amazing final sentence

late afternoon, Friday.  Super bright day, high winds have come back.  Long nap before and during GH, Bela still there.  I just finished Handke's essay on The Juke Box.  Surely David Foster Wallace had read it at some time.  Since Soria is so important for it and we have spent some time in Soria it had that special resonance even though I remember very little about Soria except being grumpy that we were even there where there clearly was nothing.  Ok, the 12th century church of Santo Domingo which Bela kept trying to get me to look at more closely every time we walked around it, the street on the right being so close to it as to almost be shaving off the corner of the building.   Photos on google show that they have fixed that, looks like they made it all pedestrian zone all around the church.  Neither of us can recall exactly why we ever spent some time in Soria.  Machado yes, but nothing of Valle-Inclán.  My only notable memory is of a long walk I took down along the river, wide stretches of reeds in the shallow edges on both sides.  Some young women, teenagers were playing around ahead of me and across on the other side at a distance, it was the town side, a man, middle-aged, appeared in the tall reeds, almost hidden but not quite enough, stood still and then moved slightly in very familiar bodily movements, he was masturbating as he watched the young girls far across the river.  

So Handke weaves all around his topics, juke boxes and geologies and Soria and how place and the spark of writing and of completing a piece of writing are all involved in the details of places.  He has found Soria of all places has one Chinese restaurant.  The essay closes with this sentence which the great translator had rendered so well I can understant what Michael Lentz meant when he praised Handke's magnificent writing style in German.  "The young girl, otherwise idle, was painting Chinese letters into a notebook at the next table, one close to the other, in a writing far more even than his own during these weeks (not only the storm gusts, the rain and the darkness when he took notes outdoors, since he had been at work, had ruined it), and as he kept watching her, a girl who had to feel incomparably more foreign than he did in this area, in this Spain, he sensed with amazement that he had only now really set out from the place he came from."   

This almost took my breath away and with some tears.  How powerful this is exactly because I have been reading his work in timeline order and so I have seen him repeat and repeat so many large and small details over and over in various ways.  In this essay he mentions the woman who invited him to share experience, sex, love, with him, in Alaska at a bar where they saw each other.  In his other work he allows his imagination to flesh out what happened, in this essay he explains that it did not happen, after all, but it might have and maybe it should have.  She takes him out to the parking lot where her Land Cruiser is parked.  "And in this moment it became clear to him that for once in his life there was a decision imagined not by him alone but by someone else; . . . . it was the moment when Percival hovered on the verge of the question that would prove his salvation, and he? on the verge of the corresponding Yes.  And like Percival, and not because he was uncertain---he had that image, after all--but as if it were innate and quite proper, he hesitated, and in the next moment the image, the woman, had literally vanished into the snowy night." 229

wow, such writing  such consciousness, awareness of one's consciousness, recalled & reconstructed & situated within the tale of Percival  It is from Chretien de Troyes Perceval: The Story of the Grail.  He hesitates to ask why the spear bled, why the king suffers, and fails in his quest.  (ok had to look that up)

"as if it were innate and quite proper"  a result of his naive adherence to advice against speaking too much

searching for the right room for writing the essay

 

1 April

Well, I just finished Handke's Don Juan.  But did I even read it?  It is short and slight and yesterday and the day before I was passing my eyes over passages, pages, without letting them in very much or taking me out very much.  But this afternoon, the wind howling and raging outside, I did comprehend the final twenty or so pages, or pretended to get them somewhat clearly, with sufficient attention to declare that the book is after all wholly in line with April Fool's Day.  It is not a joke, this tale, no, but it jokes and pokes and slips and slivers all over the place.  Of course, non-euro that I am, I am barely informed about Don Juan and I have no lifetime store of info or feeling coming from the whole body of lore found in the operas and plays and re-tellings and embellishments---Racine, Molier, Mozart et al.  Later this summer I can ask my French grandchildren to tell me all about Don Juan and Eliot now 12 will fill me in and Emma will instruct me in all the nuances of his stories.  So now I am finished with this little book and I know enough about Handke to know how much I have missed even if I know how many of his pet peeves, moves, memes and steps I recognize from all of his other books.  Took a look on youtube at a longish movie made about him when he was really young--in 1975.  He had made a good amount of money, 100k franks with the Slow Homecoming and other books and lived large with his six year old daughter in a noble apartment in the 16th!  His hair is long and his manner superbly brilliant, quick and confident, and puzzled and puzzling.  

