Motley Kamuka

This week I'm reading my pile, not focusing on one book, moving on when I get tired of what I'm reading. I start my day with Blind Owl by  Sadeq Hedayat . A surreal, dark, and cyclical novella about a pen-case painter caught in an opium-induced state of alienation, heartbreak, and madness. Reread some of Meeting The Buddhas by Vessantara on the Vajrasattva sadhana, and he pulls up short, you need a teacher to get this full sadhana. This is a book for understanding Tibetan Buddhism and the panoply in their mythology, which you can use to supercharge your understanding of Buddhism. Rereading Boundless Heart by Christina Feldman. It's not a robot's disinterest, it's human not getting too caught up on the results. Sort of the opposite of capitalism that measures and expects and demands profits. She doesn't say that, I'm riffing off her. She dwell in the brahma viharas of metta, karuna, mudits and upeksha.  Reading  Itivuttaka for the first time. It's a s...

The 8th MurderBot novel by Martha Wells is another entry into this fine series of books at a security unit that isn't all machine, and also isn't all human. It has organic parts and looks mostly like a human. And yet it's pure killing machine, designed to keep it's assets alive, get them out of dangerous situations in a science fiction future where corporations are at war with each other, and do dastardly thing.  There's an Apple tv show that is okay, based on it. It kind of shows that a minimalist non-human narrator can run an action novel. Many of the 8 are pretty short, which is good. Does it's constant risk assessment tell us about our present? Does it's ruthless focus on saving individual lives tell us something?

  That this won the Nebula, Hugo and AC Clarke awards, a first, doesn't mean it's necessarily the best scifi novel.  From St. Louis Missouri, she studied with Octavia Butler. There are 3 novels and 3 spinoffs from the same universe.  I like it so far.

I've watched so many of her things on YouTube, I think I know her more than most of my close friends. I know she doesn't like going down on woman but she's attracted to Elliot Page, "maybe that could work." I know she had plastic surgery to cut off some belly flab. She got into a cereal paradox loop where you add milk to dry cereal and more cereal to too much milk. For a while she couldn't fall asleep unless she tapped her asshole 150 times. Her sister has talked about her rape. She talks about her mother, who is the top in a lesbian relationship. Let it all hang out baby, there's something really healthy about just talking about everything, I feel. My southern baptist relatives wouldn't think so. The things she says with Steph Tolev. Wow. They talk fast and low, but wow. I like her introducing me to her friends and family. I like Melissa Villaseñor now, Ivy Wolk. I publish things so I have a place to put thoughts about certain things, and I often don...

Madhabi Mukherjee I'm going to speak out of my ass. I'm watching  Charulata (1964), and they're discussing literature. Madhabi Mukherjee is so beautiful. I want a poster of her.  So I write a scene in my mind about the great American novel, and this guy and a girl flirting at the upper class party. Moby Dick is the best novel. No, Portrait of a Lady is. And then this borrish guy that spoils everything comes into the room and says, The Sound and the Fury.  "Nobody likes that crap." "I suppose you're an Edith Wharton fan!" You mean the best, sophisticated novel of the time. The Age of Innocence. It's a bad movie, made after an even worse novel. Madhabi Mukherjee

  Les Champs Elysées – Lyrics with English Translation Je m’baladais sur l’avenue le cœur ouvert à l’inconnu J’avais envie de dire bonjour à n’importe qui N’importe qui et ce fut toi, je t’ai dit n’importe quoi Il suffisait de te parler, pour t’apprivoiser I was walking on the avenue with my heart open to the stranger I wanted to say hello to anybody Anybody, and that was you; I said whatever to you All I had to do was speak to you to win you over (chorus) Aux Champs-Elysées, aux Champs-Elysées Au soleil, sous la pluie, à midi ou à minuit Il y a tout ce que vous voulez aux Champs-Elysées On the Champs-Elysées, on the Champs-Elysées In the sun, under the rain, at noon or at midnight You can find whatever you want on the Champs-Elysées Tu m’as dit j’ai rendez-vous dans un sous-sol avec des fous Qui vivent la guitare à la main, du soir au matin Alors je t’ai accompagnée, on a chanté, on a dansé Et l’on n’a même pas pensé à s’embrasser You told me: “I have a meeting in a basement (bar)...

