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Thursday, November 12th, 2009
(comment on this) Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
literaryquotes
[ dollsome ]
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9:13p
Virginia Woolf, Orlando
What woman would not have kindled to see what Orlando saw then burning in the snow — for all about the looking glass were snowy lawns, and she was like a fire, a burning bush, and the candle flames about her head were silver leaves; or again, the glass was green water, and she a mermaid, slung with pearls, a siren in a cave, singing so that oarsmen leant from their boats and fell down, down to embrace her; so dark, so bright, so hard, so soft, was she, so astonishingly seductive that it was a thousand pities that there was no one there to put it in plain English, and say outright "Damn it Madam, you are loveliness incarnate," which was the truth.
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(2 comments | comment on this)
literaryquotes
[ almostinstinct ]
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8:45p
Somhairle MacGille-Iain: Curaidhean (Heroes)
His hour came with the shells,
with the notched iron splinters,
in the smoke and flame,
in the shaking and terror of the battlefield.
Word came to him in the bullet shower
that he should be a hero briskly,
and he was that while he lasted,
but it wasn't much time he got.
He kept his guns to the tanks,
bucking with tearing crashing screech,
until he himself got, about the stomach,
that biff that put him to the ground,
mouth down in sand and gravel,
without a chirp from his ugly high-pitched voice.
No cross or medal was put to his
chest or to his name or to his family;
there were not many of his troop alive,
and if there were their word would not be strong.
And at any rate, if a battle post stands,
many are knocked down because of him,
not expecting fame, not wanting a medal
or any froth from the mouth of the field of slaughter.
I saw a great warrior of England,
a poor manikin on whom no eye would rest;
no Alasdair of Glen Garry;
and he took a little weeping to my eyes.
( Thainig uair-sin lis na sligean )
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(comment on this) Thursday, November 12th, 2009
literaryquotes
[ witheredsong ]
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9:04a
" Memory is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it. God Himself was pulled after us into the vortex we made when we fell, or so the story goes. And while He was on earth He mended families. He gave Lazarus back to his mother, and to the centurion he gave his daughter again. He even restored the severed ear of the soldier who came to arrest Him - a fact that allows us to hope the resurrection will reflect a considerable attention to detail. Yet this was no more than tinkering. Being man He felt the pull of death, and being God He must have wondered more than we do what it would be like. He is known to have walked upon water, but He was not born to drown. And when He did die it was sad - such a young man, so full of promise, and His mother wept and His friends could not believe the loss, and the story spread everywhere and the mourning would not be comforted, until He was so sharply lacked and so powerfully remember that his friends felt Him beside them as they walked along the road, and saw someone cooking fish on the shore and knew it to be Him, and sat down to supper with Him, all wounded as He was.There is so little to remember of anyone - an anecdote, a conversation at table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming, habitual fondness, not having meant to keep us waiting long."
Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping.
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(1 comment | comment on this) Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
literaryquotes
[ two_grey_rooms ]
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10:41p
Out of my mouth is coming, at some
distance from me, a thin gnawing sound
which you could confuse with prayer except that
praying is not constrained.
Or is it, Lord?
Maybe it's more like being strangled
than I once thought. Maybe it's
a gasp for air, prayer.
Did those men at Pentecost
want flames to shoot out of their heads?
Did they ask to be tossed
on the ground, gabbling like holy poultry,
eyeballs bulging?
As mine are, as mine are.
There is only one prayer; it is not
the knees in the clean nightgown
on the hooked rug.
I want this, I want that.
Oh far beyond.
Call it Please. Call it Mercy.
Call it Not yet, not yet,
as Heaven threatens to explode
inwards in fire and shredded flesh, and the angels caw.
--Margaret Atwood, "Half-Hanged Mary"
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(1 comment | comment on this)
(comment on this) Thursday, November 12th, 2009
literaryquotes
[ bezukhova ]
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1:54a
A Hero of Our Time, Mikhail Lermontov
Я возвращался домой пустыми переулками станицы; месяц, полный и красный, как зарево пожара, начинал показываться из-за зубчатого горизонта домов; звезды спокойно сияли на темно-голубом своде, и мне стало смешно, когда я вспомнил, что были некогда люди премудрые, думавшие, что светила небесные принимают участие в наших ничтожных спорах за клочок земли или за какие-нибудь вымышленные права!.. И что ж? эти лампады, зажженные, по их мнению, только для того, чтобы освещать их битвы и торжества, горят с прежним блеском, а их страсти и надежды давно угасли вместе с ними, как огонек, зажженный на краю леса беспечным странником! Но зато какую силу воли придавала им уверенность, что целое небо со своими бесчисленными жителями на них смотрит с участием, хотя немым, но неизменным!.. А мы, их жалкие потомки, скитающиеся по земле без убеждений и гордости, без наслаждения и страха, кроме той невольной боязни, сжимающей сердце при мысли о неизбежном конце, мы не способны более к великим жертвам ни для блага человечества, ни даже для собственного счастия, потому знаем его невозможность и равнодушно переходим от сомнения к сомнению, как наши предки бросались от одного заблуждения к другому, не имея, как они, ни надежды, ни даже того неопределенного, хотя и истинного наслаждения, которое встречает душа во всякой борьбе с людьми или судьбою...
