Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Signpost [last number] +1

There are many different kinds of charm, more than I have described below.

The charm of Lolita is aloof, childish, sarcastic. It is full of mockery and hard-to-reach places. It also has a sort of breathless resignation to the pleasures of adulthood.

The charm of Catherine Moorland is quiet and prudent. It is unthreatening but it also provocative, and it has hard questions for older people.

Elizabeth Bennet has a similar charm, in my opinion. But it is more penetrating and more intelligent and it is capable of anger. I could not imagine Catherine Moorland being really angry.

Dora Copperfield has a different kind of charm altogether. She is all candyfloss and icing. You need to be gentle with her or she will break apart, but in return she will give you pleasures of the gentlest kind.

Imagine each of these charms separately. Then imagine them all together, combined in one person. This person will be sensual and puzzling. She will be sharp and full of youth and full of an intense girlish vexing energy.

And imagine the kind of response this person would get when they took their vexing youthful affection and bestowed it on another person. I venture that the response would be strong and erratic. By turns the person would be calm, complacent, condescending, aloof, suspicious, guarded, amused, surprised, alarmed, affronted, insecure, defensive, thoughtful, warm, admiring, tender, tantalised, wary, adventurous, calm.

These responses would not follow each other in a graded sequence. They would jump around a lot, start again from scratch, repeat themselves. After a while they will settle down into a wary excitement, but even then they will be prone to sudden changes.

All of this may explain why I have not written much on this blog recently. Another explanation is that I have been reading a lot of History of Science; but that explanation is not very interesting. I don't know what I will write on this blog in the upcoming weeks, but I hope it is something.

Hey My Droogs and Little Malchikiwicks

Well well for your Michael Trevor yes the time's been going fastly, O my far-away friends, and many sunny happenings have been going on over this-here little point of action, no mistaking that my friends.

I went to Ottawa. Yes! I went to Ottawa my mates and I was tolchocked on the groodies, yes I was, by the goodness growing there, the goodness and the multi-pleasurableness of this fun-sponging place. The trees were bleeding all over the city, o the ruby-water flowed and the leaves were dead on the ground and it was just like old times, o my foreign droogies in your happy summer full of oily skin and little lambs being carried off in trucks, o yes. And the things that they have built there, in Ottawa! So much building, you must see it some time before somone knocks you over, yes you mustly very soonish or there will be sorry things to say about it, notwithstanding. Buildings made of rock and buildings made of glass, all in glass, you could make a thousand knives if your inclinations lay that way my pleasing droogies, from these buildings.

And a parliament, a parliament just like the jolly big thing in London-city, all brown and spiky like a very serious fence, very serious indeed. And there were happy sunny houses in the happy suburbs, with the leaves lying sunny on the ground like money. And so much richness in these places there was, so much leafy money, that there were no footpaths at all, yes they had been killed off long ago my friends, quite some time ago when you were just a little droog with jelly fingers, o yes. And the cars went past like shiny bullets, very big and not see-through at all, not a little look-see even once.

And I went also to another place of much delight and belly-tumbling too. This was Quebec, not so far from Ottawa as you may know from school or some such thing. And there was as much leafiness and tree-falling sussuration and so forth as I had ever seen or ever wanted or needed to see in my short hooray. And the hills were all dressed up in it, o my comrades, in the heigth of Roman fashion so they say. And I scurried up a hill on my little scuttlers and I saw a little way ahead, where the hills were going bloody all the way along, poor things. And that was all. I just went down after that and was carried past the shiny lakes and people swimming and drowning happily all along the shore, like little babies fat with little arms ha ha. O yes, it was not too bad really, and me only two months from home.

And the journey then, o my droogs! A big bus with bolshy big windows black and wrapped around like darkened glasses, not unlike the road-machines back home I venture. It was not bad at all, not so bad at all I say. I say it was not so bad as you might think, and I say you catch my little meaning here and so I journey on.

And all this and many more besides, o my readers in your ugly chairs! Glad enough I was, I say, to catch a game of batter-ball. So much in the happening, and so little to see! A game of batter-ball, with all the pyjama-panted players and so much happy throwing and a little teeny bit of hitting it was not enough for me I think. Not a thing to recommend to a friend, though a foe is something different, except you may say if the friend has a beautiful companion, or some such thing, to make the time go past with greater snappishness, o my droogs.

All that to one side and the rest to another, I should say I found a friend or two while working round my itty way the city. And all are nicely set in place o my well-proportioned people, as is in the nature of things so to say. One for tennis and tennis on the table and under the table and other sizzling racquet-sports ha ha. Another then for other things, like study-work and such. And then some more for lighter times, for eating jugs of briny browny bubble-juice. But mostly study-work I think, o Michael Trevor knows the inside-outs of this and that when study-work is raised. And not all well-companioned, I should say. Not a social thing is study-work. But never mind. There's always juice or tennis on the table, so to speak.

And study-work is not so bad, though long. The History of the Physical Sciences and the History of Pschologicology and the Philosophical Parts of Science are the things I am reading and hearing about, and writing too. And there's a lot to do and no mistake. A book a week for each of these, they say that's not too much. And that is much. But very jolly study-mates I have, and not too bad are those who speak to us in class and know so much of this and that. So study-work is working just as well as one could hope, I think.

And so I go along with this and that to do and not a lot to say. I did go shopping for a thing or two. I took a lusty wallet with me, needed to, and found a place to find a windows tool or screen or pelvis-sitter, what they said it was I do not know and many grazny numbers on it too, all Niggerhertz and RAM and so on and heretofore and so they say. And other things as well. A grazny mouse or finger-lover. A set of speaking boxes which is very good for playing lovely Beet and Franz and other lovely gorgeousness, too bad about the room-mate sleeping ha ha ha. And a big sack to hold it all, of course.

I saw a film that had the right amount of dying. It started out with an unfortunate happening in a barbers shop, which left one man with a very sore neck, a very sore neck indeed, and not much means to speak about it ha ha. And so it went like that for some time, but got a little soft in the centre so to say. But mostly it was men with veins in their arms, and one or two sore ladies ha ha. Viggo Mortgensseon was there, I saw. And someone else who did famous things that noone told me about. Anyway, it was all a good time and someone gave me popping-corn, so not too bad, not too bad at all my droogs. I see you dripping at the mouth right now, o yes.

Wink wink my friends, I must away. The grazny time is timing all my typing. Not too long to go, I think. Not too long at all, now even less. O yes my droogs, I hope very much that nothing bad happens to you in the next day or so, and good things happen instead and every little thing is sizzling fast, if you like it that way, or something else if you don't. No doubt there's more to say. Your Michael Trevor o my droogs is not a one to slouch around in hats, so more to come I say. But not right now.