crimson

Leonard Cohen

2008-07-05T00:41:57Z

Only one thing made him happy
and now that it was gone
everything made him happy

affair @ 2008-04-11T19:06:00

2008-04-12T02:06:46Z

HOW MUCH WILL YOU INDULGE IN YOUR FLAWS?

affair @ 2008-04-11T17:09:00

2008-04-12T00:09:52Z

I'm trying really hard I think.

Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet

2008-03-14T21:10:16Z

Last week at the Toxic Waste Dump, Harmony asked me what I thought would be the coolest way to die. Before I reflexively blurted out a stock response like 'naked in a car crash with the tunage cranked to eleven' I paused and thought of a person like me, growing up in a flower-free part of the world and driving to the ocean in a little blue sports car won on a game show, down south to California, and admiring an acid-yellow field of zinnias. Suddenly, whoosh! along comes a blast of Pacific wind, rousing the zinnias into a pollen fervor and blasting me with yellowness, shake-and-baking me with a substance I had no idea I was allergic to, and within moments, I go into anaphylactic shock and am dead.

'I don't know, Harmony. Naked in a car crash, I guess. With the tunage cranked up to eleven.'

affair @ 2008-02-27T09:09:00

2008-02-27T17:09:31Z

I don't give up anymore.

Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

2008-02-25T20:46:53Z

Do you? Do you know what it feels like to be aware of every star, every blade of grass? Yes. you do. You call it "opening your eyes again." But you do it for a moment. We have done it for eternity. No sleep, no rest, just endless... endless experience, endless awareness. Of everything. All the time. How we envy you, envy you! Lucky humans, who can close your mind to the endless cold deeps of space! You have this thing you call... boredom? That is the rarest talent in the universe. We heard a song - it went "Twinkle, twinkle little star..." What power! What wondrous power! You can take a billion trillion tons of flaming matter, a furnace of unimaginable strength, and turn it into a little song for children! You build little worlds, little stories, little shells around your minds, and that keeps infinity at bay and allows you to wake up in the morning without screaming!

Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

2008-02-25T20:44:21Z

Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself.

Charlotte Gill, Ladykiller

2008-02-25T20:42:02Z

"Anne was tired of searching for nutritious choices. She wanted to fall instead of climb, to be swept off her feet by obsession. A skidding, careening romance, the more torrid the better. She wanted to throw herself into the rapids just to see what the world might look like once she'd crawled out onto the bank."

charles bukowski

2008-02-25T20:40:14Z

the area dividing the brain and the soul
is affected in many ways by
experience--
some lose all mind and become soul:
insane.
some lose all soul and become mind:
intellectual.
some lose both and become:
accepted.

-lifedance

Salinger, "Teddy"

2008-02-25T20:37:48Z

"'What would you do if you could change the educational system?' he asked ambiguously. 'Ever think about that at all?'

'I really have to go,' Teddy said.

'Just answer that one question," Nicholson said. 'Education's my baby, actually - that's what I teach. That's why I ask.'

'Well...I'm not too sure what I'd do,' Teddy said. 'I know I'm pretty sure I wouldn't start with the things schools usually start with.' He folded his arms, and reflected briefly. 'I think I'd first just assemble all the children together and show them how to meditate. I'd try to show them how to find out who they are, not just what their names are and things like that...I guess, even before that, I'd get them to empty out everything their parents and everybody ever told them. I mean even if their parents just told them an elephant's big, I'd make them empty that out. An elephant's only big when it's next to something else - a dog or a lady, for example.' Teddy thought another moment. 'I wouldn't even tell them an elephant has a trunk. I might show them an elephant, if I had one handy, but I'd let them just walk up to the elephant not knowing anything more about it than the elephant knew about them. The same thing with grass, and other things. I wouldn't even tell them grass is green. Colors are only names. I mean if you tell them the grass is green, it makes them start expecting the grass to look a certain way - your way - instead of some other way that may be just as good, and maybe much better...I don't know. I'd just make them vomit up every bit of the apple their parents and everybody made them take a bite out of.'"

Alan Bennett, The History Boys

2008-02-25T20:32:21Z

The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.

Jeffery Eugenides, Middlesex

2008-02-25T20:28:12Z

Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feelings. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” I’d like to show how “intimations of morality brought on by aging family members” connects with “the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.” I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.”

Kurt Vonnegut

2008-02-25T20:27:21Z

"Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand."

Another koan of sorts from Cat's Cradle and the Bokononist religion (which phrases many of its teachings as calypsos, as part of its absurdist bent), this piece of doggerel is simple and catchy, but it unpacks into a resonant, meaningful philosophy that reads as sympathetic to humanity, albeit from a removed, humoring, alien viewpoint. Man's just another animal, it implies, with his own peculiar instincts, and his own way of shutting them down. This is horrifically cynical when considered closely: If people deciding they understand the world is just another instinct, then enlightenment is little more than a pit-stop between insoluble questions, a necessary but ultimately meaningless way of taking a sanity break. At the same time, there's a kindness to Bokonon's belief that this is all inevitable and just part of being a person. Life is frustrating and full of pitfalls and dead ends, but everybody's gotta do it.

Charles Bukowski

2008-02-25T20:25:09Z

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late.

someone else

2008-02-25T20:24:25Z

"never plan, but prepare for opportunity"

Nabakov, Lolita

2008-01-08T20:14:18Z

Long before we met we had had the same dreams. We compared notes. We found strange affinities. The same June of the same year (1919) a stray canary had fluttered into her house and mine, in two widely separated countries. Oh, Lolita, had you loved me thus!

Jack Gilbert "The Abandoned Valley"

2007-12-17T22:20:46Z

Can you understand being alone so long
you would go out in the middle of the night
and put a bucket into the well
so you could feel something down there
tug at the other end of the rope?

affair @ 2007-02-04T00:12:00

2007-02-04T08:13:18Z

We've known, we've known
we've had a choice,

we chose rejoice

- devendra banhart

ANNE FRANK

2007-01-23T06:43:02Z

I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.

!!!!

affair @ 2007-01-11T22:24:00

2007-01-12T06:25:39Z

You got to keep in the game
Retaining mystique while facing forward!!!

affair @ 2007-01-09T12:11:00

2007-01-09T20:12:10Z

He said 'It's all in your head' and I said 'So's everything', but he didn't get it.

- Paper Bag / Fiona Apple

affair @ 2007-01-07T00:01:00

2007-01-07T08:03:49Z

And let your Girl Scouts lip-synch about the freedom - Just the way you like them, but soon enough you'll see them - Soon enough they all, they'll turn around - And soon enough you'll see them in a different part of town.

- Gogol Bordello

affair @ 2007-01-06T17:12:00

2007-01-07T01:13:57Z

WASTING MY DAYS AGAIN.

affair @ 2007-01-06T15:21:00

2007-01-06T23:21:57Z

Tha mi airson Gàidhlig ionnsachadh!!!

affair @ 2006-12-30T04:31:00

2006-12-30T04:31:01Z

Do you think of me, when you least expect it- when you're unwrapping a garden hose or tilting your face to the shower or making love to someone else? And can you leave it at that, or do you find yourself compulsively sifting through the memories?