back to rice and fruit only

day off anxieties, if Rachel shows.  Or will it be an ice cream and pizza day to see the Last Chair and even sip a beer?  John Sitter having trouble with walking and standing once more, miracle drug not working. Gray day.  Bulldozers on the street endlessly leveling and leveling the dirt in prep we hope for the paving trucks.  Are they just filling out their time sheets for full payment?  Does the earth need that much compacting and leveling?  What are the engineers trying to do?  Trucks still bringing in good dirt.  

German kids called mica "cat silver."  Into first paragraph of Adalbert Stifter's Motley Stones.   

what today's day off yielded---after lunch at Dos Aguates in Ashland and middling ice cream in Holderness---

Dear Mike Zuppa

Really enjoyed seeing this amazing achievement today.  

  

 (Taught at PSU for many years---lived here since '72.)

The entrance feels so dangerous.   Coming from either direction, it just scares me.    yes, at 82 I am one of those

cautious drivers.  

Our 32 year-old helper, a woman from here, agreed when I mentioned it.  She worries about it as I do.  

I hope you can improve it.   Better signs, much wider roadway, drive way, DOT Slow signs, hidden entrance, etc

I visited St Bonaventure years ago to look at the Robert Lax archive there.  From Cumberland, Maryland.  School at Ammendale, grad of U Maryland, College Park.  

 

A wonderful business in a fantastic location.

All best wishes to you.  

-----

Last day of July.  that must be why I obsessed about doing the rice and fruit diet once more and worried about too much cheese giving my left middle side foot the calcium bump it gets --- is it every summer?  

maybe days off are just best for feeling how strange things are, no matter where you go or what you do.  skimming on through Handke's plays just feels like a logical continuation of all of that  And too the old familiar deja vu feeling; that whole letter to Mike Zuppa feels like a repeat of one I sent once before, at this same time of year too.  Eve of school anxiety dreams beginning tonight, or tomorrow night?

alarm set to wake at midnight to get entertainment seats on the Royal cruise!!!

Thursday afternoon

early morning blood draw went well, for Va 

Michelle called about cruise details, L'Speza port will use tenders to get us on land---drive to Florence, Bela said Yes full steam ahead, I will step up and step down and walk the steps necessary on the gangplanks

Finished Rock Crystals by Adalbert Stifter  so clear a storytelling  Jack London's To Build a Fire must have been direct descendant of Stifter's genius.  Am still in the Preface section of Motley Stones and still moving through the two Handke plays, while also wondering if I will be able to read Anton Reiser with pleasure.  Main question otherwise is whether tomorrow will be a day off; have to see if Rachel will show after having the stomach ache earlier in the week.  Cécile down with a toothache at the Jersey shore and worried about paying.  She will have three days visiting Claire.  Ian Von Miller has a new chair design to order, much better design than the earlier model, and bursting with color.  I still have not written a reply note to Kith.  

Sturm und Drang  The book Anton Reiser belongs to this movement in literature.  Have I not always been fascinated by the phrase and wondered just exactly what it was all about?   Storm and Stress!  Or Reiser is a work that sees the movement coming without knowing just what it will be like.  

Rachel on for tomorrow so I will have the day off!!  what to do, where to go?  The detail about the tenders and the ship and the trip into Fierenze give me just one more thing to worry over, but, hey, don't worry.  Maybe I should invest in some CBD gummies for the trip.  I have the Aswaganda pills but I'm not convinced I really like what they do.  They create a brain fog, if that is the term, as much as anything else without really calming in a way that is helpful.  Does anything?  Whatever happens happens and what will be will be.  Back to Quietism, forward to Zen.  The compactor out in the street deciding to shimmer the ground under the house just now for a few more minutes before 6 pm and the workers go home.  Worried this morning about flights to Abq in January and which airlines and routes to choose.  Time to take off and wander the countryside a tiny bit tomorrow.   

landscape collage

Black Hills  Karsten Creightney 2018    Video on Insta this morning about the opening of a new exhibit at Abqmuseum made me check and realize I have seen this painting a few times in the permanent collection and loved it.  Did not realize until today that it is a collage of a number of famous mountains including Sandia Crest, Everest and the Black Hills.  

The show is about black artists and landscape.  Could easily turn all of that on its side (in another twenty years) and align it with landscape in Stifter and Handke as well as many others who still work in landscape: Aho and Molly Marshall, Zaintz. Note how every local arts shop like Artistic Roots features local landscape artists of all sorts, landscape has never left the art world but gone and come back like aquifers themselves.  Fallen and risen.  Vernal ponds every where.

Looks like Creightney is more printmaker than painter (faculty unm) but I like the paintings most. His website very rich, probably like the prints in person much more.  Texture.  McFarlane has not done landscape but he might demur about that and show us all of his street findings, photographs, and talk about his paintings differently than we would.  For visual artists is it possible to deny, expel, ignore, suppress, destroy, evade landscape altogether?  Frank Bowling? Rothko's department store window shades?  

