Two Hours and a Bit

I have two hours to read on Saturday-thirty five minutes extra if one includes the tube journey. No time to absorb what I'm reading, just see what catches my eye and transcribe it like a clerk.

H.P.L.
At the intersection of these channels of communication, man has erected giant ugly metropolises where each person, isolated in an anonymous apartment, in a building identical to the others , believes absolutely that he is the centre of the world and the measure of all things. But beneath the warrens of these burrowing insects, very ancient and powerful creatures are awakening from their slumber.

(on New York):
Coming for the first time upon the town, I had seen in the sunset from a bridge, majestic above its waters, its incredible peaks and pyramids rising flower-like and delicate from pools of violet mist to play with the flaming-golden clouds and the first stars of evening. Then it had lighted up window by window above the shimmering tides where lanterns nodded and glided and deep horns bayed weird harmonies., and itself became a starry firmament of dream redolent of faery music.

This ecstasy soon gives way to:
...elephantiasis of climbing, spreading stone where the moon had hinted loveliness and elder magic.; and the throngs of people who seethed through flume-like streets were squat , swarthy strangers with hardened faces and narrow eyes.

And soon:
Houllebecq:
'Dressed in their rigid, rather grim clothes, accustomed to repressing their emotions and desires; the Protestant Puritans of New England may at times have succeeded in forgetting their animal origin...But in the presence of "Negroes" he [Lovecraft] experiences an irrepressible reaction of his nervous system. Their vitality, their apparent lack of complexes or inhibitions, terrifies and repulses him. They dance in the street, listen to music , they talk out loud. ..Life seems to amuse them, which is worrying. Because life is itself evil.'

One comes away from that feeling somewhat dirty, tainted. Reminds me of what K.Clark said about New York: it isn't ugly-from a distance. If all that complexity produces is darkness then a simple innocence is to be infinitely preferred. This idea of impurity and danger was to have disastrous consequences for the 20 th century...

One hour left:
Badiou on Holderin:

'And fidelity has not been given to our soul as a vain present
And not for nothing was in
Our souls loyalty fixed.'

The homeland (childhood?) is what always escapes , what one always loves, loves to escape. The homeland would be a desert if it didn't already contain the irruption of place into space or the shadows of departure; already the land foretold of those who would desert her; she contained all possibilities: wanderings and migrations, homecomings and heartaches. The land would not be the land if it did not awaken us to our own strangeness, our alienation from the earth.

'There is a yearning that seeks the unbound. But much
Must be retained. And fidelity is needed.
Forward, however, and back we will
Not look. Be lulled and rocked as
On a swaying skiff of the sea. '

A crooked path, a serpent's dream, a difficult freedom; without God are there but empty circles? Nature is not 'objective' or 'the given'-but a gift , an opening up, the very possibility of opening ..an outstretched hand.

We owe God a death.
Religio =debt, 'Day of Judgement' = Day of repayment.

From an interview with Larkin:
'What about Asherby and I'd say I prefer strawberry., that sort of thing. I suppose everyone has his own dream of America. A writer once said to me, If you ever go to America, go either to the East Coast or the West Coast, the rest is a desert full of bigots.

Mercifully, the tube journey is spent reading the delightfully charming Molly Hughes and all dark thoughts are dispelled once again...as simple as that. So there you are!