Showing posts with label Fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fiction. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 03, 2017

Nutshell by Ian McEwan


EPIGRAPH

Oh God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space--were it not that I have bad dreams.   Shakespeare, Hamlet


FIRST LINE

So here I am, upside down in a woman.


ONE

Let me summon it, that moment of creation that arrived with my first concept. Long ago, many weeks ago, my neural groove closed upon itself to become my spine and my many million young neurons, busy as silkworms, spun and wove from their trailing axons the gorgeous golden fabric of my first idea, a notion so simple it partly eludes me now. Was it me? Too self-loving. Was it now? Overly dramatic. Then something antecedent to both, containing both, a single word mediated by a mental sigh or swoon of acceptance, of pure being, something like--this? Too precious. So, getting closer, my idea was To be. Or if not that, its grammatical variant, is. This was my aboriginal notion and here's the crux--is. Just that. In the spirit of Ex muss sein. The beginning of conscious life was the end of illusion, the illusion of non-being, and the eruption of the real.

TWO

Instead, he hopes to succeed by kindness and self-effacing sensitivity to her needs. I hope to be wrong, but I think he'll doubly fail, for she'll go on despising him for being weak, and he'll suffer even more than he should.

THREE

We'll always be troubled by how things are--that's how it stands with the difficult gift of consciousness.

FOUR

But here's life's most limiting truth--it's always now, always here, never then and there.

FIVE

Adversity forced awareness on us, and it works, it bites us when we go too near the fire, when we love too hard. Those felt sensations are the beginning of the invention of the self.

God said, Let there be pain. And there was poetry. Eventually.

SIX

"Seizing the law into your own hands--it's old hat, reserved for elderly feuding Albanians and subsections of tribal Islam. Revenge is dead. Hobbes was right, my young friend. The state must have a monopoly of violence, a common power to keep us all in awe."

Words, as I am beginning to appreciate, can make things true.

SEVEN

Only satisfied desire could have freed him.

Each of us, from each different point of view, is gripped by what's not being said.

EIGHT

But it won't end, the bad will be endless, until ending badly will seem a blessing.

NINE

The man who obliterates my mother between the sheets obeys like a dog. Sex, I begin to understand, is its own mountain kingdom, secret and intact. In the valley below we know only rumors.

TEN

A toast to love and therefore to death, to Eros and Thanatos. It appears to be a given of intellectual life, that when two notions are sufficiently far apart or opposed, they are said to be profoundly linked. Since death is opposed to everything in life, various couplings are proposed. Art and death. Nature and death. Worryingly, birth and death. And joyously iterated, love and death. On this last and from where I am, no two notions could be more mutually irrelevant. The dead love no one, nothing. As soon as I am out and about I might try my hand at a monograph. The world cries out for fresh-faced empiricists.

TWELVE

However close you get to others, you can never get inside of them, even when you're inside of them.

But it's hard to be separate from her when I need her. And with such churning of emotion, need translates to love, like milk to butter.

THIRTEEN

Lovers arrive at their first kisses with scars as well as longings. They're not always looking for advantage. Some need shelter, others press only for the hyperreality of ecstasy, for which they'll tell outrageous lies or make irrational sacrifice. But they rarely ask themselves what they need or want. Memories are poor for past failures. Childhoods shine through adult skin, helpfully or not. So do the laws of inheritance that bind a personality. The lovers don't know there's no free will.

FOURTEEN

a wonderful passage on revenge, which you need to read in context.

FIFTEEN

No one exclaims at the moment of one's dazzling coming-out, It's a person! Instead: It's a girl, It's a boy. Pink or blue--a minimal improvement of Henry Ford's offer of cars of any color so long as they were black. Only two sexes. I was disappointed. If human bodies, minds, fates are so complex, if we are free like no other mammal, why limit the range?

A strange mood has seized the almost-educated young. They're on the march, angry at times, but mostly needful, longing for authority's blessing, its validation of their chosen identities.

I'll feel, therefore I'll be.

Feeling is queen. Unless she identifies as king.

EIGHTEEN

She's memorising her memories.

NINETEEN

A voice on the radio once told me that when we fully understand what matter is we'll feel better. I doubt that. I'll never get what I want.

LAST LINES

And I'm thinking about our prison cell--I hope it's not too small--and beyond its heavy door, worn steps ascending: first sorrow, then justice, then meaning. The rest is chaos.



Thursday, February 04, 2016

Laugh: Cannonball Ice Dude

so much to love about this video





#cannonballicedude
#haha

Friday, March 27, 2015

Magyar Irodalomóra

The following is both my first attempt to write fiction in Hungarian and my first attempt to teach in Hungarian.  My language class asked us to prepare a presentation on the topic of our choice.  Other students presented on wine-tasting, Japan, marriage, and tourism in Hungary.  I choose to create the beginning of a story and develop a lesson plan around it.

It was fascinating to write fiction in another language.  My vocabulary is very restricted which shaped the story I created.  But it also forced me to infuse every sentence with action.

I post it here mostly for my own sake as a way to preserve my little language learning efforts.

*********************************************************************************

Magyar Irodalomóra

Olvassátok el a szöveget. Amikor találsz egy új szót, írd a táblára.


***



Rejtély

A munka után a barátok bementek a kávéházba. Leültek és rendeltek. Nyugodtan beszéltek a napjukról.

Szilvia csak nézte a telefonját. Hirtelen felállt és szó nélkül kiment az utcára. A többiek halkan és gyorsan beszéltek róla.
--Kepzeljétek el, a férje komolyan beteg lett. Azt hallottam, életveselyes.
--Ne mondd már! Kitől hallottad ezt? Nem beteg! Elvesztette a munkáját két héttel ezelőtt.
--Na, ne mondd már!  Nem igaz! Azt hallottam, hogy új munkát kapott, de az új cég arra kötelezte, hogy költözzön el valahova Dél-Koreába.

