interior of my hand on the front of the shirt and the exterior of my hand on the back of my shirt… STREAM WATER

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