Town Visit to Office

Visited the Town office about street vibrating cracking the foundation of the house.  David St-Pierre will call me about this.  Director of streets.

Rachel canceled, stomach bug, but not the national horrible one, she hopes.  

Judith and Jim cleaned the house.  I had them down for Friday but Judith was sure I'd chosen today, Tuesday.  Worked out well.  

Hotter and muggier day.  Muggier maybe not quite as hot as I think.  Muggy.   Gray

Reading Rock Crystal.  Kids are walking into the snow storm.  Word "death" has appeared at least once so far in the text.  

Ordered Moresco and later saw a video and can see how big the volume is!  Yikes.  Still have that old Antunes sitting on the den shelf.  

41  wan nothingness   leaden striations  42  a wall of Cyclopean debris -- just like the street outside !

maybe the trees Mary Taylor planted around the house, the two pines by the driveway, the oak in back, maybe their roots are holding the earth and granite shelf and cushioning the house from this construction,

earth, granite under the house, shakes, vibrates as if being dug into with a jack hammer but in fact, looking out the window, the bulldozer is leveling the earth, scraping it, and the big roller is shimmy-packing it down

today will be, will have been, a no wheat day.  To what point??  Who knows.  Whoop Dee Do!  well, this is at 1:01 pm  See if we make that gold star target!  Stay tuned.  

Read that Volvo is struggling.  Models though to be old-style.  Sales low.  Scratch Volvo from the list.  

Great conversation with Steve St. Pierre from town highway department.  He explained that the deep vibration caused by the rolling earth compactor actually happens because of the underground water content of the earth.  I mentioned our vernal pond and he said yes that would be a big factor here.  The water being compressed in the earth, it's density, resists the vibrations more solidly than the earth particles themselves.  The town did do similar work on Emerson thirty years ago.  This time they are doing it right! So at least my memory was correct about that.  He has never heard of this sort of work damaging a foundation.  

Feels somehow a deep resonance with all that Handke has been talking about in all of his books this year!

geology and narrative discontents 

reading more of Ride Across Lake Constance   act of will of sorts to keep reading it   it makes no sense, of course and am not interested in enjoying one bit after another bit and seeing if they connect or disconnect in some interesting and funny ways    Much a period piece---post-Beckett, Pinter et al---writers competing, oh, I could do that too, I could do that and do it this way rather than your way(s)  ?  having fun at everyone's expense and enjoyment  122 "People began to socialize with one another and it became the rule."  

Having second cup of cacao today.  Only Ora.  Seems at first more bitter than Embue but I also just ate one of those sweetish Bobo mocha things.  The Belize Ora definitely more bitter, more raw tasting.

Let's quit Constance for a while and look at They are Dying Out, see how Quitt is doing.  

I went out this morning, went to the town hall, walked a tiny bit.  Rest of the day, except for lunch, we read.  Get up to go to the bathroom.  Read, that is it.  I get to move about with laundry.  Dishes, kitchen stuff.  Bela reads all day.  We turn to tv in the afternoon and then in the evening.  She is hesitant, afraid, reluctant to try any more standing than is necessary to pivot between chairs.  The vibrating roller is shaking the house right now.  

Quitt's speech on 210-211 could be on tv in Trump's mouth today!!  "A tragedy of business life and I will be the survivor."  A tragedy of political life and I will be the survivor.  

Sudden wind outside slamming branches onto the windows and the porch roof.   Right next on 211 (There is thunder.)  His wife speaks of ammonite . . . and some other words.  "this and that  . . . and autumn . . ."

ammonites   extinct 66 million years ago, tightly coiled spiral shells  

omnium gatherum

Handke's final chapter in the Last Guest is yet again a brilliant collection of lines from his whole life, his whole stream of books and writings, old familiar phrases, images, words, notions (not ideas? yes, ideas but not idea ideas), thoughts, remembrances, nods to places in The Odyssey over and over.  A song of songs, a reprise and continuation, recombinations, future imaginings, to the left, to the right, joys there, sorrows here, old paths re-tread, old paths renewed, new paths.  Nature rejected as the enemy, of what? of birth? 

Fascinating.  Did he write this as he "final writing?"  Would seem so.  And yet we await news to the contrary.  Is he ill?  Does not feel like it but I suppose we do not know.  Dementia?  again, we do not know.  Is this final chapter an enactment of dementia, of the struggle against memory loss?  It does not feel like it, it feels like a final performance of the finest sort.  A final rumination about sifting through the whole collection of ruminations.  Dreams, memories, tags retagged.  

Have I completed all of Handke (available)?  Well, can still continue in the books of plays;  the narratives are at an end.  Already I think I will re-read Left Handed Woman, for one.  And maybe these last two books, Last Guest and The Second Sword and My Day in the Other Land.  

What a wonderful year of reading!!  3/4s of the year.  Began after Shattenfroh in September?  

