day off news

 started with a headache and drove west to Lebanon.  The Magic burrito place was not yet open and after looking in through the window I decided I didn't want to eat there after all.  Walked back around the square to see what the Big News painted on the gas station cafe window was about.  They had moved early in the summer to 1 Court Street.  I walked along and looked up that address to find that I had walked right past that number but had seen nothing new there then realized it must be one of those doorways on the other side of the big set of brick buildings, the side facing the back parking lot.  Just then over in the common I saw Sarah and Don getting out of their car.  They headed across the street and on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse where the big busses stop we chatted for twenty minutes.  Sarah was going in to the town clerk to pay bills on their new house in Lebanon.  The washer and dryer were full of gunk of some mysterious sorts so they were waiting for delivery of new ones.  They still think of the Ashland road house as the real house, primary home, and this Lebanon one as another place to use as needed or wanted.  Ginger, Don's daughter, is going through a divorce.  My ears took note of that but luckily I blurted out nothing.  You first agree on which house will be the base for raising the kids in a secure location; they you divide up duties involved in organizing the house and getting the kids to all their activities including school.  Wonder if this is what will soon be happening in Paris, some for of it.  

Had a sandwich at the Coop and drove home.  Fage yogurt at Walmart here is $3 cheaper than at the Coop, so there goes the myth that the coop is cheaper.  Bought those Norwegian crackers---our resident mice got into two packs that I had foolishly left out on the stove last night.  

Into the two books.  Moresco's opening title and line I love so much:  From Sleep to Silence, From Silence to Sleep I, on the other hand, found myself at ease in that silence.  In medias res, bam!  love that "on the other hand."  How far we are from "stately, plump Buck Mulligan."  Couto's opens with "War had killed the road thereabouts."  mmm sounds a note, with "thereabouts" the touch.  

If you drink a lot of water in a short period, you may move from mild overhydration to what's known as water toxicity, intoxication, or water poisoning. This happens when there's too much water in the cells (including brain cells), causing them to swell. When the cells in the brain swell, they cause pressure in the brain. You may start experiencing things such as confusion, drowsiness, and headaches.

Brain Pressure: Brain cells swell and grow larger. This extra pressure pushes against the hard bone of your skull, causing a throbbing headache

If you’re properly hydrated, your pee will be light yellow, like the color of light straw or lemonade. You may be drinking too much water if your pee is colorless or clear.

Bela had a good day of swimming.  She mentioned early that she's worried about David and Cécile and I agreed we both are.  She wonders if they had not been getting along for much longer than we realized.  I do think that is the case. 

We saw two videos on YouTube showing the tenders at L'Spezia; looks easy enough to use.  Also videos of the staterooms on Legend of the Seas.  None of course of the accessible cabins.  

Phone call from the TLC hvac tech in Abq.  Power outage notice canceled his visit to the house.  Esteban will go tomorrow or Friday to check on things.  Fingers crossed nothing serious. 

Return to Walmart

 how long has it been since we have not walked at walmart?  Went today at Bela's insistence.  She was fine, walked to the customer service.  I circumambulated the store, first in weeks as well.  Why a headache all day?  all day!  stronger now than earlier, frontal lobe.  cookies aggravate it, or was it the slices of cheese I took about an hour ago?  Just took third advil of the day.  Had a big salad with asian noodles for lunch.  Too much Skippy peanut butter on bread in the last three days?  Palm oil, corn sweetners?  Ora protein powder drinks over past two days?  Cacao?  Chocolate?  feel like I've drunk lots of water today.  

Eating a bowl of blueberries now.  Relieved Bela walked so well at walmart.  Not interested in walking around the house on her cane, however.  Not sure why.  Long sleeps in the afternoon after lunch and before GH for both of us.  She swims tomorrow.  Might ask Rachel to take her to pt again on Weds so I can drive the loaner car back over.  

starting into Sleepwalking the Land by Mia Couto   title could be one of Handke's  

Sebald on Handke

such magnificent essays   in Silent Catastrophes  

And in allowing the particular light

which filters through the leaves of the canopy

or the canvas of a tent to shine through from time to time

between the words placed with often astonishing care and precision,

Handke, in Die Wiederholung,  succeeds in making the text itself a place of refuge

among the arid zones which, even in the culture industry, are encroaching further by the day.

