I looked for that which is not, nor can be,
And hope deferred made my heart sick in truth
But years must pass before a hope of youth
Is resigned utterly.
I watched and waited with a steadfast will:
And though the object seemed to flee away
That I so longed for, ever day by day
I watched and waited still.
Sometimes I said: This thing shall be no more;
My expectation wearies and shall cease;
I will resign it now and be at peace:
Yet never gave it o’er.
Sometimes I said: It is an empty name
I long for; to a name why should I give
The peace of all the days I have to live?—
Yet gave it all the same.
Alas, thou foolish one! alike unfit
For healthy joy and salutary pain:
Thou knowest the chase useless, and again
Turnest to follow it.
- Christina Rossetti, "A Pause of Thought"
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
- Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Friday, February 23, 2007
We see—Comparatively—
The Thing so towering high
We could not grasp its segment
Unaided—Yesterday—
This Morning’s finer Verdict—
Makes scarcely worth the toil—
A furrow—Our Cordillera—
Our Apennine—a Knoll—
Perhaps ’tis kindly—done us—
The Anguish—and the loss—
The wrenching—for His Firmament
The Thing belonged to us—
To spare these Striding Spirits
Some Morning of Chagrin—
The waking in a Gnat’s—embrace—
Our Giants—further on—
- Emily Dickinson
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
I wish I did not have to write the instruction manual on the uses of a new metal.
I look down into the street and see people, each walking with an inner peace,
And envy them - they are so far away from me!
Not one of them has to worry about getting out this manual on schedule.
- John Ashbery
Monday, February 19, 2007
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Monday, February 12, 2007
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
- Elizabeth Bishop
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Friday, February 9, 2007
This is the zero moment of consciousness. Stuck. No answer. Honked. Kaput. It's a miserable experience emotionally. You're losing time. You're incompetent. You don't know what you're doing. You should be ashamed of yourself. You should take the machine to a real mechanic who knows how to figure these things out.
It's normal at this point for the fear-anger syndrome to take over and make you want to hammer on that side plate with a chisel, to pound it off with a sledge if necessary. You think about it, and the more you think about it the more you're inclined to take the whole machine to a high bridge and drop it off. It's just outrageous that a tiny little slot of a screw can defeat you so totally.
What you're up against is the great unknown, the void of all Western thought. You need some ideas, some hypotheses. Traditional scientific method, unfortunately, has never quite gotten around to say exactly where to pick up more of these hypotheses. Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20-20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go, unless where you ought to go is a continuation of where you were going in the past. Creativity, originality, inventiveness, intuition, imagination..."unstuckness," in other words...are completely outside its domain.
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Thursday, February 8, 2007
With the help of his cane, Fierro walked home from the Senior Citizen Center Luncheon... Eating was no longer a pleasure for him; it was as distasteful as age. The pale, saltless vegetables, the crumbling beef and the warm milk were enough to make any man vomit. Whatever happened to the real food, the beans with cheese and onions and chile, the flour tortillas? Once again he did what he had done every Tuesday for the last five years: he cursed himself for having thrown away priceless time.
- Helena Maria Viramontes, The Moths and Other Stories
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
and leaves say alas,
much is to do
for the swallow, that closes
a flight in the blue;
when love’s had his tears out,
perhaps shall pass
a million years
(while a bee dozes
on the poppies, the dears;
when all’s done and said, and
under the grass
lies her head
by oaks and roses
deliberated.)
- e.e. cummings
Monday, February 5, 2007
he had discovered, won't go out of their way to punish a clown.
- The Day of the Locust