Saturday, March 27, 2010

there isn't any use my telling you

... those were days of roses, poetry and proses,
save them for a rainy day...

-- a song on Radio Archaeology
those were days of roses martha by Thomas A. Waits, says Raissa

***
Prompted by Pamplona, wiki'd for clues, reading The Sun Also Rises for the first time since high school. I struggled through it then, hadn't lived long enough to understand. Now it's like being slapped on the behind by it. To read it then was simply to be exposed to foreshadowing, or prophecy. Inoculation, or infection. Talk about Painesville, Ohio.
"You see, Mr. Barnes, it is because I have lived very much that now I can enjoy everything so well. Don't you find it like that?"

"Yes. Absolutely."

"I know," said the count. "That is the secret. You must get to know the values."
Have just finished Book I. Am I Brett, or Frances? Perhaps, at different times in my life, both. Are you Jake, or Robert? Is this in service of literature, or are there concrete screws?

The text is so crystalline, it is hard to be coherent about it.

I will live on islands.

***
(Aux Champs-Elysees comes on now - my favorite French song - for decades!)

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