The book of a journey on foot through the Karst landscape . . . islands of calm . . . in whose depths

. . .  the beasts of the Karst could assemble . . . . 

Inscribed into this image of a peaceable kingdom, reminiscent of the Ark, is the hope that,

despite the unfavourable circumstances, some small part of our natural Heimat may yet be saved after all.

In Handke's work, teaching and learning are ways of preserving the world. 

I can think of no more beautiful image . . . than this page of Repetition dedicated to the road mender and sign painter.  

Seen in this light, the journey on foot becomes a kind of Pilgrim's Progress, and the stages along the way those of an imagined history of salvation.  The decisive factor . . . is the act of walking itself: 'Set out on the road to one goal or another, whether actually or merely in thought: between the goal and the intention there is something that contains both, namely the act, the progression.  This progression is as good as the goal:  for this will certainly be reached, if the decision is firm and the conditions adequate; and yet this progression can only ever be called intentional, because the walker can always just as easily be paralysed before the last step as before the first."   from Goethe's Color Theory 

This progression is what Handke calls the continuum, in his later books.  

They are the incidental results of the hope for redemption from the guilt-ridden conditions of life, a hope fleetingly realized in art, in the creation of images which allow author and reader to enter almost bodily into the nature of all things, which yet remains forever strange to us.  

----

I'm glad a read some of Stifter so I could enjoy the more the essay on Stifter and Handke.  I plan to read The Castle in our week on the cruise ship and when we get back I can then read Sebald's essay on that book.

gray sunday morning

Emmett Stinson, Perth, says his holy trinity of books is Gaddis's The Recognitions x3.  I could see re-reading that book, more than digging into the Tunnel.  I "read" Recognitions at some stressful time and barely got what it was but enough to have been impressed and fascinated.  In all the good ways.  Stinson, on X, says "I like pretentious bookslop."  He follows 1.3k has 2.5 followers.  

apple photo claims Feb 4, 2016 we stood in front of the Taj Mahal to have our picture taken. 

steady rain now falling.  Headache has won, I've capitulated and taken two small advils.  10:46 am 

on X a few moments ago a post from Nicholas dated 2014 showed up, this famous passage from Merton:   

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is so to speak [God’s] name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship [and daughtership]. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely . . . . I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.  from Confessions of a Guilty Bystander

AI discovers  "Merton borrowed the exact phrase le point vierge from the renowned French Catholic scholar of Islam, Louis Massignon.   Massignon used the term to describe a concept found in Islamic mysticism (particularly from the Sufi mystic al-Hallaj)—the innermost, uncorrupted core of the human heart where the individual directly meets the divine truth.  

simmering onions, mushrooms and carrots to add

Sebald: 198: "Stifter rarely ever attempts . . . for the latent sense of panic beneath his quietist prose."

208  via Sontag  photography promotes forgetting; writing assumes a life in the future

216  "This is not so much a wish for death as a reversible simulation of dying."  

Sebald on Handke in Silent Catastrophes

Sebald's essay on Handke, Beneath the Surface, is so good trying to slice out a key quote feels like an unforgivable violation.  What the essay demands is being re-read and re-read, its brilliance sends you back to re-read the novel.  The last sentence will have to do:  "The pathography of the protagonist and the biography of the narrator thus converge in what, from the point of view of societal normality, appears as illegitimate nature of both illness and art, which, each in their different way, recall the destruction that is wrought in the lives of children."  151  Can imagine how beautiful the sentence must be in the German.  

