Books

I just finished reading Van Vogt's awful The Voyage of the Space Beagle. The human scientists aboard the exploring spacecraft do astonishingly idiotic things, suggesting that the crew is actually a group of 12 year old boys. They take anti-sex medicine and, in one episode, are attacked by an alien who captures them to implant eggs in them (the worst nightmare of pre-adolescents--turned into females). One of them, a Nexialist, always figures out what the crew should do, although he's constantly bickering with the idiotic interim commander.

At the same time, I've started to read Pessoa's incredible The Book of Disquiet. From the introduction written by the interestingly named Richard Zenith:

"The only way to survive in this world is by keeping alive our dream, without ever fulfilling it, since the fulfillment never measures up to what we imagine. . . . How is it done? By not doing. By performing our daily duties but living, simultaneously, in the imagination. Traveling far and wide, in the geography of our minds. Conquering like Caesar, amid the blaring trumpets of our reverie. Experiencing intense sexual pleasure, in the privacy of our fantasy. Feeling everything in every way, not in the flesh, which always tires, but in the imagination."

And now from Pessoa himself--writing under one of his heteronyms, Bernardo Soares:

"I see life as a roadside inn where I have to stay until the coach from the abyss pulls up. I don't now where it will take me, because I don't know anything. I could see this inn as a prison, for I'm compelled to wait in it; I could see it as a social center, for it's here that I meet others. But I'm neither impatient nor common. I leave who will to stay shut up in their rooms, sprawled out on beds where they sleeplessly wait, and I leave who will to chat in the parlours, from where their songs and voices conveniently drift out here to me. I'm sitting at the door, feasting my eyes and ears on the colours and sounds of the landscape, and I softly sing--for myself alone--wispy songs I compose while waiting.

Night will fall on us all and the coach will pull up. I enjoy the breeze I'm given and the soul I was given to enjoy it with, and I no longer question or seek. If what I write in the book or travellers can when read by others at some future date, also entertain them on their journey, then fine. If they don't read it, or are not interested, that's fine too."