COUNTDOWN TO GREATNESS

grimes


grimes - caladan


grimes - beast infection


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aurora borealis over northern north


aurora over northern US and Canada


up the east coast of north america


north dakota to central quebec


mexico to new brunswick


central great plains


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120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade

"Nothing quite encourages as does one's first unpunished crime."

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Edward Hopper


THE PALTRY NUDE STARTS ON A SPRING VOYAGE by Wallace Stevens

But not on a shell, she starts,
Archaic, for the sea.
But on the first-found weed
She scuds the glitters,
Noiselessly, like one more wave.

She too is discontent
And would have purple stuff upon her arms,
Tired of the salty harbors,
Eager for the brine and bellowing
Of the high interiors of the sea.

The wind speeds her,
Blowing upon her hands
And watery back.
She touches the clouds, where she goes
In the circle of her traverse of the sea.

Yet this is meagre play
In the scrurry and water-shine,
As her heels foam---
Not as when the goldener nude
Of a later day

Will go, like the centre of sea-green pomp,
In an intenser calm,
Scullion of fate,
Across the spick torrent, ceaselessly,
Upon her irretrievable way.

***

Haruki Murakami Paris Review interview
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2/the-art-of-fiction-no-182-haruki-murakami

INTERVIEWER

One of the cardinal rules of magic realism is not to call attention to the fantastic elements of the story. You, however, disregard this rule: your characters often comment on the strangeness of the story line, even call the reader’s attention to it. What purpose does this serve? Why?

MURAKAMI

That’s a very interesting question. I’d like to think about it . . . Well, I think it’s my honest observation of how strange the world is. My protagonists are experiencing what I experience as I write, which is also what the readers experience as they read. Kafka or García Márquez, what they are writing is more literature, in the classical sense. My stories are more actual, more contemporary, more the postmodern experience. Think of it like a movie set, where everything—all the props, the books on the wall, the shelves—is fake. The walls are made of paper. In the classical kind of magic realism, the walls and the books are real. If something is fake in my fiction, I like to say it’s fake. I don’t want to act as if it’s real.

INTERVIEWER

To continue the metaphor of the movie set, might the pulling back of the camera intend to show the workings of the studio?

MURAKAMI

I don’t want to persuade the reader that it’s a real thing; I want to show it as it is. In a sense, I’m telling those readers that it’s just a story—it’s fake. But when you experience the fake as real, it can be real. It’s not easy to explain.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, writers offered the real thing; that was their task. In War and Peace Tolstoy describes the battleground so closely that the readers believe it’s the real thing. But I don’t. I’m not pretending it’s the real thing. We are living in a fake world; we are watching fake evening news. We are fighting a fake war. Our government is fake. But we find reality in this fake world. So our stories are the same; we are walking through fake scenes, but ourselves, as we walk through these scenes, are real. The situation is real, in the sense that it’s a commitment, it’s a true relationship. That’s what I want to write about.

INTERVIEWER

In your writing, you return to mundane details time and time again.

MURAKAMI

I like details very much. Tolstoy wanted to write the total description; my description is focused on a very small area. When you describe the details of small things, your focus gets closer and closer, and the opposite of Tolstoy happens—it gets more unrealistic. That’s what I want to do.

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Lil Wayne - Duffle Bag Boy


Shabazz Palaces - Are you...can you...were you...felt?


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