i've finally finished my brick of a novel, and i must say it was an interesting little story, one characterized by the post-WWI period of extreme disillusionment with humanity and the purpose of life. nevertheless, here are a few errant bits i liked:
-love is only infinity put at the disposal of poodles.
-i had a death sentence hanging over me and i was in love. a nightmare, to put it mildly.
-that's the way it goes. you can't deny it, men have a hard time doing all that's demanded of them: butterflies in your youth, maggots at the end.
-nobody can really resist music. you don't know what to do with your heart, you're glad to give it away.
-suddenly he fell asleep in the candlelight. after a while i got up to look at his face. he slept like everybody else. he looked quite ordinary. there ought to be some mark by which to distinguish good people from bad.
-the sunsets in that african hell proved to be fabulous. they never missed. as tragic every time as a monumental murder of the sun!
-a few poetic regrets, if adroitly placed, are as becoming to a woman as gossamer hair in the moonlight.
-love is harder to give up than life. in this world we spend our time killing or adoring, or both together. "I hate you! I adore you!" We keep going, we fuel and refuel, we pass on our life to a biped of the next century, with frenzy, at any cost, as if it were the greatest of pleasures to perpetuate ourselves, as if, when all's said and done, it would make us immortal. one way or another, kissing is as indispensible as scratching.
now, on to preparing for my 20-page research paper for sociology of education and for my social anthropology exam. these are the very anti-social days. but i suppose such a thing is just how the end of semesters goes for students. read, write, study, work, eat, sleep, drink mochas and cocoas: here i come.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
i admire all the hard work.
you're an inspiration to us all.
keep it up!
You said: "there ought to be some mark by which to distinguish good people from bad." Bravo. But how about a scent (perhaps in this context an "odor") or a certain modulation or timbre of the voice? Anything that might be communicative to decent people to warn them of danger. It takes forever in this short life to learn how to distinguish secretive "bad people," who almost always operate under disguise and by deception, because part of "bad" is cowardice, or at least lack of courage to perpetrate their harm in the open and acknowledge that they have done so. The whole concept is as insidious and odious as terrorists fighting a "war" disguised among the population as tourists or lovers or mothers, without distinguishing themselves as "combatants, as the Geneva Conventions require - and they do it because they know they would be "outed" and destroyed immediately, but for their guilty secrecy. I said once, anyone who hides an act has the mens rea of criminality, and cannot claim a mental deficiency defense, else they would not know to hide their misdeeds. Bad people can suck the whole life out of trusting good people, and then feel absolutely no conscience at having stolen even decades of pure and back-bending effort from the unsuspecting. Narcisisstic lack of conscience is a hallmark of bad people. Maybe that is their "mark." They seem always to operate from a terrifying deficiency of self-respect. as if using others to the point of destruction would feed their vacuity, like vampires, or black holes. It reminds me of a bumper sticker from the 80's - "weak people suck." This identifies the chief "relationship" challenge of life.
Post a Comment