Final Blog...maybe

Well, it always seems right to say, "it's over". or something like, "I'm sad that this class is finished and all the blogging is done with".- these are the phrases I actually started this blog with, and that I've started some of my "final" blogs before with, but I realize that this is not a point of closure. not one bit.
I am very happy that Sam is willing to keep up with the blogs for at least a little while after class is done, (I had originally thought i would have kept blogging into this year after our Nabokov class but sadly i did not)So I hope to maybe contribute a little more before we all get too far into the summer, but what has become clear to me over the past few years, is that the blogs are once facet of our learning (turly and amazing one) but just because the blogs mast stop, just because we may not all congregate together in a room for an hour or so, doesn't mean that this class is in anyway over. We have all been granted keys to unfathomable doors, -in number and in their direction- I know that personally, from each class I've taken with Dr. Sexson, i find that the material, the understandings, the sense of community and connectivity, do not end when the class does, instead they stay alongside, inside you, they do not wither, they flourish.

Rachel put it well that, Dr. Sexson has a posse. And for those of you who have just been initiated i know you will forever be a part, even if you are graduating. For any of you who have had the pleasure of learning with Sutter Strummel, you would see an example that this class, this true radiance does not adhere to school calenders, Even those of us who graduate, drop out, or even switch over to the dark side of the school curriculum, we all have been infected we are all part of an intimate group, and the membership is lifelong.

I had a sense of infinite veneration, infinite pity

In one of those common cases where I wish to share just a couple quotes I like, to get at sense of the beauty, and understanding of what i'm reading...I again find it impossible to limit or extract anything too specific, for virtually everything that Borges writes should be quoted-in its entirety- so. because what he writes is essentially what I am trying to convey in my paper, but with far better prose than I, I will share with you the just a piece of his work The Aleph
This is from a website -i didn't feel like transcribing the whole thing- so it might not be verbatim how it is actually written but it should get at the understanding.
I am sharing this to more or less get other people on bored with Borges, because i had never read him or even heard of him before until he was recommended to me at finnegans wake reading,
I went out, bought a collection of his work, and opened up to this...

He hesitated, then with that level, impersonal voice we reserve for confiding something intimate, he said that to finish the poem he could not get along without the house because down in the cellar there was an Aleph. He explained that an Aleph is one of the points in space that contains all other points.

"It's in the cellar under the dining room," he went on, so overcome by his worries now that he forgot to be pompous. "It's mine -- mine. I discovered it when I was a child, all by myself. The cellar stairway is so steep that my aunt and uncle forbade my using it, but I'd heard someone say there was a world down there. I found out later they meant an old-fashioned globe of the world, but at the time I thought they were referring to the world itself. One day when no one was home I started down in secret, but I stumbled and fell. When I opened my eyes, I saw the Aleph."

"The Aleph?" I repeated.

"Yes, the only place on earth where all places are -- seen from every angle, each standing clear, without any confusion or blending. I kept the discovery to myself and went back every chance I got. As a child, I did not foresee that this privilege was granted me so that later I could write the poem. Zunino and Zungri will not strip me of what's mine -- no, and a thousand times no! Legal code in hand, Doctor Zunni will prove that my Aleph is inalienable."

I tried to reason with him. "But isn't the cellar very dark?" I said.

"Truth cannot penetrate a closed mind. If all places in the universe are in the Aleph, then all stars, all lamps, all sources of light are in it, too."

"You wait there. I'll be right over to see it."

I hung before he could say no. The full knowledge of a fact sometimes enables you to see all at once many supporting but previously unsuspected things. It amazed me not to have suspected until that moment that Carlos Argentino was a madman. As were all the Viterbos, when you came down to it. Beatriz (I myself often say it) was a woman, a child, with almost uncanny powers of clairvoyance, but forgetfulness, distractions, contempt, and a streak of cruelty were also in her, and perhaps these called for a pathological explanation. Carlos Argentino's madness filled me with spiteful elation. Deep down, we had always detested each other.

On Garay Street, the maid asked me kindly to wait. The master was, as usual, in the cellar developing pictures. On the unplayed piano, beside a large vase that held no flowers, smiled (more timeless than belonging to the past) the large photograph of Beatriz, in gaudy colours. Nobody could see us; in a seizure of tenderness, I drew close to the portrait and said to it, "Beatriz, Beatriz Elena, Beatriz Elena Viterbo, darling Beatriz, Beatriz now gone forever, it's me, it's Borges."

Moments later, Carlos came in. He spoke dryly. I could see he was thinking of nothing else but the loss of the Aleph.

"First a glass of pseudo-cognac," he ordered, "and then down you dive into the cellar. Let me warn you, you'll have to lie flat on your back. Total darkness, total immobility, and a certain ocular adjustment will also be necessary. From the floor, you must focus your eyes on the nineteenth step. Once I leave you, I'll lower the trapdoor and you'll be quite alone. You needn't fear the rodents very much -- though I know you will. In a minute or two, you'll see the Aleph -- the microcosm of the alchemists and Kabbalists, our true proverbial friend, the multum in parvo!"

