#t zero

[theconformistreader]

Cosmic stories from a charity shop.

t zero by Italo Calvino

[robertsmithsonlibraryandbookclub]

Untitled Project: Robert Smithson Library & Book Club [Calvino, Italo, T Zero, 1967] Oil paint on carved wood, 2017

[seeingcalvino]

“I have the impression this isn’t the first time I’ve found myself in this situation: with my bow slackened in my outstretched left hand, my right hand drawn back, the arrow A suspended in midair at about a third of it trajectory, and, a bit further on, also suspended in midair, and also at about a third of his trajectory, the lion L in the act of leaping upon me, jaws agape and claws extended. ...So many and so complex are the factors that condition the parabolic movements both of arrows and of felines that I am unable for the moment to judge which of the eventualities is the more probable.” Time And The Hunter: t zero Gouache, colored pencil, and ink on watercolor paper May 19th, 2016 Artist: Joe Kuth

[panserbjorner]

So there was my impulse toward Zylphia, not only the drive to have all the ocean for us, but also the drive to lose it, the ocean, to annihilate ourselves in the ocean, to destroy ourselves, to torment ourselves, or rather--as a beginning--to torment her, Zylphia my beloved, to tear her to pieces, to eat her up. And with her it's the same: what she wanted was to torment me, swallow me, devour me, nothing but that. The orange stain of the sun seen from the water's depths swayed like a medusa, and Zylphia darted among the luminous filaments devoured by the desire to devour me, and I writhed in the tangles of darkness that rose from the depths like long strands of seaweed beringed with indigo glints, raving and longing to bite her. And finally there on the back seat of the Volkswagen in an abrupt swerve I fell on her and I sank my teeth into her skin just where the "American cut" of her sleeves left her shoulder bare, and she dug her sharp nails between the buttons of my shirt, and this is the same impulse as before, the impulse that tended to remove her (or remove me) from marine citizenship and now instead tends to remove the sea from her, from me, in any case to achieve the passage from the blazing element of life to the pale and opaque element which is our absence from the ocean and the absence of the ocean from us.

Italo Calvino, t zero