[Image: cartoon from Bizarro, by Dan Piraro. Original (in color!) here.]
Sigh. After an unexpected and almost complete Internet blackout Monday through Wednesday, I couldn’t get to it from home at all this morning.
So… In lieu of a regular Friday post, then, I thought I might just share with you — anyone who’s reading this — the whiskey river selections I culled from this past week. And then I’ll turn the comments over to you, to share any quotations (from any source, but please provide it!) which these items put you in mind of. If you don’t feel comfortable copying’n’pasting, and/or don’t want to key something in, a link to the item will do nicely.
(If you offer up a YouTube link, I’ll come back to embed the video itself for you. Audio is trickier, but we can work something out.)
Got it?
Okay. Let’s try it, this once: a Friday whiskey river interactive group meditation.
From whiskey river:
All houses are haunted. All persons are haunted. Throngs of spirits follow us everywhere. We are never alone.
(Barney Sarecky)
…and:
I feel as if I am an ad
for the sale of a haunted house:
18 rooms
$37,000
I’m yours
ghosts and all.
(Richard Brautigan)
…and:
We all have our little solipsistic delusions, ghastly intuitions of utter singularity: that we are the only one in the house who ever fills the ice-cube tray, who unloads the clean dishwasher, who occasionally pees in the shower, whose eyelid twitches on first dates; that only we take casualness terribly seriously; that only we fashion supplication into courtesy; that only we hear the whiny pathos in a dog’s yawn, the timeless sigh in the opening of the hermetically-sealed jar, the splattered laugh in the frying egg, the minor-D lament in the vacuum’s scream; that only we feel the panic at sunset the rookie kindergartner feels at his mother’s retreat. That only we love the only-we. That only we need the only-we.
That we feel lonely in a crowd; stop not to dwell on what’s brought the crowd into being. That we are, always, faces in a crowd.
(David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest)
Here’s one from me to get the ball rolling. Not from whiskey river:
For the Chipmunk in My Yard
I think he knows I’m alive, having come down
The three steps of the back porch
And given me a good once over. All afternoon
He’s been moving back and forth,
Gathering odd bits of walnut shells and twigs,
While all about him the great fields tumble
To the blades of the thresher. He’s lucky
To be where he is, wild with all that happens.
He’s lucky he’s not one of the shadows
Living in the blond heart of the wheat.
This autumn when trees bolt, dark with the fires
Of starlight, he’ll curl among their roots,
Wanting nothing but the slow burn of matter
On which he fastens like a small, brown flame.
(Robert Gibb [source])
And now: your turn. Go.
Froog says
Looking around for a vaguely Halloween-themed observation for my blog’s ‘quote of the week’ the other day, I turned up this, from a collection of essays by Italo Calvino called The Literature Machine:
“The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.”.
I was also recently reminded of that ‘micro ghost story’ game we were playing a couple of years ago. My favourite effort there was:
John says
That ultra-short-story exercise was fun, wasn’t it? (Even though it was Twitter-based, for those still resisting that Siren’s whispered entreaties.) My other favorite of yours, as I said in a comment there, was:
You know you should really do this sort of thing more often!
(I sometimes fear you squander your imagination on real life, which is one reason — aside from their inherent virtues — I so enjoy your posts about one fantasy or another.)
Froog says
The Mobius strip reference prompted me to check out Wikipedia’s article on Strange loops, the most interesting part of which, I thought was the musical phenomenon of the Shephard tone. [Note: audio-player gizmo below added by JES, discovered per Froog’s link.]
[Below, click Play button to begin Descent Infinie. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 1:05 long.]
And thoughts of chipmunks and squirrels led me to the discovery of the Aarne-Thompson classification of folk tales.
John says
This comment is completely in the spirit of my whiskey river Fridays posts — which are, in approximately equal measure, “about” not just their nominal subject but also the unfettered human mind’s capacity for distraction and serendipity. Thank you!
Jayne says
Oh, such a great idea, this collective free association (though I won’t encourage it too much as I’d definitely miss the always unique and provocative trajectory of your Freudianesque (?) Fridays). But this, so near Halloween, begging for tricks and treats, well, I’m grabbing the largest bag I can find…
I happen to have seen the (avant-garde performance artist–whoa!) Laurie Anderson’s Delusion last Saturday (talk about Freud and haunting)–a dreamscape of delusional thought and story and music and film, and… and, it was all a bit too much for my ADHD prickly head, but I’m going to pull from that for this…
and hope the internet connection doesn’t cut out while doing so…
John says
The number of people I know who (I’d guess) would attend a Laurie Anderson performance is countable on the fingers of one hand. No surprise to find you among them! (For others of you who might be interested, I direct your attention to Jayne’s own recent ruminative-Friday post triggered by this show, with several other Anderson videos embedded.)
Now I say that, but must admit that I myself have never experienced her in a live performance — only recorded ones. That she can draw upon so many varied sources, expressing her responses via so many media, and do it all live boggles my mind.
The Querulous Squirrel says
Excellent cartoon. I would not enjoy a Mobius Steak at all. I believe they should be outlawed as Mobiuses are apparently an endangered species and even if they weren’t, they are a major source of obesity. You’d like us to provide some thought-provoking quote? Well, I’m starting to participate in Nanowrimo for the first time this week and when they asked for an excerpt from my not yet even begun Novella, I didn’t hesitate.
“Help!”
John says
Oh, Squirrel: maven of compact prose, as always. Nothing says horror like that one word!
Of course, you’re well on your way if you’re counting it towards a NaNoWriMo entry. You’ve only got another 99.998% of the commitment to go. :)
John says
…and:
(JES, excerpt from an unfinished story called “Gas Day”)
Jayne says
Oh my–see!–this!, this! is precisely why I immediately think DeLillo when I read your prose. Maybe it’s the diction, tone, mood… reminds me of White Noise, or his short, The Angel Esmeralda…. I can’t pin it, but I think you ought to finish Gas Day. (What is this? Natural disaster? Alien invasion? Spaceship earth imploding? I want to know more!)
John says
*blush*
Funnily enough, I almost added a DeLillo quote here instead. He’s got a story in the current issue of Granta (#117, “Horror”) — numerous passages from which would fit nicely. Then I got thinking about this “Gas Day” story, and wavered.
I don’t want to think too much about whether my writing sounds like his or not, or to what extent. If I let that thought in, I’ll seize up like an engine with sugar in the gas tank is popularly (but erroneously) believed to do.
Jayne says
Ha! It’s funny you say that because Anderson had been off my radar for some time. When a writer friend of mine called to ask if I’d join her for Anderson’s performance, she said the very same thing– that I was the only person in RI that she could think of who would want to see Anderson. (And she would have been my first call, too.) That said, the theatre was packed to capacity! And what, with RISD around the corner, we shouldn’t have been so surprised.
If she happens to frolic in your neck of the woods, I highly recommend her show. She’s captivating–her voice alone is enough to keep you glued to the seat.