Angine

 John Elkins told us about new French sensation Angine de Poitrine.  Listening now on YouTube.

Relief that the Sage booking on Royal Carib is real.  Messages and phone call from Michelle gave more relief.  Phil's 100 bills in foil spooked me about 4 am and I woke up worried we had been scammed.  

Went to Kirk's, gossiped with Beckie about town things.  Car working well, took bags to the dump.  Light on about tire being low but assume that is car computer not yet caught up with Reality.  

Reading more of Wallace.  Could stop, now on page 171 and have the idea.  Poor W.  Like reading Jim Carey and Robin Williams et al.  Angine sort of goes with it.  They all dressed in polka dots.  Look and sound dated instantly.  

Austen gave us clarity last night.  Watched the three episode version of Sense and Sensibility.  Got it, finally, the twisted tale.  

173 "They found out that what they needed to get their feelings of being themselves from was themselves."

whoa  did not expect this  190  Eastern Europe  "tended to view all non-family members as outsiders"

was Wallace reading Handke or something? 

195  green tree toad in neck story over  Mr Rick Vigorous told it to Lenore and their plane lands in NY

contestant on game show  dr joy mental health services 

201  Rt 9 in MA  Lenore and Rick going to Amherst 

209  I see Best Faces, faces I remember well.  (What a passage this is!!!) "I intuit that the Frisbee players, whom I continue to watch, are nonbelongers."  

210  "These alone are the faces that stare out, protected and imprisoned, from behind the barbed borders of their own structures, the faces that know that, but for the grace of a God distinguished for the arbitrariness of his grace, it is they who would be bound and muffled in the College closets.  The faces that are unreachable from this far away, and that look through you and digest you in a moment, against everyone's will."   whoa     what a passage    our old buddy,    Roy Andrews 

why is it the physical place where it happens that you hate ?  

20 years exactly

 I was going to say well at least The Broom gives us a good contrast with Handke.  And sure

enough, Wallace born in 1962, 20 years after Handke (and me, close enough).  The difference one generation makes in everything or especially in our speeded-up times.  No faster than any other times?  Railroads in 1900, AI in 20220?  

unbelievable emails from Phil  

explain to me "the package with money" were you sending blocks of cash in a box????  I asked him 

his reply --- 

Yes, a bunch of hundred dollar notes hidden in the pages of a book, wrapped in tin fo and put in a box.   All of this was done to avoid xray detection which should have alerted me that the process was bogus and the recipient a scammer.  But the scammer claimed the book and tin foil were to prevent detection by thieves in the shipping system.   I was so stupid to believe that.   

Now I have a new problem.  I opened a gmail account yesterday, and it can send emails but doesn't seem able to receive emails.   Is nothing simple any more????     P

just back from Norwich, fun lunch with John and Kathy at King Arthur.   They had ten days in Paris in April and then their first ever visit to Spain, six or so days in Madrid.  Loved it.  

after page 146

 we now understand the drawing on the cover is of Mr Bloemker's plastic doll companion, Brenda.

why does Rami Kaminski recommend this book?  Makes me wonder if DFW left a suicide note.  Is this one of the best portraits we have of mani-depressive existence?  If I ask this of chatgpt the answer is sure to be ridiculous.  

waiting for news of the car from Kirk's.  Assuming we will keep the rental one more day and use it to go to VT for lunch.  Get the cars swapped tomorrow.  Just chill.  Phil says he got scammed out of 10k over the weekend, so what's money any how?  He's to five million or six, on paper, still feel bad for him, his confusion and helplessness.  He needs to get himself into a care facility sooner rather than later but that is not going to happen.  Millions like him, like us.  Better to wander into the catastrophe head first.  

