Sniff

[poliphilo]

I dreamed I was teaching Christianity to a group of Muslim converts. I hadn't done any preparation and the class was progressing at a snail's pace as I desperately improvised the lesson. The Bible wasn't helping. I started to expound the Feeding of the Five Thousand only to find that the story no longer ended as I remembered.

I woke up once or twice- then dropped back into the same dream. The students were being very patient and pleasant and I  felt really bad about how dreadfully I was letting them down.

I've got a snuffly nose this morning. Winter has been going on so long I'd forgotten I suffer from hay fever. I guess I need to go buy a nasal spray.

I read a chapter of Nightwood by Djuna Barnes last night. I don't know quite what to make of it. At first you think you're in some sort of realist novel- albeit one written in gloriously baroque prose- and then you notice that the characters are an unlikely mix of aristos and circus performers and then this Irish doctor comes on board and starts delivering  himself of huge paragraphs of non-sequitous whimsicality. It's the sort of novel Fellini might have written if his career had taken that turn. T.S. Eliot liked it a lot and I'm - well, I'm intrigued.  

Comments

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

I met her at a party in New York once - she talked like that too - as did many of the people she hung around with.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Good grief. So those speeches represent a kind of documentary realism. That's extraordinary.

I can't imagine talking that way. I slur. I "um" and I "er". I let sentences run into the sand. To speak in huge, flawless paragraphs seems positively superhuman

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

She was quite old then. But the art crowd - did speak (a bit) like that. There was always someone who believed that what they were saying was important enough for others to stop and listen to. The egotism of the intelligentsia is hard to comprehend unless you have experienced it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm getting the feeling I might not have liked her all that much in person.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

But "like" and "am entertained by" can be mutually exclusive!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. I don't suppose there are many artists I admire whose company I would have enjoyed.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

This was an important realization for me.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yeats says something about how the artist must choose between "perfection of the life or of the work"- the implication being that the conscientious artist has licence to be a bit of a swine.

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

I didn't - especially. But then she prefered the company of men (or very pretty boys)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Aah....

And I thought she was a lesbian. But then I suppose a lot of lesbians actually prefer male company.

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

as long as its non-threatening

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

And you're accepted as one of the lads?

[upasaka.livejournal.com]

I think Nightwood is brilliant -- maybe one of the best novels of the 20th century. But I like weird stuff in general...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I like weird stuff too. The fact that it reminds me of Fellini is all to the good.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Your dream is wonderful--what a problem! I can just see the patient, smiling students waiting for you to explain everything...

I thought about you the other day, because there's a new biography about Einstein out, and his thoughts about religion are fascinating. I wish I could remember the exact quote, but he said that behind all the science is something "ephemeral and mysterious" that is [numinous] to him. He also said that the most beautiful thing is the love of the mysterious.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Science doesn't have to be crassly materialistic, does it? In fact modern physics seems to point in entirely the other direction.