16/6

I lost my mile of stars to your days

Darling desires bloom to black flowers
under the overcast of faux fears
Scent of timid times reign
drizzling vanity, wary and weak
underwhelming yet beyond grasp
well intentioned, yet mercilessly cruel
I found but your remaining eyes
in a skirmish with all that has ever left you
looking for my lost stars

F

Now that he has washed ashore
after a decade full of dreams
he's thinking of her tomorrows
while she's somewhere being free.

He hopes her mind would keep him
deep in her unconscious streams
as she walks down her broken road
dust and sorrow on her feet.

He wishes her beside him
when the moonlight hits his street
if he could gather all his senses
his face may slide into her dreams.

Would she write him notes and letters
would she recall him in glee
would she stop and think of him
while she's somewhere being free?
so free.

3

I wonder how to tell you that I roughly know who I am. yet I'm ashamed when I laugh at your beliefs, because I can't fix what you lack. I wonder how to convey to you the meaning of things you can't chose not to feel, or comprehend. It is not your fault. you are merely a victim of institutionalized misbelief. I'm ashamed that you tasted the bitterness of this godless ground. I can't protect you from the truth you pass in favor of stone age stories. I can't help you when you take a saw to the branch you're sitting on. I can't help you even if it means the end of all our days. Don't forget that despite the contrast, I still feel for you. I feel for your beliefs and I feel for your simplicity. Yes, You've vetted all of them. The stories, the lessons, the practices. And I understand that you've convinced yourself. But I ask you, have you really? did you rid yourself of doubt? Because I have. Rejecting a baseless idea is much easier than accepting an excruciating truth. I guess it's a matter of perspective. Maybe you should wipe your lens.     

Dust

Can you honestly forgo this night, for the sake of days apart?
Time of ease in a dark descent, 'till emptiness fills your eyes.
Talk as if you know the make of tomorrow, the shapes unknown.
Talk as if you feel the children, as a piece of your own.

Softly moving to your end desires, chalkboard empty, black and wide.
feel the silk that is holding you, in a mass of flesh and blood.
What if we bury the kids on a sun soaked afternoon?
What if we never find the hands, that lay us next to their bones?

On a sidewalk across the street, you submit to blades of grass.
Feel the breeze on your neck and arms, see the green dance on your dime.
your past hollow like a cloud of dust, one that lays waste to your hours.
Now you're sunken with a heart of sand, did you hear me at all?

Noise

my world in a cold shade of sapphire
I chase your days  with the flight of life
to no avail, I long for a voice to admire
roars long lost, sharp is the silent knife

my days in a dusty coat of crimson
pressured air cuts your throat to my bones
vibrations lay waste to my every dimension
in weight of blood, dreams I shall atone

my eyes in a coffin of crystals
seek your signal past the realms of men
faces form above the timeless vistas
and disappear without a word of when

my mind dark and devoid of warmth
hidden by the cloak of unconscious choice
death needs a heart and a guiding voice
I lost your voice to the haze of noise.

SS3-II

Biding my time on a sundown soon set to become a memory
it too, feels the tremors that pass my narrative with a reckoning divide
sinister clouds tell of an honest passage
minor sentences mirror a rectifying shift
disarrayed despair to arresting sights
through her vigilant eyes
I watched the day blossom and decay
and I am swayed
as she sits, nihilistic and calm.

Trembling down, a cascade of abashment
of suggestive angry noises
bitter-most sweetness is all
all that was left behind.

SS3-I

Streets filled with mindless joy
fleeting faces, young & old
as I walk to find an open door
to a smile as unhindered & wild
as wind on earth's sweetest snow

Chirp the birds as they rob the sky
of her deprivations and her cries
weathered to a feather, but no cage to abide
so they sway and sink
into flight

soon they're out of sight
as we all remain
in the mercy of time
halfheartedly calm
for a chance to pretend
we know what's  to come
we know what's gone by
forgetful the souls
missunderstanding
life's our senseless paradox

SS0-VIII

Sitting alone/ he's on your arm/ now on your mind /
shaving your thoughts/ time and again/ sharp as the rain/
that's breaking his face/ into drops/ as they slide/ down a line/
that's pulling him through/ a common distress.

