{"id":2148,"date":"2008-07-24T20:28:48","date_gmt":"2008-07-25T00:28:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=2148"},"modified":"2008-07-24T20:29:24","modified_gmt":"2008-07-25T00:29:24","slug":"i-think-in-circles-and-circles-are-hard-to-break","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/i-think-in-circles-and-circles-are-hard-to-break","title":{"rendered":"I think in circles and circles are hard to break"},"content":{"rendered":"

After dropping Amy off at the bus stop this morning, I came home and realized I was on the precipice of nausea and that a 20- or 25-minute drive to the office likely would’ve pushed me over the edge. So I wrote in sick, went back to bed for 3+ hours, and found myself feeling better.<\/p>\n

Then I spent the afternoon rereading Camp Concentration<\/a>\"\", which made me feel worse.<\/p>\n

It’s a short, frightening novel about a drug that unlocks genius (at a price).\u00c2\u00a0With its unending state of war and secret prison camps, the book has plenty of contemporary resonance (published in 1968). I wasn’t thinking about its political issues when I picked it up; my reason for rereading it was the author’s recent suicide<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Beyond the horrifying vision of America, I was captivated by the romance of art and mortality as portrayed by narrator-poet Louis Sacchetti. I doubt I was too aware of the sheer Germanness of this worldview back when I first read it at the age 18, but 37 is a different story.<\/p>\n

After I finished, I decided to sprawl out on a different sofa, so I went downstairs to my library and stared at the wall of books. I picked up Ahead of All Parting<\/a>\"\", a collection of poetry and prose by Rilke (tr. Stephen Mitchell), and flipped it open. The poet-narrator of the novel refers to Rilke and quotes him in the novel.<\/p>\n

I like Mitchell’s translation of my favorite Rilke poem, Archaic Torso of Apollo<\/a>, but I was disappointed to find that this collection is set in a font that’s remarkably similar to that of the Choose Your Own Adventure<\/a> books I used to read as a kid. I found myself looking for breaks like<\/p>\n

If you ignore Lou Andreas-Salome’s Freudian analysis of how your mother dressed you in girls’ clothes as a child, turn to page 32<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anyway, I decided to look at the Duino Elegies, which I’ve never read. As it turns out, one of the key passages in Camp Concentration<\/em> comes from the first elegy:<\/p>\n

For beauty is nothing
\nbut the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,
\nand we are so awed because it serenely disdains
\nto annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It sends me back 16 years to my Attic Greek class, where I was first exposed to the word deinos<\/em>, that which is both beautiful and dreadful (or wondrous and terrible, depending on what my brother offers up by way of translation).<\/p>\n

So that’s what I do on my sick days. I’m gonna go get more rest, then embarrass myself or others at our company picnic tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After dropping Amy off at the bus stop this morning, I came home and realized I was on the precipice of nausea and that a 20- or 25-minute drive to the office likely would’ve pushed me over the edge. So I wrote in sick, went back to bed for 3+ hours, and found myself feeling … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “I think in circles and circles are hard to break”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22,4],"tags":[243,232],"class_list":["post-2148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-literature","tag-rilke","tag-thomas-disch"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-yE","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1635,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-aug-24-2007","url_meta":{"origin":2148,"position":0},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Aug. 24, 2007","author":"Gil","date":"August 24, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The links just keep coming, dear readers! Whither the skyscraper? * * * Wither the skyscraper! * * * When is a rescue not a rescue? When Goldman Sachs does it! * * * Go, underworld! * * * An added benefit of NetFlix: avoiding snotty video-store clerks. * *\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7114,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/you-must-change-your-life","url_meta":{"origin":2148,"position":1},"title":"You Must Change Your Life","author":"Gil","date":"May 31, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"For the last two years, I've been beating people over the head to read Giuseppe di Lampedusa's novel, The Leopard. It's one of my all-time faves and it turns out that E.M. Forster loved it, too. Here's the opening of a piece he wrote in an intro to Lampedusa's short\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=voyantpublishing&l=as2&o=1&a=0375714790","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13181,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/covid-check-in-with-jane-borden","url_meta":{"origin":2148,"position":2},"title":"COVID Check-In with Jane Borden","author":"Gil","date":"April 18, 2020","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show COVID Check-In: Jane Borden Essayist and journalist (and one of my very first pod-guests!) Jane Borden checks in from LA. We talk about memoir-metamorphosis, her recent Vanity Fair piece on the art of making art during a plague, the solace of deep time, working for Tom Wolfe,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "COVID Check-In"","block_context":{"text":"COVID Check-In","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/covid-check-in"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/covidjanebordencomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C603&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/covidjanebordencomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C603&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/covidjanebordencomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C603&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/covidjanebordencomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C603&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/covidjanebordencomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C603&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":3342,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-of-the-disadvantage-of-greatness","url_meta":{"origin":2148,"position":3},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Of the disadvantage of greatness","author":"Gil","date":"February 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"With Of the disadvantage of greatness (pp. 849-853), Montaigne counters Mel Brooks' wisdom that \"it's good to be the king.\" M. concedes that the actions and effects of kings are awesome, but the tradeoff is that they'll never have a measure of themselves because of the deference of their subjects.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":17709,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-652-dmitry-samarov","url_meta":{"origin":2148,"position":4},"title":"Episode 652 – Dmitry Samarov","author":"Gil","date":"September 3, 2025","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 652: Dmitry Samarov \"I want the reader to feel like they were there, like it's a sketchbook from that moment in the book.\" It's been a year since his last episode, so what's artist Dmitry Samarov been up to? Plenty! We talk about his new project of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/dmitry2025comp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/dmitry2025comp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/dmitry2025comp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/dmitry2025comp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/dmitry2025comp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":17485,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-635-ari-richter","url_meta":{"origin":2148,"position":5},"title":"Episode 635 – Ari Richter","author":"Gil","date":"April 22, 2025","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 635: Ari Richter \"If I'm not obsessed with this history, then this history goes away.\" Artist, professor and now like-it-or-not cartoonist Ari Richter joins the show to talk about his fantastic book, Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz: A Graphic Family Memoir of Trauma & Inheritance (Fantagraphics).\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/richter2025comp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/richter2025comp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/richter2025comp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/richter2025comp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/richter2025comp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}