We both enjoyed the visit with Dr Mirta this morning.  She's referring Bela to an orthopedic surgeon to explore hip surgery.  We now live once more with the transport chair and pivots.  Bela was able to walk into the shower this morning and get dressed in the usual manner.  All the stuff I ordered for bed care has arrived so we are stocked for further catastrophe.  What will happend and what will be the timeline?  Have to give up trying to figure that, imagine it, or plan for it.  Let things happen as they will.  We both seem to sleep in strange clumps of time.  Breaking Bad has taken over our lives and we have at last only the last season to finish up.  General Hospital guides us each day with its love and wisdom.  

I posted one of those photos of all my books stacked up to compete with the other performative male readers on the social media sites.  In the Ortovert quiz I said I never use those things but I realize that indeed I do, so I guess my point score might rise from 243 out of 280 up to 248 or 250.  Should take the quiz a few weeks from now.  

What next?  Complete the essays in Quiet Places and wait for the Thucydides book to get here.  The Don Juan has a whole anti-women section that surely enraged lots of readers---but by 2004 when it appeared being the provocateur was well established in Handke's quiver of personas and arrows, and having the women be avengers and destroyers fit perfectly both the feminism and anti-feminism of the times and of the inner logic of the whole Don Juan figure of legend and culture.  

Monday 30th

 Bela's hip has given out, in some pain with it.  Rested in bed earlier.  Made it to the table for lunch, in the blue recliner all afternoon, both took long naps.  Almost 5 now.  

Finished Handke's mushroom essay.  He says his essays are as slow as a milk train near dawn.  

page 135 would type out the long paragraph.   Fit my needs earlier when I was ordering toilet supplies and fearing what might be next.  

Shakespeare "so consciousness doth make maniacs of us all"  

embrace taking things as they came, laissez-faire, not interfering

at every moment, horrifyingly and ceaselessly aware---instead of letting things go, leaving welll enough alone

well these words had more resonance in the terror of the moment earlier---is this it? will Bela be bedridden from now on?  

one rose on each of our rose bushes, red in front, pink in the back 

Otrovert

science news just in   with a score of 243 out of 280 it seems I am indeed an Otrovert   invention of NYC psychiatrist Rami Kaminski, himself one, author of a book and founder of the OthernessInstitute!  we are outside of the introvert-extrovert spectrum 

Handke might be our Nobel laureate extraordinaire --  just emailed the Institute with this proclamation  

more sublme pop psychology, via Time  Kaminski has four decades of distinguished career in NY  there

are other "versions" too such as Omniversion, according to Wiki 

day off Saturday, Bela's back bothering her all night,  

in Handke's Villages we hear indeed the spoken, dramatic voice, almost declamatory, poetic speech, meant to be heard not read quietly   

for if you remain devoted to yourselves, don't you see the shimmer of the gods?

The tree top is the legitimate weapon of liberation.  

When the river trembling sets my heart atremble, only then am I within being.

Look into the land---that is how the evil stupidity will pass. 

Haven't all of you already experienced vastness?  Vastness counts --- without a home or a second home anywhere.  

Move---so that you can be slow: slowness is the secret   The good power is that of overlooking.  

The only effective prayer is the thanksgiving 

Only when you quake do you see clearly   Your trembling eyelids is the trembling of truth  The form is the law, and the law is great, and it rights you up.  The sky is great.  The village is great.  Eternal peace can be!

Walk eternally towards.  Walk about the villages.  

-----

if I were going to the no kings rallies today I could declaim Nova's oration and the crowds would cheer!!!

