Even in absurdity, sacrament. Even in hardship, holiness. Even in doubt, faith. Even in chaos, realization. Even in paradox, blessedness
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"Life expands or shrinks in proportion to one's courage." ~Anain Nin
Burroughs: My Mother and I Would Like to Know “We been tipped off a nude reefer party is going on here. Take the place apart, boys, and you folks keep your clothes on or I'll blow your filthy guts out.” We put out false alarms on the police short wave directing patrol cars to nonexistent crimes and riots which enables us to strike somewhere else. Squads of false police search and beat the citizenry. False construction workers tear up streets, rupture water mains, cut power connections. Infra-sound installations set off every burglar alarm in the city. Our aim is total chaos. Loft room, map of the city on the wall. Fifty boys with portable tape recorders record riots from TV. They are dressed in identical grey flannel suits. They strap on the recorders under gabardine topcoats and dust their clothes lightly with tear gas. They hit the rush hour in a flying wedge, riot recordings on full blast, police whistles, screams, breaking glass, crunch of night sticks, tear gas flapping from their clothes. They scatter, put on press cards, and come back to cover the action. Bearded Yippies rush down a street with hammers, breaking every window on both sides, leave a wake of screaming burglar alarms, strip off the beards, reverse collars, and they are fifty clean priests throwing gasoline bombs under every car - WHOOSH a block goes up behind them. In fireman uniforms, arrive with axes and hoses to finish the good work. In Mexico, South and Central America, guerrilla units are forming an army of liberation to free the United States. In North Africa, from Tangier to Timbuktu, corresponding units prepare to liberate Western Europe and the United Kingdom. Despite disparate aims and personnel of its constituent members, the underground is agreed on basic objectives. We intend to march on the police machine everywhere. We intend to destroy the police machine and all its records. We intend to destroy all dogmatic verbal systems. The family unit and its cancerous expansion into tribes, countries, nations, we will eradicate at its vegetable roots. We don't want to hear any more family talk, mother talk, father talk, cop talk, priest talk, country talk or party talk. To put it country simple, we have heard enough bullshit. jaybird found this for you @ 11:51 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
When William Blake died in 1827, his widow Catherine appointed Frederick Tatham his literary and artistic executor. No sooner had Tatham accepted the position than he was, in the words of William Michael Rossetti, brother of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, "beset" by "Swedenborgians, Irvingites, or other extreme sectaries", and compelled to thrust "a gag into the piteous mouth of Blake's corpse". What these timid souls feared was that Blake's remains would disclose his intense, frequently obsessive and occasionally pornographic interest in sex. Tatham's job amounted to a full-scale expurgation of what Blake's less unbuttoned followers considered obscene. Blake had left many drawings and manuscripts containing his most explicit sexual, religious and political expressions - all three were linked for him - and Tatham felt obliged to destroy these. The loss was irreparable, but some of the cover-up - literally - was less extreme. Joined by Blake's friend John Linnell, on some works Tatham only erased the offending words or images. When this proved impracticable they resorted to a fig leaf. Blake's original nude self-portrait for his Milton exhibited an erect and oddly blackened penis. One of Blake's prudish descendants mitigated the shock caused by the poet's proud member by drawing knickers over it. Thankfully, modern technology has restored much of this censored material, and what emerges is a vivid recognition that for Blake, sex was at the centre of his spiritual and domestic life. jaybird found this for you @ 12:59 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Isadore Upinsky: "On Impending Spring and the Turvy Side of a Topsy Life."  The thing about it is, is that the moon will always rise, the tides will always ebb and flow, and Spring will always come. As it happens this year, there are certain configuarations of human events which tumble about the mind and through the winds: war, famine, crumbing institutions, and earthquakes of social change. Yet, these configuations will change and scatter and blow so that each year, there is great uniqueness- and great similarity. The human dance is ongoing, ever changing, ever continuous. Until, of course, the Universe is done with our particular talents and quirks. [from an uncirculated anthology of his work, circa 1972] jaybird found this for you @ 22:49 in Authors, Books & Words , Journaling the Infinite | | permalink
Kurt Vonnegut's "Stardust Memory" A key to great writing, he adds, is to “never use semi-colons. What are they good for? What are you supposed to do with them? You’re reading along, and then suddenly, there it is. What does it mean? All semi-colons do is suggest you’ve been to college.” Make sure, he adds, “that your reader is having a good time. Get to the who, when, where, what right away, so the reader knows what is going on.” As for making money, “war is a very profitable thing for a few people. Jesus used to be so merciful and loving of the poor. But now he’s a Republican. “Our economy today is not capitalism. It’s casino-ism. That’s all the stock market is about. Gambling. “Live one day at a time. Say ‘if this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is!’ “You meet saints every where. They can be anywhere. They are people behaving decently in an indecent society. “I’m going to sue the cigarette companies because they haven’t killed me,” he says. His son lived out his dream to be a pilot and has spent his career flying for Continental. Now they’ve “screwed up his pension.” The greatest peace, Vonnegut wraps up, “comes from the knowledge that I have enough. Joe Heller told me that. “I began writing because I found myself possessed. I looked at what I wrote and I said ‘How the hell did I do that?’ “We may all be possessed. I hope so.” jaybird found this for you @ 21:20 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Sedaris: Suitable for framing She examined all of the painting, and then parts of it, her fingers dabbing in sympathy as she studied the brushstrokes. “What are you thinking about?” I once asked. And she said, “Oh, you know, the composition, the surfaces, the way things look realistic when you’re far away but weird when you’re up close.” “Me, too,” I said, but what I was really thinking was how grand it would be to own a legitimate piece of art and display it in my bedroom. Even with my babysitting income, paintings were out of the question, so instead I invested in postcards, which could be bought for a quarter in the museum shop and matted with shirt cardboard. This made them look more presentable. I was looking for framing ideas one afternoon when I wandered into a little art gallery called the Little Art Gallery. It was a relatively new place, located in the North Hills Mall and owned by a woman named Ruth, who was around my mom’s age, and introduced me to the word “fabulous,” as in: “If you’re interested, I’ve got a fabulous new Matisse that just came in yesterday.” This was a poster rather than a painting, but still I regarded it the way I thought a connoisseur might, removing my glasses and sucking on the stem as I tilted my head. “I’m just not sure how it will fit in with the rest of my collection,” I said, meaning my Gustav Klimt calendar and the cover of the King Crimson LP tacked above my dresser. jaybird found this for you @ 19:39 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Phillip K. Dick: If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others May I tell you how much I appreciate your asking me to share some of my ideas with you. A novelist carries with him constantly what most women carry in large purses: much that is useless, a few absolutely essential items, and then, for good measure, a great number of things that fall in between. But the novelist does not transport them physically because his trove of possessions is mental. Now and then he adds a new and entirely useless idea; now and then he reluctantly cleans out the trash -- the obviously worthless ideas -- and with a few sentimental tears sheds them. Once in a great while, however, he happens by chance onto a thoroughly stunning idea new to him that he hopes will turn out to be new to everyone else. It is this final category that dignifies his existence. But such truly priceless ideas. . . perhaps during his entire lifetime he may, at best, acquire only a meager few. But that is enough; he has, through them, justified his existence to himself and to his God. An odd aspect of these rare, extraordinary ideas that puzzles me is their mystifying cloak of -- shall I say -- the obvious. By that I mean, once the idea has emerged or appeared or been born -- however it is that new ideas pass over into being -- the novelist says to himself, "But of course. Why didn't I realize that years ago?" But note the word "realize." It is the key word. He has come across something new that at the same time was there, somewhere, all the time. In truth, it simply surfaced. It always was. He did not invent it or even find it; in a very real sense it found him. And -- and this is a little frightening to contemplate -- he has not invented it, but on the contrary, it invented him. It is as if the idea created him for its purposes. I think this is why we discover a startling phenomenon of great renown: that quite often in history a great new idea strikes a number of researchers or thinkers at exactly the same time, all of them oblivious to their compeers. "Its time had come," we say about the idea, and so dismiss, as if we had explained it, something I consider quite important: our recognition that in a certain literal sense ideas are alive. What does this mean, to say that an idea or a thought is literally alive? And that it seizes on men here and there and makes use of them to actualize itself into the stream of human history? jaybird found this for you @ 20:33 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Choose Your Villain Note the eerie similarities between Goldstein and whomever the posterboy of the day is for All That Is Wrong In America: In the novel Goldstein is rumored to be a former top member of the ruling (and sole) Party who had broken away early in the movement and started an organization known as "The Brotherhood", dedicated to the fall of The Party. However, in the course of the novel, the reader never learns if "The Brotherhood" or Goldstein himself actually ever existed, even though he is led to believe that neither Goldstein, nor the "Brotherhood," nor "Big Brother" exists outside of suggestion.  jaybird found this for you @ 21:23 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Decades-old mystery: Who visits Poe's grave?  Continuing a decades-old tradition, a mystery man paid tribute to Edgar Allan Poe by placing roses and a bottle of cognac on the writer's grave to mark his January 19 birthday. Some of the 25 spectators drawn to a tiny, locked graveyard in downtown Baltimore for the ceremony climbed over the walls of the site and were "running all over the place trying to find out how the guy gets in," according to Jeff Jerome, the most faithful viewer of the event. Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum, said early Thursday he had to chase people out of the graveyard, fearing they would interfere with the mystery visitor's ceremony. "In letting people know about this tribute, I've been contributing to these people's desire to catch this guy," Jerome said. "It's such a touching tribute, and it's been disrupted by the actions of a few people trying to interfere and expose this guy." The cryptic visits began in 1949. Jerome has seen the ceremony every January 19 since 1976. Poe was born in 1809. "They had a game plan," Jerome said of the spectators. "They knew from previous years when the guy would appear." jaybird found this for you @ 13:04 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Gibran: Your thought and mine Your thought is a tree rooted deep in the soil of tradition and whose branches grow in the power of continuity. My thought is a cloud moving in the space. It turns into drops which, as they fall, form a brook that sings its way into the sea. Then it rises as vapour into the sky. Your thought is a fortress that neither gale nor the lightning can shake. My thought is a tender leaf that sways in every direction and finds pleasure in its swaying. Your thought is an ancient dogma that cannot change you nor can you change it. My thought is new, and it tests me and I test it morn and eve. You have your thought and I have mine. Your thought allows you to believe in the unequal contest of the strong against the weak, and in the tricking of the simple by the subtle ones. My thought creates in me the desire to till the earth with my hoe, and harvest the crops with my sickle, and build my home with stones and mortar, and weave my raiment with woollen and linen threads. Your thought urges you to marry wealth and notability. Mine commends self-reliance. Your thought advocates fame and show. Mine counsels me and implores