Spotlight on ... Witold Gombrowicz 'Cosmos' (1965)

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'To write is certainly not to impose a form (of expression) on the matter of lived experience. Literature rather moves in the direction of the ill- formed or the incomplete, as Witold Gombrowicz said as well as practiced.' -- Gilles Deleuze

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Intro

'Reading Witold Gombrowicz means confronting an artistic vision of extraordinary intensity, withering in its austerity, imperious in its dismissal of convention and cant, solicitous only of the truth, no matter how unpleasant or embarrassing. A relentless opponent of hypocrisy, pretension, and the romantic attitude toward life, he castigated the dehumanization rampant in the world around him. Gombrowicz’s imaginative writing likewise reveals an arresting technique, as he shifts perspectives from hallucinatory clarity to antic obfuscation. Characters suddenly discover in the coordinates of their lives cracks in the façade, perverse predilections in associates, portals opening into arenas that turn abruptly, unaccountably, topsyturvy.

'Gombrowicz was a complex character, as ruthless with himself as with everyone else. An elitist of inimitable hauteur, he championed the prerogatives of art against science and politics, deploring society’s increasing reliance on mechanization and other formal imperatives that compromise individual integrity. For Gombrowicz, the powers of invention should probe the limits of form, transmitting a glimpse of that will o’ the wisp, reality.

'Gombrowicz’s art envisages the tyranny of what he calls form. In his view, obeying the dictates of form is central to the human condition, ordering our relations with the world and ourselves. What others make of us—what we make of them—the form with which we invest them—determines our character in the world around us. As a result, the world is ambivalent, dualistic, experienced as an unnerving tension between the antinomies Gombrowicz regards as underlying all human activity: immaturity and maturity, superiority and inferiority, beauty and ugliness, and so on.

'Gombrowicz is not an easy read, for his style is often elusive, whimsical, replete with wordplay that is nearly impossible to convey in English. A consummate artist, he continually challenges our preconceptions; the more his work is read—and reread—the more it reveals. Despite the disadvantages of writing in a “minor” Slavic tongue, spending most of his adulthood in obscurity, and winning worldwide recognition late in life, Gombrowicz remained true to his artistic vision. Photographs typically portray him wearing a trilby, slender and sharp-featured, abstracted, even distant. Sanguine, skeptical, temperamentally aristocratic, despite his achievements Gombrowicz was never fooled by the illusion of his own wisdom. His writing illuminates the difficulties we face in ridding ourselves of the same illusion.' -- Michael Pinker, Context

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Media

Witold Gombrowicz - Présentation du site officiel


Witold Gombrowicz Interview


João Paulo Simões's 'cosmos - a microfilm'

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Further

The Official Witold Gombrowicz Website
Witold Gombrowicz's Duel with Ideas' @ Bookforum
The World of Witold Gombrowicz @ Yale University
'Witold Gombrowicz, or the Sadness of Form
The Witold Gombrowicz Homepage
On translating Witold Gombrowicz
Witold Gombrowicz Archive
Buy Witold Gombrowicz's books

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Cosmos

Witold Gombrowicz Cosmos
Yale University Press

'Cosmos is the final book by Polish Modernist Witold Gombrowicz. Written in 1968, it arrives now for the first time in English, as nasty as the day it was born. Cosmos is a vicious and uncompromised little gem of the obscene.

'A summary of this oddly plotted book might go like this: a desperate man named Witold—the narrator—meets another unhappy man named Fuks in the woods, where they find a dead bird hanging from a string. Later, they share a room at a family-run hotel, whose owners are as indolent as anyone in Chekhov, and who include a sexy maid named Katasia, and another sexy woman named Lena, though Witold either can’t or won’t distinguish them. At one point, Fuks and Witold break into Katasia’s room, and, on finding it empty, they accidentally leave behind a boxed frog. Soon, Witold kills the family cat and hangs it from a tree. Everyone seems headed toward a giant, if oblique, domestic showdown—and yet, somehow, nothing happens.' -- Adam Novy, The Believer

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Excerpt

I’ll tell you about another adventure that’s even more strange . . .

