everything at the mirror sites of 8ly dysfunctionally should be posted as black bckgrnd and blk text - mnot my original plan but of ourse the only option that is and would be at all appropriate under the circumstances: Me actively redacted.
Friday, May 10, 2013
MIA File(s)...Again
As I saved it over three times in and as three different titles there is simply that what i would like to post I cannot.
Big piece labeled/titled "Shades of black and white: Letter 60 of the W.S Merwin series"
but as I can't get any of what I want I'll go for the music though I would have liked to have put the poem out there- I really like the poem titled REM: RADIOhead's phone booth SONG but oh- well.
To the all seeing, and not all knowing,: Weird and a total lie what that Desrt Storm guy said. BS.
but now for what closed the essay (or whatever it I'm writing) would have closed with
- all that would have been "sometimes more IS more" (ie: renee Zellwinger and Meryl Streep) having been temporarily or permamently stripped/stolen/file not found:
1 release me
2(important copy regarding two words) Animal
3 daughter
4 (and the CD that was playing pefect and then suddenly nearly every tune scratched beyond listening in on play of it and thus I didn;t get to hear the song
I'd link all these but par usual this monkey's desire to produce something interesting - well I guess those that can't block. Becaus ethat's all they've got.
Big piece labeled/titled "Shades of black and white: Letter 60 of the W.S Merwin series"
but as I can't get any of what I want I'll go for the music though I would have liked to have put the poem out there- I really like the poem titled REM: RADIOhead's phone booth SONG but oh- well.
To the all seeing, and not all knowing,: Weird and a total lie what that Desrt Storm guy said. BS.
but now for what closed the essay (or whatever it I'm writing) would have closed with
- all that would have been "sometimes more IS more" (ie: renee Zellwinger and Meryl Streep) having been temporarily or permamently stripped/stolen/file not found:
1 release me
2(important copy regarding two words) Animal
3 daughter
4 (and the CD that was playing pefect and then suddenly nearly every tune scratched beyond listening in on play of it and thus I didn;t get to hear the song
I'd link all these but par usual this monkey's desire to produce something interesting - well I guess those that can't block. Becaus ethat's all they've got.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Search String Theor(y/ies) Letters 49 from: Letters to W.S Merwin from Purgatario:
System made Beholdthrelish=unavaliable ie: dentistry
Letter 49
Behavioral Modification
March 18, 2013
Dear Merwin,
I fought the inclination to text him while I was sleeping.
I had the weirdest dream but of course I remembered the dream so that in and of itself is memorable. He was there- I suppose he always is.
I had woken to electrical zings somewhere between 3 and 5 am; as I stretched to try and get some more sleep the thought “piano strings about to break” from my finger tips all the way to my shoulder and up my neck. Now there’s that, all the usual symptoms and that old awful metallic taste that could have me making full time work out of not hurling all day today as such days usually run into tomorrow.
That and having to make my eyes form that triangle shape, that point- that’s part of the why I haven’t been able to see right for over ten years: the focus hasn’t changed but the sockets aren’t entirely working together. Which means I could work at forcing them all day and be super dizzy or let the circuit rest and have a voluntary blindness day as much as possible- with the exception of this because I so rarely remember my dreams.
I don’t know what I was dreaming before I woke up and managed a little of what was technical sleep but certainly not rest and even in there I encountered cell phones and cigarettes.
Where it started, or where I first remember it starting was and is in a room he was in? Or a place I knew he was. I’ve written the next sentence twice already and this being my third pass I’ll merely say: no words were exchanged, I don’t believe he saw me and I promptly left as soon as I knew he was there. I went across the street instead to a building once a church and now The Rock-n-Roll café with a large banner loudly announcing “We’re Open”. Knowing they might only be open for a short time as such signs have the invisible subtext: “please, please, please come in lest we have to close“. I went in: a mercy customer.
