'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days
Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.Omar Khayyam, The Rubayyat. Transl. E. Fitzgerald
posted by Geist @ 2:39 am
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"Dawkins speaks scoffingly of a personal God, as though it were entirely obvious exactly what this might mean. He seems to imagine God, if not exactly with a white beard, then at least as some kind of chap, however supersized."
found in London Review of Books
posted by Geist @ 9:51 pm
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'Ich lag', so notierte Hebel am 5. November 1805, 'in dem Hause meiner Mutter in meiner ehemaligen Schlafkammer. In der Mitte derselben stand ein Eichenbaum. Die Decke des Zimmers fehlte, und er reichte unter den Dachstuhl. Auf einzelnen Punkten des Baumes ging Feuer auf, sehr schön anzusehen. Als man nach geloschenem Feuer an der Stelle, wo es ausgeströmt, nachsah, fand man eine grünliche Harzmaterie, die nachher gallertartig wurde, und sehr viele, schmutzige grüne, häßliche Käfer, welche an derselben gierig fraßen.'
'I lay', wrote Hebel on November 5 1805, ' in my former bedchamber in my mother's house . At its centre stood an oak tree. The chamber lacked a roof and the tree reached up to the beams. Some parts of the tree caught fire which was pleasant to look at. Looking at the place from which the fire, now extinguished, had spread, one found greenish resin that later turned gelatinous, as well as a great abundance of green, ugly beetles wich greedily ate the stuff.'
Sebald, Logis in einem Landhaus, p.23
posted by Geist @ 3:30 am
E.M. Cioran, in an attempt to characterize our own existential unhappiness writes about the 'holy sleep of objects', a state negated to us, consumed by consciousness. Will objects still be peaceful if and when they acquire an 'I'? Will they still be objects? Will they have instinctual urges and existential voids? Will they have to resort to the invention of religions?Anthony Aziz & Sammy Cucher, Trajekte Nr.4, 2002, p.12.
posted by Geist @ 7:25 pm
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Dieses kleine Gespenst will dwell in colder climes for some weeks.
posted by Geist @ 10:09 am
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posted by Anonymous @ 1:17 am
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A nice vignette has Bonnard at the Musée du Luxembourg with a friend, it was Vuillard, indeed, if I am not mistaken, whom he sets to distracting the museum guard while he whips out his paint-box and reworks a patch of a picture of his own that had been hanging there for years. The true workers all die in a fidget of frustration.J. Banville, The Sea, 41
posted by Geist @ 12:04 pm
posted by Geist @ 12:01 pm
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J. Banville, The Sea, 41.We are not skivers, we are not lazy. In fact, we are frenetically energetic, in spasms, but we are free, fatally free, of what might be called the curse of perpetuance. We finish things, while for the real worker, as the poet Valéry, I believe it was, pronounced, there is no finishing a work, only the abandoning of it.
posted by Geist @ 11:55 am
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I hate these films the most: 1. Russian Ark, Sokurov 2. There will be blood, PT Anderson 3. Gerry, Van Sant 4. Primer, Carruth 5. Shadow of the Vampire, Mehrige. 6. Dancer in the Dark, von Trier 7. Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick 8. Magnolia, PT Anderson 9. Palermo Shooting, Wenders 10. My Son, my Son, Herzog 11. Cave of forgotten dreams, Herzog
