A Reading Entry in Elephant Architecture

I have my Final Exam in a week and my two-week vacation begins around the same time. While there are 1,001 books on my list to read, there are a few hundred I wish to reread as well. Yesterday, I really found that spot I’ve been looking for at being able to get in the zone and find my Zen while I began rereading Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. It triggered a sublime state of longing and nostalgia for the prose of old. And I mean older than Capote. My English advisor and mentor taught Modernism. I do not believe the world will ever see that literary high-water mark again. It was a Literary Renaissance unrecognized by the masses. It is Icarus’ legs drowning in a sea unnoticed. Even if I could strive to write like a Modernist or those who surround, it is almost a foreign language of prose; no one could read it save a select few experts, thus I would starve to death from the sales. The time period matters. Life was slower back then and prose were some of the main attractions. There was more time at home by candle light with nothing to do save study, read, think and write. It is a language built for a slower time.

If I were to describe the prose of the early 20th c. to the average citizen of today, I would compare the writing to software coding. And, save a few dorks and nerds like myself, it is an obsolete coding that takes decades to learn and decode. It is a cognitive machine of treasure maps where the X leads us to Enlightenment. One can trace a map of Enlightenment across the bounds of countries and oceans. It is a network. It is a cognitive machine of hidden zones that need be decoded. I long for a time, at least a month transcendent of the common man’s cognitive network wherefore the treasure map is useless. An author must be the most frustrating entrepreneur for miners of gold rushes; for our treasure is only valuable when placed in a select few hands, or “I can’t read it and I can’t eat it” says the illiterate miner. A gold rush wherefore the gold is unattainable without years of practice and study. And indecipherable maps leading to Trees Of Life where upon the eyes of the common miner, even upon physically finding, - yea The Tree would not even recognize. It is a golden goblet of the finest wine that turns to sand in the hands of those who cheated throughout life in search of a City of Gold. Hark! The City of Gold is nigh; and like the moving island upon the shell of the great ancient turtle, -submerges and moves and only those who are invited may experience the bounty.

Similar to Perry and Dick, the masses believe that riches lay in the treasure trove of The Clutter family and when they arrive to find a mere $15 they brutally murder a family for no reward.

Alas,
I digress.

I may take this year to reread my old favourites
Amongst a garden of forking paths,
flowers and dew laden stones.
Pillars of marbles over which runs

waterfall trickles. - Brooks
where lotuses float:
red for defeat and white for victory.

Honeysuckles and hacky-sacks. Pitter
pat, pat,
pat.

Last updated April 26, 2024