I haven’t had the pleasure of reading Blood Meridian yet, but every single Blood Meridian quote I’ve mined from the internet is extraordinary. To wit: They rode on and the sun in the east flushed pale streaks of light and then a deeper run of color like blood seeping up in sudden reaches flaring planewise…
Category: Authors
“…remember to die”
Simon Sellars on pandemic paranoia, self-eradication, and a taxonomy of writers: Propped inside the plague’s dimensions, Twitter is a sinkhole. Nothing escapes. Under isolation pressure, the mirror is polished and archetypes revealed. Older writers with ailing, vulnerable bodies set fire to their life’s work in the service of staring at death. Younger writers lament their…
“Lying to yourself about who you are is no less evil than lying to a friend about something important.”
An intellectual does not become unproductive because of some mysterious ailment called “writer’s block.” An unproductive intellectual is an intellectual lost in Evil. Many people think “writer’s block” is a real phenomenon and Evil is only a mystical superstition. In fact, “writer’s block” is the superstition, and Evil the real phenomenon. To escape the sin…
“You were my best friend outside of Paris in 1918. You were wounded in the Ardennes and you died in my arms there. I’m glad you’re back in the world. You have a different face, a different name, but the soul shining out of your face is the same as my friend. Welcome back.”
The best ending to any writer’s interview ever? Paris Review asks Ray Bradbury about the origins of a character named Mr Electrico. His answer starts in our world, opens a trapdoor in the fabric of reality itself, and surges into an elemental realm of cosmic myth. Genuine magic pic.twitter.com/ZKXJan44qQ — Colin Walsh (@Clnwlsh) April 15,…
“A luxury cruiseliner quarantined in San Francisco bay, its well-heeled passengers confined to their cabins for weeks on end. Holidaymakers on lockdown at a quarantined hotel in Tenerife after an Italian doctor comes down with coronavirus. A world of isolated individuals rarely leaving their homes, keeping a wary distance from one another in public, communicating with their friends and loved ones via exclusively technological means. These situations are so Ballardian as to be in the realm of copyright infringement.”
“Twenty-first century life was already Ballardian. The rapid transition, under the new viral order, into further extremes of technological alienation has only made it more so.” https://t.co/IDnD49NXWA — тцпдяапацт (@tundranaut) April 1, 2020 SOURCE: Mark O’Connell, New Statesman
Numinosum
New Paul Levy post: Instead of cursing our brokenness (or our abusers), we can recognize it as a numinous event, an archetypal creative and potentially redemptive moment that seeks to make us participants in a divine, eternal happening. The Biblical Jacob suffering for the rest of his life from a wounded hip as a…
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the week in cityscapes pic.twitter.com/lBzhhOmYC1 — тцпдяапацт (@tundranaut) February 6, 2020 Position Desired: Cosmic Surf Lord — тцпдяапацт (@tundranaut) November 18, 2019 Diamanda Galás: ”Sólo puedo vivir si me enfrento cada día a la muerte” — тцпдяапацт (@tundranaut) January 14, 2020 chaos — тцпдяапацт (@tundranaut) January 29, 2020 Drag racing, sirens, power tools — тцпдяапацт…
This Freak Establishment
Paul Levy on Philip K. Dick: In a very real sense, PKD did find the solution to humanity’s existential dilemma. He writes, “compassion’s highest power is the only power capable of solving the maze.”[89] As PKD points out, “The true measure of a man is not his intelligence or how high he rises in this…
“…an ambiance of rampant pathology.”
An “ambiance of rampant pathology” is a great turn of phrase and also kind of Ballardianhttps://t.co/CWtjjGiTB2 — ᵗ ᵘ ⁿ ᵈ ʳ ᵃ ⁿ ᵃ ᵘ ᵗ (@tundranaut) November 9, 2019
Incandescent Totems
“We are all sleeping avatars of God, with amnesia.” — Philip K. Dick pic.twitter.com/IpNgw8dfbc — MC (@tundrapalms) August 18, 2019
Baudrillard: “America”
Taking inventory of my summer reading. Here are some favorite passages from Jean Baudrillard‘s “America.” (Emphases mine.) Driving This sort of travel creates its own peculiar type of even and innervation, so it also has its own special form of fatigue. Like a fibrillation of muscles, striated by the excess of heat and speed, by…
California
G Faye, on California: ‘…an uninhabited, disenchanted nature, deserted by the gods: a sinister land beneath a sun that is too bright.’ pic.twitter.com/KKGZltEex2 — ᵗ ᵘ ⁿ ᵈ ʳ ᵃ ⁿ ᵃ ᵘ ᵗ (@tundranaut) July 27, 2019