I admired it though, the building. The old redbrick, ancient hydrangeas in mottled blue and pink bloom which were oddly straggly and not at all like their usual rounded bush but like long languid singular branches only in, and with, blooms and leaves at their ends. The branches had been allowed to grow in this strange form as if tendrils were emerging from the building. Considering the inner décor perhaps that was entirely the case.
There was a huge turquoise canvas, a piece just behind the head of the proprietor amid a shop, I presume it was a shop?
The place featured enough art to be an art gallery except there was too much for that and it had turned into an above ground attic with lots of old junk with the exception of that large canvas layered in various blues with dollops of smudged white. (probably because of that NPR singer I heard on that program yesterday wherein she sang in “B minor- a very unusual key for that song” and kept referring to the host as John so of course I turned off the broadcast just the same as I left the building/place he was in during the dream but still in this dream I’ll consider texting him. It will actually occur to me.)
Inside the church’s ( in edit I have sudden urge to hear “Under the Milky Way” filed in summer 1989)
I am in The Church’s rock and roll café which is too many parts layers and layers of stuff lining the walls and without a menu?
I turn my head to look at something and when my gaze returns to the proprietor she has a malicious glint in her eye. I feel temporarily dazed because the painting is gone, the one in progress the one in layers of blues and turquoise, the one painting that was interesting and instead it has been replaced by several paintings making the same large shape leaning against a wall. All her replacement paintings are of the same type you find in shopping malls or anywhere someone had bad taste.
The proprietor looks at me as though she’s waiting for a reaction: she knows she’s switched the background and seems to be waiting to see if I know, if she’ll get what I’m there to feed her because this café feeds on the customers. I don’t know if she got the doe in headlights confused expression she was waiting for so greedily.
She’s frightening and exudes a conniving mean spirit so I leave. I can’t say whether she got the reaction from me she seemed to be waiting for but maybe I have a poker face in my dreams.
Either before or after I existed the rock-n-roll church cafe I had a thought about the place I hadn’t walked into and what would certainly be a kindly proprietor. I had thought about volunteering that perhaps it would help if people could see inside. “If people could see the tables“ I had thought before I entered the building “a (plexi)glass door“ - then it occurred to me the historic society would probably have something to say about any alteration regarding the doors and I realized I was in Savannah.
I had been in this Savannah before. Of course its not really Savannah but a Savannah in dreams just like Charleston is never Charleston in my dreams and both places seem to be constructed of large doses of Beaufort. (S.C.)
Now I don’t remember if the rock-n-roll café was before the gas station or after the gas station but the restaurant certainly came at the end- right before I woke up.
After leaving the rock-n-roll café across the street from the guy who- well you’re here to replace him Merwin.
So I leave the café and it is a sunny gorgeous day and I am suddenly standing in front of a white stucco building at least four stories high. I am admiring, with a few other people, the grandness of this white façade as if we are on a Greek island with Spanish architecture.
Plumes of coral begonia fronds with leaves as big as elephant ears are glossily not only adorning the building’s sunny rooftop veranda. At the front and center of the stucco façade, at the heart of the building -a huge spray is seemingly growing, ever so slowly airily-fairily growing out of the building. Watching the plant sway against the building I’m cognizant and wonder if anyone else knows.
I think of what I often see here in non dream and sometimes living nightmare Charleston: people seem unaware that in the tropics plants can quickly turn a building into rubble.
In this dream, from what I can see at ground level one of the plants hanging from the huge colander sized containers, or perhaps from the large array lining the rail from enormous window boxes: Was a leaf lost or was it an errant seed cast which found a crack and began to root in the damp of the breathing stucco?
The glossy green, the splash of coral against the sun bleached white of the clean Spanish lines and I thought “he must know this building- I’ll send him a picture” and in between I think about the title, unable, as usual, to remember begonia and thinking instead “bougainvillea”. And then I remember.
I don’t remember “begonia” - I have to wake up for that to happen.
No, I remember I can’t write him because he doesn’t want me writing him.
“I could just send the picture,” a voice says.
