Giant

 Without really meaning to, this blog has turned into something of a meditation on what I really believe about Art, Literature, Poetry, and, especially in the case of cinema, "greatness".  Suppose I were to take this opportunity to  review where I'm at with each, and apply them to this work?

ART

A great deal of what I have come to think about Art comes from Giorgio Vasari, who seems to have come closer than anyone else to putting his finger on it.  My fairly faithful summary of his definition is that Art is the successful transmission of a truly human moment through honesty and mastery of a medium.  

Is Giant Art? At times, yes.  Three of the Artists involved deserve to be credited for their mastery and success in my opinion.  Two of them were at least acknowledged for their work: Ivan Moffat and Fred Guiol were nominated by the academy for their screenplay, which does most of the work here, especially in the dialogue.  A quick look at her other work and achievements make it likely that the real artist is Edna Ferber, who wrote the novel on which it is based.  In every scene, however, it is Elizabeth Taylor who is clearly the master.  Though Hudson and Dean were the ones recognized for their acting, it is Taylor who Vasari would have applauded: every moment both technically perfect, and excruciatingly human.  Though not recognized for her work here, it seems safe to say that her status as an artist, rather than a mere actor, is pretty universally recognized.

LITERATURE

My approach to this label is more practical and, perhaps, unique to me.  To be Literature in my mind, something need merely be literate, literary, to exist in communication with the body of human work that precedes and follows it.  This, like all of these labels, is a continuum; Literature is not a bar to be cleared, but rather an attribute.  Something is Literature "to the extent that . . . "

Is Giant Literature? Certainly.  Ferber has a place in that conversation, though not often by name.  And this work in particular gives more than it took, inspiring other works that have become inextricable from the fabric of culture.

POETRY

This definition is entirely my own, and completely unsupportable.  Poetry is more than verse; we often speak of poetic justice, or apply the term to music, visual art, or dance.  To me, and to any of my students who will listen, Poetry is layering, the act of doing many things at once with only what is necessary.  In verse, this means imagery, figurative language, texture, form, etc. all working together to create a unified moment, elegant and magical in its efficiency.  The opposite, of course, is Prose: one thing at a time, sequential, mechanical.

Is Giant Poetry? Perhaps the only element that could really qualify by my criteria is the art direction of Boris Leven and Ralph S. Hurst, for which they were duly nominated, though I can't argue with the ultimate victory going to  Lyle R. Wheeler and John DeCuir, and  Walter M. Scott and Paul S. Fox for The King and I. The one award Giant won, that for best direction, seems to be a nod to the more popular criterion that something be merely beautiful.  

GREATNESS

This is the definition that I have worked hardest to put into words.  In my current thinking, something is Great to the extent that it has a reason to exist, and then rises to the level of that reason in every facet.  It is the intersection of importance and mastery.  Truly Great things arise irresistibly from a collective moment, almost without the willingness of their respective creators.  The word itself has as many meanings as there are people, and could just as easily mean "enjoyable", but I am not known for being easily satisfied.

Is Giant Great? It certainly needed to be made.  Its criticism of Texas style capitalism, and the subtlety with which it strove to meet that need, are certainly noteworthy.  But that's the label I would give it, rather than Great: noteworthy.  The moment that called for its creation was approached, but not reached.  It remains specific, rather than universal, and is correspondingly liked, but not worshiped.

Ramón Gómez de la Serna: Las Proximas Greguerías hasta 800

700. El calzador es la cuchara de los zapatos.
The shoehorn is the spoon of shoes.

701.Abdicación es dejar la corona sobre la mesa y marcharse de viaje.
To abdicate is to leave your crown on the table and go on a trip.

702.Cuando aparecen tres perlas en  una  ostra es que el mar ha regalado al hombre una botonadura.
When three pearls appear in one oyster, it is as though the ocean has gifted a man an entire set of buttons.

703.Los bostezos son oes que humen.
Yawns are Os that have escaped.

704.Debajo de la almohada do los cochecitos de niño esconde la mamá sus ilusiones muerta.
Under the pillows of baby carriages, moms hide their own dead illusions.

705.El río cree que el puente es un castillo.
The river must think that the bridge is a castle.

706.En los cipreses retoñan los palos de los navíos naufragos.
Cypresses sprout the slats of sunken ships.

707.El que en la desgracia se oculta la cara con las manos parece que se está haciendo la mascarilla de su pena.
He  who covers his face with his hands in disgrace seems to construct the mask of his shame.

708.Los vegeterianos no admiten sino transfusiones de sangre de remolacha.
Vegetarians only allow blood transfusions from beets.

709.Una de las cosas más tristes de los trenes es que las ventanillas de la derecha no podrán ser nunca las ventanillas de la izquierda.
One of the saddest things about trains is that the windows on the right can neer become the windows on the left.

710.Entre las cosas que quedaan en las papelerías están las manos doradas para coger en su pinza los papeles que deben estar unidos y a la vista.  Esas manos doradas nos han emocionado siempre, porque tienen algo de manos de difuntas fuera de sus féretros, bellas manos de mujeres cándidas.
Among the things offered in stationery stores is gilt hands to clasp papers that must remain together and in sight.  These gilt hands make us emotional because they have something of the hands of the deceased outside of their coffins, beautiful hands of innocent women.

711.Esas cortinas cortas de algunas puertas son como cortinas de puertas embarazadas.
Those short curtains of some doors are like curtains of pregnant doors.

712.El compositor de música es el último negrero, por cómo acumula barcos de negros, en los mares del pentagrama.
The composer is the ultimate slave trader, for how he amasses boats of black notes in the seas of the staff.

713.El ruido más malagorero del cine es el de esa primera cortina que suena sus rodajas--pulseras subalternas y miserables--en cuanto chasquea el beso de la reconciliación final.
The most ominous sound of the theater is that of the first curtain sounding its panels--lowly and miserable straps--like the kiss of the final reconciliation.

714.El cinematógrafo da sólo una hora para que cenen los cómicos, los perritos y los chóferes y vuelvan a la pantalla.
The cinematographer gives only one hour, during which the comedians, puppies and chauffeurs dine and return to the screen.

715.Reminiscencia: rumiar recuerdos.
Reminiscence: chewing on memories.

716.Las violetas son actrices retiradas en el primer otoño de su vida.
Violets are retired actresses in the first autumn of their lives.

717.Lo peor del matrimonio de Adán y Eva es que no tuvieron anillos con la fecha grabada.
The worst part of Adam and Eve’s wedding was that they didn’t have rings with the date engraved.

718.El paisaje adora al molino.
The landscapes adores mills.

719.Cuando nos tardan en servir en el restaurante  nos convertimos en xilofonista de la impaciencia.
When we linger in a restaurant we become the xylophonists of impatience.

720.El amor nace del deseo repentino de hacer eterno lo pasajero.
Love is born from the sudden desire to make eternal that which is fleeting.

721.El cisne es la S capitular del poema del estanque.
The swam is the capital S of the pond.

722.El ciervo es el hijo del rayo y del árbol.
The deer is the child of a bolt of lightning and a tree.

723.La medicina ofrece curar dentro de cien años a los que se están muriendo ahora mismo.
Medicine offers to cure within a hundred years those who are dying right now.

724.Lo que más irrita a la Luna es que sea la Tierra la que le pone los cuernos, eclipsándola de ese modo grotesco.
The which most irritates the moon is that it would be the Earth that gives it its horns, eclipsing it in this grotesque way.

725.Al pasar la luna por la sierra de los ladrones la roban el reloj.
As the moon passes the thieves mountains, they steal its watch.

726.De lo único que no hay operador que opere al hombre es del túmulo.
The only thing which operates on man, but has no operator, is the tomb.

727.Después del eclipse, la luna se lava la cara para quitarse el tizne.
After an eclipse, the moon washes its face to remove the soot.

728.Hay quien se reserva para dar su primer limosna a los pobres que haya a la puerta del cielo.
There are those who are waiting to give their first charity to those at the door of heaven.

729.El que se despierta de la siesta al atardecer, nota que le han robado el día mientras dormía.
He who wakes from his nap at dusk realizes that he has been robbed of the day while he slept.

730.Al inventarse el cine, las nubes paradas en las fotografías comenzaron a andar.
When the cinema was invented, frozen clouds in photographs began to walk.

731.Si no fuésemos mortales, no podríamos llorar.
If we were not mortal, we would not be able to cry.

732.Lo que ve el alfamado en su fama es su propia muerte anticipada.
That which the famous person see in his fame is his own impending death.

733.Cuando el banderillero y el toro se citan, queda en supenso una única cuestión: quién clavará a quién.
When the banderillero and the bull have a date, one question remains: who will stick it to whom?

734.El reloj no existe en las horas felices.
The clock does not exist in happy hours.

735.La X es el corsé del alfabeto.
The X is the corset of the aphabet

736.Si la realidad es apariencia, resulta que la apariencia es la realidad, eso si no es la realidad la apariencia de la irrealidad.
If reality is appearance, then appearance is reality and it must follow that the appearance of unreality is not real.

737.A asomarnos al fondo del pozo nos hacemos un retrato de naúfragos.
When we peer into a well, we make the portrait of a castaway.

738.La almohada siempre es una convaleciente.
The pillow is always a convalescent

739.En las huellas digitales está ya el laberinto del crimen, pero falta quien las sepa descifrar antes de que sea irreparable.
In fingerprints there already exists a labyrinth of crime, but there is nobody who can decipher it before it becomes irreparable.

740.Catálogo: recuerdo de lo que se olvidará.
Catalog: a record of that which will be forgotten.

741.El arco iris es la bufanda del cielo.
The rainbow is the scarf of the sky.

742.Las velas de cera gotean camafeos.
WAx candles rip camoes.

743.La luna es la lápida sin epitafio.
The moon is a tombstone without an epitaph.

744.Las algas que aparecen en las playas son los pelos que se arrancan las sirenas al peinarse.
The seaweed that appears on the beach is the hair that mermaids pull out while combing.