The beginning of that final paragraph:  "The suggestion implicit in the above, that in depicting a pathological world view Handke was ultimately also concerned with a scrupulous examination of his own artistic 'guilty' conscience, and his own distance from 'normal' life, is confirmed by his story in another regard also."   "Bloch's story converges with that of the missing schoolboy" 

"the development of goalkeeper Bloch's pathological state goes back to pre-existing handicaps of a social nature, and that his own art only goes beyond the pathological inasmuch as it opens up, for both author and readers, [. . . . .readers . . . .] an understanding of the wretched and utter hopelessness of such circumstances."  150-151 

now if only Sebald had written such an essay on each of Handke's novels after this one !  

next essay on Light and Dark deals with Stifter and Handke  and later a big essay on Repetition  

much to look forward to    probably will not read the final tale in the Stifter volume  

heavy gray skies now    rain tonight, Saturday   

"he had chosen this apartment in particular

 because it appealed to his poetic powers--which expressed themselves less in creation than in reception."

108 Motley  "there was nothing he loved more in the world . . . to stand at his window on a rainy day and watch as . . . the moisture crept down the old walls."  

I like that notion that poetic powers could best express themselves in reception---there, my whole life understood, described.  When I consider the remainder of the passage and the context in which it is placed I wonder if I am using it, affirming it, adopting it as my motto, somewhat too hastily.  It may not be a sentiment one should take as an ideal, after all.  How can I know?  

Saturday   What if I place that comment about reading with Mia Cuoto's?  

"Books are never written. When we read them, we write them."   Mia Couto

his poetic powers expressed themselves less in creation than in reading--reception  

Sebald's essay on Stifter may help me out here.  Since he wrote and painted might he not be placing reception on the lower rung of estimation.  Could also wait to see how this vaguely creepy story turns out.  The narrator warned us it would be dark---Tourmaline  

today and tomorrow I am trying to do a 24 hour only thing eating only Ora So Lean & So Clean powder protein.  Why?  Who knows.  Some strange "cleansing" impulse, or "fasting" or experimentation to see what happens to the cycle of headaches?  

"It is a dietary supplement designed to boost protein intake, not a complete meal replacement. Each serving provides only around 120 calories and minimal fats and carbohydrates, meaning it lacks the total daily energy, essential fatty acids, and broad spectrum of vitamins and minerals required to sustain human life."  

so indeed this is a fairly stupid notion and where does it spring from?  

Anton Reiser, the German novel, written in 1785-1790    Christian Garlitz shows up in Garrett County, Maryland  1790-1873 Avilton, MD 

In the end we are unable to reconcile the facts, because they, to this date, simply have not been discovered. Therefore we can only reconcile the stories. Thus, for the present, the history presented on this website lists the first Garlitz in the area, the one who came from Prussia, as John Hendrey Garlitz. The Garlitz to whom all the family histories are traced is Hendrey Christian Garlitz or Christian I. The great hunter of folklore is Christian II. And the convert to the Catholic faith and the settler of Avilton, MD, is Christian III.

"same" German cultural mind-sets?  And the point is?  

putting an end to the Ora only thing, having some milk, yogurt and granola 

back to Tourmaline   a tale of the mother who fled, who disappeared, from the girl with the large head who lived in the basement of the abandoned house.  Sense of tales from Poe, slightly.  

so that's it!  the great actor, the professor, the man who fell to his death, the woman who birthed the young girl, the ancient house, everyone "disappears" and none of their lives are told with any meaning.  Very proto-modernist indeed.  Nothing coheres.  The tale is dark in the sense that it is a mystery with no revealing patterns.  Stones hold themselves together, we can carry them in our hands, but in themselves they yield nothing to us that we may want to hear from them.  We live in the landscape of mountains, nature, stones, but we are not of them.  At all.  

