there was a time to read two volumes of
Knausgård... and since i don't speak any norwegian:
it didn't really matter...
whether it was in english or western slavic...
will i get to the other four volumes?
i can only remember giving william burroughs...
so much of my attention as to complete
the oeuvre...
                         and unlike the translator's note
from michel foucault's... surveiller et punir...
i was really going to start reading this today...

- foucault uses the infinite: to the effect of an
'impersonal imperative'...
          this nuance is not afforded in english:
or is just plainly denied...

- the verb surveiller... has no adequate translation
into english... the english noun 'surveillance'
is apparently: but also obviously
too "technical"...

- the range of connotations between 'inspect'
and surveiller as a direct translation...
alan sheridan: this in part verbatim joystick
is... bothered by the work of a prior to his own
work of translation: a jeremy bentham...

- 'supervise' is closer than to 'inspect'...
                  but the word applied: is not close
to the word being translated...
      
- 'observe' is too neutral - but... its apparently
teeming with aggression should
an 'observation' be one-sided...
                      
             before the book even began...
i very much doubt... translating... Knausgård's
magnum opus of 6 vol.
beginning with... min kamp... my struggle...
because there was the obvious precursor...
and nothing more...
so much for nuancing the devil in the details...
of a book's title...

i once proposed that... well: what is mine?
is the struggle truly mine?
it's mine: in the superlative...
    but not in the confines of an: adjective-adjective...
in the superfluous...
skip the middle-ground "reasoning"...

but associated with struggle is the my:
that someone is mine...
           i'd rather posit... a lost sense of ownership...
translated back into either german
or norwegian:
              ich skampf...
                          jeg kamp...

                 then i guess: a struggle owns me...
it wrestles with me...
   it becomes a sort of... Israel...
               i become a sort of Israel...
prior to: i am Jacob: it is my struggle...
but... what if this struggle is outside of the confines
of merely me and my ownership of it:
to be donned and worn proud for...
future: coquetry?

   how different it sounds...
my struggle: i am jacob...
   i struggle: he named me Israel...
             and he called himself what i didn't wish
to own or be, therefore, mine...

if what is mine is a determiner -
akin to... a determiner being and:
   a conjunction...
           if i were to posit: ich kampf...
i cannot claim a determiner of the struggle:
it's... indefinitely there...
passed between strangers...
having a share of universal qualities shared
among others: which i can't exactly
invest a self with: but a pronoun i can...
since... by then... i struggle is an indefinite articulation
statement... a determiner allure of the expression
is a definite articulation...

but there's a time and a place...
and i'm not going to read a translation of an otherwise
french text... i was hoping to skip past
fiction... but having regarded Knausgård
first two volumes as:
autobiographical fiction... or...
       would i rely on... something that explores...
discipline and punishment...
naturally... i am expected to be the good citizen
and not go out...
i'm figuring... i need to stock up on some
more kalimotxo juice...
i'll take some bottles to the recycling center
and if stopped i'll just tell them...
i haven't been out all week...
i'm doing my exercise: i don't jog...
i walk... i'm just stocking up on kalimotxo juice...
and i'll be recycling some glass...
i can apparently get away with the first
time misunderstanding...

so no... not a good genesis of testing
the waters of: bad boy citizen...
i read the first two chapters and just left the book...
it's a book... it's not a piece of music...
sometimes it takes much longer...
to get into the mood:
if you want to read the book proper...
plus... i have neglected my libra prerogative...
to not write more than i have read...
i must have crossed a rubicon of sorts...

as it happens: these stale "concerns" are here
because: i honestly don't know how
to be a teenager: again... and to be riddled by
pangs of unaddressed emotions...
having to turn to fiction and vampires...
i don't have the credentials to write of pangs
of either joy or misery...
perhaps it's a numbing effect that allows
me to plough through bibliophile affairs...

after all... i have in my hands...
   illustrations by william rainey R.I.
the gresham publishing company 34 & 35
southampton street, strand, london,

an address to a mr. serjeant talfourd M.P.
by the man himself...
not the first edition (1837)
not even the first cheap edition (1847)...
i'm guessing this is, then...
the "C.D" edition... and the year is 1867...
so a one-hundred-and-fifty-three-year-old
book...
   it even smells so... grotesquely: variant...
then again... what's not to like about misnomers?
well... when no metaphor is at hand...
i guess a misnomer will just have to do...

but to keep to some quality of "mannerism"
regarding such artefacts...
it's one thing keeping such a book,
on a shelf... and having the gorgon's pride
to have to buy a modern cheap paperback
edition... no... this book will... just have to be handled...
perhaps handling it will...
allow me to air it... it is tinged with a horrendously
stuffy allure...
one that wants to find it... being...
a neglected "something or other"...
to give it life and most certainly air...
  a book that wants as much to be read:
as it wants to be aired...

    it can't be anything less than...
charles dickens' the pickwick papers...
to this i remember our first schooltrip to the world
war I graves near Ypres...
on the bus i was reading by the sort of
illumination that would make me successful
as to having to acquire glasses come mid-age...
and this dreaded teacher came up to me...
spotted i was reading dostoyevsky's crime and
punishment... and how... when he was my age...
read the pickwick papers with the same
ferocity as i was reading... what i was reading
at the time...

and i will be as **** honest as necessary...
me... reading a native novelist of these parts...
the parts of: make thames proud and london blush...
what on earth was i thinking...
not having or having not... succumbed to the allure?
what was i doing with the french writers
and the russians?
why wasn't i... bypass Shakespeare and sprint
to the trough from where pigs entertained
the company of kings?
                    we'd too wish... of what "we" is
not necessary to mind... had "we" been giving
smoking's to attire and join in the festivity...
oh sure, sure... smoking's and moccasins...
         well... if they can get away with donning
the converse sneakers... these days...
                   who would... hunt us down...
these sock hunters?!

     come to think of it... this is a **** good rendering
of how far i have fallen...
in terms of moodiness... or lack of: thereof...
sometimes there's only this:
an exercise in applied language...
   to what use? no one really knows...
had i... not discovered Dickens prior...
which... well: to know that Dicknes... is also
a suitable term used in pub trivia and
the encyclopedia...
              but it's good enough of me...
to have finally come about...
        
                              this romance of societal norms...
and reciprocative contracts of expectations...
hierarchal strands of weaving and the river-works
of flow...
              it's nice... there's none of that french
romancing the period...
nor the ever-pervasive angts of the russians...
that... sense and what remains of sensibility...
the self-evident pomp...
and the circumstance just around the corner...
the allure of what english liberals would
sell to foreign investors when being given
the opportune chance to do so...
as to how england was to be carved:
and sold by the pound...

                     and what a time to be given
privy into this literature...
                         i almost can't imagine having
an impetus left to drag myself into Proust.