me to cast aside notoriety and treat it like a grain of sand cast upon the shore of eternity. Your thought instils in your heart arrogance and superiority. Mine plants within me love for peace and the desire for independence. Your thought begets dreams of palaces with furniture of sandalwood studded with jewels, and beds made of twisted silk threads. My thought speaks softly in my ears, “Be clean in body and spirit even if you have nowhere to lay your head.” Your thought makes you aspire to titles and offices. Mine exhorts me to humble service. You have your thought and I have mine... jaybird found this for you @ 16:59 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Shakespeare's smoke and mirrors tricks solved “You notice at once that Macbeth is full of optical illusions — there are floating daggers, the ghost of Banquo, ghostly kings, and ghostly cauldrons. I thought, surely if that’s the case, Shakespeare is probably saying to himself, ‘What sort of special effects are available to make these more spectacular?’.” This train of thought took Professor Wright to the library at the University of Cambridge where he picked up a copy of Euclid’s Geometry edited by John Dee. A contemporary of Shakespeare, Dee is now regarded as one of the fathers of the modern age because of his talent for what was then called natural magic – science. He was especially interested in how specially modified mirrors could create tricks of the light, making things appear as if by magic.
Professor Wright argues that Shakespeare would undoubtedly have been aware of such tricks of the light when writing Macbeth, and may even have used a device like Dee’s to create the effect of a floating dagger. Similar optical effects might also have been deployed to create the many ghosts who pop up during the play. jaybird found this for you @ 09:00 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Good behavior: I Broke the Law at Walden Pond--Twice So I camped in the trees surrounding Walden Pond that night. Aware that I might be breaking some regulation, I snuck into the forest, the leaves rustling under my tires. I felt like one of Robin Hood’s band of merry men, gleefully trespassing in Sherwood Forest. I broke the law, crushed a few autumn leaves in the process, brought no harm to anyone, and left the next morning. We break laws every day and neither the world nor our souls are worse for wear. Indeed, to be a law-abiding citizen often requires a citizen to either commit crimes ourselves or become silent accomplices to crimes committed by those we’ve foolishly empowered. The biggest lawbreakers are usually powerful state officials, those who formulate malignant laws that require others to perform felonious tasks and then penalize anyone who resists. As Thoreau noted, in such cases: “I say, break the law.” jaybird found this for you @ 20:22 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Vonnegut: Your Guess Is as Good as Mine Most of you, if not all of you, like me, feel inadequately educated. That is an ordinary feeling for a member of our species. One of the most brilliant human beings of all times, George Bernard Shaw said on his 75th birthday or so that at last he knew enough to become a mediocre office boy. He died in 1950, by the way, when I was 28. He is the one who said, “Youth is wasted on the young.” I turned 83 a couple weeks ago, and I must say I agree. Shaw, if he were alive today, would envy us the solid information that we have or can get about the nature of the universe, about time and space and matter, about our own bodies and brains, about the resources and vulnerabilities of our planet, about how all sorts of human beings actually talk and feel and live. This is the information revolution. We have taken it very badly so far. [via metafilter] jaybird found this for you @ 08:02 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Pinter: Art, truth and politics It's a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence. What follows is fitful, uncertain, even hallucinatory, although sometimes it can be an unstoppable avalanche. The author's position is an odd one. In a sense he is not welcomed by the characters. The characters resist him, they are not easy to live with, they are impossible to define. You certainly can't dictate to them. To a certain extent you play a never-ending game with them, cat and mouse, blind man's buff, hide and seek. But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort. So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, at any time. But as I have said, the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be postponed. It has to be faced, right there, on the spot. jaybird found this for you @ 20:50 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Philip K. Dick: How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. It is my job to create universes, as the basis of one novel after another. And I have to build them in such a way that they do not fall apart two days later. Or at least that is what my editors hope. However, I will reveal a secret to you: I like to build universes which do fall apart. I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem. I have a secret love of chaos. There should be more of it. Do not believe -- and I am dead serious when I say this -- do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a universe. The old, the ossified, must always give way to new life and the birth of new things. Before the new things can be born the old must perish. This is a dangerous realization, because it tells us that we must eventually part with much of what is familiar to us. And that hurts. But that is part of the script of life. Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new. [via metafilter] jaybird found this for you @ 16:27 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Isadore Upinsky: On Religion and Mysticism "The main purpose of most religion is to prevent people from killing themselves for the sheer thrill of it, unless that suicide lends a regime some degree of political credence. The main purpose of most mysticism, however, is to encourage people to completely and utterly annihilate their sense of self in order to view the whole of the Universe--- which is quite possible, literally. They do so in a way that does not prop up human institution, but the creative institutions of love, passion and freedom that humans can so barely grasp these days." ~From "Falling through a Whole" jaybird found this for you @ 08:28 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
 "I feel like a certain kind of horse's ass, like somebody born rich. I don't deserve it, and those who crashed and burned didn't deserve it, either. So I'm the asshole who broke the bank at Monte Carlo." jaybird found this for you @ 08:11 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