149 Has she done the thing with the broom with you? No? 

151 peudo-Wittgensteinian mafia 

ok  Cliff's Notes for today  --- interesting that Wallace knew all about Derrida  ---that's how far behind I was, still am  

Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea (1938) and David Foster Wallace's The Broom of the System (1986) both center on the existential dread of meaninglessness, but approach it through vastly different literary traditions. While Nausea uses a French phenomenological lens to explore isolation, Broom applies American postmodernism and the philosophy of language to dissect identity. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]

Philosophical Focus

• Nausea: Heavily rooted in Existentialism, the novel explores the idea that "existence precedes essence". The protagonist, Antoine Roquentin, experiences a sickening physical and psychological revulsion when he realizes the world has no inherent purpose and that humans are terrifyingly, absolutely free. [1, 2, 3, 4]
• The Broom of the System: Heavily influenced by Wittgensteinian philosophy, the novel explores the boundaries of language and whether reality is entirely coextensive with what we can say about it. Wallace famously described the book as "a conversation between [Ludwig] Wittgenstein and [Derrida]".[1, 2, 3]

first system

 122  Gramma says any tellling automatically becomes a kind of system, that controls everybody involved. 

first appearance of that title word?  

if only I had taught Burke as the teaching of close reading, techniques for constructing the dictionary for each text/book where meanings revolve within the system of that book, each book a system unto itself 

Jew's harp mewed

 Handke likes the sound of the Jew's harp throughout his books.  Now Milosz has one already on page 13 of Amorous Initiation.  Will DFW have one too in Broom of the System?  What a strange book, so far, for Kaminski to feature on his site.  

Terrific rain a few hours ago.  Now bright and sunny.  

14   walking backward !  the three deplorables of the palace 

meanwhile in Broom luau party downstairs and joints upstairs  

1910 and 1987   both books as opposite Handke as possible  

bear resting in our oak tree

 11:15  our bear has been up in the tree for about two hours now.  Bela saw him climbing up during breakfast.  I went to pick up the rental car and later took stuff to the dump.  Bright and breezy after heavy rains all through the night.   

250 "this one being oscillated all night long "  "Infinite oscillation of love between the soul and God" 251

got four or five videos of the bear climbing up and climbing down the oak tree  

255 I love this triangular intersection more than the world.  "Silent awe and loud exclamation."

it is the soul's journey into the interior of the soul, her soul 

299 she wanted to ask the oracle, without actually posing the question 

the great war, the true one: the war with yourself 

301  she saw each person as someone special in his uniqueness, in his personal light, his nimbus

309  The ability to perform wonders while standing outside oneself, and furthermore seldom being understood, even by those closest to one: that was powerful.  

289 Walking along blind to find her way out of the labyrinth.  Eyes closed to see whether behind her lids that old reliable writing scrolled by.  

[missed some pages yesterday because after the eye appointment I tried to read with dilated eyes the rest of the afternoon and evening and I read some but didn't really get most of what my eyes were passing over]   super bright red lights scanning my eyes to check on macular stuff, that wrinkle at the edge of one eye, in spite of these clouds and spots of yellow in the red, told my vision was excellent amazingly so and all was well, is still well ]  

super heavy gray day, heavy rains earlier, heavier rains on the way, heavy dark greys, nearly all lights on in the house, touch of heat from the splits, back to st john's wort so see if it helps get from june to january

Handke was 29 when his mother killed herself at age 51 by taking an overdose of sleeping pills in 1971, November 19th.  

317  How his cheekbones gleamed.  How his apron billowed around his hips

318  We stateless people, here and today rid of the state, beyond the reach of the state.  All the rest turned into sects--states and churches---and . . . And we?  Time refugees, heroes of escape. We without a role, while the state folks stick to their role, steadfastly. We the eternally daunted undaunted.  The eternal hesitators and delayers. 

320 I don't want to know anything now.  The mother is responsible for resources.  And the father? For places.  

321  But better illegal than the legal crooks all over the world.  The sects everywhere.   . . . The more you get lost, the more you experience.  

what she had experienced in the three days of her journey into the interior of the country, and how every hour had been dramatic, even if nothing happened,  and how every moment something had been at stake

one bright summery strand in her dark hair: strange.  Or not strange after all?  No, strange.  Still strange.  Eternally strange.  

12:34 pm  wow  what a chill, a thrill, such perfection and nothingness else  over finished complete adam and eve brings us by a  riverun past eve and adam's brings us by a ?? recurrence hmm on our rings these 57 years but now can't recall the circle  have to google even that !!  "riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."  forget that stateish baloney  Handke walks away from all that sectarian stateness, gets much more lost and finds much more, much more strange  wander further into the strange, away from all circles, backwards out of even spirals And yet that eternal stuff is there, strange 

Sunday the 14th

 videos in the morning of Emma's dance recital.  Beautiful, Martha Graham be proud.  

