Some things never change; or, Why Milton still matters today.

“There are some irrational bigots who, by a perversion of justice, condemn anything they consider inconsistent with conventional beliefs & give it an invidious title – ‘heretic’ or ‘heresy’…To their way of thinking, by branding anyone out of hand with this hateful name, they silence him with one word & need take no further trouble.” - John Milton, de doctrina Christiana

Yesterday morning I opened my book and these were the first words that greeted my eyes. Only a few seconds ago had I finished reading the news, and looking at peoples’ tweets: people were abuzz about the same thing. Salman Rushdie wasn’t going to be attending the Jaipur Lit. Fest (happening now), and worse, he had been persuaded to not go by the fact that (allegedly) there would be assassination attempts on his life.

Given the sheer irritation that probably affects any (even semi-?) rational person when confronted with news like this, it was nice to open my book and find my irritation echoed by Milton, and to realise that things like this are nothing new; Milton wrote the above words in the 17th century. It’s possible – no, necessary – to question the linear idea of ‘progress’ that we are so self-congratulatory about every now and then. It’s equally necessary to question the labels societies apply to themselves and the ideals they allegedly defend: are so-called ‘secular societies’ really that? Is free speech really universally and indiscriminatingly allowed? (Easy answers, I guess, but at least let’s stop stuffing ourselves with false rhetoric when we want ego- & morale-boosts in the media or in conversations.)

I’m really enjoying my class on secularism this term, and have been thinking a lot about religion and the way its rhetoric creeps repeatedly into our daily lives and allegedly religion-free, secular politics (this is as true of India as of the United States, really, every time I look at someone running for the Republican candidacy…..). I’m coming increasingly to feel that it isn’t enough for countries to valorize their secular politics (or even take it for granted) when all it seemingly does is function as some sort of political shell, one still repeatedly susceptible to the demands of religious factions and ideologies. The divorce is really not that simple (or effective). But what do I know……these is jes’ thoughts.

*  *  *  *  *

On a happier note, I like libraries.

I discovered a beautiful website recently – http://bookshelfporn.com/ . It is full of the most awe-inspiring bookshelf photos, and inspired – I tried to emulate its pictures a bit myself. A website any bibliophile must visit!!

 

Amartya Sen & the Indian media.

I came across this Op-Ed in The Hindu today, by Amartya Sen (Nobel Prize for Economics etc., list of accolades so long they take up a good sixth of his Wikipedia page, etc.) on the Indian media.

So many things to be said about it: what an enjoyable read it is, because he states his points so precisely, so clearly and so lucidly – something that I feel very few people do these days. Either they get bogged down in technicalities incomprehensible to the poor layman, or they make criss-crossing never-ending train tracks of their sentences. (O! The hypocrisy, I hear you cry. Yes, well. I ain’t writing for no big newspaper!)

It is one of those rare articles which not only highlights some very real problems with the Indian media (kindly, gently) even as it actually attempts to offer some suggestions for corrective. The Indian media is a critique extraordinaire – it rages, raves and incessantly accuses, but as I have always held and believed, thousands of rants later  the subjects become immune to criticism, it rolls off their backs like water off a duck’s. And then there is the perennial defense: You don’t understand the practicalities of the situation; we are doing the best we can under the circumstances. What is so wonderful about this article is that it makes some headway in resisting such defenses: I understand the practicalities of your situation, but here are a couple of things you could and should do, for the reasons outlined above. It is actually a critique which incites action, as opposed to taking a public blow at something wrong. I think this is perhaps an exemplar in itself for the Indian media: take notes, take notes. (I understand by & large this will have no place for the wider reporting of news, the purpose of which is – allegedly – just to convey what happens. But Op-Eds and analyses pepper the pages of the Indian news, and so perhaps it would behove them more to rope in experts from different fields to offer a more proactive type of criticism. As The Hindu has done!)

And then of course there are the critiques themselves, especially about the media’s complicity with class divisions and bias. I cannot say anymore on this, except how much I agree with him, and how much I hope the media is actually taking his words to heart. A few choice quotes from the article here, for those who won’t sift through it:

 There tends to be fulsome coverage in the news media of the lifestyles of the fortunate, and little notice of the concerns of the less fortunate.

…..