wordplay: Weird and wonderful vocabulary from around the world "The Greeks had a word for it," we used to say, when stumped for the precise way to describe something. Now, thanks to Adam Jacot de Boinod and his collection of bizarre foreign words, we discover that the Malays, Hawaiians and Sumatrans had, and still have, words for it too. There is a word for the fold of skin under your chin (alang - it's Nicaraguan). There is a word for the ring you put in the nose of a calf in order to stop it suckling its mother (oorxax, and, as you know, it's from the Khakas region of Siberia). There is, thank God, a word that sums up that annoying thing you do when your taxi is 20 minutes late and you're too restless to wait for the doorbell to ring. It's iktsuarpok - "to go outside often to see if someone is coming." jaybird found this for you @ 08:00 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Calvino's belief in the transforming powers of literature runs in harness with his hesitations over the newly extrovert role of the writer in society. His instinct was to let the work speak for itself and to seek anonymity for himself. There is a slight awkwardness therefore, in publishing and reading pieces which Calvino made no effort to publish himself, outside of their original moment in newspapers, or as prefaces, journalism and letters. [via mefi] jaybird found this for you @ 12:45 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
This American Life: After the Flood Surprising stories from survivors in New Orleans. We give people who were in the storm more time than daily news coverage can to tell their stories and talk about what they're thinking. This leads to a number of ideas that haven't made it into the regular news coverage. jaybird found this for you @ 08:15 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
The Venerable Robert Anton Wilson: Premature Illumination "Faith-based organizations say we don't need any more research, we know enough now, we can be dogmatic, whereas researchers say we don't know enough now, investigate, research," argues Wilson. "Faith is a reason to become stupid: 'From this point forward, I will remain stupid.' To me, faith-based organizations are responsible for everything I see wrong with this planet. Research-based organizations are responsible for everything I like about it. Before the French Revolution, the average life expectancy was 37 years. Now it's 78 years. All due to research-based organizations. Not at all due to faith-based organizations. All faith-based organizations give you is George Bush. Research-based organizations give you cures for disease." jaybird found this for you @ 12:23 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Twain: Letters from the Earth "Very well, then, let us proceed. We have witnessed a wonderful thing; as to that, we are necessarily agreed. As to the value of it -- if it has any -- that is a matter which does not personally concern us. We can have as many opinions about it as we like, and that is our limit. We have no vote. I think Space was well enough, just as it was, and useful, too. Cold and dark -- a restful place, now and then, after a season of the overdelicate climate and trying splendors of heaven. But these are details of no considerable moment; the new feature, the immense feature, is -- what, gentlemen?" "The invention and introduction of automatic, unsupervised, self-regulating law for the government of those myriads of whirling and racing suns and worlds!" "That is it!" said Satan. "You perceive that it is a stupendous idea... jaybird found this for you @ 06:52 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
terra: tongue in cheek
jaybird found this for you @ 16:19 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
lawrence ferlinghetti Great Oracle, why are you staring at me, Great Oracle, sleeping through the centuries, O long-silent Sybil, Far-seeing Sybil, forever hidden, jaybird found this for you @ 11:58 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
william carlos williams  Of asphodel, that greeny flower, like a buttercup upon its branching stem- save that it's green and wooden- I come, my sweet, to sing to you. more -> jaybird found this for you @ 12:35 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
dillard The other side of Dillard's mysticism explores with the unanswerable questions, such as -- why must there be pain and suffering? She wonders why God would create creatures in such great numbers that some must die of famine, or why God would create 10% of the earth's creatures as parasites -- creatures that live only by destroying other life - and she provides lots of examples of the gruesome ways that parasites devour their prey. Dillard feels that we give children the wrong idea in regards to the nature of reality -- and muses that perhaps stuffed teddy bears should come with little stuffed lice, to paint a true picture of the way things are. {PTC, 233} However, at the same time she is cursing God for the creation of parasites, she also understands that "these parasites are companions for life...more life to the universal dance." {PTC, 234} The existence of two such diametrically opposed facets of nature is confusing to her, and she finds herself dwelling on this paradox. jaybird found this for you @ 12:23 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
hart crane We will make our meek adjustments, For we can still love the world, who find We will sidestep, and to the final smirk And yet these fine collapses are not lies We can evade you, and all else but the heart: The game enforces smirks; but we have seen jaybird found this for you @ 12:19 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
john aubrey Mrs. E. W. daughter of Sir W. W. affirms that Mrs. J. (her father's Mr. Trahern, B.D. (chaplain to Sir Orlando Bridgman, Lord Keeper) a When Sir Kichard Nepier, M.D. of London, was upon the road coming jaybird found this for you @ 11:39 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
fernando pessoa The poet is an inventor. And those who read what he writes And thus in the wheel ruts jaybird found this for you @ 16:12 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
frank herbert jaybird found this for you @ 20:21 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