27 March

 Dave asked for face visit  C's birthday today   high winds all day  I see a new doctor at Oak St Atrisco at noon

enjoying villages ok   see how it makes a 4th around mt st victoire essays  poem play  convoluted introduction by the translator   handke finally praises his work in the letters   gratifying to him  

the tunnel arrived  moresco postponed  email about address change for that from The jon repetti  

villages book falls apart as I read   spine glue dried out  fine  fits the dispose at once approach  

handed on misdelivered mail to neighbor across the street  Lydia T ?  sweet, in her 70s?  worked as custodian at petroglyph elementary school, must be the one on the corner of Western Trails  

also continuing in the mushroom mania essay   handke says his writing is laconic in the letter to the villages translator   

listened to some credence clearwater revival   could not hear just what handke had heard so long ago took over into his aesthetic   too fancy a word for it

have to read his Absence again    what was the onset of puberty but the experience of absence  if yearning was dawning what was I yearning for  wandering around johnson heights  wandering around DC and college park   years of wondering wandering floating  decoding the mysteries of talk and chatter about what might have been desired should have been desired   yearning without comprehending anything 

Villages

now I am moving backwards in time to the dramatic poem that goes with the Mt St Victoire essays, 1981 Walk About the Villages 

John sent a handout of poems about spring that he was presenting at a county nursing home in Atlanta today    I did a poor job of skimming them this morning 

Bela's swim went well.  We ate at Panda Express and 28% went to the Repertory Ballet company we saw at the Kimo last Sunday  

also back into the essay on mushrooms  his earlier attachment to edges, rims, and clearings

parasol mushrooms sauteed well  peerlessly tender delicacies 

different for the stinkhorn mushrooms  Latin name! phallus impudicus  "the head---impossible not to associate with the head of a human penis"  

Kant's disinterested pleasure as the chosen model and measure of his life   that smiling equanimity could make my blood boil 

that area from which we both came where tragedy had never been at home 

prescriptions

 finished the 1996 book, On a Dark Night I Left My Silent House.  Not sure I read it very well.  It is strange, strangely fairy tale -esque and anti-tale in every way.  Prescribing 

write nothing but love stories from now on Love and adventure   After all what kind of storytelling do we have nowadays---not for the marketplace, royal court, middle class, not even addressed to an individual---"merely for the person to whom the story happened, himself?"  179

final address to raven  you can sreech and squawk and do otherwise   Taxham an almost forgotten place

the pharmacist forever changed  but did I get the change?  I missed the change, didn't I?  

ok, weak as I am, I am cheating majorly ---

He is transformed in the following ways:

• From Estrangement to Connection: Initially, the pharmacist is a lonely, estranged figure who finds comfort in solitude and hallucinogenic mushrooms. The trauma forces him to leave his isolated existence and engage with the world in a new way.
• A Shift in Perception: Following the head injury, the narrative of his life changes from "ironic description" to a collection of "sensual impressions, observations and reflections".
• The Journey as "The Driver": He embarks on a quest through the Alps with a former Olympic skiing champion and a formerly famous poet, experiences in which he is beaten and stalked, which leads to a, "final series of bizarre, cathartic events".
• Renewal: Although he is eventually taken back to his pharmacy and his former life, he is fundamentally altered by the surreal, often frightening experience. 

He moves from a state of silent, isolated existence to one that has undergone a profound, almost spiritual, ordeal.

magical fairy tale

 that is what Handke turned to in On a Dark Night after his year in the Bay.  I'm a little past half-way. Missing the details and moods of Bay, this one feels a bit vague and hypothetical even though pleasant enough and clearly evoking the folk tales in which a wandering musician or such gets a bump on the head, falls asleep, wakes up in a new reality.  

Moving to this  house near the Petroglyphs prepared me for Handke's love of landscape, of basins and edges, basalt and lava, sand, wind, peaks and crests.  He loves to describe interior spaces too.  Bravo.

In this tale the pharmacist replaces the geologist.  So why the failed poet and the has-been athlete? Two forms of fleeting fame.  

Oh and the whole fascination with mushrooms and mushroom hunting---well of late I tuned in to all the people now offering to help me replace morning coffee with morning mushroom sludge and ritual beverage.  I tried Ryze and sent them angry letters.  Now of late I've been happy with Alcami and various chocolate suppliers, Embue and Ora.  The one from Peru, the big chunks, I worry about quality and metals.

