WoTD: ne plus ultra

Definitions:
1. The highest point, as of excellence or achievement; the acme; the pinnacle; the ultimate.

2. The most profound degree of a quality or condition.

Arnold aspired to greatness. He worked long and hard at perfecting his craft and even harder at self promotion. His single minded obsession to gain fame earned him a reputation and notoriety amongst his peers. He longed for more, for recognition from the everyday man, the person in the street who mixed in circles other than his own. The ne plus ultra was for Arnold DiSilva to be a household name like Da Vinci, Picasso and Van Gogh. But his peers could see what he could not. If he achieved fame for anything, it would be for his arrogance and ego, not for the talent that he lacked.

BR: Immortality (Milan Kundera)

A friend loaned me this book, confiding that it's one of her favourites and taught her a lot about the meaning of life.

The back cover reveals little about the novel, instead -- as is the modern style -- it features snippets of reviews as if to say 'these people think the book is great, so will you.'

I found an overview online, At least this gives part of an impression of what will come.

Synopsis (http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/k/milan-kundera/immortality.htm):

Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnes becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose; to explore thoroughly the great, themes of existence.

The book started well; the prose poetic, longing, rich and detailed with a tainted worldiness that hooked me in. Divided into seven parts, I worked through part one with a heady sense of wonder, luxuriating in the complexity of the author's mind and delighting in the philosophical wanderings of a writer whom blends himself into his work. The female character engaged me and I sympathised with her. She wasn't around long enough for me to connect.

Part two began to bog down, but I persevered, aware that the fictional nature of the work had crossed over into the realm of non-fiction, yet without going all the way there. I felt that the author held strong views about life, love, human connectedness and the ongoings of select historical figures but lacked the determination to pursue them other than in idle daydreams.

As the book progressed, I laboured forward. I felt trapped inside the author's head, locked in a theatre of his mind with his theories, his values, his moral questions and hypotheses. The characters lusted and toyed with each other in a bitter orgy of misplaced emotions and deviant motivations.

Yes, in places the author's insight impressed me. I thought outside of the square, but as the chapters laboured on and the same themes repeated in different ways, I grew bored.

This novel best suits academia where students can pore over the words, compare the text with other masters and engage at great length in discussion about the meaning and intent. It is well written and obscure enough to appeal to intellects who long to unearth its secrets. As a writer, however, I approach reading from another angle, not from the intellectual challenge it might bring but from the emotions it can evoke. This story tells a story and offers up a paradigm shift in how the reader might view their relationships and lives, but it doesn't offer an experience, a sensory world between the written lines. I seek that.

I acknowledge that I wouldn't make a good academic intellectual. I don't read to learn, I read to feel, and through feeling, to become more than I am. This isn't my type of book, but that doesn't make it bad. In fact, it's not. Maybe in another time I'll give it another try. Maybe.

WoTD: arcanum

definition:

1. A secret, a mystery.

2. Specialised or mysterious knowledge, language, or information that is not accessible to the average person (generally used in the plural).

Pop once said that the secret of life lay not in the living of it, but in the study of those who came before. He lived that advice, reading volume after volume of historical text in preference to stepping out to live his own. I long thought he did it because he could not walk, but then I saw him hurry down his back steps to shoo the neighbour's cat from out of the yard. Then I figured he did it because he feared life beyond the safety of his front gate, until I happened across him at the local library, chattering away to the librarian as though he had known her his whole life. In the later years he hosted clandestine meetings in his basement for men who wore dark clothes and carried dusty old tomes. I wondered if he were a cult leader, but what kind of cult would my grandfather lead?
As I grew into adolescence and my grandfather into old age, I wearied of trying to figure him out. He was an arcanum and I lacked sufficient wisdom and persistance to figure him out. 

WoTD: fructuous

definition: fruitful, productive

The stakes, over two metres high and set into the ground at regular intervals across the length and width of the paddock, supported an intricate trellis of wire and netting. One foot high seedlings dotted the tilled earth like an army of forest green cow pats. Twenty thousand dollars and the future of two familes rested on those herbaceous clumps and so very much could go wrong.
George leaned on the strainer post and rubbed his back. Eddie did the same to his own though no amount of rubbing could ease the deep ache.
"Should have hired someone," George said.
"Couldn't afford it."
George bent a little as though the weight of the field and all it represented rested on his shoulders. He nodded, resigned. In the distance as two tanned, slow moving dots, Norma and Eloise finished the last of the stakes.
"If this is anything other than a fructuous endeavour, we lose everything. You know that."
Eddie's skin prickled. "Yeah. I know it."

WoTD: fractious

definition: 

1: tending to cause trouble, unruly.

2: irritable; snappish; cranky.

My moods take me, at random, to squarish places in windowless rooms. Inside those confines, I war against a fractious enemy, a despicable, angry warlord consumed by venom and spite. It wages against me, tireless and irrational, ever yapping like a rabid Chihuaha on a monster's leash, all fangs, froth and torment. Respite, heavy and numb, comes with slow regard, unwrapping leaf by leaf, strip by strip, taking me apart in pieces, separating and reassembling, making me whole again. I am savoured -- saved -- until next time. Random.