Stick around/ to catch the cries/ of a mass denial/
our softest desires/ sick, sickly and dark/ we are bent and aroused/
right under your eyes/ we shed them across/ this artful despise.

One by one/ we fade in our ways/ for a sacred heart/
for a lapsing out/ a foolish abide/ such a childish reliance/
on her charming disguise/ leaves you gently crossed/
with every smile that sails her lips sky wide/ that bates and locks.

A cure and a fall/ for all that it's worth/ you're a point of pride/
for all that has gone/ haywire or fine/ you're the oddest despair/
foreshadow the dawn/ hymns to our allergic needs and wants/
those subterranean to our daily trending files.

SS0-VI

My most faithful road
diminish so I can find another way
your dust, I know too well
now your rocks crack at her thunder
when her light shines the brightest
your days, I know all too well

Misty mirror sighs in silence
sees and reflects
his fearful climb
his restless denial
for a fearless fall

Old friend, airways fill
with your sweeping whispers
your words swing and sway
my paper moon on the rise
I am done with your days.

SS0-V

- I’ll call you, okay? Said A In the mist of eyeliner and bags as her soon to be former husband watched the rusty cab speed by the fucking street cats. Their “DO NOT ENTER” sign shook as the door slammed. Her entrance caused them a night’s well deserved solitude and rest.

.:.

B: Welcome! Oh my utmost pride! Turn the fucking TV down and put on some piano when your tears are dry.

A: Hello, got a solid surface to spare for a night and perhaps half a day?

C: Hello! Shocking don’t you think?

A: How so?

C: Well we haven’t seen you since your dad decided to painted the bathtub red.

A: Didn’t you get the letters I sent?

C: B mentioned them but I never took a glimpse.

B: If feelings are suddenly going to be the object of the game …

A: Be more abstract please! I won’t take you seriously if suddenly reason is leading your way.

B: My apologies, don’t mind if I do.

-   Time hammers another nail to a casket.

A: A friend drowned in the North Sea last year.

C: How awful!

A: It was tragically hilarious.

B: Wonders you’ve seen! Did you find it odd?

A: Just oddly amusing.

C: Is that the best you got?

A: Oh pardon my manners, but I have to punch something before I can connect to my birth giver again. Share a smoke with me before I sing that mirror a tune so deeply cursed?

B: Wait, let me look at you for a second.

A: Is something not usual with my distant presence?

B: Nothing out of the ordinary. It’s just that I can kill myself tomorrow if the weather is agreeable.

C: Take your pills and pipe down. And buy some candles for the funeral.

A: I’ll never get used to your senseless jumbling of words. I’d appreciate some obscurity if you could.

With pleasure C revolts: If you want my words on the Z-plane of a paper I’ll send you a letter and rejoice as my son finds a new home under six feet of dirt and an inch of snow.

.:.

C: What a coward your brother was.

A: We always received mixed reviews. Comment on him please. I’d love to tell his lovely bones.

C: For that I’d have to ask the cutlery set he destroyed.

B: Did you cut your own hair?

A: fuck you. My scissors weren’t as sharp as the blade you know so well how to use.

B: Well if I must confide in you and you alone, life put me on my ass, on my back and my hands even though that seems humanly impossible.

A: A tad inhumane but I think if done properly it may be possible to keep you hanging there like my brother’s chronicles.

C: Care for some milk darling? But with a prior warning, it has adapted a rather sickly taste.

A sat on the floor and gazed at C amazed.

A: You’ve soften quite a bit. Anything to do with the snow on your hair?

C: No darling, maybe the books on the shelves, and the pills by the bed. Or perhaps the marks on your dad’s arm and the fucks I reserved for your brother’s big day.

.:.

A: Kill yourself at a time between seasons.

B: Only if you’d burry me in that black duffle bag I kept when I threw his shit away. He said as he slapped his red gloves on the palm of his wrinkly hands and wept.

A: Well fine if the damn coffin can fit in it, can you two please be a bit more shrouded?! I am bored and this house if fucking crowded with whatever my brothers and I left when our age was a combination of one and eight.

