Honestly, that stamp, and what presumably had to occur in the way of selecting the most Aryan imaginable typeface etc for it to be produced, coupled with the fact that 'G. Delbridge.' has employed it to cock his or her leg so to speak on several other pages of the book, almost put me entirely off reading the actual essays inside but at the last minute I rose above thoughts of 'G. Delbridge.' and I'm so glad because the essay called 'The Mysteries of Life and its Arts' is slaying me, as the young people say, with its wonderful mixture of Ruskin bleating about his personal disappointments and thwartedness, and Ruskin busting out a string of big and interesting ideas about art and life. As the kids also say, I so relate: to that combination of subjects, to the fundamental feeling he seems to be having, somewhat against his will, that he can't properly articulate his aesthetics and philosophy except by embedding it in the sludge and sediment of his private and unnameable issues - his weird and creepy longings, his grinding sadness. Well, I am close to finishing but I intend to read it again immediately, purely to revel in the bizarro emotional textures. Also the book itself exudes a particularly spicy instance of old book smell and I am having a nice time picking it up and holding the text block to my nose and huffing it in like Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet.
Four hours in the car today and as always that meant a lot of time for thinking.
I thought a bit more about a topic I raised last time I blogged, namely the plan for when I become eternal universal king. That was dutiful thinking, for I feel it shall happen soon, and plans had to be laid but I did not dwell upon them.
The dwelling-on I reserved for a constellation of matters to do with patterns and my inner life. The time between the two drives was spent with a big group of members of my father's family, including him and three of his four siblings, one of whom I have been very fond of my whole life but who is highly annoying to most people. He's probably got it worst but all those siblings share a trait of saying things they don't mean, entirely to get a reaction; the preference is for absurdity but it mostly comes out just plain stupid and / or strange. This uncle did produce one of those cartoonish remarks - he said 'I reckon there's nothing wrong with a bit of misogyny. It's healthy' and everyone ignored him, his own children in a very practiced manner and his poor daugher-in-law with visible annoyance. Yet I called him on it, and of course, he had nothing at all to say for himself - but oh dear, he was so pleased to have somebody put up the gloves. His whole face lit up with pleasure at the thought of a bit of an argument. His oldest son thanked me later, most sincerely. I'm just like that uncle, really. Darcy put Elizabeth wriggling on the tip of a pin when he told her he'd seen her doing just this - taking great pleasure in professing opinions not really her own. And Elizabeth got it from her father, right.
Oh well. The other mystery of life and its arts I felt preoccupied by today was the same old one - what's with the yearning, the restlessness, the urgent desire to seek and find something real? I think it's possible that I'm coming closer to freeing myself from the painfulness of this feeling, because it is becoming more vivid and clear. I can see it better but it is also more painful. The pain is physical. It's in the centre of my torso and it involves breath and tension, sometimes constriction. (I can whine just as much as John Ruskin, although his is a lot prettier, involving the fading of light from clouds etc.) I think of this pain as being like a big mobile glassy bubble of air rising up through a deep blue ocean. It's into the sunlit zone now and the light bounces off its outline. I don't know what will happen when it gets to the surface.
While I drove I noticed a feeling and a wish, quite dreamlike, that is very familiar to me, though I don't think I've ever articulated it to anyone but myself before now. This is to walk with a companion in a grassy paddock bordered with trees and with a view to hills, far away from the noise of a road, maybe at moonrise. The companion I picture beside me is a child; I don't think it's a real child though - not my own child nor myself as one* - but the child holds my hand and laughs and the air is warm and quiet and everything is still and complete.
When I drive in the country I'm always doing it in a businesslike way - got to get to my destination and get there on time. But today I realised, I can go to the countryside and wander in fields whenever I want, and so that is what I plan to do...soon.
*and definitely not the red-caped creepy dwarf in Don't Look Now
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