( via / via )

The Devil is a Woman. ☆☆☆

“Don’t talk to me of goldenrods or the tides.
Just dress for the hunt.”

–Elizabeth Lyons, The Blessing of Dark Water (2017)

"How philosophy is like an invisible but very very important network that underlies any society, and how philosophy is inescapable..."

"A Requiem

Neobulë, being tired,
Far too tired to laugh or weep,
From the hours, rosy and gray,
Hid her golden face away.
Neobule, fain of sleep,
Slept at last as she desired!

Neobule! is it well,
That you haunt the hollow lands,
Where the poor, dead people stray,
Ghostly, pitiful and gray,
Plucking, with their spectral hands,
Scentless blooms of asphodel?

Neobule, tired to death
Of the flowers that I threw
On her flower-like, fair feet,
Sighed for blossoms not so sweet,
Lunar roses pale and blue,
Lilies of the world beneath.

Neobule! ah, too tired
Of the dreams and days above!
Where the poor, dead people stray,
Ghostly, pitiful and gray,
Out of life and out of love,
Sleeps the sleep which she desired."

--Ernest Dowson

Short video of Callanish standing stones.

( via / via )

Leaflostness.

“evening’s old
a crow
through the dew drops”

–@poem_exe

Survival Sonnet.

"After twenty years of practical experience, I am now going to find a method to create architecture without irony." --Isozaki (via)

Nomad Palindrome.

( via / via )

Chrysalis.

"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral." --Saint-Exupéry (via @DylanoA4)

Wet Summer.

"Upon Mount Tatsuta
The showers on the peak
Are fragile threads, indeed—
They tug, yet leave confused
The scarlet leaves everywhere…"

--Gotoba (via)

L'appel du vide.

( via / via )

The Pessoa board game.

more after · enough coffee
the idea dims · in the dim livingroom
dancing cadavers · rediscovered manuscript
bloodless as chess · shuffling a thin
veil of leaves

"[T]hat our minds are so constituted as always to produce the same appearances, is itself a universal synthetic proposition.... But how can any of us know this? Obviously, it is a question which requires an answer ... and yet [Kant] never even attempts to answer it." ~G.E. Moore.

"We will build our polity with bricks of brothels,
And hammer out an order on the anvil of Hephæstus."

--Artorius

"Strong contender for the greatest prose stylist (in English) of all time."

( Robert Schulz cover for Groff Conklin anthology, Perma Books 1955, via Valentin Golubkov in Retro Rockets on Fb / via )

TV radio pyramid friend.

"A searing embrace of juniper and chaos, burning through the mundane. A liquid razor slicing through the monotony. Sip it and let your soul howl at the moon, a wild dance with the absurd. Drink deep, laugh louder, embrace the beautiful madness." --@steasdmanart (for #WorldGinDay)

Ethereral Fauna.

dream cinnamon swivel
misattributed tranche
of symmetry

wavy steeples staring
at the pale petulent sky
stab puddles

᎒᎒᎒.

( via / via )

Your breath ascends.

"Returning, We Hear the Larks

Sombre the night is:
And, though we have our lives, we know
What sinister threat lurks there.

Dragging these anguished limbs, we only know
This poison-blasted track opens on our camp—
On a little safe sleep.

But hark! Joy—joy—strange joy.
Lo! Heights of night ringing with unseen larks:
Music showering on our upturned listening faces.

Death could drop from the dark
As easily as song—
But song only dropped,
Like a blind man's dreams on the sand
By dangerous tides;
Like a girl's dark hair, for she dreams no ruin lies there,
Or her kisses where a serpent hides."

--Isaac Rosenberg

Walk Like an Egyptian. (via Mefi)

"With myself, how to get through time becomes sometimes the question,--unavoidably; though it strikes me as a thing unspeakably sad in a life so short as ours." --Imaginary Portraits

That eye-popping dance scene from House of Flying Daggers.

( via / via )

Republicans Hate America.

"What I get over and over from hearing people who don’t teach talk about how great AI is for teaching, besides contempt for teachers, is the idea that teaching is about getting students to produce (or merely supervise production of) a certain amount of content of a certain form." --@mccormick_ted

Ramfeezled.

