Stendhal's Syndrome

The Utah Kid sent along Julian Barnes new book on the fear of dying, which same is both funny and poignant, and clearly the result of a life-long consideration. The cast of characters is large, the variety of voices wonderful, an elegant balancing act. Stendhal, when he was still Henri Beyle, went to Florence and kept a diary; years later, Stendhal as Stendhal, wrote that he entered Florence and swooned at the art. 1979 a psychiatrist coined the Syndrome. Hogwash. S/H made it up. Back to Plato, Barnes quotes a Professor C. from Oxford: "The religion of art makes people worse, because it encourages contempt for those considered inartistic." (Barnes points out that the opposite is more likely true.) Emily famously, dying, said: "I must go in. The fog is rising." which certainly seems to approach the sublime, and doesn't seem to threaten anyone. Not being religious, great art and nature are my shrines. Listening to the Cello Suites, walking the woods when an ice-storm has crystallized the entire visible world, sitting for an hour staring at a Sargent portrait, Beverly Sills' last Traviata, Turkey Creek in spate, reading Skip Fox and Stephen Ellis; the list could easily grow to include great meals with excellent wines, certain ankles, a particular smile, the last time I nearly swooned was when Holly showed me her tattoo. Worship is an interesting word, more, for me, that I should be engaged, and that is my faith. Cold front and wind, temps dropping into the forties at night, the leaves are being blown off the trees and they haven't colored yet. With a bow-saw I hand-cut the first firewood, pieces of the Wrack Show, and I don't want to use a chainsaw, because the noise would be so off-putting. Probably need a fire tomorrow night, not much of one, but enough to fry an egg, have breakfast for dinner. Cooler weather, I need to use the sling-blade, when I get home from work, a few minutes a day, get back into my physical self, work on some muscle groups, cut back on the reading for the fall, so I can read more this winter. But I want to move slowly here, warming up the system, because I can't afford a failure. I'm so completely alone. I mean really. We all are, of course, ultimately. But I'm so isolated, in addition. Be careful, is all, take care. A monk goes into a bar in Wyoming, he has a monkey on his shoulder, every time the monk orders a drink the monkey runs down the monk's arm and drinks it, after three or four the monkey falls over, dead drunk, and the monk says: " Walk down, and fuck 'em all." I love a bit of weather, the way it changes things, this front has me cleaning the stovepipe. There are ways I'm just an aging Boy Scout with dreams of looking up someone's skirt. There is a way in which Plato is correct, many, he proposed women's suffrage, he established the syllabus, he's the Man, the Dude. No matter what I think. I might argue a minor point but the spirit of Plato rises up like a golem and squashes me. One step, bam, I'm non-existent. Which somehow ties back to whatever that was. I don't care about anything, but I'm concerned nonetheless. When Stendhal reinvented Florence he was just re-remembering. I'm pretty sure I have this straight, what construct comes from what line of reasoning. You can build any world you want, but it all comes back to the natural world, what you actually saw. You have to start somewhere. I like the natural world because it's even-handed. Sometimes slaps me on the face, but sometimes allows great beauty to show through. Like any other relationship. I like a fox right now, she doesn't demand much; I roll her an apple, she's happy with me. I could be accused of a great many things, but inattention isn't one of them. I might swoon, at the Circus Show, but it could just be exhaustion. We'll never know, because I'm installing this show, and everything becomes fiction. The closer I describe something, the further away it appears. It's an artifact of the medium, something to do with something I don't understand; I'd leave everything to someone else but I can't afford their time, I can barely buy groceries for god's sake. What seems to be the real world is more than enough. Consider our narrator poking the napp with a stick, how thick, exactly, is the blanket?