Hummm... this question should be actually an advertising slogan, and I'm no publicist therefore I'm not going to advertise anything, not even my blog. I'm going to talk about something totally uninteresting and empty, nothing to do with Isobel. I just want to talk about the readers of this blog and even when the note profiles to be not literarily enriching or for the same good sake interesting, I think the owner of this blog is oweing this note already for sometime. For it's far more important to talk about the readers of the blog than it is important to talk about the characters of the blog. The characters themselves might shift their sides and their encores, we've already noticed from words of the story-teller that most of them are nothing but stoppovers, odes and navigation maps in the life of Isobel and in regard to Isobel there's not much we can really know, for the mystery of her animal existence is the main concern of some series of writings included in this blog, understand Isobel is not a purpose but rather a process, a process that just like beauty or virtue is meant to be unfinished, is meant to be half-foretold, half-untold.
In my opinion there hasn't been that many people reading through these pages other than a few friends and other cronies; somehow it doesn't really make justice to the writer since many of our readers are themselves characters whose lives are vividly pictured here in the most absolute and radical abstractions, those kind of abstractions that probably can spring only from the hands of a linguist. Of a linguist who pretends to write journals, who pretends to write history, who pretends above all to be a simple blogger. Bottom line is, no justice is being made to the linguist.
The philologist is reading this blog with content, apparently he's been made the main and only purpose of this blog, but he's mistaken for he's only got to provide us with the background that would make this enriched language and elaborate discourse possible, the philologist is the one to provide us with the mustiness that is necessary to explain the lives and deers of Isobel, to explain the Isobelian tragedy with its riddles, poems and side dishes. The philologist provides with the content, he's a musty young man with context and background, a victim of the Isobelian frustrations. Cursed by the awareness granted to those softened by the arts of the muses and even by Sappho, the 10th muse as some Greek demagogist would say.
The wife of the journalist or at present simply wife was also one of our frequent readers, a critic of every word and every persona depicted here, the wife of the journalist with her little talk and acute moral understanding of other people and other dynamics was one of the most impressive features of our blogs, Ari and the wife of the journalist did manage actually to keep us entertained for a couple of weeks with their conflict and their bond. A triada between Sophoclean agonies, Victorian novels and Israeli newspapers. Together they walked the paths of wife's short life until the take over of Isobel one night of wild motions and animal breathe, when the primary instinct took over the infatuations of a rich woman and gave birth to the girl Isobel, to the woman Isobel, above all to the a more human and delicate Isobel. The wife of the journalist was a victim of post-modernism, a victim of gay American life, a victim of feminism and a victim of democracy. Even so, she read this blog. Since we're far to have completed the superstructure of this blog (and that will probably never happen) there're several future notes missing. The wife of the journalist doesn't need a biographical profile or a history of her own, there's a little bit of this little woman in each and every one of us, in every wife and in every big and strong husband. Only my notes about the victims of post-modernism (due to be published here) and some other desserts will explain the life of the wife of the journalist, the ageless "petit femme". There's something about her I truely liked, but we're not the same real persona. I don't need to regret her wrongdoings and her invasive suitcases in the journalist's life leaving Ari asides. We're just saying the wife was one of our most faithful readers.
They haven't been the only readers of this blog, there are others whose mention is definitely worthwhile. The journalist has read this blog as well but little can be told about him for there's a real persone behind the character of the journalist, a real persona about whom we'll talk by the end of this note. The journalist himself has allegedly been unnamed by Isobel. His name has become a Biblical metaphor that is outside the scope of this note. For now we shall just say Ofer is behind the note, in between the lines and hence we're indebted to him as well for this note, shall the whiskey not play up on me I'll be able to finish this note and comment the real person behind his title and what he's got to do with this note.
There have been other casual readers, other circumstancial and coincidential readers. People like Elliot has been also been reading this blog and making casual annotation about the elevated morality of our characters, our fogs and our screens of mist. Elliot has been also a passive player of this plot. Her friendship with wife has been a proof of her existence, of her circumstancial existence. How she brought herself along from centuries long gone by and spoke up her mind, in abscences, in silences.
Elliot hasn't been the only reader, there have been others whose names we're not meant to mention, there have been other odes and other poems. Dramatists, tragics, novelists and even simple story tellers, mythologic deities and people with little stories, people of little words, little people just like wife, little in their grandeur, rendez-vous.
We can count on other people as well. I have two sisters, not sisters in blood of heart but blood in arms, blood specially in arms. My sister Lola actually seems to be occupied with beatings and academic romances and anyhow she doesn't know the language good enough as to understand the leit-motifs behind this blog, despite the Kunderian letters we've exchanged over the last four years. Timeless but not meant to stay. I count with another sister, Keren, but unfortunately destiny has placed us with different standings and she hasn't been able to outreach me on such a level that would enable her to read this blog, hence she's just not reading it.
Then I have a broad circle of so-called friends, to whom I would refer as nothing but acquaintances for our communication is one-sided and we don't manage to hear each other's language in spite of speaking the same language. Language is not something that has to do with grammar, it probably has to do with Logos more than with anything else. I must be right here in the position to talk about Anne Frank, "who would believe that a thirteen years old girl feels alone in the world?". Who would believe that such a talented and overinfatuated blogger feels alone in the world? Well this blogger certainly does.
I have other friends who should be likely to read in this blog but still no mention has been made of them whatsoever. There's not many people in the world I trust for that purpose and between shades and soul Ari still constitutes an unreadable paper, a blank page in uncertainty of selfness. We can mention a few only for the good sake. Iris for example, my advisor and guide in different paths of life, the breed and breathe of motherhood in one friend, unconditional friend... yet she's too busy between morning vermouth and anti-depressant pills hence she's not very likely to stare at my blog. Friends that have come and gone in the missing, in the abscence and the yearning of other days... these friends haven't read here either, they haven't been read here either.
Many others constitute the core of passengers and different travel companions in the journey of Isobel through the hues of Indigo and ebano and jade. Childhood soulmates and adolescence soulmates that been lost on the way through the journeys of time that separate all things, that bring all things together like Hesperus, like Aurora. Despite all that we're not together in this life for Isobel has led very different lives. Thus they're not reading these pages and they're not very likely to do so in the future. They don't constitute the steady group of subscribers to this blog.
Strangers, unknown strangers and familiar strangers have also wandered down these pages, I've stranged them as well. Strangers that might just have come across these pages through a search enginge or just through scrolling down profiles in my site, maybe through my website, my fora or the different websites in which I've been writing for the last years which are quite a few. Strangers are the readers I like the most but I don't think I count with many of them for who would be really interested in the writings of a poor young philologist? Who would be interested in the stranged life of Isobel in the forest and in the peak and in the dawn?
Still I rely on strangers to keep the meaningfulness of these pages for the posterity, strangers have constituted in all times the best of readers and the most conscipicious and loyal followers, but I count with no such followers. If you're a stranger that just came across these pages and has the patience to come down here let me know who you are, not because I'm certainly interested in you as the selfish journal writer I am, but only in order to profile you for the record of my historial. Maybe one day notes about strangers will be written down here, just like I did years back during my years in college and university. All my notes were about strangers and about stranged.
The pale and sad guy and the flowers, the smells to old and to morrow, the mourn and the morning, the still smells, the smells then still, it still smells. Deja-vouz in the streets, the blonde guy with the leather jacket just next to the hotel's corner, Liad-looking girls and other categories of stars, other impersonal categorizations. That's what pleasurably I used to write back then in the days of my earlier youth.
My old lovers also fall in the category of stranged readers, of known unreaders. None of them has been invited to these pages for no one of them has ever got to know Isobel, none of them was curious enough to dig into the reality shades of Isobel and her moonly companion. Even after being simpe flirts, affairs or love stories they didn't find the way right through Isobel and very few yet have found it straight. My old lovers don't fall among these category of finders. They're not categoric readers, they constitute probably simple Hegelian and Proustian introductions to Isobel's thought, as if there was such a thing though. Heraclitus would help us to elucidate better; "If you've heard me but not the Logos, it is wise to ascertain by means of the sense that all things constitute one very thing". "Ta panda". My old lovers are as unfit to wander through these pages as the half-strangers of my phone agenda are. They don't reach the category of odes, they're stuck as simply rememebrances, not even memories.
Probably Fernando would be the most qualified reader but still he's not reading me, not because he lacks of the language or state of mind to do so. It's only because I'm still sitting on his pedestal among other Greek divinities I introduced to him in books of Jung and Kerenyi. This is not meant to be read by admirers, only by observers. He's not even stranged yet, only placed somewhere between nothingness and spaced conceptualizations. Hence he's not reading Isobel either, for in despite of being the closest of lovers and the most feeble and fervient of them, he hasn't seen Isobel yet. He was content with the distant reflexes of Ari from afar, of an Apolinear Ari that doesn't have place among tragic discourses and short poems. Not even the most loyal admirer of Ari has place among these pages for Isobel can't really tolerate, she's in the end living by herself, "when she does it she means to".
Does it mean we're simply unread? Hummm... not so sure about it. There are a few readers, very few and it's very much worthwhile to talk about them with a banal touch, with a touch not even Isobel herself would recognize.
There are probably only two readers I woud rely on but I'm prone to talk about them with a certain despise. I will refrain to do so though because who am I anyway to jump into conclusions? Who am I to draw up conclusions from Isobel's findings? She's probably known for longer than I do where she's being led to. Who am I to talk about her secret life and her private loves? I do relate to these two readers but my opinions are simply unfounded, because "one is the loneliest number that you'll ever do... one is a number just worse than two". I'm not Isobel, I'm simply Ari, the loneliest number. Ari the zweerver, a lonely number.
I might just talk a little bit about these two meant-to-be-loyal readers without going into detail for a lifetime and whole empty blog is meant to do this job. Unlike Isobel's, Ari and these two readers are enormous "muss-nicht-sein" that only adulthood and maturity will break from their unrest. Even when unnamed for Isobel those readers and eventually writers and self-contained writers do have a name for me and since I don't belong to Isobel's world I'm prone to comment on them. Simple flesh, simple bones, simple human kind. A couple of days back in time I pretended to make those two readers members of this blog but I withdrew in the last minute, they're meant to be readers and who could write about Isobel's life if not me? Yes I know it's just me being totally egoccentric, but let them make a choice. Let them spin. It's a chill out comedy. I wouldn't allow them to write in these pages as first person and I don't know if they're even interested in reading at all so I rather don't ask questions whose answers I'm afraid to foresee.
Ari and these two readers seem to lead parallel lives from different universal axes and theyr bridges although unbridged seem to have connected at some point.
Lara and Ari have been friends for already sometime and she seems to understand Isobel better than she understand Ari. She and Ari seem to lack a bit of a connection, a reality touch. Religious differences separate them, age separated them and not just age but thousands of miles and several oceans, several ships, nights and days. They haven't really outreached. Lara is more than the hilarious Anglo-Saxon woman from the tabooed Christian world, more than the kindergarden and the van, she's far beyond those little ephimerities. Ari is more than the average gay man, than little talk and post cards. More than weltschmerz and unrest. One still hasn't managed to see the other, they don't embrace and they don't seem to understand.
Lara and Isobel are something else. Lara doesn't know the world where Isobel lives although she's been already to Norway, but it's worthwhile remembering there's a world of hues and words between suburban Norway and the Isobelian nights, there's a world of differences between cosmopolitan Trondsheim and the Valhala. A world not even language can bridge. Yet they do seem to relate, they both seem to understand. Things that not language but skin can explain. Ari personally only partly likes Lara for she finds her temporarily deceiving and superficial, sometimes talkable and sometimes just filled up with the phony North American Europeans couldn't ever put up to, for these people has been nowhere beyond the Northern Sea, even when living in the Middle East they haven't left Vriesland and Ruegen. But Lara and Isobel are intimate friends, just like Elliot and wife. Lara constitutes one of the readers of our blog, one of those two readers we rely on.
Ofer and Ari are somewhere else, different planets standing on axes of the same galaxy yet distant as nothingness and selfness, distant as oxygen and decomposition. Ofer and Ari have just come out of a flirt, of a little story that never broke ground, of a little story that became a silent operetta, yet never breaking the ground, nor the waves. Ari and Ofer are not an ordinary companion but an extraordinary lack of it. An infatuated and overly smart and well spoken lack of companion. They're edges from different strings, unparallel wires. Walking together through a tempestful storm they've already parted for storms come in cycles and companion allows no repetition and American gay life allow no stronghold of sentimentalisms. Who's got time for humanity these days anyway? Ofer and Ari are heavy suitcases of "muss-nicht-sein", elaborate and overcomplicated misunderstandings. Also tons and tons of sadness, that sadness probably only Elliot and Isobel could understand.
Isobel and Ofer are nonetheless standing on a very different axe; Ofer is probably one of the only males with enough sensitivity to approach Isobel's delicate silent skin in between the lines, in between Ari's sadness and wife's overcomplicated speech and rehearsal. In the silences and in the inmortalities of blank poems Ofer and Isobel walked into each other's eyes every once in a while, and thus walked out too. He could smell Isobel the hunter, in her haunt. Isobel the animal killer, more than probably anyone else he could not just smell but also taste Isobel the animal killer, the wet smell to ground and animal beauty of Phoebus energetikos. A Demetrian unsung ode, an ode written in paper skin, in skinned paper.
The both of them and Isobel embrace in sweet brutality, in animal motions. The ones who could see her beautifully sad and angry face in between the clouds of smoke exhalling from the philologist's knowledge-starving mouth. Ari can walk on water no otherwise than by himself... Lara and Isobel, Ofer and Isobel.. they dance in the Aurora and walk on water together without letting go. Without freezing cold, unfinished and thrill-free, almost Biblical. From their different scopes they foresee what's inside the forest, a pitch dark, a spark. The bursting flame with a name, Isobel.
Without loving Isobel, without hating her... just wrapping her in motions, embracing her in delicate wishful thoughts, in pitiful prayers of bereavement and mourning that replace the irreparability of their uncanny foresight. Those are the ones who are meant to read Isobel, shall they not be Greeks but thereinafter read the Greeks and echoeing modernity. Wasteful modernity and North-American fate. Roman empires and armies being led astray, in canned thoughts.
These are the real personae who are unwillingly meant to read us, those who have sorrowfully crossed the boundaries of no man's land, who have sneaked in between philologists and novelist and outreached the untouchable forest's Isobel.
Ofer and Lara in their unwandering contemplating the wandering in Bacchants' theories, those who allow her silent crawling and demagogically encourage it, for they've understood there's no other possible way, withdrawing themselves from the symphony.
For Ofer and Lara, our only readers... this note is meant for. We aren't even certain whether they're factually reading us but on them we rely. Once upon a time I explained how love poems become mournings when unread, so let these poems become only mornings, only morrows instead of sorrows. Temporarily the journalist and the wife (not his wife, but Lara the wife) are the only subscribers of this blog and for the tragedy (in the Aristotelian plot) we need no more than two, hence here three hitherto we have.
Be unto them comfort altogether with Isobel.
The writer
PD: There might be a third reader, his name is Siggi and unheard of still but we can't count him yet for we don't know much about the Isobelian background. Reykjavik 101 will bring the answer, Kopavogurian breakfast and Akureyri midnight sun. Once into the future Isobel will reveal her realm, her steady home way up north. Then and only then he'll become our third reader, the guide for the other two into the native country and language of Isobel. In order to understand better we also need some note about Bjork Sigmundsdottir music, that shall come. "O Holy Roman Empire, you and whose army? You and your cronies? Will you take us on?".
I must confess this note was re-written for a first final version was erased by a technical failure and this final version was written right after a couple of jameson's and a long long chat on frustrations and lead-astray's. I'm satisfied with the result, I hope you're too.
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
A Kitty's note
Well in the end right before 3:33 pm I did get dressed, it gives me the ultimate feeling of occupying space in a timely and proper manner. There are several things I would like to say, although in compliance with my last note I shouldn't just waste time on complaints for nothing has got done yet. The day will sleep away with some political letters, official claims and even an asylum petition in Swedish, hummmm sounds thrilling, no?
Basically I'm still alive, even after yesterday, even today. Had running water, decent sleep, breakfast for 2, quasi-lunch, music, electricity, clean clothes, fresh blankets, etc. any of you would say I have more than everything an average man would need for comfort, yet I will claim I really don't. But those claims will not see the light on this blog, they will be rather directed towards other walls, not thick concrete walls. Surprisingly enough I did manage to sleep last night and eventually can say I had the first decent sleep I've got in more or less a month, you see? Time really flies mercilessly, Tishri will see the light soon and I'm still asleep, I'm still the sleeper.
That's worth having an ode written (despite the calcinating fears drowning me as the hours go by) about, but we don't really have the time for that. So many things I would like to talk about, I just don't see the beginning, and just like the Jewish new year seemed to me like the pseudo-end of a timeless year, this new years seems exactly alike. It's not really a new year, just an old encore.
Yesterday I held almost permanent ultimate thoughts of endlessness, fatalist thoughts, self-attempted criminal thoughts, but in my early twenties I can prove them to be just mere thoughts or at least I think so; my aunt Rivka used to say that those who attempt to suicide and succeed will be only those under the age of 20, for beyond that people usually doesn't have the courage to do it and as time goes by they seem to accept themselves with integrity. Her theory as a senior social worker doesn't really prove anything, and what Sweden knows about the world anyway? They only have Isobelian landscapes.
The history of this country has proven her sociopathic theories very different, for in this country people is killed by other phenomena than the old age and the come about of Hades, but not only. Yet as a lunar culture whose main aim is to surround death in circular motions, in this culture.... of the death-and-dread-praising people, suicide shouldn't surprise me. But it doesn't surprise me in the Finnish context either, so should death surprise me at all in any form? I don't think so.
