#it absolutely measures up to the incredible magic of these three beautiful paragraphs

[queenlucythevaliant]

Any memorable (as in you still remember them 😅) quotes from books you've read this past year?

I'm just gonna share THE QUOTE from Dead Souls. I encountered this passage while reading criticism several years ago and it actually put me off reading the book because I was certain that my expectations were too high and it could never live up to them. I was so very wrong! Here's the troika passage, and it's even better in context 😁

And what Russian is there who doesn’t love fast driving? How should his soul, which yearns to go off into a whirl, to go off on a fling, to say on occasion: “Devil take it all!”—how should his soul fail to love it? Is it not a thing to be loved, when one can sense in it something exaltedly wondrous? Some unseen power, it seems, has caught you up on its wing, and you’re flying yourself, and all things else are flying: the milestones are flying, some merchants are flying toward you, perched on the front seats of their covered carts; the forest flies on both sides of the road with its dark rows of firs and pines, echoing with the ring of axes and the cawing of crows; the whole road is flying none knows whither into the disappearing distance; and there is something fearsome hidden in the very flashing by of objects, so rapid that there’s no time for each one to become defined before it disappears; only the sky in the infinity above and the light clouds and the moon breaking through these clouds seem motionless.

Eh, thou troika, thou that art a bird! Who conceived thee? Methinks’tis only among a spirited folk that thou couldst have come into being, in that land that is not fond of doing things by halves, but that has evenly, smoothly spread itself out over half the world; therefore, try and count its milestones until they turn to spots before the eyes! And far from cunningly contrived is the vehicle the troika draws; held together with no screws of iron art thou, but hastily, with a slam and a bang, wert thou put together and fitted out by some handy muzhik of Iaroslavl, with nothing but an ax and a chisel. No fancy Hessian jackboots does thy driver wear, he sports a beard and great gauntlets and sits on the Devil knows what for a cushion, but let him rise in his seat, and swing his whip back, and strike up a long-drawn song—and his steeds are off like a whirlwind, the spokes of each wheel have blended into one unbroken disk; the road merely quivers, and a passerby on foot, stopping short, cries out in fright, and the troika is soaring, soaring, soaring away! . .. And now all one can see, already far in the distance, is something raising the dust and swirling through the air.

And art not thou, my Russia, soaring along even like a spirited, never-to-be-outdistanced troika? The road actually smokes under thee, the bridges thunder, everything falls back and is left behind thee! The witness of thy passing comes to a dead stop, dumfounded by this Gods wonder! Is it not a streak of lightning cast down from heaven? What signifies this onrush that inspires terror? And what unknown power is contained in these steeds, whose like is not known in this world? Ah, these steeds, these steeds, what steeds they are! Are there whirlwinds perched upon your manes? Is there a sensitive ear, alert as a flame, in your every fiber? Ye have caught the familiar song coming down to you from above, and all as one, and all at the same instant, ye have strained your brazen chests and, almost without touching earth with your hoofs, ye have become all transformed into straight lines cleaving the air, and the troika tears along, all-inspired by God! . . . Whither art thou soaring away to, then, Russia? Give me thy answer! But Russia gives none. With a wondrous ring does the jingle bell trill; the air, rent to shreds, thunders and turns to wind; all things on earth fly past, and eyeing it askance, all the other peoples and nations stand aside and give it the right of way.

[mikesgotsquareeyes]

Tom Bryans. Thoughts on a life departed.

It has been just over a month since I lost my dad. In that time I have been gradually working my way through every one of, what could be described as, “the mourning emotions” from Total Grief through to Despair before falling deep down into Rage and then finally drifting into Melancholy. That initial sharp, piercing, sorrow has subsided and now I’m left with a pensive, introspective sadness you seem to only feel when remembering the life of someone departed.

The illness that took so much from Dad including and ultimately his life likewise stole it all from us as well. However there are things that even a despicable disease like the one Dad had could not steal. The first thing, however obvious it is to say, is the years and years of memories that we made as both a family and personally over Dad’s life. I remember the family trips we would take where Dad would have a few too many “strong” continental beers and exclaim incoherent sentences like… “Drink up quickly, I don’t want another beer so make it last” Statements like that could easily be dismissed as the pissed-up ramblings of a drunken madman but for me when Dad would blurt them out they had a sozzled poetry like that of a lager-drenched Philip Larkin or Spike Milligan.

