There will be points awarded to any who can spot the two (or more) allusions in the title of today’s blog entry.
Actually, I have little to say, and little time to say it in. The third issue of Horror Quarterly (formerly Terror Tales) is now online, and with it the third part of my three part essay, ‘Stray Thoughts on the Phenomenon of Japanese Horror’.
Parts one and two may be found here and here.
I am currently experiencing the form of insufferable oppression known as ‘work’, and for that reason literary production of all kinds has been crippled. However, there are things moving, under the surface. If you want to know what they are, you only have to ask.
Mind you, I might not answer.
Hello Dr. Prime.
What can I say? You have outdone yourself. And what a denouement!
The latest news from the editor of Horror Quarterly:
“I think the success of issue3 has killed the server.
I’m trying to contact the service provider now.”
Well, hopefully the problem will be sorted out soon.
Dear M,
Thank you very much. I think it’s very true that Japan has, in many ways, lost its history. I could dig out some Nagai Kafu quotes on this, but maybe later. A Japanese critic called Kobayashi Hideo also wrote much about the loss of ‘home’ in Japan.
Mishima Yukio once said that the desire for beauty in the male is always the desire for death. In The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, the main character attempts to rid himself of the life-denying influence of beauty by destroying what, for him, is the most beautiful thing in the world – the temple of the title.
I seem to fluctuate between the desire for beauty and the desire to see it destroyed, as, I am certain, did Mishima.
In a sense, though, the destruction of beauty that I am talking about comes from an extreme obssession with beauty, whereas most of the destruction of beauty that takes place in the world comes instead from an obssession with money.
It reminds me of the title of a David Bowie song, The Voyeur of Utter Destruction as Beauty. Great title. The song’s not bad either, if only because he actually sings those words.
Q,
I just read part three and it’s Beautiful. So interesting about the 20-year-old buildings! I actually think that’s terrifying! To me, it communicates extreme impermance. It suggests that you could lose your history. Imagine your childhood home being demolished. The idea of a landscape that fluctuates and topples and is reborn many times before your eyes, so that your memories do not match …how disconnecting. Of course I know that’s not the point you were trying to make. I was going to say that I thought it was funny that 20 years is considered a “spooky” age for a building. But when I really started to think about it, it seemed really scary for different reasons.
The diary entry about the resort is exquisite. Something you said after kicking snow, about there being no people to suffer your avalanche, “just some machine running by itself” makes me think of Schrodinger, who suggested that matter exists in infinite forms until it is observed. I don’t know why I think of this. Somtimes I think you are like an anti-me, in your desire to abandon beauty. But when you describe lonliness and sorrow, it is like a song that I know the words to.
Peace.
M
http://my.opera.com/a_a/journal/ :up:
“Just the place to be Morbid”
The earthworm cried,
As he entered the blackbird’s gullet,
“I’d as sooner be here,
Where it’s warmer inside,
Than be swallowed
By some deepsea mullet”
For the earthworm had guessed
That passing the test
Was always a matter of chance,
And the knowledge was sweetened
To know he’d been eatened
By a bird whose gene’s he’d advanced.
“Just the place to be Morbid”
The earthworm declaimed,
“Though I perish I say it with pride,
There’s a darkness in here
That fills me with fear
As I head down the Esophagus inside”
The earthworm accepted a Morbid result,
From the fact he’d been swallowed and so
He wasn’t surprised at the acid outcome
In the blackbird’s digestion below.
“Just the place to be Morbid”
The earthworm opined,
I’ll say it once more, for it’s true
My remains will be scattered
Out there on the floor
In a sort of a shitenous glue”
I liked the joke about the condoms and cigarettes. Very funny.
Well, Horror Quarterly appears to be offline at the moment for some reason. I presume they’re making adjustments to it or something. I wonder how long it will take.
Hello Q.
Just a light distraction from all our other ‘heavier’ input(see elsewhere in various, entries/pages). Compared to the complexity of your incomparable and assiduous output my hasty ‘orisons’ are mere footnotes.