our son's dissolving marriage weighs on us in the silence of the house now and we wonder how it will all play out over seas in that other country that we understand and do not understand.  Could his wife not be a character in many types of stories, including one by Stifter?  One by Henry James, for sure.  I talked with him about Henry James in the only short conversation we had about the situation.  I wonder how to help him, what to do, what to say.  We are clarifying bequests in the portfolio that had erroneously been neglected and I am going to re-do the trust and will to clarify David as sole beneficiary.  Ten years ago we had named the grandchildren as well, trying to be caring, but now under these new circumstances it seems better to not try to engage legal structures we cannot comprehend.  So many tv dramas under our belts!  As much as we do not cotton to "Ted Lasso" as entertainment, it had some resonances that we could not help but notice, in this new situation, about the American abroad trying to navigate a different national and cultural reality.  

rules of thumb

years ago I learned from that beautiful magazine for doctors that Mamacita subscribed to that it takes three weeks before a doctor actually begins to feel the relaxing effects of a vacation.  Old rule of thumb.  Bet it would bring some scoffs these days.  However, the query today is: how many weeks does it take to relax after visitors have been staying with you for three weeks?  

hmmm

empty house, chill air this morning, picking up, laundering, rearranging; we did establish that the new toy aisle chair works perfectly to get Bela into the downstairs bathroom.  

letter from Dr Fagan says nothing in the mri would relate to persistent headaches.  Should I see anyone else, maybe neurology?  

hard time sleeping last night.  suspect mountain mermaid shake had some green tea or other such in it

Karl Philipp Moritz's Anton Reiser

Adalbert Stifter's Motley Stones

will I finish these ?  

picked up euros at the bank.  Very tall young teller.  Nolan Cross, graduated from Exeter high school six years ago; advanced placement English there with Ryan Hale.  

will talk with Fagan next week for short visit about mri and headaches---nothing to figure out, really 

MRI today August 19

 

Interesting experience; wanted DFW to write an essay about it.  After, in the parking lot short chat with John Sheineman.  He stopped himself short explaining why he took his buy out from the college a year short of turning 65 saying "because I was tired of fucking. . . ."   I was glad to hear that.  He described instead what a great trip he had with his family driving around the great lakes and taking in three or four of the world cup games.  

On the message from Mid-State it doesn't seem possible to copy and paste.  So here is the key line

so far as I can tell:  "IMPRESSION: Mild frontoparietal atrophy.  Pontine and supratentorial white matter disease, likely the sequelae of microangiopathy.  No acute hemmorhage, infarct, mass effect, or midline shift."  

Now, do I wait for Mid-State to contact me and offer explanation and what to do?  Or do I ask google to explain the lingo and advise procedures?  

Stopped into Westcott Law to find out if we are in the computer.  Email said no.  Should I contact Dorcas can't recall her last name, now!  Dorcas Murphy?  She is no longer with Westcott.  

Rick Evans called while we were watching General Hospital.  All is well but he is sending documents to update beneficiaries for two of our accounts.  Wrote him back and said maybe we should update all the accounts to be safe.  

So the word disease has shown up.  What to do about it?  How significant is it?  Normal part of aging?  Angiopathy?  Diet? medicine?  Cut back, kick up, smooth out?  

AI says it might be about blood pressure and to stay active.  Walk more?  What about nsaids on daily basis?  or live with whatever and try movement rather than any pills?  

Stylistic Rhapsody

 title from search on G on iphone, which did not show up on same search here on airbook

Stylistic Rhapsody:  Critics characterize the book as dream-like and plot-nebulous, functioning less as a traditional novel and more as a turbulent, erudite prose poem oscillating between despair and rapture.  

so, I got it.  Long essay in NYRB "His Mystic Way" July 14, 1994 issue  is it worth $10. to read it and 9 other issues?   also a long essay (AI?) on something called Grokipedia, what is that?

Furbank, turns out, wrote the big, key, biography of his friend E. M. Forster, also Alan Turing and "a book on political thought."  it's that political thought that helps me dismiss his terrible treatment of Milosz.  

here is his final harshness "Thus, as the Duke’s bravura tirades begin to modulate into Milosz’s serious mystical theories, the reader, battered and bemused by so much exorbitant phrase-making, can no longer quite silence the whisper at the back of his mind, that what the book suffers from is silliness." 