What should surprise is how far we've come from each other in the end of times, in the end of times and in the land of Israel I've become a full time Greek, and not even of the healing elixirs of the "Iatros" I fear. I'm involved by thick frames of livelihood that protect me, just as if my name were Yaakov, just as if my name were Zayde. Death and me, in spite of my unbearable heaviness are no longer best friends, our streams don't collide, our streams are unlikely to meet. Even when the night and me sink together into the dark waters of the tree of knowledge, even there... as a divinity of the 21st century, death and me stare at each other from afar. My attemps to touch her delicate veil turn into letters, into blog notes, into G. Elliot's evening hues, into deliverances.
That's one thing, at least one thing is over and done. Then what? Well as far as I'm concerned being alive is not a timeless warranty, so it's not meant to be taken seriously. Don't take it for the granted, you just need to remember there's a ball growing somewhere in the back of my head, it might one day just blow, it might perfectly sleep forever. Probably from these little Kitty notes you can figure out much better my connections. Why would the young flesh of a twenty years old waste any time in Elliot? Particularly in the Lifted Veil, why would anyone? A diseased condition is probably more of a determinant than language is a limitant. And then you asked me why wouldn't I care about anything at all? I have more important issues, I have far more important issues. Some days the acute pain in the back of my head is one of those issues.
Now there're all kind of missing issues and I'm not sure if I really want to get into them, but probably I should. We'll be talking about maturity and the skills that are necessary to cope with frustration, we'll talk about Colombia and also about the East, we'll talk about Rehavia and Katamon, we'll talk about my condition. Probably each of these things deserve an independent note or maybe many of them.
Being alive is not yet a state of mind, it's simply a state of the affairs. Being alive is not categoric. Let me walk away this time without featuring anything smart, for I've spent too much time with my headaches and these pages. I rather waste time studying for it'll bring me closer to the ground and further from other victimizations. Anne, dear Anne... just like what you used to say "It's studying what makes us forget". Yeah, how truthful of you, it's the only cure.
I intend to dig into little books, Kerenyi's book about the Greek gods and then a little bit of Hesiodus, partly the Bible. Then Homer, firstly I'll start studying the Genesis altogether Hesiodus, I'll read little poets in the aftertimes. That's all what my pretensions are made of at the moment and I can call them simple pretensions for any strength provided by nourishment and spiritual enticement is prone to abandon my body over the next few days, but from ambitions great empires and enterprises have been formed in my thoughts, in planet Isobel.
I might eventually get alive out of it, I said yesterday. In the meantime there must be a way to pass the minutes and the hours. Philological notes, bloggical notes, Isobelian notes, little books, apple tea with milk. You see, Anne was right, there's always an answer. In the nature there's always an answer.
Ari
Basically I'm still alive, even after yesterday, even today. Had running water, decent sleep, breakfast for 2, quasi-lunch, music, electricity, clean clothes, fresh blankets, etc. any of you would say I have more than everything an average man would need for comfort, yet I will claim I really don't. But those claims will not see the light on this blog, they will be rather directed towards other walls, not thick concrete walls. Surprisingly enough I did manage to sleep last night and eventually can say I had the first decent sleep I've got in more or less a month, you see? Time really flies mercilessly, Tishri will see the light soon and I'm still asleep, I'm still the sleeper.
That's worth having an ode written (despite the calcinating fears drowning me as the hours go by) about, but we don't really have the time for that. So many things I would like to talk about, I just don't see the beginning, and just like the Jewish new year seemed to me like the pseudo-end of a timeless year, this new years seems exactly alike. It's not really a new year, just an old encore.
Yesterday I held almost permanent ultimate thoughts of endlessness, fatalist thoughts, self-attempted criminal thoughts, but in my early twenties I can prove them to be just mere thoughts or at least I think so; my aunt Rivka used to say that those who attempt to suicide and succeed will be only those under the age of 20, for beyond that people usually doesn't have the courage to do it and as time goes by they seem to accept themselves with integrity. Her theory as a senior social worker doesn't really prove anything, and what Sweden knows about the world anyway? They only have Isobelian landscapes.
The history of this country has proven her sociopathic theories very different, for in this country people is killed by other phenomena than the old age and the come about of Hades, but not only. Yet as a lunar culture whose main aim is to surround death in circular motions, in this culture.... of the death-and-dread-praising people, suicide shouldn't surprise me. But it doesn't surprise me in the Finnish context either, so should death surprise me at all in any form? I don't think so.
What should surprise is how far we've come from each other in the end of times, in the end of times and in the land of Israel I've become a full time Greek, and not even of the healing elixirs of the "Iatros" I fear. I'm involved by thick frames of livelihood that protect me, just as if my name were Yaakov, just as if my name were Zayde. Death and me, in spite of my unbearable heaviness are no longer best friends, our streams don't collide, our streams are unlikely to meet. Even when the night and me sink together into the dark waters of the tree of knowledge, even there... as a divinity of the 21st century, death and me stare at each other from afar. My attemps to touch her delicate veil turn into letters, into blog notes, into G. Elliot's evening hues, into deliverances.
That's one thing, at least one thing is over and done. Then what? Well as far as I'm concerned being alive is not a timeless warranty, so it's not meant to be taken seriously. Don't take it for the granted, you just need to remember there's a ball growing somewhere in the back of my head, it might one day just blow, it might perfectly sleep forever. Probably from these little Kitty notes you can figure out much better my connections. Why would the young flesh of a twenty years old waste any time in Elliot? Particularly in the Lifted Veil, why would anyone? A diseased condition is probably more of a determinant than language is a limitant. And then you asked me why wouldn't I care about anything at all? I have more important issues, I have far more important issues. Some days the acute pain in the back of my head is one of those issues.
Now there're all kind of missing issues and I'm not sure if I really want to get into them, but probably I should. We'll be talking about maturity and the skills that are necessary to cope with frustration, we'll talk about Colombia and also about the East, we'll talk about Rehavia and Katamon, we'll talk about my condition. Probably each of these things deserve an independent note or maybe many of them.
Being alive is not yet a state of mind, it's simply a state of the affairs. Being alive is not categoric. Let me walk away this time without featuring anything smart, for I've spent too much time with my headaches and these pages. I rather waste time studying for it'll bring me closer to the ground and further from other victimizations. Anne, dear Anne... just like what you used to say "It's studying what makes us forget". Yeah, how truthful of you, it's the only cure.
I intend to dig into little books, Kerenyi's book about the Greek gods and then a little bit of Hesiodus, partly the Bible. Then Homer, firstly I'll start studying the Genesis altogether Hesiodus, I'll read little poets in the aftertimes. That's all what my pretensions are made of at the moment and I can call them simple pretensions for any strength provided by nourishment and spiritual enticement is prone to abandon my body over the next few days, but from ambitions great empires and enterprises have been formed in my thoughts, in planet Isobel.
I might eventually get alive out of it, I said yesterday. In the meantime there must be a way to pass the minutes and the hours. Philological notes, bloggical notes, Isobelian notes, little books, apple tea with milk. You see, Anne was right, there's always an answer. In the nature there's always an answer.
Ari
A chance?
Hummm... this is really damn weird. A litte explanation was written more than an hour before the note about Ari but they are juxtaposed in the order of notes, I really don't get it. Anyway this note about Ari was a bit of a bad brain trip so we're better off ignoring it, the writing about Isobel is going smooth actually, and only by devoting myself a bit more to the studies and less to the wasteful screen I think I'll be able to really achieve something out of all this cool writing.
Going back to the note I held myself back from complaining in the last minute, my blog will not be the place where I'll pour all this unnecessary hatred and frustration; I've managed very well to do it inflated with the most sublime art and I think it's an admirable thing, even coming from myself.
I probably should give it a try more, I might end up getting out of the mess alive. Yeah! believe it or not it's very probably I'll survive this time too, well it's easier said than done like everything, for despite of having pulled myself through really difficult times in life so many times alone in this filthy place (which isn't filthy at all, it's my country... so I'm the only one who can say this aloud, got it right? It's not a try-it-at-home kind of thing) this time things seem to be very different. Firstly I've come to conclusions and terms I'd never been in before and it's nothing but a good thing. Secondly I never got myself so deep in shit ever before, but there's a first time for everything. The next step will be court trials, deportations, notifications, lawyers, etc. and oh well I almost seem to be there.
I still don't seem to care about anything at all, how Ari of me.. and how resignatedly Jewish of me, as if God was to take care of anything at all. Still if I've pulled out of other kinds of shit why wouldn't I pull out this time? What do I have to lose?
I mean, from this point on I really have nothing to lose. Very few things left in my life at the moment, my books, some platonic friendships with friends that never pick up the phone, my blog, Isobel. That's all about it, oh... tons and tons and tons of alcohol. That as well. That's all what I've got, hence should I fear anything at all? Should I fear anything worse than what I've been through in the last weeks? Not really
I mean, I'm not made of still by no means yet no evil in this world seems to be able to surprise, for as in Elliot some people is extremely well designed and built up to bear pain and frustration, but awfully bad configurated for enjoyment, pleasure and love. I'm not sure if I can count myself in that group but sort of, it's a sucession of rainy days hence I can't put things otherwise. It was all too good to be true, something had to go wrong back then and I just surrendered, without trying to amend anything at all.
I can just give it a last try. Some ultimate things are already well known and that's very important, but material comfort, running water, clean clothes, decent food and some tender caring love are as well, probably just as much; even for a self-obsessed philologist. I can truely claim to be alone in this world, or not really... it's just self-pitying Ari... that's yet to be seen. He's just too good of a friend with no friends, as funny as it might sound (and ironic) I think probably Keren is my only real friend down here. Life acts in really sympathetic ways.
I'm also too old to say I'm going to kill myself or that I just want to die and disappear, life would never put me in situations I can't really cope with, the pain I can bear is relative to my tools and skill so to cope with it, still I have my doubts about it but probably some more security will be built overtime. What if I dose off now, get some human sleep, and get up in the morning and attempt if not to change the world, to clear the piles of shit of my life and one good day just get out of the storm and live? Lead a life?
Sounds good no?
Well let's do it for once at all. I'm too young to let myself die, too old to think about fatalist ends and too smart to let it all go to waste. My great grand father said one day I'd be a wise in the Holy Land, hence here I am. Unmovable like oceans.
It's not time for heavy decisions, for fatalisms and for ultimate purposes. Let's live one hour at a time, bear what we can for the house and defer the rest for the next hour or two. Slowly I'll be able to live one day at a time and so on back and forth. Maybe one day soon or not I'll get out of all this shit, and maybe Isobel will just turn up. Poetry doesn't only talk about regretful past, also pretends to change the unavoidable future, let us change the future for there's no present, so in that order of ideas the future can be altered.
Tomorrow the story will go on, the story behind this screen the story beyond this screen and also behind. We'll see where I'll be in a week or in a month from now. As from this morning this country and its armies and its cronies will realize I do exist. How could be a thinker like me unheard of in his own country midway his sorrows? It makes no sense, and no need to fight against life for justice in order to achieve that. It seems just natural. I've just done what I've got to do, history has stood by me, men will too.
Ari
Just Ari
Going back to the note I held myself back from complaining in the last minute, my blog will not be the place where I'll pour all this unnecessary hatred and frustration; I've managed very well to do it inflated with the most sublime art and I think it's an admirable thing, even coming from myself.
I probably should give it a try more, I might end up getting out of the mess alive. Yeah! believe it or not it's very probably I'll survive this time too, well it's easier said than done like everything, for despite of having pulled myself through really difficult times in life so many times alone in this filthy place (which isn't filthy at all, it's my country... so I'm the only one who can say this aloud, got it right? It's not a try-it-at-home kind of thing) this time things seem to be very different. Firstly I've come to conclusions and terms I'd never been in before and it's nothing but a good thing. Secondly I never got myself so deep in shit ever before, but there's a first time for everything. The next step will be court trials, deportations, notifications, lawyers, etc. and oh well I almost seem to be there.
I still don't seem to care about anything at all, how Ari of me.. and how resignatedly Jewish of me, as if God was to take care of anything at all. Still if I've pulled out of other kinds of shit why wouldn't I pull out this time? What do I have to lose?
I mean, from this point on I really have nothing to lose. Very few things left in my life at the moment, my books, some platonic friendships with friends that never pick up the phone, my blog, Isobel. That's all about it, oh... tons and tons and tons of alcohol. That as well. That's all what I've got, hence should I fear anything at all? Should I fear anything worse than what I've been through in the last weeks? Not really
I mean, I'm not made of still by no means yet no evil in this world seems to be able to surprise, for as in Elliot some people is extremely well designed and built up to bear pain and frustration, but awfully bad configurated for enjoyment, pleasure and love. I'm not sure if I can count myself in that group but sort of, it's a sucession of rainy days hence I can't put things otherwise. It was all too good to be true, something had to go wrong back then and I just surrendered, without trying to amend anything at all.
I can just give it a last try. Some ultimate things are already well known and that's very important, but material comfort, running water, clean clothes, decent food and some tender caring love are as well, probably just as much; even for a self-obsessed philologist. I can truely claim to be alone in this world, or not really... it's just self-pitying Ari... that's yet to be seen. He's just too good of a friend with no friends, as funny as it might sound (and ironic) I think probably Keren is my only real friend down here. Life acts in really sympathetic ways.
I'm also too old to say I'm going to kill myself or that I just want to die and disappear, life would never put me in situations I can't really cope with, the pain I can bear is relative to my tools and skill so to cope with it, still I have my doubts about it but probably some more security will be built overtime. What if I dose off now, get some human sleep, and get up in the morning and attempt if not to change the world, to clear the piles of shit of my life and one good day just get out of the storm and live? Lead a life?
Sounds good no?
Well let's do it for once at all. I'm too young to let myself die, too old to think about fatalist ends and too smart to let it all go to waste. My great grand father said one day I'd be a wise in the Holy Land, hence here I am. Unmovable like oceans.
It's not time for heavy decisions, for fatalisms and for ultimate purposes. Let's live one hour at a time, bear what we can for the house and defer the rest for the next hour or two. Slowly I'll be able to live one day at a time and so on back and forth. Maybe one day soon or not I'll get out of all this shit, and maybe Isobel will just turn up. Poetry doesn't only talk about regretful past, also pretends to change the unavoidable future, let us change the future for there's no present, so in that order of ideas the future can be altered.
Tomorrow the story will go on, the story behind this screen the story beyond this screen and also behind. We'll see where I'll be in a week or in a month from now. As from this morning this country and its armies and its cronies will realize I do exist. How could be a thinker like me unheard of in his own country midway his sorrows? It makes no sense, and no need to fight against life for justice in order to achieve that. It seems just natural. I've just done what I've got to do, history has stood by me, men will too.
Ari
Just Ari
A little explanation
Well.... this is just the version of the fragment #2 translated by Isobel last week, this is also included in the "box". One of these days (shall the opportunity to mention it at all come) I'll make a little note about it and you should know by now exactly what I mean by a little note, that's just like when I say let's talk for 5 minutes or in the aftermath of the wife, when I put my head on the pillow for one second. This fragment shall serve as an explanation for the brackets in my last note called "Thy name Israel, thy name Isobel". I'm not the kind of "pragmatos" who wastes any time in explanations, for a good poet shall never be totally understood. This time however, it was a must-be. Before the end of the road we tend to find more than a few "must-be" signals, don't we all?
1 "That man seems to me the equal of a god
2 The man who sits opposite you
3 And at close he listens
4 To your sweet voice
5 And your enticing laughter
6 That indeed has stirred up the heart in my brest
7 For whenever I stare at you even briefly
8 I can no longer muse words
9 For my tongue in silence frozen is
10 Instantly a delicate flame calcinates beneath my skin
11 With my eyes nothing I see
12 My eyes stumble at the whirring noise
13 A cold sweet embraces me
14 Tremblors seize my body
15 And greener than grass I am
16 Surrounding death by close I seem
17 But all one's got to endure, even....
After the supper break I can continue with the note....well as I said previously the translation of this poem should be the explanation for the brackets in the first paragraph of my last note. I still don't really understand why I always ramble like this, I mean... I give explanations about simplistic and meaningless objects such as brackets and little talks, about quotations, yet I never take the time to introduce Isobel for example. None of the readers of this blog have ever got to meet Isobel except for Ari, Elliot and the journalist. However the three of them also turn out to be characters of this Isobelian iambic plot so it doesn't really make justice to the reader, but I'm a selfish and egoistic writer, I'm not really in the obligation to explain those things. Apparently Isobel is the closest to a real persona you'll ever find in this blog for most people around her are simply stoppovers in her way, passengers and subway coffee companion. Yet I feel it's needless to "explain" Isobel who by all means constitutes the very main purpose of these pages, and if not Isobel herself, her silence and agony. The transformation of Isobel the creature into Isobel the philologist and paradoxically in Ari the man. It doesn't make lots of sense I think.
None of the characters here have been introduced or explained but they don't pretend to turn up in the public light for they are trying to escape the storm of events that lead to this story and through this story and even when without much success, they still struggle. Unfortunately I started to write a bit late in my teenage years hence you have missed the genesis of the story and I've missed myself as well. I've stranged myself on the way, and somehow stranged Isobel, who temporarily doesn't have a face either, probably she only has eyes seen through the eyes of others, seen in reflections.
But let me return to the poem; I personally dislike long poems and I rather stay with short odes and little verses like in the previously translated fragments, that might be feasible to blame on me being a linguist too, my obsession for hyper-textuality and semiology, for non-verbal language is probably higher than my delicate close tough with the language in which I'm writing.
Still fragments #2 is a poem painful enough to carry along the way the aim to be translated and as a poem directly or indirectly (as well as fragments #1 and #3) to Afrodite it has some epic value in the context of the Greek mythology (although the "philologists" of the time -and until the Renaissance, quoted Sappho most likely in order to explain metrical and rhaetorical paradigms, with a few exceptions that didn't constitute philologists but philosophers like Plato and Solon, needless to say that in order to understand this dynamic we would have to crawl into the definition of what and who was the philosopher for the Ancient Greek) and constitutes an historical text. However, since I'm a simple philologist I can put the weight on short poems and bridal hymns. That's probably where her real core lies upon I think, for when reading poems such as the one transcribed here previously (and probably one of the best literary translations I ever did) I can't help the tremblor that seizes my skin.