Sweat, Fuks is walking, I’m behind him, pant legs, heels, sand, we’re plodding on, plodding on, ruts, clods of dirt, glassy pebbles flashing, the glare, the heat humming, quivering, everything is black in the sunlight, cottages, fences, fields, woods, the road, this march, from where, what for, a lot could be said, actually I was worn out by my father and mother, by my family in general, I wanted to prepare for at least one of my exams and also to breathe in change, break loose, spend time someplace far away. I went to Zakopane, I’m walking along the Krupowki, thinking about finding a cheap little boarding house, when I run into Fuks, his faded-blond, carroty mug, bug-eyed, his gaze smeared with apathy, but he’s glad, and I’m glad, how are you, what are you doing here, I’m looking for a room, me too, I have an address— he says—of a small country place where it’s cheaper because it’s far away, out in the sticks somewhere. So we go on, pant legs, heels in the sand, the road and the heat, I look down, the earth and the sand, pebbles sparkling, one two, one two, pant legs, heels, sweat, eyelids heavy from a sleepless night on the train, nothing but a rank-and-file trudging along. He stopped.

“Let’s rest.”

“How far is it?”

“Not far.”

I looked around and saw whatever there was to see, and it was precisely what I didn’t want to see because I had seen it so many times before: pines and fences, firs and cottages, weeds and grass, a ditch, footpaths and cabbage patches, fields and a chimney . . . the air . . . all glistening in the sun, yet black, the blackness of trees, the grayness of the soil, the earthy green of plants, everything rather black. A dog barked, Fuks turned into a thicket.

“It’s cooler here.”

“Let’s go on.”

“Wait a minute. Let’s sit down a while.”

He ventured deeper into the bushes where recesses and hollows were opening up, darkened from above by a canopy of intertwining hazel branches and boughs of spruce, I ventured with my gaze into the disarray of leaves, twigs, blotches of light, thickets, recesses, thrusts, slants, bends, curves, devil knows what, into a mottled space that was charging and receding, first growing quiet, then, I don’t know, swelling, displacing everything, opening wide . . . lost and drenched in sweat, I felt the ground below, black and bare. There was something stuck between the trees— something was protruding that was different and strange, though indistinct . . . and this is what my companion was also watching.

“A sparrow.”

“Ah.”

It was a sparrow. A sparrow hanging on a piece of wire. Hanged. Its little head to one side, its beak wide open. It was hanging on a thin wire hooked over a branch.

Remarkable. A hanged bird. A hanged sparrow. The eccentricity of it clamored with a loud voice and pointed to a human hand that had torn into the thicket—but who?

Who hanged it, why, for what reason? . . . my thoughts were entangled in this overgrowth abounding in a million combinations, the jolting train ride, the night filled with the rumble of the train, lack of sleep, the air, the sun, the march here with this Fuks, there was Jasia and my mother, the mess with the letter, the way I had “cold-shouldered” my father, there was Roman, and also Fuks’s problem with his boss in the office (that he’s been telling me about), ruts, clods of dirt, heels, pant legs, pebbles, leaves, all of it suddenly fell down before the bird, like a crowd on its knees, and the bird, the eccentric, seized the reign . . . and reigned in this nook.

“Who could have hanged it?”

“Some kid.”

“No. It’s too high up.”

“Let’s go.”

But he didn’t stir. The sparrow was hanging. The ground was bare but in some places short, sparse grass was encroaching on it, many things lay about, a piece of bent sheet metal, a stick, another stick, some torn cardboard, a smaller stick, there was also a beetle, an ant, another ant, some unfamiliar bug, a wood chip, and so on and on, all the way to the scrub at the roots of the bushes—he watched as I did. “Let’s go.” But he went on standing, looking, the sparrow was hanging, I was standing, looking. “Let’s go.” “Let’s go.” But we didn’t budge, perhaps because we had already stood here too long and the right moment for departure had passed . . . and now it was all becoming heavier, more awkward . . . the two of us with the hanging sparrow in the bushes . . . and something like a violation of balance, or tactlessness, an impropriety on our part loomed in my mind . . . I was sleepy.

“Well, let’s get going!” I said, and we left . . . leaving the sparrow in the bushes, all alone.

Further march down the road in the sun scorched and wearied us, so we stopped, disgruntled, and again I asked “is it far?” Fuks
answered by pointing to a notice posted on a fence: “They’ve got rooms for rent here too.” I looked. A little garden. In the garden there was a house behind a hedge, no ornaments or balconies, boring and shabby, low budget, with a skimpy porch sticking out, wooden, Zakopane-style, with two rows of windows, five each on the first and second floors, while in the little garden—a few stunted trees, pansies withering in the flower beds, a couple of gravel footpaths. But he thought we should check it out, why not, sometimes in a dingy place like this the food could be finger-licking good, cheap too. I was ready to walk in and look, though we had passed a few similar notices and hadn’t paid any attention, and besides, I was dripping with sweat. He opened the gate, and we walked along the gravel path toward the glittering windowpanes. He rang the bell, we stood a while on the porch until the door opened and a woman, no longer young, about forty, came out, maybe a housekeeper, bosomy and slightly plump.