745.Sólo al morir nos acordamos de que ya morimos otra vez al nacer.
Only upon death do we remember that we died already when we were born.

746.Los cuervos se tiñen.
The crows dye themselves.

747.Lo mas dificil que hace un jinete es sostenerse en la imagen de su caballo reflejada en el agua.
The most difficult thing for a rider is to remain in the image of his horse reflected in the water.

748.La jirafa es el periscopio para ver los horizontes del desierto.
The giraffe is the periscope used to see the desert horizons.

749.Lo malo que La Bruyére es que tiene nombre de queso.
The worst thing about Bruyere is that he has a cheesy name.

750.El arco iris es como el anuncio de una tintorería.
The rainbow is like a dyeworks’ advertisement.

751.Quien sugirió al hombre la sopa de tortuga fue la propia tortuga, por llevar la sopera a cuestas.
It was the turtle himself who suggested turtle soup to man, to bring the tureen on his own back.

752.Al dar a la llave de la luz se despierta a las paredes.
Flipping the light switch awakens the walls.

753.La nieve se apaga en el agua.
The snow extinguishes itself in the water.

754.Se tocaba un bucle como si hablase por teléfono con ella misma.
She twirled her ringlets as if talking on the phone with herself.

755.Lo malo es cuando los glóbulos rojos se quedan en calzoncillos, conviertiéndose en glóbulos blancos.
The worst is when red blood cells stay in their underwear, becoming white blood cells.

756.Un papel en el viento es como un pájaro herido de muerte.
A paper in the wind is like a mortally wounded bird.

757.El agua no tiene memoria: por eso es tan limpia.
Water has no memory; thus is it so clean.

758.Lo primero que hace el sol es pegar en la tapia el cartel del día.
The first thing the sun does is put up the poster of the day.

759.Nunca queda posada una hoja sobre el cisne: la sería mortal.
A leaf never perches above a swan; it would be fatal.

760.El piano refleja en su espejo negro la llegada de la música al puerto una noche lluviosa.
The piano reflects in its black mirror the arrival of music at the door on a rainy night.

761.Bar pobre: una aceituna y muchos palillos.
A dive bar: one olive with a lot of toothpicks.

762.Somos lazarillos de nuestros sueños.
We are the blind guides of our own dreams.

763.Gracias a las gotas de rocío tiene ojos la flor para ver la belleza del cielo.
Thanks to the morning dew, the flower has eyes to see the beauty of the sky.

764.La luna está subvencionada por la Policía.
The moon is subsidized by the police.

765.Al levar el ancla parece que el barco, vista la hora, se mete el reloj con leontina en el bolsillo y parte.
Raising its anchor, the boat seems to see the time, put its watch and chain in its pocket, and depart.

766.El colador está harto de pepitas.
The colander is filled with seeds.

767.El león tiene en la punta de la cola la brocha de afeitar.
The lion has a shaving brush at the end of his tail.

768.¿Dónde está el busto del arbusto?
Where is the shrub’s bust? [untranslatable pun]

769.En el esternón está el camafeo del esqueleto.
The skeleton’s cameo brooch is in the sternum.

770.Laura sigue saliendo de misa bella y joven todos los domingos.  Quien desapareció fue el Petrarca.
Laura comes out smiling and young every Sunday.  It is Petrarch who disappeared.

771.Lo único que tenemos de porcelana son los ojos.
The only porcelain thing we have is our eyes.

772.Nos muerde el ladrido de los perros.
The dogs bite us with their bark.

773.Es más fácil quitar el traje o desollar a un cordero que desnudar a un niño dormido.
It’s easier to fleece and skin a lamb than to undress a sleeping infant. [liberties taken]

774.Parece que en sueños se nos va a morir el corazón, como un obrero que se rebelase a cumplir sin descanso una jornada de día y noche en el fondo de una mina lóbrega y húmeda, húmeda de sangre . . .
It seems that in dreams we kill our hearts, like a worker who rebels against journaling day and night in a gloomy and humid mine . . . of blood.

775.La tragedia de la gota de agua cayendo en el cubo del lavabo toda la noche es una tragedia de asunto lacónico, pero espeluznante, que conocen los pobres criaturas humanas, en las que no todo ¡ni mucho menos!, es heroico . . .
The tragedy of a sink that drips all night is that of a matter terse but terrifying, that all humans know that not everything--indeed, very little--is heroic.

776.Se tiene un poco de pánico a los papeles que giran en las calles de invierno, movidos por el fuerte viento de la estación, como si fueran perros que quisieran morder . . .
There is a bit of panic in the sheets of paper, turning in the winter streets, driven by the wind of the station, as if they were dogs who would like to bite . . .

777.El que se casa trata de solucionar con la expiación su deseo de mujer.
He who gets married tries to absolve himself of his desire for women.

778.Los rayos propenden al agua porque no tienen más deseo que refrescarse.
Lightning bolts are drawn to water because they have no other desire than to cool down.

779.Entre las cosas que ofrecía aquel gran hotel estaba: «Garaje para las moscas.»
Among the things offered by that grand hotel was “A garage for the flies”.
780.¿No os dice nada el que tantos grandes hombres hayan muerto? A mi me dice más que lo que ellos dijeron en vida.
Does it tell us nothing that such great men have died? To me, it says more than whatever they said in life.

781.El dedo gordo de pie asiente o deniega impaciente lo que decimos a lo que oímos.
The big toe confirms or denies impatiently what we say to what we hear. [wtf]

782.Cada tumba tiene su reloj despertador puesto en la hora del Juicio Final.
Every grave has an alarm clock set to the hour of the final judgdement.

783.En la Guía de teléfonos todos somos seres microscópicos.
In the telephone book, we are all microscopic orgamisms.

784.El polvo está lleno de viejos y olvidados estornudos.
The dust is full of old and forgotten sneezes.

785.La lluvia es triste porque nos recuerda cuando fuimos peces.
The rain is sad because it reminds us of when we were fish.

786.Los paraguas son viudos que están de luto por las sombrillas desaparecidas.
Umbrellas are widowers dressed in morning for lost parasols.

787.Aburrirse es besar a la muerte.
To be bored is to kiss death.

788.Los orgullosos dicen «columna vertebral», y los modestos, «espina dorsal».
The haughty say, “spine”, and the modest “backbone”.

789.El león daría la mitad de su vida por un peine.
The lion would give half of his life for a comb.

790.La pipa no se quema; luego si la Humanidad hiciese las casas con madera de cachimba, sobrarían los bomberos.
The pipe does not burn itself.  If humans had made their houses out of the same wood, bombs would have been useless.

791.Era de esas mujeres que, al hablar, se dirigen a nuestras solapas como si tratasen de seducir a nuestro traje.
It was from [or perhaps “the age of”]those women who, speaking, directed themselves to our lapels as if to try and seduce our suit.

792.Si os tiembla la cerilla al dar lumbre a una mujer, estaís perdidos.
If the light of a match on a women makes us tremble, we are lost.

793.El que lleve mucho el reloj al oído es que es corto de vista de la suposición.
He who often brings his watch to his ear is short-sighted in making suppositions.

794.El coleccionista de sellos se cartea con el pasado.
The stamp collector carries on correspondence with the past.

795.Las cebras son directamente caballos nacidos para los carrouseles.
Zebras are horses born directly for the carousel.

796.El erudito pone las manos crispadas en la librería, como el pianista en el teclado, y arranca veinte libros para sacar veinte notas.
The scholar puts his tense hand on the bookshelf, and pulls out twenty books to play twenty notes.

797.La sandía es una hucha de ocasos.
The watermelon is a repository of sunsets.

798.El cantar rabioso del gallo quiere decir, traducido: «¡Maldito sea el cuchillo!»
The furious song of the rooster is translated, “Cursed be the knife!”

799.En la gruta bosteza la montaña.
The mountain yawns in the cave.

800.Si hubiese habido fotógrafo en el Paraíso, habría sido bochornoso el retrato de bodas de Adán y Eva.
If there had been a photographer in Eden, Adam and Eve’s wedding portrait would have been embarrassing.

At-Tawbah

 Already this book has taken an ominous tone by the omission of the invocation of the compassion and mercy of the divine بَسْمَلَة.  

1-2: And no wonder: it is identified immediately as an ultimatum to the polytheists or, as Hulusi names them, the dualists.

3-5: It is not until after their death sentence has been given that the possibility of commutation is offered and the compassion and mercy of Allah is invoked.

6-12: This is justified with the explanation that these dualists would do the same if the roles were reversed--a rather petty argument.

13-15: And furthermore, they always have the option to reverse course.  In this respect, at least, the god of the Quran is more merciful than the god of the Hebrew scriptures.

16-18: There is some disagreement among the translators how to render مَساجِدَ.  The word itself invokes the act of worship, though it seems to be inextricably tied with the non-translation "mosque".  For my part, I prefer Hulusi's rendering "place of prostration" for it's thematic consistency.

19: There is a theological principle here that could bear comparison with similar concepts in other religions: the interplay between faith and works, with clear preference here being given to the former.

20-22: The admonition that the particular place of worship is not of utmost importance seems to be lost on modern Muslims.

23-27: A nice moment of thematic consistency here: the reality of things is not connected to their physical form.  Attachment to physical things, including particular holy sites, is not to be confused with actual faith.

28: Which makes this command inexplicable

29: Likewise the command in one breath to fight the unbelievers, and to fulfill the duty to protect them implied in the collection of  الجِزيَةَ .

30-32: Hulusi makes a rather uncharacteristic point of transliterating the entire phrase لا إِلٰهَ إِلّا هُوَ, which he usually does only for words he considers holy in their very pronunciation.  One wonders if there is a connection to the very peculiar orthographic features of the character لا, the only one in Arabic that might be considered syllabic rather than alphabetic.

32-33: I don't know if this is an accurate characterization of the Jews and Christians of the time.  It is rather the Muslims who are interested in abolishing other religions, in this very same breath.

34-35: This, at least, is fair--even poetic.

