Image or Mire And Murk?

[from Susanna Kaysen's Asa, As I Knew Him p146-147:]

---And the biggest discrepancy of all was between what we were and what we perceived in each other. Who did I love? What man was it who in my dreams and in the long vibrant winter evenings alone on my sofa I had kissed and awakened, feeding my images with conversations about layouts conducted in the fluorescence of the office? Whose eyes superimposed themselves on Fay's during dinner, halting his descriptions of his day at work? Can human beings love each other? Must we always love an image we've labored over secretly, never love the living soul with all its mire and murk?

[I really enjoyed Kaysen's memoir, Girl, Interupted; it lead me to seek out her other writing, and this was my favorite of her fictions. Whom do we really end up loving — our image of a person, or their actual mire and murk? I've asked myself this for a long, long time; and it's illuminated some of my explorations of developing a computational consciousness.]

Investigation vs. Imagination

[from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, p20 in the Norton Critical edition, 1996.
Victor Frankenstein describes his cousin and future wife, Elizabeth Lavenza, when both were children:]

---Every one adored Elizabeth. If the servants had any requests to make, it was always through her intercession. We were strangers to any species of disunion and dispute; for although there was a great dissimilitude in our characters, there was an harmony in that very dissimilitude. I was more calm and philosophical than my companion; yet my temper was not so yielding. My application was of longer endurance; but it was not so severe whilst it endured. I delighted in investigating the facts relative to the actual world; she busied herself in following the aërial creation of the poets. The world was to me a secret, which I desired to discover; to her it was a vacancy; which she sought to people with imaginations of her own.

[This passage interests me both in Mary Shelley (as a woman) writing a male character describing a female character (and the influences of the Georgian period, which i have only begun to explore) and in (of course) the word choice ("Every one"), punctuation, and character of the writing which i do so enjoy. Perhaps i could find a worthwhile doctoral thesis in the literature transition from the Georgian to the Victorian.

Gentle Reader, enjoy the day!]

that insoluble riddle of the sentimental life

[from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton, p57-58]

---A fear of the future again laid its cold touch on Lansing. Susy's independence and self-sufficiency had been among her chief attractions; if she were to turn into an echo their delicious duet ran the risk of becoming the dullest of monologues. He forgot that five minutes earlier he had resented her being glad to see their friends, and for a moment he found himself leaning dizzily over that insoluble riddle of the sentimental life: that to be differed with is exasperating, and to be agreed with monotonous.

[One of my favorites. Aren't people difficult? :-D ]

seeing & letting go

[from Pilgrim At Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, p30-31:]

Seeing is of course very much a matter of verbalization. Unless I call attention to what passes before my eyes, I simply won't see it. ... It's not that I'm observant; it's just that I talk too much. Otherwise, especially in a strange place, I'll never know what's happening. Like a blind man at the ball game, I need a radio.
When I see this way I analyze and pry. I hurl over logs and roll away stones; I study the bank a square foot at a time, probing and tilting my head. Some days when a mist covers the mountains, when the muskrats won't show and the microscope's mirror shatters, I want to climb up the blank blue dome as a man would storm the inside of a circus tent, wildly, dangling, and with a steel knife claw a rent in the top, peep, and, if I must, fall.

But there is another kind of seeing that involves letting go. When I see this way I sway transfixed and emptied. The difference between the two ways of seeing is the difference between walking with and without a camera. When I walk with a camera I walk from shot to shot, reading the light on a calibrated meter. When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment's light prints on my own silver gut. When I see this second way I am above all an unscrupulous observer.

[How do you see? Do you analyze and pry, or do you sway transfixed and emptied? Either way, enjoy!]

The Daily Promise - "the other side of silence"

Nine o'clock greetings, intangible folks out there on the ether.

Each and every day i would like to compose (or find) some tasty little nugget of text to share with you. Then the next morning i'll put it in a new posting here.

And since i did not take the time yesterday either to craft or to discover anything new to share, i shall fall back on an old favorite of mine from Middlemarch by George Eliot:
---
If we had a keen vision and feeling for all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.
---
See you tomorrow, gentle readers; joy to all!

Hello world!

Beginning a new week with the first entry in a new blog (during the first month in a new town and a new life).

The sun is shining; the breeze is blowing. Get out and enjoy it (while the low humidity lasts)!

Live. Love. Laugh.

Celebrate! Sing! Sanctify!

Find (and cherish) the holy in your life.

Nurture the good in yourself and those around you.

And have fun while you're at it! Enjoy!