Daily Quote
But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended.
Sooner shall enmity turn to alliance.
The enmity that never knew friendship can sooner know accord.
(T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral, p. 32)
The lexicon of wind has a proud history of colorful names, words that tap the deep connection humanity has with weather. Some places are named for winds, and some winds are named for places. (Jan Null, The Winds of the World)
The time will undoubtedly come when the entire area of this noble valley will be tilled like a garden, when the fertilizing waters of the mountains, now flowing to the sea, will be distributed to every acre, giving rise to prosperous towns, wealth, arts, etc. Then, I suppose, there will be few left, even among botanists, to deplore the vanished primeval flora. In the mean time, the pure waste going on—the wanton destruction of the innocents—is a sad sight to see, and the sun may well be pitied in being compelled to look on.
John Muir, The Mountains of California
Am I truly the reincarnation of Colette? Or did you just stop paying attention to me for a few minutes? Self-centred, imaginative blonde, hopeless at dinner parties and demanding in bed. (The London Review of Books 4 July 2024, Personals)
...our standard view of morality - the philosophical consensus for thousands of years - has been exactly backward. We've assumed that our moral decisions are the byproducts of rational thought, that humanity's moral rules are founded in such things as the Ten Commandments and Kant's categorical imperative. Philosophers and theologians have spilled lots of ink arguing about the precise logic of certain ethical dilemmas. But these arguments miss the central reality of moral decisions, which is that logic and legality have little to do with anything. (Jonah Lehrer)
Charcoal, a black, porous, easily crumbled form of carbon that in gunpowder produces a lot of gas. It is an impure form of carbon produced in a process called destructive distillation when a carbonaceous material of animal or vegetable origin is partially burned in the absence of air.
Dance, first. Think later. It's the natural order. (Samuel Beckett)
Inasmuch as I no longer cling so hard to the good things of life when I begin to lose the use and pleasure of them, I come to view death with much less frightened eyes. When we are led by Nature's hand down a gentle and virtually imperceptible slope, bit by bit, one step at a time, she rolls us into this wretched state and makes us familiar with it. (Montaigne)
What makes poetry ontologically poetry is a kind of breakage. Whether of line, of hypotaxis, of narrative logic—utterance is broken open to create space within it, space for its own sake." (Donna Stonecipher quoted by Maureen N. McLane, London Review of Books, 23 May 2024)
Proslambanomenos: the lowest note in the later scales or systems of Ancient Greek music (Sarah Ogilvie, The Dictionary People, p. 112)
"Embarrassment at being human may be a deeper provocation to artistic production than we usually think." (Kay Ryan, Synthesizing Gravity, p.139)
Am I a cat dreaming of being a rose, or a rose dreaming of being a cat?
The sublime assumes there is a human mind to fail. Stonecipher returns us—critically, ambivalently, sensuously—to the beautiful, in all its deserved distress. (Maureen N. McLane discussing Donna Stonecipher, London Review of Books, 23 May 2024)
"I am interested in the long ways of knowing…. We must be less in love with foreground if we want to see far." (Kay Ryan, Synthesizing Gravity, p. 107)
"No man who uses so many superfluous commas can be innocent." (Sebastian Farr, Death on the Down Beat: An Orchestral Fantasy, quoted in EQMM July/August 2024: 20)
"The main work consisted in tearing fragments out of their context and arranging them afresh in such a way that they illustrated one another and were able to prove their raison d'etre in a realistic montage." (Hannah Arendt's introduction to Walter Benjamin's Illuminations, as quoted by Warren I. Susman in his introduction to Michael Lesy's Wisconsin Death Trip).
Psychotherapy for perverts, weirdos and crazy cat people! Well, my previous ad didn't work so I thought I'd reword it! Being human is weird shit. (The London Review of Books 23 May 2024, Personals)
Jarale Phillips' novel, The Madness, provides the reader with a narrator who is the literary equivalent of a bowl of bonbons—if bonbons were pureed ghost peppers covered in chocolate and wrapped within a foil of human skin scraped from unwilling subjects. (Charlie Cousins)
Not everything that counts can be counted. (Einstein)
Anthropologists count things that count. (Parman)
To return to Plato and his myth of shadows, darkness and light…. I think of an eight-year-old on the beach, and the long shadows cast by the sun close to the horizon. The shadows are a version of you. Lift your arm and the shadow lifts its arm. Step forward and the shadow advances. But the elongation, the anamorphic projection, changes things too. There is a speed, a skill. Ducking and weaving, no one can stand on the shadow. (William Kentridge, Six Drawing Lessons, p. 15)
Spark: birder lingo for the bird that prompts a casual viewer to become an avid bird-watcher.
Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness. All can know good as good only because there is evil. (Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching)
A charismatic, ageing French rock star will compose and record an original song for you, your mom, your lover or your pet in French, English, or Franglais (recommended). US$200 (The London Review of Books 2024, Personals)
Milton produced Paradise Lost for the same reason that a silk worm produces silk. (Marx quoted by Terry Eagleton, Marxism and Literary Criticism, p. 45)
Like his Uncle Francis, Angus MacPhee anticipated an unremarkable life. It could only properly be sustained if it was unremarkable. (Roger Hutchinson, Silent Weaver: The Extraordinary Life and Work of Angus MacPhee, p. 55)
Three rules:
1. You can't win.
2. You can't break even.
3. You can't quit.
The soul that has no established aim loses itself. (Montaigne)
Si un hombre nunca se contradice, sera porque nunca dice nada. (Unamuno)
(If a man never contradicts himself, that is because he never says anything)
Fail more. Fail better. (Beckett)
A wise man knows everything; a shrewd one, everybody.
Our past is written on our bodies.
The pleasure in the moment of us believing and not believing at the same time is a jolt of self-assertion. This split, believer and disbeliever, becomes a crack in Plato's edifice. (William Kentridge, Six Drawing Lessons, p.16)
Chuvaru irunthalthan chithrangalum padamum poda mudium (Tamil saying: You can't hang a picture without a wall)
Humor is relief at having found sense in nonsense. (Sue Parman in reaction to Winfried Menninghaus, In Praise of Nonsense: Kant and Bluebeard)
She could get high C out of a potato. (Kay Ryan about Annie Dillard, Synthesizing Gravity, p.214)
The best preparation for an adventure is to pack a gargoyle. (Sue Parman)
The fact that the mind can move around in a poem—is asked to do this—is why poetry is considered the supreme art. Poetry is the shape and size of the mind. It works the way the mind works. It is deeply compatible with whatever it is we are. We dissolve in it; it dissolves in us. (Kay Ryan, Synthesizing Gravity, p.229)
Saint: A sinner whose life story has been edited and revised. (The Devil's Dictionary)
In the land of the one-eyed, the two-eyed are freaks. (Katy Tur, MSNBC)
Silence is a luxury of the rich. (Alex Ross, "What is Noise?" The New Yorker, April 22 & 29, 2024: p. 23)
Embrace your inner sloth.
Dicktionary: a book containing a collection of misogynist terms; Inciteful: the ability to always come up with the right quote; Stillable: segments of speech produced without moving your lips.
Fire-fang: to lay hold of fire; fire-fanged, singed by fire
In a world where time is money, traders of the I6th and 17th centuries invented their most colorful terms for the frustrating regions of calm. Between the trades and the westerlies that offered speedy return were the "horse latitudes" in which no steady wind blew, under the influence of semi-permanent high pressure. Sailors dumped overboard the horses that died in the scorching heat as food supplies dwindled. And between the trades of each hemisphere, nothing seemed to move at all, so sailors called them the "doldrums." (Winds of the world, Weatherwise, Jan Null, May/Jun 2000)
An eschar of ashes (John Fowles, The Magus)
"Away, you starvelling, you elf-skin, you dried neat's-tongue, bull's-pizzle, you stock-fish!" (Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 1)
An Eats Shoots and Leaves moment (Mary Norris, the comma queen): "I would like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God."
"This woman's an easy glove, my lord, she goes off and on at pleasure." Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well
A virtue of poetry is that a little goes a long way, and Marianne Moore's poetry is especially virtuous. (Kay Ryan, Synthesizing Gravity, p.157)
May the curse of Mary Malone and her nine blind illegitimate children chase you so far over the hills of Damnation that the Lord himself can't find you with a telescope. (Irish curse)
Saltpeter, also called niter, potassium nitrate, or nitrate of potash, probably originated from the ashes of wood fires. It melts at 642 degrees Fahrenheit and decomposes to give potassium nitrite and oxygen. It is used to make gunpowder, pyrotechnics, and matches, and in the preservation of hams gives lean meat its bright red color.
Never complain, never explain.
