"Those who write about fairy tales are often accused of casting evil spells on the world of fantasy or, worse yet, of breaking magic spells. We are entitled to search for the hidden meanings of literary texts, but fairy tales count as sacred stories meant to enchant rather than to signify. Analysis at its best leads to demystification, and who would want to remove the magic from a fairy tale, especially since there may be nothing left once the magic is banished?" -- Maria Tatar
"From sentence to sentence, in fairy tales there is no reality that is subordinated to any other. Just as, outside the pages there is no reality." -- Kate Bernheimer
"For me, flatness is the most magical aspect of fairy tales, a transformative spell played out within the level of the sentence. Like snow, flatness blankets the surface of language—it covers the sinister and the good with an equalizing coat of paint, and the game then comes in the act of reading when we have to scratch away and reveal, through context, the emotion beneath the sentence’s calm surface." -- Alissa Nutting
"Singer tried to think of the time before he had ever known his friend. He tried to recount to himself certain things that had happened when he was young. But none of these things he tried to remember seemed real." -- Carson McCullers
"At the school he was thought very intelligent. He learned the lessons before the rest of the pupils. But he could never become used to speaking with his lips. It was not natural to him, and his tongue felt like a whale in his mouth. From the blank expression on people's faces to whom he talked in this way he felt that his voice must be like the sound of some animal or that there was something disgusting in his speech. It was painful for him to try to talk with his mouth, but his hands were always ready to shape the words he wished to say. When he met Antonapoulos, he had never spoken with his mouth again, because with his friend there was no need for this." -- Carson McCullers
"There is not enough love and goodness in the world for us to be permitted to give any of it away to imaginary things." -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler.” -- Friedrich Nietzsche
"The poem is lonely. It is lonely and en route. Its author stays with it. Does this very fact not place the poem already here, at its inception, in the encounter, in the mystery of encounter?" -- Paul Celan
“What cannot be said above all must not be silenced but written.” -- Jacques Derrida
“I always dream of a pen that would be a syringe.” -- Jacques Derrida
"Of all the gods only death does not desire gifts." -- Aeschylus
“To know that one does not write for the other, to know that these things I am going to write will never cause me to be loved by the one I love (the other), to know that writing compensates for nothing, sublimates nothing, that it is precisely there where you are not--this is the beginning of writing.” -- Roland Barthes
“To try to write love is to confront the muck of language; that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive (by the limitless expansion of the ego, by emotive submersion) and impoverished (by the codes on which love diminishes and levels it).” -- Roland Barthes
"Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“You become what you think about all day long.” -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"A complete image with reference to a world devoid of image which imagines me in the absence of any imaginable figure. The being of a nonbeing of which I am the infinitely small negation which it instigates as its profound harmony." -- Maurice Blanchot
“When I beheld you, suddenly - for perhaps a second - I had the strength to reject everything that wasn't you." -- Jean Genet
"For years, he lived serenely in a cabin near the town of Klampenborg that had been passed down to him through many generations of his family, all poets, but none so successful at their craft as he, or should I rather say revered since even the greatest Danish poets had died obscure and penniless until he broke the pattern. When he was barely old enough to store a cogent memory and his poems were wobbly crayon lines that only he could read, he daydreamed of the sad occasion that would make this scenic cabin his abode. But by the time his father died, the gorgeous trees and unspoiled view where he’d imagined wandering with pen in hand had been truncated to a copse, and even it was culled through constant trimming and defoliating into atmospheric details along the pathways in a large amusement park whose southern fence came up nearly to his door." -- DC/Hans Christian Anderson
"To make a long story short, the amusement park expanded. To do this, they used some loophole in the law to buy the land around and underneath his cabin where they planned to build the sassiest roller coaster in the northern hemisphere. But using another loophole, the poet refused to move, and this second loophole proved his being stubborn was a legal right as well. So what had happened is the amusement park simply built the roller coaster all around his cabin, which became an atmospheric detail in the ride, now renamed The Homewrecker, and he had lived for several years enveloped by this most unnatural machine." -- DC/Hans Christian Anderson
