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

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.'"

'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."

Several Posts and an Etymology

Have you ever mistaken a dream for reality? Because maybe that question's a tired trope but maybe out of dissociation, whether depersonalisation or derealisation or anxiety my memories so often have a completely detached quality indistinguishable at times from the conchoidally fragmented shards of my dreams, but then at times my present also has that detached quality, in fact it all does, my sight seems to recede far behind my retinas, everything is distant and muted, dull echoes of the world spiralling about my skull. And then I get a grip. As if a grip were to be held (haldan), as if there was anything solid to hold onto in the first place - as if that first place existed.
Although I still catch myself heading towards the door for a meeting with a friend I had scheduled until I realised that it was never scheduled, that that friend no longer is around.

But that's not what I came on to write about. More scheduled posts, quite a few. So I didn't recognise those words at first, but a quick google told me that they come from the novel As I Lay Dying. Pretty apt name. Pretty good book as well. The picture was a recent post, I just forgot to tag it, so it blends in with the other old ones. I uploaded it from a scan of of Leaves for someone looking for it in a forum.

I don't know that there's much more to say on the posts. All in all pretty disturbing. I definitely had something about myself in mind when I wrote them - the 'Irrealis' and 'trees' posts that is - and it's not hard to tell what it was. Makes me think of ripples. I think George Eliot remarked on the way every motion of every life will have wider influences; which of course wasn't only her idea (Chaos Theory etc. etc.). But I'm not so sure how much lingers. Did you know that the word 'linger' comes from the Sanskrit dīrghá; to the same root apparently as the Greek ἐν-δελεχής, meaning 'perpetual'? Some people also think it comes via the Gothic tulgus ('firm, persistent'), Old Saxon tulgo ('very'); all of which might connect to the Latin indulgēre ('to indulge'(originally to be 'long-suffering towards'(maybe))). All's very prolix, I'm sorry.


Words linger. I think that much is clear. And I knew that then as I know that now. And even with all that, I know that there is nothing perpetual in lingering.

Okay a new one. I recognised the quote immediately, although it didn't much matter since I actually remember when I scheduled this post to begin with. It's the opening of Danielewski's novella The Fifty Year Sword.

The word 'ghost' comes from the Old Norse geisa to rage, Gothic usgaisjan to terrify (hence we get 'ghast'); outside Germanic the derivatives seem to point to a primary sense ‘to wound, tear, pull to pieces’. It's thought to have pre-Germanic origins but the sources are hazy; the word's haunted by the phantom of some other past, but we don't know the origin. We never do.

It's interesting that the sense 'pull to pieces' comes up. I think of the German der absoluten Zerrissenheit, a phrase Danielewski/Johnny left untranslated in House of Leaves. I also remember the torn up text of the Esau and Jacob chapter, and that old Hebrew word vayitrozzu which comes from the amazing root rzz meaning "to tear apart, to shatter". Finally I remember Sappho, all her destroyed papyrus manuscripts, left littered in rubbish heaps with IOUs and store records, waiting in the dark to be read again, reread in its ghastly half-rotten visage and its fragments, all of which becomes some kind of uncanny beauty that I still can't place my finger on.

Oh, I remember one more thing. A poem I read once, about a ghost in a house , by the sea if I remember. Lingering for days with a friend. More than a friend. More than days. It was a long long time ago. I don't remember any of the words. But I remember having read it, I remember remembering it, and something of that ghost and her house remains or lies dormant or reappears before me now, and I know she never really left me, and she was with me, in every moment, every glance and inhalation, every season, she was always there behind my eyes, on the tip of my tongue, always alone yet never gone.

Leviathan

This round of uni has been bad. There's so much work, and I'm already feeling guilty about not planning for my dissertation. It was meant to be on House of Leaves, which of course is always stunning, immense, sublime, but with all the essays and lectures I already have - and there's so many, it's like a Kafkan fever dream or something, every second that the second hand of a clock crawls across it's circle is an eternity that I feel guilt about not having done enough work: until it all soars up like so many droplets of water, enough to form a Weight, a wave looming above, over me - but with all that I don't know how I can manage to fit the time in to work on the plan. Decoding it's a nightmare. I like that sentence. Decoding it's a nightmare. It is. But you have to suffer for your passions, right?

It doesn't help with all this that there's something in my girlfriend's expression these days. I couldn't describe it but here's my try: like a cargo ship laden with islanders migrating across the Atlantic, heavy, metal creaking below metal, maybe even sinking. Fated to sink. I do believe she's going to break up with me.

I'm genuinely scared of this book. The way it sits there, emitting so many unspoken volumes of thought that I can never grasp, let alone even see as they shimmer past my perception. An unending stream.

Soul Architects

The soul architects slid along the pavements,
sniffing, murmuring between themselves.
They watched for the moment before the storm,
the aftermath of which was their creation,
in such destruction their resurrection,
in such anguish their ^house was built.

The Library

The sun glared on the bare legs of figures spread over Piccadilly Gardens. I don't know how that's relevant, but it seemed a good way to start telling you about something odd that happened yesterday, even though that particular moment happened two days earlier.

I've started volunteering in a library this summer. It's one that specialises in antiques; old, crumbling tome after old, crumbling tome. I get to climb high among the books, like a midshipman scaling the crow's nest. It's an interesting way to look at books. It also gets tiring, spending hours on end reshelving.

I was sat behind a desk taking a break when she came along. Her age was indecipherable. She could have been anywhere from late twenties to early fifties. A lot of the time her age seemed to vary on the lighting, or her mood. Maybe it was just the make up.

She glanced about the place absently, and I watched. Just a habit, I suppose, or perhaps my eyes just happened to plant themselves on her when she turned and caught my eye. I was in trouble now. I was just a re-shelver. Not a receptionist. Hell, it was my second day.

I asked her to sign in on the sheet because that's what the others did when someone came in. When I looked at what she had written later, all I saw was an indecipherable scrawl.

She wanted to know where the section on marriage-advice was. Remember, this library specializes in antiques. One section's even called 'polite literature'. There was no marriage shelf, let alone any self-help section.

Also, her hand was bare. No wedding ring.

Could have been trying to find a book for a friend but she seemed way too personally involved. Her eyes kept flitting about the room, she couldn't settle on her feet. I don't think she ever stopped moving after she entered. She scratched at an arm a lot too, and all while giving the saddest smile.

I didn't notice any of it at the time, but I knew then she was acting oddly, even if I couldn't explain how. None of it bothered me too much beyond the usual parameters of disliking social contact. What really made me hesitate was when she turned to leave. It took some convincing until she believed me when I told her that we didn't have that kind of book. And then she'd gone on a tangent about how I should be careful using the ladders, that I could fall easily.

Anyway, when she started moving off, she did this sort of stretch, and her shapeless beige shirt lifted up slightly. Creeping out of the hem of her jeans was a faded sliver of grey and white. A tattoo. A cartoon rabbit. A Thumper tattoo.

House of Leaves

I'm rereading a book today, it's one of my favorites. I might do a few posts about it.