Drink up

Why if dancing you would be,
There's brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton build on Trent?  (Burton is a brewery)
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried halfway home or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Than the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely much I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Than I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad

Saying Good Bye to the Consumer Driven Holidays

". . . in the mass and variety of our purchases, in the sheer plenitude those crowded bags suggested, the weight and size and number, the familiar package designs and vivid lettering, the giant sizes, the family bargain packs with Day-Glo sale stickers, in the sense of replenishment we felt, the sense of well-being, the security and contentment these products brought to some snug home in our souls - it seemed we had achieved a fullness of being that is not known to people who need less, expect less, who plan their lives around lonely walks in the evening."

Don Delillo "White Noise"

The Suzerain: Is the judge in McCarthy's Blood Meridian similar to the enigmatic Kurtz in Conrad's Heart of Darkness?

Whatever exists, he [the judge] said.  Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.
He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked.  He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected.  These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world.  Yet the smallest crumb can devour us.  Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men's knowing.  Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth.

Barbarians at the gates

... and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of christen reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eyes wanders and the lip jerks and drools.

Excerpt from Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian

The University of the Absurd

"Another important department is Adynata, or Impossibilia.  Like Urban Planning for Gypsies.  The essense of the discipline is the comprehension of the underlying reasons for a thing's absurdity.  We have courses in Morse syntax, the history of antartic agriculutre, the history of Easter Island painting, contemporary Sumerian literature, Montessori grading, Assyrian-Babylonian philately, the technology of the wheel in pre-Columbian empires, and the phonetics of the silent film."

Jacopo Belbo in Umberto Eco' "Foucault's Pendulum"

Ever watch a seagull?
A seagull at rest will just stand and look into the ether of the air.
Does he think?  Does he remember or have foresight?
In the winter if he gets cold he may switch the legs he is standing on;  the only reaction he gives to the external world.
Nothing in those lifeless eyes.
Does he get bored?  Can he get bored?
Is there a past or a future for him? or just a never-ending present.

- 1/30/09

Post Halloween excerpt from Frankenstein

"Why did I not die? More miserable than man ever was before, why did I not sink into forgetfulness and rest? Death snatches away many blooming children, the only hopes of thier doting parents; how many brides and youthful lovers have been one day in the bloom of health and hope, and the next a prey for worms and the decay of the tomb!
Of what material was I made that I could thus resist so many shocks, which, like the turning of the wheel, continually renewed the torture."

Question: Was the fiend in Frankenstein "real" in the novel or was it a metaphor/analogy for some other torment suffered by the protagonist or the author?