my best friends
How marvellous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself.
Gore Vidal
Julian: A Novel
go to them
YES.
“You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes”
A. A. Milne
Winnie the Pooh
[illustrated by E. H Shepard]
unassailable serenity
…to make one’s center of life inside of one’s self, not selfishly or excludingly, but with a kind of unassailable serenity – to decorate one’s inner house so richly that one is content there, glad to welcome anyone who wants to come and stay, but happy all the same when one is inevitably alone.
Edith Wharton
Letter to Mary Berenson
Reproduced in Edith Wharton: A Biography by R. W. B. Lewis
Other painters
Other painters paint a bridge, a house, a boat…I want to paint the air. I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house and the boat are to be found — the beauty of the air around them, and that is nothing less than the impossible.
Claude Monet
Interview conducted c. 1895, reproduced in Monet in the Twentieth Century
most poetic
The most ordinary conversation is often the most poetic, and the most poetic is precisely that which cannot be written down.
Virginia Woolf
Orlando
Do you have any idea how hard it is not to use the F-word when talking about Donald Trump? It’s damn near f-ing impossible. #FactsMatter #HowToTrainYourDragon
A great rant! Reminds you that “Twitter rhymes with shitter”.
Margaret, I know you don’t Tweet unless you are talking to your parrots. And for what it’s worth, I told you those things would outlive us. I know you thought I was stupid to get on the Twitter. Well, I should have listened to you, honey. I came. I tweeted. And I got covered in shit. Probably because Twitter is chock-full of assholes who don’t know the difference between your and you’re.
Now before all you NitTwits out there write me off, read on for a little bit. There are some things that are good about Twitter. Most are not easy to find, but they’re there if you are willing to work a bit. I’ll explain…
On Friday, a jackass named Roger Stone whined that the FBI had raided his home leaving himself, his dog, his wife (in that order) and even his neighbor forever traumatized. From his description, it’s…
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the writing process
True. True, true, true.
For me, the writing process is something related to like exercising your body, taking a walk, stretching. It’s better if you do it on a regular basis. You won’t be as stiff, so all my life I’ve tried to write every day. It doesn’t have to be great. Doesn’t have to be even good. Just keep that pen rolling. Write down you know, whether you’re writing a journal of what’s been happening during the day or signs you saw that day or conversations you overhead.
It really doesn’t matter what you’re writing every day whether you’re working on a project at every given moment or not, but keep the pencil, the pen moving and the more you write, the more you feel writing as a process, as a world that can be shaped and reshaped and re-envisioned. I really love the word “revise,” like a new vision, revision or something…
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God?
Lady Claire: How do you know you’re God?
Jack Gurney: Simple. When I pray to Him, I find I am talking to myself.
Peter Barnes
The Ruling Class
The Cat’s Song
How can you not love this poem? I can easily hear my cat Bobby singing this. Oh, everything makes so much sense now. His midnight song.
Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness.
My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says
the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing
milk from his mother’s forgotten breasts.
Let us walk in the woods, says the cat.
I’ll teach you to read the tabloid of scents,
to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt.
Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat.
You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends,
says the cat, although I am more equal than you.
Can you leap twenty times the height of your body?
Can you run up and down trees? Jump between roofs?
Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch.
My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard.
My lusts glow like my eyes. I sing to you in the mornings
walking round and…
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insensible trance states
Medieval folklore throughout Europe recognized a specifically female trance state closely analogous to divine possession. In popular culture, too, we find groups of laywomen entering into immobile and insensible trance states, during which they reportedly visited the realms of the dead and consorted with supernatural figures. Efforts to rouse such women when in this state proved fruitless: the trance was like a temporary death in which the spirit was wholly absent. These women often were credited with healing powers and oracular abilities, and sometimes they attained positions of local prestige – or marginalization – as a result to their activities. Known variously as the “good things,” the “good ladies,” or the “night-times ladies,” these women believed themselves to be destined, by an accident of birth, occasionally to leave their bodies in order to follow, in spirit, in the train of a mysterious female supernatural being.
Nancy Caciola
Discerning Spirits: Divine…
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