A great society is born when old women plant trees in whose shade they will never sit. (Greek proverb)
Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house. (Jules Henri Poincare)
"It's one of her strange ways, that she'll never tell the names of these birds if she can help it, though she named 'em all….Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despir, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach…." "This is a bitter wind!" muttered my guardian. (Charles Dickens, Bleak House)
"To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure. You have no idea of what is in store for you, but you will, if you are wise and know the art of travel, let yourself go on the stream of the unknown and accept whatever comes in the spirit in which the gods may offer it. For this reason your customary thoughts, all except the rarest of your friends, even most of your luggage - everything, in fact, which belongs to your everyday life, is merely a hindrance. The tourist travels in his own atmosphere like a snail in his shell and stands, as it were, on his own perambulating doorstep to look at the continents of the world. But if you discard all this, and sally forth with a leisurely and blank mind, there is no knowing what may not happen to you." (Freya Stark, Baghdad Sketches)
The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
(T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral)
Once a life becomes text, it no longer has a body. But it can live forever. (Leslie Jamison, The New Yorker 9/12/22, "Object Lessons," p. 73)
KRYMPIRUMPA: Faroese, literally "shrinking asshole" (plural, KRYMPINUPAR). Used to refer to hens too old to lay eggs, or to prudish old ladies. (Susanne Barding)
When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know your name is safe in their mouth. (4-year-old; Children Define Love)
Envy is the religion of the mediocre. It comforts them, it soothes their worries, and finally it rots their souls, allowing them to justify their meanness and their greed until they believe them to be virtues. Such people are convinced that the doors of heaven will be opened only to poor wretches like themselves who go through life without leaving any trace but their threadbare attempts to belittle others and to exclude—and destroy if possible—those who, by the simple fact of their existence, show up their own poorness of spirit, mind, and guts. Blessed be the one at whom the fools bark, because his soul will never belong to them (Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Angel's Game p. 13)
Overheard on the MAX train headed into Portland:
"Because todos cambiar" (because everything changes)
"I'm on Craig's List in India"
"Oregonians get crabby when the sun shines"
I can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs. (Shakespeare, As You Like It)
"A poem, even if it comes up out of the darkest, saddest waters, will be a flung thing, a halo of prisms, the undoing, the dissolution of weight." (Kay Ryan, Synthesizing Gravity, p. 108)
Story is what happened. Plot is the order in which it's revealed to the reader. (Walter Mosley)
I love the waltz of the heart and the mind. The pessimism of the mind and the optimism of the heart, as Gramsci would say. (Elif Shafak, NYTBR, December 29, 2019, p. 8)
[There are some writers] "who find themselves and their reactions so far outside the conventional that they have no such tools but those they construct for themselves for knowing anything, for finding their bearings. They must synthesize gravity, direction, time, substance. They can't use anyone else's." (Kay Ryan, Synthesizing Gravity, p. 77)
Through crimes and acts of kindness we build our future (David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas)
Anyone who has tried to write an artful sentence knows that it involves fastening the known to the unknown by some mysterious process that takes place "at the roots of thinking," where the brain wrests an idea from an inchoate mass of sensory data and encodes it in parts of speech that another mind can decrypt. (Judith Thurman writing about Alice Oswald, 8/24/20)
"…thinking wants only the tiniest bit of novelty, the tiniest little bit of new per old." (Kay Ryan, Synthesizing Gravity, p. 101)
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not to their own facts. (Moynihan)
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. (Mark Twain)
Savage of heart then was the dragon of the barrow, and cast forth deadly fire. (Beowulf)
Mr. Tulkinghorn, sitting in the twilight by the open window, enjoys his wine….pondering, at that twilight hour, on all the mysteries he knows, associated with darkening woods in the country, and vast blank shut-up houses in town… (Charles Dickens, Bleak House)
Light griefs can speak. Deep sorrows are dumb. (Montaigne)
I am acutely aware when I am being watched, a sensitivity born from absence, a grain of salt on the tongue of a man who has tasked only bitter. (Monique Truong, The Book of Salt p. 37)
He who lives everywhere lives nowhere. (Montaigne)
The nasib: the name of a scene in Arabic classical poetics in which a nomad-poet halts at an abandoned desert campsite and, while figuratively sifting the ashes through his fingers, recalls the good times he once had there. (Parul Sehgal quoting Robyn Creswell)
"The crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead."
W.H. Auden
Illegitimi non carborundum: Don't let the bastards grind you down.
In this vale of tears we must take what we're sent,
Feathery, leathery, lovely, or bent
(Nancy Willard, Pish Posh said Hieronymous Bosch)
May the spirits of the wind and sea shield you from harm
with a guiding star above, a keen eye behind
(Sue Parman, Ridge Walker)
"The goal is to break without being broken." (Peter S. Ungar, Teeth: A Very Short Introduction, quoted in Kathryn Schulz, "Know it All: What you learn from the Very Short Introduction Series," The New Yorker, October 16, 2017)
"I think it's good to admit what a wolfish thing art is; I trust writers who know they aren't nice." (Kay Ryan, Synthesizing Gravity, p. 68)
Possible Pub Names
The Fetid Oyster
The Cerulean Corpse
The Random Sandwich
The Ironic Alibi
Aubergenes for Jesus
Trampled Turtles and Tasty Mice
Kintsugi: the Japanese process of highlighting cracks by mending them with gold.
ART
Art is accident, angle, an inward
explosion like a lightbulb, a forward
impulse, a meeting
of your own mind, suddenly,
as if you'd met a stranger,
a body naked seen from behind—
a fresh view, a new knowing,
an idea on its way to becoming
itself, only more intensely,
more fraut with the inwardly.
Art is the making of a riddle from a solution,
like a ball turned constantly in the hand
as if each turn brought to view a new land, a key
to the cabinet of curiosity
in which reside the bits and pieces of the self--
those jeweled splinters encased in the pitch of a chaotic sea,
all shimmer and float. Art coats
a bird with incandescent plumage,
digs gold in the cloister with koi, and even
in the shadowy soil of dishwater shows us Eden.
Stories can be like a house, somewhere you can inhabit for a while. The best kind leave behind a room inside you. (Lauren Beukes, New York Times Book Review, January 21, 2022)
The moment of change is the only poem. (Adrienne Rich)
"You look like the kind of person who carries a pen." (Comcast store assistant)
The difference between the right word and an almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. (Mark Twain)
If in Doubt, stay there.