Even the life of Sappho itself is a remarkable example of what interests me about the Greek world, of what I'm running after. Middle beginnings and initial endings, the endlessness of things (can you already figure how many times I've used this understatement over the last 4 years?). I'm deeply concerned about God and the gods and I'm if not a religious person, someone nourished with a stronghold of religious feelings, yet I would place the gods among the machinery and wheels behind the stage of the tragedy, of the greatest works the humanity has heard of (or unheard of as Heraclitus would say, the "Logos aphanatikos" - another note about Heraclitus and the fragment #1 in Kirk's edition to be made), but in the day to day life, beyond the Homeric grandeur, I'd rather stay with little songs for hidden lovers and slaves, for unofficial divinities and repulsively beautiful women of other men. That's where Sappho falls in place for me even after reading and commenting the greatest poets of the antiquity. The measure in which other people has come in contact with, and understood Sappho causes me "inciting laughter"; this philologist in the other hand doesn't claim anything but having attempted erroneously to misunderstand Sappho and he's perfectly fine with it. Nothing else should be expected.
Heidegger would help me to rephrase this accurately, even in his overcomplexations of simple words spoken by Parmenides, and spoken in the spirit of the Logos and not in the spirit of the Pneuma, hence no matter how deep we crawl into we can get nothing but lost, but I think that's the only possible direction. To find yourself in order to loosen and lose yourself back again in the drunkenness of wisdom and primary knowledge, just like nature does in our times and in theirs, to understand the "Logos" also like the river of Heraclitus and even the river of Aristotle. Yes, Heidegger would definitely be my man when I want to approach this broad subject but even he failed just like I failed, we failed in understanding those minimally radical concepts that only the average man would be ready to comprehend, and the average man is not precisely the philologist or any educated man of the 20th century, we're just victims of the 20th centuries, self-pitied victims (watch out for a note on this subject). We all have failed in understanding all this, so why not spending some little time trying to misunderstand?
In this order of ideas I must stress again I prefer little stories and little poems with little words (so much unlike my command and use of language) in opposition to greatest operas and recitals. Those little "somethings" do contain in my opinion the human being by itself and by definition. Heidegger would say the true human science, again Martin... you failed buddy... but I really enjoy his conceptualization. Despite my faithful love and admiration for Heidegger he, inasmuch as the rest of us has failed. The definiton of Heidegger the philosopher itself has failed. If he would have taken upon the standings of Parmenides he would have refused to call himself ever a philosopher. It was probably impossible in the scope of the German post-enlightenment, still nonetheless he failed.
This experience is not truely unique for I've admired every Greek and every Greek I've stumbled upon in my short life ever since my first Greek grammar class and Melitta's jar. I've also admired each and every man who admired the Greeks from afar, each and every man who has features and imitated the Greeks (that would include the whole human kind and as a presumably infatuated scholar the human kind includes most likely only the West) and even each and every man who has read the Greeks. I believe wholeheartedly that those I would consider the most brilliant heads of my generation are probably those who were nurtured from the Classics and that were fed with the bitter-sweet milks of the tragedy and the Athenian splendor.
Above all these I've admired those who think Greek, not those who think about the Greeks but only those who think Greek. I've read those great men who think Greek, who despite the impossibility of retrieval still dare to think Greek, for impossibility of retrieval or in other words a struggle against fate is also thinking Greek, Greek individual, however not "Hellenic". But it is about Greek individuals that I dream and lust about and in the end of the day struggle against fate (or let's call it living against history) is probably what we, the Jewish people, sons of Abraham and Yaakov are made of, hence the concept doesn't surprise me at all. I don't find myself at odds with it. Who if not the Jew in the Day of Atonement to prove that even the sons of Yaakov are metaphysical phenomena? (This related to a chassidic story I read in my childhood, one day I'll explain).
Ever read Antigone? She sounds very semitic to me, but in the end of the day who if not the Greek gods (the latter gods, second breed I think) coming from Syria and Lebanon to poison Thebas and Troja with the good and the evil of Abraham's progenie? With the curse of sin and virtue?
This certainly doesn't resume my poems or my translations and much the least my story-telling, it doesn't gather my religious spirit but it simply makes a note. It simply makes a note because I just realize the vaste amount of knowledge I lack to make anything worthier out of it. Still I can claim simple banality, the banality of "menschkeit".
I'm still loyal to Dyonisos and to Aurora; for my sorrowful state of the affair with the Apolinear trends has got to be explained somewhere else. In the aftermath of the journalist and the genesis of Isobel "de zweerver" there's no place for Apolinear remarks. Let the day come first, for we're still sinking into the dark night.
Sappho and me still read poetry aloud together and we come to interesting terms one with the other; for my translations are merely speculative since I don't know the Aeolic dialect as good as I would like to, specially because the language and the metre was based on patterns of speech, and this is certainly way beyond any educated knowledge I might have about the Greek antiquity, that would be wife's concern for sure but she's not around these days. So still Sappho and me read little poetry and I'm granted the license of speculating about the missing words and broken fragments of the text since I could say right down there I'm the poet myself, a poet who interprets a poet just like Saussure reading Saussure. It is allowed.
I'm not even certain if the numeration of the fragments is correct, for I just follow the Oxford papyrus since I don't know anything else; and right here I don't pretend to make elucidations of textual critic and parylogy for it's not really a good timing. Leave that to Isobel, leave that for Rehavia's rainy evenings. We don't do that kind of things in Tel Aviv. As I say, I prefer to cling onto little things, following Kunderian elucidations for the modern man.
And in any case who am I take on the weightfulness of these works? Who am I? When I'm still feeding my empty speech with books of Ranana Meridor and phone conversations with Kaltsidou? Am I anyone worthy at all to take on? You're better off with books of Harrison for I still read him everyday. In the end of the day I'm just a blogger.
A starving blogger, a single blogger, an anonymous blogger. So please, click right top and proceed to the next blog, between casual sex, kitchen tales and HTML you might be able to find elucidations such as these as well.
1 "That man seems to me the equal of a god
2 The man who sits opposite you
3 And at close he listens
4 To your sweet voice
5 And your enticing laughter
6 That indeed has stirred up the heart in my brest
7 For whenever I stare at you even briefly
8 I can no longer muse words
9 For my tongue in silence frozen is
10 Instantly a delicate flame calcinates beneath my skin
11 With my eyes nothing I see
12 My eyes stumble at the whirring noise
13 A cold sweet embraces me
14 Tremblors seize my body
15 And greener than grass I am
16 Surrounding death by close I seem
17 But all one's got to endure, even....
After the supper break I can continue with the note....well as I said previously the translation of this poem should be the explanation for the brackets in the first paragraph of my last note. I still don't really understand why I always ramble like this, I mean... I give explanations about simplistic and meaningless objects such as brackets and little talks, about quotations, yet I never take the time to introduce Isobel for example. None of the readers of this blog have ever got to meet Isobel except for Ari, Elliot and the journalist. However the three of them also turn out to be characters of this Isobelian iambic plot so it doesn't really make justice to the reader, but I'm a selfish and egoistic writer, I'm not really in the obligation to explain those things. Apparently Isobel is the closest to a real persona you'll ever find in this blog for most people around her are simply stoppovers in her way, passengers and subway coffee companion. Yet I feel it's needless to "explain" Isobel who by all means constitutes the very main purpose of these pages, and if not Isobel herself, her silence and agony. The transformation of Isobel the creature into Isobel the philologist and paradoxically in Ari the man. It doesn't make lots of sense I think.
None of the characters here have been introduced or explained but they don't pretend to turn up in the public light for they are trying to escape the storm of events that lead to this story and through this story and even when without much success, they still struggle. Unfortunately I started to write a bit late in my teenage years hence you have missed the genesis of the story and I've missed myself as well. I've stranged myself on the way, and somehow stranged Isobel, who temporarily doesn't have a face either, probably she only has eyes seen through the eyes of others, seen in reflections.
But let me return to the poem; I personally dislike long poems and I rather stay with short odes and little verses like in the previously translated fragments, that might be feasible to blame on me being a linguist too, my obsession for hyper-textuality and semiology, for non-verbal language is probably higher than my delicate close tough with the language in which I'm writing.
Still fragments #2 is a poem painful enough to carry along the way the aim to be translated and as a poem directly or indirectly (as well as fragments #1 and #3) to Afrodite it has some epic value in the context of the Greek mythology (although the "philologists" of the time -and until the Renaissance, quoted Sappho most likely in order to explain metrical and rhaetorical paradigms, with a few exceptions that didn't constitute philologists but philosophers like Plato and Solon, needless to say that in order to understand this dynamic we would have to crawl into the definition of what and who was the philosopher for the Ancient Greek) and constitutes an historical text. However, since I'm a simple philologist I can put the weight on short poems and bridal hymns. That's probably where her real core lies upon I think, for when reading poems such as the one transcribed here previously (and probably one of the best literary translations I ever did) I can't help the tremblor that seizes my skin.
Even the life of Sappho itself is a remarkable example of what interests me about the Greek world, of what I'm running after. Middle beginnings and initial endings, the endlessness of things (can you already figure how many times I've used this understatement over the last 4 years?). I'm deeply concerned about God and the gods and I'm if not a religious person, someone nourished with a stronghold of religious feelings, yet I would place the gods among the machinery and wheels behind the stage of the tragedy, of the greatest works the humanity has heard of (or unheard of as Heraclitus would say, the "Logos aphanatikos" - another note about Heraclitus and the fragment #1 in Kirk's edition to be made), but in the day to day life, beyond the Homeric grandeur, I'd rather stay with little songs for hidden lovers and slaves, for unofficial divinities and repulsively beautiful women of other men. That's where Sappho falls in place for me even after reading and commenting the greatest poets of the antiquity. The measure in which other people has come in contact with, and understood Sappho causes me "inciting laughter"; this philologist in the other hand doesn't claim anything but having attempted erroneously to misunderstand Sappho and he's perfectly fine with it. Nothing else should be expected.
Heidegger would help me to rephrase this accurately, even in his overcomplexations of simple words spoken by Parmenides, and spoken in the spirit of the Logos and not in the spirit of the Pneuma, hence no matter how deep we crawl into we can get nothing but lost, but I think that's the only possible direction. To find yourself in order to loosen and lose yourself back again in the drunkenness of wisdom and primary knowledge, just like nature does in our times and in theirs, to understand the "Logos" also like the river of Heraclitus and even the river of Aristotle. Yes, Heidegger would definitely be my man when I want to approach this broad subject but even he failed just like I failed, we failed in understanding those minimally radical concepts that only the average man would be ready to comprehend, and the average man is not precisely the philologist or any educated man of the 20th century, we're just victims of the 20th centuries, self-pitied victims (watch out for a note on this subject). We all have failed in understanding all this, so why not spending some little time trying to misunderstand?
In this order of ideas I must stress again I prefer little stories and little poems with little words (so much unlike my command and use of language) in opposition to greatest operas and recitals. Those little "somethings" do contain in my opinion the human being by itself and by definition. Heidegger would say the true human science, again Martin... you failed buddy... but I really enjoy his conceptualization. Despite my faithful love and admiration for Heidegger he, inasmuch as the rest of us has failed. The definiton of Heidegger the philosopher itself has failed. If he would have taken upon the standings of Parmenides he would have refused to call himself ever a philosopher. It was probably impossible in the scope of the German post-enlightenment, still nonetheless he failed.
This experience is not truely unique for I've admired every Greek and every Greek I've stumbled upon in my short life ever since my first Greek grammar class and Melitta's jar. I've also admired each and every man who admired the Greeks from afar, each and every man who has features and imitated the Greeks (that would include the whole human kind and as a presumably infatuated scholar the human kind includes most likely only the West) and even each and every man who has read the Greeks. I believe wholeheartedly that those I would consider the most brilliant heads of my generation are probably those who were nurtured from the Classics and that were fed with the bitter-sweet milks of the tragedy and the Athenian splendor.
Above all these I've admired those who think Greek, not those who think about the Greeks but only those who think Greek. I've read those great men who think Greek, who despite the impossibility of retrieval still dare to think Greek, for impossibility of retrieval or in other words a struggle against fate is also thinking Greek, Greek individual, however not "Hellenic". But it is about Greek individuals that I dream and lust about and in the end of the day struggle against fate (or let's call it living against history) is probably what we, the Jewish people, sons of Abraham and Yaakov are made of, hence the concept doesn't surprise me at all. I don't find myself at odds with it. Who if not the Jew in the Day of Atonement to prove that even the sons of Yaakov are metaphysical phenomena? (This related to a chassidic story I read in my childhood, one day I'll explain).
Ever read Antigone? She sounds very semitic to me, but in the end of the day who if not the Greek gods (the latter gods, second breed I think) coming from Syria and Lebanon to poison Thebas and Troja with the good and the evil of Abraham's progenie? With the curse of sin and virtue?
This certainly doesn't resume my poems or my translations and much the least my story-telling, it doesn't gather my religious spirit but it simply makes a note. It simply makes a note because I just realize the vaste amount of knowledge I lack to make anything worthier out of it. Still I can claim simple banality, the banality of "menschkeit".
I'm still loyal to Dyonisos and to Aurora; for my sorrowful state of the affair with the Apolinear trends has got to be explained somewhere else. In the aftermath of the journalist and the genesis of Isobel "de zweerver" there's no place for Apolinear remarks. Let the day come first, for we're still sinking into the dark night.
Sappho and me still read poetry aloud together and we come to interesting terms one with the other; for my translations are merely speculative since I don't know the Aeolic dialect as good as I would like to, specially because the language and the metre was based on patterns of speech, and this is certainly way beyond any educated knowledge I might have about the Greek antiquity, that would be wife's concern for sure but she's not around these days. So still Sappho and me read little poetry and I'm granted the license of speculating about the missing words and broken fragments of the text since I could say right down there I'm the poet myself, a poet who interprets a poet just like Saussure reading Saussure. It is allowed.
I'm not even certain if the numeration of the fragments is correct, for I just follow the Oxford papyrus since I don't know anything else; and right here I don't pretend to make elucidations of textual critic and parylogy for it's not really a good timing. Leave that to Isobel, leave that for Rehavia's rainy evenings. We don't do that kind of things in Tel Aviv. As I say, I prefer to cling onto little things, following Kunderian elucidations for the modern man.
And in any case who am I take on the weightfulness of these works? Who am I? When I'm still feeding my empty speech with books of Ranana Meridor and phone conversations with Kaltsidou? Am I anyone worthy at all to take on? You're better off with books of Harrison for I still read him everyday. In the end of the day I'm just a blogger.
A starving blogger, a single blogger, an anonymous blogger. So please, click right top and proceed to the next blog, between casual sex, kitchen tales and HTML you might be able to find elucidations such as these as well.
A tiny bit of Ari
Oh well time for the first "personal" note in a very long time, I'm a very particular kind of blogger since I'm never really writing about anything concretely personal, I wander in between the different waters and the different skies and poison my inexistent readers with puzzles, enigmas and riddles. It's a very Isobel thing to do, a very Ari thing to do. Who doesn't know it anyway? Well the answer is pretty sad, most people totally ignore it.
Here I took a break for I needed a damn fag and just couldn't find one to grab, so now I'm flying again; I got to pay a very high price for my addictions... the unintended withdrawal is always so hard, and I know what I'm talking about, sure I do. In some stupod thought (and don't let me get philosophical) I wish I could take the time back a couple of years and release myself from this chilly evening (chilly in more than one sense) with a good, thick and long line of coke. I must accept it has always been my favourite drug, the bitter ugly taste somewhere in your throat and the choky feeling, then a few seconds to dive into yourself and then a couple of hours to fly but with the feed on the ground; then painful withdrawals and the need for more... the incesant need. Well to tell the truth I remember those days with nothing but jealousy and regret, not regret of having been there but of not being there now, but oh well you grow up, don't you? It ain't no good to snif coke all day when you're 20, when you're writing, when you're responsible, when you're an adult. Ha! I should just laugh about all this cheap morality, so much unlike me. In the end I'm not in such a reasonable position to talk about morality. I've been a fighter for life and also someone who has fought life so hard that here and there tried to get out of it the most banal and irrational pleasures.
I'm that old if you ask me but I did have a wild life keeping up with a few addictions at a time only shifting some with others as the time goes by just not to be in monotony. Who could ever think that what's today a philologist who writes seriously blogs was once upon a time a cocaine addict? When did he have time for all that? Where in his uttermost short life does he have place for so much? Hummmm.... don't ask me. I just happened to be in his body at the moment, who knows where his thoughts lead anyway?
I really enjoyed the life of a philology student-bogota resident-cocaine addict, the three things actually make lots of sense, maybe not for the average man... but for those that have been through the tragedy and through the lyric, in Oxford classrooms and St. Anne's libraries, for those... it perfectly makes sense. No need to tell me about it. Probably I have much a better life now (and I really mean the probably as an understatement of hesitation).
Anyways... let me get back to the blog, well.... I'm not worried about my readers for this is almost a private blog and just like Anne Frank would say (you must be a "suscriber" of this blog to see where Anne Frank and the cocaine addict meet): Who could ever believe that a 13 years old girl feels all alone in this world? I think I perfectly match such statement, and I'm not thirteen, I'm already in the freaky twenties. Yesterday I was simply a fucking cocaine addict, a teenager, a runner, etc. tomorrow I'll simply turn thirty and once again game starts all over.
