“Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.”
— John le Carre
theres a knight in my backyard stabbing the ground with his sword trying to render my soil barren by killing the worms but luckily ive trained them all in classical ballet and they keep pirouetting away from the blade
you can’t get sentences like this anywhere else
I love Tumblr
Rosemary? You mean spicy pine needles?
Are you insinuating that regular pine needles aren’t spicy???
Regular pine needles are regular
Not by rosemary standards
…Have you eaten pine needles?
We’ve been friends for like four years, do you seriously have to ask if I’ve eaten pine needles or not
I mean I’m pretty sure you have but I don’t want to assume
Of course I’ve eaten pine needles. Various kinds. Singleleaf pinyon is weirdly the best
Are they…
spicy?
You know, I’d love to tell you but I’m pretty unclear about what marks the difference between “spice” and “strong-tasting plant that isn’t considered a spice”
I’ll have to eat some pine needles myself then to find out
Ok but it only counts if they’re PINE needles and not just any old needle-like leaf off a tree
I’m going to eat every needle-like leaf I see
Please Don’t Do That
Needle-Like Leaf Roulette
…I’ll accept this plan as long as you promise not to eat any yew leaves.
I can try very hard not to
Pine needles are distinguished by the presence of a sheath-like structure at the base of the leaf, almost always holding bundles of two or more leaves. Yews don’t have the sheath thing
It’s time for me to go out into the woods and stare at needle leaves
Finally you can gain real insight into my average daily life
this conversation reads like two shakespeare characters who come out in the middle of the play to talk about something completely unrelated for comic relief and then are never heard from again
god fucking dammit gimme a minute
Enter AERUH and MALUS SYL-VESTRIS, a pair of JESTERS.
AERUH
I tell thee, rosemary is like a pine
but with a spicy taste.
MALUS
Art thou to claim
that needles base of pine have not a spice?
AERUH
A needle base of pine is merely base.
MALUS
‘Tis not when held, comparing, to anthos.
AERUH
My dearest Malus, needles thou'st eaten?
MALUS
How many moons have we as friends seen rise?
How many suns have we as friends seen set?
Thou sixteen seasons in my heart I’ve held,
and hope that I in thine hast been the same.
With brotherhood as rich and old as this,
thou needst not ask me such frivolities.
AERUH
I know thou likely has, to tell the truth,
but I would not assume.
MALUS
Well, yes, I have.
A multitude of types I’ve eaten too.
I’ll tell thee now: the best (though it is strange)
is single-leaf pinyon.
AERUH
And it has spice?
MALUS
I truly wish that I could tell thee this,
but now, i'faith, I cannot fully tell,
the difference in classifying thus:
to say “has spice” or merely “herbal strength”.
AERUH
To tell this tale most clearly it would seem
that eating needles from a pine’s required.
MALUS
Aye, it would seem that that’s the task at hand,
but caution tells that this is what’s to do:
eat only needles of the honest pine,
and none of lying leaf with pinelike shape.
AERUH
I’ll eat them all.
MALUS
I prithee, stay thyself.
AERUH
Roulette with leaves.
MALUS
At least restrain from yew.
AERUH
I’ll do my best.
MALUS
That is all can we do.
The scholars tell that needles true of pine
can be distinguished from the lying yew
by sheathlike clothing all along the base;
the yew has no such guard.
AERUH
With this new truth
I now will venture out into the wood
and seek the pines and pinelike fakes alike
to stare them down and learn their secret truths.
MALUS
With this thou canst at long and weary last
Discover for thyself my life’s own path.
Exeunt.
Enter MACDUFF.
MACDUFF.
Yo dudes that king there’s dead. Like dead as FUCK.
Hey what the fuck this entire thing scans
Holy Shit
“The magic of autumn has seized the countryside; now that the sun isn’t ripening anything it shines for the sake of the golden age; for the sake of Eden; to please the moon for all I know.”
— Elizabeth Coatsworth, Personal Geography: Almost an Autobiography
(via exhaled-spirals)
““…candied plums, figs, oranges, and apricots with fine gold leaf, and more gold was being smoothed onto sweet biscuits of fried dough cut into witty shapes and drenched in spiced syrup and rosewater.””
— Philip Kazan, “Appetite.” (via lesgardenias)
“A copy of the first edition of the Edda Islandorum of Snorri, printed in Denmark. The five volumes of Schopenhauer’s œuvre. The two volumes of Chapman’s Odyssey. A sword that waged war—the desert. A maté gourd with serpent feet my great-grandfather brought from Lima. A crystal prism. Some smudgy daguerreotypes. A terraqueous wooden globe which Cecilia Ingenieros gave me and was her father’s. A cane with a curved handle I walked through the American plains, through Colombia and Texas. Various metal cylinders with diplomas. The cap and gown of a doctorate. Enterprises by Saavedra Fajardo, in odorous Spanish board. The memory of a morning. Lines of Virgil and Frost. The voice of Macedonio Fernández. The love or dialogue of a few. Certainly they are talismans, but of no use against the darkness that I cannot name, the darkness that I must not name.”
— Jorge Luis Borges / “Talismans”
“It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you’ve made, and there’s this panic because you don’t know yet the scale of disaster you’ve left yourself open to.”
— Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go