The problem here does not, of course, originate in the media, for it is social division that feeds this bias in coverage. But the media can play a more constructive part in keeping the reality of India persistently in the view of the public. The bias in coverage, even though it is by no means unpleasant to the reader, contributes quite heavily to the political apathy about the urgency of remedying the extreme deprivation of the Indian underprivileged.

With a voting percentage of under 50% in the most recent last elections (I think?), and a famously low voter turn-out from people in urban locations and the educated middle/upper classes, there can be no question of some degree of apathy in terms of political action. There is too much armchair criticism and too little active political engagement, even through something so simple as voting! (Well, I say simple – Indian bureaucracy might be enough to scare anybody.) It might sound ironic to call Indians apathetic, given the whole Anna Hazare business: but would it not do as much, if not more, good to vote the right people into office, as to starve and protest on the streets?

Rambling on!

Sometimes I wake up briefly at early hours of the morning (6/7 am) and look out of my window (I sleep with my curtains open expressly to do this). And then I see beautiful things, and if I have presence of mind enough, I photograph them. This is sunrise in KL.

Today I am leaving city skyline views for mustyfusty……

View from the library!

….LIBRARIES! And library-views, of course.

Leaving is always weird. I’ve done it so many times now you’d think I’m alright with the whole business – and I am, by & large, but – I miss home intensely at the same time I’m desperate to be back! Last night I was struck by a desperate urge to run to Dutamas and flop down their with shisha (because it is the most chilled out, laid back thing/place ever?!). But of course I had to pack. In the UK, pubs will replace mamaks.

But – ONWARDS HO! I have done NO WORK these holidays, I am going back obscenely late (I know the libraries will be missing me) and I need to start work ASAP!!! Ahharhghg!! I know holidays are for chilling, and I have, so I’m very grateful… but I still feel guilty!

*   *   *   *   *

I am going back late because driving tests in Malaysia are only administered on Mondays, and I was desperate to take mine. KL is a city which was not built (with any conceivable plan, it’s true, but also) for walking. To get from Point A to Point B can be the most painful experience ever for the transportationally-challenged, because it would be too long and dangerous a distance to walk but too embarrassingly short a distance to take a cab, etc etc. I haven’t seen buses in a long time (although I am assured they exist). Miles asked me if there were buses to my area, and I didn’t know what to say: I don’t think so? I’ve never seen any? And he didn’t understand it either, which explains the unique conundrum that one finds oneself in.

Having attempted to take it in September, and failing because my front wheels didn’t touch a yellow line of some sort (bah), I felt I had to get it yesterday! Otherwise I knew my driving plans would be shelved forever (I can’t conceive bothering to drive in the UK, at present anyways – who would give me a car?!).

My driving school is most wonderful an encapsulation of Malaysia and Malaysian life. The place I had to sit waiting in was next to a miniature city-jungle of sorts, hastily fenced off from civilization/the driving school – but the smells of the forest still wafted over. It reminded me of Duke of Edinburgh trips to Belum, and school trips to FRIM.

There was also the most wonderful little old man who would “look after” the test-takers and send them to their first test (the hill-test). He was tiny, and shouted perpetually at the candidates (only ever in Malay, so I didn’t understand much); although he was mostly only shouting numbers, sometimes his face would crinkle up into a mesmerizing mixture of malevolence/benevolence, and he would lean forward and utter (shout) words like “TAI-TAI!!!” confidentially. (I am VERY eager to know what “Tai tai”, phonetically rendered here, could possibly mean. If you know: get in touch.)

His other job, besides seeing that candidates kept going to the cars as they were available, was to bring back the cars of failed candidates (stopped unceremoniously then and there, upon committing the fallacy) to the next candidate. It was the smallest distance imaginable; about a 15 second drive at a slow speed. He would drive it at insane speeds (60? 80?), and take sharp turns at insane speeds also – the tyres would scream, the small Kancil would look as if it were either about to turn over or be driven on two wheels only. This scandalized all the test-takers, who would gasp, whimper, or shriek, according to their diverse temperaments. Some would hiss, “Aiyohhh!!” – the traditional Malaysian/Singaporean exclamation of dismay, despair and disapproval (“Oh no!” would be a reductive but appropriate translation). Others nudged each other, and condemned the little old man roundly: “REMPITNYAAA!!”

It made me laugh A LOT.

