Two short excerpts from The Tunnel. Rest in Peace, William Gass.
The other large carton unpacked in the same
way - box into box - but the feeling it gave me was the opposite of that
suggested by the endless nest of Russians dollies it otherwise
resembled, for what I was opening was a den of spaces which now covered
the floor near my feet. It was plain that every ten-by-ten-by eight
container contained cubes which were nine by nine by seven, and eight by
eight by six, and seven by seven by five, and so on down to three by
three by two, as well as many smaller, thinly sided ones at every
interval in between, so that out of one box a million more might
multiply, confirming Zeno's view, although at that age, with an
unfurnished mind, I couldn't have known of his paradoxes let alone have
been able to describe one with any succinctness. What I had discovered
is that every space contains more space than the space it contains.
Please read out loud if you can, if you want. Think Gass didn't when he wrote it?
I built, of blocks, a town three hundred thousand strong, whose avenues
were paved with a wine-colored rug and decorated by large leaves
outlined inappropriately in orange, and on this leafage I'd often park
my Tootsie Toy trucks, as if on pads of camouflage, waiting their
deployment against catastrophes which included alien invasions, internal
treachery, and world war. It was always my intention, and my conceit,
to use up, in the town's construction, every toy I possessed: my
electronic train, of course, the Lincoln Logs, old kindergarten
blocks—their deeply incised letters always a problem—the Erector set,
every lead soldier that would stand (broken ones were sent to the
hospital), my impressive array of cars, motorcycles, tanks, and
trucks—some with trailers, some transporting gas, some tows, some
dumps—and my squadrons of planes, my fleet of ships, my big and little
guns, an undersized group of parachute people (looking as if one should
always imagine them high in the sky, hanging from threads), my
silversided submarines, along with assorted RR signs, poles bearing
flags, prefab houses with faces pasted in their windows, small boxes of a
dozen variously useful kinds, strips of blue cloth for streams and
rivers, and glass jars for town water towers, or, in a pinch, jails. In
time, the armies, the citizens, even the streets would divide:
loyalties, friendships, certainties, would be undermined, the city would
be shaken by strife; and marbles would rain down from formerly friendly
planes, steeples would topple onto cars, and shellfire would soon throw
aggie holes through homes, soldiers would die accompanied by my groans,
and ragged bands of refugees would flee toward mountain caves and other
chairs and tables.
Reiteration: Obama continued to dazzle the literati even as he stepped up deportations of illegal immigrants and drone attacks, ruthlessly pursued whistle-blowers, and inaugurated the extrajudicial executions of American citizens. He exhorted African Americans to assume personal responsibility for their plight while absolving bankers of all responsibility for ruining the lives of millions of people. Yet, as with Trump and his loyal and captive audience today, support for Obama remained steadfast among African Americans and white liberals. Obama’s supporters remain as defensive about their president as Trump’s fans are about theirs, even though Obama, kite-surfing with Richard Branson in the wake of Trump’s victory, and reassuring Wall Street with handsomely remunerated speeches, has affirmed his dedication to the one percent. But we should not be surprised and dismayed that Obama’s audacity of hope dwindled into some humdrum self-cherishing, or that Macron is now derided as “president of the rich.” The actual record of personality cults reveals the mendacity of hope. - Mishra
Life in the Between-Screaming-Reiterationsocenes.
Reiteration: We cannot claim that, since nothing makes sense any more, for us works
of art no longer contain narrative or time, nor can we claim that others
might ever be able to find a way toward making sense of things, however
we declare that for us it has proved useless to disregard our
disillusionment and set out toward some nobler goal, toward some higher
power, our attempts keep failing ignominiously. In vain would we talk
about nature, nature does not want this; it is no use to talk about the
divine, the divine does not want this, and anyway, no matter how much we
want to, we are unable to talk about anything other than ourselves, because
we are only capable of talking about history, about the human
condition, about that never-changing quality whose essence carries such
titillating relevance only for us; otherwise, from the viewpoint of that
“divine otherwise,” this essence of ours is, actually, perhaps of no
consequence whatever, forever and aye. - Krasznahorkai.
Re: link below - go listen also to a cut from #s 3, 17, 18, 19, 31, 50, 64, 67, 74, 75, 79. 87, 93.
And everything else, too.
The Quietus and I agree! Best My favorite album of 2017 is:
FOR IT FELT LIKE POWER Carl Phillips
They’d only done what all along they’d come
intending to do. So they lay untouched by regret,
after. The combined light and shadow of passing
cars stutter-shifted across the walls the way,
in summer,
the night moths used to, softly
sandbagging the river of dream against dream’s
return…Listen, it’s not like I don’t get it about
suffering being relative—I get it. Not so much
the traces of ice on the surface of four days’
worth of rainwater in a stone urn, for example,
but how, past the ice,
through the water beneath it,
you can see the leaves—sycamore—where they fell
unnoticed. Now they look suspended, like heroes
inside the myth heroes seem bent on making
from the myth of themselves; or like sunlight, in fog.
The Future: What is more likely, if the possibility of a large shift to the left is
stifled, is cyberpunk dystopia (sadly, so far, minus the cyberwear).
Surveillance police state, vast slums abandoned by corporations and
governments, corporate syndicalist towns and enclaves (already
happening, as tech companies start building housing for their
employees), and so on.
Believe you me: the shift to the left will be stifled.