Not sure about those "tools" to cope with frustrations and impotence that "age" grants you, or I mean... at least not in the terms of Ofer, probably it's just too gay of a thing to have this kind of patronizing conversations, what are you expecting from me? And I'm however not ashamed of talking like this for I have no readers to say I've accostumed them to my explicitly high usage of language. I count no more readers than the journalist (and that's probably only my wishful thinking), sweet lara and a few cronies more that would come across my blog only in order to find out stuff about me. Yet it's a dead end, how could you being the average man find anything conclusive about me in between Isobel and Elliot? Not even being smart enough to read between lines could you do so. Or maybe you can, no need to be Ari or Isobel to do so, but understanding Isobel's writing is like understanding airport's music, it doesn't really make sense for the sake of a try. Since I don't count with all those readers then why should I care about what I write? Maybe one day I'll be a published writer, so scornful remarks won't be indifferent to me.
It's amazing how I can let myself fly, to start with this note pretended to talk exclusively about Ari and yet when I do so, Isobel pours over here and there like some sweetish disgusting liquor whose taste you can't get rid of, despite the poisonous recipe.
But let us proceed. Like every philologist I've met (except for Ronald even when he should be hating me, I think it was an argument over some white lines what tore the friendship apart thereinafter) I'm leading a pretty messed up life and I'm too infatuated among my Greek totems to talk freely about it so my frustrations can come up to the surface in those faces, with other names. They can even become unreadable poems and delight for strangers. Don't take me wrong, my life isn't messed up by default (most of it isn't) but that's just what I made of it. Yes, you can gather I'm talking like a man who is just near the end of his life, like in Xenophon's Anabasis and the impressions are mistaken, they always are I guess.
It all has a remedy, or at least we want to think so, unless you've come across Aimee Mann. Then add being a philologist, being a Jew, being an orphan, ha! Now I have all possible excuses for self pity, and you know what? That's not my kind of thing. I learnt it from wife, she was pathetically self-pitiable but I didn't really hate that about her, she just learnt from some friends of mine, from some married friends of mine, women.... oy! For my own good sake I won't say their names aloud here. I can complain though, for I'm an Israeli and nothing else could be expected. Still I'm complaining to a blank thick wall. So I rather complain to my blog. I don't really know where to start for the story is really long and I don't want it to interfere at all with Isobel, who at the moment constitutes my only passion with all what she comprises. Anything else can just fall apart without me being willing to do anything about it.
I don't really know where to start, this isn't part of my book but maybe worthwhile to be told. Maybe I should do it today for tomorrow there might be no line or even no food to feed the person behind this screen, don't know... I'll think about it for a while with an imaginary cigarette and some alcohol, for as a typical philologist I came to the state in which home holds no food, but alcohol here you'll always find.
Here I took a break for I needed a damn fag and just couldn't find one to grab, so now I'm flying again; I got to pay a very high price for my addictions... the unintended withdrawal is always so hard, and I know what I'm talking about, sure I do. In some stupod thought (and don't let me get philosophical) I wish I could take the time back a couple of years and release myself from this chilly evening (chilly in more than one sense) with a good, thick and long line of coke. I must accept it has always been my favourite drug, the bitter ugly taste somewhere in your throat and the choky feeling, then a few seconds to dive into yourself and then a couple of hours to fly but with the feed on the ground; then painful withdrawals and the need for more... the incesant need. Well to tell the truth I remember those days with nothing but jealousy and regret, not regret of having been there but of not being there now, but oh well you grow up, don't you? It ain't no good to snif coke all day when you're 20, when you're writing, when you're responsible, when you're an adult. Ha! I should just laugh about all this cheap morality, so much unlike me. In the end I'm not in such a reasonable position to talk about morality. I've been a fighter for life and also someone who has fought life so hard that here and there tried to get out of it the most banal and irrational pleasures.
I'm that old if you ask me but I did have a wild life keeping up with a few addictions at a time only shifting some with others as the time goes by just not to be in monotony. Who could ever think that what's today a philologist who writes seriously blogs was once upon a time a cocaine addict? When did he have time for all that? Where in his uttermost short life does he have place for so much? Hummmm.... don't ask me. I just happened to be in his body at the moment, who knows where his thoughts lead anyway?
I really enjoyed the life of a philology student-bogota resident-cocaine addict, the three things actually make lots of sense, maybe not for the average man... but for those that have been through the tragedy and through the lyric, in Oxford classrooms and St. Anne's libraries, for those... it perfectly makes sense. No need to tell me about it. Probably I have much a better life now (and I really mean the probably as an understatement of hesitation).
Anyways... let me get back to the blog, well.... I'm not worried about my readers for this is almost a private blog and just like Anne Frank would say (you must be a "suscriber" of this blog to see where Anne Frank and the cocaine addict meet): Who could ever believe that a 13 years old girl feels all alone in this world? I think I perfectly match such statement, and I'm not thirteen, I'm already in the freaky twenties. Yesterday I was simply a fucking cocaine addict, a teenager, a runner, etc. tomorrow I'll simply turn thirty and once again game starts all over.
Not sure about those "tools" to cope with frustrations and impotence that "age" grants you, or I mean... at least not in the terms of Ofer, probably it's just too gay of a thing to have this kind of patronizing conversations, what are you expecting from me? And I'm however not ashamed of talking like this for I have no readers to say I've accostumed them to my explicitly high usage of language. I count no more readers than the journalist (and that's probably only my wishful thinking), sweet lara and a few cronies more that would come across my blog only in order to find out stuff about me. Yet it's a dead end, how could you being the average man find anything conclusive about me in between Isobel and Elliot? Not even being smart enough to read between lines could you do so. Or maybe you can, no need to be Ari or Isobel to do so, but understanding Isobel's writing is like understanding airport's music, it doesn't really make sense for the sake of a try. Since I don't count with all those readers then why should I care about what I write? Maybe one day I'll be a published writer, so scornful remarks won't be indifferent to me.
It's amazing how I can let myself fly, to start with this note pretended to talk exclusively about Ari and yet when I do so, Isobel pours over here and there like some sweetish disgusting liquor whose taste you can't get rid of, despite the poisonous recipe.
But let us proceed. Like every philologist I've met (except for Ronald even when he should be hating me, I think it was an argument over some white lines what tore the friendship apart thereinafter) I'm leading a pretty messed up life and I'm too infatuated among my Greek totems to talk freely about it so my frustrations can come up to the surface in those faces, with other names. They can even become unreadable poems and delight for strangers. Don't take me wrong, my life isn't messed up by default (most of it isn't) but that's just what I made of it. Yes, you can gather I'm talking like a man who is just near the end of his life, like in Xenophon's Anabasis and the impressions are mistaken, they always are I guess.
It all has a remedy, or at least we want to think so, unless you've come across Aimee Mann. Then add being a philologist, being a Jew, being an orphan, ha! Now I have all possible excuses for self pity, and you know what? That's not my kind of thing. I learnt it from wife, she was pathetically self-pitiable but I didn't really hate that about her, she just learnt from some friends of mine, from some married friends of mine, women.... oy! For my own good sake I won't say their names aloud here. I can complain though, for I'm an Israeli and nothing else could be expected. Still I'm complaining to a blank thick wall. So I rather complain to my blog. I don't really know where to start for the story is really long and I don't want it to interfere at all with Isobel, who at the moment constitutes my only passion with all what she comprises. Anything else can just fall apart without me being willing to do anything about it.
I don't really know where to start, this isn't part of my book but maybe worthwhile to be told. Maybe I should do it today for tomorrow there might be no line or even no food to feed the person behind this screen, don't know... I'll think about it for a while with an imaginary cigarette and some alcohol, for as a typical philologist I came to the state in which home holds no food, but alcohol here you'll always find.
Monday, September 20, 2004
Be thy name Israel, be thy name Isobel.
Hummmm... just a short annotation, a critical note. A critical note with some personal taste, with some spice of yesterday.
In our last chapter, draft of what one day (if I'll see the light until then for the ground smells to fresh and approaches me with certainty -see below Isobel's translation of Sappho's fragment #2, in special edition for the ephoebus) will be the lives (mind the plural) and deers (not deeds) of Isobel we have started to talk about the Bible and I must reckon it is a subject that interests me deeply despite my knowledge gap; we have discussed how "his" name was apparently meant to be changed, for its meaning didn't convey the historical meaning necessary for the completion of this plot. Some names don't necessarily need historical trascendence for they are meant to be history on the make, streams that flow into larger masses of water (mind the title "stream" for it does bring us back to unfinished chapters of other story-telling still unfinished in my own flesh), Ari and Isobel are such names, they're in the make out as we mentioned previously, after achieving the glories of gods and heroes in sagas of other days, in sagas of other futures.... in the aftermath they are crawling for some present, for some living history outside books of wars and love affairs. Outside TV comedies and cheap soap.
His name is something else, it's just a name that repeats itself in the wind and even when sung as an ode it constitutes nothing but the irreparability of animal motions, a little story from a little novel. Stories for wives and little women. In the other hand Isobel can do much better than that, she's a few steps forward into the future, hence his name shall be changed. The name Roe doesn't actually represent its pharmaceutical functionality, its antisimbiotic character, and all because this is simply the name of a poem written on a bench, written on pale bareskin, written with a pen, designed to overwrite frustrations and wounds caused by history and unavoidability. His name, that name we granted him is simply the name of a poem that is not with us anymore, the name of a poem that flew with the end, that flew into the wind, the name of a poem not grandious enough to walk on water like Isobel, Ari and other creatures of the Pontos do. That name is simply the name of a poem without story, of a poem written by the throat of a thirsty woman, written by the compulsive desires of evil, in delicate and mortal sweetness.
That was just any other poem that vanished in the mist of the blue Aurora with the most unreadable thoughts, those thoughts that can arise from silences, from the silences of pains and rips that can't be described, pains and rips that only silence can explain, that only Aurora in her childish wisdom can repair. Silences which tears are no worthy to compete with. It was a timely poem, served with punctuality in delicate evening hues, but not meant for timelessness, for the echoes of timelessness bring along the aims of understanding. A poem that can't be read by the receipient is a timely poem, punctual but prone to death.
That's why most love poems are nothing but mournings, the author and the reader mourn together; they mourn their own bereavement, they mourn the feasibility of their speech. They mourn in complicity, in tea rooms, in shelves, in winter milieus.
The bible says "And God said unto him, Thy name is Yaakov: thy name shall not be called any more Yaakov, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel".
This verse is a paradox to the lives and deers of Isobel, for obviously his name shall not be called any longer, but what shall be thy name O Phoebus? O morning star? O evening calm?
His name will remain as one of the mysteries of our book. One of those names that ancient epic written thousands of winters back in time, will reveal one day. Just like the commandments were revealed to Abraham, just like his name was revealed to Yaakov. Temporarily he's just an Isobelian creature. Another passenger, a travel companion. An Isobelian travel companion. Not allowed in the forest as yet but once upon a time a travel companion. A beneath-the-skin travel companion.
For the last cigarette was lit but the last of the operas hasn't been played. The last of the operas isn't meant to be played. Some books should begin by the middle and finish before the beginning. This is one of that kind.
The writer
In our last chapter, draft of what one day (if I'll see the light until then for the ground smells to fresh and approaches me with certainty -see below Isobel's translation of Sappho's fragment #2, in special edition for the ephoebus) will be the lives (mind the plural) and deers (not deeds) of Isobel we have started to talk about the Bible and I must reckon it is a subject that interests me deeply despite my knowledge gap; we have discussed how "his" name was apparently meant to be changed, for its meaning didn't convey the historical meaning necessary for the completion of this plot. Some names don't necessarily need historical trascendence for they are meant to be history on the make, streams that flow into larger masses of water (mind the title "stream" for it does bring us back to unfinished chapters of other story-telling still unfinished in my own flesh), Ari and Isobel are such names, they're in the make out as we mentioned previously, after achieving the glories of gods and heroes in sagas of other days, in sagas of other futures.... in the aftermath they are crawling for some present, for some living history outside books of wars and love affairs. Outside TV comedies and cheap soap.
His name is something else, it's just a name that repeats itself in the wind and even when sung as an ode it constitutes nothing but the irreparability of animal motions, a little story from a little novel. Stories for wives and little women. In the other hand Isobel can do much better than that, she's a few steps forward into the future, hence his name shall be changed. The name Roe doesn't actually represent its pharmaceutical functionality, its antisimbiotic character, and all because this is simply the name of a poem written on a bench, written on pale bareskin, written with a pen, designed to overwrite frustrations and wounds caused by history and unavoidability. His name, that name we granted him is simply the name of a poem that is not with us anymore, the name of a poem that flew with the end, that flew into the wind, the name of a poem not grandious enough to walk on water like Isobel, Ari and other creatures of the Pontos do. That name is simply the name of a poem without story, of a poem written by the throat of a thirsty woman, written by the compulsive desires of evil, in delicate and mortal sweetness.
That was just any other poem that vanished in the mist of the blue Aurora with the most unreadable thoughts, those thoughts that can arise from silences, from the silences of pains and rips that can't be described, pains and rips that only silence can explain, that only Aurora in her childish wisdom can repair. Silences which tears are no worthy to compete with. It was a timely poem, served with punctuality in delicate evening hues, but not meant for timelessness, for the echoes of timelessness bring along the aims of understanding. A poem that can't be read by the receipient is a timely poem, punctual but prone to death.
That's why most love poems are nothing but mournings, the author and the reader mourn together; they mourn their own bereavement, they mourn the feasibility of their speech. They mourn in complicity, in tea rooms, in shelves, in winter milieus.
The bible says "And God said unto him, Thy name is Yaakov: thy name shall not be called any more Yaakov, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel".
This verse is a paradox to the lives and deers of Isobel, for obviously his name shall not be called any longer, but what shall be thy name O Phoebus? O morning star? O evening calm?
His name will remain as one of the mysteries of our book. One of those names that ancient epic written thousands of winters back in time, will reveal one day. Just like the commandments were revealed to Abraham, just like his name was revealed to Yaakov. Temporarily he's just an Isobelian creature. Another passenger, a travel companion. An Isobelian travel companion. Not allowed in the forest as yet but once upon a time a travel companion. A beneath-the-skin travel companion.
For the last cigarette was lit but the last of the operas hasn't been played. The last of the operas isn't meant to be played. Some books should begin by the middle and finish before the beginning. This is one of that kind.
The writer
Notes
During the last three weeks I've been writing more than I did probably ever, and although my writing is still confusing and enigmatic I don't pretend to say it's good, for I don't forsake the good intentions of others. That's probably something I enthrall about the wife, her vaste knowledge and culture, which I lack thereof. I haven't pursued a fruitful education in the Classics out of simple idleness and I probably lack of the words to make this readable and pleasant for everyone. Not even myself can slide through the words without a dreadful smell of confusion, without noticing an overly wordliness. I doubt whether anyone reads me at all but I didn't really pretend to write for anyone other than Isobel. It would be interesting to know whether anyone is reading her at all.
Isobel doesn't claim to be a poet, not a writer but simply a philologist and not even to that simplistic level I can aim for I totally lack of knowledge and experience, in the river of the Logos I'm still trapped beneath. Still these pages contain more than a journal, more than a diary and more than a reflexion. These are not only words of frustration but rather elaborate cohesions, with or without the charm that sophistication grants us.
Over the next few weeks I'll do my best to spend less time with the screen and more time with books for they are of good aim to me.
Isobel requires a higher level of language, further simplicity and less wordliness. More context and less inspiration. For the sake of Isobel I'll abandon myself in the dark waters of knowledge, in the dark waters of awareness... in those waters that have corrupted my soul for so long, my timeless curse. The unavoidability that comes with the knowledge of facts, with the understanding of general laws... those hardships that shouldn't be beared upon in the young age of Ari, yet Isobel in her uniqueness thinks different, old souls always think differently, those old souls that alike Greeks and Hebrews changes our world for ever after. Still it's a heavy suitcase to carry, a heavy burden to bear.
Tomorrow will be another day, Isobel and me alone. Heading towards Rehavia as a last stop. Isobel and I already have a country, we also have a people and needless to say a language. We also have our music, operas and symphonies in different colours and smells, to morrows and yesterdays. Now we need some present, we need some history. We need to make history, to make real history, beyond little women novels and Saturday romances.
The near future will bring us to this present, we'll bring us present. Standing still. Looking at the world from afar, in the eyes of Isobel we struggle hard to keep up to our standings and flow with the hours and the days. More of a Greek I should be, should Isobel be. We're reading the bible, we're making out.
Isobel and Ari, Ari and Isobel
Isobel in the make
Isobel alone
Heading somewhere, embracing something... caressing... wrapping simple thoughts in crystaline odes. She's still got a couple of years more to continue married to herself. Time will bring the answers, time will bring the deers, will brings the deeds. Once again in the aftermath Aurora and me will be dancing, like walking on water.
The writer
Isobel doesn't claim to be a poet, not a writer but simply a philologist and not even to that simplistic level I can aim for I totally lack of knowledge and experience, in the river of the Logos I'm still trapped beneath. Still these pages contain more than a journal, more than a diary and more than a reflexion. These are not only words of frustration but rather elaborate cohesions, with or without the charm that sophistication grants us.
Over the next few weeks I'll do my best to spend less time with the screen and more time with books for they are of good aim to me.
Isobel requires a higher level of language, further simplicity and less wordliness. More context and less inspiration. For the sake of Isobel I'll abandon myself in the dark waters of knowledge, in the dark waters of awareness... in those waters that have corrupted my soul for so long, my timeless curse. The unavoidability that comes with the knowledge of facts, with the understanding of general laws... those hardships that shouldn't be beared upon in the young age of Ari, yet Isobel in her uniqueness thinks different, old souls always think differently, those old souls that alike Greeks and Hebrews changes our world for ever after. Still it's a heavy suitcase to carry, a heavy burden to bear.
Tomorrow will be another day, Isobel and me alone. Heading towards Rehavia as a last stop. Isobel and I already have a country, we also have a people and needless to say a language. We also have our music, operas and symphonies in different colours and smells, to morrows and yesterdays. Now we need some present, we need some history. We need to make history, to make real history, beyond little women novels and Saturday romances.
