in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the narrator’s conscience exacts revenge on him, for two things. one is murder, but not only murder, a murder where the victim, an old man, almost catches him, the murderer. because the old man knows there’s someone else in the room, the narrator doesn’t have the same unfair advantage he would ambushing an old man who’s asleep. so that’s weighing the ol’ Scales against him. then, after there’s blood on his hands, the narrator lies to the cops. now, who wouldn’t agree that such dishonesty denies the relative equality between souls? this is Nietzsche’s (oct 15) ironic sense of justice inverted into felt guilt, a burning guilt brought on by the double violation of near-mutual recognition.
I listened to Christopher Lee read the story and I wanted to say he overdoes it, but the narrator really is that cartoonish in prose, & so is a lot of Poe, who I’m revisiting because I’m trying to write a horror story this month; “The Sphinx” I like more because it’s weirder, more oblique and disconcerting; it has something to say about shared reality, alienation, and democracy. “The Tell-Tale Heart” seems more like an exercise in pacing. could also be an overexposure thing. cartoonish isn’t necessarily bad either, to be clear, not a critique of Poe really. idk it’s Libra szn I can’t be *that* mean. tho Bela Lugosi (oct 20) kinda disappointed me in The Black Cat (1935), “suggested by” Poe’s story with the same name and carried by Boris Karloff’s performance (and his great costumes).
last night I watched Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965), a delightfully gothic sexploit that titillates and horrifies in equal measure. creepazoid rapists & malevolent city slickers shot in high contrast black & white, cast in shadows stark enough to compete with the most self-serious of the German expressionists. not to mention stacked-brick-house 60s babes, wearing (and removing) all kinds of lacy things. all of which is to say it was extremely “my shit.”
Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity
Ecclesiastes 1:2, c’mon you knew that.
mornings are like this: the alarm goes off at 6:50am, which I snooze until 7:00am. I fail at avoiding the internet for the first 15 minutes of wakeful consciousness, winding me into compulsivity from the jump. the sink’s never empty because my kitchen is tiny and I am lazy. or, rather, I do not afford myself the same consideration I would for guests on whom I want to make a good impression (ie women I want to see naked). clean the french press, make a cup of coffee, sit down with whatever I’m working on that day: right now it’s this. sometimes I read, sometimes I waste a bunch of time looking at my screens. the sun this morning is muted by lingering clouds that had electrified the sky all night, a rare thunderstorm on the Southern California coast. for some reason I am still being coquettish about where I live. fine it’s Ventura, that’s where I live. I don’t really care if you know I guess. then I eat a yogurt, shower, sometimes hit the bong, and head to work.
on balance, I could stand to “do” more, and more intensely. maybe I’ll get into microdosing; I bought a vial of LSD at the start of 2020’s COVID lockdown and haven’t sampled any of it yet. an experiment in living and perceiving for the sake of documentation. but doing things so that there’s something to write about is extreme vanity, only for the cameras, like a Kim K (Oct 21) pap walk. all the same, vanity is a powerful motivator for me, I will admit shamelessly. perhaps I ought to accept as much, under this airheaded bimbo of a Libra new moon.
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