Chapter 9
Page 95

He was consumed with infinite ennui. The pleasure he had felt in the possession of his amazing flowers was exhausted; and the shades of their blossoms. Besides, for all the care he lavished upon them, most of his plants had died; these he had removed from the rooms, and then, to such a pitch of nervous irritability had he come, that the sight of the places left vacant for want of them wounded his eye and reduced him to a condition of further exasperation.

To distract his attention and kill the interminable hours,he had recourse to his portfolios of prints and sorted his Goyas. The early states of certain plates of the Caprices, proofs distinguishable by their reddish tone, which he had bought in former days at sales, at extravagant prices, struck his fancy, and he lost himself in their contemplation, as he followed the weird fancies of the artist with an unfailing delight in his bewildering imaginations,—witches riding black cats, women extracting a dead man’s teeth at the food of the gallows, bandits, succubi, devils and dwarfs.

After this, he went through all the other series of the artist’s etchings and aquatints, his Proverbs, so grotesque in their gloomy horror, his battle subjects, so ferocious in their blood thirstiness, his plate of the Garotte, of which he possessed a superb proof before letters, printed on heavy paper, unsized, with visible watermark-lines showing in its substance..

The savage vigour, the uncompromising, reckless talent of this artist captivated him. Yet, at the same time, the universal admiration his works had won put him off somewhat, and for years he had always refused to frame them, fearing, if he exhibited them, that the first noodle who might happen to see them would feel himself bound to talk inanities and fall into and ecstasy in stereotyped phrases as he stood in front of them. 1 month ago

‘And there’s a second reason you are convinced that you’re more yourself when you’re alone: because it’s more familiar. You are in a habitual, repetitious rut. “This is me, because I’m in the same pattern”; it’s recognizable.

When you’re with another person you’re out of yourself because the other person is flowing into you and you are flowing into them, there are surprises, you’re a little out of control, and then you think you are not your real true self. The out of control- that’s the community acting through you. It’s the locus that you’re in, acting through you.’

James Hillman 13 months ago

Marianne Williamson

We can hardly even imagine a world in which all of us were in love, all the time, with everyone.There would be no wars because we wouldn’t fight. There would be no hunger because we would feed each other. There would be no environmental breakdown because we would love ourselves, our children and our planet too much to destroy it. There would be no prejudice, oppression or violence of any kind. There would be no sorrow. There would only be peace.

13 months ago

Amy Gerstler

Introducing: The Clouds

Introducing: the clouds.
Billowing, tufted,
or ragged. Flying,
or just hanging around
in the sea of air
that bathes all living
things.

Introducing: chewing gum
With your current total
of four teeth, I’d avoid
it for the time being.
It smells nice, but makes
your jaw tired.

Introducing: insects.
Yucca moths. Fairy moths.
Paper wasps. Fat caterpillars.
Luscious stinkbugs. Some
have wings or hairy legs,
spin webs, or sting.
Others eat books or wood
or light up, manufacture
silk or look like tiny
armored cars.

Introducing: a haircut
A towel around your neck
Endless mirrors. Chill
stork-beaklike scissors
flash and clip harmlessly.
Afterward, it itches
a little. The truth
is revealed: you hav
beautiful pink ears
just like your uncle.

Introducing: soup.
Delicious with crumbled
crackers or croutons
flung into it. Bisque.
Consomme. Cream of green
peas. You get to use
a bigger, rounder spoon.
Gumbo. Turnip or potato
puree. A lake in a bowl
suitable for very small
sailboats only. 20 months ago

By: Beatrix Potter

Once upon a time there
was a frog called Mr.
Jeremy Fisher; her lived in a
little damp house amongst the
buttercups at the edge of a
pond.

The water was all slippy-
sloppy in the larder and
in the back passage.
But Mr. Jeremy liked get-
ting his fet wet; nobody ever
scolded him, and he never
caught a cold!

He was quite pleased when
he looked up and saw
large drops of rain, splashing
in the pond-

“I will get some worms
and go fishing and catch
a dish of minnows for my
dinner,” said Mr. Jeremy
Fisher. “If I catch more than
five fish, I will invite my
friends Mr. Alderman Ptolemy
Tortoise and Sir Isaac Newton.
The Alderman, however, eats
salad.”