Szilvia odalépett az asztalhoz. A barátai kíváncsian felnéztek. Meg akartak tudni az igazságot. Nem kérdeztek semmit mert megijedtek az arcától. Az arca holt sápadt volt. Az egyik keze remegett. Majdnem elejtette a telefonját.  Nem ült le.


Ott termett a pincér. Letett az asztalra egy drága üveg pezsgőt és négy magas poharat.


Szilva kezébe vette az üveget és kezdte kihúzni a dugót. A barátok féltek a dugótól. Ki is jött belőle halkan és finoman, mint egy kielégitett nőből a sóhaj.


A többiek csak bámultak egymásra.


Szilvia az asztal körül sétált. A pezsgőből töltögetett a barátainak, végül magának is.


A barátok nem tudtak mit mondani. Ilyenkor sütit és kávét szoktak fogyasztani. Most nem tudták, mi történik.


Szilvia felemelte a poharát. Lassan a többiek is.

--Igaz, ugye, barátaim, hogy süt a nap? Én rendeltem a különleges buborékost mert...

Nem tudta folytatni. A barátok már tűkön ültek.


--Igyátok meg --súgta Szilvia.


A barátok kiitták a poharakból a pezsgőt.


A pincér odament és letette a számlát, mert már egy ideje a terem másik végéből figyelte a jelenetet. Úgy döntött, hogy jobb ha fizetnek és távoznak.


Csengett egy telefon. Szilvia ránézett a telefonjára és kikapcsolta.

--Barátaim, nincs sok időnk. Hallgassatok meg és csináljátok, amit mondok. A kabátotokat a táskátokat, mindent hagyjatok itt. Fussatok el!

***


Kepzeljétek el a végét! Válaszoljatok a kérdésekre. Önálló munka.


Hány évesek?


Hol dolgoznak? Együtt?


Kivel beszélt Szilvia telefonon?


Miért szól sok pletyka a ferjéról?


Miért nem ivott Szilvia a pezsgőből?


Mi a te véleményed, milyen baj van?


Szilvia jó ember vagy rossz? Beteg?


Mit fognak csinálni a barátok? Mit fognak mondani? Tényleg birkák lennének?



***


Mit történik ez utàn? Rövid legyen! Nem kell a mese végét tudni.

Mondjátok el!


Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Secretions



The baby did not blink as creamy white milk thickened with stomach acid cascaded over her lips and down her bare stomach. The vomit coated her mother’s breast and fell onto the couch as she straightened her elbows. That was when the baby shrieked. She was dangling midair, naked, shivering in her own spit-up. She peed her diaper. Then she stopped crying. She always calmed down after a good pee. The sweet release of pressure in her stomach made her placid. Until the damp made her itch. Then she simply whimpered. Relief of one kind led to discomfort of another degree. And now her stomach, a greedy walnut, echoed across its emptiness. A groan only she could feel. A groan it would take years to put into words.


The mother set her down on the changing table and dangled a toy within her grasp. They both had the motions memorized now: the wet cloth diaper removed and tossed in the diaper bucket, the lid quickly replaced. A wipe gently eased around the babies soft, plump folds. A dry diaper velcroed into place, a tab on each side.


The mother didn’t bother with a fresh onesie and instead swaddled her firmly and put her back to the breast. Left breast, ten minutes. Then right. Then left. Right, left, right. This time the mother would fall asleep, her head angled backward into the couch’s corner, before the baby. Soon the baby would follow, still latched to the left breast. It was the sleep of exhaustion. The kind that controls you. The sleep that has no regard for hour of day or night. When the body stops, sleep takes the mind. Sleep is supposed to allow the mind to process new information and make sense of the world. This sleep cannot rise to that function. This is the sleep of the parent with a newborn. It is the sleep of the body. The body gets to reclaim itself. It is work. There is no rest. Even sleep becomes labor. Even sleep is not solitary. The baby’s sweet pucker is latched to her breast; they are still one body.


The mother remembers her panic when the baby’s cord was cut. Her husband severed her flesh with surgical scissors. She felt nothing as the scissors shut, except her heart skipped a beat in the moment after it was done. They were two. She took a deep breath and gathered the hot, slippery baby to her chest.


Now, months after the birth, the mother’s body is still the source of the baby’s every ounce of nutrition. The mother is fucking growing a human being, even now, outside her body. Yet not outside. Attached. And this connection is terrible. It is fundamental. It is the irrefutable definition of humanity. It is who we are. It is what a woman can do. It is singular. It is universal. It is the beginning. It is the future. It is tiresome. It is one long paragraph that lasts for three solid months, so far.


The mother woke from the pain in her neck and let her head roll to the other side, then down to her chin. She breathed in the air her baby exhaled. The baby made gurgles in her throat. The mother will not wake her. The baby has fallen off the breast, her face gone entirely milk drunk. The mother stared. She reached for her phone and fumbled with one hand to take a photo of this adorable baby. The mystery of her silence, her inert happiness fills the room with a giddy electric buzz. The baby will sleep for a few hours. She can see that now. She eased the baby out of her arms and into the deep cushion of the couch, placing a pillow next to her. She stood and looked at the small bundle, swaddled and serene.


The mother would fix a sandwich, a weak cup of coffee. She might dare take a hot shower, the hottest water good for her milk-heavy breasts. She will wait. And see. And scroll through the hundreds of photos on her phone since the birth. And she will be proud that this baby, her baby, exists. It is almost more than she can bear.