Breaking through

I took me some time to understand what he was talking about but after self-imposed hibernation this week, I find that talking to Cortazar is awesome.

Most of his undertakings ended not with a bang but a whimper; the great breaks; the bangs without return were the nips of a cornered rat and nothing else. Otherness were rotating ceremoniously, dissolving into time or into space or into behavior, without violence, from fatigue – like the ending of his sentimental adventure – or from a slow retreat as when one begins to visit a friend less and less, read a poet less and less, go to a cafe less and less, taking mild doses of nothingness so as not to hurt one's self.

False action was almost always most spectacular, the kind that tears down respect, prestige, and equestrian effigies... so it was better to sin through omission than through commission. 

Being an actor meant renouncing the orchestra seas and he seemed born to be a spectator in the first row.

Once he had believed in love as an enrichment, an exaltation of interceding forces. One day he realized that his loves were impure because he presupposed that expectation, while the true lover loved without expecting anything but love, blindly accepting that the day would become bluer and the night softer and the streetcar less uncomfortable... He ended up by making friends out of the women he had loved, accomplices in the special contemplation of the world around.  The women started out by adoring him, admiring him, then something would make them suspect the void, they would jump back, and he would make their flight easy for them, he would open the door so that they could go play on the other side.  
    - Hopscotch, Chapter 90, Cortazar

I spent the day shopping in the Chinatown market for the perfect ingredients to my Thai shrimp sweet and sour soup.  Wound my way around a couple of vegetable stands before finding the right herbs.  Everything was ready until I locked myself out of the house (music blaring and candles eating to the wicks' end) rushing out to the corner store for some forgotten sugar. 

After some five minutes of freaking out cause I didn't have my roommates' phone numbers, I calmed down, took a smoke, and attempted to break in using my work ID card. I learned that if you find where the tongue of the lock is, it's much better to push in rather than trying to slide the card vertically to unhook a simple lock.  Spent twenty minutes learning this lesson.  After banging my head against the wall I succeeded, although my office tag is now irreparable.

But success!

what you smoke!

*cry cry cry*

did you know there is a strong correlation between smoking and lung cancer? i'm not making this stuff up!

Posted by: kyle | November 01, 2005 at 08:27 PM