Sunday 26th noon sunlight

 big rains in Abq past few days, photos on Instagram.  Today, Saturday, sleepy day.  Hallmark movie on screen this evening, early.  

that was yesterday  today is Sunday, bright sun this morning 

tweet from Karun Pal  "Modern luxury is the ability to live quietly. No drama. No noise. No pretending to be someone you are not. Just living low-key. Reading. Thinking. Listening to music. Staring at walls. Going for walks. Watching old movies. Being bored. Working on your purpose. And feeling life deeply. That is peace." today Close enough to Lukacs saying in the future aristocrats will be those who enjoy privacy.

Earlier in the night or wee morning I got a thing about how I needed to go to Cold Spring with the new wheelchair to make sure it will fit through the doorway into the dressing room. For Rachel on Tuesday. I imagined going today but too many people around on a Sunday. Tomorrow I will go to the dump but both trash and wheelchair will not really fit into the car so I don't want to make two trips. Then I thought, after measuring upstairs bedroom doorway, you know I'm sure the opening is fine and Rachel is quite capable for handling any thing that arises. Let it go, let it be. Look out the window, go back to Handke's wandering prose wanderings. They were written just for me and only for me, no one else, no matter what the Nobel committee says. Should I order Moresco's first volume today or wait a week or so?

Handke brings in a tag from his seminary years in complaining about earworms--"At last I can be an innkeeper again!"? Thank goodness, that doesn't lend itself to becoming an earworm, unlike Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" or "I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General"; it's as unsuitable, for instance, as "Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus Bear the Cross." 135 a joke I'll bet very few contemporary readers would get Could send it to Burgo but he wouldn't pay it enough attention. Our Knight of Malta!!! Pretty remarkable, really, in terms of the people our paths have crossed with over the years. 82 now, pretty amazing in its own right.

my breakfast seemed too big this morning If I want to do one meal a day could I possibly make it be breakfast? Doubt that. Mid-day-ish? Or should I stay with grazing as primary mode? Ate a matcha mocha at breakfast, Can you tell? Caffeine rush brain all morning, even with Ashwaganda last night. Might take one of those now to taper down the matcha, even though I get the sense that I will not like two Ashwagandas a day, in the morning or one early, one later. The homeless in France usually answer it asked where did you spend the night: To the right, and to the left; to the left and to the right.

Friday 24 July

10:45 am  Family almost ready to get into the car and head south to Mt Airy.  Gig at Fallser Club tomorrow night.  

Searching for all those mystical writers was a spiritual reading method for getting diagnosed as an Otrovert and finding healing therapeutic guidance and modeling on how to live with one's innate gifts amid hives inimical or indifferent to those benefactions.   Head in the clouds of unknowing as a way of life.  A practice leading into the continuation.  

Forty-five seconds, or so, after the car drove out of the driveway, the doorbell rang, and there was the piano tuner right on time.  

now have on the new bohempia shoes, sand color very nice, maybe better than the rust would have been, textile patch included and now I understand why---to protect the shoes from raised or hammer toes--which my right foot is indeed developing and I could put the patch up in the older pair in place of wearing the new sock!!!

these shoes, this model, looks more like a boat shoe, the older gray and white pair look like sport or running shoes, what is the proper distinction in models of shaping and sewing the materials?  Anyway, will discover how well it breaks in and feels down the road.  

Handke:  on the back cover of Last Guest a blurb from John Updike!! amazed that he read Handke, when did Updike die?  Great line---"The best writer altogether, in his language . . . There is no denying [Handke's] willful intensity and knifelike clarity of evocation."  What a superb phrase, proof as Joe would have it, that Updike was better than we had thought!!!  So interesting that someone at FSG found the line and thought it good enough to put on what might be H's last book.  But maybe not, there may be a few more tales.  

Headache?  tried putting lots of salt on one piece of toast, two, to counter the yin of the ceremonial cacao. Worked for a while but now a head ache.  May just need water.  

Arethusa Falls

Got it!  While Bela and Colin were playing piano, after the kids left to shop at Ladders, I drove downtown, found a spot to park just past monte alto, went to Roots and bought the painting by Molly Marshall.  I've hung it on the wall and will wait to see if anyone even notices it.  I was obsessed with it all night after looking at it in the shop yesterday morning when I bought a stack of notecards.  Now each house has a waterfall painting.  Why that pleases me I don't know; the influence of Handke and Stifter?  Motely Stones.  Landscape, geology, water.  

Watched the hour long video Mike McDermand sent about the memorial for Nancy.  Nicely done video, mostly the book group and watercolor group members, two oldest friends from college at Cornell College in Iowa.  Class of '64.  this from online cornell college class updates --- Nancy Connolly McDermand ’64 and Bob McDermand ’63, San Jose, California, celebrated their 59th anniversary. Nancy loves her hiking trips with her group (highlights include San Francisco and Point Reyes National Seashore), book group, and she especially loves her watercolor classes. 

