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If by intellectual you mean somebody who works only with his head and not with his hands, then the bank clerk is an intellectual and Michelangelo is not.
Showing posts tagged literature
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If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.
Ray Bradbury (via bbook
Not surprised to learn that Bradbury, RIP, was apparently a fount of truly fantastic quotes.
(Source: criterioncollection)
- Holden Caulfield: Hey I just met you
- Holden Caulfield: and this is crazy
- Holden Caulfield: but anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.
- Holden Caulfield: so don't even call me, you're a phony
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I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
Billy Collins, “Introduction to Poetry” (via atomiclanterns)
Love the line, “…walk inside the poem’s room/and feel the walls for a light switch.”
That said, writing about writing’s a little played yo.
Rare Words
acosmist - One who believes that nothing exists
paralian - A person who lives near the sea
aureate - Pertaining to the fancy or flowery words used by poets
dwale - To wander about deliriously
sabaism - The worship of stars
dysphoria - An unwell feeling
aubade - A love song which is sung at dawn
eumoirous - Happiness due to being honest and wholesome
mimp - To speak in a prissy manner, usually with pursed lips
(Source: fashion-indie)
how i regret squandering four years of my life
I took a deeply magical journey to the Brooklyn Public Library today, and finally relinquished their copy of Petrushevskaya’s “Once Upon A Time…” They didn’t judge me — not once — but then again, they apparently don’t judge anyone who renews a book 6 times in a row. I don’t think they even have a maximum number of times you can renew something, which is wonderful when you’re the renewer, but awful when you’re the renewee. Karma, you cruel mistress.
I know, I know, it was poor library etiquette to renew a book 6 times. I’m going to be much better about it in the future, I promise. If you go to Central Library and can’t find a book, send me an email to kick my ass or something. But don’t send me a virus, because that’s just petty.
Anyway, thank you to everyone who replied to my desperate plea for book recommendations! I’m still in the market for more book recs, if you have them in you to give. Always in the market for book recs. Amassing them like a roomful of plunder and the fruits of pillaging the unsuspected. Especially if they happen to involve sex with queens (a la Eleanor Herman, aka alectointhunderland’s recommendation, though I unfortunately couldn’t find that on the shelves).
Speaking of, thanks go out to alectointhunderland, g-nomey, charliesuh, and sometimesnotalways. I couldn’t find all of your recommendations, but I’ll be on the lookout in the following weeks.
Which brings me to my next point: I totally squandered 4 years of access to a university library, and I regret it with every fiber of my being. Oh why oh why didn’t I foresee a lifetime of sifting through dozens of copies of The Da Vinci Code only to find that the one copy of House of Leaves has been checked out for 2 months already and might never return? I was a fool, university library, and I take full responsibility except for the part where your cubicles were so comfortable and I was so sleepy and I couldn’t help but be lulled into a wonderful dreamland by the tip-tapping of stressed-out premeds and the scent of carefully preserved periodicals.
It should be noted at this point that I’m really sleep deprived and spent the last 3 hours in a hypnotic daze, watching Shoegaze swing around Arkham City while avoiding missiles and sniper rifles. But that’s a post for another time.
Anyway, I could spend all night writing a semi-lucid, mostly nonsensical letter of apology to libraries about all the time I disturbed their occupants by smelling like Korean barbecue (that stuff sticks to your hair, you know (and every Korean within 20 feet of you will know where you’ve been (and sometimes they’ll judge you for not inviting them (even though that’s a little irrational (but I don’t blame them because Korean barbecue is delicious)))). But I won’t. To cut this rambling post short, a list:
- After Dark, Haruki Murakami
- Cakes and Ale, William Somerset Maugham
- Aloft, Chang-rae Lee
- Grotesque, Natsuo Kirino
- The Interrogative Mood: A Novel?, Padgett Powell
What I’ll be doing for the next 2 weeks or so.
Of course, I’m a big Murakami fan and I already know sort of what to expect from After Dark; and I’m simply finishing the thought with Cakes and Ale. I’m very excited about all the other books I picked up:
Chang-rae Lee is a Korean-American writer who teaches writing at Princeton and won the PEN award, among others, and was selected as one of the 20 best writers under age 40 by The New Yorker. And he was nominated for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction! Gotta support my AsAm peeps, y’know.
Grotesque sounds like a rather exciting murder mystery/thriller by a female Japanese author who has dabbled with LGBT themes in the past. And The Interrogative Mood — well. It’s a book composed entirely of questions. We’ll see how that goes. I’m kind of fussy with my reading, so I figured I should step outside of my comfort zone.
Updates to come, as well as probably a sputtering rant about how much I disliked Arkham City. It’s nothing personal, except that it is.
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What can I do with my happiness? How can I keep it, conceal it, bury it where I may never lose it? I want to kneel as it falls over me like rain, gather it up with lace and silk, and press it over myself again.
Anaïs Nin (via misswallflower)
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I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (via iwasgoingtocrossthisout)
(Source: saddest-summer)
Things I like
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anonymous asked: why can’t a man say “i’m only attracted to asians” but can say “i’m only...
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anonymous asked: are there degrees of racism?
YEAH IT’S CALLED AN MBA LOL -
Anonymous asked: Yo, when I was like 10 I repeated something I heard about "political correctness" to my mom. She told me that whenever I hear the phrase "politically correct" I should mentally replace it with "polite" and see if it makes the speaker sound like a jerk. It totally works (and, surprise, they always sound like jerks). Props to my savvy mom.
Props to your savvy mom.
