All the elements that make what I write recognizable as mine seem to me a cage that restricts my possibilities. If I were only a hand, a severed hand that grasps a pen and writes… Who would move this hand? The anonymous throng? The spirit of the times? The collective unconscious? I do not know. It is not in order to be the spokesman for something definable that I would like to erase myself. Only to transmit the writable that waits to be written, the tellable that nobody tells.

Italo Calvino – If on a winter’s night a traveler

Carl Gustav Carus – Clouds of Fog in Saxon Switzerland

Vocabulary: Bilious Branglomane Edition

atrabilious: morose, melancholy, or in a like way ill-tempered (from the latin for ‘black bile’)
jonquil: corruption of the bird ‘junco,’ revised to refer to an associated type of narcissus
sough: a rustling or sighing noise; or, to speak or preach whinily; or, a ditch or marsh
mythomane: abbreviation of mythomaniac, similarly graphomane, monomane, etc
imbrangle: also embrangle, to involve in a brangle, a noisy fuss or squabble
afflatus: divine or otherwise miraculous creative inspiration or knowledge
posset: an old cold remedy, spiced milk curdled with beer or wine
bistre: a brownish-yellow pigment derived from wood soot
petroliferous: capable of yielding petroleum, e.g. oil shale
palter: to act or talk carelessly or deceitfully, or to haggle
parclose: a rail or screen dividing parts of a church
cark: care or worry; to carken is to burden

Hauschka – “Paige and Jane”
Youyoume

Delicate yet rich, a piano and cello weave together and create something heart-stopping. This album is short but absolutely exquisite. (serein)

When he arrived at a clearing, he saw a dragon holding a lion by the tail and burning its flanks with its flaming breath. My lord Yvain did not waste time observing this marvel. He asked himself which of the two he would help. Then he determined that he would take the lion’s part, since a venomous and wicked creature deserves only harm: the dragon was venomous, and fire leapt from its mouth because it was so full of wickedness.

Chrétien de Troyes

Álmos Jaschik – Angel above the city, Star Gazers, and Peer Gynt

Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens, 1838)


This classic, while it is by far the poorest book by Dickens I have read, nevertheless somehow endures as one of the author’s most visible and popular works. Perhaps if it were not the first Dickens people were often tasked with reading, they would not develop a dislike towards the man. All its qualities are inferior, and all its flaws deeper, than every other work of his I’ve encountered.

Oliver, to begin with, is a cypher. His only qualities seem to be politeness and naiveté, neither of which seems likely to have emerged naturally in a child raised in the orphanage described. He fails to make any meaningful decision the entire book, acting only as a plot device and nullifying him as something anyone reading should care about — since as a plot device he is more or less immune to harm or influence. The idea of inherent honesty and goodness, always strained in Dickens (and allied to class), reaches the level of nonsensical here.

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He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.

George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant

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Houndmouth – “Penitentiary”
From the Hills Beneath the City

This folk-orchestra item impressed me in the car with its resonant chorus harmonies and authentic sounding insertions of “oh mama” and “oh lord.” Not my usual wheelhouse, but a great song is a great song. (insound)