But no. I put the idea of a camera shot away and instead am walking down a curved street and on my right I see I am walking toward a huge rock formation with sulfur yellow streaks against a grey that seems nearly to glow as the sun hits what must be high amounts of mica in its walls. A lovely crumbling shape which is not a rock but a building carved from rock? No, a building in disrepair and I notice the street I’m on. The white building has disappeared and I only see women lined up on their stoops showing shoulder, showing leg - the observing men approaching them transmit some kind of permanent sloth particle like an odor that’s permeated plastic.
There’s something dirty about the street and I can’t see around the bend of where the rock formation building is, the lighting is great but beginning to dull and I don’t know what’s around that corner only that this lose pack of men is heading in that very direction, there may be more of this pack ahead and wherever I’m going I don’t want to be where they are.
They’re like that guy at the gas station, and that woman in the rock and roll café, a sneer in waiting. The gas station where I’d gone down stairs, found that I lived there- or once had- because there was my old german shepherd Bishop and a cat I feel guilty about, a hole in the door and me feeling as if I didn’t and never could have done enough for either of them. There’s a hole in the door for Mongo who doesn’t look anything like Mongo but I know its her “good for hunting” I say guiltily because I took her away from hunting ground. I’m glad for the hole in the door because I always felt he would’ve forgotten and killed her that way - just like he killed that kitten.
I know Bishop made the hole in the door for Mongo because he would. I know I’ll be blamed for the escape-n- hunt hatch he made for her but that’s okay- I’d rather that. I don’t blame them I just wish it was a better, nicer place for them than the basement of this crummy gas station.
I think that’s where the dream started: in the gas station.
So the gas station, the church as rock-n-roll failing café, the white stucco house with coral colored fronds sprouting from its heart, a big rock formation crumbling like public housing, a seedy street where nothing good grows and across the street into the restaurant.
I’m in and out. Time loses its structural sequence so thoroughly I actually become aware of it: actions are completed before they’re started and it is as if I am in the Quantum Café; perhaps I am. I go outside and am not glad to find a circle of smokers because I don’t smoke anymore and was hoping for some air, for some feeling of space because this all feels like its closing in.
I go back in the restaurant and see the waitress’s section now has another single sitting at a table, one of her four tops -which sucks.
Was I at a two top? I don’t remember. I feel badly about not having any cash to leave the waitress. I secure my bags like a homeless person. Am I? Am I homeless?
I wake up in an apartment.
I have a stove.
I’ll make some tea.
So Merwin- having remembered the dream in crystal clarity I figured I’d write in down. I had my cup of plant, sat on some ice - my left ear just popped. Wonder if that will be all day?
Hmm- I was still so asleep when I started writing this I was in, dated it: 2012
Letter 49
Behavioral Modification
March 18, 2013
Dear Merwin,
I fought the inclination to text him while I was sleeping.
I had the weirdest dream but of course I remembered the dream so that in and of itself is memorable. He was there- I suppose he always is.
I had woken to electrical zings somewhere between 3 and 5 am; as I stretched to try and get some more sleep the thought “piano strings about to break” from my finger tips all the way to my shoulder and up my neck. Now there’s that, all the usual symptoms and that old awful metallic taste that could have me making full time work out of not hurling all day today as such days usually run into tomorrow.
That and having to make my eyes form that triangle shape, that point- that’s part of the why I haven’t been able to see right for over ten years: the focus hasn’t changed but the sockets aren’t entirely working together. Which means I could work at forcing them all day and be super dizzy or let the circuit rest and have a voluntary blindness day as much as possible- with the exception of this because I so rarely remember my dreams.
I don’t know what I was dreaming before I woke up and managed a little of what was technical sleep but certainly not rest and even in there I encountered cell phones and cigarettes.
Where it started, or where I first remember it starting was and is in a room he was in? Or a place I knew he was. I’ve written the next sentence twice already and this being my third pass I’ll merely say: no words were exchanged, I don’t believe he saw me and I promptly left as soon as I knew he was there. I went across the street instead to a building once a church and now The Rock-n-Roll café with a large banner loudly announcing “We’re Open”. Knowing they might only be open for a short time as such signs have the invisible subtext: “please, please, please come in lest we have to close“. I went in: a mercy customer.
