Todo Tiene Su Como-Se-Llama

Blogging about Slogging

And the days move on and the names of the months change and the four seasons bury one another and it is spring again and yet again and the small streams that run over the rough sides of Gormenghast Mountain are big with rain while the days lengthen and summer sprawls across the countryside, sprawls in all the swathes of its green, with its gold and sticky head, with its slumber and the drone of doves and with its butterflies and its lizards and its sunflowers, over and over again, its doves, its butterflies, its lizards, its sunflowers, each one an echo-child while the fruit ripens and the grotesque boles of the ancient apple trees are dappled in the low rays of the sun and the air smells of such rotten sweetness as brings a hunger to the breast, and makes of the heart a sea-bed, and a tear, the fruit of salt and water, ripens, fed by a summer sorrow, ripens and falls . . . falls gradually along the cheekbones, wanders over the wastelands listlessly, the loveliest emblem of the heart's condition.

And the days move on and the names of the months change and the four seasons bury one another and the field-mice draw upon their granaries. The air is murky and the sun is like a raw wound in the grimy flesh of a beggar, and the rags of the clouds are clotted. The sky has been stabbed and has been left to die above the world. filthy, vast and bloody. And then the great winds come and the sky is blown naked, and a wild birdscreams across the glittering land. And the Countess stands at the window of her room with the white cats at her feet and stares at the frozen landscape spread below her, and a year later she is standing there again but the cats are abroad in the valleys and a raven sits upon her heavy shoulder.

And every day the myriad happenings. A loosened stone falls from a high tower. A fly drops lifeless from a broken pane. A sparrow twitters in a cave of ivy.

The days wear out the months and the months wear out the years, and a flux of moments, like an unquiet tide, eats at the black coast of futurity.

And Titus Groan is wading through his boyhood.

--Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast

And so life marches on, even though I haven't been talking about it here. I go about my daily routine . . . hang out with friends, watch movies, read, sleep, and (when no other options present themselves) get my homework done.

Everything from Fall Break or so is pretty much a blur. I went to the R. W. Norton Art Gallery in Shreveport last Tuesday, and that was really fun. I was motivated primarily by a need to see the page from a Gutenberg Bible they had on display there (Ps. 18-20) for extra credit in History of the English Language, but that turned out to be one of the least impressive things there.

By far my favorite thing there was a hallway of 16 fantasy-architecture sketches by Giovanni Battista Piranesi called "The Prisons." They were just about the first things we looked at, and Scholl, Randy, and I returned for a second look at the end while Anna and Rachel wandered the gardens. The drawings really looked the way I picture portions of Gormenghast Castle. Incredibly cool.

They had a great collection of antique guns that we enjoyed . . . some tapestries . . . lots of bronze sculpture (Too. Many. Horses.) . . . rare books . . . antique globes . . . The list goes on and on. We enjoyed ourselves.

Besides that one event, I'm drawing a complete blank on the last ten days. I know I've been doing things, but I have no clear idea as to what. My life feels like the above excerpt, and I'm just waiting for it to snap back into focus. I hope it doesn't take too long.

On a lighter note (tee hee) go take the Machiavelli Test. I scored a 79, and I'm guessing I'm low-end for this crew.

And, on a random note, remember: "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." (Lisa Grossman)

Posted by Jared at November 4, 2004 03:32 PM | TrackBack