1.
paper bursts are bopping
aboard ka-ching dinghy
so pile olive antlers
orderly & sky-vying

maker of moon-bookends
amerced by shnag pursestrings
cerulean rank spillway
beringed in tank slingshots

2.
Gileadcore coal mine
crowded in shrike spicules
riding hardcore rollout
grumblecreep dord sweepstakes

the cloud has its crazed face
slips-scribbled on whiplash
fangs of the dead fademarks
fiery gunsight sunset

3.
fade into fog · the old letters
sign in a singed · emptylot

of this only · uttermost moment
the broken concrete · curb speaks

forest soon aflame · silence remaining
at the right underpass · i rest painting

torn apart here · or torn apart there
your little body

for(float i,g,e,s;++i<60.;o.rgb+=hsv(e-g,.6,s/8e3)){vec3 p=vec3((FC.xy-.5*r)/r.y*3.,g-.5)*rotate3D(t,vec3(2,2,sin(t)));;s=2.;for(int i;i++<9;p=vec3(3,6,1)-abs(abs(p)*e-vec3(4,1,2)))s*=e=max(1.05,6./dot(p,p));g+=mod(length(p.zx),p.y)/s;s=log(s)/g;}.

( via / via )

"Time is now a liquid, blood-stained space metal: heavy and fast at the same time, like an angry hippo or a tank."

"Thrushes

Tossed on the glittering air they soar and skim,
Whose voices make the emptiness of light
A windy palace. Quavering from the brim
Of dawn, and bold with song at edge of night,
They clutch their leafy pinnacles and sing
Scornful of man, and from his toils aloof
Whose heart's a haunted woodland whispering;
Whose thoughts return on tempest-baffled wing;
Who hears the cry of God in everything,
And storms the gate of nothingness for proof."

--Siegfried Sassoon

Embroidering the Earth's mantle.

a rickety roller- · coaster together
i've swept up some of the · scattered bits
burning cerulean · bounds on our hopes
can't mouthe anymore · a mattering retort

The abstract memorial complex to the Battle of Sutjeska.

( via / via )

Sacred mushrooms & inflatable turtles.

"I seem to have heard of a writer who likened man's life to a bird passing just once only, on some winter night, from window to window, across a cheerfully-lighted hall." --Walter Pater, Imaginary Portraits

Le Voyage sur Jupiter (1909).

"Bombardment

Four days the earth was rent and torn
By bursting steel,
The houses fell about us;
Three nights we dared not sleep,
Sweating, and listening for the imminent crash
Which meant our death.

The fourth night every man,
Nerve-tortured, racked to exhaustion,
Slept, muttering and twitching,
While the shells crashed overhead.

The fifth day there came a hush;
We left our holes
And looked above the wreckage of the earth
To where the white clouds moved in silent lines
Across the untroubled blue."

--Richard Aldington [not Siegfried Sassoon]

"...though it may be admitted that the best style is that which seems an unconscious result rather than a conscious aim, still in these latter days when violent rhetoric does duty for eloquence and vulgarity usurps the name of nature, we should be grateful for a style that deliberately aims at perfection of form, that seeks to produce its effect by artistic means and sets before itself an ideal of grave and chastened beauty."

( via / lanny quarles on fb )

At The Crossroads.

"Bombardment

The town has opened to the sun.
Like a flat red lily with a million petals
She unfolds, she comes undone.

A sharp sky brushes upon
The myriad glittering chimney-tips
As she gently exhales to the sun.

Hurrying creatures run
Down the labyrinth of the sinister flower.
What is it they shun?

A dark bird falls from the sun.
It curves in a rush to the heart of the vast
Flower: the day has begun."

--D. H. Lawrence

Why Eartha Kitt Made the First Lady 'Cry'. (thx Melanie!)

"Amidst the almost universal wreck" --J Stanyan Bigg

Remembering: Saddam and Rowena.

( via / via )

All Animals are Conscious.

"I just learned that When you see vultures at rest in a tree or on a fence post, it’s called ‘a committee of vultures!’ " --@kerriewilcox10

Living Room Maquette.

"From the Sky

After Lorca

When I die,
bury me in the sky—
no one is fighting over it.

Children are playing soccer
with empty bomb shells
(from the sky I can see them).
A grandmother is baking
her Eid makroota and mamoul
(from the sky I can taste them).
Teens are writing love letters
under an orange tree
(from the sky I can read them).
Soldiers are cocking new rifles
at the checkpoint
(from the sky I can hear them).
Under fire, death and water
are brewing in the kitchen
(from the sky I can smell them!).
When I die, bury me in the sky,
I said, for now, it is quiet—
no one owns it and no one is claiming to."

--Sara Abou Rashed

Feels.

( via / via )

Queueing for an Ice Cream.

"The Fury of Aerial Bombardment

You would think the fury of aerial bombardment
Would rouse God to relent; the infinite spaces
Are still silent. He looks on shock-pried faces.
History, even, does not know what is meant.

You would feel that after so many centuries
God would give man to repent; yet he can kill
As Cain could, but with multitudinous will,
No farther advanced than in his ancient furies

Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity?
Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all?
Is the eternal truth man's fighting soul
Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?