Similarly I will always remember those personal little moments that Dad and I would spend together predominantly when we were playing music. These moments, I recall, were filled with both joy and utter frustration in equal measures. As Dad had his very own very distinct sense of rhythm. When he would play the violin or sing, he would perform with the same theatricality regardless of where he was, whether in our front room or at an event in front of 200 people. He would fly through certain sections of songs making them bounce and soar, yet at other times he would hang on notes for what would seem like an age until every last ounce of sentiment had been drawn out of it. It was wonderful to watch but an absolute nightmare to try to play along with. When playing alongside him, my performance would often be reduced to the musical equivalent of a man either arriving too early or too late for a bus. Nonetheless when playing next to him, I always had the best seat in the house.

However in many regards, Dad is still here. He’s still within me. I’ve got his stupid sense of humour. His insatiable thirst for shite jokes. It’s now up to me to decide when the conversation has become too highfalutin, and thus drag the brow lower with a bizarre joke without a punchline. Similarly, for all his irreverence, Dad was an incredibly sentimental man. An attribute that has remained in me also. He would often well up at a piece of music or something on T.V, which when I was younger would make me think: “How can that make you cry Dad? You big girl” However now I find myself doing the exact same thing all the time. To the hilarity of those around me. Most recently I welled up watching an episode of Derren Brown’s TV magic show Trick of The Mind. I know, what the hell? Cheers for that Dad.                                    

Ultimately I believe his sentimentality came from his beautiful appreciation for everything. My mum has told me stories about when they worked at the bank together. It there where they initially met and ultimately fell in love. Mum has told me even though he was the guy in charge, everybody loved him because he genuinely cared about the people he worked with. He was encouraging and saw potential in everyone in the office. He prided himself on having never sacked anyone. He believed in making people better. He hated the TV show The Apprentice, as he would say “That is not how you do business!”

Likewise he would see the innate value of things; forgotten or broken objects, from the minute to the massive. It was his love of things that made it impossible to throw anything away in our house. He would take things and fix them or re-purpose them. His shed was packed full of, what we used to call, “loads of old shite” but to be fair to him, the guy used it. “They’ll come in handy one day”

I remember once he spent a whole Sunday afternoon building me and my brother Nick a skateboard ramp out of a broken coffee table he had been keeping at the bottom of the garden. He put so much care and effort into building this elaborate, ridiculous-looking ramp, which made it all the more upsetting when it lasted 10 minutes before collapsing under the weight of our almost kick-flips. I think we stayed outside in the street hiding that broken coffee table all evening as to not hurt our old man’s feelings.

I do have one caveat to that last paragraph and it is the following story. Like I said, Dad would not throw things away. But we had this sofa. A relic from the Seventies. One of the most garish things I’ve ever seen. Seriously it was like something out of the Super Prize Showcase from an old Family Fortunes episode. You can imagine Les Dennis in a canary yellow lounge suit straddling it legs akimbo. Basically what I’m getting at is, it was a shit sofa. We had it for years, until it had essentially lost all comfort and was more coffee stain than design. 

Eventually, years after it should have been condemned forever, Dad finally replaced it. Which meant that we had to dismantle it…and I got to dismantle it with him. So one sunny afternoon, we took the sofa into the garden. Dad braced me beforehand that it was to be a strict, regimental, and systematic operation. He spread all his tools out on the garden lawn and explained to me the intricate process he had planned. Within five minutes, we were just kicking the shit out of that sofa. And we continued to wreak havoc on that poor three-seater all afternoon. He was always a very gentle composed man but that afternoon he kicked the arms of that sofa like a pissed gorilla in DFS. We massacred those seats till sundown. It was a day an 11 year old boy would dream about. It had everything. Outdoors, sunshine, mindless destruction, but most of all I got to spend all afternoon hanging out with my dad.

Ultimately this grief that I feel will never totally leave and lastly what I have realised is that Grief is a powerful emotion, which should be harnessed and used as fuel to power me to go live the life that my dad always wished for me, and to make him proud. He was a sensitive soul with the surreal jokes, who never threw anything away, who was an accomplished musician whom played to his own time, a failed carpenter but an expert at sofa demolition. But ultimately he was my friend and he was my dad.