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they had the ring of something true

0 comments Published 9.28.2008 by matt o.

‘all our lives want a suitable background.’

-- henry david thoreau, a week on the concord and merrimack rivers

here come the warm jets

0 comments Published 9.22.2008 by matt o.

'you remind me of a man who is surprised that one spark could blow up a gunpowder magazine.'

-- fyodor dostoyevsky, the devils

no structured narrative, no neat story-line to explain

0 comments Published 9.21.2008 by matt o.

the shapes we make

0 comments Published 9.19.2008 by matt o.

when our geology professor asked if refraction in water was a protection device installed by the 'wishing well fairy' to prevent theft, hillary and i said yes, because we have a sense of wonder.

how it feels to be something on

0 comments Published 9.16.2008 by matt o.

'i didn't suspect the pettiness of my dream. i believed that i had conceived the vastest dream of my generation: i wanted to be a magician. that was my idea of glory. here is a plea based on my whole experience: do not be a magician, be magic.'

-- leonard cohen, beautiful losers

an observation

0 comments Published by matt o.

today's society is where satire goes to die.

stretch out and wait

0 comments Published by matt o.

monday was hot and windy, what we'll all hope was the last breath of summer. i sat under a tree with pink lemonade reading dostoyevsky. tuesday, fall-like; you could almost see the leaves just almost beginning to change. walking to school today the thought i tell myself i'll stop having every year popped up-- what spring will be like. it's going to be a long winter if i'm already thinking about the leaves coming back when they haven't even left yet.

that's how every winter is, though, and in the changing of the seasons i'll find yet another thing i can't unmoor myself from. i'll drive through salem and find the familiarity comforting while somewhere in the back of my mind a certain rage rages on that i'm not somewhere else. that conflict isn't going away anytime soon.

here's premature winter for you: this afternoon in a nearly empty parking lot with the lightly attended roar of fall sports in the background. it's easier in the colder months to imagine someone at a distance thinking about you just as you're thinking of them. why is that? there's more time to think because there's less to do, there's more desire to be close because it's colder, there's more need for others because it's lonely. so in a moment like that, when there's nothing to do but cross pavement and there's almost a slight chill in the air, a light trance can take hold and almost convince you just as you were convinced last december that any day now they'll all walk right back into your life, wondering what on earth stopped them from doing it sooner.

good news for people who love bad news

0 comments Published 9.12.2008 by matt o.

'i'm not against anyone fastening their life to an event of some significance and that way making themselves significant. god knows, we need what footholds we can find on the glass mountain of our existence. trouble is, you climb and climb, and around middle age, you discover you have spent all the time in the same spot. you thought you were going to be somebody until you slip down into the nobody that you are. i'm telling you because i know.'

-- jeanette winterson, 'atlantic crossing'

living with the devil

0 comments Published 9.07.2008 by matt o.

'"'look, alyoshka" — smoke got into the baptist's eyes as shukhov pushed his outstretched hand aside — "i'm not against god, see. i'm quite ready to believe in god. but i just don't believe in heaven and hell. why do you think everybody deserves either heaven or hell? what sort of idiots do you take us for? that's what i don't like."'

-- aleksandr solzhenitsyn, one day in the life of ivan denisovich

god save the village green

0 comments Published 9.01.2008 by matt o.

another fake labour day spells september, spells the end of summer already, a few long weeks from the equinox.  we are left grasping at the first threads of 'what now?', hoping something tangible will reveal itself so that we can get a look before we have to feel, but we forget once again that the future does not come on in pieces: it arrives whole with arresting events, developments, decisions.

i sit outside and feel a cool evening breeze that in temperature does not prefigure the autumn air to come but, to me, internally, can mean nothing but.  i watched and felt the temperature rise these past few days that should have been cooling-- at one point last week the cool-down had felt so permanent that i even put together my annual fall mix cd lest i be caught on my lengthened daily commute without a fresh one, but such certainties are those of the inexperienced and willfully obtuse.

try this, though: fall has been interesting before and will be interesting again, 'interesting' here being meant with the same connotation as the old curse about living in interesting times. that is the certainty of someone who knows.

ask one of these trees.  they've seen me sit in this spot before, though perhaps not this early when they were this green, but to the quick i know they can read my thoughts and must spend night sighing knowingly to each other about me and everyone else-- 'why do they live and move in such circles,' they must think.  'they don't have to.'

books i've read: summer 2008

0 comments Published by matt o.

an ongoing series:
summer 2005 , 05-06 academic year, summer 2006, 06-07 academic year, summer 2007, 07-08 academic year.

Germinal - Émile Zola
Murphy – Samuel Beckett
Hiroshima – John Hersey [re-read]
Guide to Kulchur – Ezra Pound
Watt – Samuel Beckett
Name All the Animals – Alison Smith
The Conquest of Gaul (Penguin Classics) – Julius Caesar
After Henry – Joan Didion
Rebels: The Irish Rising of 1916 – Peter de Rosa
Mercier and Camier – Samuel Beckett
The Solace of Leaving Early – Haven Kimmel [re-read]
Something Rising (Light and Swift) – Haven Kimmel [re-read]
The Used World – Haven Kimmel
Kitchen – Banana Yoshimoto
Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West – Cormac McCarthy [re-read]
A History of Christian Thought – Paul Tillich
Witchcraft and Quakerism: A Study In Social History – Amelia Mott Gummere
Rabbit Is Rich – John Updike
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov [re-read]
Ann the Word – Richard Francis [re-read]
Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
The Shaker Experience in America – Stephen J. Stein
L’Assommoir - Émile Zola
Adam, Eve, and the Serpent – Elaine Pagels [re-read]
Katherine – Anchee Min
The Stranger – Albert Camus
The Atlas – William T. Vollmann
Life and Death: Unapologetic Writings of the Continuing War Against Women – Andrea Dworkin
The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East – Robert Fisk
The Gathering – Anne Enright
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Trial – Franz Kafka [re-read]
Farewells to Plasma: Stories – Natasza Goerke

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