36-37: Rather a difficult sentence to parse, as reflected in four very different translations.  Hulusi renders it in a way that indicates a one-year period for the creation.

38-39: The call to battle is altogether incompatible with a detachment from earthly concerns.

40: The intersection of muddy pronoun reference and shifting listener require a level of dialectic mastery I will never attain.

41-47: A rare rebuke of The Prophet here, and a bit inexplicable.  In 40, the assurance is that those who stayed behind were not necessary, and in 47 that they would even have been a hindrance.  Why is The Prophet scolded for allowing it?

48-50: It certainly sounds like leaving these individuals to their own devices was the right choice.

51-55: A nice parallel with 19-22 here, and a reversal of the corresponding concept in James 2:26.

56-59: If these verses were followed today, the result would be world--or at least regional--peace.

60: The only thing that stands out about this seemingly apostrophic verse is the inclusion of those who collect the charity in the list of recipients.  I can see how that would go south very quickly.

61-66: The Surah that these chatterers feared is this very one.

67-68: I suppose it is the behavior in 62 that qualifies them as hypocrites, rather than just disobedient or greedy.

69-70: The stories of عادٍ and ثَمودَ were seemingly as familiar to the audience as those of Noah and Lot, but I find very little specific narrative of those stories, here or elsewhere.  Maybe in a future surah we will get details.

71-72: The fact that the promised rivers flow under paradise, rather than through it as in Judeo-Christian texts, is no doubt a regional accommodation.

73-79: The list of charges here draws attention to something that is not present (so far) in the Quran.  The defendants here are guilty of muttering, conspiring, and withholding charity.  The god of the Israelites would have rained death upon them for even one of these charges, but this version of the divine is content to punish them in the hereafter.  

80: A contrast with Abraham's experience of mercy.  Despite caveats in 66 and elsewhere, forgiveness does not seem to be an option for these hypocrites.  The plea deal has been withdrawn, so to speak.

81-93: And Allah has not forgotten that they stayed behind during the battle either, though his instructions to The Prophet regarding them are contradictory.  The fact that Allah has "sealed their hearts" remains troubling theologically.

94-96: The sudden change in tense here is difficult to integrate.  Indeed, the book retains traces of its character as a surah that has been pieced together after the fact.

97-99: The mention of a still existing specific ethnic group here would seem to have modern implications.  I wonder how modern Bedouins feel about these verses.

110-104: Even the Prophet does not know the heart, and this book returns to the position that it is best to mind one's own work and not worry about others . . . lovely, but in contrast to the rest of this book.

105: One of my favorite verses in the entire Quran so far.  

106-110: A fascinating side tale, but one wonders about a few things: since the details of the episode are not mentioned here, how were they retained?  Is there some adjunct book that gives the narrative?  The earliest surviving account seems to have been written 200 years after the fact.  Also, the directions in 108 are seemingly a rare moment of direct and specific revelation to The Prophet alone.

111: I don't know if it is accurate to say that the directive to kill and be killed is also in the Gospel.

112-114: This is not the story of Abraham I was thinking of in 80, but I look forward to learning more about it in future surahs.

115-117: There might be some resolution to the tension between mercy, repentance, and free will here.  It seems that the principles operate differently in groups than in individuals--something akin to the statistics being useless in individual cases.

118-119: It is assumed that these are Ka’b ibn Mâlik, Murarah ibn Rabi’, and Hilâl ibn Umaiyah, mentioned in 106.  More evidence for the gradual revelation of this surah, and possibly a key to unraveling confusing passages in other surahs.

120-122: A distinct minority report exists in the interpretation of these verses, and for once it is not Hulusi who is the dissenter.  Of the four translations I am referencing, three interpret this to refer to the fight at Tabuk, but https://al-quran.info/#9 interprets those who "march forth" to be going to Medinah.

123-125: I can certainly imagine that some grew suspicious or weary of the timing of these revelations.  The writing of this text even as it was happening gives it a unique structure and character among holy books.

126-129: I don't recall another instance of the Prophet himself being given the descriptor رَحيمٌ, elsewhere used almost ritually to describe Allah, and especially in the invocation that begins every surah but this one.

Ocean Vuong: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

 I feel within me lately an idea developing, a new way of looking at works of narrative fiction.  Reading this author concurrently with Konstatin Paustovksy, two very different styles and eras, served to highlight the contrast in what I am tentatively thinking of as the writer's gaze.  Every word the writer makes is a choice, and the choices Vuong and Paustovsky make are so divergent that my naturally tendency to systematize things kicked in and I began to look for a taxonomy of their choices, and the choices of prose writers in general.  

The first choice the writers makes, or at least the most basic one, is what to look at, what to attend to.  Why does the writer tell us about this passerby rather than that one, this detail of the landscape instead of another.  There are infinite choices available to her or him in any scene, but, although experience is had in parallel, writing is done in series, and the writer must tell the reader what specifically is worthy of notice.  Vuong reveals himself thus to be interested in words, weather, faces, death and the dead  in ways that Paustovksy, for example, is not.  

The second choice the writer makes is how to describe these things, what and how many judgements to put on them with adjectives and adverbs.  One effect of these choices is a tacit choice of how much to lead the reader, if at all.  Mark Twain famously abhorred telling the reader what to think or feel about the things to which he directed their attention,, saying, "when you see an adjective, kill it."  Vuong seems to feel the opposite: that adjective always need a friend and furthermore that they should make clear through connotation what the reader is to think and feel about the noun in question.  One method is not superior to the other by nature, but Twain's method allows the reader to inhabit the world of the writing, and Vuong's forces the reader to inhabit the narrator's body instead.

And this tendency of Vuong's to commandeer the reader's experience is even more present in the third set of choices he makes as a writer: what connections to make for the reader through allusion, comparison, and figurative language.  He does not seem to think a paragraph is complete without a metaphor or three in stark contrast to Paustovsky and his realist influences: Flaubert, Pushkin, Gogol, etc..  The effect in Vuong is appropriate to the narrator that he forces the reader to inhabit.  The Little Dog of this novel is indeed too poetic for this world, and if the reader occasionally grows a bit weary of his poetic flights, it only serves to suggest that the narrator himself may be sick of them too.  This choice, combines with his extensive descriptions, make it no surprise that the writing feels most natural when he occasionally breaks into something resembling verse.

The fourth choice a writer makes, and it is this that might be considered a mark of youth and immaturity in Vuong, is when to mandate meaning.  Paustovsky, and I'm sure I'll have more to say about this when I eventually finish his 800-page epic, says what something means so rarely that the reader is allowed time to forget the eyes with which they are forced to look, and the rare moments when she or he is reminded that the writer has a point to make are the more effective for their rarity.  Vuong does not allow the reader this freedom.  What to look at, how to feel about it, and what it invokes are all choices that I am comfortable ceding to the writer.  If I am also constantly told what it means, however, I begin to resent it.  Literature is a conversation, and this one was a little bit one-sided.  And just as in a conversation in which it is difficult to get a word in edgewise, I felt by the end that my partner was a little bit insecure in what he was saying, and overcompensated accordingly.  A gifted young man, filled with passion and poetry.  I wonder what he'll write in twenty years when he calms down a little and settles into himself.

David F. Vennells: Beginner's Guide to Reiki

 Well, I guess I've found my new thing.  There are books in my life that I enjoy, not because they are masterful works of literature, but because as I am reading them, they are reading me back.  the works of Philip K. Dick are a key example of this: they are not particularly well-crafted, but whenever I pick them up they speak to something deeply personal and eerily real in my life at that moment.   

It is similar with this book.  It is not particularly well-written, and didn't contain any deep and profound truths that changed the way I think about or see things.  nonetheless, every time I picked it up to read a few chapters, a feeling of peace and energy came over me, as if to say, "This is the path for you right now.  Keep going."  

So I did.  I don't know that this book is even that good of an introduction to Reiki, just as I have my doubts about the level 1 Reiki course I took while reading it.  In these cases, however, the medium is not the message.  The words and exercises themselves were almost incidental to the experience of simply being on a path that feels right.  The question remains, however: where to go from here?  And even as I write it, the answer comes to me.  "Don't worry. You are already going there."

Jorge Luis Borges: El Aleph

I will never have said everything I have to say about Borges.  Each glimpse I get of him, behind his elaborate Potemkin villages, reveals something new, the blind man palpating the elephant, Beethoven with his ear to the soundboard.

On this reading, he reveals himself to me as the first Bokononist, winkingly proclaiming "It is nothing but foma! All of the true things that I am about to tell you are shameless lies."  It is beyond dispute that Vonnegut knew and drew from Borges' works.  It is a shameless and atextual leap for me to say that Borges is Bokonon, but there.  I have said it.  Such Foma!

Pierre Menard and Tlon Uqbar wear different faces in El Aleph, but their fingerprints are everywhere.  There is always Foma floating on Borges' Latte [please clap], a ludicrously elaborate parallel world of invented places and invented scholars to study them.  None of this is real, not Uqbar, not Tarnowitz, and not Droctulft.  They are all the third best thing, the orbis tertius, of the three-body problem. It is the nature of this third best thing that it is the only thing we can talk about, however.  "'Cuando se acera el fin,' escribió Cartaphilus, ‘ya no quedan imagénes del recuerdo; sólo quedan palabras’” (El inmortal, 29). Words are not real; they cannot be, for that is their nature.  "Lo que vieron mis ojos fue simultáneo: lo que transcribiré, sucesivo, porqie el lenguaje lo es" (El Aleph, 205)

But the kcymaerxthaere that Borges creates is not merely Middle Earth or Westeros.  Those worlds have their own parallels to ours, but they float over it, detached, and secure in their fiction. Borges' alternate universe is strategically tied to ours in such a way that every name he drops has a chance of existing in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Each offhanded pin tacked to our reality with "actual" names and places serves to highlight the vast canopies vaulting away from our grasp.  This reality, the actual, the action, has more of a claim to exist than the words which describe it.  If the "palabra"is the third best thing, the "acto" is the second best thing.  "Mejor dicho un instante de esa noche, un acto de esa noche, porque los actos son nuestro símbolo" (Biografía de Tadeo Isidoro Cruz, 69).  The fact is the finger pointing at the moon: slightly more real that the awestruck, "Look!" that announces it, but still not the moon itself.  It is still just a symbol, and like all symbols only real to the extent that it is ours, that we all see it and agree on what it means.