Once we were in the dining room, he added, "Of course, if you don't see it, your incapacity will not invalidate what I have experienced. Now, down you go. In a short while you can babble with all of Beatriz' images."

Tired of his inane words, I quickly made my way. The cellar, barely wider than the stairway itself, was something of a pit. My eyes searched the dark, looking in vain for the globe Carlos Argentino had spoken of. Some cases of empty bottles and some canvas sacks cluttered one corner. Carlos picked up a sack, folded it in two, and at a fixed spot spread it out.

"As a pillow," he said, "this is quite threadbare, but if it's padded even a half-inch higher, you won't see a thing, and there you'll lie, feeling ashamed and ridiculous. All right now, sprawl that hulk of yours there on the floor and count off nineteen steps."

I went through with his absurd requirements, and at last he went away. The trapdoor was carefully shut. The blackness, in spite of a chink that I later made out, seemed to me absolute. For the first time, I realised the danger I was in: I'd let myself be locked in a cellar by a lunatic, after gulping down a glassful of poison! I knew that back of Carlos' transparent boasting lay a deep fear that I might not see the promised wonder. To keep his madness undetected, to keep from admitting he was mad, Carlos had to kill me. I felt a shock of panic, which I tried to pin to my uncomfortable position and not to the effect of a drug. I shut my eyes -- I opened them. Then I saw the Aleph.

I arrive now at the ineffable core of my story. And here begins my despair as a writer. All language is a set of symbols whose use among its speakers assumes a shared past. How, then, can I translate into words the limitless Aleph, which my floundering mind can scarcely encompass? Mystics, faced with the same problem, fall back on symbols: to signify the godhead, one Persian speaks of a bird that somehow is all birds; Alanus de Insulis, of a sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere; Ezekiel, of a four-faced angel who at one and the same time moves east and west, north and south. (Not in vain do I recall these inconceivable analogies; they bear some relation to the Aleph.) Perhaps the gods might grant me a similar metaphor, but then this account would become contaminated by literature, by fiction. Really, what I want to do is impossible, for any listing of an endless series is doomed to be infinitesimal. In that single gigantic instant I saw millions of acts both delightful and awful; not one of them occupied the same point in space, without overlapping or transparency. What my eyes beheld was simultaneous, but what I shall now write down will be successive, because language is successive. Nonetheless, I'll try to recollect what I can.

On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand; I saw a woman in Inverness whom I shall never forget; I saw her tangled hair, her tall figure, I saw the cancer in her breast; I saw a ring of baked mud in a sidewalk, where before there had been a tree; I saw a summer house in Adrogué and a copy of the first English translation of Pliny -- Philemon Holland's -- and all at the same time saw each letter on each page (as a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not get scrambled and lost overnight); I saw a sunset in Querétaro that seemed to reflect the colour of a rose in Bengal; I saw my empty bedroom; I saw in a closet in Alkmaar a terrestrial globe between two mirrors that multiplied it endlessly; I saw horses with flowing manes on a shore of the Caspian Sea at dawn; I saw the delicate bone structure of a hand; I saw the survivors of a battle sending out picture postcards; I saw in a showcase in Mirzapur a pack of Spanish playing cards; I saw the slanting shadows of ferns on a greenhouse floor; I saw tigers, pistons, bison, tides, and armies; I saw all the ants on the planet; I saw a Persian astrolabe; I saw in the drawer of a writing table (and the handwriting made me tremble) unbelievable, obscene, detailed letters, which Beatriz had written to Carlos Argentino; I saw a monument I worshipped in the Chacarita cemetery; I saw the rotted dust and bones that had once deliciously been Beatriz Viterbo; I saw the circulation of my own dark blood; I saw the coupling of love and the modification of death; I saw the Aleph from every point and angle, and in the Aleph I saw the earth and in the earth the Aleph and in the Aleph the earth; I saw my own face and my own bowels; I saw your face; and I felt dizzy and wept, for my eyes had seen that secret and conjectured object whose name is common to all men but which no man has looked upon -- the unimaginable universe.

I felt infinite wonder, infinite pity.

and it never rains but it pours

just perusing, semi-proofreading my last blog, I noticed that I subconsciously put the word Reality in "" and thus I was drawn to remember our fair Lolita and her Nabokov, "reality is one of the few words which mean nothing without the quotes"
what a perfect backing to my emerging thoughts
alignment with the universe.