“We’d like to see the rooms.”

“One moment please, I’ll get the lady of the house.”

We waited on the porch, the din of the train still in my head, the journey, the previous day’s events, the swarm, the haze, the roar.

Cascading, overwhelming roar.What intrigued me in this woman was a strange deformity of the mouth in the face of a bright-eyed, decent little housekeeper—her mouth was as if incised on one side, and its lengthening, just by a bit, by a fraction of an inch, made her upper lip curl upward, leap aside, or slither away, almost like a reptile, and that sideways slipperiness slipping away repelled me by its reptilian, frog-like coldness, and, like a dark passage, it instantly warmed and aroused me, leading me to a sin with her, sexual, slippery, and lubricious. And her voice came as a surprise— I don’t know what kind of voice I had expected from such a mouth—but she sounded like an ordinary housekeeper, middleaged and corpulent. I now heard her call from inside the house: “Auntie! A couple of gentlemen are here about the room!”

After a few moments the aunt trundled out on her short little legs as if on a rolling pin, she was rotund—we exchanged a few remarks, yes indeed, there is a room for two, with board, please come this way! A whiff of ground coffee, a narrow hallway, a small alcove, wooden stairs, you’re here for a while, ah, yes, studying, it’s peaceful here, quiet . . . at the top there was another hallway and several doors, the house was cramped. She opened the door to the last room off the hallway, I only glanced at it, because it was like all rooms for rent, dark, shades drawn, two beds and a wardrobe, one clothes hanger, a water pitcher on a saucer, two small lamps by the beds, no bulbs, a mirror in a grimy frame, ugly. From under the window shade a little sunlight settled in a spot on the floor, the scent of ivy floated in and with it the buzzing of a gadfly. And yet . . . and yet there was a surprise, because one of the beds was occupied and someone lay on it, a woman, lying, it seemed, not quite as she should have been, though I don’t know what gave me the sense of this being, let’s say, so out of place—whether it was that the bed was without sheets, with only a mattress—or that her leg lay partially on the metal mesh of the bed (because the mattress had moved a little), or was it the combination of the leg and the metal that surprised me on this hot, buzzing, exhausting day. Was she asleep? When she saw us she sat up and tidied her hair. “Lena, what are you doing, honey? Really! Gentlemen—my daughter.”

In response to our bows she nodded her head, rose, and left silently—her silence put to rest the thought of anything out of the ordinary.

We were shown another room next door, exactly the same but slightly cheaper because it wasn’t connected directly to a bathroom. Fuks sat on the bed, Mrs.Wojtys, a bank manager’s wife, sat on a little chair, and the final upshot was that we rented the cheaper room, with board, of which she said: “You’ll see for yourselves.”

We were to have breakfast and lunch in our room and supper downstairs with the family.

“Go back for your luggage, gentlemen, Katasia and I will get everything ready.”

We returned to town for our luggage.

We came back with our luggage.

We unpacked while Fuks was explaining how lucky we were, the room was inexpensive, the other one, the one that had been recommended to him would surely have been more expensive . . . and also farther away . . . “The grub will be good, you’ll see!” I grew more and more weary of his fish-face, and . . . to sleep . . . sleep . . . I went to the window, looked out, that wretched little garden was scorching in the sun, farther on there was the fence and the road, and beyond that two spruce trees marked the spot in the thicket where the sparrow was hanging. I threw myself on the bed, spun around, fell asleep, mouth slipping from mouth, lips more like lips because they were less like lips . . . but I was no longer asleep. Something had awakened me. The housekeeper was standing over me. It was morning, yet dark, like night. Because it wasn’t morning. She was waking me: “The Mr. and Mrs. Wojtys would like you to come down for supper.” I got up. Fuks was already putting on his shoes. Supper. In the dining room, a tight cubbyhole, a sideboard with a mirror, yogurt, radishes, and the eloquence of Mr.Wojtys, the ex–bank manager,who wore a signet ring and gold cufflinks:

“Mark you, dear fellow, I have now designated myself to be at the beck and call of my better half, and I am to render specific services, namely, when the faucet goes on the fritz, or the radio . . . I would recommend more sweetie butter with the radishes, the butter is tip-top . . . ”

“Thank you.”

