Mercurialgem > Recent Status Updates

You know you're a book addict when you were just going to the library to return some books but couldn't help yourself and came out with five: 3 by Bolano, Americanah and The Stranger (which I put as reading on Jan. but never touched it so had to recheck it). AND they have a section in the library where they sell books and I got FOUR to add to my TBR. Plus, I'm suppose to start IJ and TM&M on June for two GR bkclubs.

"I followed my inclination always, guided by the stars; which made me so that I never could deny my chamber of Venus to any likely lad." (p. 207).


chamber of Venus - lol - nice.

"...John came to life and threw himself upon this good woman. It was the best bout she'd had in years - he thrust away like a madman, hard and deep. And so the two students had the time of their lives till it was nearly dawn."

Due back 21st...hope I can focus and read this in the next six days....

Emilie du Chatelet died Sept. 10, 1749 of an infection from giving birth.
"Her translation and commentary on Newton's Principia became fundamental to key eighteenth-century developments in theoretical physics, laying the groundwork for much of contemporary science" (p. 281).

to theorem 13, was where it was hidden. There had been hints of that in Leibniz’s work too, but Emilie wanted to go further in showing exactly what the idea meant, and thus guide her successors for their research to come. Somewhere in there might also be the answer to all her questions about free will… (p. 277).

Newton lusted for immortality – or at least for understanding how God’s universe could be immortal. For seventy years people had read his Principia but missed these deeper findings. Emilie was convinced she could unearth them amidst the immense range of theorems in the thick Principia volumes. By revealing the right ones, it would be as if she could see through a portal...The seemingly minor corollary 40, attached

"I'm not a Christian, but only to love Thee more closely, People turn Thee into a tyrant - yet what I seek in Thee is a Father" (p. 110). -Voltaire

"I'm not a Christian, but only to love Thee more closely, People turn Thee into a tyrant - yet what I seek in Thee is a Father" (p. 110). -Voltaire

...Why did you only reach me so late?
What happened to my life before?
I hunted for love, but found only mirages
I found only the shadow of our pleasure.
You are a delight
You are tender
What pleasure I find in your arms

Voltaire's poem to Emilie<333

...where the prompter loaned him a copy of that night's Shakespeare script, so he could mouth the words to himself while listening to the actors speak them."

He began (31 July 1726) by keeping a journal, carefully noting down verbs of interest. "Mr. Scuttlars history," he slowly printed in English, "...He cured his wife of the spleen, with a good fuking." Then Voltaire struck out the word fuking and above it thoughtfully wrote the shorter variant fuk, to be sure he got the spelling right. When he needed help in pronunciation he made his way to the theater at Drury Lane,..

But the overweening power of his body was too much for her. She relaxed again, and lay loose and soft, panting in a little delirium. And to him, she was so sweet, she was such bliss of release, that he would have suffered a whole eternity of torture rather than forego one second of this pang of unsurpassable bliss.

He lifted her close and folded her against him. Her softness, her inert, relaxed weight lay against his own surcharged, bronze-like limbs in a heaviness of desirability that would destroy him, if he were not fulfilled. She moved convulsively, recoiling away from him. His heart went up like a flame of ice, he closed over her like steel. He would destroy her rather than be denied.

For the time, her soul was destroyed with the exquisite shock of his invisible fluid lightning... How much more of him was there to know? Ah much, much, many days harvesting for her large, yet perfectly subtle and intelligent hands upon the field of his living, radio-active body. Ah, her hands were eager, greedy for knowledge. But for the present it was enough, enough, as much as her soul could bear.

She was next to him, and hung in a pure rest, as a star is hung, balanced unthinkably. Still there remained a dark lambency of anticipation. She would touch him. With perfect fine finger-tips of reality she would touch the reality in him, the suave, pure, untranslatable reality of his loins of darkness.....his suave perfect loins and thighs of darkness, this was her sustaining anticipation.

‘Yes there is,’ he said. ‘There’s somewhere where we can be free— somewhere where one needn’t wear much clothes— none even— where one meets a few people who have gone through enough, and can take things for granted— where you be yourself, without bothering. There is somewhere— there are one or two people—’ ‘But where—?’ she sighed. ‘Somewhere— anywhere. Let’s wander off. That’s the thing to do— let’s wander off.’

‘Still,’ he said, ‘I should like to go with you— nowhere. It would be rather wandering just to nowhere. That’s the place to get to— nowhere. One wants to wander away from the world’s somewheres, into our own nowhere.’ Still she meditated. ‘You see, my love,’ she said, ‘I’m so afraid that while we are only people, we’ve got to take the world that’s given— because there isn’t any other.’

A strange black passion surged up pure in Gudrun...Ah, if that which was unknown and suppressed in her were once let loose, what an orgiastic & satisfying event it would be. And she wanted it, she trembled slightly from the proximity of the man, who stood just behind her, suggestive of the same black licentiousness that rose in herself. She wanted it with him, this unacknowledged frenzy.

He said the individual was more than love, or than any relationship. For him, the bright, single soul accepted love as one of its conditions, a condition of its own equilibrium. She believed that love was everything. Man must render himself up to her. He must be quaffed to the dregs by her. Let him be her man utterly, and she in return would be his humble slave— whether she wanted it or not.

There was the paradisal entry into pure, single being, the individual soul taking precedence over love & desire for union, stronger than any pangs of emotion, a lovely state of free proud singleness, which accepted the obligation of the permanent connection with others, and with the other, submits to the yoke & leash of love, but never forfeits its own proud individual singleness, even while it loves & yields.