At fifty generations’ end (And such abysses time affords us all) I return to the further shore of a great river That the vikings’ dragons did not reach, To the harsh and arduous words That, with a mouth now turned to dust, I used in my Northumbrian, Mercian days Before I became a Haslam or [...]
Archive for February, 2009
On Beginning the Study of Anglo-Saxon Grammar :: J. L. Borges
Posted in Dreamtigers, Jorge Luis Borges, Poetry, tagged Borges, Dreamtigers, Jorge Luis Borges, Poetry on February 28, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Ode Composed in 1960 :: J. L. Borges
Posted in Dreamtigers, Jorge Luis Borges, Poetry, tagged Borges, Dreamtigers, Jorge Luis Borges, Poetry on February 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Sheer accident or the secret laws That rule this dream, my destiny, Will — O needed and sweet homeland That not without glory and without shame embrace A hundred and fifty arduous years – That I, the drop, should speak with you, the river, That I, the instant, speak with you, who are time, And [...]
The Facts about Weed
Posted in Quotes, tagged Junky, Quotes, Weed, William S. Burroughs on February 27, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Tea heads are not like junkies. A junky hands you the money, takes his junk and cuts. But tea heads don’t do things that way. They expect the peddler to light them up and sit around talking for half an hour to sell two dollars’ worth of weed. If you come right to the point, [...]
What I push against, blindly
Posted in Quotes, tagged Grendel, John Gardner, Quotes on February 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I understand that the world was nothing, a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity on which we stupidly impose our hopes and fears. I understand that, finally and absolutely, I alone exist. All the rest, I saw, is merely what pushes me, or what I push against, blindly — as blindly as all that is [...]
In a Station of the Metro :: Ezra Pound
Posted in Poetry, tagged Ezra Pound, imagist, Poetry on February 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The apparation of these faces in the crowd ; Petals on a wet, black bough.
In Memoriam : A. R. :: J. L. Borges
Posted in Dreamtigers, Jorge Luis Borges, Poetry, tagged Borges, Dreamtigers, Jorge Luis Borges, Poetry on February 25, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Vague chance or the precise laws That govern this dream, the universe, Granted me to share a smooth Stretch of the course with Alfonso Reyes. He knew well that art which no one Wholly knows, neither Sinbad nor Ulysses, Which is to pass from one land on to others And yet to be entirely in [...]
The Moon :: J. L. Borges
Posted in Dreamtigers, Jorge Luis Borges, Poetry, tagged Borges, Dreamtigers, Jorge Luis Borges, Poetry on February 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
History tells us how in that past time When all things happened, real, Imaginary, and dubious, a man Conceived the unconscionable plan Of making an abridgment of the universe In a single book and with infinite zest He towered his screed up, lofty and Strenuous, polished it, spoke the final verse. About to offer his [...]
Mirrors :: J. L. Borges
Posted in Dreamtigers, Jorge Luis Borges, Poetry, tagged Borges, Dreamtigers, Jorge Luis Borges, Poetry on February 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I, who felt the horrors of mirrors Not only in front of the impenetrable crystal Where there ends and begins, uninhabitable, An impossible space of reflections, But of gazing even on water that mimics The other blue in its depth of sky, That at times gleams back the illusory flight Of the inverted bird, or [...]
Queer (quotes) :: William S. Burroughs
Posted in Quotes, tagged Queer, Quotes, William S. Burroughs on February 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
What Lee is looking for is contact or recognition, like a photon emerging from the haze of insubstantiality to leave an indelible recording in Allerton’s consciousness. Failing to find an adequate observer, he is threatened by painful dispersal, like an unobserved photon. (xvi) “I glance at the manuscript of Queer and feel I simply can’t [...]
My skull changes shape . . . the bones bend
Posted in Music, Quotes, tagged Jeff Buckley, Orgasm, Quotes on February 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I try to make my music joyful — it makes me joyful — to feel that music soar through the body. It changes your posture, you raise your chin, throw back your shoulders, walk with a swagger. When I sing, my face changes shape. It feels like my skull changes shape . . . the [...]
Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves
Posted in Poetry, Quotes, tagged Ballad of Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde, Poetry on February 14, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
* Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword! Some kill their love when they are young, And some when they are old; Some [...]
No More Runnin’ :: Animal Collective
Posted in Music, tagged Animal Collective, Lyrics, Music on February 14, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
No more runnin’, says my mind All this movement has just proved your kisses hard to find Older harmony that I see Friends I once had turn their thoughts away from me No more runnin’, I’ve got to breathe On back porches with the torch of a firefly lit tree It’s what I hope for [...]
A New Refutation of Time (selections) :: J. L. Borges
Posted in Jorge Luis Borges, tagged Borges, New Refutation of Time, Time on February 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Before me there was no time, after me there will be none./With me it is born, with me it will die. – Daniel von Czepko, Sexcenta Monidisticha Sapientum III, II (1655) . . . the feeble artifice of an Argentine adrift on a sea of metaphysics . . . . . . A word on [...]
Imaginary Bullets
Posted in Quotes, tagged George Orwell, Orwell, Quotes on February 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
A soldier sprawls in a muddy trench, with the machine-gun bullets crackling a foot or two overhead, and whiles away his intolerable boredom by reading an American gangster story. And what is it that makes that story so exciting? Precisely the fact that people are shooting at each other with machine-guns! Neither the soldier nor [...]
Beyond Good and Evil :: Selected Epigrams :: Nietzsche
Posted in Quotes, tagged Beyond Good and Evil, Epigrams, Nietzsche, Philosophy on February 12, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
[Asterisks (*) indicate some of my especial favorites. -- Dr. Sineokov] *.63. Whoever is a teacher through and through takes all things seriously only in relation to his students — even himself. .64. “Knowledge for its own sake” — that is the last snare of morality: with that one becomes completely entangled in it once [...]