Woe is me! I have to take a semester off. Looking for work, must make money.
But I found CROKASHIT.COM!
So I am now happy.
I'm clearing off one of my old PCs to install Plan 9. It looks like it is going to take sometime.
Hopefully I don't screw it up. :D
Literary Moment
Last week I read Dreiser's Sister Carrie. Finally. It was so depressing towards the end that I wanted to just put it down.
If you have not read it already, don't read any further.
What was most depressing was the degradating of Hurstwood. Although it began the moment he set eyes on Carrie and decided to follow the emotions, one cannot help but feel deep sympathy for this fictional character. I found that I was struggling with guilt for having this sympathy because the character's decisions were selfish and were what ultimately placed him in this final degradation. Being from a situation not unlike his first family, I had to force myself to say he was wrong and this was his payment.
What I did enjoy about this novel is the fact that Carrie, who starts out as this mousy new girl in Industrial Revolution Chicago, turns out in the end the true survivor. All the smartly-dressed competition of her mind in those early days, could never dream of the things Carrie went on to see. Dreiser gave her an inner stength that is rarely seen, even now, in most people.
The ending left me bewildered. Was she going to follow her next call to wild? I think so. I think she went on to be the actress she was meant to be only to find that even this was not where true happiness lays. It's funny how things seem greener on the other side of the fence. Even while I spend my days trying to catch up on programming, knowledge management, and the Lord knows what else; in my true inner Self, I know that whatever position I gain with this knowledge will gain whatever it is I strongly desire inside. It will be a means for making money. Nothing else.
This week Im reading Barker's Weaveworld again. Im almost finish, it getting close to the re-appearance of the Scourge. The whole time I'm wondering if I am imagining the story as I did many years ago. I don't really remember much of it. The only things that were familiar this round were Cal, the Fugue, the fruit from Lemuel Lo's orchard and Shadwell's jacket. Somehow everything else just slipped my mind over the years, which is ironic. The irony is in the fact that Barker's characters forget the Fugue when it is returned to the weave and they to their Cuckoo lives. The struggle to remember it, but some odd element that Barker doesn't elaborate on too much causes them to slowly forget. Like it was all just a dream...
This is definitely a masterpiece and I am furiously jealous that Barker beat me to it. Although it gets wordy at times, something Barker and King mutually share, Barker didn't miss a heart beat. From the vivid imagery of pure creation within the Gyre to the great nullifying sandy garden, he covers all my inner child fantasies and fears. What I wonder most is: How many women that have read this horror-fantasy and thought to themselves that the menstruum is not altogether fictional at all?
Next on the list: Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn as revealed by Israel Regardie. Ive been putting it off a long time now, but curiosity kills the cat...
