"I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give." -Sylvia Plath

Peggy

There.
Tubes atomize childhood
Downfall of a dream

Patting the back of my hand
Rhythmic, frantic.
Chipped pink nail polish
Keeps a grotesque kind of secret,
Litany of a life.

Her mouth hung loose
In a half-dug grave
Pulled open, ruined
Waiting to finish off the rest.
I stand on the edge of it
Waiting
For our hearts to fall in
Dismantled.

I’ve thought to face it
This eventual cross,
Back-binding and cold
Grips inside me hard.
Splinters rush my skin
I’d do anything to remake you
Give half my heart to magic
That knows how to conjure the dead

Vomit collapses Neverland
My eyes for a flash of yours
Give my tongue to taste
The salt of you.
Fish pump through me
Scales of your rings

Morning, glory.

All I can see is you
And
I want you to go away.
I never could take
The way you were, when you were sad.
Now your sadness seeps days
Attempts to erase heaven
You can't say it, but I know.
I disappeared in the tear that slid from your eye.
-2009

Time finds guts.

The Cat and The Canary

“Knowledge is power-and power of one sort or another is the secret lust of human souls; and here is, beside the sense of exploration, the undefinable interest of a story, and above all, something forbidden, to stimulate the contumacious appetite.” -Le Fanu

“It is actually possible to become amateurs in suffering.” -Maturin

Maturin

“There is no error more absurd, and yet more rooted in the heart of man, than the belief that his sufferings will promote his spiritual safety.” 

"Nothing remained to assure us that the adventure had not been an illusion of a moment but the young lady, who just at that moment opened her eyes."

“For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome possession of me. If it was sad, the tone of mind which this induced was also sweet. Whatever it might be, my soul acquiesced in it.” -Le Fanu

Love, egocentric

“When you wept it was just over yourself and not because of the marvelous impossibility of reaching her through the difference that separates you.” -Duras

“Even so you have managed to live that love in the only way possible for you. Losing it before it happened.”

“That she had so completely recovered her sanity was a source of sadness to her. One should never be cured of one's passion.”  -Duras

Marguerite Duras

“Suddenly, all at once, she knows, knows that he doesn't understand her, that he never will, that he lacks the power to understand such perverseness. And that he can never move fast enough to catch her.” 

Happy Halloween, my pretties.

Baldwin guts me

“I write emotional algebra.”

-Nin

Escape

"One word I would banish from the dictionary is 'escape.' Just banish that and you'll be fine. Because that word has been misused regarding anybody who wanted to move away from a certain spot and wanted to grow. He was an escapist. You know if you forget that word you will have a much easier time. Also you're in the prime, the beginning of your life; you should experiment with everything, try everything.... We are taught all these dichotomies, and I only learned later that they could work in harmony. We have created false dichotomies; we create false ambivalences, and very painful one's sometimes -the feeling that we have to choose. But I think at one point we finally realize, sometimes subconsciously, whether or not we are really fitted for what we try and if it's what we want to do.

You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too. No, I think there was too rigid a pattern. You came out of an education and are supposed to know your vocation. Your vocation is fixed, and maybe ten years later you find you are not a teacher anymore or you're not a painter anymore. It may happen. It has happened. I mean Gauguin decided at a certain point he wasn't a banker anymore; he was a painter. And so he walked away from banking. I think we have a right to change course. But society is the one that keeps demanding that we fit in and not disturb things. They would like you to fit in right away so that things work now.” -Anais Nin

“I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live.”

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”  -Anais Nin

“We don't see people as they are. We see people as we are.” -Nin

"It's a simple yes or no question."

“If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody.”

“'You do not,’ cried Giovanni, sitting up, ‘love anyone! You never have loved anyone, I am sure you never will! You love your purity, you love your mirror—you are just like a little virgin, you walk around with your hands in front of you as though you had some precious metal, gold, silver, rubies, maybe diamonds down there between your legs! You will never give it to anybody, you will never let anybody touch it—man or woman. You want to be clean. You think you came here covered with soap and you think you will go out covered with soap—and you do not want to stink, not even for five minutes, in the meantime.’ He grasped me by the collar, wrestling and caressing at once, fluid and iron at once: saliva spraying from his lips and his eyes full of tears, but with the bones of his face showing and the muscles leaping in his arms and neck. ‘You want to leave Giovanni because he makes you stink. You want to despise Giovanni because he is not afraid of the stink of love. You want to kill him in the name of all your lying little moralities. And you—you are immoral. You are, by far, the most immoral man I have met in all my life. Look, look what you have done to me. Do you think you could have done this if I did not love you? Is this what you should do to love?'”  -Baldwin

"Tonight I can write the saddest lines."

"Love is so short, remembering is so long." -Neruda

“With this fearful intimation there opened in me a hatred for Giovanni which was as powerful as my love and which was nourished by the same roots." -Baldwin

"A cavern opened in my mind...I saw my future in that cavern. I was afraid."