The near future will bring us to this present, we'll bring us present. Standing still. Looking at the world from afar, in the eyes of Isobel we struggle hard to keep up to our standings and flow with the hours and the days. More of a Greek I should be, should Isobel be. We're reading the bible, we're making out.
Isobel and Ari, Ari and Isobel
Isobel in the make
Isobel alone
Heading somewhere, embracing something... caressing... wrapping simple thoughts in crystaline odes. She's still got a couple of years more to continue married to herself. Time will bring the answers, time will bring the deers, will brings the deeds. Once again in the aftermath Aurora and me will be dancing, like walking on water.
The writer
Fragments from her wooden box
"The moon hath left the sky;
Lost in the Pleiad's light,
Midway sinks the night,
Yet alone and still I lie".
Translated from the original Greek by Isobel.
Sunday, September 19, 2004
Genesis 35:10
Well in the most astounding silence the day sleeps away.... I contemplate with fascination my newborn calm, it's like I really know what I'm doing, I know where I'm going to, I know what I'm going to do and when I'm going to return and to whence.. well it's written in the Bible in the end, isn't it? So I shouldn't be surprised.
My drunkenness sleeps away too, and I imagine myself in the most awkward situations life can bring me to, as if I hadn't had enough of those already. It's been quite a pleasure to be home alone, with Isobel, embraced to myself. The wife is long gone as we all know, she left with the morning train, with her suitcase she came, with no suitcase she left. That's the only difference between my story and Theresa's. The stubborn wife of the journalist was never invited, was never called for... she built herself in ellucidations from sand, and just like sand vanished in the waters, vanished in the wind. I proved to be made of something else, hence I was able to walk on the water embracing Aurora like a little tiny piece of feather, delicate and shy. Isobel and me were made of something else, not of our books and our old stories, not of indigo and Blues. Isobel and me are made of nothing but timeless things. The days that there were, will never be again.
In the course of two years I had probably never been so secure about my rightdoings and wrongdoings, in spite the insecurities and uncertainties of the future in that place where I'm heading towards, far from the splendor of Rehavia, far from the charm of the Old City, far from Jerusalem of Gold and Kinneret. Even so I'm very secure, self-assured to follow the course of things. Once I reached the end of the Ocean I realized it's not the end what matters but the way, for everything in this life is a process and the process is never ending, one of the most marvellous and exciting qualities of existence, it's called the "come about", if you could wear my shoes and cover yourself with my thin and warm silk-weary skin you would taste one of the greatest victories humanity can delight itself on. The victory of the grown up man who once way beyond the Ocean returns to the stream, for one day he hopes to be big enough to outreach the river. That's what I'm doing today, life and me are even for the first time ever. Life and me are not fighting, and just like the wife and me stopped fighting without going anywhere, life and me are not fighting anymore; for I'm no justice maker.
As the song goes "To return to your seventeenth, after you've lived a century.... it's like deciphering symbols, without being competent wizzard.... ", I can't defy time, not even being Isobel, married to myself, not even in my wisdom and in my elevated understanding of the natural rules that govern this world, not even in my glory and in my sublime position, not even there I can defy time, for he knows what he's got to take and when he's got to take it. I'm still in the beginning of the way and there's a long road for me to go, and even when I've been through half the road I've opted for a return, for rehearsal, for a take-back.
Today I'll sleep in myself, I'll sleep in my only love, Isobel. Despite her courageous attempts to jump into the world of the unknown and take over, to bring heavy suitcases and coffee cups, despite her friendship with the wife and Elliot, despite herself even.... Isobel shall return, for it is her fate and each period and step in life must be taken at its time. Isobel is no woman of different men, she's simply woman of no man. In her savage beauty admired by most and enjoyed by no more than few, in her savage beauty she can counsel herself. She can always comfort herself.
Isobel is probably one of the oldest creatures ever existing in the forest, and her existence has been testified by different generations of knights and burglars, who unsuccessfully attempted to touch her silk-weary skin, that silk-weary skin I wear in my own private nudity, that silk-weary skin I embrace myself with in the moments of cold, for there's no further counsel. Yet even being Isobel, even skipping a hundred years in your life and even after being beyond the Oceans, and having reached the highnesses of the gods. Even there, there's a need to return. Isobel still married to herself, to her books, to her obsessions, Isobel unmarried herself from the wife, unmarried herself from the journalist. Isobel and Ari walk today on the same path, waiting for a plane that will take them back to the root of this wisdom, to the wet ground, to the heavy smell of the morning breeze and the frozen humidity of the forest, their home....
For if even in the desert they found their nitch and home, is the forest where they belong....
Isobel, our beautiful Isobel.... in her silence, in her crawling, in her weightfulness.... that's me Isobel. In silence crawling down, curdling up into her own darkness, sinking into the night without repair. Just when near the end of the sailing I must return and say "my journey starts here".
I still make the table and set the china, and serve tea for all of us. For you're still welcome home, we're not blank pages in the life of Isobel, we're her odes, we're her navigation maps, we're her directions, we're her confirmation of the heavenly purpose of her wandering. We're little airport signals. We all sit by the table.
Today Tel Aviv, tomorrow Reykjavik.... does in matter in the end of the day? I certainly doubt it, I'm just bitterly happy that there's more than one Isobel left in this forest, and that I've had the chance to see one from close, to look into her eyes and to touch her delicate lips of paper and her watery tight and firm skin. And even when she's not meant to be loved, for she can't be married to anyone but herself, even so.... she's meant to be known, at least once in your life you have to stumble with one Isobel.
I think I had my turn, just like Ofer did. But it's time to let Isobel return, to let Isobel fly and to let Isobel hide. One day, in the aftermath of things, in the postend, one day... Isobel will return, we'll live in Rehavia, we'll drink coffee in the morning, she'll teach the Classics and read newspapers, and no... Isobel will not the wife of a journalist, neither the wife of anyone else. Isobel will be simply Isobel just like Ari is simply Ari and Ofer is simply Ofer. Isobel will be just herself, just not with herself.... and one day between Wordsworth and Elliot, between Acropolis and Pergamo... Aurora will filter with her rays into Isobel's window just like she did this morning in mine, she and Isobel will embrace each other and dance walking on the water - for they are not meant to meet more than a few times in a lifetime, and then and only then Isobel will find a man who will marry her and will marry herself. Isobel will stop being a self-obsessed artist, center of your universe.
And a few times on the way probably we'll meet, for it's always a pleasure to enjoy the sad beauty of the Isobel, the youngest of creatures and the oldest of souls.
This is not a conclusive story, for in the symphonies and operas of life there's no black and white, it's just a little ode to Isobel. From now we'll go on this way, back and forth forever. Just like "someone" told me, "once you've crossed certain borders you just can't step back". I feel tempted to change his name, for it doesn't make as much history as Isobel, and even Ari do. Hereinafter his name will be.... his name will be something else. Shall he be named Liam or Yaakov? For I have a people but I also have a tribe, a state of mind where my journey ends, where ends make ends meet.
No, actually I have an idea. His name will be Roe. Roe is his name, just like Yaakov became Israel. His name will be Roe, the young deer.
"And God said unto him, Thy name is Yaakov: thy name shall not be called anymore Yaakov, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel"
The writer
My drunkenness sleeps away too, and I imagine myself in the most awkward situations life can bring me to, as if I hadn't had enough of those already. It's been quite a pleasure to be home alone, with Isobel, embraced to myself. The wife is long gone as we all know, she left with the morning train, with her suitcase she came, with no suitcase she left. That's the only difference between my story and Theresa's. The stubborn wife of the journalist was never invited, was never called for... she built herself in ellucidations from sand, and just like sand vanished in the waters, vanished in the wind. I proved to be made of something else, hence I was able to walk on the water embracing Aurora like a little tiny piece of feather, delicate and shy. Isobel and me were made of something else, not of our books and our old stories, not of indigo and Blues. Isobel and me are made of nothing but timeless things. The days that there were, will never be again.
In the course of two years I had probably never been so secure about my rightdoings and wrongdoings, in spite the insecurities and uncertainties of the future in that place where I'm heading towards, far from the splendor of Rehavia, far from the charm of the Old City, far from Jerusalem of Gold and Kinneret. Even so I'm very secure, self-assured to follow the course of things. Once I reached the end of the Ocean I realized it's not the end what matters but the way, for everything in this life is a process and the process is never ending, one of the most marvellous and exciting qualities of existence, it's called the "come about", if you could wear my shoes and cover yourself with my thin and warm silk-weary skin you would taste one of the greatest victories humanity can delight itself on. The victory of the grown up man who once way beyond the Ocean returns to the stream, for one day he hopes to be big enough to outreach the river. That's what I'm doing today, life and me are even for the first time ever. Life and me are not fighting, and just like the wife and me stopped fighting without going anywhere, life and me are not fighting anymore; for I'm no justice maker.
As the song goes "To return to your seventeenth, after you've lived a century.... it's like deciphering symbols, without being competent wizzard.... ", I can't defy time, not even being Isobel, married to myself, not even in my wisdom and in my elevated understanding of the natural rules that govern this world, not even in my glory and in my sublime position, not even there I can defy time, for he knows what he's got to take and when he's got to take it. I'm still in the beginning of the way and there's a long road for me to go, and even when I've been through half the road I've opted for a return, for rehearsal, for a take-back.
Today I'll sleep in myself, I'll sleep in my only love, Isobel. Despite her courageous attempts to jump into the world of the unknown and take over, to bring heavy suitcases and coffee cups, despite her friendship with the wife and Elliot, despite herself even.... Isobel shall return, for it is her fate and each period and step in life must be taken at its time. Isobel is no woman of different men, she's simply woman of no man. In her savage beauty admired by most and enjoyed by no more than few, in her savage beauty she can counsel herself. She can always comfort herself.
Isobel is probably one of the oldest creatures ever existing in the forest, and her existence has been testified by different generations of knights and burglars, who unsuccessfully attempted to touch her silk-weary skin, that silk-weary skin I wear in my own private nudity, that silk-weary skin I embrace myself with in the moments of cold, for there's no further counsel. Yet even being Isobel, even skipping a hundred years in your life and even after being beyond the Oceans, and having reached the highnesses of the gods. Even there, there's a need to return. Isobel still married to herself, to her books, to her obsessions, Isobel unmarried herself from the wife, unmarried herself from the journalist. Isobel and Ari walk today on the same path, waiting for a plane that will take them back to the root of this wisdom, to the wet ground, to the heavy smell of the morning breeze and the frozen humidity of the forest, their home....
For if even in the desert they found their nitch and home, is the forest where they belong....
Isobel, our beautiful Isobel.... in her silence, in her crawling, in her weightfulness.... that's me Isobel. In silence crawling down, curdling up into her own darkness, sinking into the night without repair. Just when near the end of the sailing I must return and say "my journey starts here".
I still make the table and set the china, and serve tea for all of us. For you're still welcome home, we're not blank pages in the life of Isobel, we're her odes, we're her navigation maps, we're her directions, we're her confirmation of the heavenly purpose of her wandering. We're little airport signals. We all sit by the table.
Today Tel Aviv, tomorrow Reykjavik.... does in matter in the end of the day? I certainly doubt it, I'm just bitterly happy that there's more than one Isobel left in this forest, and that I've had the chance to see one from close, to look into her eyes and to touch her delicate lips of paper and her watery tight and firm skin. And even when she's not meant to be loved, for she can't be married to anyone but herself, even so.... she's meant to be known, at least once in your life you have to stumble with one Isobel.
I think I had my turn, just like Ofer did. But it's time to let Isobel return, to let Isobel fly and to let Isobel hide. One day, in the aftermath of things, in the postend, one day... Isobel will return, we'll live in Rehavia, we'll drink coffee in the morning, she'll teach the Classics and read newspapers, and no... Isobel will not the wife of a journalist, neither the wife of anyone else. Isobel will be simply Isobel just like Ari is simply Ari and Ofer is simply Ofer. Isobel will be just herself, just not with herself.... and one day between Wordsworth and Elliot, between Acropolis and Pergamo... Aurora will filter with her rays into Isobel's window just like she did this morning in mine, she and Isobel will embrace each other and dance walking on the water - for they are not meant to meet more than a few times in a lifetime, and then and only then Isobel will find a man who will marry her and will marry herself. Isobel will stop being a self-obsessed artist, center of your universe.
And a few times on the way probably we'll meet, for it's always a pleasure to enjoy the sad beauty of the Isobel, the youngest of creatures and the oldest of souls.
This is not a conclusive story, for in the symphonies and operas of life there's no black and white, it's just a little ode to Isobel. From now we'll go on this way, back and forth forever. Just like "someone" told me, "once you've crossed certain borders you just can't step back". I feel tempted to change his name, for it doesn't make as much history as Isobel, and even Ari do. Hereinafter his name will be.... his name will be something else. Shall he be named Liam or Yaakov? For I have a people but I also have a tribe, a state of mind where my journey ends, where ends make ends meet.
No, actually I have an idea. His name will be Roe. Roe is his name, just like Yaakov became Israel. His name will be Roe, the young deer.
"And God said unto him, Thy name is Yaakov: thy name shall not be called anymore Yaakov, but Israel shall be thy name: and he called his name Israel"
The writer
Odes of return
Hummm..... an easy morning, a white morning. Probably the easiest morning I've been through in several months, in several years... things developed unlike my plans for it was the least productive day I could ever think of, but I don't really seem to be worried about anything, nothing really seems to trouble me.... today I'm a flow of all kind of colourful emotions flowing slowly in a stream that one day will be a river. One day I'll reach the river and will dive into his waters, for each time is a different river, each time is a different me. Today I'm no one but Isobel, married to myself.
I decided to stay up tuned with my new situation and letting myself surrender in the irreversability of events I let the morning surround me, and before Aurora would slip through the tiny rays of light from the window I went outside. I was in the outside chasing her. Aurora and me danced, just like old friends can dance - those kind of friends that aren't meant to be seen but a few times in a lifetime. She embraced me in her blue and I caressed her delicate unmaterial fingers with my sorrows, with my eyes.
In her drunkenness the wife of the journalist and me made some companion, a very different companion for she was relying on my shoulder with her clothes totally rip off, unclean make up spread all over the face and eyes lost in the sight, lost in the light, lost in the ocean, lost in Aurora and lots in mine.
I felt a bit of pity for her since there was nothing that could have been done, the last scene of the play was performed in her abscence, in her own story... the story of her short life the last scene was played out without her. In the last chapter of her story wife was left. At that time already known just as wife, for wife... a simple little wife she may perfectly be the wife of a journalist, of any journalist. Not the journalist. And in her unfinished simplicity wife was waiting outside, while the crowd inside the stage spoke in a language she couldn't understand. They spoke in the language of awareness, in the language of legitimate trascendence, in the language of alitheia, for somethings not even from the gods in heavens afar kept may be. Wife didn't understand this language.
Just next to the last scene we were all asked to hush and in despair we looked at our storylines to find out our lines were unwritten, erased by the secrets of time, erased by our own irreversability, erased by our functionality. In the end of the day we were nothing but mere elements in the come and in the go, we weren't ends that make ends meet. We were just passengers, deceived passengers, we were odes and navigation maps.
The list of complaints among ourselves was very long, from Antigone to Elliot, from Selene to Helios, from Demeter to Apolo, from god and man, from animal and kind. How could we be asked to leave in the last minute? In the scene next to the last? How could we have been betrayed by the secrets of time?
I don't really have an answer to this question for it's too much of a philosophical question whose weight exceeds my ability to cope with analogies at the moment. I just can say that once again it was a must-be, it was a chain of events which led to one common place, one simple day, in one single say. We weren't meant to be in the story, unfortunately wife wasn't able to take up to it and in her pain, in her diseased condition and disposed of her grandeur she vanished from my hands, she vanisehd by definition, she vanished like an ode that is never read... she vanished from my hands whilst Aurora and me danced in the fields, run one after the other and rediscovered the morrow. Whilst Aurora and me walked on water, in the morning..... wife just turned into a cloud, into a cloud of my smoke and disappeared.
Her pain are truely touching and outrageous, pain of destruction and pain of defeat. Pain of a life that was spent before it was lived, pain of the justice-maker, of the justice-maker who can't understand how unavoidable the intentions of time are. The wife was the Antigone of our story; and in the most bitter irony Antigone -Ari's most praised hero, and the wife just became one. Despite her musty knowledge wife failed to achieve the purpose to be a Greek or even a pagan for the same purpose. She failed to understand that somethings aren't meant to be understood, aren't meant to be dealt with, aren't meant to be taken on. In words of Goethe, "be every man a Greek his own way, but be it!". She failed to understand his timely beauty and her own timely wisdom. For some people is born with no age, the same way is to be taken away with no age.
I remember having seen wife with eyes never seen before, I could see my pain and my decomposition in her eyes. Yet I didn't seem to care once again for it was all meant to be that way, whatever the gods have closed in their secret deals is nothing we should be concerned of, for our purpose on this earth more than understanding is learning, learning, learning, observing. The eyes of the wife were frozen with music, frozen with tremblor and frozen with feeble motions. The wife just couldn't understand how one day, when everything seemed alright, one day... while she wasn't home... while she wasn't home... Isobel just returned home.
Despite her mature wisdom and simplicity the wife failed to understand we can play with fate, we can play with love, we can even play with trascendence, we can shallow ourselves in little motions and hide oursevels from the stars and from the emissaries of the gods. But from time..... from time we can't escape. Time will always place us in the right place. Time is wiser than any of us and not just wiser but as well older. The merciless thief of our youth and merciless thief of our only loves, a fair thief... who only takes his part. We humans in rebellion pretend to do things always our way and to defy him, but in the duties of time there's no control, he's a timely executor.
It's about time to return, to return to Isobel. The most beautiful of creatures, the most unreachable of creatures. A tiny savage animal that can't be caught in the shades, can't be caught in the lights, can't be caught in the water, can't be caught in the sand.... that brutally wild creature of the green waterish eyes that change with the flux of the light, that brutally wild creature of silk-weary skin and strong shoulders. Not many of us have seen Isobel, for she's well hidding on the forest, hidding among secrets of other times and timely sequences of deliverance. The most beautiful animal of the kin. Isobel, wild and married to herself, her only love Isobel, living by herself....