  Rat (子时 - Zi) 11:00 PM - 1:00 AM 🐀 Ox (丑时 - Chou) 1:00 AM - 3:00 AM 🐂 Tiger (寅时 - Yin) 3:00 AM - 5:00 AM 🐅 Rabbit (卯时 - Mao) 5:00 AM - 7:00 AM 🐇 Dragon (辰时 - Chen) 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM 🐉 Snake (巳时 - Si) 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM 🐍 Horse (午时 - Wu) 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM 🐎 Goat (未时 - Wei) 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM 🐐 Monkey (申时 - Shen) 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM 🐒 Rooster (酉时 - You) 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM 🐓 Dog (戌时 - Xu) 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM 🐕 Pig (亥时 - Hai) 9:00 PM - 11:00 PM 🐖 [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]

You'd have to embrace the entitled chaos, writing about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Lear and Prospero of course have similarities, but I'm disinclined to collapse them into one, which Roger Lewis does in Erotic Vagrancy (2023). Reading about Rachel Roberts , a fellow Welsh actor, who would jack her dog off was pretty weird, but not in the book, it only referenced something weird she would do to dogs, and then you go read about it on Wikipedia. The people who are against Wikipedia have a negative thing in their entry and want it erased. I like this book because it discusses a lot of movies, and of course it's annoying to not have seen a movie. I've watched a lot of movies lately and I feel kind of at an end of having watched essential movies. I guess I need to drill down and watch all of Richard Burton and Liz Taylor, and maybe even Rachel Roberts. This book launches a few to be watched lists. I didn't know Roberts was in Murder On The Oriental Express . I d...

My edition has a sticker that it won the Man Booker Prize, and is among the best books of the 21st century according to the New York Times, and the claim that it was a #1 NYT best seller. And a quote from Golson Whitehead. And the horizon isn't just lighter, there's an orangish yellow. George Saunders is 67 year old, 9 years after publishing this book, which seems to be his only book that is not short stories. He was born in Amarillo Texas, and grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, Oak Forest. He got an MFA at Syracuse 1988, where he's a professor since 1997. In 1981, he received a B.S. in geophysical engineering from Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. "I really love Russian writers, especially from the 19th and early 20th Century: Gogol, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Babel. I love the way they take on the big topics. I'm also inspired by a certain absurdist comic tradition that would include influences like Mark Twain, Daniil Kharms, Groucho Marx, Monty Python, Steve ...

The Husbands by Holly Gramazio is the next book for the book club, that I can't seem to meet with. I've fallen asleep before the meetings the last two times.  It's speculative fiction where a woman comes home to a different husband. It could be horror because she's so scared at this alteration of reality, but it's more like Groundhog Day . Reality changes enough so that it makes sense, and she has a pictures of the surprise husband on her phone lock screen, and in her photos. There are changes, but not enough to be a completely different world. It becomes a mystery, who is my husband? It's a rorschach for who she wants to be. In the 3rd chapter we learn the mechanism, if he goes into the attic, a new guy comes down and the walls and whatnot change. Some are more handsome than others, one is naked, they have different accents. My first thought was of a German movie called  I’m Your Man (2021) (Ich bin dein Mensch). In that movie, a woman is given a companion an...

Why not title it the cruelty instead of unkindness ? It emphasizes the lack of virtue than the vice.  It's Afrofuturism, a plantation in a traveling spaceship. All the various problems are worse in poverty, and neurodivergence is one of them, avoiding gender issues by being a they, though others call Aster a she. Aster is a healer in the slave area of the ship.  Rivers Solomon has a few interesting changes in their looks: Notes: 27 pages a day until we meet for the book club.  I like it that Solomon has Keats' negative capability .  The mean guard imagines they should thank him for being such an asshole. It reminds me of a certain person who gets imaginary peace prizes and starts wars.  The sections have different narrators. I didn't make the book club, and I'm almost done, but I came across the sentence where she used the unkindness idea. My translation is, the unkindness of ghosts is that we're reactive, and have unhelpful traumatic reactions to situations i...

Siri Hustvedt is openly mourning the loss of Paul Auster on Facebook with photos of notes he wrote her, and photos of them when they were young.  In my early 20's friends visited my wife, and he had The New York Trilogy . I read it and loved it. Read his poems. Read almost everything he's published, not quite everything he edited. I saw him read one of his novels at a book reading. Watched movies he was involved in. Listened to his daughter's music. Read some of his wife's books. Read his wife's sister's book on hysteria. Read his last book.  Another one

Can't seem to power my way through Rob Burbea's Seeing That Frees . I like his insistence that sunyata is a vehicle for freedom, helps you to let go of negative fabrications. I'm reading it slowly. I'm still podding my way through Megha Majumdar's A Guardian And A Thief.  One bad thing after another, but it's also about triumph over all those problems, so far. I fear the ending. Mary Oliver's Devotions is something I occasionally pick up. Her neo-transcendentalism and love of nature is really grand. Lama Govinda's Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism.  He explains how it's quite impossible if you go deeper into it, to be Hindu and Buddhist because the worship is different. Sangharakshita also talked about Hindus who believe Buddhism is just an offshoot, not different. I'm not around that, so it seems far off to me, in time and place. The Gujarati women in my neighborhood don't come at me with that. Only a few speak English, they mostly keep to t...

