COMPENDIUM:
Don’t Do This:
Page 95- Don’t open a
character’s predicament with the weather.
Techniques/Strategies:
Waiting For the Barbarians:
“They were interested
only in demonstrating to me what it meant to live in a body, as a body, a body
which can entertain notions of justice only as long as it is whole and well,
which very soon forgets them when its head is gripped and a pipe is pushed down
its gullet and pints of salt water are poured into till it coughs and wretches
and flails and voids itself.” – Movement
from philosophical/political to corporeal, makes me think of Larkin, “Days are
where we live…” tangible operating in the intangible.
“What has made it
impossible for us to live in time like fish in water, like birds in the air,
like children? It is the fault of the Empire! Empire has created the time of
history. Empire has located its existence not in the smooth recurrent
spinning time of the cycle of the
seasons but in the jagged time of rise and fall, of begging and end, of catastrophe.
Empire dooms itself to live in history and plot against history. One thought
alone preoccupies the submerged mine of Empire: how not to end, how not to die,
how to prolong its era.” – 154
Clear Light of Day:
Look at the chronological transition on page 44
Phrases/Fictional, Poetic, and Essayistic
Thinking:
Waiting For the Barbarians:
“And in a day or two
these savages seem to forget they ever had another home. Seduces utterly by the
free and plentiful food, above all by the bread, they relax, smile at everyone,
move about the barracks yard from one patch of shade to another, doze, and
wake, grow excited as mealtimes approach” 21, Waiting for the Barbarians--- The social contract, but they must
pay with physical pain and decimation of their cultures.
“Thomas Hobbes famously said that in a "state of nature" human life would be
"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". In the absence of
political order and law, everyone would have unlimited natural freedoms,
including the "right to all things" and thus the freedom to plunder,
rape, and murder; there would be an endless "war of all against all"
(bellum
omnium contra omnes). To avoid this, free men contract with each other to
establish political community i.e. civil society through a social contract in which they all gain security in return for
subjecting themselves to an absolute Sovereign, preferably (for Hobbes) a
monarch.”
But, what if the monarch
rapes, pillages, murders, tortures?
“The
older a man the more grotesque people find his couplings, like the spasms of a
dying animal.”
“Lodging
my dry old man’s member in that blood-hot sheath makes me think of acid in
milk, ashes in honey, chalk in bread.” -
Contrast of inedible to edible, the idea of contamination.
“…
as if I had spent nights copulating with a dummy of straw and leather.” – a
____of ____ and ____.
“Crossing
an unusually smooth patch the front horse suddenly plunges through the crust
and sinks chest-deep in foul green slime […] We struggle to haul them out, the
salt crust splintering under the hooves of the flailing horse, the hole
widening, a brackish stench everywhere.
“This
is the last time to look on her clearly face to face, to scrutinize the motions
of my heart, to try to understanding who she really is: hereafter,
“I
am now no more than a pile of blood, bone, and meat that is unhappy.” – concept
of human as object.
“That
smile, that flush of joy, leaves behind a disturbing residue.”
“Under
the mulberry tree where the earth is purple with the juice of fallen berries.”
“I
am swinging loose. The breeze lifts my smock and plays with my naked body. I am
relaxed, floating. In a woman’s clothes.” – Good God is this beautiful.
Gentle/sensual/free juxtaposed with violence/fear/death. Begs questions about
the obscured history of the woman who once wore the smock.
“But
then, I thought, someone else will be appointed to bear the shame of office,
and nothing will have changed. So I continues in my duties until one day events
overtook me.” Complacency/justification both perpetuate unjust systems. How are
we all complicit? What is my role in empire? How do I form my understanding of
what is just and unjust?
“After which the
barbarians will wipe their backsides on the town archives. To the last we will
have learned nothing. In all of us, deep down, there seems to be something
granite and unteachable. No one truly believes, despite the hysteria in the
streets, that the world of tranquil certainties we were born into is about to
be extinguished.” – 165 He creates a
fantasy of destruction/death impulse. Is that why we are fascinated by
apocalypse/dystopia? (It would divorce us of our responsibility of having
formed part of Empire/exploitation, etc…?
