/lit/ - Literature

>>11925560
>tfw I'm being sincere and /sffg/ is too jaded to believe me

It had not been a good day for Ito Nakamura. First, the phone call. His mother in hysterics. Something about a car crash and his father. He didn’t feel much of anything, just a numb sense of duty that covered everything like a heavy blanket. He didn’t bother to let his professor know he wouldn’t be in the exam. At least another semester of classes, a triviality.

CRITICAL CONDITION

The cab to the airport. Buying the ticket. Half of his savings. It was going to be a long flight from Boston to Osaka.

WON’T LAST LONG

He was barely in his fifties, he couldn’t die now. The injustice of it all was almost funny. He had always been a just man, Ito remembered that all too well. The only Christian priest in their district. The mandatory Sundays spent reading what Ito considered fiction. The endless lectures and sermonizing. None of it stuck.

COME. HOME. NOW.

An avowed atheist, Ito had nothing but disdain for his old man. Always guilting him out of all that was fun in life. The girls. The music. The questioning. Everything Ito enjoyed was anathema to his father. “My greatest failure is not passing the faith on to my son”. The arrogance of it all, that was the worst part. The absolute certainty he had in his beliefs made Ito sick.

ASKING FOR ITO

“CZ4516 to Osaka has been delayed”. Icing on the cake. Mechanical difficulties. A full eighteen hours later and still no takeoff. He phoned the hospital. “He wants to talk to you”. Of course he does. He braced himself, but he wasn’t ready. “Ito...” That voice. That same voice he had heard delivering sermons with the blood and thunder of the Old Testament reduced to this fragile nothing. He said hello. Then it happened. The shrill beeping. The muffled voices of the hospital staff, full of alarm. The old man started speaking Latin at a manic pace. He couldn’t follow. He told him to slow down. The voice stopped.

“...Dad?”

“DEUS.”
“PAX.”
“ITO.”

Nelson Drake awoke to find that, despite his protestation, the sun had decided to rise once again. It was early in the afternoon (practically dawn by Nelson's standards) and the drawn curtains to his basement room took on the familiar dull glow that was the only natural light to ever break his sanctuary. “If only I could live in sleep” thought Nelson as he rolled over to where his phone had been charging, picking up the device and wincing as the electric light tore his eyelids from themselves. Rubbing the crust of sleep from his eyes Nelson was greeted by a single message: “You up?” - Alex. Responding with a simple “yeah”, Nelson threw the phone down onto the pile of dirty laundry that was one of the mainstays of his humble furniture and, stretching his seventeen year old body to its full height, began his “morning” routine. The bearded face that greeted him in the bathroom mirror, the envy of many a schoolmate and even some of the less developed adults, was as familiar as it was mute: brown locks of unkempt hair running from scalp to shoulder melted seamlessly into his impressive facial hair covering an always even mouth. The bags under his eyes, ever present despite his penchant for sleeping ten hours a night, seemed particularly heavyset today giving him the likeness of a man twice as age. With a shrug he dismissed his troubled appearance and began the ritual process of brushing his teeth, emptying his bladder, and putting on a wrinkly t-shirt to compliment the comfortable sweat pants he had been wearing for the last couple of days. All together this gave Nelson the appearance of one who could not be bothered by what one thought of him, least of all himself. With his wardrobe complete and his mind finally surrendering to wakefulness Nelson wandered from the adjacent washroom back to his basement suite, a journey of nearly a meter that brought him face to face with the message written in permanent marker on the face of his door: “Everything is Temperary”, a gift from one Shannon Moore some two years back that made up for its spelling error by standing for the utmost in spontaneity. Flicking the light switch Nelson took a moment to take in the view that was his home: posters of cartoons, bands, and semi-popular (never popular) actresses were arranged haphazardly on all four walls of the room. Where there weren't posters there were more notes written in permanent marker, everything from the lyrics of entire songs to brief declarations of impulsive passion (the most glaring being “JOHN WAS HERE” in bold lettering across an entire ceiling crossbeam), artifacts left by those that had come and gone through Nelson's life.

I've never been a proud man.

The black shoes scissor-swaying across the pavement below me have always been those of a person, nobody in particular. Many people give off the impression that beneath their deceptively singular human visage lies a sleeping Ulysses. This mute tragic hero can never be seen, least of all by the one putting on the guise, as nothing would kill Hamlet faster than the knowledge that he is a dream. However, it's not like these personas lie completely dormant. They apparate subtly in a tone of voice or a certain geometry of the body. Like Caesar's ghost descending from a bedroom closet your closest friend announces his plan to head to the liquor store, his every word another rhetorical swish of Cicero's tongue. He dances out the door like a consul on parade and returns to his own private last supper of Pabst and Kraft Dinner.

What a world that must be, to become Christ one minute then betray him as Iscariot the next, to be a slave to history and time. What a blessing to inhabit the beautiful paradox of being something which strives to become nothing at all.

Yet wherever I look, I can't help but see.

I've been dreaming lately so I think we're coming close to the end. I can already feel mythology creeping up on me. I've already been there, on mescaline in McDonalds, beheading my father with my own blade before ignobly penetrating the overweight cashier I knew to be my own mother, yet providence drove me onwards and outwards and onwards again.

I birthed myself and awoke to find I had a craving for a peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwich, humming 'Blue Suede Shoes' as I readied the pan.

Nunca hice esto antes, no sean malos pero tampoco condescendientes.

http://pastebin.com/8uXFVdAh

This is what happens when you discuss philosophy on a thai television site frequented by people who's only conception of a social life is based on shit they remember from high school

Egotism is subjective at its core, to chain it to either pole (social/anti-social, good/bad, this/that etc.) would be to undermine the very individualism it represents

University of Victoria (Canada)

Are there any examples of a summary/analysis on Sparknotes actually being better than the book?

They have some damn good writers.