Dave and crew trying to orchestrate the rest of today.  Big crowd at the beach yesterday, wide angle group photo on Micah's super google camera.  Today in array because they are juggling family groups and interests.  Cooler today, gorgeous air and sun.  We have the Dr Wesley appointment at 4:15--pit of the afternoon but it will be fine.  Suggest Last Chair evening meal to Dave.  He seems pretty distracted.  Their packing this time is the lightest we've ever seen; the one big red bag and three light backpacks.  Airlines now charging for size and weight more than ever, that encouraged them to downscale.  Emma and Eliot both on screens but not for that long.  Eliot still love kicking the small football in the den and hallway endlessly.  They both have summer reading books to finish for school.  Emma's are of good size---Jane Eyre and S King's The Shining, a british woman writer I don't know, Sarah Waters, the little stranger, and Oscar Wilde's Portrait of Dorian Gray.  She is Welsh, the book a ghost story.  Nicely grouped novels.  Oh, at prom night at school Emma got a prize, a surprise to her, as "most engaged" student in her class this year.  Nice.  

Last summer Dwayne was instructing Bela in how to use this larger wheelchair.  Why did her legs give out once more a few weeks ago?  No one knows.  

The Cloud of Unknowing.  Would I enjoy reading it once more?  Did the whole work keep my interest, or was it, is it, the title alone, the bumper sticker, that serves me my life long?  If I had read that work, or have even heard of it, early in high school, would that have made significant difference in what came after?  Cloud, dreams, detachment, distance, observing, wandering, uncertainty, ambivalence, abulia (term I learned at Ammendale for spiritual state of indecisiveness,  "While it shares some surface-level similarities (such as social withdrawal and inactivity), abulia is fundamentally different from depression. People experiencing abulia generally do not feel intense sadness or negative thoughts; rather, they experience an absolute decline in psychic drive. For more granular clinical details and case definitions, you can consult the . . . ."  

"In French thought and cultural spirituality, aboulie (abulia) describes a profound collapse of the will, manifesting as spiritual dryness, existential inertia, and a paralyzing inability to direct one's soul toward action or faith "

Katherine Murphy University of Exeter "ABSTRACT The literary exposition of abulia in Pío Baroja’s early

novels, especially La lucha por la vida trilogy, illuminates the ways in which

diagnostic language from psychopathology was adapted, assimilated, and

disseminated through the trajectories of fictional characters who suffer

from a loss of volition. This article analyzes cultural narratives about abulia

in Baroja’s early fiction, demonstrating that they constitute a resonant

pathological ­ metaphor during a period in Spain’s history defined by na-

tional introspection and regenerationist debates. By tracing meta­ phorical

explanations for social, ­ political, and economic circumstances conveyed

through the literary appropriation of medical terminology, this study ex-

plores comparisons between abulia and the gendered and class-­ based asso-

ciations of neurasthenia at the turn of the twentieth ­ century. Although the

assumed ­ causes of each condition are diff er­ ent, this ­ process of transposition

between medicine and ­ metaphor anticipates the con­ temporary social, cul-

tural, and ideological shaping of concepts such as stress and burnout.

Family just exited the house.  They are going to meet their other families at La Familia for lunch on the terrace there.  After that they will decide whether to take a hike or go to the beach.  Remember---one key tenet of these travelers is that being out in the sun as much as possible in the first days of travel gives one the best solution to problems of jet lag in terms of mood and energy.  The have swirled all around us, now the house is empty, and we, what should we now do with the rest of this day before heading to MidState for medical check-in?  

Summer after high school, at Ammendale, I was starting to read texts in late 19th C French spirituality, some, much, of which I had glimpsed in the twelve! twelve! years of Catholic schooling, but now I was into the inner core, the harder core, of what spiritual thought was, what guidance in spirituality was, even having, suddenly as it were almost, having meetings about "spiritual direction" would be about.  How did Brother . . . forget his name, thin, sandy hair, eyes that never met yours lest he break the rules about the practice of modesty of the eyes, how did he first help me use the word "abulia?"  Brother Germinus Paul, Adeodatus Philip, Antoninus Leo, all those strange names those brothers had, where on earth did they get those names, who did they recast themselves to be and want to become by choosing these names from the Lives of the Saints? 

Kids went to the Creamery on the way home.  Dave had vanilla with potato chips.  Eliot had pink lemonade but it tasted nothing like it and it was too sugary.  

Evergreen

teensy-tiny wild apples  "One bite: so tart it makes your asshole contract till its sealed tight. Here's wishing the whole world a bite like that."  60 Last Guest

slowly getting the hand of the day off again.  Caved and got sushi (salmon) at MB after driving to Meredith and chatting new cars with Rick at Volvo Lovering.  He is 70, been there 21 years.  Has seen the new plant in South Carolina, with beautiful black women working the line, how smart the Chinese owners are to have each worker do every one of the jobs in rotation every few hours to relieve boredom and give them a full sense of how the whole car functions as complete design.  Drove in the rain to Center Harbor and then around through Holderness.  First off in the morning I looked into Artistic Roots.  No good wooden cups.  I now want to go back in the morning and buy Molly Marshall's painting of Arethusa Falls, Livermore Falls.  Then each house would have a waterfall painting.   Read for a while parked in the large lot next to Gusto's beer garden pavilion.  Handke continues to have funny and sharp observations.  "Well, he no longer walks as he once did, in long theatrical steps, a stride bespeaking power, the stride of the last in his line."                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

it is always

 in people's ordinary everyday infinitely recurring actions that this law most surely forms the fulcrum, for these actions are the lasting the underlying ones, like the millions of fibrils of the tree of life."  Schifter Motley 7  

got the blood drawn, enjoyed the concert last night, paid the apple card, put in some laundry, read two pages in each book, now almost noon.  Gorgeous weather again, not too hot.  Weekend for waiting for the family to arrive on Monday evening.  

