/ THOUGHTS AND EPHEMERA /

"All religions will pass, but this will remain: simply sitting in a chair and looking in the..."

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 23:05:19 -0400

“All religions will pass, but this will remain: simply sitting in a chair and looking in the distance.”

- / Vasilii Rozanov

"why why why why It is an illusion you were ever free"

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 01:42:56 -0400

“

why why why why

It is an illusion you were ever free

”

- / Frank Bidart, from Like Lightning Across An Open Field

"Ano ba ang buhay? Ano ba ang panahon? Hanggang kailan ang pagsisikap, at para nga ba saan? Saan tayo..."

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 01:39:08 -0400

“Ano ba ang buhay? Ano ba ang panahon? Hanggang kailan ang pagsisikap, at para nga ba saan? Saan tayo nanggaling, at saan patungo?”

- / Tony Perez, Cubao Pagkagat ng Dilim: Mga Kuwentong Kababalaghan

"He didn’t speak of the pain, never said a word about it. Sometimes his face would quiver,..."

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 01:35:44 -0400

“He didn’t speak of the pain, never said a word about it. Sometimes his face would quiver, he’d close his eyes and clench his teeth. But he never said anything about the images he saw behind his closed eyes. It was as if he loved the pain, loved it as he’d loved me, intensely, unto death perhaps, and as if he preferred it now to me.”

- / Marguerite Duras, The Lover

"Kay lungkot at kay pait ng mga Midnight Express na pag-ibig ni Perez. Subalit kay tapat. Wala na..."

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 01:33:44 -0400

“Kay lungkot at kay pait ng mga Midnight Express na pag-ibig ni Perez. Subalit kay tapat. Wala na marahil mahihinging higit pang kadakilaan sa sining.”

- / Benilda S. Santos on Tony Perez’s Midnight Express

I am better at dry sadness than at cold anger, for I remained dry eyed until now, as dry as smoked...

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 01:27:00 -0400

I am better at dry sadness than at cold anger, for I remained dry eyed until now, as dry as smoked fish, but my heart is a kind of dirty soft custard inside.

[…]

I am not sad. Rather stunned, very far away fro myself, not really believing you are now so far, so far, you so near. I want to tell you only two things before leaving, and then I’ll not speak about it any more, I promise. First, I hope so much, I want and need so much to see you again, some day. But, remember, please, I shall never more ask to see you — not from any pride since I have none with you, as you know, but our meeting will mean something only when you wish it. So, I’ll wait. When you’ll wish it, just tell. I shall not assume that you love me anew, not even that you have to sleep with me, and we have not to stay together such a long time — just as you feel, and when you feel. But know that i’ll always long for your asking me. No, I cannot think that I shall not see you again. I have lost your love and it was (it is) painful, but shall not lose you. Anyhow, you have me so much, Nelson, what you gave me meant so much, that you could never take it back. And then your tenderness and friendship were so precious to me that I can still feel warm and happy and harshly grateful when I look at you inside me. I do hope this tenderness and friendship will never, never desert me. As for me, it is baffling to say so and I feel ashamed, but it is the only true truth: I just love as much as I did when I landed into your disappointed arms, that means with my whole self and all my dirty heart; I cannot do less. But that will not bother you, honey, and don’t make writing letters of any kind a duty, just write when you feel like it, knowing every time it will make me very happy.

Well, all words seem silly. You seem so near, so near, let me come near to you, too. And let me, as in the past times, let me be in my own heart forever.

Your own Simone

/ Simone de Beauvoir’s letter to Nelson Algren (•)

/ Robert Pinsky reads "The Forgetting"

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 01:17:00 -0400

/ Robert Pinsky reads "The Forgetting":

The stand-up master Steven Wright says he thinks he suffers from / Both amnesia and deja vu: “I feel like I have forgotten this before.”

(•)

“Forgetting is never perfect, just as recall is never total: the list or the person’s...

