Lit

cavetocanvas: Carrie Mae Weems, You Became a Scientific...

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 12:26:02 -0500

You Became a Scientific Profile

An Anthropological Debate

And I Cried

Carrie Mae Weems, You Became a Scientific Profile (top), An Anthropological Debate (middle), and And I Cried (bottom) from From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, 1995–96. Collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Copyright Carrie Mae Weems.

I

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 22:53:00 -0500

As so-called quarks, so atoms before and through
And after molecules, which too
Constitute us awhile, pluming

Through our slowly changing shapes
Like beachscapes
Through a duneless sandglass, say

(I said, once)—all these
So utterly forgetful, wiped clean
As numbers with each new use, lint-free.

How not so words, which pass our minds
And mouths and ears from hind-
Most elsewhere, on their way to elsewhere—why

So?
Words are the sum of their histories: rose
And roke and no and blanketing snow.

— from Words are the Sum, Richard Kenney

The Art of Poetry

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 19:53:48 -0500

The Art of Poetry:

To gaze at a river made of time and water
and remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.

To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.

To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
into a music, a sound, and a symbol.

To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadness—such is poetry,
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.

Sometimes at evening there’s a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.

They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
a green eternity, not wonders.

Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.

Jorge Luis Borges

"I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It..."

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 21:53:16 -0500

““I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves.””

- Jean-Paul Sartre (via seabois)

"Summer grasses, All that remains Of soldiers’ dreams"

Mon, 24 Dec 2012 23:13:38 -0500

“Summer grasses,
All that remains
Of soldiers’ dreams”

- Bashō Matsuo (via rhea137)

Home is where one starts from. As we grow olderThe world becomes stranger, the pattern more...

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:47:09 -0500

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before or after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.

T.S. Eliot, ‘East Coker’ from Four Quartets

And I have searched the highths and depths, the scope Of all our universe, with desperate hope To...

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 14:10:00 -0500

And I have searched the highths and depths, the scope

Of all our universe, with desperate hope

To find some solace for your wild unrest.

—James Thomson, “The City of Dreadful Night”

Photo

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 22:12:36 -0500

The sun is an example of a supremely sensitive being because it can always disappear. —Liberté et...

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 22:12:16 -0500

The sun is an example of a supremely sensitive being because it can always disappear.

—Liberté et Patrie - Jean-Luc Godard, 2oo2

Sacred Space

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 10:41:12 -0500

yellowofthelemons:

Not time at all, really, but space

like you don’t know, and knowledge there

in general, finally admits

how meager a consolation

it has been all along. Once

you grow accustomed to the sprawl

and velocity your own mind

articulates (and that queasy

rocking tapers to a hum) you might

have pause to entertain a sense

of presence reaching suddenly,

and now, and deeply, ever so.

-Scott Cairns

gammasandgerunds: by Graham Foust

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 10:33:55 -0500

gammasandgerunds:

by Graham Foust

timeimmemorial: It’s a strange thought that human life is built on such quicksand, governed largely...

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 18:09:36 -0500

timeimmemorial:

It’s a strange thought that human life is built on such quicksand, governed largely by vagaries and accidental encounters from the past, even though we take such great pride in our aesthetic sensibilities and freedom of choice. On this one point I am in complete agreement with Freud.

— Ramachandran, V.S. The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011

"How many kingdoms know nothing of us?"

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 18:01:08 -0500

“How many kingdoms know nothing of us?”

- Pensées - B.Pascal

invisiblestories: Nescio, “Young Titans” (trans. Damion...

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 17:15:07 -0500

invisiblestories:

Nescio, “Young Titans” (trans. Damion Searls)

wolf

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 21:29:06 -0500

acktor:

you should love books
but I mean my books

I communicate
my vision of being

simple and wide

we meet
in upstate new york

the center of colorado
or the bottom of the atlantic ocean

you are not a curse
you are a swear

I am not complicated

you are a revolution
you take too long

I am afraid of those
whose only deterrent is morality

you are sand reckoner
wolf or great attractor

I can swim

D.M.

"When I think of my mad anxiety, of the need I have to be worried, to be in this world a man..."

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 15:36:44 -0500

“When I think of my mad anxiety, of the need I have to be worried, to be in this world a man breathing uneasily, on his guard, as if he were going to be short of everything,”

- Georges Bataille, The Impossible

Photo

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 17:59:51 -0500

"It is a desert, but it is also a world turned sideways."

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 17:59:18 -0500

“It is a desert, but it is also a world turned sideways.”

- Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson (via perfectcoma)

ratak-monodosico: Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las...

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 21:34:22 -0500

ratak-monodosico:

Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Canto I

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 09:30:00 -0500

Stopped mid-motion in the middle

Of what we call our life, I looked up and saw no sky—
Only a dense cage of leaf, tree, and twig. I was lost.

It’s difficult to describe a forest:
Savage, arduous, extreme in its extremity. I think
And the facts come back, then the fear comes back.

Death, I believe, can only be slightly more bitter.
I can’t address the good I found there
Until I describe in detail what else I saw.

I don’t know for certain how I entered it—
I was so sleepy-faced
At the place where I took a wrong path.

