re the aleph (from kate 13/11/07)

Reread the aleph again and actually its is the 19th step where it is, he lies on the ground on a sack to look at it.

I like all the descriptions Borges writes as he hopelessly tries to write the description of the inconceivable universe. ....

"Alain de Lille speaks of a sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere" (must ask Marcus about this? How does it relate to finite yet unbounded?)

"tigers, pistons, bisons, tides, and armies, saw all the ants on earth, saw a Persian astrolabe, saw a desk in a draw (and the hadwriting made me tremble) obscene, incredible detailed letters that Beatriz had sent Carlos Argentino, saw a beloved momument in Chacarita, saw the horrendous remains of what had once, deliciously, been Beatriz Viterbo, saw the circulation of my dark blood, saw the coils and springs of love and the alterations of death, saw the Aleph from everywhere at once, saw the earth in the Aleph, and the Aleph once more in the earth and the earth in the Aleph, saw my face and my visecra, saw your face, and I felt dizzy, and I wept, because my eyes had seen that secret, hypothetical object whose name has been usurped by men but which no man has ever truly looked upon: the invonceivable universe."

All this and that he ends with "Our minds are permeable to forgetfulness; I myself am distorting losing, through the tragic erosion of the years the features of Beatriz."