Thursday, September 15, 2005

Writing To Know Oneself

I bought eight books the other day, only one of those is new, a 'remaindered'book bought from Daedalus Catalogue (mail order) lawyer Dershowitz's take on Genesis up through The Ten Commandments as the source of our present day ideas about Justice. The book is titled The Genesis of Justice. Once I got into it it was fun, but the beginning clashed with my romanticised notions of our expulsion from Eden (Paradise) borrowed whole from Milton. Dershowitz finds God quite unreasonable and 'unjust' ha ha ha ha ha but Milton builds emotional drama when Adam and Eve, "hand in hand took their solitary way through Eden" out into the world "where to choose"!  Disobedience Dershowitz seems to skim over, but it cost our parents "Paradise"!  Milton's epic poem begins, "Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree..." is what I have from memory, plus the fact that the first line deliberately echoes the poetry of Homer. Not having a copy of the poem close at hand explains my ongoing book buying. The other seven books are the following, some virtually brand new bought at Goodwill for less than a dollar per book;  The Discovery of Poetry, 2nd Edition, Francis Mayes: (Primary reason being that flipping through the soft cover book I chanced upon Sylvia Plath's TULIPS perhaps my favorite modern poem a copy of which I don't have anymore. Yowee, it reads better now than it ever did primarily because of it's honest sentiments and stunning insights and reckless self-revelations.) Damage, by Joesphine Hart. The narrator is male. It tries to make high drama out of sex, I think, instead of out of character, but sometimes one wants to read 'low', ha!  I Hate Actors! (1944, yellowed pages but intact.) by Ben Hecht, Hollywood luminary, author, with someone else, of His Girl Friday, based on The Front Page a stage play. Very funny novel. Sort of Americanized P. G. Wodehouse. ALBERT EINSTEIN Historical and Cultural Perspectives. The Centennial Symposium in Jerusalem. I'm gonna groove on this book because since reading and rereading Stephen Hawking I've already caught on to the fact that Relativity and the follow-up new insights about the nature of the universe devined by Physicists has had, and will continue to have a huge impact on the arts, and, religion. Sexual Personae "Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson," by Camille Paglia. This is over 700 pages and dense, so it will take me a while. Twenty years ago when author Paglia was on TV a lot I couldn't make out if she was crazy, simply hostile, or a genius. So, I want to find out if I should write her a fan letter. In youth she was hot. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the one and only. I'm embarrassed; I've never read it. Classic Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.


So, all that mess should keep me occupied for a while.


I'm so in love with TULIPS I might post all 63 lines here but how could I do that given the primitive nature of this format in which, as far as I know, you can't make short lines without a huge space between those lines. Yet, I've seen other bloggers do all kinds of things. I'm determinedly un-Techie.


So, I confess, I continue to read books I should have read in college but didn't because I was too busy nursing my unhappiness. Ha ha ha ha ha..........!


To torment me, an enemy, a deadly serious scurrilous enemy from the message boards, thought it would hurt me to say I took Viagra. Didn't in the slightest of course, and besides I'd never taken anything like that. Up to that time I had not. But, as of a few weeks ago, I have taken it and would like to post what thoughts I have about the experience. Do you think that is unwise? I've decided to use the trade name on the grounds that as far as I know it came first, it's the one I have used, and has become virtually the 'generic' name even though of course it is not the generic name. My physician of about three years suggested I cut each blue pill in half. I wondered how to do that but found ordinary sissors do the trick easily. For me it's better that way, half at a time. Bragging? You bet!


Barry 


 


 

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Working in a urologist's office I can tell you that ED medicines might as well be aspirin as much as the get prescribed!  And imagine the trade they're doing on the black market selling to young guys who think it's a toy?!!

Anonymous said...

>Working in a urologist's office I can tell you that ED medicines might as well be aspirin as much as the get prescribed!  And imagine the trade they're doing on the black market selling to young guys who think it's a toy?!!
Comment from pixiedustnme - 9/15/05 9:29 PM >

That's a new wrinkle. I've imagined lots of fallout from
the arrival of a real, actual, effective aphrodisiac. but
not the procuring of it by "young guys." Young women
don't swallow it? That, or a similar pill? I think there's
one for women on the market. It's not available even in
Mexico without a prescription, yet it can be bought via
the Internet with a credit card. There will be strange
permutations, which is one reason I want to write an entry
on the subject. Thanks for the 'heads up,' on a serious subject.

Barry  

Anonymous said...

Man, you must read fast.  What a Herculian effort.  I wish you would post TULIPS.  I'm not sure how to prevent the double spacing, but I think you can type it as if it were an e-mail, then pick the whole thing up in edit . . .  and drop it on this page.  You can't type it in WORD because it picks up all these weird little symbols, but you probably already knew that.

Happy reading!

Anonymous said...

With your encouragement I will definitely
follow your directions and get TULIPS up
here sometime today or tomorrow. I'm
postumately, in fantasy, in love with Sylvia
Plath (my wife doesn't mind). Tulips was
written, when Sylvia was 31 (only 31!) one
year, about, before her suicide in London
during a two week long winter storm that froze
the water in the pipes; her husband was in
sunny Spain with another woman, and using some
of Sylvia's money. Ted Hughes, her husband,
was England's Poet Laureate. He was some
kind of stinker. Their two daughters, to his credit,
now speak well of him. I've heard a tape of one
of the daughters reading her mother's poems
to audiences at American colleges.

Barry