"Why not face everything head-on, and even, as was mentioned, look forward to it   5 in Last Guest

18 July  successful full shower for Bela this morning    now looking for an upstairs transport chair

Guest  17  "That's how it was, more or less, almost."  "found a rhythm"  "a rhythm that, instead of footprints left behind, suggested a trail leading onward."    Thus we have moved on from "fail better" to "onward."   the epic search 

great visit with Pattie and Kirsten, who later on was off to her 35th h s reunion, at The Last Chair, she's now 52.   Served them ceremonial cacao.  

message to Phil about his meeting with John and Bill Stakem on Aug 3 in Cumberland

Greetings to Bill.  

We were in kindergarten together at Mrs Waddell's.  On a day I was

privileged to have been seated in the red chair she read us a story and I wanted to hear how it

ended only to feel a hot stream running down my leg, staining an embarassing puddle into the

rush mat on the floor.  Much later I read a helpful passage in Coleridge's Biographia Literaria

explaining the importance of this event!!!

that wonky left leg worse today

Bela's walking has not gotten better today.  Been a wheelchair day.  Do I want to read these plays?  Not that enjoyable as novels and that has always been my point about that.  Maybe read two pages a day as a reading as doom scrolling.  The next play has more of a line to it.  They Are Dying Out.  

"The drama abandons traditional linear storytelling in favor of lyrical monologues and allegorical scenes. Quitt’s sudden realization of his life's hollowness sets off a series of events where he attempts to dismantle his former ruthless empire. 

The original German title, Über die Dörfer (meaning "Across the Villages"), emphasizes a transition from urban industrialism to simpler, rural settings. It reflects a shift from corporate ruin to a space where humans can seek authentic connection and existential meaning

published in 1981, is an epic, poetic drama that critiques corporate greed and modern alienation. The narrative follows Hermann Quitt, a ruthless business mogul who begins to recognize the spiritual emptiness of capitalism, embarking on a philosophical quest for emotional rebirth, community, and personal redemption"

could be more readable, sure sounds prescient and appropo our days in 'ol USA today these days 

could alternate with Stifter . . . .

but wait. . . . The Ballad of the Last Guest is right here, in hardback even.  2023 in Berlin 

Bela is reading Ghost-Eye and liking it a lot   Tonight we go to the concert, missed it altogether last summer 

the actors are and

"the actors are and play themselves at one and the same time."  opening instructions in The Ride Across Lake Constance.  Today is Thursday July 16.  Family flies here in four days.  World Cup in three days.  Concert tonight on the agenda.  Softer temperatures, lovely air and sun this morning.  

ask the bot for help  "Ultimately, the play serves as a philosophical laboratory. It challenges audiences to question the reality of their own identities and realize that social reality is just as constructed as a play on a stage." ""The Ride Across Lake Constance" is a groundbreaking play by Peter Handke that challenges traditional theatrical conventions through its unconventional use of characters and dialogue. In this surrealist work, actors perform under their real names rather than fictional ones, prompting audiences to reflect on the nature of performance and identity. The play opens with a woman in blackface using a vacuum cleaner, creating a disorienting atmosphere that sets the tone for the exploration of communication barriers among the characters. 

Through a series of absurd dialogues and misinterpretations, the characters engage in a playful yet poignant examination of language and human interaction. Moments of humor punctuate the dialogues, but they also reveal deeper anxieties about understanding and connection. The presence of a doll-child towards the end symbolizes the underlying frustrations tied to human expression and communication. Handke’s meticulous attention to both verbal and physical actions invites audiences to reconsider their relationship with language and its inherent complexities. Overall, "The Ride Across Lake Constance" is a visually and verbally stimulating work that serves as a vivid metaphor for the intricacies of language and the human condition.