“This heat, there’s bound to be a thunderstorm, I swear on the holiest of holies, bless me and my grenadiers!”

“Did you hear the thunder, Daddy, beyond the forest, far away?” (This was Lena, I hadn’t seen much of her yet, I hadn’t seen much of anything, in any case the ex-manager or the ex-director was expressing himself with a flourish.) “May I suggest a teensy-weensy helping of curdled milk, my wife is a very special specialist when it comes to curdled milkie, and what is it that makes hers the crème de la crème, my dear fellow? It’s the pot! The quality of milk fermentation depends on the lactic attributes of the pot.” “What do you know, Leon!” (The ex-manager’s wife interjected this.) “I’m a bridge player, my dears, an ex-banker, now a bridge player in the afternoons as well as Sunday nights, by special wifely dispensation! So, gentlemen, you are here to study? Quite so, perfect, peace and quiet, the intellect can wallow like fruit in a compote . . . ” But I wasn’t really listening, Mr. Leon’s head was like a dome, elf-like, its baldness riding over the table, accentuated by the sarcastic flashing of his pince-nez, next to him Lena, a lake, and the polite Mrs. Leon sitting on her rotundity and rising from it to preside over supper with self-sacrifice, the nature of which I had not yet grasped, Fuks saying something pallid, white, phlegmatic—I ate a piece of meat pie, still feeling sleepy, they talked about the dust in the air, that the season had not yet begun, I asked if it was cool at night, we finished the meat pie, then the fruit compote made its appearance, and, after the compote, Katasia pushed an ashtray toward Lena, the ashtray had a wire mesh—as if an echo, a faint echo of the other net (on the bed), on which a leg, a foot, a calf lay on the wire netting of the bed when I had walked into the room etc., etc. Katasia’s lip, slithering, found itself near Lena’s little mouth.
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p.s. RIP: Peter Christopherson. That's really fucked up and really sad news. Hey. Oh, just a quick heads up that there won't be a new post here on Monday because I'll be en route from Munich to Paris that morning, but I'll do a reminder about that tomorrow. ** Misanthrope, Your nephew's WWE clock does sound pretty sweet. And your Batman clock's a keeper on looks alone. Yeah, I guess with me, when I look at someone, I'm always immediately trying to read who they are as well as absorbing how they look technically, even when I pass them on the street. It's just a weird habit or something. So the technical stuff never really registers on its own. Well, I guess I think of Thanksgiving as being like a birthday except for families instead of individuals. Or like how Sunday is the day you go to church. I don't know. I guess it's about being thankful, but I always just think of it as the day when you're supposed to have a big dinner with your family and not much else. Do something about that tooth, man. Neglected bad, infected teeth can lead to really bad shit. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Yeah, terrible about Peter Christopherson, and seemingly just out of the blue. Ugh. Beautiful stuff about clocks, man. Wow, that was beautiful. ** David, Yeah, I seem to like melancholy. Which is strange because I'm not a very melancholy person as a rule. ** David Ehrenstein, Thanks about my Tea Party tea leaves reading. I didn't know there was a Fran Leibowitz documentary. That's interesting. I'll definitely see that. I met her twice briefly, and she was witty/surly from the get-go just like you would imagine. ** Allesfliesst, Hey! Glad you found a way to sneak in. Jesus, that fury from the president of the Kleist Society is so crazily petty. The kind of guy for whom the phrase 'get a life' was coined. I'm okay, just working, off to Munich tomorrow and curious to see what it is. ** Bill, Hey. Oh, sure, I know that clock near the Pompidou. I walk by it constantly but, yeah, I've never seen it in action. It's always sitting sitting there. I've seen the automata in the Arts & Metier museum, but only in their cases and stuff. Next time, I'll see if I can spot a bored, knowledgeable looking guard. Mm, no I don't think I've done an automata/ clockwork post here. It's a great idea. I'll do that, and, sure, if you want to help me out in any way, that would be terrific and super kind of you. Thanks! Hope your feast yesterday was a feast. ** Pisycaca, Hi, Montse. Yeah, I think I'm nearly finished with the novel. I'll have to reread it to be sure. I hope so. I'm having a no confidence day about it today. Hopefully, I'll sleep that off. It would great if you don't mind making a post about your label. Yeah, awesome, thank you, pal! A fourth Atlas Sound demo collection?! Wow, what's going on? Fantastic, obviously. ** Bernard Welt, Yes, that all sounds very, very delicious. Most of it. I can't believe you dripped animal juice into the stuffing though because I was so there until that caveat. I had veggie-dogs wrapped in tortillas and dipped in store bought guacamole. 