We've heard a lot about the uninteresting characters of our story, of our stories. We've heard a lot about the journalist, about Elliot, specially about wife... needless to say about Ari as well. In the end of the day we mistook the storyline, because hidding in the trees and laboriously fighting with dragons and knights, hidden.... animal-like, wild and untouched, perfectly unfinished and jovial... untouchable and violent... Isobel was waiting for some space. Isobel has been home, Isobel has taken us on. This story, the story we are attempting to write, is not the story of a wife and is not the story of a philologist. It's probably simply the story of Isobel.
I would like to talk about Ofer as well, but that we'll leave for our next stagaire in life. The streets of Rehavia and Nachlaot will bring Ofer and us together, will bring Ofer and Isobel together.
The writer
I decided to stay up tuned with my new situation and letting myself surrender in the irreversability of events I let the morning surround me, and before Aurora would slip through the tiny rays of light from the window I went outside. I was in the outside chasing her. Aurora and me danced, just like old friends can dance - those kind of friends that aren't meant to be seen but a few times in a lifetime. She embraced me in her blue and I caressed her delicate unmaterial fingers with my sorrows, with my eyes.
In her drunkenness the wife of the journalist and me made some companion, a very different companion for she was relying on my shoulder with her clothes totally rip off, unclean make up spread all over the face and eyes lost in the sight, lost in the light, lost in the ocean, lost in Aurora and lots in mine.
I felt a bit of pity for her since there was nothing that could have been done, the last scene of the play was performed in her abscence, in her own story... the story of her short life the last scene was played out without her. In the last chapter of her story wife was left. At that time already known just as wife, for wife... a simple little wife she may perfectly be the wife of a journalist, of any journalist. Not the journalist. And in her unfinished simplicity wife was waiting outside, while the crowd inside the stage spoke in a language she couldn't understand. They spoke in the language of awareness, in the language of legitimate trascendence, in the language of alitheia, for somethings not even from the gods in heavens afar kept may be. Wife didn't understand this language.
Just next to the last scene we were all asked to hush and in despair we looked at our storylines to find out our lines were unwritten, erased by the secrets of time, erased by our own irreversability, erased by our functionality. In the end of the day we were nothing but mere elements in the come and in the go, we weren't ends that make ends meet. We were just passengers, deceived passengers, we were odes and navigation maps.
The list of complaints among ourselves was very long, from Antigone to Elliot, from Selene to Helios, from Demeter to Apolo, from god and man, from animal and kind. How could we be asked to leave in the last minute? In the scene next to the last? How could we have been betrayed by the secrets of time?
I don't really have an answer to this question for it's too much of a philosophical question whose weight exceeds my ability to cope with analogies at the moment. I just can say that once again it was a must-be, it was a chain of events which led to one common place, one simple day, in one single say. We weren't meant to be in the story, unfortunately wife wasn't able to take up to it and in her pain, in her diseased condition and disposed of her grandeur she vanished from my hands, she vanisehd by definition, she vanished like an ode that is never read... she vanished from my hands whilst Aurora and me danced in the fields, run one after the other and rediscovered the morrow. Whilst Aurora and me walked on water, in the morning..... wife just turned into a cloud, into a cloud of my smoke and disappeared.
Her pain are truely touching and outrageous, pain of destruction and pain of defeat. Pain of a life that was spent before it was lived, pain of the justice-maker, of the justice-maker who can't understand how unavoidable the intentions of time are. The wife was the Antigone of our story; and in the most bitter irony Antigone -Ari's most praised hero, and the wife just became one. Despite her musty knowledge wife failed to achieve the purpose to be a Greek or even a pagan for the same purpose. She failed to understand that somethings aren't meant to be understood, aren't meant to be dealt with, aren't meant to be taken on. In words of Goethe, "be every man a Greek his own way, but be it!". She failed to understand his timely beauty and her own timely wisdom. For some people is born with no age, the same way is to be taken away with no age.
I remember having seen wife with eyes never seen before, I could see my pain and my decomposition in her eyes. Yet I didn't seem to care once again for it was all meant to be that way, whatever the gods have closed in their secret deals is nothing we should be concerned of, for our purpose on this earth more than understanding is learning, learning, learning, observing. The eyes of the wife were frozen with music, frozen with tremblor and frozen with feeble motions. The wife just couldn't understand how one day, when everything seemed alright, one day... while she wasn't home... while she wasn't home... Isobel just returned home.
Despite her mature wisdom and simplicity the wife failed to understand we can play with fate, we can play with love, we can even play with trascendence, we can shallow ourselves in little motions and hide oursevels from the stars and from the emissaries of the gods. But from time..... from time we can't escape. Time will always place us in the right place. Time is wiser than any of us and not just wiser but as well older. The merciless thief of our youth and merciless thief of our only loves, a fair thief... who only takes his part. We humans in rebellion pretend to do things always our way and to defy him, but in the duties of time there's no control, he's a timely executor.
It's about time to return, to return to Isobel. The most beautiful of creatures, the most unreachable of creatures. A tiny savage animal that can't be caught in the shades, can't be caught in the lights, can't be caught in the water, can't be caught in the sand.... that brutally wild creature of the green waterish eyes that change with the flux of the light, that brutally wild creature of silk-weary skin and strong shoulders. Not many of us have seen Isobel, for she's well hidding on the forest, hidding among secrets of other times and timely sequences of deliverance. The most beautiful animal of the kin. Isobel, wild and married to herself, her only love Isobel, living by herself....
We've heard a lot about the uninteresting characters of our story, of our stories. We've heard a lot about the journalist, about Elliot, specially about wife... needless to say about Ari as well. In the end of the day we mistook the storyline, because hidding in the trees and laboriously fighting with dragons and knights, hidden.... animal-like, wild and untouched, perfectly unfinished and jovial... untouchable and violent... Isobel was waiting for some space. Isobel has been home, Isobel has taken us on. This story, the story we are attempting to write, is not the story of a wife and is not the story of a philologist. It's probably simply the story of Isobel.
I would like to talk about Ofer as well, but that we'll leave for our next stagaire in life. The streets of Rehavia and Nachlaot will bring Ofer and us together, will bring Ofer and Isobel together.
The writer
"Agaetis byrjun"
"Agaetis byrjun" would be probably the most appropriate title for this note, even when this isn't really a note but rather a fragment of thoughts, a spaceless momentum in which my thoughts flow in all possible directions and find themselves in the same river.... in the river of Heraclitus, "for twice thou shalt not dive into the same river, for the river is not the same nor art thou". My thoughts are flowing in this river of conscious endeavours and finding some place. I'm beautiful this morning, beautiful and radiant.... with the beauty only sadness and security can grant me, with the beauty that only the uncertainties of a long foreseen future can grant me. I'm beautifully peaceful and beautifully sad.... with a calm that only the devastating truth of unavoidable facts can grant me, a calm that is likely to last and a calm that will drive me through all different paths in life.
Last night the wife of the journalist was taken by surprise and left out; the wife of the journalist turned out to be nothing but a simple wife, for the wife of the journalist could perfectly be the wife of a doctor, the wife of an engineer, the wife of a farmer... she's just a simple wife, despite her denied mustiness and walking library of dead knowledge, despite the interesting facts that surround her life and her grandeur... despite all that she's just a simple wife. Ari turned out to be something else, probably not as legitimate as the wife, but beyond authenticism and infatuation. Last night, at odds with himself and his world Ari came out of the shell and embraced the journalist in speech, for the journalist wasn't the journalist and wasn't the husband, the journalist was simply sweet Ofer, kind Ofer, kindred Ofer.
"Agaetis byrjun" is the ode of today, a resemblance of yesterday. A sweet poison for the diseased soul, for the sickening character of a philologist. A new beginning is all what is required from today, a new beginning.... a return. It's like learning to write Greek characters when you already master Homer and Alceus... it doesn't make lots of sense but sometimes is necessary, sometimes it's necessary to crave back into the roots of the affair and find yourself in between, picking up chapters from your life, picking up little pieces of you left here and there, a smell everywhere. In between cups of coffee and empty glasses of cognac and a suitcase it's difficult to start a new day, and it's just a continuation of yesterday. It's a little plot with no end, like being a justice maker.
Ari's found some calm in the morrow, with the fresh air of the morning and staring at the Ocean at glance, like that day... from the shuttle glass... the smell of the winter morning calcinating an unfinished soul, the soul of a philologist who craved for history, who craved for a present, who craved for a past... who craved for some trascendence. The young philologist poisoned by the waters of the tragedy and the wines of bridal hymns, that young philologist was needy of trascendence, needy of endeavour, needy of an encore. Today the philologist is a tired old man with the cravings of the aftermath, in the post end of the world philologists still exists and still write love novels.
Ari today has come to the end of the book, to the last page... to the last stop of the train. In the course of time his cause for justice and understanding has been nothing but a wasteful trap, a wasteful timely sequence.... in the last page of the book where Elliot and the wife meet, where the philologist and the journalist meet, where Israel and Colombia meet, where fate and chance meet... in that last page there was also space for Ari, finally there was space for Ari, the human Ari. Ari the little lion, like the Dutch boy and the finger in the dam, like an Anne Frank, like a bride.... There was space for Ari.
In this confusion of events that comes along with the end of a bad novel several events take place and the most diverse paths of life converge, just like motorways, just like motorways. The mathematical equation plays a bad joke on the philosophical meditations and reality pours its sweetest poisons over the characters of our novel. Without previous notice, without clarification, without premeditation we all have met in the end. In between glasses of liquor and clouds of smoke all of us have met in the end, around this small table in an empty Tel Aviv apartment.
In a table for two, in my table for two all of us have met today, all of us have parted today. We haven't parted anywhere but to the beginning of the story for our storylines have been nothing but misplaced, misplaced by a lousy writer and by excess of coffee, misplaced by religions and misplaced by history. Each and everyone of us had a word last night, yet most of us have parted. The wife in her desperate outcry wasn't allowed in the table but I did meet her outside when I went for a walk, when I went to stare at the ocean as if I had never seen it.
She walked with me until we reached the shore and then she vanished in the smoke, she vanished in my smoke as I lit a cigarette outside... her body and her grandeur and the waterish autumn became one and disappeared untouched by my hands, misunderstood, unfinished. Vanished with the waters just like Romans and Greeks vanished, just like the Persians, the Hittite and the Babyloans vanished, but me... I did remain. I remained next to the waters, like walking on the water... with a purified soul free from my preoccupations and free from my deepest sorrows with the security of having life and fate on my side this time.
I remained, for I'm a descent of the tribe of Jacob and his lord promised to sustain him, just like he has sustained me to this day. The God of Jacob sustained me once again and walking on the water hand to hand with the wife I stared at her disappearing with her empires and her armies.... and the insignificant being I am... I remained, and I returned. I returned to complete my duties, my duties as a writer and my duties as a person, as a timeless being, as a part of a timeless people.
Upon returning home already in the morning a sweet pain embraced me and poisoned me with the beauty of the morning, with the beauty of the unheard, with the beauty of the unknown. Upon returning home I found myself alone, I found myself weightless for the very first time in many years. I even found her suitcase, the suitcase of the wife for she didn't have time to take it with her, we didn't have time for fare wells. I was walking on the water but she couldn't. And Ari, that's me if you haven't noticed... the dark ship that sinks into the night and dares into the storms of life... for the first time ever I walked on water..... without pink dots, yellow dots, green dots, blue dots... I was alone there and I kept walking on the water, in a sudden motion I stared at wife disappearing.... I kept walking on the water.... and I just arrived home, at the end of the ocean where the river starts.... from whence the sun comes up, from whence strangers and lovers spring, at the end of the story.... in the other side of the ocean..... I simply arrived home.
When I arrived home I looked at myself in the mirror and found myself extremely young and beautiful, brutally alive and in the drunkenness of morning tiles and sweaty smiles. Nothing was left of wife, nothing but her suitcase. Her suitcase that I'll bring along with me, that heavy suitcase with which she came, the heavy suitcase with which she left. To the countryside she took it, to Rehavia she took it, to Elliot's she took it and even to the journalist's she took it. No one ever called her for, but she always needed a new trick, something intellectual to say, something brilliant to rephrase, something catchy and interesting to say.... her walking library of dead knowledge... that's what she's left me with.... our relationship didn't last long yet we've met a few times in life, we've understood each other, we've died together and be borne again. Unfortunately she forgot her suitcase and I will have to bring it along. For I understood her better than she understood me, in the end I never really talked. So Greek of me, a passive spectator. A passive spectator in my life, a passive spectator in my sorrows, a passive spectator in her life, which someday knowingly took on mine.
When she understood what was going on in our table she clang to the door and claim for some space, claimed for justice, claimed for some deliverance. I personally would have let her in with pleasure, hadn't Isobel been home. After so many springs and winters Isobel returned home.
We all sat on the table, no one was missing except wife.... she and Isobel never really got along and since Isobel is the real star of our story then we couldn't let wife in. The journalist sat in front of me, looking at me with compassion, almost loving compassion. Elliot was in the sides, listening carefully and writing down acure moral observations about each and every one of us, writing down in small little notes for her novel, for her next novel, which was already published a few hundreds of summers back. What would be her last encore, a last encore that turned out to be a blank page, like a poem with no reader, like an echo with no voice... a river with no sea... a river into which you can dive twice. The journalist, Ari, Elliot and all our royal guests, Antigone, Persefone, Demeter and even Sappho were present... each and everyone of us in the same table. A get-together of mythological dimensions, a get-together that unknowingly would become the last page of our story, a certain last page that would bring us to the first page, that would bring us to the genesis, just like this week brings us to the first chapter of Bereshit.
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was astonishingly empty" says the bible, in the beginning a philologist created a story and we were all invited, by the end of the story just right in the page next to the last we realized our story was astonishingly empty, for all the pages were blank, and to the beginning we returned, to a good new beginning. One of us claimed having asked us to leave the theater before the last song, so the musical would go on forever. But it doesn't make sense, in the end of this story... or let's say in the beginning someone had to walk on water, and someone had to be seen walking on water, like Jesuschrist did. Another Jew.
Last night we were all invited but the table was only for two, and the air was heavy enough for 2 souls... wishing half the thoughts would evaporate with the Aurora and give birth to a newborn man. There were only two chairs, and only two were allowed to talk. And it wasn't the journalist, it wasn't me Ari, it wasn't Elliot, it wasn't wife, it wasn't God, it wasn't mom.
Only Isobel and Ofer were granted that privilege, for in the aftermath Ofer and Isobel are the genesis of this story. In the next pages we'll start over, we'll talk about Isobel, about the bible, and about each and every one of us. For this is the beginning of the story, and it's worthy of attention that you note that even when not walking on water, each and every one of us did live through these pages. Only wife has been denied entry, but we've kept her suitcase, one day.... when Isobel isn't home we'll open the suitcase.
The writer
Last night the wife of the journalist was taken by surprise and left out; the wife of the journalist turned out to be nothing but a simple wife, for the wife of the journalist could perfectly be the wife of a doctor, the wife of an engineer, the wife of a farmer... she's just a simple wife, despite her denied mustiness and walking library of dead knowledge, despite the interesting facts that surround her life and her grandeur... despite all that she's just a simple wife. Ari turned out to be something else, probably not as legitimate as the wife, but beyond authenticism and infatuation. Last night, at odds with himself and his world Ari came out of the shell and embraced the journalist in speech, for the journalist wasn't the journalist and wasn't the husband, the journalist was simply sweet Ofer, kind Ofer, kindred Ofer.
"Agaetis byrjun" is the ode of today, a resemblance of yesterday. A sweet poison for the diseased soul, for the sickening character of a philologist. A new beginning is all what is required from today, a new beginning.... a return. It's like learning to write Greek characters when you already master Homer and Alceus... it doesn't make lots of sense but sometimes is necessary, sometimes it's necessary to crave back into the roots of the affair and find yourself in between, picking up chapters from your life, picking up little pieces of you left here and there, a smell everywhere. In between cups of coffee and empty glasses of cognac and a suitcase it's difficult to start a new day, and it's just a continuation of yesterday. It's a little plot with no end, like being a justice maker.
Ari's found some calm in the morrow, with the fresh air of the morning and staring at the Ocean at glance, like that day... from the shuttle glass... the smell of the winter morning calcinating an unfinished soul, the soul of a philologist who craved for history, who craved for a present, who craved for a past... who craved for some trascendence. The young philologist poisoned by the waters of the tragedy and the wines of bridal hymns, that young philologist was needy of trascendence, needy of endeavour, needy of an encore. Today the philologist is a tired old man with the cravings of the aftermath, in the post end of the world philologists still exists and still write love novels.
Ari today has come to the end of the book, to the last page... to the last stop of the train. In the course of time his cause for justice and understanding has been nothing but a wasteful trap, a wasteful timely sequence.... in the last page of the book where Elliot and the wife meet, where the philologist and the journalist meet, where Israel and Colombia meet, where fate and chance meet... in that last page there was also space for Ari, finally there was space for Ari, the human Ari. Ari the little lion, like the Dutch boy and the finger in the dam, like an Anne Frank, like a bride.... There was space for Ari.
In this confusion of events that comes along with the end of a bad novel several events take place and the most diverse paths of life converge, just like motorways, just like motorways. The mathematical equation plays a bad joke on the philosophical meditations and reality pours its sweetest poisons over the characters of our novel. Without previous notice, without clarification, without premeditation we all have met in the end. In between glasses of liquor and clouds of smoke all of us have met in the end, around this small table in an empty Tel Aviv apartment.