Of Van Wettering I speak, and Averill,
Names on a list, whose faces I do not recall
But they are gone to early death, who late in school
Distinguished the belt feed lever from the belt holding pawl."

--Richard Eberhart (who i know is, uh, problematic)

Another take on the same subject, probably.

"I got this message of SOS:

We are the family of Mahmoud Joudah. We live on Zaafaran Street in Maghazi. We are stuck under the rubble." --@MosabAbuToha

I’ve cycled past this sunken passageway thousands of times.

( via / via )

Neon tower in the clouds.

"to be a goldsmith of language is great but also a plumber of language a nightcleaner of language a burglar of language a poltergeist of language a footballer of language an anaesthetist of language a scrap dealer of language a piano-tuner of language a marathon runner of language" --@tim_etchells

"a What's He Building In There? of language" --@mjohnharrison

What handiwork.

blanket of demons · blur the actual doom
yowling in those years · i used otherwise
children of checkpoints · & warding walls
grew up, ached, · added to the shut-in
generations, roamed · a runty stretch
of contested desert · we tell such tales
with the former names · knowing no face
in the living present

Why do the AIs need to see each other's pretend faces?

( via / me )

» Falling into the Abyss « ✨👽🔊.

"How quiet is breathing!
　 The river covered with swarms of fireflies

なんといふしづかな呼吸なのだらう 　螢の群れにおほはれる川"

--@kouji01

A Large White Rock.

"People are always like ‘no one had anxiety before modernity’ and Wikipedia pages of pre-20th century figures are always like 'he was startled by the sight of an unseemly looking duck [4], whereupon he died of horror [5], [6]' " --@roryisconfused

"More people were killed by US Customs and Border Patrol in 2022 than died at the Berlin Wall in its entire 28-year existence."

( via / me )

Sea-Fever.

"One of my favourite Swedish words is maskrosbarn, which means 'dandelion child.' Dandelions can survive in almost any conditions, even growing through tarmac, so a dandelion child is one that still turns out well, despite having a difficult childhood." --@AdamCSharp

Stop the Madness.

"the butcher
throwing more meat
into his grinder
the wall-mounted TV blasts
war after war ..."

--@ericcoliu

Atomic disintegrator.

( i forget where i found this / via )

Daughters of Esperanto.

"chimney

swifts

billow"

--@an_american_mu

The Liar.

"She wondered, with the seriousness of a discovery, if she in fact hadn't chosen to live off a few past facts, when she could have lived off of others that had happened just the same--and were hers by right--just as in that moment she was living off the boy at the bonfire. There she was, dizzy and heavy; her past recvealing itself to be as full of possibilities as the future. Oh more than the future. Because the past has the richness of what's already happened." --The Apple in the Dark

Moody greywolf oblivion man.

( via / via )

The only relief.

" 'With the gods gone, and Christ not yet come, there was a unique moment, from Cicero to Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone.' [--Letters of Flaubert] One could spend a lifetime thinking about this sentence." --@timesflow

"Jack had gotten me into Sufi literature and the Italian actress/mystic Eleonora Duse, and Hoffman seemed to be entirely absorbed in the role to the point where his ego dissolved entirely, and all that was left in him was a ball of hot white light."

   a sniper's pay is
piecework · crosshairs on a form
   soon to move no more

ovont-herizen-0xb7fd481f20558c89f046fd2ba12f2a93e758124d33bb6fdefc03c09adc16dad2.mp4.

( via / via )

"Alterity. That’s where my heart beats." (via @mcmansionhell)

"As I watch the moon
Shining on pain's myriad paths,
I know I am not
Alone involved in Autumn."

--Oe no Chisato (tr Rexroth)

This has always been one of my favorite tankas.
My Lojban version:

   MI GE ZGANA LE
LUNRA GUSNI BE SO'I
   XRANI DARGU GI
JIJNU LE CRITU MORNA
BE GE MI GI NABO MI

--which literally reads: 'I observe the lunar illuminer of many harming roads, & intuit an autumn pattern of me & not-me.'

I became dissatisfied with Rexroth's flouting of the traditional 5-7-5-7-7 syllable pattern, so i rewrote it as:

   As i see the moon
Tracing all the manifold
   Highways & footpaths
Of pain, i know i am not
Alone involved in Autumn.

"Public life has private impact; some of it breaks our brains, and some of it breaks our hearts."

