One of those mornings:
when the sun’s out, but there’s a chill in the air.
To open the windows or keep them shut?
The light shines in, anyway.
It’s all fun and games until someone pokes their eye out
Words and words and words all piled up in a row standing end on end, leaning, ready to snap or fall over a studious mishmash of logical nonsense I mean, all the words make sense one at a time or maybe three at a time but strung all together, laced up against the brick? Well, let’s just say, it’s not happening.
I suppose there’s some occasional punctuation in there a tidy comma or a lumbering semicolon keeping the whole train from completely coming off the tracks. But it all sort of feels like the periods are just thrown in willy-nilly when there’s no where else for the words to go.
Damn, so much time spent noodling about with words as though they’d ever made much sense or difference. Maybe in aggregate. Like, all together, all those words slurching back and forth, a vasty sea of em. Best not go swimming, there aren’t any lifeguards about.
So many years of things
When I think of my own small bucket of years (compared to the vasty sea of them) it’s humbling, I suppose. Not so many years and days, really, when I think of it. There’s a sea of time out there, past there, flowing out (or maybe ebbing back), so big it’s hard to remember that it’s there. Not even the ticking of clocks helps remind (not that there are so many of those around anymore). There are some trees out my window that have been around easily twice or thrice times my own time, just patiently growing in time, just patiently have been growing in time.
There were small trees planted when we moved in, not so long ago, that were my height, now grown to touch the lines. Our small plum tree now needs a ladder to reach the fruit at its highest height. My own small son now looms as he shuffles by. See all this evidence of times slow roil, that drip drop that fills the bucket. Hey now, where’s all that time go when I’m not looking? I’m reminded of that game of statues. All the kids can only move (or grow) when you’re not looking. Soon, one will tap you on the shoulder, saying, I’m here, you’re it.
How much of the folly of the world is baked into this denial that time rolls ever, ever on? That this game has an end for me, but carries on regardless?
from Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers

Enjoy some Emily Dickinson

from All Tomorrow’s Parties by William Gibson (pg 98)

Good definition of happiness, I’d say.
Complications
eating crackers in bed
I didn’t know my eyes were so bloody-minded
no one laughed at my jokes
you kept apologizing, the doctor said
it struck me as odd that breath and death rhyme
Conquest of the Useless by Werner Herzog (pg 152)

One of my favorite passages from Herzog’s book so far. Especially the midwife line.
Only a kitten
Feel those tiny teeth nibble, those tiny teeth scratch
Is it a duck with teeth? no! It is only a kitten
Are there claws there? oh yeah, so tiny, so small
Hidden in tufts of fur, yeah, they’re always there
Attack! Pounce! Crawl! Leap! Strike!
We all know no harm is meant, kisses come next
Oh, my best beloved, we see you with your tiny teeth
Aching to lash out, to strike and lash, full-throated
Yeah, you yawp with the best of the them, chin jutting
I see the kitten in you, pal, see through the harm
Crash! Smash! Bash! Shout! Troll! Leap!
When you’re done, we’re still here, arms still wide
The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez is the most refreshingly original fantasy novel I’ve read in a long time. An exhilarating mix of nested stories, complete with second person and omniscient narration.