Updates to recent posts

[porphyry]

1. The other day A. called out from the back-seat of the car, "I wish they would stop all those weird noises!" "There is nothing weird about Brahms," I told him, imagining he meant the stereo, but he said nothing to that and a moment later came, "And I wish they would stop all those weird voices talking to me all the time!"

"When do you these voices talk to you?" I asked, somewhat alarmed.

"In the morning."

"You mean when you are waking up? You must mean dreams."

"No, I'm not asleep. Its at night and in the morning when I am lying in bed."

"Well, it is a kind of dream. You think you're awake, but you're not. You're between dreaming and waking." I could not resist telling him these are hypnogogic states, but even to him I am sure that made no impression.


2. Here is A.'s latest toy:



(don't ask me why he's not nude)

Comments

[benicek.livejournal.com]

I'm unsure whether you are training A to be a scholar or a devout Greek pagan. Maybe both.

[(Anonymous)]

When I was a little boy, I sometimes heard a voice calling my name: "Martin!" I was sure it was God, but I had no idea, what he wanted from me. But I told my parents. Erm, and that was shortly after I heard about Samuel being called by God, cf. 1 Samuel 3,1-21. What an annoying hypocrite, I mean, what a nice dreamy kind of a child I must have been... :-)

Emma Kirkby, yay! I'm currently listening to her Monteverdi Madrigali.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

It's a thunderbolt. Poseiden and other water-type gods carry tridents (I think).

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Oh, definitely both despite my benificient Catholic influence, ha ha.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Maybe God's calling Andrew as well to counteract Malkhos's pagan influence. Either that, or the child needs a psychiatric evaluation for schizophrenia. :)

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I've only had two auditions:

1. When I was about 6 years old, owing to illness I stayed in from recess, all alone in the classroom. I knew where the class supply of candy was kept and lightly raided it. I heard my name called out in reproach as clearly as I have ever heard anything. I even searched for anyone who could have said it. But even at that tender age I soon came to the conclusion it had been a hallucination rather than divine revelation.

2. When I had my gall bladder removed I suffered congesive failure and spent two weeks on a ventilator. A day or say after the surgery, when I had tremendously high levels of morphine in me, I distinctly saw and heard two angels enter and isnpect my body and discuss my condition, though without reaching any conclusion about my prognosis. If you are curious about what they looked like they were geometrical point sources floating about, if you can imagine what that would look like. Probably it was the poppies.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I believe its meant to be a cloud.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Is there someone who doesn't like her?

[benicek.livejournal.com]

Maybe you could buy him a Jesus figurine too and he could make it fight Zeus.

[himmapaan.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine who...

[himmapaan.livejournal.com]

Hehehe...

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

You mean like this?

(http://picasaweb.google.com/Anebo10/PhotosMay2008/photo#5202319323771673538)

I hate to think what will happen when one of them turns the other cheek and the other casts the thunderbolt.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I have a confession.

Other than seeing below (I'd put my money on Jesus), and at the risk of sounding like some kind of nut, I had to laugh when you said "maybe you could buy a Jesus figurine"--now, along the top of the bookcase, I have no less than thirty figurines of saints. I'd like to get more sometime but find it difficult to get to the Catholic Supply store; I go through phases of saint collecting. And just for the record, Malkhos has purchased a few himself for me as stocking stuffers though I'm unsure of his motives, heathen that he is. I hope you don't unfriend me over this. :) It's my own kitsch version of the Vatican (you know, they have statues of saints all around). I have some really cool ones: St. George slaying a dragon; St. Michael standing on Satan's head; St. Lucy with her eyeballs in a bowl; St. Joan of Arc in full armor. Want to see some pictures of 'em?

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Picture above should have been me; sorry!

[(Anonymous)]

I'd love to see St. Lucia. You know she's the patron saint of poets with bad eye-sight, like Dante (cf. Inferno II, where it's St. Lucia who - nudged by St. Mary - turns Beatrice's attention to Dante's misery; Beatrice doesn't intervene herself either but sends Virgil, what a long chain) and James Joyce (who named his daughter Lucia). (martin here)

[(Anonymous)]

(Still me.) Impaired eye-sight is an important issue in Joyce's life and work. The first page of "A Portrait of the Artist as a young Man" has Stephen's father looking at the boy "through a glass", and on the next page we read:

"His mother said:
- O, Stephen will apologise.
Dante said:
- O, if not, the eagles will come and pull out his eyes."

(Later little Stephen gets in trouble because he breaks his glasses. "Any boy want flogging? Broke his glasses? Lazy idle little schemer. See it in your eye.")

That's just a few examples from that one book. But Joyce was quite obsessed with that topic all through his work.

[(Anonymous)]

(And he goes on and on about it...)

Of course "through a glass" (apart from meaning "monocle") is also a quote from the good book: "For now we see through a glass, darkly" (1 Corinthians 13:12), which refers to mirrors and not lenses.

[(Anonymous)]

And also alluded to in E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Sandmann" (another text obsessed with eyes):

"Vielleicht wirst Du, o mein Leser! dann glauben, dass nichts wunderlicher und toller sei, als das wirkliche Leben und dass dieses der Dichter doch nur, wie in eines matt geschliffnen Spiegels dunklem Widerschein, auffassen könne."

(Possibly, you, my dear reader!, will come to believe that real life is more singular and more fantastic than anything else and that all a poet can really do is present it as in a glass, darkly.)

[benicek.livejournal.com]

Oh go on. I kind of like Catholic kitsch. It's so removed from my own culture that it has the allure of something exotic, like a Hindu temple.

[benicek.livejournal.com]

What vivid hallucinations! You descriptions make my hair stand on end.

I've seen pain killers do some strange things to patients. I remember one bloke had a birthday and his family brought him a helium balloon and tied it to the end of the bed for him, which he liked. Then we gave him some pain killers (I forget which) and ten minutes later he thought the balloon was his daughter and was trying to introduce me to her.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Oh, good. They are hilarious. I'll work on in as soon as I finish grading all these blasted papers. Did you notice the dust on Jesus' head above there? I mean, what the hell kind of world is it when Jesus can't even get his head dusted off now and again?

[benicek.livejournal.com]

What kind of world? Clearly a godless one. Haha.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I have been meaning to reply to this for days, but it was near the end of the term and I had papers to grade.

I once took a graduate seminar just on James Joyce, and never having had to read so much Joyce altogether, and I was finally able to look at his work more as a whole. I did notice that motif come up--the obsession with sight and vision, etc.

Although I must admit, reading Finnegan's Wake was one assignment I did not get through. It could take me a whole lifetime to get through that.

[(Anonymous)]

Wow, is that uncool that I'm replying so quickly. Anyway, I happened to find your reply today and next week I'm off-line for five days, so.

I can never get enough of a book that really interests me. (Like favourite music, like favourite paintings.) So I guess Joyce, Horace and a few others will eventually have taken my whole lifetime. I'm not complaining.

Joyce calls Finnegans Wake "the hardest crux ever" (FW 623). It's without the apostrophe, by the way. Wow, you really didn't get very deep into it, hahaha! (Just kidding.) I wouldn't want to answer any questions on that book in general, I couldn't draw a map so to speak, but I could go on forever about things I found in the underwood. Frightfully fertile ground, that, and a very straining read.