What is the moon, then?  What is El Aleph, el jaguar (as in "La escritura del dios"), that each of Borges' third-best scholars search for and, in some cases, find?  What are all the battles, the mutilations, the embarrassments for?  I cannot tell you, and neither can Borges.  He can, however, tell you that he cannot tell you.   "Como Cornelio Agrippa, soy dios, soy héroe, soy filósofo, soy demonio, y soy mundo, lo cual es una fatigosa manera de decir que no soy" (El inmortal, 24). The eye cannot see itself, the sun cannot feel its own light, and the mind that thinks will always be at least two steps away from being known. You only exist by virtue of that which you are not, that which is outside you, including your own thoughts and especially your words.  I am a Cartesian well, a mind beyond subject and object, trapped forever between wave and particle.  "Quizá en mi cara estuviera escrita la magia, quizá yo mismo fuera el fin de mi busca" (La escritura del dios, 147).  The moment I am anything else is the moment that ends the search, and with it ends all moments.

Zachari Logan: A Natural History of Unnatural Things

 

 "The artworks I become enamored with offer simple clues about their creators" (from "Paper, Petals, Leaves and Skin").

 What is it about queerness that announces itself to me?  How do I perceive, from a single image, that there was something queer in its creation?  The above work, used to advertise an exhibition by Logan at the Peabody Essex, was one such image, and it moved to the top of my list with a glance.

Post-facto analysis gives some hints at a logical underpinning for the phenomenon.  Clearly male lips, surrounded by flowers: very queer.  A prominent gap between the incisors: almost stereotypical in its queerness.  In the moment, however, none of those thoughts occurred to me.  I simply knew that whatever this exhibit was: A. it was queer as fuck, and B. I must see it.

And it was marvelously queer.  Every one of the works spoke to me, and each in a very different way.  Logan's queer voice is a very specific one, seemingly obsessed with expressing the raw sexuality of the intersection of life (often flowers), and death (in many guises).  In his poetry too, this equation is visible.  Occassionally it is as elegant as his visual art, as in "Tattoo", where the scabs of a tattoo render it mute, dead, though life runs below it through a large vein, 

"until spoken,

not by a voice,

but by the brushing 

of your beard

on my arm."

More often, however, his poetry invited me to a dinner party where he is Truman Capote, and I am nobody.  Invited by chance or fortune, to a world in which I have not made a place, I am instantly defensive.  My ego sounds alarms, and every pointlessly arcane reference, every self-congratulatory asyndeton, and especially the myriad places where the host chooses the seemingly most clumsy, prosaic word possible, is a chance for that ego to save itself and affirm its own existence with a sneer.  I adopt a grimace intended to convey incredulity, saying "Am I the only one who sees that the host is nude?" 

 Queerness is, as in Logan's art, the old made new with a moan.  We are the flowers that bloom from the decayed remnants of culture that are left after all that is insincere and false has rotted away.  We are also a thin shell of art over a gaping void where our place in the world should be.  Capote was a boring writer, and a truly ugly man in many ways.  Logan is rather bad at poetry.  Both wear the elaborate decorative shell of queerness, for brashly is the only way we are allowed to exist.  It is fickle, though, and can come apart with a pin prick.  And this writing is my own version, a desperate attempt to join the party, for although I have no real place in the queer world, at least my facade fits right in.

Al-Anfal

 I can never hear these introductions other than in the voice of Freddy Mercury.

1: The eponymous "Spoils" seem suspiciously like plunder, from a historical context.  They do not seem to be the rewards of a battle between armies, but rather the pillaging of trade caravans

2-4: Which makes it somewhat disingenuous to insinuate that these material rewards are the result of pious reflection.

5-6: To those who resisted, it may have seemed the opposite at the time.

7-10: The implication is that simple bloodshed is not enough; there must be violent conflict on a grander scale.  This is a bloodthirstiness that one would expect of the Hebrew god.

11-13: A level of pettiness one would not expect from the divine.

14-18: I'm finding this altogether difficult to reconcile with earlier portrayals of the divine as relatively tolerant and accepting.  In earlier surah, the message is often "What do you care what others do?  If they are good, they will be rewarded.  If not, punished.  Mind yourself."  Here, however, there seems to be a caveat: "Unless they have nice things."  Even Hulusi's metaphysical reading is strained.

19: For example, Hulusi interposes here that the Meccan's persistence is a metaphor for belief in duality.  What then, is the metaphysical interpretation of the numerous troops that they are using to no effect?  The whole thing seems manifestly literal, and was in fact an actual war, and any attempt to allegorize it fails to soften the violence.

20-24: The minds reels at the seeming irreconcilability of these two concepts. First, there are those who simply will never be able to perceive the truth.  this is already problematic.  Then it is added that the divine is willing to open the eyes and ears of such ones.  Okay.  But even if the divine so wills it, they will be unable to perceive!  How is this possible? And what does it means that the divine "Stand between a man and his heart"?  Is this as an impediment, a judgement, or an intercessor? If, as Hulusi interposes, it is the former, then is not all search for truth vain?  The unsatisfying, though politically and commercially expedient, message seems to be that "If you do what I say, then you are doing it right.  Don't worry about it."

25-28: More contradiction.  The victories of the believers are held up as evidence that they are on the right path, but the spoils of those victories are said in 28 to be an object of trial.

29-31: The promised standard/criterion/فُرۡقَانٗا would solve the quandary of "chosen-ness".  It is left vague, however, leading one to wonder if it exists.

32-35: The protestations of the dualists/Meccans certainly seem reasonable.

36-37: Unlike in Hebrew and Christian holy texts, hell is pretty clearly intended to be seen as a literal place here.  No doubt this is because the idea had gained traction by the time of its writing.

38-40: "Fight until there is no more oppression" seems like quite the paradox.  The warning given to the disbelievers here seems to be lip service.  Have not their hearts and eyes been divinely sealed, and is not their path set for them?

41: More ambitious than the tenth prescribed in other holy traditions.

42-45:The metaphysical interpretation is irresistible here, and Hulusi does not disappoint.  Numbers and groups and armies are illusions, and only contemplation of the names of reality can reveal the essence.

46-48: It is unclear how the trick played by the Shaitan here is different from that done in behalf of the Muslims.  Both were shown something unreal to manipulate their actions.

49-51: As with belief in a literal hell, this verse reflects the belief of its time in a metaphysical soul--in contrast to earlier religious texts.

52-54: The push and pull with Hulusi is strong here.  His metaphysical translation of these verses is consistent and justifiable.  Sadly, it has almost no relation to the text.

55-57: The connection here between oath-breakers and people incapable of belief jumps several logical steps, but it is a revealing one nonetheless.  To run it through the metaphysical interpretation engine one more time might produce: " Those who are inextricable from their ego-self will never keep their word, and are suitable only for object lessons."

58:But . . .but . . . those who break a treaty are the worst of all possible creatures in 55.  Is it different somehow if one does so openly?

59-62: Seemingly advice for this specific situation rather than a general principle.

63-63: A lovely verse, tying up the central ideas of the surah.

64-66: A little bit of comedy here, which mirrors Abraham bargaining for the lives of Sodom.  Yeah if you were steadfast, you could take ten times your number.  But . . . maybe let's say twice your number, looking at you.

67-68: I'm reminded vaguely of a parallel account in the Hebrew scriptures of the Israelites trying to secretly keep a little plunder and the whole camp being punished for it.  Wonder if I'm making it up.  Aha!  It was the sin of Achan in Joshua 7-9.

69-71: One wonders what became of these captives--whether good was found in their hearts, or betrayal.

72-75: Well, this at least seems to have come true on a grand scale.

The Mabinogion

 Some things are only meant to be read by completionists and obsessives.  The book of Numbers, for example, is notoriously tedious and unrewarding.  Nonetheless, there are those for whom either their fanatical religious identity or their neurotic necessity to finish things leads them to mechanically pass their eyes over each word of it.  For the book of Numbers, I am in the latter category.  I only read it because I felt I should at least be able to say that I had.  The Mabinogion is in many ways of a similar flavor: pages upon pages of names and lineages, each of which fails to find any purchase in the reader's cognitive matrix, any other connecting fact to adhere to and make a case for memory.  Unlike the book of Numbers, however, this book has several means of ingress into my own identity, and it is for that reason I persevered.  And also, I am a neurotic completionist.

I have long felt an affinity for Wales.  Each time I've been there, a feeling has washed over me of excitement, comfort, and inexplicable familiarity.  The stories of that ancient land, of a time before even the dreams of Maxen Wledig (Maximus) led him to claim it for the Romans, hold promise of the reason for that feeling.  Perhaps it lies in the stories of my namesake, Bran the Blessed.  I have no affinity for his imposing physical stature, of course, but his role as protector and guardian speaks to me.  Somewhat anticlimactically, the stories themselves are from a time before the invention of narrative consistency.  They are so disjointed and fragmentary--and focus on details of little interest to a modern mind, such as the particulars of heraldry--that I did not come away feeling as though I had discovered a part of myself.  Such was, no doubt, too much to hope.  I did, however, discover a rich canon of characters and stories that begs to be fleshed out in modern form.  An opera perhaps, or an animated epic.  In places though, the only possible adaptation would be a Monty Python sketch of the Johann Gambolputty . . . of Ulm sort: a list of names so long and isolate that it quickly becomes farcical.

Modern Times

 I am well on record in my admiration for Charles Chaplin.  His feats of art and skill in romance and comedy have not been matched in the 100 years since.  He was a visionary the likes of which we are do to see again in our generation, but do not seem to have yet.  Nonetheless, there is something to the perception that his films are mere entertainment, fluffy, meaningless, and ultimately unimportant.

