Even the next era has no right to judge anything if it lacks the ability to contemplate the past without hatred or envy. But even that judgment would be one-sided, for every subsequent era is the fruit of previous periods and carries much of the past with it. It is fortunate if something of the ancestors lives on in it and continues to be loved and protected; only then does the past become fruitful and effective.
— Rilke, Early Journals
Researchers found that suicide rates drop after U.S. presidential elections in states that support the winning candidate, and that suicides drop even further in states that support the loser. It was determined that stock-market returns in predominantly Muslim countries are nine times higher during the holy month of Ramadan than they are the rest of the year. Girls with younger brothers lose their virginity later, and girls with older brothers experience menarche later. Women who drink regular beer are at increased risk for psoriasis, but women who drink light beer are not. A man’s likelihood of picking up a female hitchhiker was correlated with her breast size, and a man’s likelihood of infidelity to a female partner was correlated with his financial dependence on her. A new species of titi monkey, which has a bushy red beard and mates for life, was discovered in Colombia. American students exhibit an inferior understanding of the “equals” sign. At Stonehenge, archeologists discovered a second henge; in the Sistine Chapel, a brain stem and spinal cord were discovered in God’s neck; and on Bulgaria’s Sveti Ivan island, the bones of John the Baptist were unearthed. It was revealed that the human buttocks tan poorly.
Three liger cubs were born in a Taiwanese zoo whose keepers had allowed an African lion and a Bengal tigress to cohabitate. Previous attempts to separate the couple, said the zoo’s owner, had made the lion “very angry.” Beavers reintroduced to Scotland through the Scottish Beaver Trial had produced offspring, the first beavers to be born in the country in 400 years. Polar bears were eating the eggs of barnacle geese, and both Greenlandic polar bears and Svalbardian glaucous gulls were suffering from industrial contamination. Moose malnourished in childhood are at greater risk of developing arthritis in old age. Female mongooses were found to coordinate their litters in order to keep other mongoose mothers too busy to kill rivals’ pups. Adult moongooses were seen teaching their children how to open plastic Easter eggs filled with rice and fish. Neurologists identified the regions of the brain responsible for baby talk. Scientists concluded that the female ancestor of all human beings lived 200,000 years ago and that frogs learned to leap before they learned to land.
In Nevada, Christians prayed for the relocation of Bubba, a 700-pound black bear with a bulletproof skull who steals peanut butter from the poor. Ethnoprimatologists recommended ways for villagers in Guinea to avoid or defuse chimpanzee attacks. “Keep calm,” advised Kimberley Hockings of the New University of Lisbon. “Try not to scream.” Five hundred people were attacked and four children were killed by Peruvian vampire bats. The brains of gregarious locusts are 30 percent larger than those of solitarious locusts of the same species, according to neuroscientists who bred the insects over three generations. Aphids living on plants that produce the same pheromone whereby the insects announce that ladybugs are eating them become inured to the smell and are themselves likelier to be eaten by ladybugs. Pea aphids will drop to the ground in the presence of a lamb’s breath. Optimism was observed among happy pigs.
The philosopher may sometimes love the infinite; the poet always loves the finite. For him the great moment is not the creation of light, but the creation of the sun and moon.
— G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday
With minds still hovering above their testicles
Certain poets here and in France
Still sigh over established and natural fact
Long since fully discussed by Ovid.
They howl. They complain in delicate and exhausted metres
That the twitching of three abdominal nerves
Is incapable of producing a lasting Nirvana.
— Ezra Pound, Poems from Blast
October 13. “There she blows,” was sung out from the mast-head.
“Where away?” demanded the captain.
“Three points off the lee bow, sir.”
“Raise up your wheel. Steady!”
“Steady, sir.”
“Mast-head ahoy! Do you see that whale now?”
“Ay ay, sir! A shoal of Sperm Whales! There she blows! There she breaches!”
“Sing out! sing out every time!”
“Ay ay, sir! There she blows! there — there — thar she blows — bowes — bo-o-o-s!”
“How far off?”
“Two miles and a half.”
“Thunder and lightning! so near! Call all hands!”
— J. Ross Browne’s Etchings of a Whale Cruize. 1846
“Extracts,” Moby-Dick
You said live out loud, and die you said lightly,
and over and over again you said be.
But before the first death came murder.
A fracture broke across the rings you’d ripened.
A screaming shattered the voices
that had just come together to speak to you,
to make of you a bridge
over the chasm of everything.
And what they have stammered ever since
are fragments
of your ancient name.
— Rilke, The Book of Hours I, 9
Are there relations of the heart that embrace what is most cruel for the sake of wholeness? For the world is only world when everything is included.
— Rilke, Letter to Marianne von Goldschmidt-Rothschild
December 5, 1914
I love you, gentlest of Ways,
who ripened us as we wrestled with you.
You, the great homesickness we could never shake off,
you, the forest that always surrounded us,
you, the song we sang in every silence,
you dark net threading through us.
You began yourself so greatly
on that day when you began us.
