Fruit of the Wednesday
Oct. 2nd, 2019 11:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bWhat I Watched Instead of Reading
Last Friday, I went to see a play at the local university. The play was called Eurydice and purports to be a Eurydice-focused retelling of the Orpheus myth, though in fact it gives more time to Eurydice's dead dad, "one of the few among the dead who can still read and write." He writes letters to his daughter when she's still alive, and when she dies he re-teaches her to read and regales her with stories from his own memories. He makes her a room out of string because the dead don't get their own rooms. When Eurydice leaves to go back to the land of the living with Orpheus (a goofy idiot savant who looks like David Tennant's Doctor), her dad is so sad that he goes and soaks himself properly in the Lethe and lays himself down to drip forlornly off the edge of the stage. Then Eurydice comes back and can't get her dad to recognize her, so she does the same thing. Then Orpheus shows up, presumably having been killed by entitled fans after trying to release a mopey album of silences, and he doesn't remember anything, either. The end! For the curtain call, they turn up wrapped in bathrobes, which was a nice touch. I always enjoy seeing a live play and this one was no exception. It felt very unfinished, in spite of a lot of nice moments, and poor Eurydice in particular never really got to be much of a character (though to be fair, she did die very young). There was a subplot about the Lord of the Dead trying to marry Eurydice that just didn't work at all. But the music that fills the air when Orpheus first arrives in the land of the dead was the cheesiest possible piano ballad, accompanied by sparkling falling paper, and that was the perfect choice as far as I'm concerned.
What I've Finished Reading
Malcolm Bradley's The History Man begins with a party and a desparate gesture and ends with a different party and a desperate gesture, and in between there is not so much a plot as a series of snide brushstrokes. A sociology tutor in a large new university, Howard Kirk manufactures a lot of drama and spoils some lives and careers, throws parties, and gets no comeuppance because he doesn't have enough self-awareness. It's hard to care but easy to read - except that there was an episode at the end that was so unpleasant (to me) and so undermotivated except by the cycnicsm of the narrator, that my slightly kneejerk fun was spoiled. All the denouements are done in dismissive gestures after a timeskip. There are some funny moments and some moments where you look around and wonder what you're doing here.
What I'm Reading Now
I'm reading The New Age Directory Holistic Health Directory, a circa 1978 reference by dull-eyed beard-bearer Viktoras Kulvinskas (pictured on the back with his plants and looking none too trustworthy), primarily because I didn't want to be out all day with nothing but Gravity's Rainbow. I'm giving GR my all, but I am really starting to hate it. I'm sure it doesn't deserve all my hate; I've just reached a point of saturation at which any new petty annoyance clangs like twenty bells, for no logical reason. We've just been introduced to a character called "Scorpia Mossmoon" and I found myself making an involuntary gagging sound because it's only page 42 and I'm already sick of Thomas Pynchon's wacky names.
The New Age Directory is mildly fascinating, heavily driven by Viktoras' interests ("live foods," frutarianism, natural healing) but covering a wide range of vaguely new-agey enterprises and how to contact them (in 1978).
What I Plan to Read Next
Some books I got from the library yesterday for 99 Novels: Staying On by Paul Scott, Farewell Companions by James Plunkett, and Life in the West by Brian Aldiss.
Last Friday, I went to see a play at the local university. The play was called Eurydice and purports to be a Eurydice-focused retelling of the Orpheus myth, though in fact it gives more time to Eurydice's dead dad, "one of the few among the dead who can still read and write." He writes letters to his daughter when she's still alive, and when she dies he re-teaches her to read and regales her with stories from his own memories. He makes her a room out of string because the dead don't get their own rooms. When Eurydice leaves to go back to the land of the living with Orpheus (a goofy idiot savant who looks like David Tennant's Doctor), her dad is so sad that he goes and soaks himself properly in the Lethe and lays himself down to drip forlornly off the edge of the stage. Then Eurydice comes back and can't get her dad to recognize her, so she does the same thing. Then Orpheus shows up, presumably having been killed by entitled fans after trying to release a mopey album of silences, and he doesn't remember anything, either. The end! For the curtain call, they turn up wrapped in bathrobes, which was a nice touch. I always enjoy seeing a live play and this one was no exception. It felt very unfinished, in spite of a lot of nice moments, and poor Eurydice in particular never really got to be much of a character (though to be fair, she did die very young). There was a subplot about the Lord of the Dead trying to marry Eurydice that just didn't work at all. But the music that fills the air when Orpheus first arrives in the land of the dead was the cheesiest possible piano ballad, accompanied by sparkling falling paper, and that was the perfect choice as far as I'm concerned.
What I've Finished Reading
Malcolm Bradley's The History Man begins with a party and a desparate gesture and ends with a different party and a desperate gesture, and in between there is not so much a plot as a series of snide brushstrokes. A sociology tutor in a large new university, Howard Kirk manufactures a lot of drama and spoils some lives and careers, throws parties, and gets no comeuppance because he doesn't have enough self-awareness. It's hard to care but easy to read - except that there was an episode at the end that was so unpleasant (to me) and so undermotivated except by the cycnicsm of the narrator, that my slightly kneejerk fun was spoiled. All the denouements are done in dismissive gestures after a timeskip. There are some funny moments and some moments where you look around and wonder what you're doing here.
What I'm Reading Now
Suggestions for Fruit Festivals
They can last for months. Pick a time when your location is having a fruit harvest. The gathering can serve as a place for group detoxification and experimenting in natural living. Exclude all use of fire, no drugs. Set up sanitation facilities. Have a brook or some other resource for bathing. Pick a date. Send out announcements. To avoid potential problems, do not advertise to the general public. Keep a loving attitude toward outsiders and the law people. The gatherings will be transition experiences in the withdrawal from civilization and the exodus into life with nature on the spiritual path. For those who decide to remain in the city, organize raw food houses. Aid one another during the dietary transition. Have weekly classes open to the public, discuss diet, crafts, zone therapy, yoga, healing and organic foods. Set up a lending library. Serve daily meals, ask for donations. [. . .]
How: 1. Find tract of land near but not on farming groves, preferably private - with or without owners o. k. 2. Rules - no fire - no drugs - no underaged runaways. Must be warm part of the year. 3. No need to contact legal authorities or officials as long as public is not invited. A public event can be staged in a local town park one day at the end of the gathering if desired.
I'm reading The New Age Directory Holistic Health Directory, a circa 1978 reference by dull-eyed beard-bearer Viktoras Kulvinskas (pictured on the back with his plants and looking none too trustworthy), primarily because I didn't want to be out all day with nothing but Gravity's Rainbow. I'm giving GR my all, but I am really starting to hate it. I'm sure it doesn't deserve all my hate; I've just reached a point of saturation at which any new petty annoyance clangs like twenty bells, for no logical reason. We've just been introduced to a character called "Scorpia Mossmoon" and I found myself making an involuntary gagging sound because it's only page 42 and I'm already sick of Thomas Pynchon's wacky names.
The New Age Directory is mildly fascinating, heavily driven by Viktoras' interests ("live foods," frutarianism, natural healing) but covering a wide range of vaguely new-agey enterprises and how to contact them (in 1978).
What I Plan to Read Next
Some books I got from the library yesterday for 99 Novels: Staying On by Paul Scott, Farewell Companions by James Plunkett, and Life in the West by Brian Aldiss.