In a table for two, in my table for two all of us have met today, all of us have parted today. We haven't parted anywhere but to the beginning of the story for our storylines have been nothing but misplaced, misplaced by a lousy writer and by excess of coffee, misplaced by religions and misplaced by history. Each and everyone of us had a word last night, yet most of us have parted. The wife in her desperate outcry wasn't allowed in the table but I did meet her outside when I went for a walk, when I went to stare at the ocean as if I had never seen it.
She walked with me until we reached the shore and then she vanished in the smoke, she vanished in my smoke as I lit a cigarette outside... her body and her grandeur and the waterish autumn became one and disappeared untouched by my hands, misunderstood, unfinished. Vanished with the waters just like Romans and Greeks vanished, just like the Persians, the Hittite and the Babyloans vanished, but me... I did remain. I remained next to the waters, like walking on the water... with a purified soul free from my preoccupations and free from my deepest sorrows with the security of having life and fate on my side this time.
I remained, for I'm a descent of the tribe of Jacob and his lord promised to sustain him, just like he has sustained me to this day. The God of Jacob sustained me once again and walking on the water hand to hand with the wife I stared at her disappearing with her empires and her armies.... and the insignificant being I am... I remained, and I returned. I returned to complete my duties, my duties as a writer and my duties as a person, as a timeless being, as a part of a timeless people.
Upon returning home already in the morning a sweet pain embraced me and poisoned me with the beauty of the morning, with the beauty of the unheard, with the beauty of the unknown. Upon returning home I found myself alone, I found myself weightless for the very first time in many years. I even found her suitcase, the suitcase of the wife for she didn't have time to take it with her, we didn't have time for fare wells. I was walking on the water but she couldn't. And Ari, that's me if you haven't noticed... the dark ship that sinks into the night and dares into the storms of life... for the first time ever I walked on water..... without pink dots, yellow dots, green dots, blue dots... I was alone there and I kept walking on the water, in a sudden motion I stared at wife disappearing.... I kept walking on the water.... and I just arrived home, at the end of the ocean where the river starts.... from whence the sun comes up, from whence strangers and lovers spring, at the end of the story.... in the other side of the ocean..... I simply arrived home.
When I arrived home I looked at myself in the mirror and found myself extremely young and beautiful, brutally alive and in the drunkenness of morning tiles and sweaty smiles. Nothing was left of wife, nothing but her suitcase. Her suitcase that I'll bring along with me, that heavy suitcase with which she came, the heavy suitcase with which she left. To the countryside she took it, to Rehavia she took it, to Elliot's she took it and even to the journalist's she took it. No one ever called her for, but she always needed a new trick, something intellectual to say, something brilliant to rephrase, something catchy and interesting to say.... her walking library of dead knowledge... that's what she's left me with.... our relationship didn't last long yet we've met a few times in life, we've understood each other, we've died together and be borne again. Unfortunately she forgot her suitcase and I will have to bring it along. For I understood her better than she understood me, in the end I never really talked. So Greek of me, a passive spectator. A passive spectator in my life, a passive spectator in my sorrows, a passive spectator in her life, which someday knowingly took on mine.
When she understood what was going on in our table she clang to the door and claim for some space, claimed for justice, claimed for some deliverance. I personally would have let her in with pleasure, hadn't Isobel been home. After so many springs and winters Isobel returned home.
We all sat on the table, no one was missing except wife.... she and Isobel never really got along and since Isobel is the real star of our story then we couldn't let wife in. The journalist sat in front of me, looking at me with compassion, almost loving compassion. Elliot was in the sides, listening carefully and writing down acure moral observations about each and every one of us, writing down in small little notes for her novel, for her next novel, which was already published a few hundreds of summers back. What would be her last encore, a last encore that turned out to be a blank page, like a poem with no reader, like an echo with no voice... a river with no sea... a river into which you can dive twice. The journalist, Ari, Elliot and all our royal guests, Antigone, Persefone, Demeter and even Sappho were present... each and everyone of us in the same table. A get-together of mythological dimensions, a get-together that unknowingly would become the last page of our story, a certain last page that would bring us to the first page, that would bring us to the genesis, just like this week brings us to the first chapter of Bereshit.
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was astonishingly empty" says the bible, in the beginning a philologist created a story and we were all invited, by the end of the story just right in the page next to the last we realized our story was astonishingly empty, for all the pages were blank, and to the beginning we returned, to a good new beginning. One of us claimed having asked us to leave the theater before the last song, so the musical would go on forever. But it doesn't make sense, in the end of this story... or let's say in the beginning someone had to walk on water, and someone had to be seen walking on water, like Jesuschrist did. Another Jew.
Last night we were all invited but the table was only for two, and the air was heavy enough for 2 souls... wishing half the thoughts would evaporate with the Aurora and give birth to a newborn man. There were only two chairs, and only two were allowed to talk. And it wasn't the journalist, it wasn't me Ari, it wasn't Elliot, it wasn't wife, it wasn't God, it wasn't mom.
Only Isobel and Ofer were granted that privilege, for in the aftermath Ofer and Isobel are the genesis of this story. In the next pages we'll start over, we'll talk about Isobel, about the bible, and about each and every one of us. For this is the beginning of the story, and it's worthy of attention that you note that even when not walking on water, each and every one of us did live through these pages. Only wife has been denied entry, but we've kept her suitcase, one day.... when Isobel isn't home we'll open the suitcase.
The writer
Friday, September 17, 2004
Temporarily unavailable
Hummmm.... I'm a bit sad actually, with the sadness of a kid. I and wife had our meeting this am, black tea, clouds of smoke, etc. I think she was a bit cranky from the sleeplessness of the night, I on the other hand was in my best, very childish and fresh. I reminded her she was still owing me that note about Anne Frank, she looked at me almost in despair and started to write.... it seems it's not easy for grown up people like her to talk about the books of their childhood, and about the childhood at all. I enjoyed every line of what she wrote although I felt all the time it was riping off my guts but I decidedly pushed her forward; it was probably one of the most interestingly intimate notes ever written in these pages.
Still the note was way too heavy, way too personal, too daring.... at a certain point near the half of it (I know for sure there was a lot more to go) the modem failed and we tried to resume our adventure. The press of the wrong bottom would send 1.5 hours totally astray.
That note, which ressumed the universalism of wife through 3 different stages in her life (even as Ari the kid) disappeared and we were unable to retrieve it. It saddened me very much, I laid on the bed with no possible content and covered myself pretending to sleep but the bad mood just didn't let me.
This is one of those "muss-sein" we have every once in a while, yet wife is asking me in tone of protest "muss es sein?" and I, simply Ari... with the content youth gives me in the uncertainty of things shall answer with a despotic "ja, es muss sein". Thus I shut her up. She's clinging down. Despite herself, pathos was bigger than her.
The note was lost just like were lost the napkins in which I used to write poems in a certain Rotterdamer café, just like I burnt my poetry writings up to the age of 15 one cool night in our old yard, just like I forsook my books at some storage book accross the Ocean and started another completely new set of volumes, bringing over only 2 useless books. A German dictionary and some cheap basic skills coaching book. There's a need for useless stuff in my life, it's a vicious constant of art, a vicious obsession of the art. Needy of the unfound, needy of the unheard and unsatisfied with his own holdings. Just to give an example, in 2002 I shifted from one language to the other, to a point in which it's already difficult for me to rephrase a couple of educated sentences in my own language. As I said, needy of the unfound, needy of the unheard, with no content.
In that order of ideas the loss of the note constitutes nothing but a "muss sein", and who if not Ari or Teresa to explain it, even Elliot would protest I'm sure or the justice-filled Antigone. The note wasn't meant to be written as such pain can't be beared all at once; that kind of stories must be written in weekend chapters to be published in a village newspaper, where people still dies of love. Not even Icelanders would read it I'm sure; for it is a cheap and extremely melancholic and musty version of the Dutch boy and the finger in the dam, also an androginous version. And the wife herself claims her attitude against everything that is musty, being herself a walking library of dead knowledge. In my next life please remind me to skip Goethe and Holderlin, nothing has come out of it but a rather diseased condition. A condition that would wed Elliot and me, even Elliot herself would pour benzedrine and vokda down her throat upon reading our former forlon note.
After the disappointment and the muss-sein I and wife refused to be Odysseus and understood we could have been better off with some Demetrian ode. The Homeric hymns... hummmm... still carry them with me as if they were in my pocket.
It was a total dare to dive into Anne Frank these days though, after all in this country we eat hot dogs with mustard right after our pilgrimage through the dreadful camps of death in Poland, so why would we want to crave into Anne? Probably because Anne and me had an unavoidable bon, just like Elliot and me have at the moment. But somehow I think I'm able to bear that bond, the wife herself isn't. To read the pages of the diary these days was like reading Hesiodic tales, reading about a past long gone by yet as present as the present. It was to read about open wounds.
For now wife and I have agreed to put the book asides for sometime, we're better off among computer investigations, modulus functions, syntagmic associations and combinatorics. It doesn't mean we've neglected our heaviness, for it's impossible. Once your suitcase is loaded with certain books, you'll have to bring them all over. Even to the your wedding bed. I think Elliot, wife and I will spend some time on the Bible this year and stuff our library with a few more novels, it's always interesting to read novels, they can be so truely deceiving...
At last I hit the shower with the pretension to leave the house (not sure when that will happen though) and dressed up with wife's clothes still bearing my newborn smile. A smile that only the fresh skin of the phoebus can bear.
I read in some magazine that people dressing all in black are trying to hide themselves; today I'm all dressed in black, my favourite colour and in such delicate taste of wife. Don't take me wrong, I've learnt a few things from her, those kind of things only an old Jewish woman can teach. Today wife and I are beautifully radical, let us be that way. The day will bring something, the day will take us on.
Ari
Still the note was way too heavy, way too personal, too daring.... at a certain point near the half of it (I know for sure there was a lot more to go) the modem failed and we tried to resume our adventure. The press of the wrong bottom would send 1.5 hours totally astray.
That note, which ressumed the universalism of wife through 3 different stages in her life (even as Ari the kid) disappeared and we were unable to retrieve it. It saddened me very much, I laid on the bed with no possible content and covered myself pretending to sleep but the bad mood just didn't let me.
This is one of those "muss-sein" we have every once in a while, yet wife is asking me in tone of protest "muss es sein?" and I, simply Ari... with the content youth gives me in the uncertainty of things shall answer with a despotic "ja, es muss sein". Thus I shut her up. She's clinging down. Despite herself, pathos was bigger than her.
The note was lost just like were lost the napkins in which I used to write poems in a certain Rotterdamer café, just like I burnt my poetry writings up to the age of 15 one cool night in our old yard, just like I forsook my books at some storage book accross the Ocean and started another completely new set of volumes, bringing over only 2 useless books. A German dictionary and some cheap basic skills coaching book. There's a need for useless stuff in my life, it's a vicious constant of art, a vicious obsession of the art. Needy of the unfound, needy of the unheard and unsatisfied with his own holdings. Just to give an example, in 2002 I shifted from one language to the other, to a point in which it's already difficult for me to rephrase a couple of educated sentences in my own language. As I said, needy of the unfound, needy of the unheard, with no content.
In that order of ideas the loss of the note constitutes nothing but a "muss sein", and who if not Ari or Teresa to explain it, even Elliot would protest I'm sure or the justice-filled Antigone. The note wasn't meant to be written as such pain can't be beared all at once; that kind of stories must be written in weekend chapters to be published in a village newspaper, where people still dies of love. Not even Icelanders would read it I'm sure; for it is a cheap and extremely melancholic and musty version of the Dutch boy and the finger in the dam, also an androginous version. And the wife herself claims her attitude against everything that is musty, being herself a walking library of dead knowledge. In my next life please remind me to skip Goethe and Holderlin, nothing has come out of it but a rather diseased condition. A condition that would wed Elliot and me, even Elliot herself would pour benzedrine and vokda down her throat upon reading our former forlon note.
After the disappointment and the muss-sein I and wife refused to be Odysseus and understood we could have been better off with some Demetrian ode. The Homeric hymns... hummmm... still carry them with me as if they were in my pocket.
It was a total dare to dive into Anne Frank these days though, after all in this country we eat hot dogs with mustard right after our pilgrimage through the dreadful camps of death in Poland, so why would we want to crave into Anne? Probably because Anne and me had an unavoidable bon, just like Elliot and me have at the moment. But somehow I think I'm able to bear that bond, the wife herself isn't. To read the pages of the diary these days was like reading Hesiodic tales, reading about a past long gone by yet as present as the present. It was to read about open wounds.
For now wife and I have agreed to put the book asides for sometime, we're better off among computer investigations, modulus functions, syntagmic associations and combinatorics. It doesn't mean we've neglected our heaviness, for it's impossible. Once your suitcase is loaded with certain books, you'll have to bring them all over. Even to the your wedding bed. I think Elliot, wife and I will spend some time on the Bible this year and stuff our library with a few more novels, it's always interesting to read novels, they can be so truely deceiving...
At last I hit the shower with the pretension to leave the house (not sure when that will happen though) and dressed up with wife's clothes still bearing my newborn smile. A smile that only the fresh skin of the phoebus can bear.
I read in some magazine that people dressing all in black are trying to hide themselves; today I'm all dressed in black, my favourite colour and in such delicate taste of wife. Don't take me wrong, I've learnt a few things from her, those kind of things only an old Jewish woman can teach. Today wife and I are beautifully radical, let us be that way. The day will bring something, the day will take us on.
Ari
Another kid in the blog!
Ok, good morning Tel Aviv! Remember my last note? Well, still faithful. Unsuccessfully tried to catch some sleep last night between exhausted and excited, but that's what happens when you're twenty. You just can't miss the spot and gotta crawl all night long between shades and souls, boring though. I asked the wife for some sleeping pills for married women take them all the time (if not drugs, too) but once again she wasn't home.
The whole night turning upsides in bed was like waiting for a dental appointment, with no dentist and no appointment. (Oh my! Isobel!) Yet I did manage to do some progress with Saussure and even when I don't really like him I think his theories as interesting from a theoretical point of view, cards to play with you know. I want to develop the subject a little bit further for it constitutes my main academic interest, right after the Greek poetry of course, much less elucidated but probably far more interesting for the educated reader. A philologist got to do these things for a mere sake of art, for tragedy and poetry are too disciplined for a young soul that altogether must be embodied with mathematics, astronomy, logic and other things the muses dispose of.
Therefore I've decided to set up another blog, since this one is too serious for trivial matters such as linguistics and mathematics; here you find more weightful cores in pink dots, black dots, yellow dots and even blue dots. You can't really read about a person's feelings when you read a linguistic abstract but anyhow we all need to falter sometimes. I know what you're thinking, oh yeah the guy couldn't catch with his sleep so now he's going to torture our brains with linguistics. Don't worry, these pages will continue containing operettas and ballets, I'll take my linguistics somewhere.
This is the linguistic blog: http://taalwetenschap.blogspot.com and if you want to sort entries and read the XML version you can try http://taalwetenschap.blogspot.com/atom.xml. It's designed for ATOM, actually until 2 days ago I didn't really know what that is but I'm getting better. The new blog will be also the right spot for some computer investigations and lots, lots of trials.
For now Ari and wife (or widow) will stay here in these pages for they're the main aim of the blog, an act for the act itself, self-deceiving. Despite myself the morning doesn't have any bitter taste, just unpatient taste. Wife will take care of it, I'm sure of it.
In the meantime it's my 2nd day without leaving the house, I think I'm growing either old or rather frustrated; you know the mortages and furniture thing. What can bother me anymore anyway? Once I said I'm way too young for so much frustration (but obviously I meant other frustrations) and now I think I'm right, oh well a true Calvinist would just claim for resignation. That's certainly not me.
The whole night turning upsides in bed was like waiting for a dental appointment, with no dentist and no appointment. (Oh my! Isobel!) Yet I did manage to do some progress with Saussure and even when I don't really like him I think his theories as interesting from a theoretical point of view, cards to play with you know. I want to develop the subject a little bit further for it constitutes my main academic interest, right after the Greek poetry of course, much less elucidated but probably far more interesting for the educated reader. A philologist got to do these things for a mere sake of art, for tragedy and poetry are too disciplined for a young soul that altogether must be embodied with mathematics, astronomy, logic and other things the muses dispose of.
Therefore I've decided to set up another blog, since this one is too serious for trivial matters such as linguistics and mathematics; here you find more weightful cores in pink dots, black dots, yellow dots and even blue dots. You can't really read about a person's feelings when you read a linguistic abstract but anyhow we all need to falter sometimes. I know what you're thinking, oh yeah the guy couldn't catch with his sleep so now he's going to torture our brains with linguistics. Don't worry, these pages will continue containing operettas and ballets, I'll take my linguistics somewhere.
This is the linguistic blog: http://taalwetenschap.blogspot.com and if you want to sort entries and read the XML version you can try http://taalwetenschap.blogspot.com/atom.xml. It's designed for ATOM, actually until 2 days ago I didn't really know what that is but I'm getting better. The new blog will be also the right spot for some computer investigations and lots, lots of trials.
For now Ari and wife (or widow) will stay here in these pages for they're the main aim of the blog, an act for the act itself, self-deceiving. Despite myself the morning doesn't have any bitter taste, just unpatient taste. Wife will take care of it, I'm sure of it.
In the meantime it's my 2nd day without leaving the house, I think I'm growing either old or rather frustrated; you know the mortages and furniture thing. What can bother me anymore anyway? Once I said I'm way too young for so much frustration (but obviously I meant other frustrations) and now I think I'm right, oh well a true Calvinist would just claim for resignation. That's certainly not me.
No need for thrill
Well, everything in order at the moment. Wife's home, Ari's home. Today I actually ressumed Saussure a little bit, it was very motivating and algebraic sort of needless to say. After a couple of hours in uncertainty about do's and dont's actually I manage to proceed with my readings, to stop later on only in order to search for the axe of evil. I could have done before, my usual way but eventually didn't, have a good feeling about it actually.
