Without Lifting A Finger

Now, though his conviction that jealousy was a shameful feeling and that one ought to feel confidence, had not broken down, he felt that he was standing face to face with something illogical and irrational, and did not know what was to be done. Alexey Alexandrovitch was standing face to face with life, with the possibility of his wife's loving someone other than himself, and this seemed to him very irrational and incomprehensible because it was life itself. All his life Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived and worked in official spheres, having to do with the reflection of life. And every time he had stumbled against life itself he had shrunk away from it. Now he experienced a feeling akin to that of a man who, while calmly crossing a precipice by a bridge, should suddenly discover that the bridge is broken, and that there is a chasm below. That chasm was life itself, the bridge that artificial life in which Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived. For the first time the question presented itse...

In his Petersburg world all people were divided into utterly opposed classes. One, the lower class, vulgar, stupid, and, above all, ridiculous people, who believe that one husband ought to live with the one wife whom he has lawfully married; that a girl should be innocent, a woman modest, and a man manly, self-controlled, and strong; that one ought to bring up one's children, earn one's bread, and pay one's debts; and various similar absurdities. This was the class of old-fashioned and ridiculous people. But there was another class of people, the real people. To this class they all belonged, and in it the great thing was to be elegant, generous, plucky, gay, to abandon oneself without a blush to every passion, and to laugh at everything else.

Another old poem I just found on the Net in Right Hand Pointing: "Heart." Had totally forgotten it. Not sure whether it ever made it into one of my books. Heart 1. Words. Symbols. Sums. What fraction of reality gets into them? The commerce of the hordes, he thinks. The earth-dwellers.  Those with the hubristic screech and scrawl. 2. Heart is playing at the Hollywood Bowl tonight ( Crazy on You ). He is tooling  about trying to get the right combination of nibbles and bits:  Pinot noir,  brie, fresh figs, etc.  Leaving TJ’s, he flinches, then grabs a few plastic  knives and forks from their holsters on the wall.  Sorry, he thinks.  We’ve done this to ourselves. We’re doing it.  Stopping  isn’t an option.          

An old poem of mine that my AI kicked up tonight (from my book Matman & Testudo): "Surface Tension." I had almost forgotten it. LAUSD was "restructuring" and my principal said, "Don't worry, you'll land somewhere. You're a good teacher." I landed somewhere, then somewhere else. Etc. Stressful but fun -- exploring many places I had no idea about, even teaching some simple science. Anyway, here's the poem (inspired by my drive in the morning, over the two bridges to and through San Pedro CA). Surface Tension If the paperclip doesn’t float on the water’s surface, first lay a thin piece of paper on the water, then lay the clip gently on the paper * He’s not drowning. The nearest body of water is the bottle of water in the back of the car, wedged between two Blue Ice Blocks in his Igloo. Still, he sits behind the wheel taking in little fish gulps, as though staving off the big gulp that would take him under  *  The way to his new job takes h...

From Tolstoy's Anna Karenina: "Well, you must excuse me there. You know to me all women are divided into two classes…at least no…truer to say: there are women and there are…I've never seen exquisite fallen beings, and I never shall see them, but such creatures as that painted Frenchwoman at the counter with the ringlets are vermin to my mind, and all fallen women are the same." "But the Magdalen?" "Ah, drop that! Christ would never have said those words if He had known how they would be abused. Of all the Gospel those words are the only ones remembered. However, I'm not saying so much what I think, as what I feel. I have a loathing for fallen women. You're afraid of spiders, and I of these vermin. Most likely you've not made a study of spiders and don't know their character; and so it is with me." Note: The pope who wrongly identified Mary Magdalene as a prostitute was Pope Gregory I (also known as Gregory the Great) in the year 59...

The sledge swayed hardly at all. The shaft-horse, with his tightly bound tail under his decorated breechband, galloped smoothly and briskly; the smooth road seemed to run rapidly backwards, while the driver dashingly shook the reins. One of the lawyers and the officer sitting opposite talked nonsense to Makovkina's neighbour, but Makovkina herself sat motionless and in thought, tightly wrapped in her fur. 'Always the same and always nasty! The same red shiny faces smelling of wine and cigars! The same talk, the same thoughts, and always about the same things! And they are all satisfied and confident that it should be so, and will go on living like that till they die. But I can't. It bores me. I want something that would upset it all and turn it upside down. Suppose it happened to us as to those people--at Saratov was it?--who kept on driving and froze to death. . . . What would our people do? How would they behave? Basely, for certain. Each for himself. And I too should act...