“I stare at his pale
high temples. Memories of his mother’s soft breast, of the tug in his hand of
the first kite he ever flew, as well as of those intimate cruelties for which I
abhor him, shelter in that beehive.” – the dimensionality/history in every
character, even the most cruel.
Clear Light of Day:
“There has been far
more roses in it when she was a child – luscious shaggy pink ones, small crisp
white ones tinged with green, silky
yellow ones that smelt of tea”
“While the morning
took another stride forward and stood with its feet planted on the tiled
floor.”
“Her mouth tingled
with longing to bite into that hard astringent flesh under the green rind.”
“A part of her was
sinking languidly down into the passive pleasure of having returned to the
familiar- like a pebble she had been picked up and hurled back into the pond,
and sunk down throw the layer of green scum, through the secret cool depths to
the soft rich mud at the bottom, sending up a line of bubbles of relief and
joy.” Instead of a quick metaphor/simile she develops whole paragraphs around
metaphors
“Flocks of parrots
came winging in, a lurid shrieking green, to settle on the sunflowers and rip
their black-seeded centres to bits, while mynahs hopped up and down oxhn the
lawn, quarrelling over insects.” – the parallel created by the two types of
birds and their behaviors.
“A scent of spider
lilies rose from the flowerpots massed on the veranda steps as soon as they
were watered, like ladies newly bathed, powdered and scented for the evening.”
– Engages the sensory experience of smell while also giving two images 1)plants
2) women (while also allowing for a dual scene of plants vs. women bathing
“It seemed to have a
pigeon-hole all to itself as if it were a holy relic like fingernails or a
cooked yellow tooth.”
“waving his glass od
soda water so that it spilt and frothed and sizzled down his arm,” – stacking
verbs: spilt, frothed, sizzled combined with the motion of sliding down his
arm.
“black lemon pickle”
three different colors, associations, flavors
“the cigarette catch
fire with a little throb”- just so accurate – the refrigerate shut with a
little murmur
“They him only as the
master of the entrance and exit.” – such economy of language
“Instead they turned
instinctively to Aunt Mira who smiled with grotesque unnaturalness into their
troubled faces and made them laugh by dropping things, forgetting others and
stumbling about the house like a sad comedian” –
“For a while she would
sit hunched on the cane chair, inspecting with narrowed eyes her cheesy,
blue-nailed hands through which thick veins twisted like green worms, then
begin to shivera and to mutter to herself…”
“When Tara did appear
in the pool of green, insect-fretted
light at the gate, she was not alone. Bim had known, in those bones that
jarred every time Baba threw hiss pebbles across the tiles, that she would have
someone with her when she came. Here he was.” -63 First sentence is such a
ghostly image.
“Miras’s mouth
twitched and a nerve jumped in her cheek, making her left eye flicker.”
“Here it was. Here, in
this tall, slim coolness just by her hand, at the tips of her fingers. If she
got her fingers around it, its slender pale glassiness, and then drew it
closer, close to her mouth, she could close her lips about it and suck, suck
little, little sips, with little, little juicy sounds, and it would be so
sweet, so sweet again, just as when they were little babies, little babies for
her to feed, herself a little a baby suck, sucking at the little trickle of
juice that came hurrying in, sliding in…”
Parallel, woman and child, repetition
of little and suck.
Highlighted portion
from bottom of 89 to mid 90
“Oh,” sighed Tara,” is
that why she had those little blue marks in her arm? And she laid her head
against her aunt’s shoulder, weal with relief and gratitude at having been gave
an explanation that would cover up the livid, throbbing scene in her mind as a
scab covers a cut.” Using metaphor/imagery to simplify and resolve emotional
experience. `
“said Tara, suddenly
rebellious, impatient to go back down the stairs, get away from Bim and join
the women who were now streaming out of the house, laughing calling to each
other, flocking to this long tables on which platters of sweetmeats, pink and
yellow and topped with silver, had been placed between the silver vases with
the zinnias and gomphrenias, while a waiter in a white coat with something
embroidered in red across the picket, frenziedly uncapped bottles o lemonade
and stuck straws into them and handed them out with automatic efficiency.” Movement, color, encapsulation of an entire
scene.