No need to be jumpy about conclusions and odds, just let the morning come and with it sweet cakes and bitter-sweet snacks. Unfortunately I'm less thrilled than I expected, and knowingly aware but it doesn't really trouble me as it used to do, probably because I had the chance to through it myself if you know what I mean. I felt contemptously tempted to pick up the phone and ring up a few people and pour over my tragedy, my discontent. Still I haven't read Sophocles in a while, hence there's no real tragedy and there's no real thrill. I've spent my afternoons between blogs, wife's talks, Elliot and Saussure, mathematical linguistics and demons of other kinds, of other races.
A suppressing feeling came over me in the early evening, something I couldn't explain, something not even Giorgia could cure, figured it out? Yeah I did as well but it's nothing worthy of attention. I mean, I would do exactly the same probably. And since right now the wife is making an triumphal appear back home, Ari is laid to rest for a while... it doesn't really mean laid to rest... he might just be busy with any other book he found, with any other book Elliot sent for him. Ari sleeps, with his hesitations and his hopes of a better tomorrow, let her take over... for she's more into enjoying the present with its evil calculations and depraved pieces of self. Glassy kind of.
I'm a bit happy you know! It's not that I don't have any real feelings, it's just infatuation-free and unexpected, released, thinking of myself, thinking of a stranger, voiceless and calm, taking a lead. Finding my loosen screws and tightening them up for the good sake of the morrow.
I can start to resume my novels, to resume my poems, to resume my thoughts, to resume my words. In motorways, in tramlines, at the patisserie, walking down the seashore, I can keep my silence, I'm allowed to silence up now and breathe the tranquility of today, the unrest of yesterday.
For life can only be in my side this time, for we're not at odds one with the other. Let me return to Reykjavik 101 or to Bogota 121 if you want. Let life decide, and let me sleep... for once at all... to sleep out of unrest.
In the same bed, Ari and her... share a pillow, and share a life... share something no one can take away from them... they share a something linguistics can't attempt to describe, they share a signified, being themselves together in communion a signified. Firstly a signifier,then all the rest.
No need to be jumpy about conclusions and odds, just let the morning come and with it sweet cakes and bitter-sweet snacks. Unfortunately I'm less thrilled than I expected, and knowingly aware but it doesn't really trouble me as it used to do, probably because I had the chance to through it myself if you know what I mean. I felt contemptously tempted to pick up the phone and ring up a few people and pour over my tragedy, my discontent. Still I haven't read Sophocles in a while, hence there's no real tragedy and there's no real thrill. I've spent my afternoons between blogs, wife's talks, Elliot and Saussure, mathematical linguistics and demons of other kinds, of other races.
A suppressing feeling came over me in the early evening, something I couldn't explain, something not even Giorgia could cure, figured it out? Yeah I did as well but it's nothing worthy of attention. I mean, I would do exactly the same probably. And since right now the wife is making an triumphal appear back home, Ari is laid to rest for a while... it doesn't really mean laid to rest... he might just be busy with any other book he found, with any other book Elliot sent for him. Ari sleeps, with his hesitations and his hopes of a better tomorrow, let her take over... for she's more into enjoying the present with its evil calculations and depraved pieces of self. Glassy kind of.
I'm a bit happy you know! It's not that I don't have any real feelings, it's just infatuation-free and unexpected, released, thinking of myself, thinking of a stranger, voiceless and calm, taking a lead. Finding my loosen screws and tightening them up for the good sake of the morrow.
I can start to resume my novels, to resume my poems, to resume my thoughts, to resume my words. In motorways, in tramlines, at the patisserie, walking down the seashore, I can keep my silence, I'm allowed to silence up now and breathe the tranquility of today, the unrest of yesterday.
For life can only be in my side this time, for we're not at odds one with the other. Let me return to Reykjavik 101 or to Bogota 121 if you want. Let life decide, and let me sleep... for once at all... to sleep out of unrest.
In the same bed, Ari and her... share a pillow, and share a life... share something no one can take away from them... they share a something linguistics can't attempt to describe, they share a signified, being themselves together in communion a signified. Firstly a signifier,then all the rest.
Thursday, September 16, 2004
Comedy
Back in town (only for the evening... as the house needs some care) the wife of the journalist has honoured us with her presence, the wife still with no journalist is visiting. From what I've heard she's been a while away in the companion of Elliot, or Mary-Ann rather let's say. The wife and Ari aren't in a very chatty mood and things have turned somehow cold; for she was expecting a clean house, hot food and endless sequences of smiles, musty books on the table and the translation of a few lines from the Latin reader, and even from Meridor's book. Ari in the other hand is playing indifferent, as if it wasn't with him. He didn't tell her to run away anyway but she did, and we can understand her. We all need our space sometimes, our loneliness even outside our own loneliness.
A bit of desolation at home, a stinky kitchen, unfolded clothes all over, bills, preoccupations, lawyers, and other side dishes. Ari doesn't really seem to care, and he never does. He's too busy with personal issues, with universal questions, sorrows, books, towers of paper and even with memories. The wife is something else, she's always something else, she rather keeps herself busy with less problematic matters.
She prefers the light and sweet talks about mortgages and new houses, furniture and appliances, names of streets, neighborhoods, hot spots in town and even weddings small talk. Well, I can sincerely understand her, for her life is far from being at ease even in her glory, even in her sublime glory. Her life is never at ease because she has to deal with Ari, every single minute and in every single instance... Ari and the wife don't really like each other, they probably detest each other instead.
Ari accuses her of being superficial and full of grandeus, always putting on smiles and avoiding any kind of weariness, and he's probably right. But I think she's more justified in her complaints about Ari... for he's too dark of a person.... a ship that sinks into the night, into the irreversability of things, into the unavoidability. They're at odds with each other and whenever they have the chance to meet someone's got to interfere, sometimes Elliot, sometimes Ofer, sometimes even the bible intereferes.
The wife of the journalist is somehow a religious person, but lacking the delicate touch of Ari's religious feelings, the chore of things... such heavy thoughts. Still Ari is also justified in some kind of way, if the life of the wife is far from being easy Ari himself isn't doing much better and for the good or for the bad both of them seem to rely one on the other. They manage to live in some strange kind of pathos, Ari by never talking and she by talking only about herself... and one bears the sorrows of the other, in a different way but still beared.
They share common feelings but interpret them very differently... Ari curdling up into his shell and keeping it hidden deep inside, despite the eyes, despite the smiles, despite the sad faces. She deals with life in a very different way, she's a deceiving optimist by nature. Someone with an accute and repulsive sense of trascendence, one of those persons who get some kind of pleasure even out of the most dreadful miseries. It's an admirable kind of thing, but difficult to understand when you're 20 years old. Very difficult to understand, and even so those things aren't meant to be clear for you at that age, even if you've skipped a decade in your life, even if you've been through the lowest depths of the soul, and even if you're Ari.
The wife is an understanding self and hence she doesn't complain about this state of affairs, and even blames herself for not spending enough time home. That's what happens when you have a romance with a writer, you lose the dimension of time, you loosen. That's what happens when you neglect history, when you neglect present, when you neglect facts. Still she's not called for perfection, for a wife is known socially not for her virtues but for her highest defects, those are the kind of things that make someone a person.
In contract to Ari her beauty is very different but also very unique, her beauty is the beauty or Marla, a highly intellectual unpurified self... the night bird, frozen smiles, walls of nicotine, silk and black coats, cognac, Elliot... everlasting Elliot. Her beauty is like the charm of music, like the charm of a glaciar... unfinished; the beauty of the aged who understands the symphonies and the operas of life, the beauty of someone who laughs at the bitter with bitterness and who claims a strange type of passive justice, the justice you are granted when you stop fighting for justice. The beauty of someone who doesn't pretend to change the world.
Ari brings another panorama, the innocent beauty of the Phoebus, certain type of beauty only age can grant you, only youth can grant you. It's actually finished beauty, complete.... in small doses, with small proportions. The beauty of the boy that has reached some kind of adulthood without being carried away with it, keeping his own features. Beauty without grandeur, without glamour..... beauty in raw, elaborate shapes product of nature and silk-weary skin. A beauty that comes with confusion, questions and immaturity, doubts, hesitations and even unfounded sorrows.. but still the most exquisite and delicate beauty a human being can aspire for, an unknowingly beauty. With this beauty, his... the wife of the journalist can't compete. For age has granted him the benefit of doubt, unlike her... in her age (that we still don't know) hesitations seem like a thing of the past, unallowed... and awareness is not only her wisdom, but her deepest sorrow. Awareness of her impossibility to compete with Ari, to compete with time and to compete with a life that isn't hers.
But they still suffer together their way and their paths in life as they're bonded one to the other, unavoidably for they constitute one same being, not one same person however. They stare at each other in despair, every morning, every evening, in every hue. The wife of the journalist actually loves her journalist even when there's no journalist, she loves herself when she's with him, she loves him with the proportions that adult love grants you despite your own self, with the proportions of reality and the proportions of the modern world. A world where -still in the paths of the 21st century, journalists and humanists make companion. Ari is headed somewhere else, he doesn't really love anyone but he's needy and he's cranky, and he lets himself probably not really being loved but more like being caressed and being touched, being softened from the rawness of youth and from the aggresivity of childhood, softened by his hands, softened in silence, without coming out of the shell... softening for himself and just smiley. In the drunkenness of youth, in the drunkenness of romance, in the drunknenness of trascendence.
The journalist in the other hand seems to like Ari very much, and much less his wife. But he still doesn't notice the difference, who could notice it anyway? Talking about unavoidability? it's probably Ari the one he likes and the one he enthralls, even when the wife and the journalist do seem to get along. It's a long and thin wire to be walked carefully, for you never when your attempt to please one will hurt the other. Ari is like an impossible, a shapeless piece of time with which is impossible to go further than romance, still he's got his charm, no doubt about that. The wife is much more of a real person, but far less attractive and far less interesting, despite her intellect, despite her awareness. It's the rawness and the finished beauty what calls for, what springs.
Ari and the wife have spent some time together by themselves and also one without the other, they don't really seem to miss each other but their necessity to return just like the river returns to the sea is more than evident. Ari has been with the journalist, and also has the wife. Probably in the wrong moments for one has taken the place of the other wherever wasn't expected to be that way, but no one really wrote this plot. It just started out and broke ground (not sure about that yet) from one little story, from one of those little stories we read in little magazines.
The little story became a song and later an opera, with organ and recital. The little story became an understatement. The undeniable bond between Ari and the wife of the journalist. This is probably a triada, but just let him return to his wife and to his boy. I think, as an Hellenist.. the journalist might find it pleasurable; and if not Ari will grow up and the wife will grow younger.
Ari
A bit of desolation at home, a stinky kitchen, unfolded clothes all over, bills, preoccupations, lawyers, and other side dishes. Ari doesn't really seem to care, and he never does. He's too busy with personal issues, with universal questions, sorrows, books, towers of paper and even with memories. The wife is something else, she's always something else, she rather keeps herself busy with less problematic matters.
She prefers the light and sweet talks about mortgages and new houses, furniture and appliances, names of streets, neighborhoods, hot spots in town and even weddings small talk. Well, I can sincerely understand her, for her life is far from being at ease even in her glory, even in her sublime glory. Her life is never at ease because she has to deal with Ari, every single minute and in every single instance... Ari and the wife don't really like each other, they probably detest each other instead.
Ari accuses her of being superficial and full of grandeus, always putting on smiles and avoiding any kind of weariness, and he's probably right. But I think she's more justified in her complaints about Ari... for he's too dark of a person.... a ship that sinks into the night, into the irreversability of things, into the unavoidability. They're at odds with each other and whenever they have the chance to meet someone's got to interfere, sometimes Elliot, sometimes Ofer, sometimes even the bible intereferes.
The wife of the journalist is somehow a religious person, but lacking the delicate touch of Ari's religious feelings, the chore of things... such heavy thoughts. Still Ari is also justified in some kind of way, if the life of the wife is far from being easy Ari himself isn't doing much better and for the good or for the bad both of them seem to rely one on the other. They manage to live in some strange kind of pathos, Ari by never talking and she by talking only about herself... and one bears the sorrows of the other, in a different way but still beared.
They share common feelings but interpret them very differently... Ari curdling up into his shell and keeping it hidden deep inside, despite the eyes, despite the smiles, despite the sad faces. She deals with life in a very different way, she's a deceiving optimist by nature. Someone with an accute and repulsive sense of trascendence, one of those persons who get some kind of pleasure even out of the most dreadful miseries. It's an admirable kind of thing, but difficult to understand when you're 20 years old. Very difficult to understand, and even so those things aren't meant to be clear for you at that age, even if you've skipped a decade in your life, even if you've been through the lowest depths of the soul, and even if you're Ari.
The wife is an understanding self and hence she doesn't complain about this state of affairs, and even blames herself for not spending enough time home. That's what happens when you have a romance with a writer, you lose the dimension of time, you loosen. That's what happens when you neglect history, when you neglect present, when you neglect facts. Still she's not called for perfection, for a wife is known socially not for her virtues but for her highest defects, those are the kind of things that make someone a person.
In contract to Ari her beauty is very different but also very unique, her beauty is the beauty or Marla, a highly intellectual unpurified self... the night bird, frozen smiles, walls of nicotine, silk and black coats, cognac, Elliot... everlasting Elliot. Her beauty is like the charm of music, like the charm of a glaciar... unfinished; the beauty of the aged who understands the symphonies and the operas of life, the beauty of someone who laughs at the bitter with bitterness and who claims a strange type of passive justice, the justice you are granted when you stop fighting for justice. The beauty of someone who doesn't pretend to change the world.
Ari brings another panorama, the innocent beauty of the Phoebus, certain type of beauty only age can grant you, only youth can grant you. It's actually finished beauty, complete.... in small doses, with small proportions. The beauty of the boy that has reached some kind of adulthood without being carried away with it, keeping his own features. Beauty without grandeur, without glamour..... beauty in raw, elaborate shapes product of nature and silk-weary skin. A beauty that comes with confusion, questions and immaturity, doubts, hesitations and even unfounded sorrows.. but still the most exquisite and delicate beauty a human being can aspire for, an unknowingly beauty. With this beauty, his... the wife of the journalist can't compete. For age has granted him the benefit of doubt, unlike her... in her age (that we still don't know) hesitations seem like a thing of the past, unallowed... and awareness is not only her wisdom, but her deepest sorrow. Awareness of her impossibility to compete with Ari, to compete with time and to compete with a life that isn't hers.
But they still suffer together their way and their paths in life as they're bonded one to the other, unavoidably for they constitute one same being, not one same person however. They stare at each other in despair, every morning, every evening, in every hue. The wife of the journalist actually loves her journalist even when there's no journalist, she loves herself when she's with him, she loves him with the proportions that adult love grants you despite your own self, with the proportions of reality and the proportions of the modern world. A world where -still in the paths of the 21st century, journalists and humanists make companion. Ari is headed somewhere else, he doesn't really love anyone but he's needy and he's cranky, and he lets himself probably not really being loved but more like being caressed and being touched, being softened from the rawness of youth and from the aggresivity of childhood, softened by his hands, softened in silence, without coming out of the shell... softening for himself and just smiley. In the drunkenness of youth, in the drunkenness of romance, in the drunknenness of trascendence.
The journalist in the other hand seems to like Ari very much, and much less his wife. But he still doesn't notice the difference, who could notice it anyway? Talking about unavoidability? it's probably Ari the one he likes and the one he enthralls, even when the wife and the journalist do seem to get along. It's a long and thin wire to be walked carefully, for you never when your attempt to please one will hurt the other. Ari is like an impossible, a shapeless piece of time with which is impossible to go further than romance, still he's got his charm, no doubt about that. The wife is much more of a real person, but far less attractive and far less interesting, despite her intellect, despite her awareness. It's the rawness and the finished beauty what calls for, what springs.
Ari and the wife have spent some time together by themselves and also one without the other, they don't really seem to miss each other but their necessity to return just like the river returns to the sea is more than evident. Ari has been with the journalist, and also has the wife. Probably in the wrong moments for one has taken the place of the other wherever wasn't expected to be that way, but no one really wrote this plot. It just started out and broke ground (not sure about that yet) from one little story, from one of those little stories we read in little magazines.
The little story became a song and later an opera, with organ and recital. The little story became an understatement. The undeniable bond between Ari and the wife of the journalist. This is probably a triada, but just let him return to his wife and to his boy. I think, as an Hellenist.. the journalist might find it pleasurable; and if not Ari will grow up and the wife will grow younger.
Ari
Well I'm done
Ok then... I'm actually done with the set up of the blog. I really don't get the atom thing but I guess I'll learn it overtime, being such a net addict I'm really frustrated by discovering how ignorant I am about these things. I don't know... the blog has several advantages but somehow I liked better the old one for there I could just jump into an specific date and find a posting, I was also able to write not only a topic but to choose a mood icon.
Some chicken in the oven at the moment, I've been starving myself for more than a half a day and actually I'm doing it all the time, no wonder this skeleton figure... but oh well better times will come. Dying to see my journalist for the good or the bad, also a bit unsorted, ha! a bit? Totally unsorted. Let me first move my postings and then I'll have some time for myself.
Ari
Some chicken in the oven at the moment, I've been starving myself for more than a half a day and actually I'm doing it all the time, no wonder this skeleton figure... but oh well better times will come. Dying to see my journalist for the good or the bad, also a bit unsorted, ha! a bit? Totally unsorted. Let me first move my postings and then I'll have some time for myself.
Ari
New blog
Oh well
I don't really know what I'm doing but I'm trying to republish my blog, it will take me at least 4 or 5 hours to migrate all the postings from my tripod side but I'll do my best.
Let's see how it comes about... by the end of the day we'll have some new postings here.
Ari
I don't really know what I'm doing but I'm trying to republish my blog, it will take me at least 4 or 5 hours to migrate all the postings from my tripod side but I'll do my best.
Let's see how it comes about... by the end of the day we'll have some new postings here.
Ari
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