C: Of course, darling, are you still living in a sentence that’s left without a dot?

A: yes, page eight thousand five hundred and twenty fucking five. But be careful! It may be under a layer of daddy’s blood or your gin soaked dresses that were hung on a different hotel wall every night of summer winter spring or fucking fall.

B: I’ll pass by on the way to my accountant’s office. I do miss how you used to dip your quill in every cross I made with a shaving blade.

C: I’ll pass on passing but I’ll sing you my secondary version of a saving grace. Shall we give the cemetery a go?

A: Lead the way.

C: Funny.

A: I thought so.

.:.

B: So how many pens had to bleed for you to write this non-sentimental piece of sentiment?

Three, said A as she, B and C walked through the name-bearing stones of life’s predicament, Classified and categorized as if the ground had a sense of accomplishment.

B: Look who it is.

Slowest time of the slowest day of the slowest year for A as he walked towards them with a sadness screaming under his blank fixated stare.

C: Now that’s kind of a fuck you isn’t it? All of your children at one place but only one of them is properly dressed.

D: Are you stuck between a bitch and a cunt gear again?

C: 16^th time this week, and counting. Does she lick the right spot?

D responded as he looked as his watch: Right on the dot.

C: Excuse me! Something I forgot.

B: what?

C: I forgot.

B: You’re happy aren’t you?

C: yes, but slightly of a different kind.

D: He was always considered an asshole as you know.

A: I know, and for you timing was never right, I always thought you were a little unfortunate. Want some advice from a point of utter indifference?

D: Leave me the fuck alone. A bit of respect please, but only if you’d make it extra obscure.

C: You smell like a dead cat my sweet girl.

B: Ah it’s right beside your left leg darling.

C: Ah how unfortunate. Flatten and flushed, gone in such an ugly way.

A: It’s hard to say, I heard it was going through a nervous breakdown.

B: Because of me as well? Just hang me with all the ropes in your head.

A: yes, but I have to admit that it wasn’t your fault.

D: don’t be silly, your unpoetic presence never hurt a soul. Want to count the stitches though?

C: Stop adding and subtracting dear, just ash your smoke cuz the end of something beautiful is near.

A: Have you taken a holiday from thinking?

D: No, but I’m stuck in the line that was pulling me through.

A: Speaking of things that might kill you and let that vacancy in their heads to remain unfilled, can you please bring the car around B? I don’t want the dead cat to miss the epilogue but I’m cold and the earth’s need has already been fulfilled. 

-       B took one last look at the empty grass adjacent to his son's grave. Jealousy shines greener when every other shade is painted in vain.

.:.

Subtle breeze, white skies and a silent street through which her whispers spread past infidelity, lost time and estranged progeny to keep this life afloat over his sense of irony that keeps him up all night by the phone that’s been unplugged form a wall that welcomes no soothing sound through the door as dust settles on his table and coffee mug as he lights up another one when the fucking street cats start to make some noise. The crossing of I know and I don’t knows as the siblings mark their line around the less than motivated piano sets the tone of another winter, another chance to truly be fucking alone. Obscure is the sensation that rules their weary souls.

SS0-IV

Night falls and a sacred panic arises

As eyes sense what’s missing,

brain whispers the descant to a cedar’s cry,

wrapped in the grip of a climaxing flame 

the interring meadowlarks swing through the fazing haze

searing spin of mortals fans the flame

pixie dust on trial, pop the seeds and eggs

a motherly caress, crest of all latency

the crestfallen cedar now fills the air and time

As fingertips long to feel

ears fill with silence in the suspense of ash and pines 

roots now parted, as night roots anew  

SS0-II

Somewhere along the axes that made up his psyche, between the bars that cress every thought or sensation, rests a hole. One might think it came to be when the incident took place, but he felt like it was there, or technically not there, all along. It's a strange entity if one might call it that. This void, depths of pitch black nothingness, echoing wordless silence, calls for him with the wave of  a non-existing hand. He can see it now, he can understand it, but he never saw it coming. The framework of one's mind disappears with a faint gradient to outline the void, as if it's the quicksand for the whole of reality, minus him. He sees himself falling, without any fear or distress, without any sense of anxiety or peril. He is in perpetual motion. There is nothing, no sides or circumference, nothing that can be physically sensed. Basically, nothing to contort.