As if in answer to such accusations, although in reality from some deeper urge to comment on changing worlds conditions, he created Modern Times, and critics should consider themselves forever silenced.  To his already masterful art as writer, director, and performer, which in and of themselves are more than enough, he adds here insightful and timeless social commentary--executed with the same level of command.  

Everything he has to say about the lie of capitalism, and its effects on the humans under its yoke, is as true today as it was 90 years ago.  Equally true is the deaf ear upon which such warnings fall.  Now, as then, those who pull aside the veil of opportunity to reveal the leering bloodthirsty machine underneath are labelled as communists, lazy, or weak.  One looks at the way Chaplin was treated in his own time, and is left with a sour despair of humans ever learning his lessons.  His art, at least, endures.  Perhaps it is the only thing that ever can.

Eckhart Tolle: A New Earth

 I normally shy away from books like this, which I tend to view as Pop Spirituality.  Just like Pop Philosophy, these sort of books tend to dilute their source material, breaking it down and digesting it for an audience that, rightly or not, is seen as unable to understand and internalize the older, deeper books whence they derive.  I admit that it feeds my ego to look at those original texts, and to scoff at the modern distillations. But the name of this author had been coming up in multiple contexts, and with something of a ring of authority and validity.  I decided it couldn't hurt.

To a certain extent, what Tolle says here is exactly what I expected.  He takes ancient truths about the self and reality, drawing largely on Buddhist and Hindu ideas, and phrases them in a way that is innocuous and approachable.  In these moments, he is at least not insulting or pedantic in his approach, though often repetitive.  But there were also moments where he threw in elements that seemed to come not from religion, but from philosophy: Descartes, Nietzsche, and Jung.  In these moments, it was as if he had rotated the ideas and understanding that I already possessed in such a way that they clicked together and opened up an entirely new level of awareness.   

I drew especially juicy grist from his discussion of time.  The distinction he so clearly highlights between the moment and the content of that moment has proven to be no less than a new glass bead in the grand game of ideas, a new fundamental operation of reality that is reflected in all truths and at all levels. The distinction between the moment and the happening of that moment is perfectly reflected in the relationship between the mind and the thought, the silence and the word, the ocean and the fish, the void and the attention.  Most immediately practical, this is also the connection between the true self and the ego.  To that end, he rightly observes, "The elimination of time from your consciousness is the elimination of ego.  It is the only true spiritual practice" (207).

My particular ego is addicted to doing (as contrasted to some who are built on the illusion of having).  Each task is immediately followed by a quidnunc impulse to rush to the next thing, accomplish the next step, tackle the next task.  This impulse is not only diametrically opposed to my goal of spiritual awakening, it is also manifestly harmful--causing anxiety and self-loathing, and reducing joy.  It has already been deeply helpful to have words to put the lie to this impulse: this moment is not simply something to be endured until the next moment.  The next moment is an illusion, as is time itself.  Freed from this illusion, one can realize that this moment, which is the only moment and all moments, is itself beautiful, abundant, powerful, and perfect.

Jacqueline Woodson: Hush

 My criteria for teaching a novel to a group of students are stringent but simple:

1. Readbility.  It must be written at a level that will challenge, but not frustrate them.

2. Interest.  The students must be able to find some point of reference to which they can relate.

It is at this point that I assume most teachers stop, being of a more practical bend than I am.  However, there has to be some reason for me to teach a book.  If these were the only criteria, they could be even better served with a so-called "Reading Flood", or sustained silent reading, etc.  If I am going to spend instructional time on a specific book, rather than on the act of reading in general, it must meet another criterion:

3.  Literary Merit.  It must demonstrate certain qualities of "Literature" that I can use to teach those concepts.

It is on this third point that Hush excels.  It meets the first two criteria perfectly, to the extent that at least one student in my class suspected me of choosing it specifically for her.  It is the mastery of such things as form, imagery, plot, characterization, and theme, however, that makes it worth spending weeks of classroom time scrutinizing. 

Hermes Trismegistus & The Three Initiates: The Emerlad Tablet of Hermes & The Kybalion

 At last, something that makes sense.  It is not these works' antiquity that gives them their credibility.  The former seems indeed to be ancient, but the latter is scarcely a hundred years old.  No, it is their nature that keeps them from the traps that religion--including Wicca, New Age, and even systems that spring from these works themselves, such as The Golden Dawn, etc.--fall into.  These systems invariably make the mistake of building a narrative around the universal truths that they purport to channel.  They get specific and detailed, and to the extent they do, they obscure reality under the veils of perception, interpretation, and judgement.  

What made this book so edifying, and I cannot overstate how thoroughly it has occupied my mind and transformed my thinking, was its universality.  There are very few specifics offered, and no "How to . . ."s.  These works merely state that which is true, and leave it at that.  Thus they allow the reader to apply it however she or he sees fit, whether it be candles or crystals or star charts.   Every step removed something is from the fundamental and general corrupts it.  These first steps are unavoidable to some extent: meaning, and language, for example.  But one need not progress through all the degrees of separation from these basic truths and end up with something so far removes as to be not only useless, but demonstrably false.

I recently uncovered the original quote that my friend Jim White often (incorrectly, as it turns out) referenced when describing the Divine.  Heinrich Zimmer is reported to have said,

"The best things can't be told," because they transcend thought. "The second best are misunderstood," because those are the thoughts that are supposed to refer to that which can't be thought about, and one gets stuck in the thoughts."The third best are what we talk about.”

 

Too often, we are left with the sixth or seventh best things instead, and build an entire belief system around them.  In these works, at least, I can see something as close to "True" as could be hoped for.

Ursula K. LeGuin: Orsinian Tales

 "Mr. Eray, let me speak to you."

"What about?"

"About anything," . . . (The Road East)

It is hard to say what this collection of stories is about.  It is good, fun, and I remember having difficulty putting it down as I read it.  But what was the author trying to accomplish with it?  Sometimes books are just entertainment, of course, but the works of LeGuin are not usually considered such.  Famously activist and political, she isn't what one would call a fluffy writer.  So where is all of that in this book?  

The world is, of course, a dark mirror of our own, and with that comes certain tacit criticisms.  The dark, lonely grind of existing in such a world is all too relatable, and even prescient.  Left at that level, however, the implication is that there is nothing for one to do but despair of existence, to muddle through in a broken, cruel system, and then die alone.  It is the very dread of this that seems to drive modern discourse, both at the literary and the personal level.

But there is a joy to be had here.  The characters find it, not in overthrowing or resisting a corrupt and heartless system.  Such a thought doesn't even seem to cross their minds.  Maler's response to the suggestion above is understandable in such a world: "What does it matter if any of us talks or doesn't talk  What is there to say?"

Equally revealing is Provin's answer: "It does matter.  there''s nothing left to us, now, but one another."  Even beneath the millstone of existence, the one true joy that is possible in life remains unscathed.  Simply speaking to each other is not sufficient to remove that kernel of joy from its husk, though.  The act of discourse, and of writing these stories, is merely a means to the end mentioned over and over again in them.  "She looked at him, seeing him again, and the future be damned, since all possible futures ever envisaged are . . . endlessly sordidly dreary . . ." (A Week in the Country).  The stories we write, and the conversations we have, are all in service of the goal of seeing and being seen.  The one joy left to us, and honestly the only one that ever existed in the first place, is to be able to say, as Isabella does, "She simply saw him.  She saw him clearly.  It was exhilirating" (The Lady of Moge).

Ramón Gómez de la Serna: Las Proximas Greguerías hasta 700

 601.El epitafio es la última tarjeta de visita que se hace el hombre.
The epitaph is the last calling card a man leaves.

602.La huella del pie en la arena es como la huella de la mano del gorila.
The footprint in the sand is like the print of a gorilla’s hand.

603.Dijo Buffon: «El genio es una larga paciencia. . .» Sí, la de su esposa.
Buffon says, “Genius is a lengthy patience.”  Yes, that of their spouse.

604.El lunar es el punto final del poema de la belleza.
The moon is the period at the end of the poem of beauty.

605.Se enfadó porque no la oía, pero es que estaba pensando en lo mismo que no escuchaba.
They got mad because they didn’t hear, but it was because they were thinking of the same thing they didn’t listen to.

606.El búho es el implacable juez que medita durante el día las sentencias que cumple de noche.
The owl is the implacable judge who ponders by day the sentences he carries out at night.

607.Cuando la mujer se da rouge frente a un espejito parece que aprende a decir la O.
When the woman applies lipstick in front of a little mirror, she seems to be learning to pronounce the letter O.

608.Los remeros de la regata componen el ciempiés acuático.
The rowers in a regata make up an aquatic centipede.

609.En la piel de tigre está su cólera laberíntica.
In the tigers skin is its labyrinthine anger.

610.En el canastillo del pan está también el símbolo de Moisés.
In the basket of bread, there is also the symbol of Moses.

611.En las aletas de los autos está el muñón de las alas del avión que pudieron ser.
In the fins of a car are the wing stumps of the airplane it could have been.

612.Los pararrayos hubieran sido inútiles en el diluvio universal.  Por eso se inventaron mucho después.
Lightning rods would have been useless during the Great Flood.  That is why they were invented much later.

613.Lo más misterioso del barco es que podría estar navegando ahora mismo por otros mares.
The most mysterious thing about boats is that at this very moment, they  could be sailing other seas.

614.Al soplar al mosquito para que se vaya le dotamos de algo de nuestra alma.
To blow a mosquito away is to bestow it with something of our own soul

615.Muchas veces la mariposa parece los lentes de la flor.
The butterfly often seems to be the eyeglasses of a flower.

616.Cuando una mujer chupa un pétalo de rosa se da un beso a sí misma.
When a woman sucks at a rose petal, she gives herself a kiss.

617.Fruncimos las cejas porque queremos pillar con pinzas algún gran pensamiento que nos escapa.
We furrow our brow because we want to plucka great thought that has escaped us with tweezers.

618.La mujer que se ha olvidado del rouge se consterna como si hubiese dejado los labios en casa.
The woman who has forgotten her lipstick is as dismayed as if she had left her lips at home.