— Rilke, From The Book of Hours I, 25
Shadows are falling and I’m running out of breath
Keep me in your heart for awhile
If I leave you it doesn’t mean I love you any less
Keep me in your heart for awhile
When you get up in the morning and you see that crazy sun
Keep me in your heart for awhile
There’s a train leaving nightly called when all is said and done
Keep me in your heart for awhile
Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-li-li-lo
Keep me in your heart for awhile
Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-li-li-lo
Keep me in your heart for awhile
Sometimes when you’re doing simple things
around the house
Maybe you’ll think of me and smile
You know I’m tied to you like the buttons on
your blouse
Keep me in your heart for awhile
Hold me in your thoughts, take me to your dreams
Touch me as I fall into view
When the winter comes keep the fires lit
And I will be right next to you
Engine driver’s headed north to Pleasant Stream
Keep me in your heart for awhile
These wheels keep turning but they’re running out
of steam
Keep me in your heart for awhile
Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-li-li-lo
Keep me in your heart for awhile
Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-li-li-lo
Keep me in your heart for awhile
Keep me in your heart for awhile
— Warren Zevon
I was sitting in the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel
I was listening to the air conditioner hum
It went
Mmmm mmmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm
mmm mmm mmmm mm mm mmmm mmmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm
mmm mmm mmmm mmmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm
mmm mmm mmmm mm mm mmmm mmmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm
mmm mmm mmmm mmmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm
mmm mmm mmmm mm mm mmmm mmmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm
mmm mmm mmmm mmmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm
mmm mmm mmmm mm mm mmmm mmmm mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm
Look away down Gower Avenue
Look away . . .
— Warren Zevon
The last leaves dance as they fall. It takes a big dose of insensitivity to confront autumn.
— E. M. Cioran, “That Fatal Perspicacity”
I.
A point is that which has no parts.
II.
A line is length without breadth.
III.
The extremities of a line are points.
IV.
A straight or right line is that which lies evenly between its extremities.
V.
A surface is that which has length and breadth only.
VI.
The extremities of a surface are lines.
Thirty-six times and a hundred times
the artist portrayed the mountain.
Now pulled away, now compelled
(thirty-six times and a hundred times)
to return with glad impatience
to that ungraspable one.
To see it rise there, bold in outline,
withholding nothing of its majesty.
Out of each day emerging over and over,
letting the unrepeatable nights
fall away as though too small.
Each glimpse exhausted in an instant,
form ascending into form,
far off, impassive, wordless —
then suddenly the revelation
of an awareness lifting in the sky.
— Rilke, New Poems
AUGUST 6 [1914].
What will be my fate as a writer is very simple. My talent for portraying my dreamlike inner life has thrust all other matters into the background; my life has dwindled dreadfully, nor will it cease to dwindle. Nothing else will ever satisfy me. But the strength I can muster for that portrayal is not to be counted upon: perhaps it has already vanished forever, perhaps it will come back to me again, although the circumstances of my life don’t favor its return. Thus I waver, continually fly to the summit of the mountain, but then fall back in a moment. Others waver too, but in lower regions, with greater strength; if they are in danger of falling, they are caught up by the kinsman who walks beside them for that very purpose. But I waver on the heights; it is not death, alas, but the eternal torment of dying.
— From Kafka’s Diary
The place, I’ll make it all the same, I’ll make it in my head, I’ll draw it out of my memory, I’ll gather it all about me, I’ll make myself a head, I’ll make myself a memory, I have only to listen, the voice will tell me everything, tell it to me again, everything I need, in dribs and drabs, breathless, it’s like a confession, a last confession, you think it’s finished, then it starts off again, there were so many sins, the memory is so bad, the words don’t come, the words fail, the breath fails, no, it’s something else, an indictment, a dying voice accusing, accusing me, you must accuse someone, a culprit is indispensable, it speaks of my sins, it speaks of my head, it says it’s mine, it says that I repent, that I want to be punished, better than I am, that I want to go, give myself up, a victim is essential, I have only to listen, it will show me my hiding-place, what it’s like, where the door is, if there’s a door, and whereabouts I am in it, and what lies between us, how the land lies, what kind of country, whether it’s sea, or whether it’s mountain, and the way to take, so that I may go, make my escape, give myself up, come to the place where the axe falls, without further ceremony, on all who come from here, I’m not the first, I won’t be the first, it will best me in the end, it has bested better than me, it will tell me what to do, in order to rise, move, act like a body endowed with despair, that’s how I reason, that’s how I hear myself reasoning, all lies, it’s not me they’re calling, not me they’re talking about, it’s not yet my turn, it’s someone else’s turn, that’s why I can’t stir, that’s why I don’t feel a body on me, I’m not suffering enough yet, it’s not yet my turn, not suffering enough to be able to stir, to have a body, complete with head, to be able to understand, to have eyes to light the way, I merely hear, without understanding, without being able to profit by it, by what I hear, to do what, to rise and go and be done with hearing, I don’t hear everything, that must be it, the most important things escape me, it’s not my turn, the topographical and anatomical information in particular is lost on me, no, I hear