OK, enough whinin' & moanin' & groanin'. I just go over here & get a 2nd wind. (though I ain't so enthused about what I've seen of Mr. Thomas IQ Pynchon. Seems like a Joyce wannabee, over-ambitious, splenetic fussbudget. Like me.)

A nocturnall upon S. Lucies day,
Being the shortest day

 
TIS the yeares midnight, and it is the dayes, 
Lucies, who scarce seaven houres herself unmaskes, 
The Sunne is spent, and now his flasks 
Send forth light squibs, no constant rayes; 
The worlds whole sap is sunke: 
The generall balme th'hydroptique earth hath drunk, 
Whither, as to the beds-feet, life is shrunke, 
Dead and enterr'd; yet all these seeme to laugh, 
Compar'd with mee, who am their Epitaph. 

 
Study me then, you who shall lovers bee 
At the next world, that is, at the next Spring: 
For I am every dead thing, 
In whom love wrought new Alchimie. 
For his art did expresse 
A quintessence even from nothingnesse, 
From dull privations, and leane emptinesse: 
He ruin'd mee, and I am re-begot 
Of absence, darknesse, death; things which are not. 

 
All others, from all things, draw all that's good, 
Life, soule, forme, spirit, whence they beeing have; 
I, by loves limbecke, am the grave 
Of all, that's nothing. Oft a flood 
Have wee two wept, and so 
Drownd the whole world, us two; oft did we grow 
To be two Chaosses, when we did show 
Care to ought else; and often absences 
Withdrew our soules, and made us carcasses. 

 
But I am by her death, (which word wrongs her) 
Of the first nothing, the Elixer grown; 
Were I a man, that I were one, 
I needs must know; I should preferre, 
If I were any beast, 
Some ends, some means; Yea plants, yea stones detest, 
And love; All, all some properties invest; 
If I an ordinary nothing were, 
As shadow, a light, and body must be here. 

 
But I am None; nor will my Sunne renew. 
You lovers, for whose sake, the lesser Sunne 
At this time to the Goat is runne 
To fetch new lust, and give it you, 
Enjoy your summer all; 
Since shee enjoyes her long nights festivall, 
Let mee prepare towards her, and let mee call 
This houre her Vigill, and her Eve, since this 
Both the yeares, and the dayes deep midnight is.

- John Donne

I'm also reading Thos. Pynchon, as it happens. After spooky experience of watching PBS documentary on Nazi scientists & Wernher von Braun, thinking of Gravity's Rainbow (which I've never read), then, immediately after, seeing GR on shelf in hallway, opening book to find it starts with quote from Wernher von Braun... anyway, so I'm reading Gravity's Rainbow. Haven't read Pynchon before. (As commentators have noted, I am usually about 35 yrs behind the times.)

Curious to discover that one of Slothrop's subconscious trances re: "American race relations" (cf. around pp. 65-70) sound a lot like the "underground" scene with Bluejay and the railroad tunnel in Stubborn Grew. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised.

Having sort of a schizoid reaction to the book (maybe I shouldn't be surprised). Intrigued by thick intricate fabric of history and pseudo-history, the "info", the obsessions, the jokes. & yet surprised to find myself sort of bored on the "sonic" level. These paratactic strings of phrases, each ending with suspension dot dot dots...... seems like Pynchon is very carefully channeling a triangulation of Joyce, Celine and Kerouac through his set-piece fuzzbox. The sentence structure is sort of repetitive, I think that's what is boring me. Maybe it's sposed to be that way, obsessive run-on paranoid etc. But that doesn't mean I is going to like it entirely. Oh well. I just started it.