My Body

My headache kills me. Hard to imagine a new year would start like this. Caught in a flu. And my teeth obviously need some overhaul work which, to say the least, may stretch to a few weeks of treatment. Hope my body can stop betraying me and start being my faithful ally to confront the numerous challenges, both academic and familial, to come.

Proust and Sign

Pick up Deleuze's treatise on Proust and sign to read. Beautifully written. I really like the way Deleuze brings forth his musings on Proust. My order of Proust's monumental work arrived at my hand a few days ago. Really want to re-tackle the work and wish to have a better feel of it as my experience of life and literature has grown and expanded years by now. Literature always brings me consolation and food of thought which teaches me what may lie beyond the signs of human use and what use those signs can assign itself to for achieving a work in its proper sense. A way to rethink my will to creative writing.

Hyperion

Coming back from my trip with my family to Sabah, Malaysia. Aside from various precious memories, what struck my mind most is the reading experience of Dan Simmons's Hyperion, the first of his four-volume space opera. To be specifically, it's the Priest's Tale in its very beginning. Though the novel is structured like Chaucer's Cantebury Tales, his Priest Tale does leave a strong impression. I would say a certain sense of sublimity is successfully created in that tale. Yet the following two tales are not so attractive and fall into a clear category of sci-fi space novel. The written signs, so to speak, simply designate things to communicate in those two tales, while in the first one the signs signify something that is beyond simple things and transport the reader's mind to a place where communication is brought to a failure. The novel, at least up to now, has demonstrated before my eyes what kind of literature is appealing to me and, to my thinking, should be coming near the greatness that can stand firmly against temporary reading consumption and instant post-reading amnesia. There's a kind of literature that will never leave you in peace, but violently make an encounter with you, an unforgettable encounter that will keep disturbing you for years, or eons of years. That's the literature i am seeking and want to write about.