Jim > Recent Status Updates

The cruel spleen torments me now again,
And its foul vapours sheds upon my brain.
It comes and goes inconstant as the wind,
And makes a sport of my unhappy mind.
Three hours ago I was entirely sound:
All was complacent, all was smiling found;
Hearty I supped and sung a jolly song,
And thought the time ran cheerfully along.
But now, alas! I feel a weight of woe,
And all confused and wild to bed I go.

The hissing in the background sounded ominous, as if the son was about to kill the father or the mother the son. I could even hear sounds of blows and scuffling, Ows and Ohs, cries of "you disgusting beast," "you big bully"--was going on in the home of the man who had been called "the grey eminence of German Catholicism."

Morris was to demonstrate in his own personal pilgrimage one of the key reasons why the Left took so long to become an effective political force in England. The psychology of the rebel against the system is unlikely to be that of the team player. However much they believe themselves converted to a system of universal comradeship, they are always likely to rebel against the actual comrades' way of going about things.

The old-rich and new-rich helped to keep Britain as a whole rich. That was the idea which underpinned late Victorian politics, making it a contest not between plutocrats and 'equalitarians' but between two parties who, much as they might differ over some aspects of foreign policy, of Irish policy and even of domestic administration, were united to keep the wealth of the plutocracy largely undisturbed.

The word 'Pre-Raphaelite' in popular modern parlance does not refer to particular painting techniques or attitudes to the Middle Ages. It means young women with pale faces, pouting lips and abundant hair. The hair was important; so important that hairdressing, for the first time in English history, came out of the private domain of the home.

The Royal Navy pursued slave ships no doubt with the fervor of moral liberators, partly influenced by the fact that they could earn 'head money' for the number of slaves liberated. The slavers in turn could claim insurance for cargo -- i.e. slaves -- lost at sea. It was therefore a common occurrence if a Navy vessel pursued a slaver that she would cast her cargo into the ocean, still in chains as a feast for sharks.

After 1832, there were to be three major cholera epidemics in Britain: 1848-9, 1853-4 and 1866. The first of these killed 53,000 in England and Wales, 8,000 in Scotland; the next killed 26,000 -- but 10,000 in London.

No, the Eskimos are damn well not silly! After all, aren't they the ones who've found the best solution for getting their elderly off their hands? Sit them on a chunk of ice, give it a kick and off they go -- bon voyage!

His knuckles rapped lightly on the door. Doris opened it. He came into the room and took Doris in his arms. He lowered his head to kiss her and in that instant he smelled the liquor on her breath. In the next instant he saw a large paper-wrapped package resting on the floor. His eyes narrowed and he began to breathe hard.

For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorces, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well.

There are blanks in this life, white spaces you can detect if you open the "case file": a single sheet in a sky-blue folder that has faded in time.

Los Angeles. Sprawling, noisy, ugly, dirty -- and completely wonderful. It would always be home to me, this place and no other. It would never be home to me.

I coul still smell Berenice in the apartment, and knew that her feminine compound of musk, sweat, perfume, pungent powder, lavender soap, bacon breath, Nose-cote, padded sachet coat hangers, vinegar, and everything else nice about her would linger on in the apartment forever.

I knew that the Lord God didn't actually love the truth so much, in fact he loved madmen, crazy exalted enthusiasts, people like my Uncle Pepin, the Lord God loved to hear untruth reiterated in faith, he adored the exalted lie more than the dry unadorned truth....

The point to seize is that social progress takes effect through the replacement of old institutions by new ones; and since every institution involves the recognition of the duty of conforming to it, progress must involve the repudiation of an established duty at every step.

Heaving a door open I stepped outside. Soaked to the skin within seconds I felt a wonderful sense of flooding warmth and invigoration; it was, indubitably, a bit like being born again. Raindrops rang like coins on the flagstoned path and the air was filled with fusillades of crimson flowers from the flamboyant trees....

The first sounds I ever heard were of falling rain.

It looked like Tommy had been shot in the head, only one shot hitting him of the five Chili could still hear and count, but the one was enough. He had watched it happen without seeing it coming, and that scared him.

I realized that Norman seemed to be in Mexican heaven, not Jewish heaven, let alone philosophy heaven or Marxist heaven. But what was goddamned Mexican heaven? A pretense of happiness? or what lay behind it? empty gestures? or what was hidden (for reasons of survival) behind them?

Belano, I said, the heart of the matter is knowing whether evil (or sin or crime or whatever you want to call it) is random or purposeful. If it's purposeful, we can fight it, it's hard to defeat, but we have a chance. If it's random, on the other hand, we're fucked, and we'll just have to hope that God, if He exists, has mercy on us. And that's what it all comes down to.

I thought about he old days and how late it was, that time when night sinks into night, though never all of a sudden, the white-footed Mexico City night, a night that endlessly announces her arrival, I'm coming, I'm coming, but it is a long time coming, as if she too, the devil, had stayed behind to watch the sunset, the incomparable sunsets of Mexico....

He had some Peruvian friends who gave him work occasionally, a group of Peruvian poets, probably poets in name only, since as everyone knows living in Paris wears you down and erodes your vocation if it isn't ironclad. It coarsens you, it pushes you into oblivion.

Then I thought it might be some other Logiacomo, but that would've been too much of a coincidence: another Argentinian Logiacomo, another twenty-four-year-old Logiacomo, another Logiacomo who'd written a book of poetry with the same title as mine. Well. In Latin America these things happen and there's no point trying to come up with a logical a nswer when sometimes there is none.

All the sadness in the world was concentrated in that shadow, framed by the strict rectangle of the Impala's window. It's firecrackers, I heard Belano say as our car leaped forward and left behind the Fonts' house, the thugs' Camaro, Calle Colima, and in less than two seconds we were on Avenida Oaxaca, heading north out of the city.

From the west there appeared a dark cloud. Moving along close to the ground, it spread out; with a swirling extended arm it surrounded the landing site and hung there motionless. It remained there for some time. Then, when the sun had definitely dropped to the west, a black rain began to fall on the desert.

You don't ask too many questions in a city where you don't have friends.

You obviously don't know much about gypsies. They're nasters of disguise. You don't see them, you think everything's peachy and then, bam! You end up with a knife in your back.

[Elsie] thought of her presentiment of the previous evening but one: 'This will be the last time I shall ever wheel in the bookstand.' And she had a firm conviction that is that presentiment she had by some magical power seen acutely into the future.