...

SS0-I

Hey stranger

I'm sitting in a room that can dim any ray, vibration or notion of change, to an unfathomable string of words. I sit down and look around, the tiniest particle of dust, the unruly books that claim the desk as their own and rightfully so. On the yellow wall, four heads are bowed, the crestfallen girls of a land lost in a sinful slow dance with a tinted rhetoric. They look down on a piece of poetry, as if they can read it:

"window was yesterday,
and a sun that only shined on me.
Tree is today,
and a shade craving for my jaded soul.
Breeze is tomorrow,
in a scorching summer day, when I am burning,
waiting for you.

You are yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Not just for me, but for whoever knows the windows and the trees and the breeze."



Olive leaves glow when they share a look with you
singular stretch of a second
shattered soon after, the crushing grip of a soothing thought:
'Remain and you shall overcome"
hacked in the core of the waltz
obliging their every move, but
the trace of their eyes
still paints my night sky
as they wait, settles the dust of time
on their hairs and on their homes
on the doorknobs and window shades
"Remain and you shall overcome".

Remain the forsaken walls
to validate a dead society
long after the rain washed the curse off the tombstone.

Ominous and dire
they watch the road
they watch the moon above them
and they watch the dirt beneath
and they watch the bright dust that lays in between
"To remain is to overcome"
they think to themselves
as the dust waltz
their aches into oblivion.

S0-II

Too dull to resolve your damning device
reluctant, the compass of one's measly being,
favonian thoughts turn the rotting tides
tho orient-ward, the faithful rod is kneeling

Subliming mirage of her softest touch,
sweeps the sinner from his rack of lies
the past playing like a melancholic montage
with dolor, he rests inside her naked thought

Her Melody

Say it again, I said
cursing the years
kill my words and be gone
by the sunset

Take the rain
burn the bees and the birds
leave the way you had always imagined

Oh, how the wind
serenades what is left of her
paints the shades
as autumn leaves make her lonely bed

Say it again, I said
thinking of her
your thought comes and aways
like a laughter

Hanging on, little less,
by and by,
end me like you had always imagined

Oh, how the wind
serenades what is left of her
sighs through the trees
to her melody they calmly bend

Say it again, I said
counting the days
till I see you again
cold and naked

Carve this song
in a tender terrain
so the ash and the clay would remember

Of how the wind
sways the seas with a subtle pain
sparks with a name
may the flames warm her lonely bed

Oh, comes the mare
every night and she tells a tale
of you and me
a season sinking without a trace

S4 - I

A heart wrapped in pitchers and vines
secluded from the touch of the dawn
dwells deeper into the mist and thinks
of pain and love abidingly as one

S0 - I

I look for a settling sigh
to silence her seeming cry
and take my own begotten pain
for which she cuts my every vain
to rid me of all that's hers
a swindling smile, a mind dispersed

Talk to me. Your words are subliming. They distract me from the emptiness of the ceiling above. What do you see when you look at it? is it as plain? is it as boring?

Your lips, your words, perfectly arrayed
your face, with lines bending logic and regret
to see you, is to see the ceiling as a way
to keep you here, and softly embrace

S3 - I

Stuck between visions that bring
nothing but some baseless yearns
and a thought stripped of all thats sane
forgive me now, it's just a game
a must to play, a must to lose
or to admit
all was obtuse

let me be a while and then
check back to see what might be left
of howl of wolves and frosty rocks
flakes of light dancing about

that twisted little spear of lust
wanders in my heart somehow
vein by vein, it hides the pain
when you're not around, not around.

N1

12 years passed like one of those winter afternoons,
that we used to waste on the street.

12 years passed under a cloud,
one that dared to defy our midsummer dream.

12 years got buried under your smile,
your voice got trapped beneath everything that left you,
the echo started.

12 years left one thing in mind,
Vivid and vibrant, it remains,
a part of me until I see you again.