(It would be difficult to translate ‘Rempit’ also: I am assuming that it is shorthand for ‘Mat Rempit’, which – though it originally meant a very particular brand of streetracing motorbikers – has, I think, become shorthand for any kind of dangerous street-driving. See ‘Mat Rempit‘, an article as amusing as my little old man and his scandalized audiences.)

Edit: My friend Sara has clarified one thing “Tai tai” means (in Mandarin, I think): ”a lady who enjoys life, one who marries a rich husband, dresses well, only goes shopping at Gucci/Prada, does nothing but that” (Sara). It seems a bit out of place in the context of a driving test, but I wouldn’t be surprised…maybe knowing how to drive makes it easier to be the aforementioned ‘tai tai’? Or maybe no ‘tai tai’ would ever drive (because they would have chauffeurs, of course!), so he was congratulating us on not being one? Your guess is as good as mine!

Books reviews for winter.

I’ve been reading into the early morning recently, because I have all these books around me which are  so gripping and beautiful. I’ve finished about three over the past week, and I guess these constitute my “winter reads” this year. A quick little note here about all three – none of these authors, nor at least two of these books, need any introduction. They are classics: most beloved bookshelves will have carried them for many years, and loving fingers would have thumbed them many times. It would thus be presumptuous of me to ‘review’ them, and I couldn’t do them justice – this post rather serves as a reminder, mostly to myself, of things that were especially exciting about them. So here goes!

Mmm.. classical Penguin edition. I could eat it, it's so gorgeous!

Gabriel Marquez Garcia, Love in the Time of Cholera.

I’d heard so much about this book and Garcia that I’d been desperate to read him for a long time: the two books which kept thrusting themselves into my attention were this, and A Hundred Years of Solitude (I still haven’t read that). It is a beautiful book; it is engaging, interesting, and made me smile many, many times – he writes with a successful and wry sort of humour, which not many people do well. It is one of those finely crafted works, certain parts of which will stick in the brain and the soul and haunt one forever – certain turns of phrase, certain aphorisms (and Garcia does like these). A previous post of mine contains one of these beautiful moments.

This is more a story of characters than a story of ‘plot’, I guess – Garcia hollows out vast glittering caves behind his figures, exploring the recesses of their pasts, memories, thoughts & actions with great dexterity. I guess this isn’t a book for those who’re looking for action/adventure, but it is a sweet & sad  love story which manages to dispense entirely with clichés (as indeed, finally, does Florentino Ariza).

That’s probably all the ‘review’ I can give of its worth – for the rest of it, Garcia’s Nobel Prize in literature, his and specifically this novel’s place in the pantheon of classics, and the way a seemingly large portion of the English-reading world rave about his writing, must do.

It should be read.

Jean Rhys, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie.

This is probably the least well-known book out of all the three in my list, because Rhys is seemingly inseparable from her status as the Godmother of Postcolonial Lit., author of Wide Sargasso Sea. Her early novels are astonishingly and tragically ignored by the majority.

This is a great shame, because they present quite different issues to the ones people have gotten used to reading into her ‘work’ (and by ‘work’ they mean Wide Sargasso Sea…) – and I think it’s also important not to pigeonhole (anybody, and here specifically) Rhys as a ‘postcolonial author’ or any work as stringently ‘postcolonial’. I find this sort of stringent reading/labelling and application of a critical paradigm disturbing for a number of reasons, the main one being that (I feel) it’s very reductive of the work/author. But stick to these paradigms people do, and so it’s worth casting up Rhys’s early novels as works that don’t necessarily or specifically deal with everybody’s poco favourite, Otherness, and also as works that present a pretty and tragic snapshot of places (specifically Paris) and people (specifically women).

Anybody dreaming, like Woody Allen’s Gil Pender, of Paris in its bohemian heyday will love Rhys’s work: Paris is an ethereal universe of cafés and fines, lonely whiskies consumed throughout the day and dream-like streets seen through bar windows at night. It is also a cruel Paris; one which watches its desperate women ceaselessly, as they go around from man to man in order to earn the financial pittance they need.

It’s not the nicest of her early novels – it isn’t half as shocking as Quartet in its cruelty, or half as subtle as Good Morning, Midnight - but it is nonetheless in the same vein as the others. It is certainly (I think?) as pessimistic. It’s well worth a read, and does immense amounts in opening up other, overshadowed aspects of Rhys’s writings to the postcolonially-fatigued reader.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles.

