“We are unusual and tragic and alive.”
—Dave Eggers (via larmoyante)
December 2011
2012
Intentions: New friends & old friends, good books, strange cities. Contentment, sorrow, wildness, joy. Snow, mountaintops, wilderness. Alone time. Spontaneous plans. “Magic and dreams and good madness.” And of course music!
“I wasn’t a Bokononist then, so I agreed with some peevishness. As a Bokononist, of course, I would have agreed gaily to go anywhere anyone suggested. As Bokonon says, “Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.”
—Kurt Vonnegut; Cat’s Cradle
but if you weren’t alive and alone
this silver mist of sorrow wouldn’t curl
warm tendrils around your shoulders.
you would never know the smokiness of it
in your hair, sweet-smelling like the candle
your grandmother lit when you were born. or
its liquid form behind your eyes,
or the way it sits heavy in your stomach
and jumbled in your throat.
you can hardly breathe
for the birds between your teeth, and
if you speak
you’ll crush them: wings,
eyes, miniature sets of bones.
I think I’ll start using my Twitter again so here i am! and you should all follow me and also tell me your Twitter names too because right now most of the people I follow are either really famous or news sites, neither of which is going to be friends with me. Okay sweet!
“You certainly don’t consider all the bipeds running around the street to be human beings merely because they walk upright and carry their young for nine months? After all you, see how many of them are fish or sheep, worms or leeches, how many are ants, how many are bees! Now, each one of them has the potentiality of becoming a human being, but only when he senses that potential, when he even learns to be conscious of it to some degree, does that potential belong to him.”
—Hermann Hesse; Demian
Got a Kindle Touch for Christmas!
I never in a million years would have bought one for myself, and I was on the fence about ebooks and whatnot, but I think I’m totally converted. I’m still desperately attached to the feel of a real book in my hand and the way pages smell and how piles of books look stacked up in corners or on shelves, so I probably won’t use the Kindle much for novels and things, but for magazines and silly word games and all kinds of short stories and poetry and biographies that are open source and free? Yes yes yes.
I’ll probably still carry all my books around with me everywhere and just carry the Kindle in addition; this defeats what seems to be the primary point of an e-reader, but that’s fine. Good stuff!
Made cookies yesterday and played lots of carols at 2 church services and listened to a lot more holidayish music. Today I made pancakes for my family and I’ve been reading Hesse’s “Demian” and cuddling with my cats and cleaning old things out of my room. I hate those people who go around saying they can’t wait for the holidays to be over, but this Christmas is a little sad, I don’t like all the ways things change, then again I don’t want them to stay the same forever. The past few years this season has just been so bittersweet, everything turns and I haven’t quite learned to live with it.
Es ist ein Ros entsprungen
Virgil Fox
Es ist ein Ros entsprungen (“O, How A Rose Ere Blooming”) Chorale + chorale prelude
Original chorale by Michael Praetorius, Chorale prelude by Johannes Brahms.
Virgil Fox, organ.
Merry Christmas, Tumblr.
“People speak sometimes about the “bestial” cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.”
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (via funeral)
“This hour too will be more lovely in recollection.”
—Anna Kamienska (via laceofpearls)
Play
“It’s very weird that we’re on a fucking rock flying through the universe, and it hardly ever comes up. Everyone wants to talk about Brad and Angelina’s baby - “oh my god he’ll have the best bone structure of all time!” Nobody wants to talk about how we’re on a fucking rock flying through space! Above us is the craziest thing you could ever look at and we hardly ever look at it.”
—Joe Rogan (via nathanielstuart)
“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”
—Walt Whitman (via nirvikalpa)
“Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.”
—Hermann Hesse (via quote-book)
