A Reading Entry in Elephant Architecture
Revised: 04/26/2024 10:23 p.m.
- April 26, 2024, midnight
- |
- Public
I have my Final Exam in a week and my two-week vacation begins around the same time. While there are 1,001 books on my list to read, there are a few hundred I wish to reread as well. Yesterday, I really found that spot I’ve been looking for at being able to get in the zone and find my Zen while I began rereading Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. It triggered a sublime state of longing and nostalgia for the prose of old. And I mean older than Capote. My English advisor and mentor taught Modernism. I do not believe the world will ever see that literary high-water mark again. It was a Literary Renaissance unrecognized by the masses. It is Icarus’ legs drowning in a sea unnoticed. Even if I could strive to write like a Modernist or those who surround, it is almost a foreign language of prose; no one could read it save a select few experts, thus I would starve to death from the sales. The time period matters. Life was slower back then and prose were some of the main attractions. There was more time at home by candle light with nothing to do save study, read, think and write. It is a language built for a slower time.
If I were to describe the prose of the early 20th c. to the average citizen of today, I would compare the writing to software coding. And, save a few dorks and nerds like myself, it is an obsolete coding that takes decades to learn and decode. It is a cognitive machine of treasure maps where the X leads us to Enlightenment. One can trace a map of Enlightenment across the bounds of countries and oceans. It is a network. It is a cognitive machine of hidden zones that need be decoded. I long for a time, at least a month transcendent of the common man’s cognitive network wherefore the treasure map is useless. An author must be the most frustrating entrepreneur for miners of gold rushes; for our treasure is only valuable when placed in a select few hands, or “I can’t read it and I can’t eat it” says the illiterate miner. A gold rush wherefore the gold is unattainable without years of practice and study. And indecipherable maps leading to Trees Of Life where upon the eyes of the common miner, even upon physically finding, - yea The Tree would not even recognize. It is a golden goblet of the finest wine that turns to sand in the hands of those who cheated throughout life in search of a City of Gold. Hark! The City of Gold is nigh; and like the moving island upon the shell of the great ancient turtle, -submerges and moves and only those who are invited may experience the bounty.
Similar to Perry and Dick, the masses believe that riches lay in the treasure trove of The Clutter family and when they arrive to find a mere $15 they brutally murder a family for no reward.
Alas,
I digress.
I may take this year to reread my old favourites
Amongst a garden of forking paths,
flowers and dew laden stones.
Pillars of marbles over which runs
waterfall trickles. - Brooks
where lotuses float:
red for defeat and white for victory.
Honeysuckles and hacky-sacks. Pitter
pat, pat,
pat.
Last updated April 26, 2024
TL ⋅ April 27, 2024
I'd buy a copy.
I really struggle to sit down and read. Even listening to my audiobooks is a challenge. I don't know how to still my mind.
Zampano TL ⋅ April 27, 2024 (edited April 27, 2024)
Edited
It takes a lot of practice and dedication. I mean, it's even a fight for me and I've read for over 15 years. It gets harder because one sort of needs to unplug from things for a while in a world where staying constantly active participants is the pull to be "normal". Selfies, videos of what you are doing today, journaling on prosebox (lol) where I used to unplug from everyone and everything and do only what I wanted to for months. That entailed months of hitting the yoga mat at home, kayaking down a creek around my old home, playing my guitar on my front porch, and then down at an abandoned bridge drinking beer and playing, reading and journaling at night, and no one knew what I was doing. I didn't take a smartphone with me and just lived off a grid.
And people just don't like that these days. They want to know what you are doing all the time. Which takes the introspective nature, and spontaneity out of things; adds anxiety, FOMO, likes, hopes for approval of what you are doing. You are forced into existential feelings with the masses. You are constantly on a stage and are never allowed to be backstage, or in the attic (like The Phantom of The Opera), or basement or all the winding staircases and passageways or just sitting on a roof somewhere like a gargoyle. These were all normal pastimes in a slower, less connected time. More time to think deeper thoughts.
TL Zampano ⋅ April 28, 2024
You made all of that sound so divine. I started to learn how to play guitar, but I never followed through. I could make that a better pass time than what I currently do.
Zampano TL ⋅ April 28, 2024 (edited April 28, 2024)
Edited
That's a terrific idea. We always have this angst these days that if we are not connected 24/7 that we will somehow be missing out on somethings. Prosebox will be there whenever you choose to turn it on.
Growing up, a family from Navada joined our home school Co-Op whose parents forbade having a television. They had a barn that the 3 boys turned into a music studio with guitar, drums, bass and the works. All 3 could play all instruments exceptionally well. Around that time I swore off television because I saw a pattern in my friends who didn't watch it: they were all exceptionally, over-the-top talented. It's math and Geology: like the Grand Canyon, small contributions daily overtime can produce a wonder of the world.
I stopped watching television and shut myself in my room with no phone or computer with a guitar and books and pen and paper.
TL Zampano ⋅ April 29, 2024
That sounds like self-punishment lol but probably what it will take.
Zampano TL ⋅ April 30, 2024
It may sound so but it was actually self-reprieve. Watching the tellie is passive. One watches others living where in my room, I was living. There is Weezer song called In The Garage that I was listening to back then that describes the feeling. Dog trainers will tell you to kennel your dog. It seems like punishment but its not. It becomes a safe place for the dog to chill out in, and so that was what "room time" was like before smartphones and internet sort of invaded that space.