When the wooded valley I’d just passed through
In heart-rending terror
Dead-ended at the foot of a hill,

I looked up and saw the sun bright on the body
Of the hill’s high spot—like a headlight
That helps the lost find the way.

The turbulent fear that had filled my heart
During the night I had passed in such sadness
Calmed some when I saw it.

Like someone breathless after an escape
From the deep end, who stands at the side of the pool
And looks back on the danger and list of close calls,

That’s how I looked back—my mind a stopped top
In the middle of a turn—for a glimpse of where I’d been,
A place no one leaves alive.

I rested for a while and then started up the sandy slope.
I lifted one well-intended foot
While the lower one acted like a post.

Suddenly, at the base of a rise, just where the hill begins
Its steep incline, I saw a leopard with a patterned coat,
Light on its feet and lightning fast.

Wherever I looked it was there, blocking the path,
So that several times I turned back
And began to retrace my steps.

It was daybreak, the sun rising with the stars
That were with it when the first clock started—
The spring wound by the hand of a love supreme

Who set in motion those beautiful things.
In spite of the beast with his showy coat
I felt hope, reassured

By the fact of morning and the hint of spring,
Although the promise hollowed
When I caught sight of nothing less than a lion.

He seemed dead set against me, head high,
Crazed with hunger. It made not just me
But even the air around him tremble.

And after him: a she-wolf, her frame so emaciated
Her body seemed defined by the cravings
That had caused so many to live in misery.

Looking at her bitch-kitty face
I felt an odd sense of solid defeat and lost sight
Of any hope of climbing higher.

You’ve seen the one at a roulette wheel who whispers
Sweet nothings to his winnings, but when he loses whimpers,
“How did we come to this?” and wrings his hands—
I was a sad sack like that, as the impossible beast
Inch by inch drove me back into the shadows
Where the sun keeps a stopper in its mouth.

I was rushing backward into ruin when I saw someone
Who, given I’d been alone for so long,
Seemed almost like a mirage.

There on that wasteland, I called out,
“Take pity on me, please, whatever you are,
Ghost or material man.”

“I was once a man,” he said, “but now I’m not.
Both my parents, both Lombardi,
Were born in Mantua.

I was born late in the day of Julius Caesar
And lived in Rome, under the reign of good Augustus,
Back when the gods were false and told sweet-talking lies.

I was a poet. I sang the song of the righteous son
Of Anchises, who came back by boat from Troy
After smug Ilium had been burned to black ash.

But you, why return to what made you unhappy?
Why not climb the meringue-pie mountain ahead of you?
It’s the ultimate end, and means of all pleasure.”

I said, “You’re Virgil, aren’t you? You’re that rainmaker
Who creates a torrent of speech that turns into a riptide.”
Then I felt bashful and hung my head.

“The best and the brightest in the class of poets,
I read you and loved you and hope
That what I learned from you will now serve me well.

First of all authors and master of me,
I borrowed from you and to you I owe a debt
For the music that’s brought me success.

Can you see the beast I had to flee? Can you save me
From her? You, Mr. Übermensch, you Mr. Man
Of the World. I’m shaking with fear.”

When he saw that I was now in tears, he said,
“In that case, you have to take a different route
To escape this place that is only rock and the sandy road.

The beast that drove you back and made you cry
Ends the life of any who try
To pass her on their way through.

She’s insane and insatiable. She eats more and that
Just makes her more malignant with craving. She kills
All she comes in contact with. All with whom she comes.

She takes many to her bed
And many more are coming, until the day
The big dog arrives and deals her an agonizing death.

The dog doesn’t need property or money but lives
On knowledge, love, and truth.
He’ll be born between two layers of felt.

He’ll be the savior of a now-humbled country
For which the gallant Camilla
And three loyal boys died of their wounds.

He’ll search for her in this city and that, chasing the bitch
Back to the hole where Envy first undid her chain
And choker and set her loose.

As we go forward from here, it’s best if you stay behind me;
I’ll play the part of your guide. It’s my plan
To lead you through a place neverending, i.e., eternal

Hell, where you’ll hear the worst kind of wailing,
See the ageless shades writhing in pain,
Sense their vain request for a second death.

After that, you’ll see those who are happy in the heat
Of the fire because they hope at some point to pursue
The path to Purgatory and so achieve a Bible clerk’s bliss;

To those, if that’s where you would go, up and farther up,
You’ll need another escort, one more honored
Than I. When I leave you, I’ll leave you with her.

The Emperor on high says I can’t enter His city;
I wasn’t obedient to His unbendable laws. He says
I’m smudged by Adam’s ink and so must live in Limbo.

He reigns in all parts of the empire. His city is there;
So is His chair, poised at the edge of Heaven.
Happy are those He asks in.”

And I said to him, “Poet, I beg of you,
By the God you never knew, help me out of this Denmark,
Which threatens to go from bad to worse. Lead me

To where you just mentioned, so I can see the door
Of Purgatory and meet Saint Peter at the Gate and,
Along the way, see the dolorous souls who are designated

Damned.” Then he set out, and I at his back.

—Dante