WoTD: duplicity

definition:
1: deliberate deceptiveness in behaviour or speech; also, an instance of deliberate deceptiveness; double dealing.
2: the quality or state of being twofold or double.

I saw her on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a waif-like creature camped out by the city market, two bags by her side, a dog in her lap. Each week she wore the same t-shirt, faded black, long-sleeved, the cuffs torn and frayed. Her presence, ritualistic and shameful, struck a sympathetic chord in me. Whenever I walked past I dropped some coins or a five dollar note onto the footpath beside her. Not too much money, I thought, for fear she would use it for drugs, but enough to buy a meal, or some socks, or food for her dog.

Months passed and I developed a habit, a need, a ready discharge of my societal guilt. Never once did I ask if she needed more, nor did I offer it.

Then, she disappeared.

I dismissed her absence on the first day, comforting myself that even vagrants had responsibilities, but by the next Thursday the vacant place by the wall distressed me. I lingered for a long time with coins warm in my hand; needing answers, an explanation. I felt cheated. She and I had a deal, an unspoken agreement, a passing of financial fortune to one less fortunate. She had no right to reneg. Eventually I accepted that she had.

It's been weeks now and she has not returned. I am helpless to uncover the truth. I satisfy my curious turmoil by tarnishing her memory, slating her as a deceptive cheat, a trickster who feigned poverty to exact a complex and measured duplicity. Probably she was affluent and bored, testing society's generosity by behaving like a homeless person. If I never learn otherwise, that is how I will remember her. It's easier that way.

WoTD: coquetry

Definition:
1. dalliance, flirtation

Marion danced with the lustful, uninhibited vigour of a gypsy temptress. Her hair, earlier coiled and knotted at the crown of her head, now flicked and trailed, a glorious russet mane as bold and liberated as she. Her dance partner, a solid gentleman with an unfortunately protruding chin and unflattering rim of stomach fat, lumbered in false step behind her. He lasted one waltz – attributable to her generous nature – before she fell out of sync and wafted into the arms of another. Her manner and allure might have been interpreted as blatant coquetry, a threat to any attached women who dared to allow their men to fall prey. Yet the women offered no challenge and the men knew better.

Later, when the dance ended and the couples went home, Marion stayed behind and danced in the silence, her footfalls a quick step on polished boards. No man waited for her. No woman lingered to defend her territory. Marion danced alone.

WoTD: mondegreen

Definition: a word or phrase resulting from a misinterpretation of a word or phrase that has been heard.

Seated against the wall, pinned flat by the music, my spinal fluid oscillating to the pounding pop beat, I mimed songs from my adolescence and bobbed my head to a rhythm long forgotten. Alone and off to the side, I blended into the faux brickwork and maintained just enough motion so as to guarantee invisibility. Over the crackling speakers and vacuous hiss of forty year olds reliving their youth, Cyndi Lauper screeched and whined about how girls just wanted to have fun. Back then, like now, I struggled to unravel the definition of the three letter word. While my peers had danced, sang and kissed their way through their high school years, I, in comparative solitude, read books, wrote stories and imagined freedom. Not a lot had changed in those intervening years.

"C'mon, get up and dance. You're missing all the fun."

I smiled at the owner of the voice, a woman I hardly recognised. We had been friends once, long ago. I had a hazy recollection of school hallways, lockers and whispered words. She fitted in there somewhere.

The track changed, on came Madonna with her swooning Spanish ballad, la isla bonita. The woman sat beside me, her thighs touching mine. She held a glass with shimmering, bubbling liquid and her breath smelled sour. We sang together, fumbling the words.

"... a young girl with eyes like potatoes," I sang, loudly. The woman leaned in, laughed, her forehead momentarily resting on my shoulder as she mimicked the words. The deliberate lyrical mondegreen built a bridge between us and I remembered then what had connected us as children. I smiled.

WoTD: vicissitude

Definition:

1. Regular change or succession from one thing to another; alternation; mutual succession; interchange.
2. Irregular change; revolution; mutation.
3. A change in condition or fortune; an instance of mutability in life or nature (especially successive alternation from one condition to another).

Nature's seasonal vicissitude wore Norm down. Sure, the four seasons offered a measure of diurnal predictability, scheduled long and short days and those in between where the sun, low down and lacking in heat, chased frost across the ground, but from year to year he endured torturous unpredictability. Three years ago, in spring no less, a howling sandstorm blew in from the west and scraped two inches of topsoil from every one of his paddocks. All his seed went with the wind. Five thousand dollars gone in just a few hours. Then the summer rains, regular for December, failed to arrive. December burned into January and still no rain. That was three years ago and the experts called it a climate change induced drought. Norm thought otherwise and hung on when other farmers gave up. He believed in cycles, in seasonal patterns, in the regular succession and order of things. The rain would come. It had to, and until it did, he would suck it up and endure. It's what Anderson men did.