Bed-Witch > Recent Status Updates

I read 'Sons and Lovers' as a teenager, which put me off trying any of D H Lawrence's other work - and yet I currently find myself in a state of rapturous gluttony, my eyes half rolled back into my mind in mental pleasure as I read his poems about barbed and crowned green globes and their jewelled fissures, or voluptuous velvet peaches, and waiting, waiting for the snake. Aside from the saints - I am wave-thrilled.

I have been averaging about 2 days in a month where the fog lifts it's heavy skirts from over my cells so I can sit listening to the squabbling clicks of wattlebirds above a high tide on the breeze; and for the most part, become lost in Oliver. So much of her poetry reminds me of the moments I turn into my own. Only her faith breaks my experience of her magic.

Excuse me!? Melville, if you can snipe me with a rolicking tale of mutinous activity, - and enthrall me with piratesque turns of phrase and concepts like being stung in the ventricles of the heart - why could I not get past the first chapter of Moby Dick ... 3 SEPERATE TIMES!? How dare this short tale I just read be lifted from the very same book. You arse. I'm going to have to retry the white whale and I'm mad!

Crip-time metaphor explored. A reverse Addie Leroux, a quiet and less eye-in-the-sky Memory Police. I like how the questioning is a creeping soft discordance - it reminds me of how it feels to be unwell for a long time. What you notice and remember changes, and it doesn't always sharpen your attention. What is time anyway... Is it time changing or unchanging? Or Tara? or Thomas? The read changes each way.

The argument re the social authority of science versus the traditional authority of science and its connection to Disavowal is an enjoyable read. So too is the connection between the social authority of wealth and Disavowal. I mean I didn't need this to have understood that 'ugh capitalism' has a large role to play (not the only point, a point Zupančič covers) - but I am finding it all pretty interesting.

I'm still reading, but in just two arguments Zupančič has made sense of things I've puzzled over for years by interrogating what I'd always assumed was obvious. Apparently, the obvious was the blind spot. (Revolutionary, I know.) It's like being slapped by your own stupidity while it's wearing your own gloves.

Žižec makes me laugh and think. I like it.

I think maybe 'Witty' just feels intuitive to me...
Dynamic language-games and constantly renegotiated contracts are elements of everyday life and survival from a queer, disabled lens. The idea that meaning isn't fixed, but emerges through the use of language and lived context as a dynamic praxis, just makes sense to me so far.

There are reasons to question publishing ethics and reasons to put such questions aside here. The posthumous publishing arena is grotty with the murk of debate around this book. Hard to tell here. But it feels necessary reading after Didion and Babitz was published (I really hated that book), and after reading Janet Malcolm. Also I now understand why Anolik was not given much access to Didion's material.

A few years ago I read some of Act I, and have returned to it in errant fashion.
Calling anyone a two legged wine skin should be revisited in popular culture; 'paper-ghosts of gold also.
Who decided we should shorten language so much?

I was going to wait and read this after all the books I’m popping in and out of right now, but I can’t - it’s too absorbing.

Sometimes I start at the beginning of a book and find myself balking through my current levels of exhaustion at the prospect of sequential reading. Sometimes I test the waters of a books worth by picking up a few pages in the centre to see if I’m interested still. In this case, I’ve had the book for over a year and 10 pages in the centre have me baked right in. Back to the beginning we go!

So I’m not actually a fan of romance or romantacy, (read heaps b4 deciding) so I haven’t read Leigh Bardugo before. I picked this up at my local bookstore because it built depth in layers of narrative which reminded me a little of Allende’s Eva Luna and of the flavour of Mexico. Also I crave more standalone fantasy. Let’s see - it’s got punishing reviews by romantacy nuts.