I have NOTHING to say about this that ain’t done gone been said already, BUT, I can and will say this. I am having a Sherlock Holmes reading frenzy at the moment. It is taking me away from the work I should be doing and the life I should be living. But it’s damned good, so I can’t complain. This one especially – quel twists and turns!

When I was very young and maybe about 7 or 8 years old, I was given a little book of Sherlock Holmes stories, abridged. I read one called ‘The Speckled Band’ or something, and couldn’t sleep for a week. I was terrified. I have never read Sherlock Holmes since, so this is actually a big moment for me! And I’m sorry to have missed out on it all these years (though I kept myself well-occupied with Poirot and all).

This Sherlock Holmes reading frenzy has been inspired by the real point of this really needless review –  the TV series Sherlock is back on! I wasn’t half as sold on it as Miles & co. when it first came out, but having seen last Sunday’s episode (‘A Scandal in Belgravia’), and reading the actual novels now, I realise how amazingly clever the modernizing of the stories has been, and actually how damned intriguing and fun it all is too. This Sunday’s episode will be an adaptation of…*drumroll*…The Hound of the Baskervilles! And I am now well-prepared. I was also pretty taken with the recent Guy Ritchie movie, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows – it was a really fun movie, just the sort one wants to see  with a MASSIVE pile of popcorn, a Diet Coke and a friend, late at night.

And Robert Downey Jr. and Benedict Cumberbatch are both ridiculously attractive, so if there’s a time to (re?)read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, NOW IS IT: one’s visualisations are really much improved by the prevalence of celebrity-eye-candy-pretending-to-be-Holmes around. I dream happy, these days. No woman or man should be deprived of these dreams.

I'd hound YOUR 'baskerville(s)' ANY DAY. Sigh.

 

The last day of 2011.

The last day of 2011 was a beautiful day: the skies were finally blue, the sun was shining through the city – rendering it unbearably hot sometimes, but beautiful – and the whole town was relaxed but buzzing with excitement at the same time; everyone looking forward to evening when the sky would be all lit up. I met up with some old school friends: 4 years and not too much has changed. Nice to be able to relax and just sink back into the chair; not having to worry about what to say next, whether one said or did the right thing – I found myself too worried about all that over the past term in Ox.

I looked out of my window at six pm and saw the Petronas Twin Towers reflecting off the most beautiful, golden sunset I’d seen since coming home. It was a good colour-filter to lay over the memories of the year: golden, shiny and bright! (My life is so consumed by photograph-editing software – AS BELOW – this seems an appropriate metaphor for me.)

ITunes’ Christmas app – 12 days of Christmas, where they give away some secret thing for free each day – gave away an amazing photo editing software yesterday, which makes a nice alternative to instagram. So here’s one from there!

Love in the Time of Cholera. (A moment.)

“Despite the perpetual rain, the sordid merchants, and the Homeric vulgarity of its carriage drivers, she would always remember Paris as the most beautiful city in the world, not because of what it was or was not in reality, but because it was linked to the memory of her happiest years.” - Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Marquez Garcia

I’m reading (continuing from three months ago, because ‘reading for pleasure without needing to write an essay’ is unthinkable while at uni) this right now, and I came across this passage which is breathtaking in its beauty and truth. A case of someone else setting down what I’ve always felt and never said (c/f Alan Bennett!).

It always amazes me how much places become infused with the memories of certain experiences or people (and I guess obliquely, people are experiences). I don’t think I could ever conceive of Oxford or London without certain people; London would be much sadder and without half its excitement/charms for me without Someone, for example. Paris – which is, for me also, the most beautiful city in the world! (although I didn’t encounter the ‘Homeric vulgarity’ of any carriage drivers….what is  Homeric vulgarity?) - is so linked to memories of experiencing winter and Christmas in all their European glory: vin chaud from outside St.-Pierre-de-Montmartre; chocolat chaud; crepes in Montmartre and the Quartier Latin; the Christmas market along the Champs-Élysées!

The Seine.