I admired it though, the building. The old redbrick, ancient hydrangeas in mottled blue and pink bloom which were oddly straggly and not at all like their usual rounded bush but like long languid singular branches only in, and with, blooms and leaves at their ends. The branches had been allowed to grow in this strange form as if tendrils were emerging from the building. Considering the inner décor perhaps that was entirely the case.
There was a huge turquoise canvas, a piece just behind the head of the proprietor amid a shop, I presume it was a shop?
The place featured enough art to be an art gallery except there was too much for that and it had turned into an above ground attic with lots of old junk with the exception of that large canvas layered in various blues with dollops of smudged white. (probably because of that NPR singer I heard on that program yesterday wherein she sang in “B minor- a very unusual key for that song” and kept referring to the host as John so of course I turned off the broadcast just the same as I left the building/place he was in during the dream but still in this dream I’ll consider texting him. It will actually occur to me.)
Inside the church’s ( in edit I have sudden urge to hear “Under the Milky Way” filed in summer 1989)
I am in The Church’s rock and roll café which is too many parts layers and layers of stuff lining the walls and without a menu?
I turn my head to look at something and when my gaze returns to the proprietor she has a malicious glint in her eye. I feel temporarily dazed because the painting is gone, the one in progress the one in layers of blues and turquoise, the one painting that was interesting and instead it has been replaced by several paintings making the same large shape leaning against a wall. All her replacement paintings are of the same type you find in shopping malls or anywhere someone had bad taste.
The proprietor looks at me as though she’s waiting for a reaction: she knows she’s switched the background and seems to be waiting to see if I know, if she’ll get what I’m there to feed her because this café feeds on the customers. I don’t know if she got the doe in headlights confused expression she was waiting for so greedily.
She’s frightening and exudes a conniving mean spirit so I leave. I can’t say whether she got the reaction from me she seemed to be waiting for but maybe I have a poker face in my dreams.
Either before or after I existed the rock-n-roll church cafe I had a thought about the place I hadn’t walked into and what would certainly be a kindly proprietor. I had thought about volunteering that perhaps it would help if people could see inside. “If people could see the tables“ I had thought before I entered the building “a (plexi)glass door“ - then it occurred to me the historic society would probably have something to say about any alteration regarding the doors and I realized I was in Savannah.
I had been in this Savannah before. Of course its not really Savannah but a Savannah in dreams just like Charleston is never Charleston in my dreams and both places seem to be constructed of large doses of Beaufort. (S.C.)
Now I don’t remember if the rock-n-roll café was before the gas station or after the gas station but the restaurant certainly came at the end- right before I woke up.
After leaving the rock-n-roll café across the street from the guy who- well you’re here to replace him Merwin.
So I leave the café and it is a sunny gorgeous day and I am suddenly standing in front of a white stucco building at least four stories high. I am admiring, with a few other people, the grandness of this white façade as if we are on a Greek island with Spanish architecture.
Plumes of coral begonia fronds with leaves as big as elephant ears are glossily not only adorning the building’s sunny rooftop veranda. At the front and center of the stucco façade, at the heart of the building -a huge spray is seemingly growing, ever so slowly airily-fairily growing out of the building. Watching the plant sway against the building I’m cognizant and wonder if anyone else knows.
I think of what I often see here in non dream and sometimes living nightmare Charleston: people seem unaware that in the tropics plants can quickly turn a building into rubble.
In this dream, from what I can see at ground level one of the plants hanging from the huge colander sized containers, or perhaps from the large array lining the rail from enormous window boxes: Was a leaf lost or was it an errant seed cast which found a crack and began to root in the damp of the breathing stucco?
The glossy green, the splash of coral against the sun bleached white of the clean Spanish lines and I thought “he must know this building- I’ll send him a picture” and in between I think about the title, unable, as usual, to remember begonia and thinking instead “bougainvillea”. And then I remember.
