estoy en la biblioteca de babel

[kleenexwoman]

We're doing Borges in Freed's class. Today, we discovered that everyone's copies of The Library of Babel and The Garden of Forking Paths are all translated slightly differently. None of us realized this until we'd all spent fifteen minutes arguing over whether Borges was suggesting that time was sentient or a figment of the imagination or both or neither.

drworm and I have been attempting to watch "Sapphire and Steel." We got through the first episode and have been watching bits of pieces of the second while doing other things. It's very strange and slow and low-budget and is kind of like watching a transcript of a dream someone had; there are some parts that make sense in a logical way, some parts that make sense in a magical/archetypical way, and some parts that would probably make sense if the viewer had information that they're not given. Strangely, the second episode that we've been half-watching already makes much more sense than the first episode we paid attention to. It's definitely not like anything else I've ever watched. ...Sammi said it reminded her of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

I desperately want to go to this, because it seems to offer an opportunity to party and drink heavily with middle-aged ladies who share at least one of my current major interests, and I've always had a better time drinking heavily with middle-aged ladies than I have with groups of people my own age. Perhaps another year.

Comments

[azdak.livejournal.com]

That's such an unbelievably appropriate thing to have happen in a Borges class that one almost wonders if it was Deliberately Arranged (whether by the teacher, fate or the ghost of Borges, I leave as an exercise for the reader).

I'm so glad you're giving Sapphire and Steel a go! There is nothing else quite like it in the history of TV (I don't think it matters that it doesn't make an awful lot of sense, because, as you say, it always works at least one level, even if the levels don't map always onto each other - the plots definitely follow dream logic rather than earth logic). Unfortunately, the first two assignments are the best - the fourth has some gratifyingly creepy bits but suffers from the inability to do special effects. Although, thinking about it, you might enjoy the third one, if ony because it is so hysterically 1970s in its vision of what humanity will be like in the future.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

The prof was as surprised as we were, so I'm assuming it was in fact the ghost of Borges, who has nothing better to do than to hang around classrooms where his works are being discussed. (Actually, if I were the ghost of Borges, I would spend as much time as I could messing with impressionable college students.)

Oooooh, crazy 1970s ideas of the future? I am so there. (It isn't necessary to watch them in order, right? I'm getting fed up with our progress on the second one and am considering skipping it for now.)

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

"In the future . . . disco will still suck."

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Disco has always been fucking awesome.

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

I know (am a closet fan) (like the fusion of it and heavy metal and punk in the late Seventies to create sonic perfection), but the phrase "Disco Sucks", especially on a T-shirt, has also always been equally as fucking awesome.

[blueeye-jedi.livejournal.com]

So, we did some Borges in one of my classes where the Prof tried valiantly (but vainly) to find a point to anything related to a discussion, but the class wasn't having it. I remember reading Garden of Forking Paths, but... Uh... I understand what's going on (sequentially) in the story, but still don't get the THOUGHT behind it. Can you enlighten me?

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

The simplest part of it is that it's about parallel universes; the "garden of forking paths" that doesn't actually appear in the story is time splitting, and sequences of events happening, and happening different ways in different universes. The book in the story is trying to express that without actually coming out and saying that it's about time, hence the bit about how a riddle whose answer is chess cannot use the word "chess." ...that's all I got. I'm used to the idea of parallel universes, so I got that right away, but I'm not entirely sure how to connect the idea of parallel universes with the idea of riddles.

[benprime.livejournal.com]

how about... riddles are often a collection of different ways of perceiving a thing, and the .. superimposition of those ways describes the thing itself, perhaps better than its name does. See, for example, the riddles from the Gollum/Bilbo riddle game (http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/Section/What-are-the-riddles-that-Gollum-asked-Bilbo-in-The-Hobbit-.id-305403,articleId-8003.html). my feeling of parallel universes is that they are all different expressions or perspectives of one.. origin or fundamental reality I suppose. Though that is a bit of an abstract (dare I say, platonic) way of looking at it.

It seems like the original spanish(?) would be the most authentic.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

I like it. Although riddles are often deliberately misleading...but the misleading parts might reveal more about the object, or about the object's symbolism, than a strictly factual account of it would. Time as a labyrinth or time as a devourer of all is more interesting and more revealing than time as a scale measuring duration.

I could get a Spanish dictionary and try to puzzle the originals out. (Heh. Puzzle. As though it were a puzzle to be put together...which I suppose all stories are anyway.)

[dfordoom.livejournal.com]

I absolutely adore Sapphire and Steel. It is slow, and it takes a while to get into it.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

It definitely takes a while to get the hang of exactly what's going on; it's quite a mystery.

[anivad.livejournal.com]

You're not forced to get standardised book editions? :\

Hah, Sapphire and Steel. Never seen it, but my father keeps talking about how great it is and how we should all watch it one day when it's out on DVD and/or available here.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

Nope! Well, it depends on the class; some have specific textbooks and editions, and for some we just need a basic text of the material. For English classes, we can generally supply our own texts if there aren't important forewords or anything.

I think you would like "Sapphire and Steel" a lot. It's, like...time-travel horror with the cheapest special effects in existence, and there's something about the premise and pacing that's totally addictive.

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

Yet another parallel . . . also a flashback for me . . . re the drinking with middle-aged ladies. Senior year I lived in this apartment building that was one of the few off-campus options at my school . . . it was a dorm way back when, but had since been converted to some sort of "intergenerational living unit", which meant 75% old farts, 20% regular renters, and 5% students, of which I was one that year. It was a great place to hole up, drink heavily, and play loud music (had a haunted basement, too). Anyway, part of the "intergenerational" thing was a regular social calendar among the residents, which included a daily cocktail hour. It was quite fun to show up and hang out with all these cool old people, sipping Scotch or brandy and discussing real-world adult things, instead of getting wasted on pisswater beer and committing acts of vandalism and public urination as I'd otherwise be doing if I still lived on campus.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

That's a pretty cool story.
Over the summer, my mom took me to hang out with these ladies she played dice with a few times. We drank fruity cocktails and gambled and ate things on crackers and I listened to them talk shit about their husbands. Way more entertaining than going to a loud bar and watching my roommate try to pick up boys.

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

I have great memories of that apartment. Of course it was kind of a hermitage, but that happens.

I am shamefully a boring cocktail mixer. I don't get as creative as I could or should. We must have a party sometime.

[kleenexwoman.livejournal.com]

The best cocktails are made out of ignorance and desperation!

[josephwaldman.livejournal.com]

Now I want to invent a cocktail called either the "Great Depression" or the "Dark Ages".

P.J.O'R's "Bloody Scotch" is my all-time fave. It's like a Bloody Mary, only with Scotch instead of vodka, and no tomato juice, celery sticks, glassware, or any of that other stuff. You drink it straight out of the bottle. (I am being only half facetious there. My favorite real cocktails are screwdrivers -- they're good for you and do a lot to prevent hangovers -- and whatever whoever's pouring decides to surprise me with.)