2019: My Random N(qu)otes

I don’t keep a journal.  In fact, I am contemptuous of “journaling” when used a verb.  But I make a lot of notes. I keep lists.  Some of it finds its way into more formal writing, some never does. Here are some of the words, mostly gleaned from reading, I jotted down in 2019.

“When I started wring criticism, in 1965, in almost pristine ignorance, I discovered that I was the worlds leading expert in one thing: my experience.”

            ~Peter Schjeldahl, 77 Sunset Me, in The New Yorker, Dec 23, 2019

“. . . if a sublime situation is over-curated–that is, made so safe as to eliminate any sense of danger–the whole business is reduced to something ‘picturesque.’”

 I wrote this down but did not attribute it.  Unlike me, but I must have thought it impossible to forget the source.  I am guessing Rachel Cusk.  She’s smart in that way.

“Behind every death lay a series of questions. To move on was to agree not to disturb the questions, to let them settle with the body under the earth. Yet some questions so thoroughly dismantled the terms of your own life, turning away was gravitationally impossible.”

            ~Laura van den Berg, The Third Hotel

My favorite book last year, a year in which I read a lot, even for me.

‘The universe will express itself as long as somebody will be able to say, “I read, therefore, it writes.”’

            ~Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller

This line, written on a scrap of paper was tucked into my hand, by a friend at our party on the night before Thanksgiving.

 “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

            ~Carl Jung

I read this in Dani Shapiro’s memoir about marriage.  A book which, somewhat oddly for a memoir, holds the reader at arm’s length.  Not a critique, just an observation.

“Our lives were governed by mystery, when in fact that mystery was merely the extent of our self deception over the fact of our mortality.”

            ~Rachel Cusk, Kudos

            See what I mean about the way in which she is intelligent?

We surprised an enormous mammal in the tall grass and it moved swiftly with alarm for a few seconds before I was able to determine it was a moose and not a bear.

            ~in September on the trail coming back from Macklin’s bench in the Eagle River Valley

“A good book is more intelligent than its author.  It can say things that the writer is not aware of.”

            ~Umberto Eco

I am reasonably certain this is true.  Also, a corollary, perhaps, “How Do Some Authors Lose Control of their Characters?” by Jim Davies:

            https://lithub.com/how-do-some-authors-lose-control-of-their-characters/

           

“Mountaineering, of course, is not a normal pursuit and we should not be surprised to find its adepts showing odd behavior in other spheres of life.”

            ~Robin Campbell, “The Brief Mountaineering career of Aleister Crowley, the Great Beast     666

I love his use of the word "adept" which I have only ever seen in reference to the occult. Climbing is a kind of magic, no?

On the north face of Flattop on what was supposed to be an early winter afternoon, but was unseasonably warm.  We are taking our crampons on and off and climbing with one tool, unroped.  This, actually, is one of our most preferred styles. At some point I realize that Charlie is assessing the terrain ahead and deliberately choosing the most difficult, unlikely, option. I ask about this. “Of course,” he says.

“Roosters wear out if you look at them too much.” 

            ~Gabriel Garcia Marquez. “No One Talks to the Colonel”

Roster was the name Macklin’s roofing bosses, Slim and Skeeter christened him with. Sometimes I think he was simply worn out. At 22.

“A free thinking astral traveler and spiritual gangster, he’s the official saxaphonist of your soul’s awakening.”

             ~from a description of Pharoah Sanders by Nick Marino in GQ

In summer 1973 we saw Pharoah Sanders at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge in Detroit.  Almost no one in the audience. It was like a private concert.  We were, incidentally, the only white people in the room. No one cared. Sanders was transcendent.

“The heroes of climbing are the people who climb until they drop, who hold climbing as the antidote for this slave-like way the world is going—this politically correct, pathetic, SUV-ridden, color-coded, two-week holiday and back to work nonsense.”

            ~Stevie Haston, interviewed in Rock and Ice

            Pretty much agree.

Whether your family lives or dies is more rigorous than peer review.”

            ~on the accuracy of the oral tradition at the Franklin Expedition Symposium at the   Anchorage Museum

As is now well-documented, indigenous peoples generally knew the location of the Franklin ships ever since they were lost.

In the Inuit world some crimes were punishable by death.  Those sentenced could choose the means of their execution.  In the next world they did not want to arrive with a hole in them caused by a bullet, so they chose to be strangled.

            ~at the Franklin Symposium

            They also feared that their deities would not approve of their hunting whales with iron-        forged tools newly acquired from the Europeans.

Across from the McMenamins in McMinnville was a gorgeous art deco theater called MACK in red neon letters. On its marquee was this announcement: Music For a Happy Holiday at the Community Center Free Admission Dec 15 2019 at 3PM.

            Everywhere I go.