Archive for the 'ecce umbilicus' Category

Pulling “Weeds” from the Library

Friday, January 12th, 2007

My local, The Mouldy Tome (aka the public library), is weeding out books in preparation for a move. More space, fewer booksdont ask me.

Last week I went to get Gyorgy Faludys book on Erasmus, which I enjoyed until circumstances beyond my control made it necessary to return half-read.

It wasnt there. In fact there was no record of it in the catalog. The fellow at the information desk wondered if it had been an interlibrary loan.

But no my good man! Erasmus was waiting for me right there between staid old Emerson and Doña Catalin de Erauso, the 17th century transvestite soldier of fortune whos further acquaintance I hope soon to make, assuming she too doesnt fall victim to the purge.

The Purge!

The purge which has removed poor Desiderius Roterodamus from the light and promise of open stacks, ferried him through various obscure corridors, and deposited him in some black holeif not the abysmal municipal landfill, then the limbo of a cardboard box awaiting dubious redemption at the friends of the library book-sale. The landfill? God forbid!

And so I found myself inside the dumpster, sifting the culls. That some of these books had found their rightful place at last is beyond question. (I point you to A Guide to Nevada’s Brothels.) Others, however, were obviously not cut out for their new role as solid waste. The Complete Sherlock Holmes, The Federalist Papers, Cold Mountain, Goodbye Columbus, A book of essays on Dostoevsky, these and others have a new home on my shelves. I hope I can say the same for Faludy’s Erasmus when the book-sale rolls around.

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Ode to Apollo

Thursday, May 25th, 2006

William Shaw has been kind enough to post some of my chicken scratch at his wonderful site: Un-made-up. If you’re linking from there, welcome to my mixed-up files. Please feel free to comment if the spirit moves you.
And whoever you are, go read Shaw’s fascinating, undercover account of the cult life, Spying in Guruland. (Here’s my write-up on it.)

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“Diary” by Pier Paolo Pasolini

Friday, April 28th, 2006

DIARY

Grown up? Never—never—! Like existence itself which never matures staying always green from splendid day to splendid day— I can only stay true to the stupendous monotony of the mystery. That’s why I’ve never abandoned myself To happiness, That’s why In the anxiety of my sins I’ve never been touched By real remorse. Equal, always equal, To the inexpressible At the very source Of what I am.

~trans. L. Ferlinghetti & F. Valente

Pasolini on hilltop

In high school, I made a similar promise to myselfnever to grow up. All the kids around me were stressing about getting into the best colleges on route to the best careers. If thats what being an adult is about, count me out, I thought. I was into playing cards and basketball, making and looking at art, hanging out with my girlfriendnot test scores, and certainly not career paths. Maybe I was naive; maybe I was wise beyond my years; maybe I was a spoiled brat who didnt need to stress about a career. In any case, the moment I made that vow (I remember it vividly) was an important one for me. Ive never yet had reason to regret it. (I wonder if my high school buddies who went into insurance, or retail apartment development can say the same about their choices.) I was determined to always be mindful of the inexpressible/ at the very source/ of what I am as opposed to pinning my future to, as Pasolini puts it in another poem, the flimsy crust of our world/ over the naked universe. The detachment expressed in Diary, the steering a middle course between happiness and despair, is another idea with which I sympathize. Happiness is conditionaldependent on certain factors outside of our control (Buddhist theory). So paradoxically, even happiness causes suffering when we abandon ourselves to it. By which I mean forgetting its transient nature. If, in a moment of happiness, we recall that this too will pass, we wont despair when the conditions for that happiness disappear. Its good, I thinkas Pasolini suggeststo be similarly detached in our moments of guilt or grief. This too will pass… Thats just about the best thing I ever learned.

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Reading Program

Thursday, April 27th, 2006

Not that anyone cares, but here’s a list of books that I never got around to writing up. If I do one a week it will only take four months.

1. An End to All Suffering: The Buddha in the World by Pankaj Mishra 2004
2. Spying in Guruland by William Shaw 1994
[Edit: Ha! one down, seventeen to go! ^_^]
3. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera 1984
4. Solaris by Stanislaw Lem 1961
5. Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar 1963
6. Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges 1962
7. Pornografia by Witold Gombrowicz 1966
8. The Moviegoer by Walker Percy 1960
9. On Socialist Realism & The Trial Begins by Abram Tertz 1960
10. The Hive by Jose Camilo Cela 1953
11. Nightwood by Djuna Barnes 1937
12. Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw 1903
13. The Ambassadors by Henry James 1903
14. The Sacred Fount by Henry James 1901
15. Kim by Rudyard Kipling 1901
16. The Saga of Gösta Berling by Selma Lagerlöf 1891
17. On Love by Stendhal 1822
18. Eugene Onegin by Aleksandr Pushkin 1820

I also made a list of books that I’ve started and then abandoned over the years. (It’s too long to post here.) Let’s see how many of them I can get through by the end of the year. They’re not bad books; I’m just a mercurial reader.

Finally, this year I’ve read books by authors from all of the countries shown in red on this map. I’m trying to spread the red around in 2006, but not doing a very good job so far.

apr2506

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