I'm reading Mobius Book by Catherine Lacey, and I came across this word in the title, paraclete , and it means (in Christian theology) the Holy Spirit as advocate or counselor (John 14:16, 26). Wow, a new word.  Most of the time I read difficult stuff, but I can really flow over the words here without knowing I'm not skimming. I haven't enjoyed reading a book so much in quite a while.  I have a struggle with the second part where she's in the relationship with a dominating and controlling man, but actually it's not very long and she's back in her intimate loss mode, writing about loss in the age of Covid.  My one question is, if you break up with someone, does that entitle you to paint them negatively for a whole novel? Why not leave him sooner? Actually he left her, she didn't even leave him, so horrible, she spends a whole novel painting him as a subtle monster. Maybe she's just talking about the dynamic of growing up with an angry father, who mostly ...

Reading Megha Majumdar's A Guardian And A Thief  for a book club.  Why am I just noticing Calcutta is now spelled Kolkata? It was changed in 2001! I need like spelling updates on Bluesky, except Bluesky has only really existed for me November 2023.  My experience reading this book is one of horrified anxiety. What terrible thing is going to happen next? I hope to connect to my hope, that they will surmount these trials, but I'm not so sure. In a way it's perfectly set up to tug at my heartstrings. The father is off working in another land. The mother cares for a little girl and an elderly father in a starving Kolkata, where all ethics is out of the window as people steal food. There's a fragile preciousness as lots of things almost happen and the horrors build.  I don't like the title, it makes you focus on who the thief is, but that is the point of the book. Beautiful cover art. The first apocalypse novel I read was  Lucifer's Hammer . I remember thin...

  Taking another run at ancient Greek mythology. One person leads to another. Semele to Selenos to Ampelos to Ikarios to Ariadne. It's like Gravity's Rainbow with a new character introduce every page. Reading Athena now by O'Connor, like these graphic novels. Thinking about Athena by The Who, which isn't about Athena, it's about Theresa Russell. One of my foundational mythologies is The Razor's Edge (1994), not the book, the movie. My father says The Eternals (2021) isn't a good movie but Angelina Jolie is Athena, called Thena.  Links: TED ED on Prometheus by Iseult Gillespie.  Understanding Mythology with Joseph Campbell YouTube Books read: George O'Connor Dionysos

Instinctual subjective list: Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut New York Trilogy by Paul Auster Emma by Jane Austen Moby Dick by Herman Melville The Sellout by Paul Beatty Malloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett The Hobbit by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway Franny & Zooey by Jerome David Salinger One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte Middlemarch by George Eliot Parable of Talents by Octavia Butler Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosiński Mobius Book by Catherine Lacey

I'm listening to Mark Chernow's book about Twain . Clemens is idealistic and doesn't like racism until he goes to New York, and then he becomes an out of town rube from Hannibal Missouri, and racist. He rejects a religious life because they support slavery. He's a prankster, joker, comedian, story teller. He works as a printer, but he's fairly internerant. His brother found a slave on an island, and that is the basis for Jim in Huck Finn, the point of listening to this book is to give some background to understand a rereading that book.  Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in 1835. Samuel refused to go to school. His mother was the story teller and held the family's emotion. The family's fortunes would go up and down and at one point his mother had to cook for a family so the family could have housing. The father was a humorless judge, among other things. Clemens remembers one joke in his life with his father. His father got sick and died young. Should we see...

Introduction: Thomas Pynchon 's probable last novel drops October 7th, he's 88 for goodness sakes, and I've been trying to force myself to finish Gravity's Rainbow . I'm in the 500's of a 760 page novel for the longest times as I join 3 books clubs, and don't really follow through with most of the book. It's October now and there's not much time before the book comes out.  I'm on page 505 of Gravity's Rainbow on October 1st and I've got to read 43 pages a day, which sounds easy, but not with Pynchon when you're looking up everything. I've posted a lot about looking things up, but I can't do that down the home stretch. I can't write about what an ax bell is, a new discovery of something in the world I didn't know existed. That's what I like about Pynchon, he's always teaching me things. I will update this post as I get the book and read it.  There are just too many amazing quotations (p. 509 GR): "Tempor...