Jacob Stokes > Recent Status Updates

Read the introduction

We shall all of us die, so what’s a little trouble?
p.63

Any page now

And the most awful thing of all is that he sees how upset Mihail Mihailovich is about it, whereas he does not care at all. And it is awful to think why he doesn’t care. p.46

I think he’s going to die soon

Guys got a decent life I wonder how he’s gonna die

That’s my name!

“In the other bed by the door Jacob lay asleep, fast asleep, profoundly unconscious…The child’s bucket was half-full of rainwater; and the opal-shelled crab slowly circled round the bottom, trying with its weakly legs to climb the steep side; trying again and falling back, and trying again and again.”

pg10

But when you are dying, all will abandon you, all will turn away from you, for then there will be nothing to get from you. What’s more, they will reproach you for cumbering the place, for being so long over dying. However you beg you won’t get a drink of water without abuse: ‘Whenever are you going off, you nasty hussy, you won’t let us sleep with your moaning, you make the gentlemen sick.’

Almost done

Either to be a hero or to grovel in the mud—there was nothing between. That was my ruin, for when I was in the mud I comforted myself with the thought that at other times I was a hero, and the hero was a cloak for the mud: for an ordinary man it was shameful to defile himself, but a hero was too lofty to be utterly defiled, and so he might defile himself. p.53

Smetms the narrator reminds me of a John waters movie

This was a regular martyrdom, a continual, intolerable humiliation at the thought, which passed into an incessant and direct sensation, that I was mere fly in the eyes of all this world, a nasty, disgusting fly—more intelligent, more highly developed, more refined in feeling than any of them of course—but a fly that was continually making way for everyone, insulted and injured by everyone.

p.50

Chapter 8 to the end of part 1 was a really good read.

Good heavens, gentlemen, what sort of free will is left when we come to tabulation and arithmetic, when it will all be a case of twice two makes four? Twice two makes four without my will. As if free will meant that! p.32

And what is it that civilization softens in us? The only gain of civilization for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations—and absolutely nothing more. And through the development of this many-sidedness man may come to finding enjoyment in bloodshed…In any case civilization has made mankind if not more bloodthirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely bloodthirsty.

p.25

I picked up another very short book from the library today. I began reading it on the train to center city. I am going to see blue heron at the bourse. I choose short books to read because I do not yet have the power to read anything above 200 pages. This book is interesting so far, if not a little hard to understand. It is basically one man’s cerebral ravings on his own philosophy. Looking forward to more though!

In the car with my parents and grandma on our way to my sister's college graduation. It’s a 3 hour drive. 1.5 hours left. Book is almost done. Taking a quick cookie break. I really have to pee.

12:53am read a chapter or two before bed

He searched a drawer for some old school notebooks, a diary he had kept for years, certain letters. He was astonished he had written those things. He didn’t remember them at all; everything referred to strange, forgotten events. He sat at the piano, tried a chord, and lowered the cover on the keyboard. What now? he asked himself.

Waiting for Charlotte at the dentist. Chapter 15 was so good.

Knecht Cup Regatta

Waiting for Vyas

Perhaps everything is like this: We believe we’re in the midst of creatures that resemble us but there’s only icy cold, stones that speak a strange language. We’re about to greet a friend but our arms fall lifeless, our smile fades, because we realize we’re completely alone.

Still far away? No, you need only cross that river down below and pass beyond those green hills. Or have you, by chance, arrived already? Weren’t you searching for these trees, these fields, this white house? For several moments you feel the answer is yes and you’d like to stop here then you hear the best is yet to come when you resume the journey, unfaltering.

pgs. 37-38 first time I’ve ever been moved by lit

Today I walked to the library to pick up my reservation of this book. Then I walked to my house to put it away. Then I walked to the gym to exercise. Then I walked back to my house to shower and eat. Then unfortunately I had to drive 10 minutes to the train station because I was running late. Then I got on the train and started reading. I am quite enchanted.

What a joy it is to walk and train and read