And it never rains but it pours-Borges, The Zahir

Sometimes i feel like Henry Darger

I hadn't ever even heard of the man, I had no concept or knowledge of his life or work, but after watching a PBS documentary about this man, in conjunction with the utter massive amount of time I've been spending writing term papers these past few weeks-- i feel i am become Henry Darger.
For those you like I (the former I) who don't know about this man, check out this site http://www.saraayers.com/darger.htm to give a brief overview however, Henry Darger was an extremely reclusive janitor in the early 1920's he had no friends, spent all of his time working, or in his apartment talking to himself...and working some more. A few years after his death, a 15,000 page story was found, complete with elaborate drawings and music, an entire fantastical world all his own creation.

Now I defiantly don't have 15,000 pages and i can't draw-at all, but all of this writing, all of this engagement in what is essentially the same artificial world, the world of dreamscapes and storylines, has left me seamlessly transcending between the realms of fiction and reality.
A lot of people seem to pity Darger for his seemingly empty life, and while that may be true, how can we dismiss the unfathomably complex and beautiful world in which he chose to live, chose to create.

Now for the safety of my well being i think its important for me to make a clear distinction between these two worlds, but the deeper that this class, these books have taken me the hard that becomes.
To draw some more poignant words, i turn to Borges--for he has consumed me as of late, in one of his short stories The Zahir in which a coin (the zahir) has taken over his thoughts, his life his "reality" this concept of dual worlds, consumption, knowledge... "others will dream that i am mad, while i dream of the Zahir. When every man on earth thinks, day and night, of the Zahir, which will be dream and which reality, the earth or the Zahir?"

That's Amore!

in the silence, of the sycomores, all listening, the kindling curves you simply can't stop feeling, he plunged both of his newly anointed hands, the core of his cushlas, in her singimari saffron strummans of hair, parting them and soothing her and mingling it, that was deep-dark and ample like this red bog at sundown.

the Buddha on trashy literature.

Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will never be shortened, happiness never decreased by being shared The Buddha.

With all the discussion of high vs. low brow, this quote was given to me and reassured me. If lots of people read a particular book...(as Dr. Sexson said--So What?)

Borges

As of recent, I have been time and time again recommended to read Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentine writer with whom i had previously been unaware. I decided that I might as well pick up a collection of his fiction and read--in order to separate myself from the sea of thematic waves that this class an others have dragged me by in inescapable tidal currents-- Borges however, is yet another tsunami.
One though, that I am happy if not elated to surf. I actually, am somewhat convinced that I would like to write my paper incorporating his works, if not focusing on them.
To give you just an idea of how central his writing is to the themes we sit atop, here are just a few (of inumerous) passages that are a distillation of assigned texts.

--These are all from his short story collection entitled the Aleph--

opening the collection, in quoting an essay by Francis Bacon, Borges cites,
"Solomon saith: There is no new thing upon the earth.
So that as Plato had imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance; so Solomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.

'Nine doors opened to into that cellar-like place; eight led to a maze that retunred, deceitfully to the same chamber; the ninth led through another maze to a second chamber identical to the first (187)"

"I felt that it had existed before human kind, before the world itself. Its pattern antiquity (though somehow terrible to the eyes) seemed to accord with the labor of immortal artificers. (1879)"

"We accept reality so readily--perhaps because we sense that nothing is real (190)"

now in conversation with the dog Argos:
" I asked Argos how much of the Odyssey he knew. He found using Greek difficult; I had to repeat the question.
Very little, he replied. Less than the megerest rhapsode. It has been eleven hundred years since i last wrote it.

"No one is someone; a single immortal man is all men. like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, hero, philosopher, demon, and world--which is a long way of saying that i am not. "

"I have been Homer; soon, like Ulysses, I shall be Nobody; soon, I shall be all men--I shall be dead"

"Thus, in 1946, by the grace of his long-held passion, Pedro Damian died in the defeat at Masoller, which took place between the winter and spring of the year 1904"

" I felt, on the last page, that my story was a symbol of the man I had been as I was writing it, and that in order to write that story I had had to be that man, and that in order to be that man I had had to write that story and so on, ad infinitum (And just when i stop believing in him, "Averroes" disappears). 241)

"Tennyson said that if we could but understand a single flower we might know who we are and what the world is. Perhaps he was trying to say that there is nothing, however humble, that does not imply the history of the world and its infinite concatenation of cause and effects"

"Idealist doctrine has it that the verbs "to live" and "to dream" are at every point synonyms; for me, thousands upon thousands of appearances will pass into one; a complex dream into a simple one."

then in discussing this coin, the Zahir over which he obsesses, it consumes him:

"In order to loose themselves in God, the Sufis repeat their own name or the ninety-nine names of God until the names mean nothing anymore. I long to travel that path. Perhaps by thinking about the Zahir unceasingly, I can manage to wear it away; perhaps behind the coin is God. (249)

If any of you have the chance: Read Borges. Purely amazing.
Like Santiago finding that the gears of the world click in his favor; this author fell into my lap, and completed the labyrinth.