The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible,
but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.
Vincent Van Gogh
After great pain a formal feeling comes– The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs; The stiff Heart questions–was it He that bore? And yesterday–or centuries before? The feet, mechanical, go round A wooden way Of ground, or air, or ought, Regardless grown, A quartz contentment, like a stone. This is the hour of lead Remembered if […]
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Oscar Wilde
You were the one for skylights, I opposed Cutting into the seasoned tongue-and-groove Of pitch pine. I liked it low and closed, Its claustrophobic, nest-up-in-the-roof Effect. I liked the snuff-dry feeling, The perfect, trunk-lid fit of the old ceiling. Under there, it was all hutch and hatch. The blue slates kept the heat like midnight […]
Wer nicht mehr liebt und nicht mehr irrt,
der lasse sich begraben.
If you no longer love and no longer err,
best let yourself be buried.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the […]
Barbara Rappelle-toi Barbara Il pleuvait sans cesse sur Brest ce jour-là Et tu marchais souriante Épanouie ravie ruisselante Sous la pluie Rappelle-toi Barbara Il pleuvait sans cesse sur Brest Et je t’ai croisée rue de Siam Tu souriais Et moi je souriais de même Rappelle-toi Barbara Toi que je ne connaissais pas Toi qui ne […]
Sit at your desk for three hours each morning. Don't allow yourself to read, answer phone calls, tidy up, or anything else. You sit there. If you are not writing, you still sit there.
Eventually, you will write.
Flannery O’Connor
Coming up Buchanan Street, quickly, on a sharp winter evening a young man and two girls, under the Christmas lights – The young man carries a new guitar in his arms, the girl on the inside carries a very young baby, and the girl on the outside carries a chihuahua. And the three of them […]
Some people know what it’s like,to be called a cunt in front of their children to be short for the rent to be short for the light to be short for school books to wait in Community Welfare waiting-rooms full of smoke to wait two years to have a tooth looked at to wait another […]