The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the 'Fuck you' signs in the world. It's impossible.

Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye

Metamorphosis - Kafka

'Stay where you are, I don't need you! You think you have enough strength to come here, and are merely staying back because that's what you have chosen to do. You are mistaken! I am still by far the stronger of us. Alone, I might have had to give best to you, but your mother left me all her strength. I have made a wonderful pact with your friend, and I have all your customers right here in my pocket!

'So he's even got pockets in his shirt!'* Georg said under his breath, and thought the remark would make his father impossible in the world. The thought came and went, as everything did, because he was continually forgetting everything.

'Just you try slipping your arm in your fiancee's and coming to meet me! I'll swat her away from you, you have no idea!

Georg pulled a face, as though of disbelief. His father merely nodded towards George's corner, in confirmation of what he had said.

'How you amused me today when you came along and asked me whether you should tell your friend about the engagement. He knows everything, you silly boy, everything! I wrote to him, because you forgot to deprive me of my writing implements. That's why he hasn't come for years, he knows everything a hundred times better than you. In his left hand he crumples up your letters unopened, while in his right he holds mine in front of him to read!'

In his enthusiasm, he swung his arm over his head. 'He knows everything a thousand times better!' he shouted.

"Ten thousand times!' said Georg, to mock his father, but even as he spoke them the words sounded deadly earnest.

'For years I've been waiting for you to approach me with your question. Do you think anything else had the least interest for me? Do you imagine I read the newspapers? Here!' and he tossed Georg a page from the newspaper, which had somehow been carried into bed with him. An old newspaper, with a name that didn't sound at all familiar to Georg.

'How long you dilly-dallied before reaching maturity! Your mother was unable to witness the joyful day, she had to die first, your friend is going under in Russia; three years ago he was so yellow he was obviously not long for the world, and as for me, you see what condition I'm in. It seems you have enough vision to see that!

'So you were lying in wait for me! shouted Georg.

Pityingly, his father remarked: 'I expect you meant to say that earlier. It doesn't fit in here.'

And then, louder: 'So now you know what else there was besides yourself; up till now all you knew was you! You were an innocent child, really, but it would be truer to say you were a veritable fiend! - And now hear: I sentence you to death by drowning!

Georg felt himself expelled from he room, the crash with which his father came down on the bed ringing in his ears as he sprinted away. On the stairs, which he took like a smooth incline, he collided with the charwoman, who was just on her way upstairs to give the flat its morning clean. 'Oh my God!' she exclaimed, and buried her face in her apron but was already gone. he sprang through the gate, crossed the road, and raced towards the river. Already he was gripping at the rails, like a hungry man his food. He swung himself over them, like the excellent gymnast he had been in his early years, to the pride of his parents. His grip was beginning to weaken, when through the rails he spied a motor omnibus that would easily cover the sound of his fall, softly he called out, 'Dear parents, I have always loved you,' and let himself drop.

At that moment, a quite unending flow of traffic streamed over the bridge.'

^{* Kafka's variation on the German proverb that says the last shirt - the shroud - has no pockets in it.}

Calculus of existence? :)

I thought therefore I was. I think therefore I am. What happened in between?

The Bad Writing Contest

Have a luke at The Bad Writing Contest. Now try and read this:

Total presence breaks on the univocal predication of the exterior absolute the absolute existent (of that of which it is not possible to univocally predicate an outside, while the equivocal predication of the outside of the absolute exterior is possible of that of which the reality so predicated is not the reality, viz., of the dark/of the self, the identity of which is not outside the absolute identity of the outside, which is to say that the equivocal predication of identity is possible of the self-identity which is not identity, while identity is univocally predicated of the limit to the darkness, of the limit of the reality of the self). This is the real exteriority of the absolute outside: the reality of the absolutely unconditioned absolute outside univocally predicated of the dark: the light univocally predicated of the darkness: the shining of the light univocally predicated of the limit of the darkness: actuality univocally predicated of the other of self-identity: existence univocally predicated of the absolutely unconditioned other of the self. The precision of the shining of the light breaking the dark is the other-identity of the light. The precision of the absolutely minimum transcendence of the dark is the light itself/the absolutely unconditioned exteriority of existence for the first time/the absolutely facial identity of existence/the proportion of the new creation sans depth/the light itself ex nihilo: the dark itself univocally identified, i.e., not self-identity identity itself equivocally, not the dark itself equivocally, in “self-alienation,” not “self-identity, itself in self-alienation” “released” in and by “otherness,” and “actual other,” “itself,” not the abysmal inversion of the light, the reality of the darkness equivocally, absolute identity equivocally predicated of the self/selfhood equivocally predicated of the dark (the reality of this darkness the other-self-covering of identity which is the identification person-self).

This isn't for Scott.

Rain lust

Not even a first draft.

The girls you fuck after walking dark dripping streets of rain are just mothers. They mope about, painting faces, placing make-up, worrying about paunches and stockings that smell like piss.

You want something that doesn't exist. Your disease. Wake up man! Stop trudging around "The Rocks" assaying crevices and divining rocks for impressions of sexual lust. It's stupidity.

Better to sit to warm bread and tales of Ulysses in warm comfort. Or Gaelic passion fiddled for tourists, and a kiss on cheek. Reciprocal, meaningless kisses. Chalk studied bodies poised like waxen gelatin. They simulate the perfect cadaver, model the correct density for brachytherapy studies. A slight gelatinous cheese cloth density - a skin, a cheek. A touch of friendship.

So it was we wandered, as I had hunted years before, homeless, forlorn and lost in indiscriminate passion. Or lust. But this time with friends.

And a cure, curled in brick wall cavities, molded for reasons other than drunken proclivities - meaningless actions caught on film. Digital print flaunting youth and extravagant meaninglessness. Pose. Flash. Harsh light and smiles stumble ahead. So lost - so climb illegal fences like immigrants. Boat people slapping car mirrors. Shame to not be understood. But then I'm a hypocrite. Oh to be as staid as they think I am...

A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe

So, I bought this book today¹.

¹ I lost my book of Feynman down the toilet this afternoon at work, and this is what I end up with.

Ulysses - James Joyce

Finally got around to starting this again. My god, what a book! I'm utterly gobsmacked.

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