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 01:07:41 -0400

“Forgetting is never perfect, just as recall is never total: the list or the person’s name or the poem or the phone number may be recalled in every detail, but never with the exact feeling it had. And conversely the details may be obliterated, but a feeling lingers on.

“…One doesn’t need to be Freudian to understand that memory and forgetting are partial, willful and involuntary, helpless and desperate, in mysterious measures. Forgetting is not mere absence. The repressed does not simply return, it transforms and abrogates, rising and plunging like a dolphin, or Proteus.”

/ Robert Pinsky’s notes, from Gulf Music

"They tend to have fewer pictures in the family photo album alone, compared to firstborns."

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 01:04:05 -0400

“They tend to have fewer pictures in the family photo album alone, compared to firstborns.”

- / On middleborns, from Alfred Adler’s Research on Birth Order (•)

"The flesh is easy to satisfy. It’s the heart that is insatiable, the heart that needs to love,..."

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 00:59:15 -0400

“The flesh is easy to satisfy. It’s the heart that is insatiable, the heart that needs to love, to despair, to burn with any kind of fire…That was what we wanted. To burn, to be consumed, to devour our days just as fire devours the forest.”

- / Irène Némirovsky, Fire In The Blood

"When you’re twenty love is like a fever, it makes you almost delirious. When it’s over..."

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 00:57:59 -0400

“When you’re twenty love is like a fever, it makes you almost delirious. When it’s over you can hardly remember how it happened…Fire in the blood, how quickly it burns itself out.”

- / Irène Némirovsky, Fire In The Blood

"And aren’t the most beautiful follies the ones linked to love?"

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 00:56:40 -0400

“And aren’t the most beautiful follies the ones linked to love?”

- / Irène Némirovsky, Fire In The Blood

"I’m not sentimental—I’m as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person..."

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 08:09:21 -0400

“I’m not sentimental—I’m as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last—the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won’t.”

- / F. Scott Fitzgerald (via theepitomeofsimplicite)

"Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become..."

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 07:53:38 -0400

“Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.”

- / Sylvia Plath (via pavorst)

What’s your biggest fear?“Being invalidated by the people in my life. You see sometimes it’ll...

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 23:24:52 -0400

What’s your biggest fear?

“Being invalidated by the people in my life. You see sometimes it’ll happen to people, that their self will stop coming through. And people will just cease to understand them. Getting lost in human perception is a very scary idea.”

/ Ezra Miller, in an interview by Mikael Jansson, 2011 (•)

"I wonder if it’s possible to have a love affair that lasts forever."

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 23:02:00 -0400

“I wonder if it’s possible to have a love affair that lasts forever.”

- / Andy Warhol (•)

"People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about..."

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:00:00 -0500

“People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”

- / Jim Morrison (via girlinlondon)

"5. THE MOVEMENTS OF THE ARM At this point, I should just go ahead and admit that writing occurs..."

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:45:00 -0500

“5. THE MOVEMENTS OF THE ARM

At this point, I should just go ahead and admit that writing occurs slowly. Sometimes to the point of no writing at all. An assemblage as much as it is a cutting, the equilibrium in language seems to me imaginary. At the tip, at the furthest end, I cannot offer anything but the “I.” The problem is, it takes a while for body to be covered only by skin. The bones have to project more and more between muscles and tendons, the head not to be pinned down by some idea of truth and to strategically come together with the sacrum so that the two pelvic bones may form a bony ring. And at this moment, if anything at all happens to [my] writing, nothing happens to it but touch [Nancy, Jean-Luc] and some genital contractions.”

- / Rachel Gontijo Araujo, “all the parts of the body below the head” (Evening Will Come, February 2012)

"Without sound, celebration and grief look nearly the same."

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:58:00 -0500

“Without sound, celebration and grief look nearly the same.”

- / Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet (via mythologyofblue)

I felt a tremendous distance between me and everything real. / Hunter S. Thompson

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:49:00 -0500

I felt a tremendous distance between me and everything real.

/ Hunter S. Thompson