Just like the white berries that would fall on our favorite bench,
a winter wind took you further than I could ever see.

The season wasn't right.
The season had other plans.

S2 - II

The melody that her lips don't whisper,
The memory that her eyes refrain to enter,
The feelings that everything forbid,
Though they only exist inside my head,
The visions that I keep myself from seeing,
What might be, but I won't be believing,

.:.

These are just a few things that people die from,
They make of an uneasy life, to turn your thoughts around.

Nostalgia II

A childish wish for snow, I remember.
A walk under it, I recall.
A night filled with white promises, I seek.
A sleepless night beside the fire, I need.
A winter morning with its chilling wind, I feel.
A mountain calling and recalling, I hear.

A will, to set them free, I've lost.
A longing, to retake what was once mine, I've lost.
The requiem, what I wish to lose.

S2 - I

Knowing, perhaps is the greatest burden. Knowing it all or knowing almost not enough, hardly matters. Disengagement is not a choice since forgetting is not in our control. Knowing her only shoal and brief, meaning shouldn't be assigned. But her words leave me no choice, penetrating haphazard looks with no horizon in her eyes leave me tangled in my own absurd web. To know, is to enter an everlasting maze. After all, nothing is ever over.

Paul Simon I

We come in the age’s most uncertain hour And sing an American tune.

On life II

Choosing the meaningless over the meaningful is at the hearth of every decision.

On life I

I think life is this simple: a little lie told by someone you can't live with or without. That simple...

Bertrand russell I

Bertrand russell asks a difficult question. What is the answer?

"Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it? This question, which at first sight might not seem difficult, is really one of the most difficult that can be asked. When we have realized the obstacles in the way of a straightforward and confident answer, we shall be well launched on the study of philosophy—for philosophy is merely the attempt to answer such ultimate questions, not carelessly and dogmatically, as we do in ordinary life and even in the sciences, but critically, after exploring all that makes such questions puzzling, and after realizing all the vagueness and confusion that underlie our ordinary ideas."

Bertrand russell -  The Problems of Philosophy 

Translation I

R, how did the constant monotony of your forlorn days pass? When your light faded behind the perplexing fabric of sorrow.

Tell me about your confusing adolescence, the innocent seclusion of your hands.

Did you know that beneath the fire of your woe, your tormenting tears, lay the answer to why silver lakes shine?

R, now, with me by your side, dare to let go. Accord with the essence of light.

Learn to fade in the hermetic serene.

At this moment, my R, you are in efflorescence.

Nostalgia I

The asthenic winter sun shone on the snow crested path that I walked on once a week to get to the mountain. As I walked among the trees, the sleeping giant started to dominate the December sky. The golden field of wild dried grass, randomly uniform, luminous and redolent, reminded me of her skin. Candescent while nature was at It's seasonal halt. As I approached the mountain, the single entity that spawned lucidity for me at those days, frosty swelled rocks became more frequent.

As I climbed the small hill, the frigid city became more visible, just to fade into the nothingness I wanted it to become with a simple turn of my head. patches of green grass amongst the grey rocky background were soothing to the eyes that had teared up in the face of the wild winter wind which froze anything that defied it. As the sun that sat around 5:30 in the afternoon on those days was dying off, the eastern paper moon had gained flight, and I reached the apex.

Mountain after mount, stones frozen in time and space faded into the afternoon sky. My bones ached and my face was numb but I couldn't care. The measly I had reached the mountain top to see the sight of the grand peaks afar, to be reminded of just how trivial he truly was.

S1- III

She's more than a distraction. She's bewildering. I don't know if I need her or not, that shouldn't even matter since she might have a higher purpose. Perhaps her role would be to give meaning. Not that my life is meaningless, but I've equated the meaning of my life to its purpose. If I set romanticism aside then she will not mean anything as I've defined meaning to be. But then why is she important to some twisted part of me? She challenges me. More importantly, she challenges my definition. No, she makes me challenge it with her abstractness, she demurs who I am. She slickly takes my words apart so the fabrics of my intellect are no longer in accord with me.

