#p. 32

[everyillumi]

[returntomytilene]

‘Her legs coiled around my boots that kept them apart. Her belly wanted using: drunk on slavery. And it took all the ruts of the universe to satisfy her. Her cry rose and faltered and suffered the joy of her depths: “Take me! Take me!”’

— Natalie Clifford Barney, Women Lovers, or the Third Woman, originally written in 1926, translated by Chelsea Ray

[infinite-jest-again]

“‘I want to tell you,’ the voice on the phone said. “My head is filled with things to say.’ ‘I don’t mind,’ Hal said softly. ‘I could wait forever.’ ‘That’s what you think,’ the voice said. The connection was cut. It had been Orin.”   - Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace, p. 32

I was a little disappointed when I found out that this is actually a Beatles’ song, I Want to Tell You, but then I heard the lyrics and boy oh boy, they apply perfectly to Hal’s situation, example: But if I seem to act unkind It’s only me, it’s not my mind That is confusing things

I still have a few questions though: Is this really Orin? why would Hal answer softly to Orin? why is there such an emphasis on “the voice”?

[everyillumi]

[everyillumi]

[firstreadbooks]

“So what’s your story?” he asked, sitting down next to me at a safe distance. “I already told you my story. I was diagnosed when-“ “No, not your cancer story. Your story. Interests, hobbies, passions, weird fetishes, etcetera.” “Um,” I said. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who becomes their disease. I know so many people like that. It’s disheartening. Like, cancer is in the growth business, right? The taking-people-over business. But surely you haven’t let it succeed prematurely.”

Chapter 2, p.32 (TFiOS)

What do these kids have for throwing other cancer sufferers under the bus?! What does he have about demanding weird, intrusive info off her? Again?!

[mythologyofblue]

What softness, what shimmering light.

Robert Walser, The Assistant

[mythologyofblue]

I turned aside and slipped into the forest, to hide and be alone.

-Knut Hamsun, Pan