Lola Reads, vol. 3

Mythology, Jane Ellen Harrison, 1924

To banish fear, to banish any evil, we must exercise not the will but the imagination, we must not so much determine to be brave, not make "good resolutions," but think brave, cheering thoughts, think good things, beautiful things... Thought, imagination is the starting point of action. And above all, let that thought be active, live, positive, not negative. As Baudouin has well said: "Veni Creator is in all ways a much surer method of exorcism than Vade retro Satanas." As a Greek would think it, it is better to domicile the Eumenides than to expel the Erinyes.

Sadness, Donald Barthelme, 1972

Departures

...My grandfather headed for East Texas. He had the timber rights to ten thousand acres there, Southern yellow pine of the loblolly family. It was third-growth scrub and slash and shoddy--just the thing for soldiers. Couldn't be beat. So he and his men set up operations and first crack out of the box they were surrounded by threescore of lovely dryads and hamadryads all clad in fine leaf-green tutus and waving great silver-shining axes.
"Well now," my grandfather said to the head dryad, "wait a while, wait a while, somebody could get hurt."
"That is for sure," says the girl, and she shifts her axe from her left hand to her right hand.
"I thought you dryads were indigenous to oak, " says my grandfather, "this here is pine."
"Some like the ancient tall-standing many-branched oak, " says the girl, "and some the white-slim birch, and some take what they can get, and you will look mighty funny without any legs on you."
"Can we negotiate," says my grandfather, "it's for the War, and you are the loveliest thing I ever did see, and what is your name?"
"Megwind," says the girl, "and also Sophie. I am Sophie in the night and Megwind in the day and I make fine whistling axe-music night or day and without legs for walking your life's journey will be a pitiable one."
"Well Sophie", says my grandfather, "let us sit down under this tree here and open a bottle of this fine rotgut here and talk the thing over like reasonable human beings."
"Do not use my night-name in the light of day," says the girl, "and I am not a human being and there is nothing to talk over and what type of rotgut is it that you have there?"
"It is Teamster's Early Grave," says my grandfather, "and you'll cover many a mile before you find the beat of it."
"I will have one cupful," says the girl, "and my sisters will have each one cupful, and then we will dance around this tree while you still have legs for dancing and then you will go away and your men also."
"Drink up," says my grandfather, "and know that of all the women I have interfered with in my time you are the absolute top woman."
"I am not a woman," says Megwind, "I am a spirit, although the form of the thing is misleading I will admit."
"Wait a while," says my grandfather, "you mean that no type of mutual interference between us of a physical nature is possible?"
"That is a thing I could do," says the girl, "if I chose."
"Do you choose?" asks my grandfather, "and have another wallop."
"That is a thing I will do," says the girl, and she had another wallop.
"And a kiss," says my grandfather, "would that be possible do you think?"
"That is a thing I could do," says the dryad, "you are not the least prepossessing of men and men have been scarce in these parts in these years, the trees being as you see mostly scrub, slash and shoddy."
"Megwind," says my grandfather, "you are beautiful."
"You are taken with my form which I admit is beautiful," says the girl, "but know that this form you see is not necessary but contingent, sometimes I am a fine brown-speckled egg and sometimes I am an escape of steam from a hole in the ground and sometimes I am an armadillo."
"That is amazing," says my grandfather, "a shape-shifter are you."
"That is a thing I can do," says Megwind, "if I choose."

The Beautiful Contradictions, Nathaniel Tarn, 1969

Fifteen

...

the worm multiplies in my house as I have less and less years to keep
this is how he lives off me     I do no more than house him

yet I welcome his passage and the beautiful contradictions of his work
the lichen of excrement he leaves in me that excrete him in due time
as a denominator of the flights that we all take through one another
the most material sign of certain processes   some of which are of spirit
All of a sudden life is very beautiful
there is an everbloom in the center of my existence
I want life to go on for ever

Best sentence in A dandy in aspic:

In one corner, huddled on a brown velvet-covered couch, three out-of-work actors sat talking about themselves, like three Gorgons passing round the I from one to another.