Key > Recent Status Updates

“The morning weighs on my shoulders with the dreadful weight of hope”. Why is hope dreadful? I agree…

“The journey to the grave is already begun, the journey to corruption is, always, already, half over. Yet, the key to salvation, which cannot save my body, is hidden in my flesh.”

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. I long to make this project come true.
I long to crack that mirror and be free. I look at my seed, my troubling seed, and wonder how it can be redeemed, how I can save it from the knife.” (Cont’d)

“The body in the mirror forces me to turn and face it. And I look at my body, which is under sentence of death. It is lean, hard, and cold, the incarnation of a mystery. And I do not know what moves in this body, what this body is searching. It is trapped in my mirror as it is trapped in time and it hurries toward revelation.” (Cont’d)

“ ‘Don’t you see how unjust it was to wait for me to find out? To put all the burden on me? I had the right to expect to hear from you—women are always waiting for the man to speak. Or haven’t you heard?…I’d be home by now, dancing with some man who wanted to make me. And I’d let him make me, why not?’
‘Perhaps..I only knew I had to get out of Giovanni’s room.’ “

Does lying to yourself (David lying to himself) absolve his lying to Hella? The way he treated her?

“ ‘If I stay here much longer,…I’ll forget what it’s like to be a woman…there are women who have forgotten that to be a woman doesn’t simply mean humiliation, doesn’t simply mean bitterness. I haven’t forgotten it yet,…in spite of you. I’m not going to forget it.’ “ UGH

“ ‘David, please let me be a woman. I don’t care what you do to me. I don’t care what it costs. I’ll wear my hair long, I’ll give up cigarettes, I’ll throw away the books.’ … ‘Don’t throw me back into the sea, David…’ THIS may be what infuriated me about this book. This woman relying on this dishonest man to make her a caricature, pleasing with him as he has already given up his charade

“ ‘How do you know I’m what you see?’ …
’Because…I love you.’ …
‘Ah! I loved Giovanni—‘
‘Not as I love you’ “

How have David’s fears changed since the beginning of the novel? It’s gone from shame to a fear of love.
What kind of choices do the characters believe they have? To live within or outside of the confines of man versus women versus other.

“Ages ago, in another city, on another bus, I sat so at the windows, looking outward, inventing for each flying face which trapped my brief attention some life, some destiny, in which I played a part. I was looking for some whisper, or promise, of my possible salvation. But it seemed to me that morning that my ancient self had been dreaming the most dangerous dream of all.” To be saved? To live? To open up?

“But you can make your time together anything but dirty; you can give each other something which will make both of you better–forever–if you will not be ashamed, if you will not play it safe... you play it safe long enough… And you’ll end up, trapped in your own dirty body, forever and forever and forever…Not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished…for the lack of it.”-Jacques

“Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?…If you think of [your time together as] dirty, then [it] will be dirty…because you will be giving nothing, you will be despising your flesh and his.” (Cont’d)

I think I’m remembering why I disliked this book-the narrator is pompous yet shameful and cowardly. Odd combination that makes me wish he died rather than Giovanni, who already seems innocent. The way the chronology of the book dances between his memory and the present tense is intriguing, though.

“Their decisions are not really decisions at all–a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named–but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not.”

“People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. (Cont’d)

Still don’t know why I’m reading this book, but only have 40 pages left so I must. Finish.

TLDR (but please read): psychosis makes sense

I guess why it is that I don’t like the book, is the author’s writing, as well as the main characters personalities. I can’t relate, and don’t feel connected to their stories. Why am I reading this? At this point, it’s to prove to myself I can finish something I don’t want to finish…

Finally she becomes disillusioned when faced with her uncle’s extreme wealth: “Then I discovered that Nhamo had not been lying. Babamukuru was indeed a man of consequence…Nhamo’s chorus sang in my head and now it sounded ominous…that my Babamukuru was wealthier than I had thought possible…. Having done it, what had he become? A deep valley cracked open…I felt separated forever from my uncle.” (99)

Still bored. Do I keep going?

So good! Learning about primary and secondary thought processing (Freud), and this Lacan dude I’ve not come across before—explains/details and examines what I saw and imagined Camryn going through during the first episode, and what has remained and even prevailed afterwards

Still undecided

I need to look up this Lacan guy.

Bored so far. Not sure I’m interested in women’s educational empowerment and defying gender roles right now, as words and backwards as that sounds…I’m trying to relate and I don’t think I can relate to the main character