Fred Jenkins > Recent Status Updates

"It was raining in the quadrangle, and the quadrangular sky looked like the grimace of a robot or a god made in our own likeness."

A great description, with Bolaño channelling Xenophanes of Kolophon.

Finished the Second Punic War and gone East.

"I am my own ghost."

The night is the color of the eyelids of the dead.

"I don't see why one should go on with something if one begins to ask oneself well, what for?"

This was the first and only defeat which the Romans suffered at sea during the war. Claudius was recalled and condemned to pay a heavy fine. The pious attributed his defeat to his insistence on fighting when the omens were unfavourable: hearing that the sacred chickens would not eat, it is said, he contemptuously dropped them overboard, remarking, 'Well, let them drink.'

Finished Part 1, Rome and Italy, now into Part 2 Rome and Carthage.

"being young, he made the mistake of seeing things as they are, which is never a safe thing."

"Oxford's Blackwell's is a deceptive bookshop-the bookshop as a wizard's cave. I miss the front door on every visit, presuming it must be a much bigger entrance. From small beginnings, the shop seems to keep unfolding as you walk through it like some kind of trick of spacetime."

I remember it like that also. Depending on which direction you are coming from, if you pass it you can get a pint at the White Horse.

"I am very conscious that history means 'enquiry,' not certainty."

As Toby would say, questions are never dangerous until you answer them.

Let me tell you something. May I? It is very dangerous to play with reality. Will you remember that?

We won. Not that the victory matters a damn. And perhaps we didn't win anyway. Perhaps they just lost.

As he strode along the dusty path leading down to the river boathouses, a mall herd of cud-chewing cows regarded him nonchalantly. He had no idea what a college might want with a meadow. Maybe they had plans to teach the cows Latin.

'Well, perhaps," said Sam, 'you bought houses, wich is delicated English for goin' mad: or took to buildin', wich is medical term for bein' incurable."

'Five doors further on,' replied the potboy. 'There's the likeness of a man being hung, and smoking a pipe the while chalked outside the door.'

And today is Dickens' birthday (February 7, 1812).

Back to this after a brief road trip.

Aiunt enim multum legendum esse, non multa.