I returned home through the deserted side streets of the village. The full moon, red as the lurid glow of a fire, was just coming up over the jagged skyline of the housetops. The stars shone placidly in the dark-blue firmament, and I was amused at the thought that there once were sages who believed the heavenly bodies have a share in our wretched squabbles over a tiny territory or some other imaginary rights. Yet these lamps, which they thought had been lighted only to illuminate their battles and triumphs, still burn with undiminished brilliance, while their passions and hopes have long since died out together with them like a campfire left burning on the fringe of a forest by a careless wayfarer. But what strength of will they drew from the certainty that all the heavens with their numberless inhabitants looked down on them with constant though mute sympathy! Yet we, their pitiful descendants, who roam the earth without convictions or pride, without joys or fear other than the nameless dread that constricts the heart at the thought of the inevitable end, we are no longer capable of great sacrifices either for the good of mankind or even for our personal happiness, since we know that happiness is impossible; and we pass indifferently from one doubt to another just as our forebears floundered from one delusion to another, without the hopes they had and without even that vague but potent sense of joy the soul derives from any struggle with man or destiny . . .
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(3 comments | comment on this) Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
literaryquotes
[ lightup_tea ]
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8:47p
"Now I will walk, as if I had an end in view, across the room, to the balcony under the awning. I see the sky, softly feathered with its sudden effulgence of moon. I also see the railings of the square, and two people without faces, leaning like statues against the sky. There is then a world immune from change. When I have passed through this drawing-room flickering with tongues that cut me like knives, making me stammer, making me lie, I find faces rid of features, robed in beauty. The lovers crouch under the plane tree. The policeman stands sentinel at the corner. A man passes. There is then a world immune from change. But I am not composed enough, standing tiptoe on the verge of fire, still scorched by the hot breath, afraid of the door opening and the leap of the tiger, to make even one sentence. What I say is perpetually contradicted. Each time the door opens I am interrupted. I am not yet twenty-one. I am to be broken. I am to be derided all my life. I am to be cast up and down among these men and women, with their twitching faces, with their lying tongues, like a cork on a rough sea. Like a ribbon of weed I am flung far every time the door opens. The waves breaks. I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room."
Virginia Woolf, The Waves
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feminist_action
[ pandapajamas ]
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1:39p
US: MI: Rep. Stupak is holding townhall in Escanaba! Give him h3ll!
From NARAL and the House:
Attention Michigan residents: Rep. Stupak, he of the anti-choice Stupak-Pitts amendment "fame," is holding a townhall today.
Here are the details:
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
5:30 PM - 7:00 PM (EST)
Bay de Noc Community College
Besse Center
2001 North Lincoln Rd
Escanaba, MI
(Map It)
From Rep. Stupak's press release:
U.S. Congressman Bart Stupak (D-Menominee) will host a town hall meeting in Escanaba on Wednesday, November 11, from 5:30 - 7:00 p.m. (EST) at Bay de Noc Community College's Besse Center. The meeting is open to the public and will provide an opportunity for constituents to ask Stupak questions on a range of issues, including health care and the economy. Stupak will also provide an update on his work in Congress.
The Besse Center is located at 2001 North Lincoln Rd, Escanaba, Mich.
"This is an opportunity to speak with constituents, answer their questions, and address their concerns about the critical issues currently impacting Northern Michigan, including the health care bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives this past weekend," Stupak said. "I look forward to engaging in a respectful, civil dialogue on a broad range of issues. I enjoy hearing from constituents and the ideas and feedback I receive at town hall meetings, and through the letters, emails, faxes and telephone calls to my offices is valuable to me personally and is critical to the work I do in Congress."
Out of respect for all those wishing to attend the town hall meeting only credentialed media will be permitted to record the event. Signs, banners and posters will not be allowed inside the center.
If you live near Escanaba, Michigan... this would be a good opportunity for you to tell Rep. Stupak what you think about his anti-choice amendment.
And might I also suggest you sign our petition calling on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to stand firm against a ban on abortion coverage for women in the new health system? Thanks!
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(comment on this)
literaryquotes
[ skara_brae ]
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1:16p
For Veteran's Day
You know — we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. "'My God, my God — ' I said to myself, 'It's the Children's Crusade.'"
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
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(3 comments | comment on this)
literaryquotes
[ record_playback ]
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1:41p
J.G. Ballard, Super-Cannes
'Absolutely.' Penrose pointed approvingly at me, the alert student in the front row of the lecture hall. 'We're on the same side, Paul. I want people to come together, not divide themselves into separate enclaves. The ultimate gated community is a human being with a closed mind. We're breeding a new race of deracinated people, internal exiles without human ties but with enormous power. It's this new class that runs out planet. To be successful enough to work at Eden-Olympia calls for rare qualities of self-restraint and intelligence. These are people who won't admit to any weakness and won't allow themselves to fail. When they arrive their health is at a peak, they rarely touch drugs and the glass of wine they have with dinner is a social fossil, like the christening mug and the family silver.'
-J.G. Ballard, Super-Cannes
current music: Leonard Cohen, Live in London, "The Future"
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