That seemed so clear the night I scanned it and copied out passages.  overnight and the next day I withdrew my agreement with Furbank.  His severe Judgment against Milosz is typical rational judgmental authoritarian dismissal of the poetic, the rhapsode.  As twisted and irritating as the novel, or "novel," is, it does still have many elements and passages that make it entirely worthwhile, as least as a representative work of the period and time as well as the great inner traditions,  both esoteric and exoteric. 

Sunday 16 August

big day  Emma at earring workshop with Cordelia friend and Suzan at Artistic Roots

Dave and Eliot off to sunspot for arcade games

Dinner at Farmhouse slated for 4:30

we all slept late, bela until 10!  

nice breakfast table talk about their night visiting Pete and Erin O'Donnell in Lyme; they have clean gray rats as pets now in the house, beautiful new kitchen, hundreds of beautiful plants and flowers throughout

leftovers from Polly's 

apple photo reminded me eleven years ago today I was with Scott Merrill in Boston getting him, helping him get, his doctorate at BU  

really fun forty minute talk with Eric yesterday at Mountain Mermaid; he dropped off a few mushroom pieces this morning; will I try them?  hmmm possible not but we'll see   His visit with Dawson in BCN was his first time in Europe.  He noticed everything correctly and perfectly.  That was the core of the fun talk.  I had imagined the visit would go along scenario X but of course from the instant of recognized presence of the other person the visit goes along scenario of  P, S and onward.  Am I vaguely quoting Virginia Woolf here?  He got about a hundred pages into Schattenfroh and then put it down.  I apologized for having sent it.  His wife seems to be younger, more than five years younger, works in real estate, just got arrested for dui!  His daughters sweet and shy still at 16 and 14 or 12?  

back to finish up Milosz  why is it so difficult to read?  circular, spiral, clunky translation? dense; over wrought?  under realized, unfamiliar mode?  

now we have a buccaneer and the hanged man!  maybe there is a genre of erotica-exotica known as "tarot fiction"  

Cécile wants to talk to me, get me on her side, have me get Dave to see, etc etc  I walk away from her, twice now.  I must stay out completely and protect my own tranquility in all of this.  It is their drama, not ours.  

tarot fiction   Of course, Charles Williams---I read this years ago and probably got nothing much out of it---The Greater Trumps by Charles Williams: Written in 1932 by a member of the Inklings, this fantasy book features the Major Arcana as active, moving, 3D mystical forces central to a battle of magic

and Gemini also lists a book by Italo Calvino, Crossed Destinies  

134  Beauty and Adoration  . . .  Sorrow and Pity  

paroxysms  136  that is the governing mode of this tale  "I felt in my secret flesh and soul a kind of dark and strange pleasure . . . titillating anguish and gnawing delight  . .  . comparing it to the mysterious and appalling emissions of the hanged."  whoa  that is an image and a comparison 

then a perfect description of the psychology of a stalker 

page 137  extraordinary   applies to our moments here and how  have to copy out some later  great

clarity about love and betrayal---keys to the whole book 

Monday Aug 17  

Finished Milosz's very strange book.  Hallucinatory dream? trippy?  hmm maybe if I look through the volume called The Noble Traveller I will find context and discussion that will help.   Inner Traditions and Lindisfarne devoted lots of work to it some forty years ago.  1985 edited by Christopher Bamford, links no doubt somehow to the worlds of Temenos conferences.  good guess, math shows, 41 years ago!!

super quiet day.   C upstairs all day.  Willow and I had lunch, have read all day.  Kids down at the amusement park.  I went out to Walmart to get milk and cash and walk around; then to Hannaford to buy milk and walk around.  

strange book for strange days  listened to the theta podcast Eric gave me  meditation