phantomwise

she commented on the word phantomwise

At the end of Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There:

   A boat beneath a sunny sky,

   Lingering onward dreamily

   In an evening of July—

   Children three that nestle near,

   Eager eye and willing ear,

   Pleased a simple tale to hear—

   Long has paled that sunny sky:

   Echoes fade and memories die.

   Autumn frosts have slain July.

   Still she haunts me, phantomwise,

   Alice moving under skies

   Never seen by waking eyes.

   Children yet, the tale to hear,

   Eager eye and willing ear,

   Lovingly shall nestle near.

   In a Wonderland they lie,

   Dreaming as the days go by,

   Dreaming as the summers die:

   Ever drifting down the stream—

   Lingering in the golden gleam—

   Life, what is it but a dream?

July 18, 2008

chicanerous commented on the word phantomwise

"The city itself, perhaps the whole country, was a palimpsest, Under World beneath Over World, black market beneath white; when the whole of life was like this, when an invisible reality moved phantomwise beneath a visible fiction, subverting all its meanings, how then could Abraham’s career have been any different? How could any of us have escaped that deadly layering? How, trapped as we were in the hundred per cent fakery of the real, in the fancy-dress, weeping-Arab kitsch of the superficial, could we have penetrated to the full, sensual truth of the lost mother below? How could we have lived authentic lives? How could we have failed to be grotesque?" (184).

Rushdie, Salman. The Moor's Last Sigh. 1995. New York: Vintage, 1997.

March 14, 2010