Loosey-Goosey

 

Jennifer  of “Saying Yes…”  goosed me this morning with the ‘tag five geese’ meme.

Here are the rules:

• look up page 123 in the nearest book
• look for the fifth sentence
• then post the three sentences that follow that fifth sentence on page 123.

Strange but true (I’ll use this the next time I get tagged for a “Weird Things”), I keep The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali on my desk the same as Post-Its and the little pink speakers I need for audio. It looks nice aesthetically, and I’m always open to enlightenment via proximity.

See what you think of Patanjali on page 123:

“The teachings can help you slightly, but too much learning may muddle your mind.”

Too bad, I don’t agree. My mind gets muddled most when I haven’t learned, not even the hard way, not even after countless repetitions.

Perhaps the next three sentences will enlighten me. (Not trying to build your suspense here, but I wasn’t sure how to count sentences as one or two divided by a colon. So I tossed a coin, dropped it, and suspected that if I needed to toss it again, the answer was this: a colon breaks the idea into two sentences; semi-colons don’t.)

1. "Turning inside means turning the sense within; trying to hear something within, see something within; smell something within."

2. "All scents are within us."

3. "All beautiful music is within us."

True enough, but I’d like to get my senses and music out once in a while; walk them around the block. Extra in-put wouldn’t hurt, either.

To complete the meme, I'm tapping five feathered heads.

Goose
Goose
Goose
Goose
Goose
. 

Comments

[Dan Leo]

My book happened to be "Kill the Boss Good-by" by Peter Rabe, currently out of print, but I have a Black Lizard re-issue from 1988, which I picked up at The Book Trader on 2nd Street in Philadelphia. The book was first published as a pulp paperback original in 1956. The three sentences are:

So Mound, as if he hadn't been there, got away.

Fell was no longer confused. Pander was his focus and there was nothing to interfere.

I have no idea what any of that means because I'm only up to page 93 of the novel. I'm quite looking forward to finding out though!

One thing I like about Rabe is the odd names he gives his characters: Fell, Pander, Cripp, Phido, and now this Mound dude whom I haven't met yet.

A better idea of Rabe's writing is the excellent first sentence of the book, so I'll give you that as a bonus:

For a town of three hundred thousand, San Pietro looked very dead, but it was noon and out of season.

[Jennifer]

Thanks Kathleen! Your contribution is much more enlightening than my "A Salute to Cheese"... I'm curious though, I wonder what we'd get if we crossed the two. :)

[Kathleen]

I knew you'd offer something extraordinary, Dan. The names remind me of Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part Two: Shallow and Silence, Pistol and Doll Tearsheet, and as someone pointed out to me, Falstaff himself as a variant on Shake-speare.

[Kathleen]

Jennifer, I don't know how they'd mix. "A Salute to Cheese" carries the ring of inspiration, which I suspect is much more fun than enlightenment. I say "suspect," because my experience of either remains mysterious to the point of negligibility.

[Dan Leo]

Kathleen, come to think of of it -- and it took your comment to make me think of it -- this barely-known out-of-print "cult" novel (cult consisting of aficionados of pulp crime fiction) actually is Shakespearean in its theme: the downfall of a king, in this case a crime boss.