“Maybe when people longed for a thing that bad the longing made them trust in anything that might give it to them.” -- Carson McCullers
“Owing to the fact he was a mute they were able to give him all the qualities they wanted him to have.” -- Carson McCullers
“When a person knows and can't make the others understand, what does he do?” -- Carson McCullers
“It is only people who are lacking, or bad, or inferior, who have to be good at things. You have always been full and perfect, so you had nothing to make up for.” -- T.H. White
"I no longer have any secrets, having lost my face, form, and matter. I am now no more than a line. I have become capable of loving, not with an abstract, universal love, but a love I shall choose, and that shall choose me, blindly, my double, just as selfless as I." -- Gilles Deleuze
"Something comes through or it doesn’t. There’s nothing to explain, nothing to understand, nothing to interpret. It’s like plugging in to an electric circuit. This way of reading relates a book directly to what’s Outside. A book is a little cog in much more complicated external machinery. This intensive way of reading, in contact with what’s outside the book, as a flow meeting other flows, one machine among others, as a series of experiments for each reader in the midst of events that have nothing to do with books, as tearing the book into pieces, getting it to interact with other things, absolutely anything. . . is reading with love.” -- Gilles Deleuze
“No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.” -- Charles Dickens
*
p.s. Hey. ** Torn porter, Hi. Thanks about the post. No, I have no clue as to whether any of the nightclubs were gay oriented or not. I would guess not in at least the majority of cases, but I don't know. That story and photo of the abandoned hotel in Shodoshima were very titillating, thank you. The US trip was mostly for fun, but we used our proximity to the setting of the movie project to do a bunch of work-research too. Southern Utah, mostly the area all around Highway 12 that goes in a loose semi-circle from Zion National Park up to Moab/ Canyonlands/ Arches. The most amazing part of the US, in my opinion. We were going to do the Narrows trail in Zion where you hike up and mostly in the main river/canyon that runs through the park, but doing that properly takes a minimum of 6 to 8 hours, and we got a late start, and it was pretty cold out, so we couldn't do it. That Ratty-related photo gives a good impression of the locale. I'll say more about the porn movie when/if it gets more cemented. We might be cementing a deal to get it made right now, but I won't know for sure for a bit. Good ... morning, afternoon (?) to you, sir. ** David Estornell, Thanks, David, so glad you dug it, love, me. ** Martin Bladh, Hi, Martin! No, I haven't had a chance to yet due to the trip and related busyness, but I plan to look everything over and get to your questions this week. Sorry for the slowness. ** David Ehrenstein, Morning. Yeah, here's hoping about St. Marks Bookshop. It folding would be a real tragedy. ** Keaton, Oh, cool, so happy that you dug the post. I almost never go to nightclubs. I never did all that much other than during rare, short lived very social and drug/alcohol imbibing periods or when they're venues for music gigs. The second was a nightclub, yowzer. No water inside the underwater strip club, no. I'm not sure how that worked. 'Try' is mature? Really? That's weird/cool. Hope you did some writing. ** MyNeighbour JohnTurtorro, Hi. I did like the Gnod link, yeah, for sure. I've only imbibed once so far, but I like what they're up to now. Productivity is good, for sure. Just have to organize time so that everything I want and plan to do can get done without them smashing and crowding each other to bits. What are you up to? ** Bill, Thanks, Bill. Ooh, a videoclip look/see, cool. Uh, 'leader', yeah, maybe? 'Mythologizer'? Hm. ** Unknown, Hi, Pascal, assuming this Unknown is your Unknown. How's it? ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh, gracias. I think there's some complicated story behind St. Marks Bookshop's problems. Something to do with Cooper Union, I think? Like they own the property and won't let the shop have a survival rent rate or something? Ugh. Yeah, in my brief time in LA last week, I couldn't believe how many vinyl stores were everywhere, at least in our (Silverlake/Los Feliz) area. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi! Good to see you. I don't know why the underwater club failed, but then again it must have been a pretty specialized thing to begin with? Nice about the Ken Price show. I saw his retrospective at LACMA in LA a couple of trips home ago, and it was a beauty. I hope all goes very well with you. ** Gary gray, Hi! You did it? So cool. I told Gisele, and she was excited and inquisitive about the costume too, so, yeah, pass along images when there are any, thanks! I did check out Backwoods Maze, and it was stellar. The best haunted house by far, backyard/ homemade or otherwise, was Big Worm's Sherwood Scare in Northridge. Amazing. David Byrne? Interesting. I wonder why. Hunh. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. The Orbit looks/sounds really cool. I wish I had found it for the post. Everyone, _Black_Acrylic contributes a dead nightclub to the array yesterday. Here he is: 'On a related note, the other week I dedicated a blog post to the legendary Leeds techno club The Orbit, which I'd count as among my formative aesthetic experiences. That was my first proper night out and I'd never encountered anything so radically intense. The place closed down 10 years ago, so it may well now resemble one of today's abandoned nightclub photos. Ah, memories.' ** Etc etc etc, Hey! First, I apologize because I didn't get that book list together by this morning as planned and promised. Yesterday ended up sweeping me me away unexpectedly. I'll do that today, sorry. The Sutro Baths ruins, yeah, for sure. When I go to SF, I always try to stop by them, have an omelette at Cliff House and then take a wander through or rather atop of the baths' remains. Thanks for the great photos and the alert. I am a real fan of Tao Lin's, yeah. With the 'Gchat' fiction, I like some of it pretty well and some not so much, expectedly, I guess. The form itself and the co-optation is an interesting idea, and some writers have wrung a quite interesting, fresh poetic and cool structure play out of it, but there are a lot of writers are working in it, and the sameness is an issue, and I'm not sure how rangy the area really is. Thank you for the good words about 'Closer'. Really proud and chuffed if it managed to help you in your work at all. Pynchon territory, ha ha, yeah, there is a threat there, but all is smooth so far. Have an excellent day. ** Steevee, I think 'Ender's Game' either just opened here or is about to because the metro is plastered with huge posters for it right now. That guy's Eminem comment sounds purely ridiculous. I'll be surprised if the movie causes any fuss about politics over here. ** Delilah Hannu, Hi, Dovey. Okay, I think I really do need to take a look inside SL after what you wrote. Goodness gracious, so interesting. But I need another time consuming online activity like I need the veritable hole in my head, so I'll start a timer before I go inside, and I will act invisible. I understand about the book's title change. I change my titles frequently when I'm writing a book. It's interesting how a book will outgrow its title and keep outgrowing replacement titles too. Oh, sure, you can have and use the abandoned place images as you like. I mean, I took them from other places myself. Love to you. ** Ultra VGA, Hi! Wow, nice to see you! How have you been? What's going on? ** Sypha, Hi, James. That's what I'd heard about 'Dracula', i.e. that it's a slog, and it has been a red light of a book ever since. No, I hadn't heard of that game. I just skimmed the Wiki thing, and it does sound very interesting. I'll read up on it and look for pix, etc. Thanks! ** Joseph, Joseph! Holy shit, man, it's really awesome to see you! It's been ages! This is great! I'm good, really good, and I'm glad we're all still existent and functioning, yeah. The lead up to Halloween was good 'cos I was in the States and hit up a bunch of spooky houses, but the day itself was spent on a 10 hour jet ride, and the night was spent trying to keep my eyelids as far apart as possible, which wasn't very far. So, the lying low is suiting you? If so, more power to it, although I'm glad you snuck out to say hey, and I certainly wouldn't mind if you end up adding this place to your hiding places. I've missed you too! Take care, enjoy everything, and come back as soon as you feel like it, please. ** Misanthrope, Thanks for thinking that I would understand that you were kidding, and I did! Dude, headaches, not good. Do something about that immediately. The Big Dawg, ha ha ha, awwwww. Oh, that guy who was terrified of me and threw trash at me? He moved out of the Recollets a couple of years ago. No trace. There was this guy a month or so ago who was kind of stalking me. He followed me all over Paris one day, it was really weird. Then I was out having my early morning cigarette in the Recollets courtyard one day, and he was standing in front of the gate taking photos of me. I yelled, 'What the fuck are you doing?', and he threw something over the gate at me that turned out to be a CD by this Portland 'indie' band called Imagine Dragons, and then he ran away. I listened to bits of the CD looking for clues or something, but I couldn't find anything. And I haven't noticed him around me since, so I don't know. That was really weird. ** Creative Massacre, Thanks, pal. Those abandoned buildings in your town sound so atmospheric. I hope you get to sneak into that abandoned hospital, but don't get Staph, obviously. That photo of the building in-between being what it used to be and rubble was very cool. And grim. And cool. Thanks! ** Rewritedept, Hi. I love opaque projectors. I miss them. No, the post yesterday wasn't related to anything but itself and to my fetish. God knows about American dates re: the new Gisele pieces. I would guess that the movie will have a much better chance at getting over there since it has no transportation costs. It's nice being home, sure. Talk soon indeed. ** Finis. Today you get another scrapbook page re: the novel I'm working on. As always with these posts, feel free to enjoy or ignore or ask questions or whatever you want. See you tomorrow.