S1- II

She's more than a distraction. She's bewildering. I don't know if I need her or not, that shouldn't even matter since she might have a higher purpose. Perhaps her role would be to give meaning. Not that my life is meaningless, but I've equated the meaning of my life to its purpose. If I set romanticism aside then she will not mean anything as I've defined meaning to be. But then why is she important to some twisted part of me?
She challenges me. More importantly, she challenges my definition. No, she makes me challenge it with her abstractness, she demurs who I am. She slickly takes my words apart so the fabrics of my intellect are no longer in accord with me.

S1- I

Days turn to months and pass too quickly to be indulged. A trend that has by now become mundane is one of fucking. What started as an exploration into the darkness of coupleation has by now turned into nothing but a straining, adverting task. I shared a bed with a girl who's beauty was one for Nabokov to depict. Likes of her are not frequently found in my bed, though the number of my female companions has grown quite considerably in the past year. As I watched the afternoon sun glare on her swift body as she laid there on her bed while I enjoyed the view from a building I used to live in, she asked me what I was thinking about. A question which was answered dishonestly, since what I was mulling over was why I self indulgently wanted to leave all this subliming beauty and be by my self. But after a few days the urge always returns, And with it a new girl. If I keep this up, I will fuck my way to the end of times. Perhaps to assert to myself a needlessness for love. But some say without love why do we live on. Frankly aside from passing on my genes and leaving a mark on the society i see no other point. Why should I? Those two seem rather compelling to me as I have no need for deeper meaning. I'm not in a state of despondency, I would call it acceptance.

On Absurdity

"The Absurd" is defined as the conflict between the human tendency to seek a meaning for life and his inability to find any. So what is humanly impossible, rather that logically impossible, is absurd.

To resolve one's discomfort with this issue, Camus and Kierkegaard have proposed three ways:

1. Suicide, as a measure of escaping the situation. But ending one's existence in a meaningless universe due to a lack of meaning is absurd in itself.

2. Religion, To believe that there is an alternative reality, or perhaps it's better to say one that is free of the absurd and therefore is burdened with meaning.

3. To accept and embrace the absurd, which does not mean that to accept and believe that everything is meaningless, but according to Camus, that meaning is subjective and developed overtime for one's sake of content. As Camus said: " one's freedom – and the opportunity to give life meaning – lies in the recognition of absurdity. If the absurd experience is truly the realization that the universe is fundamentally devoid of absolutes, then we as individuals are truly free. "To live without appeal, is a philosophical move to define absolutes and universals subjectively, rather than objectively. The freedom of humans is thus established in a human's natural ability and opportunity to create their own meaning and purpose; to decide (or think) for him- or herself."

The Terminal

   Two minutes to midnight, according to the numbers that dwelled beneath the cracked screen of my phone. At this point I had waited for the bus, that clearly was not coming, for about twenty minutes.
Having been possessed and ensnared by cheap demons who did not allow me to spend forty bucks for a cab ride, I was left with only one choice. 
   I gazed at the gigantic building that was reflecting the full moon's light, masterfully so, as the building's white arched edges were intertwined with the clouds above. I took the lift and entered the Terminal. The appearance of a terminal at midnight is quite predictable. A single person stretched on a row of seats that were intended to accommodate four. Children running around their weary parents. Luggage everywhere. Waiting. Just waiting. This is how people get old, I thought to my self.
   I sat down at a corner table in the only cafe open in the whole terminal. The white clock that was hanging above the sleeping African showed 12:10. I knew that the first bus in the morning comes at 7. I ordered a cup of coffee and opened my book (Trauma by Patrick McGrath).
   By 3:00 I have had another cup of coffee, finished my book and was observing the night life of the terminal. The children had fallen beside their dozing parents. The few Europeans present were head-deep in their tablets. The cleaning crew had decided to take a rather long smoke break. The moon was at the opposing side of where it was when I came in. As my non existing audience has by now came to expect from me, what I was looking for, and as usual, did not find, was meaning. At least nothing more grand than waiting. Waiting as the meaning of a scenario, since it was all this whole night represented.
   By 5:00, to scape the mind-numbing monotony of a terminal at halt, I sat next to the east window and watched the sky for the first bright spear of sunlight to appear. To laugh at the sunrise since you've been up all night is a paroxysm that I think is the manifestation of something that one can call pride.
   Two hours later, as I boarded the surprisingly crowded bus I thought to myself, perhaps waiting is necessary. Perhaps for our mind to out-run our body. Or maybe so a bad writer can have something to write about.