hart crane --And yet this great wink of eternity, Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings, Samite sheeted and processioned where Her undinal vast belly moonward bends, Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love; Take this Sea, whose diapason knells On scrolls of silver snowy sentences, The sceptred terror of whose sessions rends As her demeanors motion well or ill, All but the pieties of lovers' hands. And onward, as bells off San Salvador Salute the crocus lustres of the stars, In these poinsettia meadows of her tides,-- Adagios of islands, O my Prodigal, Complete the dark confessions her veins spell. Mark how her turning shoulders wind the hours, And hasten while her penniless rich palms Pass superscription of bent foam and wave,-- Hasten, while they are true,--sleep, death, desire, Close round one instant in one floating flower. Bind us in time, O Seasons clear, and awe. O minstrel galleons of Carib fire, Bequeath us to no earthly shore until Is answered in the vortex of our grave The seal's wide spindrift gaze toward paradise. jaybird found this for you @ 16:11 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Language is a Virus William S. Burroughs once said that language was a virus. This site dissects that virus, deconstructs it, and attempts to help you put it back together. The genome of our language is removed, thrown to the floor, stomped a bit, and reexamined to see what other pretty shapes it might make. Cut up: The back dissects deconstructs reexamined a reexamined and S. This bit, Burroughs Burroughs that floor, is that removed, to thrown that removed, stomped put and attempts a virus, it is to thrown what back to that thrown once to together. the removed, make. A Burroughs and Burroughs genome was bit, said. jaybird found this for you @ 12:26 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Whitman This month marks the 150th anniversary of a landmark event in literary history: the publication of the first edition of Walt Whitman's ''Leaves of Grass." When this thin volume, with its ornate green jacket, crude title page, and frontispiece showing the casually dressed Whitman, was advertised for sale on July 5, 1855, few could anticipate its tremendous impact on literature. The book met with sharp criticism. One reviewer, shocked by its sensual images, called it ''a mass of stupid filth." Another, puzzled by its emotional intensity, said its author ''must be some escaped lunatic, raving in pitiable delirium..." The poet, he wrote in his preface, ''is the equalizer of his age and land. . . he supplies what wants supplying and checks what wants checking." He offered a recipe for healing: ''This is what you shall do . . . read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life." Imagine if everyone followed his advice. What would happen if millions of people read his poetry regularly, absorbed it, and applied its meanings to daily life? What, in short, would be the world according to Walt Whitman? jaybird found this for you @ 20:06 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Sylvia Plath via wood's lot But I would rather be horizontal. Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars, jaybird found this for you @ 12:36 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
impossible reads The Invisible Library is a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library's catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound. jaybird found this for you @ 07:12 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
sappho In the new poem... the focus is on Sappho herself. She recites the symptoms of her ageing, as in another famous poem she recites the physical symptoms of jealous love. Then comes philosophical reflection. In the love poem she tells herself that everything is endurable, because fortunes can be transformed at God’s pleasure. In the new poem she tells herself that growing old is part of the human condition and there is nothing to be done about it. This truth is illustrated, as typically in Greek lyric, by a mythical example. It is a tale that was popular at the time, the story of Tithonus, whom the Dawn-goddess took as her husband. At her request, Zeus granted him immortality, but she neglected to ask that he should also have eternal youth, so he just grew ever older and feebler. Finally she shut him up in his room, where he chatters away endlessly but barely has the strength to move.
jaybird found this for you @ 07:11 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Regarding Cervantes, Multicultural Dreamer  Enter the Quixotic Why was "Don Quixote" originally written in Arabic? Or rather, why does Cervantes, who wrote the book in Spanish, claim that it was translated from the Arabic? Much is being said this year about "Don Quixote," in celebration of the 400th anniversary of its publication. And indeed, much has always been said about this extraordinary epic, narrating the misadventures of a half-mad hidalgo who seeks to re-establish the traditions of knight errantry. Faulkner reread it annually; Lionel Trilling said all prose fiction was a variation on its themes. But aside from its literary achievements, "Don Quixote" sheds oblique light on an era when Spain's Islamic culture forcibly came to an end. Just consider Cervantes's playful account of the book's origins. One day in the Toledo marketplace, he writes, a young boy was trying to sell old notebooks and worn scraps of paper covered with Arabic script. Cervantes recounts how he acquired a book and then looked around for a Moor to translate it. "It was not very difficult" to find such a Moor, he writes. In fact, he says, he could have even found a translator of Hebrew. jaybird found this for you @ 15:19 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
hopping mad Is the physical, social or political landscape of your story where reality loses its footing, and not the emotional or intellectual landscape of the character? Where does the real chaos lie? Sometimes it's the folks in charge who have created, and wish to maintain, a landscape of madness. The individual characters who struggle to survive this landscape cling desperately to their singular identities as they are caught up in the swirl of anarchy around them. Readers need the anchor of the "true" real in stories of madness from which to establish what's really going on. Madness, after all, is a construct of realism. jaybird found this for you @ 11:17 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Rumi O Pilgrims, thou art where, thou art where? Thy beloved is thy neighbor, behind the wall If that lovely faceless face you once see From house to house, you sought for proof If it is the house of soul you seek If you’ve been to the garden, where is your bunch? With all this pain where is your gain? Hidden treasure chest, buried in soil King of the World, to you will show jaybird found this for you @ 12:00 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
william butler yeats *** Where dips the rocky highland Where the wave of moonlight glosses Where the wandering water gushes Away with us, he's going, jaybird found this for you @ 14:29 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Richard Brautigan
