Control (Gravity’s Rainbow)

It’s control. All these things arise from one difficulty: control. For the first time it was inside, do you see. The control is put inside. No more need to suffer passively under ‘outside forces’—to veer into any wind. As if…A market needed no longer be run by the Invisible Hand, but now could create itself—its own logic, momentum, style, from inside. Putting the control inside was ratifying what de facto had happened—that you had dispensed with God. But you had taken on a greater, and more harmful, illusion. The illusion of control. That A could do B. But that was false. Completely. No one can do. Things only happen, A and B are unreal, are names for parts that ought to be inseparable…

From Thomas Pynchon’s novel Gravity’s Rainbow.

Pink-Tufted Small Beast in a Night Landscape — Dr. Seuss

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Portrait of Luca Pacioli — Jacopo de’ Barbari (Attributed)

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“Cynical” — Gilbert Sorrentino

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Bored/cool (Calvin & Hobbes)

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The Suitors — Gustave Moreau

The Bus — Paul Kirchner

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“A Walk in March” — Grace Paley

This hill
crossed with broken pines and maples
lumpy with the burial mounds of
uprooted hemlocks (hurricane
of ’38) out of their
rotting hearts generations rise
trying once more to become
the forest
just beyond them
tall enough to be called trees
in their youth like aspen a bouquet
of young beech is gathered
they still wear last summer’s leaves
the lightest brown almost translucent
how their stubbornness has decorated
the winter woods
on this narrow path ice tries
to keep the black undecaying oak leaves
in its crackling grip    it’s become
too hard to walk    at last a
sunny patch    oh!    i’m in water
to my ankles   APRIL

March — Theodor Severin Kittelsen

The Ill-Matched Couple — Goya

Watch Seasons, a lovely animated short film by Yuri Norstein

Live long and prosper (Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon)

One day, the Meridian having been closely enough establish’d, and with an hour or two of free time available to them, one heads north, one south, and ’tis Dixon’s luck to discover The Rabbi of Prague, headquarters of a Kabbalistick Faith, in Correspondence with the Elect Cohens of Paris, whose private Salute they now greet Dixon with, the Fingers spread two and two, and the Thumb held away from them likewise, said to represent the Hebrew letter Shin and to signify, “Live long and prosper.” The area just beyond the next Ridge is believ’d to harbor a giant Golem, or Jewish Automaton, taller than the most ancient of the Trees. As explain’d to Dixon, ’twas created by an Indian tribe widely suppos’d to be one of the famous Lost Tribes of Israel, who had somehow given up control of the Creature, sending it headlong into the Forest, where it would learn of its own gift of Mobile Invisibility.

“And . . . do you folk wear Special Hats, anything like that?” inquires Dixon.

From Thomas Pynchon’s novel Mason & Dixon. (More/some context).

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind — Hayao Miyazaki

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Max Frisch/PK Dick biography (Books acquired, 2.19.2015)

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I took my daughter to the bookstore last Thursday, where she traded in a bunch of Junie B. Jones books for more Junie B. Jones books. Anyway, I didn’t intend to pick up anything for myself, but, well…
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“The Harlem Dancer” — Claude McKay

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Ship in a bottle (Inherent Vice)