The depth of reality, imagined on the surface.
'Individuality resides in the way links are made.'
---Anne Carson.
For the life of 'me', I can't string anything together.
Out of solidarity for the working classes (yeah, you just knew such pretentious shit would land you in trouble) I decided to carry all the bags myself (potatoes, onions...hobbling down the street like an old stumpy Russian peasant). By the time I went to sleep my back was done for. I could feel the muscles twisting into a knot, deep down next to the bone, and imagined the pain the shape of a small Turkish glass. A small movement would bring instant but temporary relief, as if the body, suspended for the briefest of moments in the air, forgot itself but then through contact and breathing the pain returns.
Outside it is grey and drizzly by 4 o'clock. Only anther three hours and Ill try and haul myself up. My back, so uncommented upon! A silver knife sinks into golden butter.
Do we recognize the pain of others? It's so boring after a while and we take delight in returning to our own comfortable little room, so to speak, so not to speak. My little finger, and sod China! (Hume). In the common pain and suffering of the human body do we cease to be individuals? And the human heart? Can that be translated, authenticated?
'What is life, after all, but a caravan of lifelike forgeries'
---Robert Coover.
'The pain writhes spirally...The pain was a pyramid made of diamond; it was an intense light; it was the hottest fire, the coldest chill, the highest peak...'
---Jean Safford.
To travel lightly, not remember too much, is to live with fewer mistakes since there is no turning off the main road..there is no main road, only side-roads, secondary roads and diversions. What accompanies you is a vague sense of episodes strung loosely together like beads on a thread, ready to fly off in all directions at the slightest tug. Then some child will pick up the beads and count them but it won't be the same thing. The danger of a shallow life is, of course, that you do not see it as a shallow life. Self-sufficiency. Every object around you is familiar and, you fool yourself into believing a reflection of your personality, a marker of where you've traveled. In truth, you've never really left your room. What is unknown is unthought.
Late night, you watch a foreign t.v. show where everyone seems to be laughing uncontrollably, the spasms of the body, the fake gestures of the hands like a throwback to the histrionics of the silent movies, the extended moment in a conversation that is unreal. Turn the volume down and drift into sleep, you think to yourself. This is, you pause to consider, how another person or God might see your own life playing out.
Centuries of faith, in stone and wood, prayer and imagination, given over to a bit of silly prancing around in bright red shorts.
In the given time answer the following questions. Answer all questions in the available space. Answers written on the back of these sheets will NOT be considered.
But who knows how much time is given? Day to day. Nothing becomes clearer without the well known horizons, the necessary frameworks, the knowledge of the seasons and the ability to label and categorize events under the right time.
There is this line. You can take it or leave it. Is it a way out? I don't know. But there won't be a 'radical calm'; not for us anyway, you suspect.
She would try and live life one day at a time, like an alcoholic-drink, don't drink, drink. Perhaps she should take drugs.
---Lorrie Moore.
It won't work. You can be drunk for ten years and find yourself in a stupor but should sober up by thirty. What answers do you have, how much time remains, what space available? Like a fool, you ask: what was the question again?
'Individuality resides in the way links are made.'
---Anne Carson.
For the life of 'me', I can't string anything together.
Out of solidarity for the working classes (yeah, you just knew such pretentious shit would land you in trouble) I decided to carry all the bags myself (potatoes, onions...hobbling down the street like an old stumpy Russian peasant). By the time I went to sleep my back was done for. I could feel the muscles twisting into a knot, deep down next to the bone, and imagined the pain the shape of a small Turkish glass. A small movement would bring instant but temporary relief, as if the body, suspended for the briefest of moments in the air, forgot itself but then through contact and breathing the pain returns.
Outside it is grey and drizzly by 4 o'clock. Only anther three hours and Ill try and haul myself up. My back, so uncommented upon! A silver knife sinks into golden butter.
Do we recognize the pain of others? It's so boring after a while and we take delight in returning to our own comfortable little room, so to speak, so not to speak. My little finger, and sod China! (Hume). In the common pain and suffering of the human body do we cease to be individuals? And the human heart? Can that be translated, authenticated?
'What is life, after all, but a caravan of lifelike forgeries'
---Robert Coover.
'The pain writhes spirally...The pain was a pyramid made of diamond; it was an intense light; it was the hottest fire, the coldest chill, the highest peak...'
---Jean Safford.
To travel lightly, not remember too much, is to live with fewer mistakes since there is no turning off the main road..there is no main road, only side-roads, secondary roads and diversions. What accompanies you is a vague sense of episodes strung loosely together like beads on a thread, ready to fly off in all directions at the slightest tug. Then some child will pick up the beads and count them but it won't be the same thing. The danger of a shallow life is, of course, that you do not see it as a shallow life. Self-sufficiency. Every object around you is familiar and, you fool yourself into believing a reflection of your personality, a marker of where you've traveled. In truth, you've never really left your room. What is unknown is unthought.
Late night, you watch a foreign t.v. show where everyone seems to be laughing uncontrollably, the spasms of the body, the fake gestures of the hands like a throwback to the histrionics of the silent movies, the extended moment in a conversation that is unreal. Turn the volume down and drift into sleep, you think to yourself. This is, you pause to consider, how another person or God might see your own life playing out.
Centuries of faith, in stone and wood, prayer and imagination, given over to a bit of silly prancing around in bright red shorts.
In the given time answer the following questions. Answer all questions in the available space. Answers written on the back of these sheets will NOT be considered.
But who knows how much time is given? Day to day. Nothing becomes clearer without the well known horizons, the necessary frameworks, the knowledge of the seasons and the ability to label and categorize events under the right time.
There is this line. You can take it or leave it. Is it a way out? I don't know. But there won't be a 'radical calm'; not for us anyway, you suspect.
She would try and live life one day at a time, like an alcoholic-drink, don't drink, drink. Perhaps she should take drugs.
---Lorrie Moore.
It won't work. You can be drunk for ten years and find yourself in a stupor but should sober up by thirty. What answers do you have, how much time remains, what space available? Like a fool, you ask: what was the question again?
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