On "A Hanging" by George Orwell

  In "A Hanging", Orwell shows us how the prisoners are regarded as none-humans. Their cells, are as cages of animals. How they are considered dead before their execution and any attempt to prolong their lives is questioned and is found surprising by the guards who look at it as an attempt to tamper with their predetermined fate.

  Orwell shows us that this regard for the prisoners is not racial as it may occur to some, but an effect of power, As the Burmese royalist laughs the loudest at the humorous remarks made about the dead prisoner.

  The translucent moment experienced by the narrator brings him this meaning: "It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working - bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming - all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned - reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone - one mind less, one world less."

On "Why I Write" By George Orwell

  I wish I had read Why I Write before I attempted to read any of Orwell's books, because as he said himself, we can not know a writer's intention without being familiar with his earlier work and his background in general.

  In this essay he answered a couple of questions that I had queried while reading his books.
One of which was his intention for the structure chosen for his books. In his own words :"I will only say that of late years I have tried to write less picturesquely and more exactly. In any case I find that by the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it. ANIMAL FARM was the first book in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole."

  An other question will surely be his motives to write and how he came to acquire them:"What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art'. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant."
   He also talks about his childhood habits, which most of us I think can relate to easily.
Also He listed the four motives that he believed drive each prose writer and are present in all but in different fractions. these four are:

 1. Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc.

 2. Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. 

 3. Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

 4. Political purpose. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples' idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.

On "Spike" By George Orwell

George Orwell spent a night in a workhouse (spike) near London and this short essay is based on his real-life experience as a vagrant.
 He talked about dealing with confinement. "It is a silly piece of cruelty to confine an ignorant man all day with nothing to do; it is like chaining a dog in a barrel, only an educated man, who has consolations within himself, can endure confinement." I derive from this a comment on the nonproductive system of the spike, not necessarily a cry about the unfair state of treatment that tramps receive, aside from Orwell's view on living within limits.
The dialog with the young carpenter marks an interesting point in the essay. "It was interesting to see how subtly he disassociated himself from his fellow tramps. He has been on the road six months, but in the sight of God, he seemed to imply, he was not a tramp. His body might be in the spike, but his spirit soared far away, in the pure aether of the middle classes."
Keeping in mind the earlier conversation between them that included the carpenter's opinions on why the spike is in this condition and that a tramp (a true tramp) is lazy and unproductive by nature, I think Orwell is portraying the character of the carpenter to further emphasize this simple point. Hence justifying the judgmental tone that is sensed throughout the essay.
The ending:"he put four sodden, debauched, loathly cigarette ends into my hand." a tramp is displaying kindheartedness while also shoving the expected and explained uselessness. A delicate touch.

On "Mary" by Vladimir Nabokov

Once again I am taken by Nabokov's stimulating and profound understanding of the human condition.
In Mary, his debut novel, we can clearly see the genius of Nabokov's style. Characters carefully chosen, to play a certain part in the story. To reminisce about pre-revolutionary Russia (Podtyagin) , which is Ganin's hope and home, where Mary had been captured by his mind. Where Mary had waited for him when he was late. Where Mary had held his hands through the woods that Nabokov describes in such a rousing way. Mary is not as melodramatic as Lolita, though still poignant at times.
An interesting point suggested by a review I read, that in this book we get a stark sense of Nabokov's Russian origin, Compared to his quite American Lolita.
The train, shaking the Pansion by each passing, is Mary's recollection. As Nabokov said:" Memories and shadows. Images of the past that roll through the mind like smoke escaping the bellies of locomotives. A photo. A certain scent. Mary. Mary is coming."
I have to admit, in spite of foreseeing that Mary will never enter the story as her present self, her telegrams aside, I did not expect Nabokov to end this novel with a translucent moment of despair. A defining synchrony.

