impressions: the sunset limited.

"black: what. we done opened a can of worm here? what you got against being happy?
white: it's contrary to the human condition"
somewhere in the ghettos of new york cities is an apartment rather small and low classed, sits around a table a rural folky black man and a well educated white professor, conversing back and forth some of life's ultimate questions, pulling each other backward and forward into the others firmly engrossed belief.
this play (or novel in a dramatic form as the critiques like to say) was deeply moving chiefly for the reason:
it seemed like an internal monologe.
the monologe we all get when questioning the world, questioning the purpose of existence, questioning the actual possibility of genuin happiness or if it is merely built on how many illusions you could rap your self with.
while: a professor of darkness, finds himself in desire of death, of end, and peace and quite and apocalypse to all things as disgusting and pointless as dreams and hopes.
black: a folksy seemingly simpleton who has found Jesus in the very roughness of prison violence.
and so on their dialoge goes n to represent universal thoughts in the most poetic of language and word formation.
Cormac Mcarthy as always, keeps me intrigued and gives me literature that always leaves me displaced.
"if people saw the world for what it truly is. saw their lives for what they truly are. without dreams or illusions. I dont believe they could offer the first reason why they should not elect to die as soon as possible."

impressions : the death notebook.

"it makes me laugh
to see woman in this condition
it makes me laugh for america and new york city
when you'r hands are cut off
and no one answers the phone"
 death is to ann sexton, in this thin poetry volume, much larger and vaster and more frequent then the mere process of decaying and ceasing to be, to ann, a clinically depressed poet, a women deprived of her rights, the function of everyday living, the very stale motions and actions taken, are death it's self.
"once upon a time we were all born,
popped out like jelly rolls
forgetting our fishdom
the pleasuring seas
the country of comfort
spanked into the oxygens of death,
good morning life, we say when we wake,
hail mary coffe toast
and we americans take juice
a liquid sun going down
good morning life.
to wake up is to be born.
to brush your teeth is to be alive.
to make a bowl movement is also desirable.
la de dah,
it's all routine"
ann sexton, being the free spirited, feminist, intellectual she was, was doomed for her mother's life of the 1960s rural suburbs,  terrifying as it is, to have children and a household, and a kitchen when all that is on her mind, is death and poetry, the poetry of death, and the death of poetry.
"if my mother had lived to see it
she would have put a WANTED sign up in the post office
for the black, the red, the blue I'v worn.
still, it would be perfectly fine with me
to die like a nice girl
smelling of clorox and duz.
being sixteen-in the pants
I would die full of question."
once more, she was clearly oppressed, 60's society patronising her for her sexuality, assuming she is to be a housewife, a cleansed, pure unpromiscuous housewife.
with a much, much forgotten life.
bu ann was anything but.
sexton had had a very disturbed history with mental illness and eventually ended her own life.
as many other poets and artist, has drawn a beautiful, melancholy, poetic, perhaps distraught picture of death as a sort of salvation.
despite my disagreeing with so many things she believes (our religious beliefs for one)
I believe i total unbiasedness when it comes to jugging a work of art.
this was defiantly beautiful in its accurate, romantic portrayal of sexual oppression, and exploration of possibilities of life and death.
at times even, stark, pure anger.
"give me some tomato aspic, helen!
I do not want to be alone"

impressions:the road

"no sound but the wind.what will you say? a living man spoke these lines? he sharpened his quill with a small pen knife to scribe these things in sole or lampblack? at some reckonable and entabled moment? he is coming to steal my eyes. to steal my mouth with dirt." -cormack mcarthy.

somewhere in the united states, in a post apocalyptic land, is an unnamed man, and his unnamed son, walking along the indefinite road, into unguarantied, undefined survival.
practically nothing in this book goes by specifics, no one has a name, the disaster that caused this apocalypse  unidentified, lending its self to the idea, non of this is personal.
this is a pure representation of humanity, at its weakest and strongest as if the two are interchangeable, as if at the face of the cold and desertion and lack of civilization, as if in fear and loneliness and malnutrition, it is given, that the mere fatherly-son relationship, could survive, tuberculoses, and the extinction of humanity.
it also reveals men at their core, describing them from a kids pont of view as simple, and somewhat incorrect, as "the good guys" and "the bad guys".
ones who's deepened weakness crippled humanity within them, turned them into immoral barbaric, while the others were set on a deep heap of bravery.
they carry the fire.
this book was dark, to say the least, but mesmerizing in its darkness and poeticness, and full understanding of human nature that it would go one, in 300 pages of noting but humanity unhindered by luxuries and society.
a pulitzer prize winning masterpiece.
"query: how dose the never to be differ from the never was?"

impression: the great Gatsby.