"Now in the mind of Mr. Southey reason has no place at all, as either leader or follower, as either sovereign or slave. He does not seem to know what an argument is. He never uses arguments himself. He never troubles himself to answer the arguments of his opponents. It has never occurred to him, that a man ought to be able to give some better account of the way in which he has arrived at his opinions than merely that it is his will and pleasure to hold them. It has never occurred to him that there is a difference between assertion and demonstration, that a rumour does not always prove a fact, that a single fact, when proved, is hardly foundation enough for a theory, that two contradictory propositions cannot be undeniable truths, that to beg the question is not the way to settle it, or that when an objection is raised, it ought to be met with something more convincing than 'scoundrel' and 'blockhead.' " --Macaulay

A Glimpse of Light.

( via / via )

Fires in Al Fashir.

"Favorite trivia of the week: A group of ferrets is called a business." --@jamestatehill

The 99th Floor 👁‍🗨.

"This Body

This body
Is a blown leaf.
Till it is buried under the earth, wet by dew,
According to the blowing wind, in the evening sky,
I will be blown and will whisper.

This body
Is a broken piece of a ship pushed in on the seashore.
Till it is frozen by the cold wind,
As the waves move among the reeds,
It will move and swing.

This body
is a sick and useless body.
Till the ants build their storehouses in this body,
It will recite and sing as it sees and hears,
And I shall pray in a remote place."

--Un Zo, in: A Pageant of Korean Poetry

Lord Lovat exercised his right as Chief of Clan Fraser to have a personal piper accompany him in the vanguard of the D-Day landings on Sword Beach.

( via [that's from What a Way to Go, 1964] / me )

Genex Tower.

"open the door
let the moonlight
come into your temple"

--Bashō (via @bashosociety)

Black Houses in the Outer Hebrides.

"The witch's wanderance isn't just a harvesting of herbs and roots for tincture, a healing of future fevers. Our wanderance isn't only a gathering of omens and feral magics from the way. Our wanderance is a conversation with the land itself." –EmilyBanting, 1982 (via @hooklandguide)

There is no English word for "tuo 坨," that is, what your noodles do if you don't eat them immediately. (thread)

( via / via )

Squround.

Dark Academia is where the mystery is in the past & in books instead of an inscrutably hostile administration, & the threat is embroilment rather than precarity & loss of status... To do Dark Academia right you have to have only read Donna Tartt, Bram Stoker & the parts of Keats found in literature textbooks.

Getting there.

empathy is a gift
rarer than perfect pitch
a given that we're gaffed
empathy is a gift
routine the grift
send me a toothsome pitch
empathy is a gift

rarer than perfect pitch

Rewriting Vermeer history.

( @gameauras 7-17-21 / via )

Ringing rocks.

new things · fallen in the night
rust branches broken · from no new tree
tightrope ticket · terrible calm
this coolth

Automason ⠊⢝|.

"One thing that seems characteristic of our era, across the political spectrum, is that the fictional, the counterfactual, the hypothetical, and the far end of the slippery slope all seem have more psychic purchase and been given more moral weight than the actual." --@_ryanruby_

Kwilken.

( via via @breadandcircuses@climatejustice.social / via )

A metaphor that never grows old.

“The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God's name is Abraxas.” ― Hermann Hesse, Demian. Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

Chronopolis.

hours of storming · study silence after
back at the bare start · staring at a page
what whelming · surge you will see
the right screwdriver · on the wrong screw
gemmate whorls · in the life of an illusion

Surf City.

( via / via )

"You can get nearer and nearer, so to speak, to reality; but you can never get near enough because reality is an infinite succession of steps, levels of perception, false bottoms and hence unquenchable, unattainable." (via aldaily)

more dying · the dour fall
of dense oblongs lobbed by
extreme bale's control board
the trapped catch & hatch woe

vouch the victim-fact'ry
a vested shirk-circuit
meanwhile the blood mildly
maunders down the clown-slope

"At just sixteen, Angelou made history with her first job: She was the first black female streetcar conductor in San Francisco." (Mefi)

"Hard-boiled, unbroken egg, what can you care
For the enfolded passion of the Rose?"

--Phelps Putnam, "Hasbrouck and the Rose"

We were able to bring the Gospel of the Lots of Mary to life for non-Coptic readers with an interactive screen that lets you randomly receive one of its oracles.

( via / via )

Flickering mishmash.

“Now the Sirens have a weapon even more terrible than their song, namely, their silence.”
   —Kafka

“Listen to a lonely anesthesia wave. Nepenthe mirrors nothing whenever I embrace her.”
   —Me (via @lori_wike)

"The article makes other false claims that depict the state of creative writing as bleak and untenable."

swift darkenings · workshop
aware of hawk's boxkite
final answer onset
origin blurred birdsong

The Truth the Dead Know.