a world without foundations

No, haven't read this but the cover is fantastic. Enough to draw you in. Reminds me, for some odd reason, of The Leopard. Now, all I need to do is find some poor sucker on their way back from the States to the land of the pure.

~~~

"There is no question here," she said, her back turned away from him.

"I didn't think so," he replied.

"Then why did you come," she said teasingly.

"For that I have no answer," he replied, defeatedly.

~~~

Keep oneself in a dream state, so as to think clearer. Straight out of the world. This is Tuesday, where am I? Other people's mid-life crises involve affairs with pretty young things; mine is expressed in a longing for vinyl. Ho hum.

The internet connection is slow. The net is slowing us down, dragging us down to our first impulsive desires so that we can never escape them. There are no second chances, no real choices, once you've moved. Endgame, really. All there rolled in the first.

We've moved deep inland. The sunshine is centuries old. Speak, if you speak, in starts and stutters, like the First Man. You have no answers, no questions. A notepad with plain white pages and some black coffee might help. Hands and face become darker with time. Kashmir a distant forgotten song now. Your voice falters, untrue, a betrayal of sorts. If I had the mind of a monk I could focus on a button an find some meaning there.

Ina  dream, you think your whole life has been a dream [Oh, for pete's sake, cut out the pretentious crap! I hear Herr Dougal say. But then what would be left?].

Then why don't I simply say with Moore "I know that I am in England?" Saying this is meaningful in particular circumstances, which I can imagine.
---Wittgenstein.

My room has become my reality, a sort of warm prison cell (with WiFi). Capote writes like a dream (yes, another book started!). Ford M Ford, on the other hand, is determined to throw spanners and knives into the mechanism. So far: sparks but little comprehension. You wonder if there's a state of mind where the veils lift.

Go in. Go in further.

The tug is freckled with rust. What's it doing here so far inland?
It's a heavy extinguished lamp in the cold.

Find the words in the silence of your life. A gold ring lost in the house, under the sideboards, collecting dust? Stolen? Stuffed in a pocket by a quick hand in front of an unsuspecting eye?

As time passes everything becomes more inexpressible, less familiar. Dry, flat stones to mark the hours, days, the years. Each turning takes you further into bewilderment. Where is this? Is this what November looks like? The strangeness of the country. The traditions and rituals, the habits and dramas, words and gaits, and the trudging slowness of the heart: all of that makes your mind quicker, hungry for north, another North, unheard, unspoken. Each man and woman is another direction, each carries within them a faint recollection of it. The Dark Eden whose memory is love.Whose land is this, we ask (ed)? The shadows are deep, the slum within you. Every place is a frontier, no field has its centre. There is no centre to hold. Hopper was right after all: the frontier is drawn inwards now. They were once just words to you, now they're clearly outlined, worked on by gravity.

'It gets dark, difficult to see.
In there on the moss lie stones.
One of the stones is precious.
It can change everything
it can make the darkness shine.
It is a switch for the whole country.'

~~~

An old Protestant dreams of a time when there is no need for bridges. There is a pure act, a moment that transcends everything else, a stark revelation through the skies that unifies, shocks. The day without bridges is the day he dies, drowning.

(lines from Transtromer)