(no subject)
I was indeed able to get off the ground last Friday, for a nice weekend in Buffalo with Nadine. We went to Niagra Falls on Saturday and I took a few pictures, one of the falls themselves which you can see here.
Otherwise, the weekend went lovely. I finished off Robert Musil's second volume of the 'Man Without Qualities' trilogy while Nadine was doing research during the days. Here are a few of the more memorable quotes from the second volume of the much under-read series:
'I say history, but what I mean, you will remember, is our life. And after all I admitted from the very start that there is something very improper about my question: why does man not make history? That is, why does he only attack history like an animal, when he is hurt, when things are on fire close behind him? Why, in short, does he make history only in emergency? Well now, tell me, why does that sound improper? What have we against it, although what it amounts to, after all, is only that man shouldn't let human life drift the way things will always drift if you let them?'
'Modern knowledge was in fact Fischel's sedative. All this was a feeling fundamental to civilisation.'
'What suprises and overwhelms you as beauty, the thing that makes you believe you are seeing it for the first time in your life, is something you have inwardly long known and been in search of, and there was always an anticipatory glimmer of it in your eyes, a glimmer that has now merely been intensified into full daylight.'
'Only it seemed to him today, however rounded and various his life might present itself to him as being, that what had had quite a different and lasting influence on him was something that had then seemed to be among all things the most unreal: namely that romantically expectant state of mind which had whispered to him that he should belong not only to the bright and bustling world, but also to another world, one that hung suspended within it like a holding of the breath.'
'But she was by no means absent; on the contrary, it would be more correct to say she was intent, introverted somewhere in a profounder kind of space there was (in some way beyond the grasp of ordinary imagining) inside the space that her body took up in the world.'
'By exerting great and manifold skill we manage to produce a dazzling deception by the aid of which we are capable of living alongside the most uncanny things and remaining perfectly calm about it, because we recognize these frozen grimaces of the universe as a table or a chair, a shout or an outstretched arm, a speed or a roast chicken.'
'In such a night as this it was possible to feel the significance of events as in a theatre. One felt that one was an apparition in this world, something that rang and echoed and, when it passed across an illuminated background, had its shadow walking with it like some huge, jerking clown, now rising to his full height and at the next instant once more creeping humbly at the walker's heels.'
'But he now seemed to himself to be nothing more than some phantom wandering through the gallery of life, aghast at being unable to find the frame it should slip into; and he was thoroughly relieved when before long his road brought him into a district that was less oppressive and less grand.'
'One had to spread one's arms--and with her that meant one's words, one's kisses, one's tears--one had to spread them wide like wings!'
Granted, these mere fragments are nothing in comparision to the book read in its entirety. It merely sheds a little light towards the main topics dealt with in these volumes.
-=-=-=-=-=-
In other news, I might be off to Vegas in January, should be a sick time of debauchery.
Oh, and Deltron 3030 is amazing. Check it out if you're even slightly interested in any form of hip-hop.
Otherwise, the weekend went lovely. I finished off Robert Musil's second volume of the 'Man Without Qualities' trilogy while Nadine was doing research during the days. Here are a few of the more memorable quotes from the second volume of the much under-read series:
'I say history, but what I mean, you will remember, is our life. And after all I admitted from the very start that there is something very improper about my question: why does man not make history? That is, why does he only attack history like an animal, when he is hurt, when things are on fire close behind him? Why, in short, does he make history only in emergency? Well now, tell me, why does that sound improper? What have we against it, although what it amounts to, after all, is only that man shouldn't let human life drift the way things will always drift if you let them?'
'Modern knowledge was in fact Fischel's sedative. All this was a feeling fundamental to civilisation.'
'What suprises and overwhelms you as beauty, the thing that makes you believe you are seeing it for the first time in your life, is something you have inwardly long known and been in search of, and there was always an anticipatory glimmer of it in your eyes, a glimmer that has now merely been intensified into full daylight.'
'Only it seemed to him today, however rounded and various his life might present itself to him as being, that what had had quite a different and lasting influence on him was something that had then seemed to be among all things the most unreal: namely that romantically expectant state of mind which had whispered to him that he should belong not only to the bright and bustling world, but also to another world, one that hung suspended within it like a holding of the breath.'
'But she was by no means absent; on the contrary, it would be more correct to say she was intent, introverted somewhere in a profounder kind of space there was (in some way beyond the grasp of ordinary imagining) inside the space that her body took up in the world.'
'By exerting great and manifold skill we manage to produce a dazzling deception by the aid of which we are capable of living alongside the most uncanny things and remaining perfectly calm about it, because we recognize these frozen grimaces of the universe as a table or a chair, a shout or an outstretched arm, a speed or a roast chicken.'
'In such a night as this it was possible to feel the significance of events as in a theatre. One felt that one was an apparition in this world, something that rang and echoed and, when it passed across an illuminated background, had its shadow walking with it like some huge, jerking clown, now rising to his full height and at the next instant once more creeping humbly at the walker's heels.'
'But he now seemed to himself to be nothing more than some phantom wandering through the gallery of life, aghast at being unable to find the frame it should slip into; and he was thoroughly relieved when before long his road brought him into a district that was less oppressive and less grand.'
'One had to spread one's arms--and with her that meant one's words, one's kisses, one's tears--one had to spread them wide like wings!'
Granted, these mere fragments are nothing in comparision to the book read in its entirety. It merely sheds a little light towards the main topics dealt with in these volumes.
-=-=-=-=-=-
In other news, I might be off to Vegas in January, should be a sick time of debauchery.
Oh, and Deltron 3030 is amazing. Check it out if you're even slightly interested in any form of hip-hop.