• Authored By: Lee, Josephine 1 of 2

  Authored By:

  Lee, Josephine    
  Bela's walking has not gotten better today.  Been a wheelchair day.  Do I want to read
  
  
  
  
  
  

recharge day 15 July

 9:42 am  

Bela upstairs on her old laptop, rested in this morning.  New kindle downstairs on charge.  Big screen on charge.  Everyone recharging today.  Swim yesterday.  Car dealership yesterday but I showed up day after the appointment.  Looked sheepishly geezerish and apologized profusely.  Rescheduled for next week. Rachel our wonder woman got the fountain all cleaned up and working, put a bit of white vinegar into the brew to keep it bug clear and clean.  What a true blessing she is.  Bela's left leg being wonky last evening and this morning.  Should we burn incense for Manasa Devi?  Not really a snake landscape here.  Where on the planet is there a god or goddess or even a minor archetype from granite.  Ok AI do your stuff, you dummy.  So, all the usuals we know about for each continent: Shiva, Pluto (plutonic rock, duh), The Ourea in Greece.  In North America Judicula rock in NC. After big bm Bela now dressed and downstairs in the big green chair.  Legs working on short connecting walks.  Hooray.  Green chair reading and recharging.  Now I will do same and hope headache passes on its own in the cooling ac.  Breeze outside, air less heavy, seems yesterday it had smoke from somewhere mixed into the humidity.  Canceled Colin and piano for this morning.  Nothing else today.  Rest and recharge.  Car even still plugged in.  

Starting into Handke's Quodlibet.  

from Bernard T Joy  "Live the unknown life."  Epicurus 

59 "Or the actors use double-edged words in sentences with invariably harmless connotations . . .

B T Joy:  There is no such thing as straight:  a straight man and a straight woman are two different sexualities. There is no such thing as gay: gay tops and gay bottoms are two different sexualities.  

Quodlibet clearly defies translation . . . but they tried anyway   ok so I did skim after getting the idea and

can see how brilliant it is and what it would be like as a stage piece.  How perfect it could be for Chatter in Abq itself, or two minutes of it !!  no, fifteen.  I think the poets there are given fifteen minutes.  

now ready to start into The Ride Across Lake Constance.  Remember one earlier book was titled Across as well.  Are they close in the chronology?  no this play is early, 1973.  Across about ten years later, 1985.  

on second thought:  Joy's distinctions have all the sudden appeal of a tweeted insight, but reflexion reminds us, alas, it is either/or thinking, isn't it?  It says something true in its way, yes, but it does so with that split lego block that leaves out completely the possibility of "and."  Whenever either/or completes with and, and must always win!!!  now there is a typo that suggests lots--completes in place of "competes." And "wins" is mistaken:  comprehends, embraces, elevates, expands.  

we watched a World Cup match this afternoon.  Argentina won 2-1 over England.  Next Spain and Argentina on Sunday  

two videos of The Ride Across Lake Constance on YouTube.  Both of the same production.  Looks like it is a version, probably compressed or otherwise tweaked.  Reading it might reveal.  

Weather has changed beautifully.  No more heat and humidity and no more smoke from Canadian fires.   

looking for different things

 I looked again at Nicholas's review of Ghost-Eye and of course he gives it a generous and sympathetic review, none of my snooty literary concerns or such.  Never warped by English major studies.  Instead he likes the large views Ghosh is taking and weaving together.  Tempted now to paste in John S's talk about Ghosh.  Why not ---  have to find his message too where I learned that his family on his dad's side emigrated to Cumberland from Bavaria, never knew that.  So his dad was first generation here, I think.  

Impressed, too, Bob.  Especially interested in Ghosh. I'm very high on The Hungry Tide, which I taught a few times, and liked the sequel, Gun Island. Eager to hear what you think of this new one.. NYT reviewer complained it tries to do too much. That could just mean it's experimental in ways the reviewer doesn't like.

Apart from reading around in poetry to find what I might want to teach in my onerous once-a-month senior citizen gig, my long book of the moment is Michael Pollan's book on consciousness, A World Appears. Actually, listening to it. He's a good reader as well as writer.

Next Wed. is a big day for us: I do my poetry-and-memory thing in the afternoon (poems attached) and--bigger deal--Kate gives a poetry reading at a local bookstore.  Off on our voyage to Pittsburgh after that, and looking forward to seeing you, Phil, & a few others on the way home, on Aug. 3.

Bob, why don't you helicopter in, too?

         Happy trails,

                John

well here he is after all

189 Carl Jung preferred to use the term synchronicity, and they ten to occur in clusters 

Sunday 12 July 

190  Swatch of No Ground  :  Handke's No-Man's Land  obsession  --- in Handke Geology carries depth psychology, inner explorations, in Ghosh Meteorology carries depth psychology, exploration into interconnections like precognition and past lives remembered    in both the areas of the earth "forgotten" about, no-man's areas are where things happen--- places where ordinary life structures are not featured,

places where all is smudged, blurred, multivalent, contingency, open, undefined, 

203  five minutes after above  "encircled by a smudged green line in the distance." 