619.Las tijeras que se caen cortan el rabo al diablo.
Falling scissors cut the tail of the devil.

620.En Persia, la luna siempre es luna llena.
In Persia, the moon is always full.

621.La mariposuela tiembla a los pies de la lámpara como si temiese que la fuésemos a violar.
The little butterflies tremble at the foot of the lamp as if they are afraid we were going to molest them.

622.En las chimeneas en que arde la leña parecen arder libros de memorias, diarios intimos y cartas de amor.
In chimneys that burn firewood, there seem to burn memoirs, intimate diaries, and love letters.

623.En la mañana, la lámpara aperece ciega de todo lo que pensó en la noche.
In the morning, the lamp appears blind to everything it thought at night.

624.A los presos los visten con pijamas a rayas para ver si vestidos de rejas no se escapan.
Prisoners are dressed in stripes to look as though they are dressed in the bars from which they cannot escape.

625.El despertador es el zapatero de los sueños.
The alarm clock is the cobbler of dreams.

626.La cabeza es la pecera de las ideas.
The head is the fish tank of ideas.

627.Era de esos hombres que cuando se pizcan la nariz con los dedos ya están seguros de todo.
He was one of those men who, when they pick their nose, are already sure of everything.

628.Cuando la luna se pasea por el paisaje nevado parece la novia de larga cola camino del altar.
When the moon passes over the snowy landscape, she seems to be a bride with a long train walking from the altar.

629.Al solo de violín le constesta siempre muy lejos otro violín.
Every violin solo is answered by another, distant violin.

630.En la tinta china está el luto del Arte.
In Chinese ink is the mourning of Art.

631.La palabra más vieja es la palabra «vestusta».
The oldest word is the word “ancient”.

632.Los tramoyistas son los marineros del teatro.
Stagehands are the sailors of the theater.

633.El jugo pancreático es el jugo más griego que poseemos.
Pancreatic juice is the most Greek juice we have.

634.Se ve claramente la hipocresía humano cuando el que estaba furibundo o la que estaba furibunda tiene que atender al teléfono y se llena de amabilidad.
Human hypocrisy is seen most clearly when a furious person has to answer the phone, and is filled with kindness.

635.Cuando la mujer renueva su pureza es cuando lava sus guantes blancos.
A woman renews her purity when she washes her white gloves.

636.Al ombligo le falta el botón.
The belly button is missing its button.

637.La luna pasa incólume por el cielo porque en el reverso lleva escrita la palabra «frágil».
The moon passes unscathed through the sky because on the back it is marked “fragile”.

638.La alegría mayor de la mujer es cuando encuentra que está cerrado el ojal de la solapa varonil en que iba a colocar una flor.
The happiest moment for a woman is when she finds the buttonhole on a man’s lapel closed, where she was going to place a flower.

639.En el desengaño hasta las luces de las estrellas hieren el corazón.
In disappointment until the light of the stars wounds the heart.

640.El animal más cejijunto es el búho.
The most perplexed animal is the bull. (a reference to its eyebrows being close together)

641.La luna pone en el bosque luz de cabaret.
The moon shines cabaret lights on the forest.

642.El jardín se fuma en pipa las hojas caídas.
The garden smokes fallen leaves in its pipe.

643.Las serpientes son las corbatas de los árboles.
Snakes are the neckties of the trees.

644.El que ronca tiene ventriloquía de león.
He who snores is ventriloquized by a lion.

645.Las mariposas que se asoman en la noche por el cristal de la ventana la conveirten en acuarium de mariposas.
The butterflies who stick out of the window glass at night turn it into a butterfly aquarium.

646.Lo más aristocrático que tiene la botella de champaña es que no consiente se la vuelva a poner el tapón.
The most aristocratic thing about the bottle of champagne is that it refuses to allow its cork to be replaced.

647.Los que no quieren que se fume en el vagón no comprenden que si la locomotora no fumase no se movería el tren.
Those who don’t wish people to smoke in a train car don’t understand that a train needs smoke to move.

648.Los ojos de los muertos miran las nubes que no volverían.
The eyes of the dead see clouds that will not return.

649.La esfinge está picada de viruelas por los siglos.
The sphinx has been pockmarked by the smallpox of the centuries.

650.La calavera es un reloj muerto.
The skull is a stopped clock.

651.La arrugada corteza de los árboles revela que la Naturaleza es una anciana.
The wrinkled bark of trees reveals that Nature is an old woman.

652.Lloran los gatos en la noche porque hubieran querido nacer niños en vez de gatos.
Cats cry in the night because they would rather have been born as children.

653.La serpiente mide el bosque para saber cuántos metros tiene y decírselo al ángel de las estadísticas.
The serpent measures the tree to know how many meters it has, and tell it to the angel of statistics.

654.En las grandes solemnidades llenas de personajes uniformados parece que hay algunos repetidos.
En the grand processions full of uniformed people, it seems that some of them have been repeated.

655.Álbum: cementerio de pensamientos perdidos.
The album: a cemetery of lost thoughts.

656.Por el ojo de la agua se va la montañita de más allá.
A little mountain from further away comes through the natural spring.

657.El camello tiene cara de cordero jorobato.
The camel has the face of a hunchbacked lamb.

658.Al darse cuenta el Creador de que el hombre se iba a comer ell pollo, le complicó las articulaciones para que fuese dificil el trincharlo.
When the Creator realized that man was going to eat chicken, he made the joints difficult to carve.

659.La esfínge se mira con coquetería en el espejo del espejisimo.
The Sphinx looks coquettishly in the mirror of a mirage.

660.Los dulces finos son servidos en diminutos paracaídas.
The delicate sweets are served in tiny parachutes.

661.Hay un momento en que el bandoneón parece que se le cae una pila de libros no ha podido abarcar con las dos manos.
There is a moment when the accordion looks like a falling pile of books that one can’t hold with two hands.

662.Un epitafio es una tarjeta de desafío a la muerte.
The epitaph is a challenge to death.

663.El búfalo es el toro jubilado de la prehistoria.
The buffalo is a retired bull of prehistory.

664.El bebé se saluda a sí mismo dando la mano a su pie.
The baby salutes himself by touching his hand to his foot.

665.El único animal que sabe historia es el león.
The only animal that understands history is the lion.

666.Un político con cara de foca es un político ideal.
A politician with the face of a seal is an ideal politician.

667.Los niños hacen sus construcciones con el deseo de que caigan en ruinas. ¡Provocar el terremoto es lo que más les divierte!
Children make their buildings with the intent to see them fall into ruins.  To cause an earthquake is their greatest pleasure!

668.En la tormenta se ve al Profesor Supremo escribiendo y borrando cálculos eléctricos en la pizarra del cielo.
In the storm we see the Supreme Professor writing and erasing electric calcuations on the blackboard of the sky.

669.El café con leche es una bebida mulata.
Coffee with cream is a mulatto drink.

670.La pieza de bacalao es la cometa de la Cuaresma.
The piece of cod is the kite of Lent.

671.La palmeras nos hacen provincianos.
Palm trees make us provincials.

672.Franklin salía los días de tormenta con un paraguas dotado de pararrayos.
Franklin went out on stormy days with an umbrella equipped with lightning rods.

673.Hay cojos con pierna de palo que reflorecen cuando viene la primavera y se vuelven sátiros.
There are criplles with wooden legs that rebloom when spring comes and become satyrs.

674.El musgo es el peluquín de las piedras.
Moss is the toupee of the stones.

675.Los ciclistas no saben lo frágil que es la base del cráneo.
Cyclists don’t understand the fragility of the base of the skull.

676.La pantalla cinematográfica debe tener la anchura de una sábana matrimonial, ya que al final de casi todas las películas se casan sus protagonistas.
The movie screen needs to be as wide as a nuptial curtain because almost all movies end with the heroes getting married.

677.Los negros son negros porque sólo así logran estar a la sombra bajo el sol de África.
Black people are thus because only then can they be in the shade under the African sun.

678.El reloj es el guardapelo del tiempo.
The watch is the locket of time.

679.El ciclista y la bicicleta enredados en la caída parecen un insecto boca arriba.
The cyclist and bicycle tangled in a fall look like an open insect mouth.

680.El nido es una corona de espinas sin espinas.
The nest is a thorny crown without thorns.

681.La viuda parece llevar su espeso velo para que no le piquen las moscas de la muerte.
The widow seems to wear her thick veil so the flies of death do not bite her.

682.Nuestra verdadera y única propiedad son los huesos.
Our only real property is our bones.

683.Lo malo de los nudistas es que cuando se sientan se pegan a las sillas.
The problem with nudists is that when they sit, they bump against the chair.

684.El ventilador afeita la barba al calor.
The fan shaves the beard of heat.

685.Cuando en nuestras mangas faltan botones parece que hemos sido deshonorados.
When buttons are missing from our sleeves, it seems that we have been dishonored.

686.Abrir un paraguas es como disparar contra la lluvia.
To open an umbrella is as to shoot against the rain.

687.Los cocos tienen dentro agua de oasis.
Coconuts contain an oasis.

688.¿Y si estuviésemos equivocados?  ¿Y si la Tierra fuese la Luna y la Luna la Tierra?
“And if we were wrong?
“And if the Earth became the moon, and vice versa?”

689.En las máquinas de escribir, el alfabeto baila la jota.
In typewriters, the alphabet dances the jota [traditional Spanish jumping dance].

690.Las máquinas registradoras nos hacen la instantánea del precio.
Cash registers give us a snaphot of the price.

691.Es triste que el interior de los baúles esté empapelado de pasillo.
It is sad that the inside of trunk would be papered like hallways.

692.Al repartir los puros el anfitrión es como si premiase a los que se han portado bien en la mesa.
In distributing cigars, the host seems to reward those who comported themselves well at the table.

693.--¿Hay peces en el sol?
--Si, pero fritos.
“Are there fish on the sun?”
“Yes, but fried.”