'Nuff said. If you go to that spa, tell me about it. I'm developing a spa interest. ** L@rstonovich, Okay, uh, yeah, I didn't see Trumans Water last night. Why, because I'm a spaced out idiot who had it in my head that they were playing tonight despite all the evidence piled up against my mis-remembrance. I had comps to see a performance art thing last night, and I thought, oh, that's good, because that's the day before Trumans Water plays. Which was true until the night of the performance that I got comped for was changed to last night. But I maintained my 'oh, that's good ...' thing against all rhyme and reason. I do that all the time. I suck. I'm not just saying that. I do. So, yeah. ** JW Veldhoen, You can get this really thin, light, silk-like, pajamas-like body suit you wear under your clothes that can keep you warm even in really, really cold weather. I used to have a pair. They were magic. I assume they still make and sell them. 2010 plans? Not be working on a novel. That will do for now. ** Jheorgge, Hey. Yeah, kind of really crushing news about Peter. I knew him a little, you know. I saw him a couple of years ago when TG played here. He did the score for that god awful 'Frisk' movie. Anyway, it's awful news. Okay, I'll try to get a ghost photo that isn't completely blurry. I'll have to do it when I get back from Munich at the beginning of next week. But sure, and, you know, thanks again, man. Very cool. ** Memoirs of a Heroinhead, That's all so very true about clocks. Your brain rules. Very glad to hear you're electrified again, and I hope it lasts. The month following my dad's death was very strange. It's a hard thing to reckon with for a lot of reasons, one being that he was so far when it happened, so it doesn't have a realness about it. Plus, in the following month, I was doing 'Them' in NYC, working on my novel, dealing with the 'Gabe' thing and the pedophile-related craziness here, and there was just a lot of emotional interference. So, I'm still gradually dealing with his death. It's sinking in very slowly, and the impact is still building up in a way rather than being behind me. I don't know. It's really good and sweet of you to ask, my friend. ** Chris Cochrane, Hey. Intense Thanksgiving there. I hope it was okay, all things considered. I don't know why I haven't crossed paths or met up with Rhys Chatham. I sure would like to since I'm crazy about his work. I guess I should send him a Facebook message and see if he'd be up for a coffee or something, although I don't have any reason to think he would know of me or my work. Saw Ben last night. Sounds like everything's pretty set for 'Them', maybe even including Rico. ** Polter, Hey. Great to see you! I'm really liking the recent works on your blog. Really powerful stuff. Everyone, check out the blog and writings of Polter. They're here. You'll be enriched. Well, yeah, you should come to Paris. I'll be happy to show you around, if you want. You might want to wait until it warms up a little, though. It's wet and freezing here right now, and it looks like it might be a tough winter. I might actually get to come to Oslo. In late February. There's talk of me maybe doing a reading or talk or something in conjunction with the visit there of one of Gisele Vienne's and my theater pieces. It's a maybe, but I'm really hoping it happens. If it does, I'd love to meet up, obviously. Me, I'm okay. I'm just working nonstop to finish my novel, and I'm kind of tired in the brain and burnt out a lot, but hopefully it'll be worth it. Anyway, yeah, it's very nice to see you and speak with you. ** Steevee, Ah, you got the Artforum gig, excellent. I haven't heard of 'The Red Chapel'. Like 'Borat'? A Danish 'Borat'? That sounds very curious. ** Creative Massacre, Hi, pal. Oh, I'm so sorry to hear about your mom. Scary. But it's really good that it was mild, and I'm guessing they can now do preventative stuff to help ward off another one. Anyway, my very best to her and to you. It's snowing there? We were supposed to get snow yesterday, but we only got 30 seconds of sleet. I love snow. But I have a hole in the bottom of my only pair of shoes, so my feelings about snow are a little more mixed right now than usual. ** Andrew, Apple is having a one-day Black Friday sale today. I might check that out 'cos I'll need a new laptop any minute now. I don't know if you're still thinking of getting one. Trippy baby. