by nabokov is one of my new favorite short stories, and it reminds me of what i read as his high I(mpressions)P(er)H(our) (though the Institute for Preparations of the Hereafter is what he is referring to with that acronym…so maybe…as they say with that phrase i hate…same difference) in Pale Fire. this is the setting he seems most generally tuned to.
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intersection
There is a girl standing on the corner of the intersection, waiting to cross the street. She has the face of a child but her hair is all gray. Her body is small and her clothes sort of hang off her. Her sodden shoes are letting the rainwater in.
The cars are moving constantly, but the stream is just endless. There is no way a careful girl like her could cross. She sits down finally in exhaustion. The patch of grass underneath her feels cool and pliable. She senses a spider dance up her bare leg. She looks at her crumbling shoes so long that they start to change. They slither a circle and swallow themselves and make themselves into rings. She imagines the circles so hard that the rings glint and spin and become solid wheels. She stands up unsteady but the wheels propel her promptly through the intersection. She’s been standing still for so long that the movement itself feels good.
The cars slam their brakes in confusion, as they are only their own drivers. They signal unsure, but feel like the light hadn’t changed.
The girl’s long hair circulates into the most emerald of greens, and the sunlight glints off it like seawater and trees. Her clothes slip off and she spirals through the streets, naked and like a goddess at peace.
only dreams
things brushed past, and from the shadows on the wall they seemed to be horses with spindly legs and waving manes. and there were shadows of huntsmen, ladies and gentlemen, on horseback. ‘those are only dreams,’ said the crow. ‘they come to take the thoughts of their royal masters off to the chase.’ the dreams on horseback pranced into the room again.
from hans christian andersen’s the snow queen
the bloody chamber
the earl king:
perfect transparency must be impenetrable p.84
his eyes are quite green, as if from too much looking at the wood. there are some eyes can eat you.
perfect transparency must be impenetrable p.84
his eyes are quite green, as if from too much looking at the wood. there are some eyes can eat you.
the lady of the house of love:
can a bird sing only the song it knows, or can it learn a new song? p. 103
she herself is a haunted house. she does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening. (see red book notes)
she turns her head away from the blue beams of his eyes; she knows no other consummation than the only one she can offer him. she has not eaten for three days.
the bridegroom bleeds on my inverted marriage bed. how can she bear the pain of becoming human?
i had the coolest copy of carter’s book ever n i hope my friend i gave it to read any of it at all.
the geometry of reality
loo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. p. 9
dim eyes, bright lips p. 20
a very narrow interval between two tiger heartbeats p. 111
as happens with me at periods of electrical disturbance and crepitating lightnings, i had hallucinations. p. 217
nobody attempted to get in between our humble blue car and its imperious red shadow-as if there were some spell cast on that interspace, a zone of evil mirth and magic, a zone whose very precision and stability had a glass-like virtue that was almost artistic. (seemed to move because an invisible rope of silent silk connected it) {2 cars} p. 219
her tennis was the highest point to which i can imagine a young creature bringing the art of make-believe, although i daresay, for her it was the very geometry of basic reality. p. 231
there was nothing wrong or deceitful in the spirit of her game-unless one considered her cheerful indifference toward its outcome as the feint of a nymphet. p. 232
i am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. and this is the only immortality that you and i may share, my lolita. p. 309
some ole nabokov lyrics i love
Zebra
in VALIS, a character believes that Zebra, his name for the entity that manifests itself to him in 1974, “was in fact the laminated totality of all my selves along the linear time-axis; Zebra, or VALIS (Vast Active Living Intelligence System), was the supra-temporal expression of a given human being and not a god…not unless the supra-temporal expression of a given human being is what we actually mean by the term ‘god,’ is what we worship, without realizing it, when we worship ‘god.'” p. 213
also, i like #34 in his imaginary appendix, which states, ‘the ancient Greek thinkers understood the nature of this panpsychism, but then could not read what it was saying. we lost the ability to read the language of the mind at some primordial time; legends of this fall have come down to us in a carefully-edited form. by ‘edited’ i mean falsified. we suffer the mind’s bereavement and experience it inaccurately as guilt. p. 234
midnight run n sun
very cool, very large paintings from Randall Yarbrough, t’s friend.
dead to me
Hate is a dead thing. Who of you would be a tomb? -Kahlil Gibran
bat bait
i like this chapbook. n i love the line ‘you call up flashcards in your dream metropolis.’
l noelle mclaughlin 