Perplexities & Passages

Month

November 2012

2 posts

Last surviving witness of Lincoln's assassination → youtube.com

This film would have been broadcast right about the time I was conceived. Phenomenal illustration of the telescoping of time, and how very young America is. 

Nov 10, 20122 notes
Merton on Politics and War

“Indignation is not enough. The world is full of people who use it to excuse everything, including the worst of actions.”

Thomas Merton, in a letter to Mark Van Doren on the subject of the arms race. As quoted in:

Lawlor, Patrick T. “Poet to teacher, Thomas Merton’s letters to Mark Van Doren.” Columbia Library Columns November 1989 39(1):18-30. p.27.

Nov 2, 2012

October 2012

1 post

Oct 24, 201219 notes
#books #intelligence #exercise

April 2012

2 posts

the24project: Untitled - April Parent → the24project.tumblr.com

the24project:

This is how you make a life: 
Pull talking out of people like a dentist performing a root canal. Hurt them 
with the pulling. Haul it out energetically, 
spread the talking around you like blankets, until you can’t 
hear each other over all the muffled syllables, the too-long vowels. 

Apr 22, 20122 notes
the24project: Desdemona - Laura Brown → the24project.tumblr.com

Real life is like this:

the24project:

Desdemona

He was a brute and I knew it,

real bad news,

but I loved the smell of danger,

his animal reek.

He loved me more,

gave me a fistful of it,

collecting bruises like love tokens

and broken bones like Valentines.

My arm, twisted.

My…

Apr 22, 20121 note

November 2009

1 post

“Seedlings not planted, / benched perennials withered. / Limit the lament.” —@pfanderson (via haikuchallenge)
Nov 26, 20092 notes

August 2008

24 posts

“it’s really masculine, phil
reading women like a book the way you do
seeing through their breasts
into that pea-sized death
every woman knows she owns from birth.”
—Kennedy, Terry. “For Hatfield, the Radiologist.” Her Soul Beneath the Bone, ed. Leatrice H. Lifshitz. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, (c)1988, p. 5.
Aug 28, 2008
#cancer #mammogram #radiology #medicine #health
“I set out the new shoes
for the morning. I work. Nothing
will come between me
and all that I love. I will never
be done with the sweeping up
of common things,
the straightening, the putting away.”
—Skipper, Louie. “Yes, Light.” The Fourth Watch of the Night. Davis, CA: Swan Scythe Press, (c)2001, p. 35.
Aug 27, 2008
Aug 26, 2008
#found #blues #depression #farms #farmers
“Like a child constantly rebuilding the same Lego structure day after day, I have to use these blocks, these seconds and moments of unconditional love from throughout my life, every day, to remember that I am loved.” —Roche, David. The Church of 80% Sincerity. “A Perigee Book.” NY: Penguin, 2008, p. 126.
Aug 25, 2008
#love #faith #children
“‘The angels,’ he said, ‘have no senses; their experience is purely intellectual and spiritual. That is why we know something about God which they don’t. There are particular aspects of His love and joy which can be communicated to a created being only by sensuous experience. Something of God which the Seraphim can never quite understand flows into us from the blue of the sky, the taste of honey, the delicious embrace of water whether cold or hot, and even from sleep itself.” —Lewis, Clive Staples. C. S. Lewis on Joy. Nelson Publishers, 1998, p. 55.
Aug 23, 2008
#angels #senses #senuous #sensory
“But still tomorrow
builds into my face
such island fortresses
of silence that words find
not a door to enter by.”
—Adonis [‘Ali Ahmad Sa’id]. “The Pages of Day and Night.” The Pages of Day and Night, trans. Samuel Hazo. Evanston, Illinois: Marlboro Press / Northwestern University Press, 1994, p. 11.
Aug 22, 20081 note
#poem #poetry #isolation
Aug 21, 200811 notes
#signs #new orleans #words
“As I “galaxy-gaze” through time upon their diversity of colors, shapes, sizes, brightnesses, and structural detail, the boundary between knowledge and ignorance calls to me. When I reach for the edge of the universe, I do it knowing that along some paths of cosmic discovery, there are times when, at least for now, one must be content to love the questions themselves.” —Tyson, Neil deGrasse. “Onward to the Edge.” Natural History, July 1996. http://research.amnh.org/~tyson/18magazines_onwardtotheedge.php
Aug 19, 20083 notes
#information #science #philosophy #astronomy
“Other things are changed. Both Mother Darkness and Father Endless are with us again. They are welcomed with dancing each evening when Daylight Woman departs. Though it is the nature of children to fear the darkness, adults know there can be no light without it.” —Tepper, Sheri S. Shadow’s End. NY: Bantam Books, (c) 1994, p. 452. 
Aug 18, 2008
#philosophy #growth & development #maturation #nature #collaboration #culture
“Sometimes in dreams
my teeth got loose in my mouth …
Tinker, Tailor, Sailor, Sailor —
they were cherrystones,
as I spat them out.”
—Lowell, Robert. “Suicide.” Day by Day. NY: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, (c) 1975, p. 15.
Aug 17, 2008
#poetry #dentistry #health #dreams #rhymes #edentulous #suicide
Aug 17, 20085 notes
#poetry #slanted #perplexities #found words
“A boy these days took it for granted that he had work to do, and the men couldn’t do it all. No boy ever thought of himself as only twelve or thirteen or whatever he was, being anxious to prove himself and take a man’s place and responsibilities.” —L’Amour, Louis. “War Party.” Grub Line Rider. NY: Dorchester Publishing / Golden West Literary Agency, (c) 2007/2008, p. 187. ISBN: 978-0-8439-6065-5.
Aug 16, 2008
#history #culture #identity #growth & development
“The chancellor of the university has a privately funded study that he received from the Heritage Institute, on libraries, both public libraries and academic libraries, and it says that there are far too many physical volumes. That all of this can be replaced, except perhaps some rare volumes of historic value, perhaps, by a great cyber-library, one library for all, accessed from our home and office PCs. That would cut down on the need for almost all librarians, except for the cyber ones and it would make all this space available. … That would create additional savings by cutting the need for capital construction. This could be turned into classrooms, or dorm rooms, which actually earn money.” —Beinhart, Larry. The Librarian. NY: Nation Books, (c) 2004, p. 5. 
Aug 15, 2008
#slanted #libraries #books #trends #future #perplexities
“What grows wild is doubly beautiful. / What grows wild is a disguise. / Not badly formed. Take my hand, / being impervious to meaning in its bones / carefully snapping the goatsbeard from near grasses, / as the goatsbeard comes apart here / and there, its life dissembling. / Somewhere a set of premises keeps us / apart.” —Sylvester, Janet. “Goatsbeard. (1997)” Flora Poetica, The Chatto Book of Botanical Verse, ed. Sarah Maguire. London: Chatto and Windus, (c) 2001, p. 81.
Aug 14, 2008
#poetry #slanted #health #philosophy #logic #blossoming #perplexities
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