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, Hey. Me wanting cake is a good thing because France is like a god when it comes to cakes. They're everywhere, and they're crazy good. I still haven't eaten one though. Maybe today. We decided to wait and go see the Harry Potter movie next week because, predictably, it's a humongous hit here and so trying to see it on the weekend isn't such a great idea. I don't know why the Recollets has that two-year limit policy. I guess I just figured that they needed to draw the line somewhere that two years seemed fairly humanitarian. But maybe there's a real reason. I'll ask. Your Thanksgiving sounds like it was just as colorful as I had imagined and, I'll admit, as I had hoped as your reader. Love that 'fat' dialogue. Love that scene of you at the window. The thing with your uncle was kind of really moving. Your Thanksgiving kind of had it all. It was a big success as a comment and as a piece of writing. I thank and salute you. My day, however, isn't going to be so lucky. Worked on novel mostly, of course. The last chapter started getting much harder to finish, and my pace slowed way, way down, and I started having nagging doubts about the novel in general, and today I think the novel might be just completely terrible, but I'm going to keep finishing it anyway. At the moment, the narrator is pretending he's a tourist, and he's about two have sex with two Swedish tourists, and since having sex really freaks him out, this is not a good thing. Otherwise, I had a coffee with my pal Scott at the train station. That was very nice. He and his boyfriend left for a little trip to Milan and Venice today. It was pretty cold out, and it kind of sleeted for a few seconds in between stretches of drizzly rain. In the evening, Oscar and I walked to the Centre Pompidou to see a performance. It was 'Last Meadow' by the NYC performance artist/ director Miguel Gutierrez. Oh, here's a trailer if you want to see what it was like. The guy who organizes the 'Them' shows for us, Ben Pryor, was there because he's Miguel's manager, and he said the January performances of 'Them' are a definite now, so that was good news, and I guess I need to buy a plane ticket. After the show, Oscar and I came back here. I had made verbal plans to talk on the phone with my sister, her husband, my nephew, and my friend Joel who were having Thanksgiving together, but then I realized last night that they were doing Thanksgiving in the afternoon LA time, which would be in the middle of the night here, so that conversation didn't end up happening. I tried to do stuff on the internet, but the connection was so incredibly bad that I could barely open a webpage, so I gave up and went to sleep. I can't promise that today will be much better, but I'll try. How was the first day of the rest of your post-Thanksgiving life? ** Bollo, Hi, J. Thanks about the clocks. Cool, yeah, let me know when the pix are up and visible. I've been meaning to download/ hear Mater Suspiria Vision. Good, I will. I'm not listening to much right now due to novel impairment. No, I don't think the new KTL album has anything to do with 'TIHYWD' other than the fact that Stephen and Peter are together all time on the tour and thereby have the situation and time to make new KTL music. Sarkozy's a joke, yeah. An awful joke. But, man, things sound really crazy and awful in Ireland, no? Really serious funding cuts to the arts and stuff? How bad is it? ** Alan, Hey. Well, I wasn't meaning to imply that your novel isn't commercial. I haven't read it yet because I'm not reading anything until I finish mine, so I have no preset idea about that. Anyway, I don't know what being 'commercial' involves really or what it takes for a novel to be that. I just know that getting an agent is really hard, and my sense is that it's hard whether your work is accessible or not because agents are constantly getting mss., and every writer who approaches an agent is fighting for space and their attention. And agents have their own particular tastes and sense of what will sell and make them/ the writer money. Obviously, I think you have the same chance as anyone. I just mean that, as I understand it, the process itself is inherently idiosyncratic. It's not like getting the answers right on a test. You're dealing with individuals' tastes and instincts, and that makes it tricky. If what I've been saying has seemed like I'm discouraging you or stigmatizing your novel, that's not at what I intended or what I feel. I'm just trying to think the situation through with you and not doing a very good job of it, basically. ** Little foal, Hey, Darren. I'm really glad the thoughts made sense, and I'm really, really glad you're feeling clearer and better. I hope your work day went well, and I'll talk to you soon. Lots of love right back at you. ** Changeling, Hey, man! I was hoping you'd like the clocks. Intense thing with someone ... well, such things can go either way. It seems like they help the writing mostly when you're feeling insecure or confused about the intense thing or about the other person and when you're in a situation where you can just write new things rather than continue to work on something that pre-exists the intense thing. Like, if you were writing poetry or short, spontaneous fiction pieces, it might be real a boon for the writing. Does that make sense? Anyway, if it isn't helping your writing, that's not necessarily weird at all, I think. Can you say more? ** Okay. If you don't know Gombrowicz's work or the particular novel on show today, he's pretty great, and so is it. See how it strikes you. See you in the morning.