“the moon that hung
over the garden like some great priceless pearl, flawed and blemished with grey
shadowy ridges as only a very great beauty can risk being.”
“It had burnt
everything into a landscape of black and white, of coal and ash.”
HIGHLIGHTED portion on
165: the Author’s own apologies for narrative flaws.
The sun— “a serene
glass bubble filled with a pale liguid that did not quiver or ripple but was
absolutely calm, weighting it down and forcing it to fall”
“His paws made saucers
of colour on the pale dew drawn across the grass like a gauzy sheen.” – such
attention to detail and such vigilance in perfect articulation of what seems,
at first, almost ineffable.
Words to use:
Suffuse, scrim,
scarecrow, putative, allegory, parable
Ostler: groom,
stableboy, stableman
Brackish: briny,
salty, distasteful
Rapine: to plunder,
violent seizure of another’s property
To scud: to move
quickly, hurriedly. Or, to cleanse: remove hairs.
To bolt(eating): to swallow hurriedly
Irruption: breaking or
bursting in; a sudden increase in an animal’s population.
Porphyry: a very hard rock, anciently quarried in Egypt, having a dark,purplish-red groundmass containing small crystals of feldspar.
Albuminous: containing
the qualities of “albumen” – the white of an egg, the nutritive matter around
the embryo in a seed.
Marmoreal: relating
to, or resembling marble
Dialog Language:
Waiting For the Barbarians:
“You think you know
what is just and what is not. I understand. We all think we know.” – But, of
course, our ideas of justice are constructed from context, the decadent
societies in which we live.
Clear Light of Day:
“‘Much worse than any of them,’ he repeated with desperate pride.”
Desperate pride--- instead of using an adverb using adj + noun “she said with
sad consternation, effervescent disapproval, prickly joy…….”
Notes:
Waiting For The Barbarians:
*Becket once told an
inquiring actor that “Waiting For Godot” was about “symbiosis.” Made me think
about the way in which existential symbiosis operated in this text. The
colonizers define themselves in terms of the “other” of the barbarians.
*Definition rendered
in terms of antonym (colonizers vs. barbarians) (narrator vs. Joll --- the
narrator NEEDS Joll to seem relatively moral.
* “And now what’s going to happen to us without
barbarians? They were, those people, a kind of solution.” – Cavafy (author of
the poem “waiting for the barbarians.”
*Duality of the two
women: pleasure vs. horror, plaything vs. reality
*colonialism’s
relationship to torture and sexuality(both are means of “getting inside” of
someone else, forcing them to reveal or give their contents to you.” The impassable frontier of others’
internality.
* Reinterpretation of 1984
*The half-blindness of
sunglasses, her half-blindness(inability to see, the relationship of this to
the gaze)
* “In his quest for truth, he is tireless.” –
How is Joll’s truth distinct from the narrator’s?
* “I help her off with the coat, seta her on
the stool, pour water into the basin, and begin to wash her feet.” – 32 --- She is like Mary Magdalene, he is like
Jesus. How does Christianity figure into this narrative, into colonization?
*The Heart of Darkness --- A journey into the rotten core. This text
is the “skin” of darkness, the superficial and impenetrable--- page 55
* Bottom of page 63 –
He recognizes how superficial his understanding of her is(this is confirmed
later when the kitchen maid mentions that the barbarian woman cried over the
narrator—so different than how he perceived of her emotion) he has all of the
dreams where her face is closed- no orifices to invade or gouge out. And his
gaze is always upon her, trying to summon a memory of what she looked like
before she was tortured. She is then the perfect surface to project on – flat,
formless. On 63 he makes wild speculations about her “barbarian upbringing”
*71: Why would you colonize this wretched, arid
place?
*135: the next
generation of lens (contact) invisible distant/manipulation—seeing more
clearly, or less?
*The end of the text:
What is the relationship of sexuality and empire? To perpetuate because it is
only an impulse – to flee death? Penetration: to enter, to possess, to unite to
disparate bodies – it is not about pleasure for the narrator(he is rarely
successful or satisfied, but the act of swimming within another – an act which
we all fail at.
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