Wonder if Lentz read The Fruit Thief (and maybe not much else) because there he found the ceaseless, unbroken by chapters, flow of narrative journey over intimately described landscape with creatures, birds, skies, rocks.  Paragraphs, yes, mercifully.   Wonderful passage exploring more fully H's sense of mutual enthusiasm upon which behind which love finds its ways.  Alexia and Valter.  Horrible nearly dead cat covered with ticks in its eyes and all over.  Voice from somewhere of man in distress, new european jungle growth, tangled growth.  

223  "So: no rush on the in-between stretches.  Woe unto those in too much of a hurry.  Blessings upon those of you, on the other hand, who derive something useful and fruitful from in-between stretches, as well as in-between spaces, as well as in-between times, taking it slow and absorbing everything humanly possible along the way.  

the young man loses the rhythm of the walking   gets filled with fear   fear disorients him  he loses the rhythm   he cries, whimpers, howls, snot dripping down    but she knows he will eventually amaze her

distant thunder and lightning shake him out of his panic  friendly thunering, lovable lightning flashes

near Molière, the land in the Vexin 

too new

 oh dear, contemporaries make it into this book, even DT along with Clinton, Obama and Putin. 180

year published 2017  Zdeněk the suicide who organizes it all, protest against the world, against existence

year 2003, 19 years old "something bridegroomly about him" 181  

year of the hazelnut, the 100 year summer, the delicate thread from which the nut-egg hangs in the shell 185

flat tire

coming out of the dump road about two hours ago, heard and felt a pop, right rear tire flattened.   Drove to Methodist Church parking lot, few feet away.  Kirk's came and Loop5 came.  Home now.  Ordered pizza from tenney mtn pizza 

sent this to doug last night, read it over this morning  John Wilson, FirstThings.com October 18, 2019 Why you should read Peter Handke  Excellent piece.  

Found books by O.V. De L. Milosz to give to Darlene.  Should I read the love story novel first, sacred and profane love.  

how slow can you be.  By page 174 when Valter and Alexia are traipsing the countryside and he bites into an apple she has given him on the route to the  Chars mills on a channel of the Viosne, with fresh bread from a bakery nearby.  Adam and Eve, of course, she the original fruit thief.  I had mistakenly said he had left his seminary years way behind.  Hidden them of course, or slowly released them into undercover tales.

Out in front of the Methodist church with our stopped car, the man who lived across the street came over to offer his help and a glass of water.  I thanked him and said no, I'd just have to pee and he said yes I know l what you mean.  Rich with his huge flatbed truck and his son Alden? glasses, pudgy fourteen year old, not quick but polite.  Felix Garcia in his Loop van, red, bit beaten up with lots of use.  Airport shuttle and area transport.  Who knew?  Kids going to the camps in summer, skiing in winter. Born in Dominican Republic, been in this area some twenty-something years.  Strong enough to lift Bela up into and down out of the van front seat.  Older and pretty high step. She has been sleeping for hours after we ate greek pizza delivered from tenney mtn pizza.  Driver said he had just delivered one to Brint across the street.  I rented a car for Monday morning.  Two appointments on Tuesday, doubt that we will get the car back by then.  

In Chars Handke has found himself another perfect no-man's land.  No town center, no hint of village, "just a slight breeze on this warm, silent summer afternoon, an air of abandonment and exclusion."  175  That phrase fits our afternoon here.  Without a car you are nothing.  After we got back I tried to make a list of who I know I might have phoned for a pickup ride back into town.  

Bela sleeping for four hours or so now.  3-7 pm.  Will she be able to sleep tonight?  Took two small shots of Zyrtec last night, 3 am? Zyrtec always knocks her out even though she says it doesn't.  Will I sleep tonight?  Me and my ceremonial, mushroom laced cacao and ashwahganda gummies.  

It is a beautiful evening.  The sweet air and late sunlight.  Summer will seem longer now that we came back a month earlier than last year.