694.Los bébes con chupete miran al fumador en pipa como a un compañero de cochecito.
Babies with pacifiers look at pipe smokers as if they were coachmates.

695.El teléfono en realidad lo inventó al deshollinador, hablando con su compañero a traves de las chimeneas.
The telephone was really invented by the chimney sweep, talking with his friend through the chimney.

696.Los monos no encanecen porque no piensan.
Monkeys don’t go gray because they don’t think.

697.La sartén es el espejo de los huevos fritos.
The frying pan is a mirror for fried eggs.

698.La escoba baila el vals de la mañana.
The broom dances the waltz of the morning.

699.La T está pidiendo hilos de telégrafo.
The T demands telegraph wires.

700.El calzador es la cuchara de los zapatos.
The shoehorn is the spoon of shoes.

Richard Webster: Candle Magic for Beginners

 I'm so sick of this sort of thing.  Yet again, as with stones, and herbs, and numbers, and stars, the stench of the temporal eclipses any trace of the eternal.  What meaning could colors have, when they are merely constructs of a particular language and culture?  What meaning could numbers and dates and constellations have when they are such recent, and locally variable, ideas?  

It is revealed that all these things are but pale narratives pasted on to eternal truths, fingers pointing at the moon, not the moon itself.  The only thing that endures, immune to time, language, and culture, is the mind--the intention behind all things.  This mind cannot bear to suspend disbelief and rational thought long enough to make such things work.  And so, yet again I find myself in the position of having to do it my damned self.  There is no crutch, no easy fix for the questions that I am asking.  And I suppose I knew that all along.

Al-A'Raf II

 103-108: A telling fairly consistent with the Hebrew account, until Moses puts his hand into his garment.  Where Exodus says the hand was leprous, all translations of this verse render it "shining white" which makes more sense.

109-118: The only difference with the Hebrew account seems to be that the Egyptians' magic was an illusion, and Moses' real.

119-127: Another difference.  In Exodus 7:13, Pharaoh hardened his heart against these miracles, leading to disaster for him and Egypt.  But here there is an interesting moment where the Egyptian magicians sensibly submit to the superior power of Moses' رَبِّ.  Only after threatened by Pharaoh with temporal punishment did they relent.

128-136: An interesting rush through possibly the most riveting part of this story: the ten plagues and the pursuit across the Red Sea.  Here, it is framed as the mistake of seeing the good as deserved, and the bad as unjust.

137-142: A dizzying rush through the golden calf and the ten commandments.

143: Tempting to envision this, and the parallel account in Exodus, as a volcano.  Also tempting to draw a metaphorical parallel with the eponymous heights, and perhaps also with Nietzche's mountain.

144-146: Perhaps a clue to the mystery of predestination: the trigger that causes the Divine to withhold its truth and harden hearts to the signs is mere arrogance.

147-151: Aaron surely dodged a bullet here and in the parallel accounts.  

152-156: This supports the ideas in 144: repentance and humility go hand in hand.  

157-158: The mention of "The Unlettered Prophet" through here is intriguing in that it is unclear to whom it refers.  Moses?  Christ?  Muhammad? Presumably they are all reflections of the archetype.

159-162: All of this has the sense that the listeners were already familiar with the stories, from Exodus and elsewhere, and allusion was sufficient.  

163-168: The story of Aylah and the Sabbath is not as canonical to modern readers, however, and I wish there was more.  The idea of a test of devotion runs parallel to the idea of predestination.  Taken with 131, blessings are as much a test of devotion as curses.

169-170: A justification for the removal of divine blessing from the Jews.

171: More evidence for a volcanic reading of 143.

172-174: Message->Signs->Test->Chance for Mercy->Judgement seems to be the pattern.

175-176: Eivdently there is some dispute about the reference here.  Some take it to refer to  Bal’am ibn Ba’ûrâ, but even if true there is little information about him.

177-179: the dilemma of predestination extends even to the spirit realm.

180-186: The only justifiable position is that this Divine misdirection is the last step in the process.

187-189: Hulusi reads a lot into these seemingly straightforward verses.  How curious that it dovetails nicely with what I have been thinking about lately: the parallel between "gender" duality and the mind/thought relationship.  To Hulusi, Adam is the mind and Eve the thought.

190-192: Presumably this is directed at the descendants of Adam and Eve, rather than the original pair.  An argument can be made, however, that the original sin is the conflation of reality with the mind that thought it up.

193-198: More warning against the mistake of duality, the mistaking of the finger for the moon.

199-204: Wrapping up here.  "Just . . . don't be a dick, okay guys?"

205-206: Be as the angels.  Remember what you are, both divine in nature and minutely insignificant.

 

Gabrielle Ford with Sarah Thomson: Gabe & Izzy

 It is unclear whether this book is purposefully condescending and pedantic in an effort to be accessible to lower level readers, or if the author (and her zombie writer) simply had nothing of substance to say.  It is not the style alone which is insultingly banal.  Even the narrative, and the conclusions drawn from it, are so shallow as to be suitable for a poster, rather than a book.  

No doubt this is a case where the writer is more convincing in person, and no doubt her presentations at schools are effective and meaningful.  Sadly, the book does not capture any of this, and I cannot imagine it inspiring any sort of emotion in young readers, let alone meaningful reflection.  I won't be teaching this book in class, unless by some hellfire's curse I am in the fourth grade classroom at some point.  Even then, I would be required to make up for the book's deficiencies with supplementary lessons that would do just as good a job on their own, and not turn the students against me.  Preachy, shallow, and pandering.  Pass.

King John Acts IV-V

 IV.i.14-26: An excellent characterization of Arthur here, and an effective, efficient, dramatic device to rouse the audience and propel the action.  In my thirst for theme, I musn't forget to acknowledge little moments like this.

80-100: Sight quavers.  this would be a tricky sequence to navigate as an actor.  Only sound has power in this world.

109-110: And so Arthur knows that his tongue is more powerful than his eyes.  

115-120: And lo, his word cools the very iron.

145-147: Hubert rightly commands silence.  Arthur's word is simply too powerful.

IV.ii.28-34: A marvelous speech, true and succinct in exactly Shakespeare's finest fashion.  Worth committing to memory and revisiting.

48: The tongue is mightier than the sword, and words than actions, according to Pembroke.  But we shall see.

68: Success!  The tongue prevails, and on a level that John has yet to suspect.

79-80: Purpose and conscience are another reflection of the two warring forces in this world.

92-94: A valid question.  John seems to have his hands on the shears of destiny, but there are greater forces at work here.

96: "So thrive it in your game, and to farewell," is as effective a kiss-off as I have ever heard.

126-127: The tongue again.  Is it to be believed or belied?

145-159: Be careful what you wish for, John!  This tongue is mighty indeed.

181-182: In this world, Mercury is indeed the greatest of the gods.

204-211: The iron and the shears are each a callback, and a metaphor.

227-234: The hand and the eye work together.  The fact, and the action.

248-253: The eye is the sign, but the tongue is the signified.

275-278: The eye lies.  John's helpless vacillation is a reflection of his reliance on it.

IV.iii.28: Words indeed are best.  But what has prevailed here?  The word or the hand?

58-60: If, indeed.  It seems not to be the work of a hand, but of a tongue, and the Bastard is the only one who sees it.

94-95: Is it not the tongue alone that caused this, though?

103: The toasting-iron, significant elsewhere, is tellingly conflated with the sword.

152-167: Faulconbridge's character gains depth here.  His loyalty all along has been to England alone, and now that it is lost, what remains?

V.i.1-5: The hand, not the tongue, is invoked here.  Shall it prevail?

5-21: Only after is the word, and the tongue, brought to bear.

46: A wrinkle in my reading.  Where in this dichotomy does "thought", intention, will, etc. fit?

55-75: The eye is a pawn in the battle between the hand and the tongue.

V.ii.8-39: Salisbury continues to be one of the best roles written here.  The metaphysical conflict at the heart of the entire play is his in microcosm.

44: If so, then the conflict is summed up here as between compulsion and respect, reality and ideal.  Perhaps to much of a stretch to say hand and tongue, though.

64: What a line.  The Dauphin is certainly full of himself.

84-88: He's not wrong though.  The word, once given, does not return until it has been fulfilled.

110: Indeed.  And I take this as admonition to continue looking (probably too) deeply into what lies under the text.

124-130: Faulconbridge invokes the tongue, even while admiring the Dauphin's stance.  He knows the inner, even as he proclaims the outer.  Perhaps this is the central dichotomy after all.

160-163: And the Dauphin sees through it.

166: Surely the tongue is not invoked so often in the Bard's other works.

182-183: I'm genuinely eager to find out the result.  Only then will my reading be clear.

V.iii.3-4: All the aforegone tempest may well turn out to be moot, which would itself be quite revealing.

13-14: A tempting juxtaposition of hot and cold, more suitable for a Galenic reading perhaps.

V.iv.9-10: Melun's turn of heart reeks of dramatic convenience--unless we take the stance that he was not wounded in battle, but by Louis' own order.

30-44: Also flimsy explanations.  Obviously, there is more to Melun's change of heart.

50-55: Also difficult to reconclie with Salisbury's character.  This whole scene is suspect.

V.v.16-20: Efficient and deep characterization in these few lines.  An actor could really make a meal out of them.

V.vi.14: Clever Bastard.  

27-35: The result of this poisoning will reveal the entire play.

V.vii.6: He does yet speak.  The tongue prevails.

13-25: . . . and even exults!

34-36: Same, John.  Same.

38-46: If I were staging this, I would have him sing these lines.

49-54: Galen is never far from the Bard's mind.

116-124: More prophetic than he could have realized.

All in all, I feel wonderfully misled.  All of the debate, the shears, the irons, the proclamations, hands, and tongues, were for naught.  Just as Fauconbridge says, 

Now, now, you stars, that move in your right spheres,
Where be your powers? Show now your mended
faiths (V.vii.78-80)

None of this made any sense after all.  The floods, the poison, the machinations, the Pope, all irrelevant, seemingly on a whim.  Tis all a checkerboard of nights and days, after all.

