Shayda > Recent Status Updates

Chatty in style. Draycott is interested in surviving works that MAY represent Cleopatra Selene and/or her parents. Without a positive identification, these works can only ever be suggestive. Still, I'll always go for the photo insert of artifacts.

Someone or something is called idiotic every few pages....

Tales of survival. Geiger doesn't quite have the philosophical bent of a Krakauer or Junger in treating this kind of material, and I sense that at times Geiger is a bit too accepting of lone survivor accounts, without really interrogating bias or context in the source material.

Reading the essays out of order. There's a fairly strong "me in my aloneness" strand in all the essays I've read so far.

Ivan Fyodorovich hallucinates the devil: " 'Judging by the enthusiasm with which you deny me,' the gentleman laughed, 'I'm convinced that you do believe in me all the same.' "

The elder Zosima recalls a discussion with the philanthropist: " ...the period of human /isolation/ must conclude. ...For everyone now strives most of all to separate his person, wishing to experience the fullness of life within himself, and yet what comes of all his efforts is not the fullness of life but full suicide, for instead of the fullness of self-definition, they fall into complete isolation."

Ivan is sharing his fable of Christ imprisoned by the 16th-c Inquisitor: "But he alone can take over the freedom of men who appeases their conscience. ...For the mystery of man's being is not only in living, but in what one lives for. Without a firm idea of what he lives for, man will not consent to live and will sooner destroy himself than remain on earth, even if there is bread all around him."

"I was crying because of the bracelet, not because I was scared," I said.

Darrow can't stop trying to have private interviews.

...expect rough Seas, Flaws, and contrary Blasts, and ''tis well if by many cross Tacks and Veerings you arrive at the Port; for we sleep in Lyons Skins in our Progress unto Virtue, and we slide not, but climb unto it.

...expect rough Seas, Flaws, and contrary Blasts, and ''tis well if by many cross Tacks and Veerings you arrive at the Port; for we sleep in Lyons Skins in our Progress unto Virtue, and we slide not, but climb unto it.

Schiff's style is both lively and information-rich - not an easy pairing.

"And vanity, what is it but the eagerness for survival?"

Coetzee works very hard to make Costello seem dated, even ridiculous - emphasizing her age, her son's embarrassment, her lack of conviction, or rather her conviction that a lack of conviction is the author's role. Why?

I've been on-board through several selections, but now I really wonder whether it would occur to a female writer to write worshipfully about breasts like this. Cf. John Steinbeck. Caritas=breastfeeding.

Thing culture rather than commodity culture.

The femmebot Iolanthe-copy continues to be creepy. Spin about, wooden doll!