Mr. Jeremy put on a
macintosh, and a pair
of shiny goloshes; he took his
rod and basket, and set off
with enormous hops to the
place where he kept his boat.

The boat was round and
green, and very like the
other lily-leaves. It was
tied to a water-plant in
the middle of the pond.

Mr. Jeremy took a reed
pole, and pushed the
boat out into open water. “I
know a good place for min-
nows,” said Mr. Jeremy
Fisher… 20 months ago

Living Sky

I won’t be able to complain
though I never found what I was looking for.
Near the dried-up stones and the husks of insects,
I won’t see the sun’s duel with the creatures of flesh and blood.

But I’ll go to the first landscape
of shocks, fluids, and murmurs
that seeps into a newborn child,
and where all surfaces are avoided,
so I’ll know that my search has a joyful target
when I’m flying, jumbled with love and sandstorms.

There, the frost of burned-out eyes won’t reach
nor the bellowing of a tree, murdered by the caterpillar.
the same frenetic, forward expression.

You can’t pass through the swarming corollas-
the air dissolves your teeth of sugar.
And you can’t caress the elusive fern
without feeling the utter astonishment of ivory.

There, under roots and in the medulla of the air,
erroneous things are understood as true.
The chrome swimmer who secretly awaits the finest
wave
and the flock of nocturnal cattle with a woman’ little
red feet…
I won’t be able to complain
though I never found what I was looking for ;
but I’ll go to the first fluid landscape of heartbeats
so I’ll know that my search has a joyful target
when I’m flying, jumbled with love and sandstorms.

I’m used to the cool air when I fly over empty beds.
Over squalls and ships run aground.
I stumble sleepily through eternity’s fixed hardness
and love at the end without dawn. Love. Visible love!

Eden Mills, Vermont, August 24, 1929 20 months ago

J.K. Huysmans
1884

_{Page 57}

He felt perfectly happy, his eyes feasting on the splendour of these jewelled corollas, ablaze with colour against a golden background. Suddenly he had a craving for food, unusual for him, and soon he was dipping slices of toast spread with superlative butter in a cup of tea, an impeccable blend of Si-a-Fayoun, Mo-you-Tann, and Khansky – yellow teas brought from China into Russia by special caravans.

He drank this liquid perfume from cups of that Oriental porcelain known as egg-shell china, it is so delicate and diaphanous; and just as he would never use any but these adorably dainty cups, so he insisted on plates and dishes of genuine silver-gilt, slightly worn so that the silver showed a little where the thin film of gold had been rubbed off, giving it a charming old-world look, a fatigued appearance, a moribund air.

After swallowing his last mouthful he went back to his study, instructing his manservant to bring along the tortoise, which was still obstinately refusing to budge.

Outside the snow was falling. In the lamplight icy leaf patterns could have been seen glittering on the blue-black windows, and hoar-frost sparkled like melted sugar in the hollows of the bottle-glass panes, all spattered with gold.

The little house, lying snug and sleepy in the darkness, was wrapped in a deep silence… 20 months ago

By: Samuel Clemens

_{Excerpt from Page 18}

Well, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter now. I had been to school most all the time and could spell and read and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don’t reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don’t take no stock in mathematics, anyway.

At first I hated school, but by and by I got so I could stand it. Whenever I got uncommon tired I played hookey, and the hiding I got next day done me good and cheered me up. So the longer I went to school the easier it got to be. I was getting sort of used to the widow’s ways, too, and they weren’t so raspy on my. Living in a house and sleeping in a bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly, but before the cold weather I used to slide out and sleep in the woods sometimes, and so that was a rest to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a little bit… 20 months ago

Paul Durcan

Hymn to a Broken Marriage

Dear Nessa- Now that our marriage is over
I would like you to know that, if I could put back the clock
Fifteen years to the cold March day of our wedding.
I would wed you again and, if that marriage also broke,
I would wed you yet again and, if it a third time broke,
Wed you again, and again, and again, and again, and again:
For, even you-in spite of your patience and your innocence
(Strange characteristics in an age such as our own)-
Even you require to shake off the addiction of romantic love
And seek, instead, the herbal remedy of a sane affection
In which are mixed in profuse and fair proportion
Loverliness, brotherliness, fatherliness:
A sane man could not espouse a more intimate friend than you.

aw…this is sweet. 20 months ago