The Wild Bunch

 What in the Peckinpah?  When was this movie made?  Violent, chilling, and nihilistic even by modern standards, it is no surprise that audiences in 1969 blanched at this offering, and astonishing that critics of the time seemed to appreciate it.  Fifty years before Walter White, Tony Soprano, and Don Draper, Pike Bishop appeared on the screen to show reality as it is: nasty, brutal, and short.  

I did not enjoy this movie, but I have been hoisted by my own petard, and have to admit that it is great.  My current standard for the question is to ask, as a Reader's Digest critic evidently did at the the time of this one, "Why did this movie need to exist?"  Peckinpah's own answers are only the surface of a deeper truth.  One of his stated goals was to de-glamorize violence: "... it's ugly, brutalizing, and bloody awful; it's not fun and games and cowboys and Indians. It's a terrible, ugly thing," as quoted in David Weddle's biography.  He also drew parallels with the violence of the Vietnam War, as broadcast nightly at the time.

But at its heart, this movie is not about violence.  It is about the worldview that allows it.  It is not only the blood that would have shocked contemporary audiences.  The gratuitous nudity, casual sex, profanity, drunkenness, bloodthirstiness, and general lack of a moral center make it a wonder that it was created at all, let alone screened.  The opening sequence reveals the truth: as we watch the movie, we are all those children, gleefully torturing bugs, and watching as they devour each other.  Once we exit the theater, however, we are no longer the children.  We are the bugs.

Al-A'raf

I don't think I've been giving the epigraph to these books its due, especially considering the emphasis Hulusi gives to the first letter, which is also my name.

1. This mysterious introduction acquires even more meaning in Hulusi's Sufi reading, but it is still obscure, and correspondingly fascinating.  I especially like Baha u'llah's mythical idea that the letters were formed from tears of the divine.

2. A reminder that with knowledge comes no anxiety; learning is one of the only activities in life that has no downside.

3. Is this a chastisement of the prophet himself, or of the reader?  No doubt both can benefit from being reminded that the only real knowledge is remembering that which one already knows in رَّبِّكُمۡ.

 4-7. The we here is clearly the divine itself, the destroyer and the questioner.

8-9. Knowledge of the signs, in contrast to what is stated in v.2, does come with certain responsibilities.

10: Clearly a clue that "You" here is the reader, the people, not the Prophet.  will it remain so throughout?

11: Another name for Satan here: إِبۡلِيسَ . Muslim theology seems to hold that he was not an angel at all, but a Jinn, something different entirely, which opens a fascinating metaphysical rabbit hole.

12-18: Way more detail here about Lucifer than expected.  Is this book shaping up to be the Job of the Quran?  It does not line up with Biblical/Hebrew mythology.  Here Lucifer is cast out (after seemingly being forgiven once) immediately after refusing to prostrate himself to Adam along with the angels.  In Biblical mythology, he is still given access to heaven at least until the time of Job.  The most fascinating part here is not the details of the timeline, however.  It is the recurrence in v.16 of the idea that the divine is directly and purposefully responsible for the evil deeds of wrongdoers, as if by predestination.  This continues to be one of the most puzzling and ill-answered questions of both the Quran and the Bible.

19-25 A retelling of this story more or less consistent with the Bible.  Hulusi's metaphysical interpretation that the forbidden tree is ego, the idea of self and corporeality, opens a wealth of possibilities.  Another  tantalizing angle is the implication that the Paradise out of which they were cast was not on the Earth itself.  The two ideas together offer the possibility that Eden is consciousness of one's true self, and Earth is slavery to the ego.

26-27 Again, the idea that the devils tempt unbelievers on direct orders from Allah raises uncomfortable questions that could unravel all Abrahamic religion if answered honestly.

28-29:   Supposedly, these verses are in reaction to the local custom of worshiping in the nude.  It is not clear the theological reasons against this.  The surrounding verses could be taken, as Hulusi does, to indicate a connection to the awareness of nudity that accompanied the fall from grace, but the connection is tenuous at best.

30-33: The argument seems to be, not against nudity, but against putting words in the mouth of the divine.

34-36: An advertisement for the book in which it appears.

37-41: A much clearer statement of hellfire than is found in the Bible.  Hulusi's Sufi assertion that the torment described here is actually a form of radiation seems far-fetched.

42-43: The Sufi version leaves ٱلْحَمْدُ (praise) untranslated, and ascribes great significance to it.  None of the other four versions do such a thing.

44-45: The idea that the residents of torment are there because they have been misled is at odds with 12-27. Are they just casualties of the divine order?

46-49: The eponymous "heights" are a partition then, between paradise and torment.  If the Sufi metaphor is to be pursued, then what is this intermediate state between awakening and ego? It is tempting to assign it to the state I am myself in at the moment, but where are the inhabitants of paradise to whom I can look and call?

50: The parallel with the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16.  Unlike in that parable,the response of those in paradise is not recorded.

51-53: More cruelty and entrapment, if their eyes were blinded purposefully.  53 in particular seems to be an exhortation to faith, as opposed to waiting for proof, but the whole thing is a knot of cause and effect that even Hulusi does seem to be concerned with untying.

54-56: The addition of mercy as a factor in this existential conundrum does nothing to simplify matters.  Still, some good poetry here.

57: Unclear why Hulusi leaves هُوَ untranslated here, but not elsewhere.  "Hu" is either a divine name, or it is not.

58: Where is the line between this required evaluation, as يَشكُرونَ  is translated here, and faith?  53 indicates that there is such a thing as too much evaluation.  Perhaps "thankfulness" is a less prickly translation, as it is rendered elsewhere.

59-64: The people perished in the flood because they failed to believe the signs given.  What is so wrong then about requiring such signs in 53?  I am fixated on this point.

65-72: A fascinating new story, my favorite part of this project.  Presumably we will learn more about Hud in the book that bears his name later, as it is only referenced here.

73-79: And likewise with Salih, though the story of the she-camel is at least mentioned here.

80-84: The story of Lot is more familiar.  In this version, it is clear that homosexuality was the real sin here.  Liberal Christianity likes to say that the real sin was lack of hospitality, in an effort to preserve their old wineskins, but that argument has always rung hollow to me.

85-93: I also hope to learn more about Shuayb, as part of this project or otherwise, since he seems to be a larger figure in other texts.  The fact that the proscription against "corrupting that which has been reformed" in 56 is repeated here invites further consideration.  One interpretation is that this reformation is the revelation of the prophets, a return to monotheism, and the corruption is an attempted reversion to animism.

94-100: This does not seem to be an accurate summary of the pattern.  The hardship in each case was delivered as a punishment, rather than a trial.  No wonder each group was reluctant to welcome a new prophet; their current way of doing things was going just fine.  It was only after they rejected the prophet that their error was revealed and their hardship delivered.  One could well ask, "Are we supposed to believe every schlub who comes along claiming to be divinely inspired then?  That seems unsustainable . . ."

101-102: And this is especially cruel if their hearts are then locked, as if by divine order.  This is at least slightly kinder than locking their hearts before the fact, at least.  A certain argument could be made that people must be "on the heights", so to speak, ready to see the reality of paradise, when the prophet arrives.  Perhaps only those are capable of distinguishing the divine.

San Juan de la Cruz: Poesias Completas

So many questions, and so many of them the same questions I have been asking for decades.  Who is this beloved, the love in which San Juan allows himself to be subsumed?  Is it something within him, or something larger, something Divine?  Is it different at all from the love of another human, or of oneself? Or is it just the same human ecstasy with another cloak?  Is all religion, all love even,  just a mask for something within us?  Are we making it all up?  Whatever it is, where and how can I find it?

The overarching question as I read this though, was, "Did it really happen?" Did San Juan actually succeed in surrendering himself to this ecstatic love, whatever it was?  Or is this entire conceit aspirational, wishful thinking, "Wouldn't it be nice if . . ."?

Kwame Alexander: The Crossover

 Well this one is on my "To Teach" list forever.  Everything about it is ideal for teaching: the characterization, plot, thematic elements are exactly at the sweet spot where a student could see them with the right amount of work.  The form too is perfect for teaching, almost as though it were written by a curriculum committee.

But the real triumph of this book is the believability.  Somehow a grown man perfectly captured the minds of my young students on paper.  This doesn't sound like an adult trying to write in the voice of a teenager.  Every page could easily have been written by one of my students, and not one of the advanced ones.  The mistakes, the cliches, the immaturity, all perfectly captured and relatable in a way that borders on miraculous.

 Of course it's no miracle.  It's skill.  Nonetheless, it's perfect and I can't wait to see what comes out of young minds when they read it.

Rocky

 Choices, choices, choices.  What interesting choices were made here.

On the surface, this is a straightforward allegory.  The scrappy young protagonist, armed with nothing but the virtue traditional to every American movie of this sort--pluck, grit, spirit, heart, whatever mask it wears--is oppressed by the machine of wealth and business.  No matter what they take away from him, or how they try to keep him in his place, that virtue cannot be squelched, and ultimately, somehow, he triumphs.  The American Spirit cannot be defeated, and though tragedy and hardship are unavoidable, all is well.  The hero is rewarded with love, wealth, and victory.

Except for one choice, this would be every movie of that type, serviceable for an endorphin rush, but utterly transparent and unimaginative.

In every other movie of this sort, the villain, the oppressive symbol of an unjust and corrupt system, would be an old, rich, white man.  Why on earth was the choice made to cast a black man?  Was the intention to turn the trope on its head? Was the choice written into the script?  If so, that is the whole point of this movie.  It is not Rocky who carries the message, but Apollo.  The system is not the villain here, but the very idea of success and wealth.  As Rocky is here, Apollo once no doubt was.  He was the plucky underdog, oppressed by the system, equipped only with an unsquelchable spirit.  Pluck.  Grit.  Drive.  Will.  Determination.  Nothing could beat that out of him, no oppressive system, no unfair riggery of the game.  The only thing that could take his virtue was success itself, just as it inevitably will for his younger counterpart.