I don’t remember “begonia” - I have to wake up for that to happen.
No, I remember I can’t write him because he doesn’t want me writing him.
“I could just send the picture,” a voice says.
But no. I put the idea of a camera shot away and instead am walking down a curved street and on my right I see I am walking toward a huge rock formation with sulfur yellow streaks against a grey that seems nearly to glow as the sun hits what must be high amounts of mica in its walls. A lovely crumbling shape which is not a rock but a building carved from rock? No, a building in disrepair and I notice the street I’m on. The white building has disappeared and I only see women lined up on their stoops showing shoulder, showing leg - the observing men approaching them transmit some kind of permanent sloth particle like an odor that’s permeated plastic.
There’s something dirty about the street and I can’t see around the bend of where the rock formation building is, the lighting is great but beginning to dull and I don’t know what’s around that corner only that this lose pack of men is heading in that very direction, there may be more of this pack ahead and wherever I’m going I don’t want to be where they are.
They’re like that guy at the gas station, and that woman in the rock and roll café, a sneer in waiting. The gas station where I’d gone down stairs, found that I lived there- or once had- because there was my old german shepherd Bishop and a cat I feel guilty about, a hole in the door and me feeling as if I didn’t and never could have done enough for either of them. There’s a hole in the door for Mongo who doesn’t look anything like Mongo but I know its her “good for hunting” I say guiltily because I took her away from hunting ground. I’m glad for the hole in the door because I always felt he would’ve forgotten and killed her that way - just like he killed that kitten.
I know Bishop made the hole in the door for Mongo because he would. I know I’ll be blamed for the escape-n- hunt hatch he made for her but that’s okay- I’d rather that. I don’t blame them I just wish it was a better, nicer place for them than the basement of this crummy gas station.
I think that’s where the dream started: in the gas station.
So the gas station, the church as rock-n-roll failing café, the white stucco house with coral colored fronds sprouting from its heart, a big rock formation crumbling like public housing, a seedy street where nothing good grows and across the street into the restaurant.
I’m in and out. Time loses its structural sequence so thoroughly I actually become aware of it: actions are completed before they’re started and it is as if I am in the Quantum Café; perhaps I am. I go outside and am not glad to find a circle of smokers because I don’t smoke anymore and was hoping for some air, for some feeling of space because this all feels like its closing in.
I go back in the restaurant and see the waitress’s section now has another single sitting at a table, one of her four tops -which sucks.
Was I at a two top? I don’t remember. I feel badly about not having any cash to leave the waitress. I secure my bags like a homeless person. Am I? Am I homeless?
I wake up in an apartment.
I have a stove.
I’ll make some tea.
So Merwin- having remembered the dream in crystal clarity I figured I’d write in down. I had my cup of plant, sat on some ice - my left ear just popped. Wonder if that will be all day?
Hmm- I was still so asleep when I started writing this I was in, dated it: 2012
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
The relish still exists
I've been trying to remember the diference/s btween 2 buses for aruond three years. Both start with an s, both take a similiar route, both have a three in their number- but then I had a thought - based on the intel on the internet which let's face it may true or totally bogus.
But either way now I'll know it because today I realized "Savannah"and he went to SCAD (supposedly)at around 30 and it goes all the way to Meeting a broad - bit of wordplay there. And too there's hardware store- lots of wood. 3 three years later- now, now I'll be able to remember.
Sincerely,
Me
aka:Dora from Finding Nemo
PS: I miss the picture of that plane - virgin Altalntis. Witty- if you need for whole thing to be gone. Okay. But Ireally like/d that picture. Sorry Ididn't tell you that. If your wife is okay with it being up - would you?
But either way now I'll know it because today I realized "Savannah"and he went to SCAD (supposedly)at around 30 and it goes all the way to Meeting a broad - bit of wordplay there. And too there's hardware store- lots of wood. 3 three years later- now, now I'll be able to remember.