"It was like holding in my hand some rare, exhausted, nearly doomed bird which I had miraculously happened to find. I was very frightened...we shut our eyes. To remember it so clearly, so painfully tonight tells me that I have never for an instant truly forgotten it. I feel in myself now a faint, a dreadful stirring...[a] great thirsty heat, and trembling, and tenderness so painful I thought my heart would burst.
But that lifetime was short, was bounded by that night--"
-James Baldwin

Joss Whedon on Mitt Romney

So. Much. Badass.

Giovanni's Room

I don't think I've marked a book this heavily since The English Patient. Fitting that Ondaatje loves it so much. 

"Something opened in my brain, a secret, noiseless door swung open, frightening me: it had not occurred to me until that instant that, in fleeing from his body, I confirmed and perpetuated his body's power over me...I felt a tremor go through me, like the beginning of an earthquake, and felt, for an instant, that I was drowning in his eyes."

"And the rest is rust and stardust."

Vladimir Nabokov wrote "Lolita" with the intent to, "Induce a sob in the spine of the reader." 

Whatever the reader's view on this novel is, his goal was undoubtedly met.

W. Kamau Bell addresses catcalling

“The only person who can start a sentence ‘Hey girl...’ is Ryan Gosling.” While this video makes light of a serious issue, it is certainly a productive and entertaining way to address a real problem. A woman’s battleground is her body and even the insinuation of it being threatened, on a daily basis no less, is a nauseating experience.

On a T-shirt with raptors adorning his head, Jeff Goldblum remains sexier than you'll ever be

Honorary nephew, Aethan Kelley

"[I will] rise from the ground like feathered Mercury."

-W.S.

Hocking Hills, Ohio

Marco Carmassi

Carmague horses are traditionally used for cattle work and while their average height is only about 14 hands, they have strong build.

The Camargue is an ancient breed famed for stamina, hardiness and intelligence in the harsh environment of the marshes. 

Born brown or black, they grow paler as they age, developing a light grey colouring. 

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2200208/Marco-Carmassi-Wild-Camargue-horses-gallop-marshes-southern-France.html#ixzz2A4fWUU6N
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I think a lot of grandparents sang this to their grandchildren. I think mine sang it best.

“To die, to sleep - To sleep, perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub, For in this sleep of death what dreams may come...”

"Without a doubt, I must perish; there is no way I can get out of this narrow prison.”

 

"My story is of such marvel that if it were written with a needle on the corner of an eye, it would yet serve as a lesson to those who seek wisdom.” -The Arabian Nights

“A love story is not about those who lost their heart but about those who find that sullen inhabitant who, when it is stumbled upon, means the body can fool no one, can fool nothing—not the wisdom of sleep or the habit of social graces. It is a consuming of oneself and the past.”

“Moments before sleep are when she feels most alive, leaping across fragments of the day, bringing each moment into the bed with her like a child with schoolbooks and pencils. The day seems to have no order until these times, which are like a ledger for her, her body full of stories..." -M.O.

All I ever wanted was a world without maps.

“I believe this. When we meet those we fall in love with, there is an aspect of our spirit that is historian, a bit of a pedant who reminisces or remembers a meeting when the other has passed by innocently…but all parts of the body must be ready for the other, all atoms must jump in one direction for desire to occur.”-M. Ondaatje

Words can restore

Desire

I need you.

 "Desire so overwhelmed [her] that every time she had proof of it, and often when she simply thought about it, a cape of fire, a burning breastplate extending from her shoulders to her knees seemed to descend upon her."

Tongueless Pit Bull Teaches Resiliency and Forgiveness

"Rico quickly adapted to his new physical circumstance and learned how to eat by tilting his head to swallow food.  He mastered the trick of drinking through suction, which is an impressive feat, given the structure of a dog’s snout!  He even adapted to a new way to show affection by gently sucking on the chin of whomever he wants to give love to."

 Read the full article here:  http://millsapartments.net/neighborhoods/2011/03/tongueless-pit-bull-teaches-resiliency-and-forgiveness/

Constance's Crisis

"And it seemed she was like the sea, nothing but dark waves riding and heaving, heaving with a great swell, so that slowly her whole darkness was in motion and she was ocean rolling its dark, dumb mass."

“I will imagine you Venus tonight and pray, pray, pray to your star like a heathen.” -Keats

My imagination is a monastery, and I am its monk

“Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!” 

-Keats

Bataille

“To others, the universe seems decent because decent people have gelded eyes."

Henry IV

"By heaven, methinks it were an easy leap
To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon,
Or dive into the bottom of the deep,
Where fathom-line could never touch the ground,
And pluck up drowned honour by the locks."

I need this in a frame at my bedside.

Arrested Development is coming ba-aaaaack!

D.H. Lawrence was such a babe

In that gaunt, harrowed kind of way.