One lives out one’s life in emotionally distorted spaces: every walk along the Thames or every step in the Tate Modern becomes value-laden, feeling-laden – it constantly gestures back to another time and another feeling. The problem arises in time, because people fade in and out of one’s life and places do not (although there is the transience of rooms and homes, which is another matter entirely – I guess I’m thinking only about cities here). I suppose when that day comes traversing along streets of happy memories will be the saddest thing of all.

Until then though – there is little or no seeing places for what they are in ‘reality’, as Garcia writes; the only reality they have is one which is redolent of anticipations and fears, filtered through desires or one’s particular and momentary mood on a day.

This is also wonderful and not all sad, in its own way: stories lie over cities for me like palimpsests; London is never just my London but has traces of Dickens’s London, and Austen’s; Naipaul’s and Virginia Woolf’s.  Paris is never just my Paris but Djuna Barnes’s and Jean Rhys’s; Choderlos de Laclos’s, Flaubert’s. I cannot dream of New York divorced from Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, or Dos Passos’s Manhattan Transfer. Places become soaked in the memories of books too, and while I may romanticize this excessively, it definitely adds infinite amounts to their beauty and charm for me.

Parisian streets.

Edit: Oh golly! And merry Christmas everybody! That was a bit of a downer note to end a Christmas post on, now I think of it….!

Kim Jong-Il. In memoriam & some poor comfort.

The death of Kim Jong-Il (the last and grandest of that triad of losses, following Vaclav Havel and Christopher Hitchens) was a great loss to the Internet, whatever else may be said about it. For no more, as so many people aptly noted on Facebook, will Kim Jong-Il look at things. His sweet eyes have closed forever.

On the day the news of his demise broke - aptly looking at a wreath.

 

But the Internet being so vast, so reproductive and so accommodating of everything – from natural disaster to death – I wanted to make this quick post to comfort the many who might be mourning. Images of Kim Jong-Il live on, for your pleasure and mine. Not only will he continue looking at things, even post-mortem, but he will also be dropping the bass (a wonderful Tumblr, testimony to the incomparable powers of Photoshop when used right and well). Likewise, he has left this world and Internet (and poor North Korea) a predecessor, who shows great promise to be as great an onlooker as his dear father/leader was – this has not gone unnoticed, and a few preliminary images of Kim Jong-Un looking at things have begun sprouting. Hungry generations tread thee and thy looks down, dear Kim Jong-Il.

Boardwalk Empire: A paean

I just finished watching the second season of Boardwalk Empire, which means that the rest of my holidays are going to feel strangely, sadly empty and devoid of television. I don’t watch many TV shows (which makes me an inexperienced commentator, I guess), and there is absolutely no question of returning to Gossip Girl which, though always enjoyably and gloriously stupid, has surpassed even itself in recent seasons (or so Wiki-ing the synopsis indicates).

Though Boardwalk Empire has been (wrongly, unfairly!) likened to a “beautifully tailored empty suit” by a few dissenting voices, I think it’s gorgeous. Beautiful cinematography (the colours – sets and costumes – are stunning!), lovely atmospheric soundtrack, historical accuracy with an almost pathological attention to minute historical details… what ain’t to love? The Prohibition era was one of the most interesting periods of American history, flung into the melting-pot of burgeoning modernity and whatnot. (I’m reading about secularization right now, and while I don’t understand much… the writer talks about how some theories of secularization suggest that with secularization comes the privatization and marginalisation of religion, especially in the face of scientific post?/modernity – and yet the Prohibition is very, very much a manifestation of religion actually entering, affecting, transforming the public and allegedly totally ‘secular’ sphere in a radical way. As indeed are things like Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin, I guess…)

I started watching Boardwalk Empire while writing my essay on 1920s/30s Parisian film and literature, and while European avant-garde BE’s Atlantic City ain’t, the general cultural shifts brought on by modernity seem by and large the same – particularly in terms of gender relations. Of course BE depicts the rabid misogyny that was so much a structural aspect of its era, but I find it fascinating how it also shows the sheer dynamism of different types of women, how they each react to their restricted (or not) circumstances and carve out (or not) an autonomy for themselves within their domestic spaces etc. Some women fail miserably at escaping the domestic space even as they challenge the heterosexual structuring of that space (Jimmy’s wife); some are caught between church and illegal brewery (as exciting a binary as any), running from religion and unable to escape. Etc etc. It’s a historical snapshot that seems aware of the issues it inevitably raises with that historicity, but it takes (some) time and trouble to explore them. Some of the possible things one could read into it – questions and doubts about faith, whether faith is a positive influence or not – are (I feel) still relevant and interesting things to think about. (Is Nucky’s absolute lack of it, in any religious or non-religious sense, meant to suggest that faithlessness is sociopathic? Does religious faith do some basic paradigmatic thing right, if not in any actual doctrinal sense – where it seems to be inversely evil, almost, à la van Alden.)