everything, what difference does it make, the moment it’s not my turn, my turn to understand, my turn to live, my turn of the life-screw, it calls that living, the space of the way from here to the door, it’s all there, in what I hear, somewhere, if all has been said, all this long time, all must have been said, but it’s not my turn to know what, to know what I am, where I am, and what I should do to stop being it, to stop being there, that’s coherent, so as to be another, no the same, I don’t know, depart into life, travel the road, find the door, find the axe, perhaps it’s a cord, for the neck, for the throat, for the cords, or fingers, I’ll have eyes, I’ll see fingers, it will be the silence, perhaps it’s a drop, find the door, open the door, drop, into the silence, it won’t be I, I’ll stay here, or there, more likely there, it will never be I, that’s all I know, it’s all been done already, said and said again, the departure, the body that rises, the way, in colour, the arrival, the door that opens, closes again, it was never I, I’ve never stirred, I’ve listened, I must have spoken, why deny it, why not admit it, after all, I deny nothing, I admit nothing, I say what I hear, I hear what I say, I don’t know, one or the other, or both, that makes three possibilities, pick your fancy, all these stories about travellers, these stories about paralytics, all are mine, I must be extremely old, or it’s my memory playing tricks, if only I knew if I’ve lived, if I live, if I’ll live, that would simplify everything, impossible to find out, that’s where you’re buggered, I haven’t stirred, that’s all I know, no, I know something else, it’s not I, I always forget, I resume, you must resume, never stirred from here, never stopped telling stories, to myself, hardly hearing them, hearing something else, listening for something else, wondering now and then where I got them from, was I in the land of the living, were they in mine, and where, where do I store them, in my head, I don’t feel a head on me, and what do I tell them with, with my mouth, same remark, and what do I hear them with, and so on, the old rigmarole, it can’t be I, or it’s because I pay no heed, it’s such an old habit, I do it without heeding, or as if I were somewhere else, there I am far again, there I am the absentee again, it’s his turn again now, he who neither speaks nor listens, who has neither body nor soul, it’s something else he has, he must have something, he must be somewhere, he is made of silence, there’s a pretty analysis, he’s in the silence, he’s the one to be sought, the one to be, the one to be spoken of, the one to speak, but he can’t speak, then I could stop, I’d be he, I’d be the silence, I’d be back in the silence, we’d be reunited, his story the story to be told, but he has no story, he hasn’t been in story, it’s not certain, he’s in his own story, unimaginable, unspeakable, that doesn’t matter, the attempt must be made, in the old stories incomprehensibly mine, to find his, it must be there somewhere, it must have been mine, before being his, I’ll recognize it, in the end I’ll recognize it, the story of the silence that he never left, that I should never have left, that I may never find again, that I may find again, then it will be he, it will be I, it will be the place, the silence, the end, the beginning, the beginning again, how can I say it, that’s all words, they’re all I have, and not many of them, words fail, the voice fails, so be it, I know that well, it will be the silence, full of murmurs, distant cries, the usual silence, spent listening, spent waiting, waiting for the voice, the cries abate, like all cries, that is to say they stop, the murmurs cease, they give up, the voice begins again, it begins trying again, quick now before there is none left, no voice left, nothing left but the core of murmurs, distant cries, quick now and try again, with the words that remain, try what, I don’t know, I’ve forgotten, it doesn’t matter, I never knew, to have them carry me into my story, the words that remain, my old story, which I’ve forgotten, far from here, through the noise, through the door, into the silence, that must be it, it’s too late, perhaps it’s too late, perhaps they have, how would I know, in the silence you don’t know, perhaps it’s the door, perhaps I’m at the door, that would surprise me, perhaps it’s I, perhaps somewhere or other it was I, I can depart, all this time I’ve journeyed without knowing it, it’s I now at the door, what door, what’s a door doing here, it’s the last words, the true last, or it’s the murmurs, the murmurs are coming, I know that well, no, not even that, you talk of murmurs, distant cries, as long as you can talk, you talk of them before and you talk of them after, more lies, it will be the silence, the one that doesn’t last, spent listening, spent waiting, for it to be broken, for the voice to break it, perhaps there’s no other, I don’t know, it’s not worth having, that’s all I know, it’s not I, that’s all I know, it’s not mine, it’s the only one I ever had, that’s a lie, I must have had the other, the one that lasts, but it didn’t last, I don’t understand, that is to say it did, it still lasts, I’m still in it, I left myself behind in it, I’m waiting for me there, no, there you don’t wait, you don’t listen, I don’t know, perhaps it’s a dream, all a dream, that would surprise me, I’ll wake, in the silence, and never sleep again, it will be I, or dream, dream again, dream of a silence, a dream silence, full of murmurs, I don’t know, that’s all words, never wake, all words, there’s nothing else, you must go on, that’s all I know, they’re going to abandon me, it will be the silence, for a moment, a few good moments, or it will be mine, the lasting one, that didn’t last, that still lasts, it will be I, you must go on, I can’t go on, you must go on, I’ll go on, you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me, strange pain, strange sin, you must go on, perhaps it’s done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.
— Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable
The Floating Library 