If I were to live my life jaybird found this for you @ 17:29 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
rainer maria rilke  "I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone" I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
jaybird found this for you @ 10:37 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Margaret Atwood The world is full of women I do give value. Not that anyone here jaybird found this for you @ 16:49 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
the flight of Saint-Exupéry "Waterspouts stood in apparently motionless ranks like the pillars of a temple. On their swollen capitals rested the dark and lowering arch of the storm, but blades of light sliced down through cracks in the arch, and between the pillars the full moon gleamed on the cold stone tiles of the sea. Mermoz made his way through those empty ruins, banking for four hours from one channel of light to another, circling round those giant pillars with the sea surging up inside them, following those flows of moonlight towards the exit from the temple." jaybird found this for you @ 19:57 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
haruki murakami “I’m not trying to hide my age or anything,” the woman said. “I’m thirty-five.” “And how old was your father-in-law when he died?” “Sixty-eight.” “What did he do? His job, I mean.” “He was a priest.” “By priest you mean a Buddhist priest?” “That’s right. A Buddhist priest. Of the Jodo sect. He was the head of a temple in the Toshima Ward.” “It must have been a real shock,” I said. “That my father-in-law was run over by a streetcar?” “Yes.” “Of cou rse it was a shock. Especially for my husband,” the woman said.jaybird found this for you @ 15:30 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Annie Dillard Dillard's little valley — with its clouds, fences, bullfrogs, giant water-bugs, houses, red-tailed hawks; with its messy entanglement of the human and the natural - allowed her to say all she needed to say about some very big questions. In prose that was at once vernacular and visionary, she set out "to tell some tales and describe some of the sights of this rather tamed valley, and explore, in fear and trembling, some of the unmapped dim reaches and unholy fastnesses to which those tales and sights so dizzyingly lead". Oh, it leaves me breathless, this alchemist of the word! I feel so lucky to have randomly chosen "tinker Creek" as an audio book for a drive about a year ago. Changed my life. jaybird found this for you @ 11:21 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
cervantes a-go-go People in the Venezuelan capital Caracas have been queuing around the block to collect free copies of the Spanish masterpiece Don Quixote. The Venezuelan government is handing out a million copies to mark the 400th anniversary of its publication. Populist President Hugo Chavez has urged Venezuelans to draw inspiration from the figure of Don Quixote. jaybird found this for you @ 16:28 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
george carlin We have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less. We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; We have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness. We know too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry too quickly, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too seldom, and watch TV too much. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things. We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've split the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication. These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure, but less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition. These are days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw-away morality, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet. jaybird found this for you @ 08:11 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
denise levertov We live our lives of human passions, jaybird found this for you @ 15:34 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
James Tate After a poodle dies jaybird found this for you @ 22:38 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
storytime After the noon meal, he began once more to pick over his acorns. I must have put enough insistence into my questions, because he answered them. For three years now he had been planting trees in this solitary way. He had planted one hundred thousand. Of these one hundred thousand, twenty thousand had come up. He counted on losing another half of them to rodents and to everything else that is unpredictable in the designs of Providence. That left ten thousand oaks that would grow in this place where before there was nothing. jaybird found this for you @ 15:52 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
comic absurdity of war In the book, Jones criticizes the use of language to describe the conflict in Iraq, the coverage by the news media and the influence neoconservatives such as Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz have exercised in U.S. policy. "First the [initial] bombing was called a war, but I thought a war had to have two sides," he says. "Then it became a war because people fought back, but now it's an 'insurgency.' " For that matter, in the book he takes on the phrase "war on terrorism" with a Python's sense of the absurd: "But how is 'terrorism' going to surrender?" he writes. "It's well known, in philological circles, that it's very hard for abstract nouns to do anything at all of their own volition." jaybird found this for you @ 15:30 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
21st Century man For Hans Christian Andersen, life wasn't so much a fairy tale as a nightmare. Or so it seems. Though he was Denmark's most famous literary son, and a prolific author in many genres, Andersen never fully revealed himself. Today, 200 years to the day after he was born, Andersen remains something of a mystery. But he has also become an indelible feature of global culture. Anyone who reads, watches TV or goes to movies knows his stories. One website lists 102 film titles based on Andersen's fairy tales. Some of his tales are so ubiquitous, they have become part of the language, cautionary clichés: Think of The Emperor's New Clothes, The Princess and the Pea, The Ugly Duckling... As it turns out, Andersen is one of those figures who may be better suited to the 21st century than he was to the 19th. Born in 1805 in Odense, Denmark, to a shoemaker and a charwoman, Hans Christian grew up poor and depressed but protected by parents who seem to have recognized that their son was not your ordinary provincial kid. While other boys were running wild in the streets, he was at home playing with his toy theatre and sewing clothing for miniature actors. Not surprisingly, he quickly became the object of much prepubescent scorn. The fact he was tall, odd-looking and effeminate didn't help. When his father died in 1816, the Andersens hit rock bottom. In 1819, at the age of 14, he made his big break and ran away to Copenhagen intending to create a life in the theatre as a ballet dancer, an actor or a singer. None of those worked out, but in the process he met people who would help him realize his dream of fame, if not fortune. jaybird found this for you @ 11:48 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