Sincerely,
Me
aka:Dora from Finding Nemo
PS: I miss the picture of that plane - virgin Altalntis. Witty- if you need for whole thing to be gone. Okay. But Ireally like/d that picture. Sorry Ididn't tell you that. If your wife is okay with it being up - would you?
Monday, November 21, 2011
Narrative: Harry Potter: the 7th installment of a very long story and a rewrite on the rewrite of the horrible script/s they wrote
Not much new- of course none of my last posts went as planned. Either a) its drain bramage or b) -yeah I gotta go with b.)
Eventually there will be a different site for each book/teleplay- obviously not here? some here? some not?
Well the post sitting at johnmayostudiodotblogspot.com - that was not supposed to go there. The post b4 it was and would be and is a good stop point for all that. plus I worked really hard on tightening it up.
I thought of him today- it happens. At the time I was just admiring the trees and remembering a wartching a kid watch the trees because me- I didn't know that sort of thing was allowed (raised by a gadegty crew) and that kid from elementary school reminded me of that boy I fell in love with? Well adored utterly- but liked so, so much- anyway and that reminded me. Well that's not actually what made me me cry as I enjoyed watching the tree leaves sparkle. What made me cry is that that's how it was - how tightly regulated? devoid of joy? Task. Task. Task. Don't go outside it'll make you sick- and meanwhile what was my mother doing but feeding me- well poison.
I doubt I'll have to lload my thoughts on my thought on my thoughts on the final book- the dialogue between Harry and Luna- major issues- false subplotting- from the audience perspective that's what it would be.
I used to wonder if I died in that car accident- maybe I did. If so I'm pretty far from anywhere I'd want to be.
Eventually there will be a different site for each book/teleplay- obviously not here? some here? some not?
Well the post sitting at johnmayostudiodotblogspot.com - that was not supposed to go there. The post b4 it was and would be and is a good stop point for all that. plus I worked really hard on tightening it up.
I thought of him today- it happens. At the time I was just admiring the trees and remembering a wartching a kid watch the trees because me- I didn't know that sort of thing was allowed (raised by a gadegty crew) and that kid from elementary school reminded me of that boy I fell in love with? Well adored utterly- but liked so, so much- anyway and that reminded me. Well that's not actually what made me me cry as I enjoyed watching the tree leaves sparkle. What made me cry is that that's how it was - how tightly regulated? devoid of joy? Task. Task. Task. Don't go outside it'll make you sick- and meanwhile what was my mother doing but feeding me- well poison.
I doubt I'll have to lload my thoughts on my thought on my thoughts on the final book- the dialogue between Harry and Luna- major issues- false subplotting- from the audience perspective that's what it would be.
I used to wonder if I died in that car accident- maybe I did. If so I'm pretty far from anywhere I'd want to be.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Austenland
10.4.11:
If I were to recommend any book or primer on narrative it would be the collected works of Jane Austen.
“But Jane Austen’s boring!”
Agreed.
For beautiful prose there are better authors. Engaging and intricate plotting? There too there are better writers. Her characters can be so comic as to be cartoonish but all that being said no one showed the base mechanics of narrative, particularly interpersonal narrative as it plays out in the world, nobody did that better than Austen.
Well to quote the Sound of Music: “let’s start at the very beginning- a very good place to start” but better when you start at the beginning already knowing how the story ends- so watch the movie/s first. With any and all anticipation gone one can then simply read the how of the what the author, or auteur, says by showing.
If I wanted to teach and show someone about character in terms of the mechanical structure of narrative I’d first have them watch the film Emma, follow it up with Clueless and focus particularly on Mr. Elton. In terms of both casting and performance the impact/effect on the viewer/reader differed, and didn’t, from Austen’s novel . In one Mr. Elton serves an entirely different purpose per the audience’s perspective.
In the debacle of matchmaking that was Elton, Harriet and Emma there is a great lesson in narrative per personal narrative/s and how they can be chosen, influenced, informed and misinformed. The constant theme in Austen’s books is the non-omniscience of each and every narrative/perspective as it brushes up against other non omniscient narrative(s)/perspective(s).