News today that kimchee removes nanoplastics from our bodies.  Mainly I suppose how Handke seems to reject the tragic and vote for the tale, the story and the epic.  Without turning to dream work too much.  Nature and earth, land forms, earth where we land, center, rest, nest, shelter, wander.  

now we are deep into Breaking Bad, started season 3 at last and in for every detail forward   Makes me curious to try Pluribus again.  Va against that, might take a look when the ladies lunch today.  

just chanced into looking at Lars Iyer's blog about Jakob Taubes. No connection to Handke (yet) ---

"Bernhard’s repeated phrase, ‘in the opposite direction’ is an intensifier, a force of active nihilation which becomes a rising, an acceleration, even a jubilation. There is the joy of outcycling or outstriding or outrunning the world. There is great joy in his work as it affirms its own virtuosity in hyperbolic invective, as it lets its blunderbuss scatter at some deserving targets. A joy of rhythm, not in the sense of a pulsed beat, but a dance of language, that Dionysianism that unites death and chaos with both desire and the affirmation of life. A music that creates as it destroys."

Yes, Lars Iyer references Peter Handke, specifically in the context of discussions regarding the nature of fiction, the "récit" (narrative/tale), and the removal of fictional elements from literature.

• Removal of Fictions: In a 2011 interview with Full Stop, Iyer references an early comment by Handke at a Group 47 meeting: "Above all, it seems to me that the progress of literature consists of the gradual removal of all fictions". Iyer links this sentiment to his own work, particularly in his novel Spurious, where he aims to capture what remains after such a removal.
• Definition of Fiction: In a discussion regarding the nature of "The Disintegrations" (likely referencing Alistair McCartney's work), Iyer's perspective on the "récit" is mentioned, which aligns with Handke’s view of fiction as an intersection of daily occurrences, according to an interview in LA Review of Books.
• Themed Lists: Handke’s work, such as Across, has appeared in lists of "strange and ineffable" literature favored by writers in circles surrounding Iyer. 

Additionally, in his own "Notes from a Room" blog, he or discussions related to his work have referenced a A Sorrow Beyond Dreams by Handke. 

Handke’s view of fiction as an intersection of daily occurrences, according to an interview in LA Review of Books.

back in the book---we meet a hermit, vanished classics teacher Andreas Loser--name appears in another, earlier book.  

Handke sees his works more and more as recít.  "Maurice Blanchot describes the récit as follows:

If we regard the récit as the true telling of an exceptional event which has taken place and which someone is trying to report, then we have not even come close to sensing the true nature of the récit. The récit is not the narration of an event, but the event itself, the approach to that event, the place where that event is made to happen—an event which is yet to come and through whose power of attraction the récit can come into being, too."

duh   I will have to study this Nobel interview carefully ---  he starts with a feeling ---  there it is 

Interview with the 2019 Nobel Prize laureate in literature Peter Handke on 9 December 2019 during the Nobel Week in Stockholm, Sweden.

How does your writing process begin? 

Peter Handke: I start with a feeling and images and rhythm. This is inside me. Sometimes I have a story to tell. It is always this transformation during the work. This keeps me alive. I don’t want to know exactly what I have to do. It happens, and it should be a wonderful surprise to me, to the writer too. I write, I have to be surprised, not by myself, by somebody who is not only me. 

No critic, no opinion, only images, rhythm, feeling. Like Kafka said, I could search in myself during one year to find a real feeling. He was a little bit exaggerating for he was a very shy man. One real feeling, it’s not much. But nevertheless, this exists. I think I wrote a long story about the man despair. I think it’s translated in Swedish. It is A Moment of True Feeling. This is my “point de départ,” in French. I am traveling with the moment of true feeling. It’s a kind of travelling. 

lots of walking backward  146  not one strep back--with the exception of going forward by walking backward! 

ok I looked at two final episodes of Pluribus and read an explanation in Esquire.  Does it all feel like YA lit?  has the world gone YA.