"You've turned into a log of wood," he commented. "You've not only lost contact with reality and lost all interest in world events, in your civic duties, in yourself, in your friends (and you did have friends), you've not only lost all goals in life, except for winning at roulette--you've even renounced your memories. I remember you at an intense, vivid moment in your life, but I'm certain you've forgotten the best and strongest emotions that you experienced at that time, and your present dreams and aspirations do not go beyond pair, impair, rouge, noir, the middle twelve numbers, and all that. I'm sure of it."

"That'll do, Mr. Astley. Please, don't remind me of it!" I cried with annoyance, almost spitefully. "And for your information, I haven't forgotten a thing. I have only temporarily emptied my head of everything, including even my memories, until I've radically improved my situation. Then you'll see, I'll come back from the dead!"
--The Gambler

Paulina was surprised. "Why, but you too are clinging to a straw! A couple of weeks ago, you explained to me at great length that you were absolutely sure to win at roulette, and then you rushed away because I stared at you as if you were insane. Or perhaps you were joking then? No, I remember very clearly that you were absolutely serious, and it didn't sound like a joke at all."

"That's true," I said dreamily. "Even now, I am still convinced I'll win. ..." --Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Gambler, tr. Andrew R. MacAndrew

MOUNTAIN GOATS AND ANONYMOUS 4. I really, really love some of the new songs. Early favorites are "Tribe of the Horned Heart" and (perhaps predictably) "Lakeside View Apartments Suite." Link is probably via Flavorwire.

SERODISCORDANCY:

I spot Chad a few minutes later, a dark-eyed waif on the sidewalk. It's been three weeks he's been gone, and he's lost so much weight. Everything about him looks burnt-out, the way refugees on TV look with farms smoking behind them: translucent skin, an uncertain balance something like shellshock. I notice he's wearing a necklace, one he wasn't wearing last time. A ring and a small cross.

I tell the driver, "That's him."

The bus slows, but the doors don't open.

"Five hundred dollar fine!" the driver shouts.

"What?"

"Five hundred dollar fine for entering or exiting the vehicle at..." (here I have no idea what he says) "...designated stopping point."

"So he can get on at the stop?"

"Five hundred dollar fine!"

Chad studies me through the plexiglass of the bus's doors. Perplexed, panicky from lack of sleep, obviously trying not to show it. I do my best to motion him down the road, try to mouth, "wait there." The yellow and black paint of the stop is at just such an angle I can't point at it through the doors. I keep pointing as the bus keeps moving. It stops 20 feet away; the doors hiss open.

"Can he get on here?"

"Designated stopping point!"

Chad reaches the stop a few seconds after the bus. I can't think of anything to say but, "Hey."

We collapse into seats next to each other, he with a bag over each shoulder. His lips taste like seawater; his mouth is dry. I later learn that he took a shot, his last shot, in the bathroom at Dulles. This is quite valuable, actually, seeing what he looks like still high, on the tail-end of high -- it's a look I've yet to see on him again.

"I parked at the wrong gate," I explain. "We have to go back around."

He seems euphoric to just be able to rest.

more

One night in his study with brandy in one hand and a cigar in the other, [my father] asked quietly, "Do you honestly think, my daughter, that dancing has progressed since the time of the Greeks?"

"No," I replied snappily. "Do you think you write any better than Euripides?" That ought to hold him, I figured.

He looked at me long and slow. "No, my dear," he said, "but we have Euripides' plays. They have lasted. A dancer ceases to exist the minute she sits down."

As Father spoke I understood death for the first time. I was a child of fourteen but I realized with melancholy that oblivion would be my collaborator no matter how fine my work.
--Agnes de Mille, "The Swan," in Dance to the Piper

He who joins in singing a chorale, or who listens to the mass, the Christmas oratorio, the passion... wants to make his soul stand with both feet in time, in the most real time of all, in the time of the one day of the world of which all individual days of the world are but a part. Music is supposed to escort him there.
--Franz Rosenzweig, Star of Redemption, quoted in this interesting piece. (There's some unspoken stuff here as well about the interplay between satisfaction and surprise in the coming of Jesus, the promised Messiah in distinctly unpromising form....) Link via First Thoughts.

"IN PRE-RETROSPECT THIS WAS A BAD IDEA BUT WE'RE DOING IT ANYWAY." Pure poetry.

I'LL BREAK YOUR FACE. If I have readers who wonder why there are comics, or what comics might possibly add to other narrative forms like movies and paintings and symphonies and novels... I think this video might help. Imagine if you could have the broken-faced panels and the action, while still controlling how fast you flipped the pages....

Imagine if you had God's camera, and you were drunk--or in ecstasy, or caught in memory. Comics exist because we want action and suspension, sin and repentance, contorted faces and identity, all at the same time. Comics are time and judgment combined. Comics, because they're endlessly re-readable and because you control how fast the page turns (if ever), are ecstasy as addiction. The panel is the sublime moment--unintelligible without its context, yet importantly separate from that context--and when you turn the page you place that sublime moment back in its necessary context of narrative: sin, and repentance or the lack of it.

We may love comics because they take us out of time. But if we want to understand them, we have to release them back into time. This is why comics are like music: Comics are time and eternity held together in one hand.

This is why comics are like regret.