Plus I like Austen applied to a model such as Albert Brooks’ little film about “what happens when we die”- lines and lines and reams and reams of ones and zeroes. A simple mathematical equation- except that in the mere act of interpreting the data - the data is changed, altered for there is interpretation taking place. It could even be argued from a quantum perspective that the very act of observing and gathering all that information alters the results- oh maybe just a smidgeon here and there but a smidgeon anywhere in the here and there of such matters is the difference between inhabiting different universes and alternate planes.
No one can ever read the book twice and no reader reads the same book exactly and precisely the same.
Emma, of Emma, is the matchmaker, the prospects advisor and in terms of action sets she is Lady Russell, of Persuasion. If their 1z and or 0z were logged in would they register the same?
In a way Anne’s choice, and/or malleability, regarding Wentworth could be seen as exactly like Harriet’s yes or no, up or down, left or right choice/option where her mere farmer was concerned. Except to view these two creatures one can not see the same choice/action set as the same. Why?
Because Austen applied time to that narrative/equation?
Yes certainly.
But that’s not the only difference.
In closing this particular edition of absolutely none of my business:
Austen left her future essay assigned readers the theme/thesis of Emma on pg 396, chapter 48 (Bantam Classic Publishing circa 1981):
“Seldom, very seldom does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken;...”
If I were to recommend any book or primer on narrative it would be the collected works of Jane Austen.
“But Jane Austen’s boring!”
Agreed.
For beautiful prose there are better authors. Engaging and intricate plotting? There too there are better writers. Her characters can be so comic as to be cartoonish but all that being said no one showed the base mechanics of narrative, particularly interpersonal narrative as it plays out in the world, nobody did that better than Austen.
Well to quote the Sound of Music: “let’s start at the very beginning- a very good place to start” but better when you start at the beginning already knowing how the story ends- so watch the movie/s first. With any and all anticipation gone one can then simply read the how of the what the author, or auteur, says by showing.
If I wanted to teach and show someone about character in terms of the mechanical structure of narrative I’d first have them watch the film Emma, follow it up with Clueless and focus particularly on Mr. Elton. In terms of both casting and performance the impact/effect on the viewer/reader differed, and didn’t, from Austen’s novel . In one Mr. Elton serves an entirely different purpose per the audience’s perspective.
In the debacle of matchmaking that was Elton, Harriet and Emma there is a great lesson in narrative per personal narrative/s and how they can be chosen, influenced, informed and misinformed. The constant theme in Austen’s books is the non-omniscience of each and every narrative/perspective as it brushes up against other non omniscient narrative(s)/perspective(s).
Plus I like Austen applied to a model such as Albert Brooks’ little film about “what happens when we die”- lines and lines and reams and reams of ones and zeroes. A simple mathematical equation- except that in the mere act of interpreting the data - the data is changed, altered for there is interpretation taking place. It could even be argued from a quantum perspective that the very act of observing and gathering all that information alters the results- oh maybe just a smidgeon here and there but a smidgeon anywhere in the here and there of such matters is the difference between inhabiting different universes and alternate planes.
No one can ever read the book twice and no reader reads the same book exactly and precisely the same.
Emma, of Emma, is the matchmaker, the prospects advisor and in terms of action sets she is Lady Russell, of Persuasion. If their 1z and or 0z were logged in would they register the same?
In a way Anne’s choice, and/or malleability, regarding Wentworth could be seen as exactly like Harriet’s yes or no, up or down, left or right choice/option where her mere farmer was concerned. Except to view these two creatures one can not see the same choice/action set as the same. Why?
Because Austen applied time to that narrative/equation?
Yes certainly.
But that’s not the only difference.
In closing this particular edition of absolutely none of my business:
Austen left her future essay assigned readers the theme/thesis of Emma on pg 396, chapter 48 (Bantam Classic Publishing circa 1981):
“Seldom, very seldom does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken;...”
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