dune as esoteric masterwork  Science fiction novels are normally filled with technological references. Dune has little or no technology and there is a reason for this: advanced computers have long been forbidden due to the Butlerian Jihad, which states “Thou shalt not make a machine in the image of Man’s mind”, and as a replacement human skills have been developed to an astonishing degree – after Mankind as a whole has experienced the dangers of over-reliance on technology. Dune, if anything, is a message for our time, whereby the mind is not appreciated for its true potentials and drugs are seen as having no educational value – instead, we offer a computer-generated world as a virtual reality, neglecting the superhuman abilities that we could perform within our own realm. Dune may thus be a messianic vision of our own future – and a return to core human values… which may explain why it has maintained its freshness since it was written forty years ago. jaybird found this for you @ 08:11 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
wallace stevens Among twenty snowy mountains, II I was of three minds, III The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. A man and a woman I do not know which to prefer, VI Icicles filled the long window VII O thin men of Haddam, VIII I know noble accents IX When the blackbird flew out of sight, X At the sight of blackbirds XI He rode over Connecticut XII The river is moving. XIII It was evening all afternoon. jaybird found this for you @ 19:31 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
 Here's an mp3 archive for hundreds of important poets, authors, thinkers and daredevils. jaybird found this for you @ 15:48 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
relativistically speaking... The Wholeness of the World was given to me by a stranger I met recently at a Midwestern airport when I was delayed between flights. I am not quite sure what to make of it. Having taught philosophy for over a quarter century, I thought what he told me at the time made surprisingly good sense. And after reading what he gave me, I wonder why I shouldn't accept it. But it is not up to me. Others need to consider it... He called it an "inside-out encyclopedia," but in order to explain what he meant by that... let me tell you the story about our encounter... I was in line at one of those indistinguishable airport food dispensaries deciding whether to have a bagel and cream cheese with my coffee. A delayed flight had left me with a couple of hours to kill, but for some reason, I was feeling rather cheerful . Having accidentally bumped into a young man getting into line, I said I was sorry, and to coat my apology with a little humor, I quipped, when the bagel was delivered, "That's not a real bagel. That's a Wonder Bread imitation of a bagel." "That's just your interpretation of it," the young stranger replied brightly. "They surely see it as a real bagel." His comment had the ring of relativism. Perhaps he was a multi-culturalist or a victim of deconstructionism, the now fashionable relativism in literature studies. As an old fashioned philosophy teacher, I tried to draw him out. "But isn't that just your interpretation of what I am saying? Aren't you just commenting on my comment?" "Well, yes, I suppose so," he said in a more somber tone, "but that doesn't mean there isn't a truth of the matter about the bagel. I'm no relativist. In fact, I believe there is an absolute truth." jaybird found this for you @ 11:53 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
paglia on poetry and prose Artists are makers, not just mouthers of slippery discourse. Poets are fabricators and engineers, pursuing a craft analogous to cabinetry or bridge building. I maintain that the text emphatically exists as an object; it is not just a mist of ephemeral subjectivities. Every reading is partial, but that does not absolve us from the quest for meaning, which defines us as a species. In writing about a poem, I try to listen to it and find a language and tone that mesh with its own idiom. We live in a time increasingly indifferent to literary style, from the slack prose of once august newspapers to pedestrian translations of the Bible. The internet (which I champion and to which I have extensively contributed) has increased verbal fluency but not quality, at least in its rushed, patchy genres of e-mail and blog. Good writing comes from good reading. All literary criticism should be accessible to the general reader. Criticism at its best is re-creative, not spirit-killing. Technical analysis of a poem is like breaking down a car engine, which has to be reassembled to run again. Theorists childishly smash up their subjects and leave the disjecta membra like litter. jaybird found this for you @ 07:42 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Queer Geek Fiction As I walked to the girls’ apartment I really noticed buildings for the first time that I’m sure that I had passed hundreds of times. Funny how not having a home will do that. Most of Glamtasia was made up of Art Deco buildings. The majority were two and three-story boxes, some with palm-filled courtyards. The ornamentation was very drag queen: Egyptian, Greek and even Mayan motifs were plastered on buildings in a tropical climate. The vibrant blues, pinks, greens, and yellows were painted on as heavy as some of my eye shadow. Ooh, a cliffhanger! Click the link for extremely well written drag queen sci-fi. jaybird found this for you @ 16:52 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