"the need for illusion, and the tragedy that springs from it's inevitable failure" f. scott Fitzgerald , this side of paradise.


 Fitzgerald has recurring themes through out his writings that include: dreams, illusions, wealth, the jazz age.
and they all gather and mash up nicely in the great Gatsby.
the great Gatsby is the story of jay Gatsby, told from the perspective of his neighbor, nick caraway, who serves as almost nothing but an observer, of the man, the time, the helpless tragedies of dreams.
jay gasby is incredibly wealthy, and is notorious for his great parties.
nick is friends with daisy and tom buchanan, and their friend, jordan baker, who later becomes the love intrest of our narrator.
tom, is a rather awful, dislikable larg man, who is cheating on his wife, Gatsby, is in love with daisy, and she with him.
they had been in love with each other for 8 years, before daisy married tom, but due to certin complications, daisy married tom.
among the books meny messages, the idea of illusion, is what struck me the most.
he portrays illusion as a very strong and dominant factor in the human experience.
for illusion to run through a whole society, a whole decade, a widely believed (back in the 1920s especially   phenomena, that wealth was equivilint to happiness.
there is the illusion of these grand parties, when no one seems to be enjoying their time.
the illusion of jordan baker to nick Caraway, when eventually, her tand slim arms and witty personality, fail to stur any fuss within him.
there is the illusion of daisy to jay Gatsby, the illusion of her waiting for him yeas later.
the illusion of her voice, full of money.
and most of all, the illusion of the greatness of Gatsby, who otherwise was, a mere poor boy, helplessly in love with another illusion.
"Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; if you can bounce for her too, till she cry 'lover, gold hatted, high bouncing lover, I must have you!" thomas parke d'invilliers.
This was the quote scott Fitzgerald appropriately chose for the book carrying on the theme of illusion, how the man illudes the women into loving him, and how he iludes himself into believing her artificial love would be sufficient

Fitzgerald was angry at the world around him when he wrote this, but old enough, and creative enough to put his anger in such a moving way.
F.scot Fitzgerald was born to a to a lower middle class family who could barely make enough money to 'make ends meet' so the fear, and insecurity of being poor always remained with Fitzgerald.
upper classed white women were brought up to take care of their appearances and figures so they would attract a wealthy husband who would maintain them the lavished lifestyle the were use to.
scott fell in love with a girl named zelda and they were engaged for a while, zelda broke off the engagement because he was too poor, later on he wrote the novel "this side of paradise" which got him a small fortune, and he married zelda.
but he had never forgotten, that, zelda did not marry him when he was poor.
the Fitzgeralds were known for throwing parties, almost as luxurious as Gatsby's, after a while of reckless spending , they, consequently, lost all their money.
they then moved to france, where the living was more affordable back then.
Fitzgerald's main mission seemed at times ( intelligently so) to record accurit portrits of his time, which he thought, was an especially legendary time, but after a while he felt a certain end, his getting older, the jazz age  slowly fading away
"one day in 1926 we looked down and found we had flappy arms and fat pot and we couldn't say boop-boop-a-doop to a sicilian" said Fitzgerald.
"'we're getting old' said Daisy. ' if we were young we'd rise and dance' "
by the end of the book, nick talks about how he has turned 30,  and how, all of this madness, all of these parties and illusions are over.
" 'I am thirty' I said ' I'm five years to old to lie to my self and call it honor' "
this book was a beautiful collaboration of melancholy reality and the aesthetics of illusion.
this is the way of dreams.
they are complex and helplessly out of reach, we stuff our selfs with little bits of condolence.
constantly being pulled forward and backwards to actions almost irrational.
"so we beat on, boats against the curent, borne back ceaselessly into the past."