I was walking through the mall and I headed into a Barnes & Noble, and Barack Obama was for some reason signing books there so I walked up, like ???? He wrote a book? Some biography?? When I got up to the desk, all the books were just lizards, and Obama replied to my inquires with a simple, “They may have no names, but there’s an identity to be acknowledged,” and he smiled as he signed another lizard and then there was something about a surprise dragon and then I woke up.
“Say anything. Free-writing, free-associating, and keeping a journal are all ways to move from silence into words….(‘Say anything’ is another version of William Stafford’s famous advice: ‘There’s no such thing as writer’s block; you need only lower your standards.’)”
— Jane Hirshfield, in “Reconnecting After a Silence” in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine (2018)
“When you are washing the dishes, washing the dishes must be the most important thing in your life. Just as when you are drinking tea, drinking tea must be the most important thing in your life. Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the whole world revolves—slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment. Only this actual moment is life.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh (via aspiritualwarrior)
I love destemming flowers; it’s a quiet gentle task and it makes your hands smell lovely. It took me so long to prepare my last batch of syrup that by the time I was done everyone had gone to bed—chickens, guests, dog—and only Merricat was still keeping me company. I think the audiobook I was listening to caught her interest. I know for a fact that if I re-read this book ten years from now, the atmosphere of the story will have an indelible elderflower smell…
“From the first smouldering taper to the elegant lanterns whose light reverberated around eighteenth-century courtyards and from the mild radiance of these lanterns to the unearthly glow of the sodium lamps that line the Belgian motorways, it has all been combustion. Combustion is the hidden principle behind every artefact we create. The making of a fish-hook, manufacture of a china cup, or production of a television programme, all depend on the same process of combustion. Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers. From the earliest times, human civilization has been no more than a strange luminescence growing more intense by the hour, of which no one can say when it will begin to wane and when it will fade away. For the time being, our cities still shine through the night, and the fire still spreads.”
— W.G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn
basically, i think the general rule of thumb is: if someone REALLY wants the blood that’s inside of your body, and they’re like… a vampire, or a dracula, or some sort of mansquito, then that’s probably okay. a dracula and a mansquito are made for removing things like blood and swords from inside your body. that’s basically fine.
if something wants to get at your blood, and they’re, say, some kind of murdersaurus, or maybe a really big frog, that’s where the problems start to arise. a really frog is not made for removing blood, and your blood knows this, which is why it is so vehement about wanting to stay IN your body instead of coming out.
unfortunately this will not deter a really big frog, because a really big frog is full of things like prizes, and value, and quite a lot of hatred, and it would REALLY rather like to replace any and all of those things with your blood, and basically by any means possible.
These words scan with a fantastic degree of confidence considering that together they make no sense at all
“In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set; from time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall. It’s this moment we’re both trying to explain, the fact that we’re at ease with death, with solitude. My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn’t move. She’s always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image capable of life apart from her. We’re very quiet. It’s peaceful sitting here, not speaking, the composition fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering— it’s this stillness that we both love. The love of form is a love of endings.”
— Louise Glück, “Celestial Music” (via marcescentfleur)
odysseus hijacking the odyssey and forcing it to go from third person omniscient to first person vs moby dick gradually slipping from first person to third to a chapter written as a play after which ishmael has to reintroduce himself in order to regain control over the narrative. Fight