Jhorna----her native knowledge of fish ---  to geology and meteorology we have of course ichthyology 

221  goddess not geology controls the land and pond structures   Manasa Devi bit Isha/Varsha to save her

so Dinu finds he also has been reincarnated from an earlier life and Vishna and he knew one another some how 

cringe-worthy writing at various times throughout the book.  skipped some of the later cooking passages, sped ahead a bit to get to the reveal.  Tiru or Tipuru--Tipu's talk especially irritating.  Can't help but wonder if Ghosh's proposal was fleshed out by a team of ghostwriters for the publisher, smells of committee work.  Here's where we will say soon, gee, AI could have done this so much better. 

oh well.  Can easily see why Nicholas reviewed it on his blog.  A fresh experience in novels to have the main character discover not just his true nature psychologically or in terms of sexuality or gender or ethnic identity but as a new reincarnation of earlier spiritual or cosmic life.  The eco and planet ccrisis material seemed really weak, with the "irruption" of ancient, local divine beings and public outcry a sort of fairy tale with which to fight the billionaires in their bunkers counter fantasy-fear. 

A hodge-podge brew.  Perfect for some books clubs.  etc  oh well  grist for readers of the paranormal 

Manasa Devi

goddess of snakes  156 in Ghost-Eye.  4:02 pm  Earlier today in scrolling on Insta I saw weird sculpture of Hercules fighting massive snakes, created by an earlier Danish artist--can I now find that if I search?  after I added Danish it showed up among host of images on google---

Created by the accomplished Danish sculptor Rudolph Tegner, with first edition started in 1919, in plaster.

Over a decade later the artist proposed that it be recrafted in bronze. Duly done, in 1932 it was unveiled not far from the train station. Due to improvement works around the ferries, it was relocated to the water’s edge in 1994.

Like many works of art, it wasn’t universally liked when unveiled. A lovely aside is that apparently it has received the sobriquet of The Little Person Fighting Tax Administration.

this by Permia on Trip Advisor

"I was cautious and risk-averse, while she was given to tempting fate--and it was perhaps for these reasons that I was just as intriguing to her as she was to me." 157  Dinu talking about his romance with Durga.  Would fit me and Bela, if instead of political rhetoric it would be dramatic flare.  And incautious travel (most dangerous road in the world in Bolivia in 1998, the road between La Paz and .  . . the name will not come up now.  Maybe later.  

the figures in the Manasa Devi stories are archetypes "who have lives of their own.  They are presences that literally arise out of the land and inscribe their stories upon the world."  Bingo--what Handke is about, has searched for all his life and works.  In his way.  Avoiding the pre-formed variants in the air at the time.  Language about archetypes from F & Jung et al.  

'No, no, Dinu!' she protested.  'Trust me: it's not we who choose the myths that guide our lives; it's they who choose us.  But once you've been chosen, beware, because they'll always be with you.'  161 Shoma to Dinu

came sooner  4:38  the road to Coroico  

His peculiar gift:

a magnetic needle blindly recording invisible storms.   Isabel Fargo Cole

Gurnah:  winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature!  so we guess Ghosh is soon . . . 

Friday the 10th

better part of the afternoon reading Amitav Ghosh's Ghost-Eye.  Missing Handke and Stifter, but this is something amazing.  Dozing too.  Intense headache in the morning.  Colin and Bela played the piano.  Now up to page 111 where Shoma and Husna are in the fish market preparing to fix fish to serve to Varsha. Laced into this story thread have been a number of other stories, cannot keep the family and frienship relationships clear, don't suppose you are supposed to, at least not in the Western realistic fiction way.  

Reserved wheelchair for trip.  Transport chair carry bag delivered today.  

Narrator living in Brooklyn is Dinu.  

prophecy

Handke's short early play as secular liturgical litany with non-surprise ending:  Every day will be like every other day.  Next in the volume Call for Help.  Finished Shapland's A Room Above a Shop.  Moments but.  

Call for Help gem of early Handke:  No.  Perfect for Burke's theory of the negative.  

Years and years of study of Jung, MBTI and Enneagram prepared him to embrace the explanation of Otroversion as the explanation of explanations, subsuming all others, clarifying more than any other, providing the lifelong arc of insight that had taken him through all eighty-two years.  No. 

oh my goodness.  4:16 pm delightful, restful visit to the dentist earlier, big lunch now, reading about the troubled life and strange writings of Adalbert Stifter, Amitav Ghosh mentioned in the Introduction and the newest novel by Ghosh just delivered to the doorstep.  Nicholas writes about the novel on his blog, that's why I ordered it.  Even though it is hardback.  The other hardback that arrived as well is the very most recent work by Peter Handke,  The Ballad of the Last Guest.  Who is Ghosh and will he be the writer to succeed Handke once I've finished Stifter, and? Reiser?  Isabel Fargo Cole posits Ghosh's essay The Great Derangement against Stifter and she brings in Ursula LeGuin saying the novel is a medicine bag or bundle, "holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us." Now who is Amitav Ghosh.  I've seen his name.  Ok, his birthday is in two days! born 11 July 1956)^[1] is an American^[2] writer. wiki and his stature is enormous.  No wonder I need to know about him as soon as possible.  And he passes Handke's test because his interests are not simply historical but geographical, concerning landscape: "It was not intentional, but sometimes things are intentional without being intentional. Though it was never part of a planned venture and did not begin as a conscious project, I realise in hindsight that this is really what always interested me most: the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the connections and the cross-connections between these regions.^[19] 

