"Solitude. Hailey's bare feet.And all her patience now assumes."

"Sometimes
I'm terrified of my heart
of its constant hunger
for whatever it is it wants
the way it stops
(and starts)"

"Communication is more than just words, communication is architecture; because of course it is quite obvious that a house which would be built without that Will - that desire to communicate - would not look the way your house looks today."

“There is not space in the universe
to tell the universe to the universe.
Therein lies the peculiar beauty
and the sadness of stories:
to tell it all without all at all.”

"Forests have boundaries too, in our imaginings of them."

About to sleep

Couldn't sleep and I checked the blog to find all these new scheduled posts.

They're kind of creeping me out. The Everlasting Whims & Everlasting Loss is of course a quote from Only Revolutions. Page 180, Sam's side. I actually prefer, having read and reread the book several times, Sam's writing. I feel like Danielewski wrote him first, but who knows. I'll have to try reading it in reverse order, see if it makes a difference. I just love some of his phrases moments.
"

Because I am too soon.
Because without You, I am only revolutions
Of ruin.

I'm the prophecy prophecies pass.
Why need dies at last.
How oceans dry. Islands drown.
And skies of salt crash to the ground.
I turn the powerful. Defy the weak.
Only Grass grows down abandoned streets.

 "
The August 14th post is [an]other quote(s) from The Fifty Year Sword, also by Mark Z Danielewski. I didn't read the rest. I'm sorry. My eyes just float over the words.


I think I'm getting worse again.

It was a sunny day, but it doesn't feel like summer. It hasn't ever felt like summer. A spring, followed by a premature fall into something morose and grey. Old cobbled streets, coated in dust. Never seen. I stayed in my room all day. Remember that dissertation I started way too early, or at least tried to? Well I actually need to work on it this year. Reasons burn need sometimes. I just feel hollow. Like an empty jug, with no handle, no clay, nothing, unsculpted.

Lost sensations still have my fingertips tingling. My throat aches. I don't know if I can continue. I don't know why I want to. Or if I want to.

"-How iz forever?

       -Taking everyone."

I do not forget the words you spoke to Patroklus

I remember that Nestor lives in Pylos by its epithet 'sandy'. Sandy Pylos, home of godly Nestor by the ocean. How brilliant that I find some echo of the same mnemonics that were originally found in the oral poetry to hypnotise the listeners, to help the bard recall the tale he or she murmured, a tale that warped in each telling - which is not to say was deformed, but rather mutated, like some rogue cell, the very point, essence of infinity that is to unravel from it in lush, diaphanous  fractals. As when "the universe was unfolded from its state of infinite destiny.*


*Typo: 'destiny' should read 'density.'"

"A new novel by Danielewski requires a new way of reading.

A different angle of entry, if you will."

'Though here's a song they might of sung'

"Mad woman on another tour;
Everything she is she spits on the floor,
An old man tells me she's sicker than the rest,
God I've never been afraid like this."

I don't know about any of those. Okay well the second one down is from Only Revolutions, page 58. I found an awesome website that lets you search the text, like an online index. Pretty helpful for pinning down half-recalled words.

I read an interview with Danielewski the other day:

"Yeah, and I think that’s where it moves beyond just writing into a more vocational way of living. It encourages a practice of being open, of listening, and most of all finding a way of being comfortable about being uncertain, because it’s impossible to tell at a certain moment. Now and then you get these little gems, but often things that suddenly are important aren’t recognized as being important until maybe even a couple of years later. Say you had a moment, and you were open to the vitality of the story that was being told, the word that was being conveyed, but you didn’t necessarily place it somewhere, and nonetheless, two rewrites later, suddenly this moment comes to life, and that’s how it happens."

I have no idea when I must've wrote 'Chaos Magic'. It seems too calm for it to have been done that late on. It seems too calm in general. In fact none of these are using brackets, so I guess they were done a bit earlier or later than the initial bulk of scheduled posts I had made.

Insomnia & The Familiar

That's another Shakespeare quote, I recognised it immediately. It's from his poem 'The Rape of Lucrece', I read it a while ago and those lines always struck me particularly.

Insomnia's a bitch. When you feel like dying every day, you begin to look forward to those hours each night you get to spend in complete oblivion (provided there's no nightmares. Although, at least with nightmares, the fear you have is never really localised. That might be the same with the panic attacks awake, actually, but in the dream you're only so lucid, and if you suffer the suffering rolls over you like a wave. It throws you to your feet, but at least you're too dazed to get properly scared. And maybe fear is the most painful part of pain.).

So when you're up at five and the terribly thin curtains are breached, and things start to move, that's the worst part. Or maybe it's when you realise you won't fall asleep. I don't know. The whole thing is awful. And then in the day you're practically delerious. I guess that might feel like a reprieve, but it's not. It's like an ache all through your skull, and how I was back then, I didn't want to be in too much of a stupor to read, to continue my work.

Not a great poem I wrote, I admit; but then, I must have been half-asleep at the time. Danielewski's new book, The Familiar came out two days ago. I picked it up at a store on the day it came out, but I haven't had a chance to read it since then. I'm excited. It's the first volume of a twenty-seven volume series, and this book alone is 880 pages. It's sat on my desk now. I think I'll start reading, maybe put up a few posts on it.

The book has an awesome trailer which you can see here.

The Fifty Year Sword, Page 62

                                           "and she
felt bleak,
                "as if a thousand
                                            "vengeances
upon vengeances were dicing her
suddenly
                "into hail.