On "Door bell" by Vladimir Nabokov

Just read Naboko's "The Door Bell". In contrast with a review I read which strongly suggested that the son is self centered or arrogant, also, that he's dismissive or somewhat indifferent to the obvious signs that her mother's age and her experiences in the years they spent apart combined with the shock of their unforeseen reunion had little effect on him. I think Nabokov refrained from going deeper into the son's mind when he was examining the room in order to allow the reader to engage, as he always does. So this is not a sign that the son is not concerned about the mother, he did ask how she was.
But he talked about himself and his travels instead, Perhaps knowing that he wasn't going to like what she had to say and she wasn't going to tell him the truth anyways, simply a comment on the mother and son relationship. But I admit, in the end after the incident at the doorway with the lover, again another conclusion Nabokov left to the reader, the son was laughing while talking about his future plans which seems apathetic, but maybe he was trying to divert the situation for the sake of his tearful mother.
The ending, a recurrent theme of subtle pain and abandonment in Nabokov's work resurrected, with the son walking out with a promise and the mother running to the phone to call her young lover.

On "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov

   Nabokov's prose style allows us to become self aware about the way we respond to the plot by letting us see the mask of literature.It makes Us question how we acquired this understanding. Also the questions purposed directly or indirectly throughout the book and the way we choose to answer them.

    Humbert's style: Enchanting, Love trumps morality? Like an MRI's  magnetic field applied over our body that aligns the nuclei of hydrogen atoms, (dont expect a science student not to brag when they can), Humbert's style aligns our minds in order for us to share his extremely sensuous experience, to whisper Lo.Li.Ta! to physically respond. In a way, to precess. To draw us in at least.
Then come the questions he assumes we will ask, rightfully so. But the order he chose is designed to make us analyze and understand him the way he wants us to. We were seduced my Humbert, not Loita. Humbert, from whom the rhetoric of this love story rose, but built on the logical ground of Nabokov's thought process, as Humbert's problem ( I chose "problem" because Humbert referred to aches and pain not because of any judgement on his character on my part.) needs a solution and we are the solvers of his puzzling feelings and thoughts.

   We never did scape out of the head of Humbert Humbert, never detach from his subjectivity in the course of the novel. Perhaps only accessing the subjectivity of Lolita when shades of Nabokov himself blends into Humbert.

   Is the tissue between imagination and reality so light that it can be pierced? can one tamper with the other? This is one question from the book I found difficult in the sense that I see no way of even thinking about how to find the answer to this question.

   the word "Throb", used in different contexts in multiple occasions in the book. One being reference to the rising desire in HH, one being the romantic throbbing of one's heart. The word having appeared with increasing frequency in Nabokov's work before Lolita, specially in his memoir can shed some light on Nabokov's character's personification through parts of Lolita.

   Did Nabokov dislike cliches? Is that why we sense a dismissal of morality? In his style we see him talking about cliches just for the sake of averting from it to a surprise. 

   One point I did not pick on while reading the book, and an obvious one, was the repeating phrase "ladies and gentlemen of the jury". A reference to us, silent readers who are judging Humbert, who are answering his questions and those we asked ourselves. Also, us who are present when Nabokov courts this question of morality. Another take from the book, Nabokov's intolerance and detest for the simplified black and white.

 And at last, Humbert's defense: It was the poetry! The poetry made me do it! reference to Poe's Annabel by the sea.

Thank you Yale university's open course and Proff. Amy Hungerford.

The Last Day

The clock stroke 2:00. having finished the paper I put my pen down. 15 more minutes until my last exam was done. I glimpsed at the hill through the class window. A small black bird challenged my depth perception that had worsened with my astigmatism, the distorted glass wasn't much of a help. Meanwhile my sense of time was shaken by a simple question, how did it pass so quickly?

In that 15 minutes i found my self looking for meaning. Expecting a moment to have a certain meaning just because it marks the end of something drastic. Having trouble finding any I realized that lack of meaning in moments we wish were defining but pass like any other, might make us think about ourselves as irredeemable. Perhaps that's why many detest change. Also, why those who don't need meaning embrace this trend of instability. As one of my friends says: Don't be a warm comfy sheep!