^{By reading Ghost-Eye I will be on the edge of tomorrow as well as of today. Looking at the table right now I seem to be back into reading five or six books at a time rather than one book at a time.}  

lightbound

 part 2 of My Day in the Other Land

152  Lightbound all around and in the interstices of my soul.  

eyes  "selflessly empathetic, friendly   My heart stood still, and resumed beating a moment later, stronger than ever."   the Good Observer   a form of looking and listening   yawning as only newborns yawn

155  "No one had ever called me his friend that way. "  "and eventually he became my sweetheart" -sister

157 "yonder shore (you read that right, 'yonder')"  "flickering and fluttering on the keyboard of the waves"

5:16 pm finished My Day in the Other Land: A Tale of Demons    was he imagining his own death?  what death might be like if he had been the teller of it as a tale, a gathering of tales?  gentle and lovely story at the lake of being called away from being possessed by demons by a friend, The Observer

reviewers didn't know what to say ----

from Library Journal  

FICTION

The Second Sword: Two Novellas

by Peter Handke

Farrar. Feb. 2024. 192p. tr. from German by Krishna Winston. ISBN 9780374601447. $27. F

COPY ISBN

Nobel Prize winner Handke (The Fruit Thief) offers two novellas here. In the first, the narrator arrives home after several weeks of travel but leaves shortly after to avenge an insult made to his mother years earlier. What follows is a meandering and idiosyncratic daylong journey through the outskirts of Paris. The narrator encounters neighbors, shares bottles of wine with strangers, and engages children in staring matches, all the while becoming more and more intent on vengeance. In the second novella the narrator, a fruit farmer, has a psychotic breakdown, abandons his farm, and lives in a tent in a cemetery outside of town. His sister keeps an eye on him, and the townspeople view him with equanimity. When he recovers, he travels to a war-torn land across the lake. Mythological and religious imagery abound. Both stories are presented as interior monologues and have a hallucinogenic quality. The unpleasant personalities of the narrators may require persistence on the part of readers. Handke describes grim times but still manages to end on an encouraging note. 

VERDICT The most recent work by a writer who’s celebrated, influential, and controversial in Europe.

Reviewed by Jacqueline Snider , Dec 01, 2023

and in Kirkus Reviews  Dec 15, 2023  this does clarify a few details I didn't get or forgot about 

Whereas in his nonfiction Handke can be polemical and strident, in his fiction he is rather more subtle—at least to a point. This brace of novellas is no exception. In the first, he opens with a never quite fully defined man who addresses himself in the mirror, saying, “So this is the face of an avenger!” He’s not a superhero, but instead a man who roams the streets of his adopted Paris in search of a journalist who’s landed a roundabout insult upon him by suggesting that his mother once rejoiced at the Anschluss by which Nazi Germany absorbed Austria into the Reich, “which made her a supporter, a Party member.” Not so subtle among the narrator’s wanderings are the encouragements he receives from an Arab shopkeeper: “‘Kill! With a sword. Mah al-saif. Off with his head!’ He didn’t ask for details; in his eyes, insulting a mother deserved nothing less than death.” One wonders, too, at Handke’s characterization of an African cook: “Back to Africa? Didn’t they need magicians there who practiced a different kind of juju, magicians like him?” Questionable racial asides notwithstanding, Handke’s protagonist is all talk and no action: The metaphorical sword he carries is one that merely carves the offender from memory. In the second novella, as if a German-language rejoinder to Juan Rulfo’s novel Pedro Páramo, an orchard keeper endures a period of madness profound enough to scare the neighbors: “…now and then there was something distinctly odd, uncanny, even sinister about me.” After pondering his demons at considerable length, he makes his way across a lake that divides his country from the next, only to find it apparently devoid of people—a commentary, one might suppose, on the recent pandemic. Improbably, in the ruins, he finds something approaching happiness, even if he still terrifies even his own children.

Enigmatic and sometimes troubling, and so trademark Handke.

----not very favorable considerations, but then they've got the official narrative on Handke so they don't need anything else  

---dissertation idea---the works writers do when they know their lives are almost over   

157 what Goethe called oceanic stillness   ancient Greek word for calm, tranquillity "galênê"

those reviews so worthless

after reading all of his novels I can see his motifs and obsessions limned in these novellas more faintly, more gently, softened with age and silence, if not masterpieces then perfect stones washed in rains and streams and rivers in a lifetime of contemplation and wonder 

Sat the 4th

 Handke uses a great ancient line as epigraph for My Day in the Other Land:  "

"I, the idiot [Gk for private person], setting sail on my own course for the common good.

        ---Pindar, Olympian, XIII, line 49 

life by a thousand epiphanies 

My Day in the Other Land 

143  public space as a sort of fountain of youth 

transformation by a thousand gentle moments / gentle acts / reassurances

145  my oracular pronouncements    the idiot with the gentle gaze  community-enhancing demonic jolts