Jonathan Schultz

Just got invited to the next round of interviews. Your luck is powerful and most appreciated!

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everywhere
memories of you
withered roses

#haiku #poetry #grief

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I think that went very well! Time to take this suit off and return to the casual Summer, already in progress.

Interview in about fifteen minutes. Wish me luck.

Trying to become a buddha is easy
but ending delusion is hard
how many frosty moonlit nights
have I sat until I feel the cold before dawn

— Stonehouse

I have finished this read through of Against the Day. Given my own relationship woes, it was a more emotional experience than previous readings. From Cyprian joining the convent to the end raised tears in my eyes in many passages. Now to fall gently, amid the days softening light, to contemplation.

When peace and plenty are once again taken for granted, at your most languorous moment of maximum surrender, the true state of affairs will be borne in upon you. Swiftly and without mercy.

#AtD2025

Against the Day is a really long book.

Any relation to the recent enormous earthquake and subsequent volcanic activity in Eastern Russia is, no doubt, coincidence.

#AtD2025

There is an interesting foreshadowing-after-the-fact with Gravity's Rainbow in the mention of Novi Pazar. For AtD it is a 'station' on the itinerary to Total War among the empires, and in Gravity's Rainbow it is an excuse to employ Pirate Prentice's gift, to leech away anxiety about the Sanjak.

Just reading today in Against the Day Pynchon's treatment of the Tunguska event as a fore-shock of the first world war and an espionage template for future weapons programs in wars beyond. One character is on a quest for Shambalah when the event occurs, lost in Inner Asia.

What had been certain and mandated by Heaven was now as loaded with uncertainty as any peasant's struggle with the day, and all, regardless of wealth or position, must stumble blindly.

#AtD2025

They sound amazing!

I sympathize a great deal with Penelope. She spends so much time hoping that it will all work out alright, and she doesn't even know what working our alright will end up looking like. Weave and hope, then undo your work in the dark of night so that tomorrow you can weave and hope some more.

Wings in the back garden, insect and bird, beat and hum to fill the clear, warm air jubilantly, lazily, methodically.

"Reef turned and went glaring away, shoulders hunched, up onto the Ponte degli Scalzi, soon absorbed into a mobility of hundreds of separate futures, whose destiny could not be told in any but a statistical way. And that was that."

#AtD2025

Against the Day has many departures, separations, and detours within itself. It doesn't feel as if their mirror images of arrival, reunion, and intended destinations are balanced. Longing drives many of the characters who find themselves in the middle of something started before and without them.

But what if I was planning on spending the last 45 minutes of my life eating hot dogs?

There has been an ongoing internal debate within me as to whether I should go to a local mediocre brewery that serves an exceptionally good fried dill pickle 'tapa'. I don't know if it will be resolved, but a startling amount of mental processing has gone into it. Summer 'worries' can be amusing.

I volunteered this morning and signed up for a five hour shift from 7a to Noon. So many people pitched in that we finished the job in two hours. We all get good karma and the rest of the gorgeous morning to enjoy.

Miles Davis at Birdland
NYC
1958
Dennis Stock

Winding down the day with...

YouTube video by BillWithersVEVO Bill Withers - Lovely Day (Official Audio)

music.youtube.com/watch?v=bEea...

I feel fresh and free with my new haircut and the delightful weather. For me, this is a Friday ripe with pleasant feelings.

"But in exile one can always maintain a comfortable distance, a pathetic, dramatic, critical, aesthetic distance -- the orphan-like serenity of one's own world, this is the ideal figure of the territory."
- The Ecstasy of Communication

Ahh, the three B's:

Beer
Baroque music
a small Bowl of potato chips

A poem by me! 👇

The good host of Death is Just Around the Corner...

A lake of fire and fry?

#vss365 #whistpr #blue