But these are only retrospective thoughts; readings and projections, not – I think – any grand intentional social/theological critique or debate on the behalf of the writers and directors. Although I have noticed a lot of Scorsese films play on the same themes of faith/no faith, good/evil (and the sheer difficulty, if not downright impossibility, of this binary); maybe he set the tone for the series with his pilot episode? The best thing about Boardwalk Empire really is the fact that it’s a cracking story – one which sometimes makes Nucky-like sociopaths out of us all in our ability to approve of, if not enjoy, peoples’ heads being blown off with Tommy guns – which presents an indelible feast for the eyes. Atmosphere is everything; one should never underestimate how many nostalgic fantasies people can harbour – television, films and books are all such people can turn to. I’m certainly – maybe unfortunately, because Midnight in Paris was really quite bad – of the Scorsese/Woody Allen school of living in the past a little bit.

I am dreaming of….

Title-page of Henri Matisse’s Jazz. 

I found this in the library one day when I was expressly doing something else. But because I was (as always) dreaming of & in jazz, I decided to flip through this book on the shelves and because it was Matisse, and breathtaking, I took photographs too.

Jazz is, according to this essay/article on it (by Greg Kucera), the product of insomnia, and artificial lights; the child of a music-hall meets circus aesthetic. I think that’s apt enough: jazz is a nighttime madness, dogged by the stars and yellow lightbulbs. Colours that pop in one’s eyes because they’re caught in the headlights.

All pictures the product of Instagram, libraries and my procrastinating skills.

And just to finish this little word/photo vomit ramble up – if you didn’t believe that jazz belongs in the province of twilight/dark skies/faces lit up by cigarette ends, I give you – Glenn Miller & His Orchestra: Song of the Volga Boatmen.

books & musicks

Reality trying to mirror fiction (or front book-covers, anyways) as closely as possible.

A few days ago (though it feels like light years and lifetimes) I was sat in the college library – which smelled of dead rat, one (or some) of which was presumably beneath the floorboards… – and frantically hashing out an essay on Djuna Barnes, Jean Rhys, and ‘cinematic bodies’. Don’t ask me what that latter is, because I just don’t know!

But feelings of exaltation, desperation, pessimism and general agony all aside, I came across a couple of songs which really should go onto any soundtrack built to accompany the reading of Jean Rhys’s early fiction – all novels or short stories about sad and desperate women, seeking solace in drink & loving Paris but desperate to look right (think size 0 culture is bad? Imagine living in cosmetics heyday…)

Compliments of my iTunes on shuffle, I give you two particularly relevant songs (or two nice atmospheric songs with relevant lines which really make sense and seem poignant and heartrending/lifechanging after 12 hours in the library aka ‘ratland’):

1. Dance Anthem of the 80s – Regina Spektor. Note particular aptness of those climactic lines towards the end: “I went walking through the city, like a drunk but not, with my slip / showin’ a little, like a drunk but not, and I am / one of your people, but the cars don’t stop…”

2. Chelsea Hotel no.2 – Leonard Cohen. Just because it’s sad and about hotels, and all of Rhys’s heroines live out their sad lives in dingy little hotel rooms (which almost, in the final analysis, seem kinder than the world outside!). This could be the bathetic end to one of those novels.

 

I wish I had the patience to trawl through the worrrl’ wide web and/or my iTunes (which is quite big, insolent though it is to use ‘and/or’) and find more songs so I could build a decent ‘OST’ to the (cinematic ho ho!) reading experience that is reading Rhys. Unfortunately I don’t.

But I will leave everyone with these beautiful lines from Barnes’s Nightwood anyhows; that book confused me a whole lot, but moments like this one pop out at you and make you sad and exalted and astounded all at once.

“as a lover we are beginning to forget dwindles and wastes; for love and life are a bulk of which the body and heart can be drained…”  (Nightwood)