the last hours of Hunter S. Thompson The literary champ was sitting in his command post kitchen chair, a piece of blank paper in his favorite typewriter, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot through the mouth hours earlier. But a small circle of family and friends gathered around with stories, as he wished, with glasses full of his favored elixir — Chivas Regal on ice. "It was very loving. It was not a panic, or ugly, or freaky," Thompson's wife, Anita Thompson, said Thursday night in her first spoken comments since the icon's death Sunday. "It was just like Hunter wanted. He was in control here." jaybird found this for you @ 15:44 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Umberto Eco Gragnola and I talked about everything. I would tell him about the books I was reading, and he would discuss them passionately. “Verne,” he would say, “is better than Salgari, because he’s scientific. Cyrus Smith manufacturing nitroglycerin is more real than that Sandokan tearing his chest with his fingernails just because he’s fallen for some bitchy little fifteen-year-old.” Gragnola taught me about Socrates and Giordano Bruno. And Bakunin, about whose work and life I had known very little. He told me about Campanella, Sarpi, and Galileo, who were all imprisoned or tortured by priests for trying to spread scientific principles, and about some who had cut their own throats, like Ardigò, because the bosses and the Vatican were keeping them down. Since I had read the Hegel entry (“Emin. Ger. phil. of the pantheist school”) in the Nuovissimo Melzi, I asked Gragnola about him. “Hegel wasn’t a pantheist, and your Melzi is an ignoramus. Giordano Bruno might have been a pantheist. A pantheist believes that God is everywhere, even in that speck of a fly you see there. You can imagine how satisfying that is—being everywhere is like being nowhere. jaybird found this for you @ 07:40 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
population 1 The sign outside is painted on a section of a refrigerator door. The floor is bare plywood. There's no heat. But there are thousands upon thousands of books. "The Complete Works of Shakespeare." "Treasure Island." Trixie Belden and "The Happy Valley Mystery." Zane Grey's westerns, every one of them, lined up across two shelves. Homer. Tennyson. Amy Tan. Goethe. Elsie's late husband, Rudy, read them endlessly. He farmed and tended bar, he ran a grain elevator, he delivered gas to filling stations, and when the town was down to just him and Elsie, he served as mayor too. But he always found time to read — science fiction, history, the classics — anything but a Harlequin romance. When he got sick with cancer two years ago, Rudy confided a dream to Elsie: He wanted to turn his collection into a public library. jaybird found this for you @ 20:11 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
last night the rain spoke to me  by Mary Oliver Last night what joy in a new way smelling of iron, and the grass below. under a tree. and there were stars in the sky my right hand and the soft rain— jaybird found this for you @ 11:59 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
HST: 1937-2005 
The Great Hunter S. Thompson has pased. Long Live Gonzo! "America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." jaybird found this for you @ 23:58 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
woman carrying water Her Head Near Ekuvukeni, The pumpkins are gone, The engineers have reversed the river: The sun does not dissuade her, This woman, who girds her neck jaybird found this for you @ 15:32 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Upinsky on Madness "In this world, there are natural limits and orders of things for a reason, and the most predominant of these is to maintain safety and security, throughout all paradigms, from hut to empire. Those limits affect most of our actions, and one may take notice without great observational ability of those who are prone to hop the fence of decency. Without haste these rapscallions will gain a reputation in the tiniest fractal of society. For example, one must be utterly, completely, thoroughly, infinitely and irredeemably mad, foolish, rascally, idiotic, and dangerous to write, create, and most especially to love at will, all for the sake of invoking Deeper Meaning in the Universe. Damn it, why aren't there more fools in the world?" ~Isadore M. Upinsky, "Sophism on a Tricycle and Other Paralogical Gyspy Fishmongering." jaybird found this for you @ 23:08 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Arthur C. Clarke on the post-tsunami world The New Year dawned with the global family closely following the unfolding tragedy via satellite television and the Web. I was... reminded of what Bernard Kouchner, former health minister of France and first UN governor of Kosovo, (who) once said: "Where there is no camera, there is no humanitarian intervention." Indeed, how many of the millions of men and women who donated generously for disaster relief would have done so if they had only read about it in the newspapers? But cameras and other communications media have to do more than just document the devastation and mobilize emergency relief. We need to move beyond body counts and aid appeals to find lasting, meaningful ways of supporting Asia's recovery. jaybird found this for you @ 17:09 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
The Ecotheology of Annie Dillard The point of the dragonfly's terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows, is not that it all fits together like clockwork- for it doesn't particularly, not even inside the goldfish bowl- but that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it surges in such a free, fringed tangle. Freedom is the world's water and weather, the world's nourishment freely given, its soil and sap .... jaybird found this for you @ 10:24 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Pablo Neruda: Twenty love poems and a song of despair jaybird found this for you @ 07:34 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
The 400th anniversary of Don Quixote, and tilting at Einstein. Cervantes lived his character. He fought the Turks at Lepanto in 1571, the culminating struggle of medieval Europe. He lost his left hand, was enslaved in Africa and imprisoned in Spain. His plays were failures. His life was a mess. Yet in just a few months of 1605 he wrote a book which soared beyond its time. The two parts of Don Quixote are as different as thesis and antithesis. The Don of the first part is the true fantasist, sated on fusty old texts. He sets out to re-enact the rules of chivalry, to defend justice and love in a sinful world. He battles with windmills, sheep and innkeepers’ daughters. In his great essay on the Don, Carlos Fuentes talks of “art giving life to what history has killed”. Part II breaks step with the past. The Don hears tell of his own exploits, indeed of his own book. Already he has chastised Sancho for thinking him unaware that Dulcinea is not a great beauty. He knows that she is a vulgar village girl, but she is the nobler for it. “Come Sancho,” he cries, “it is enough for me to think her beautiful and virtuous . . . I paint her in my imagination as I desire her.” A million Spanish women cheer. We are no longer sure who is poking fun at whom. Who are we to legislate between dream and reality? We are players and audience alike in the charade. jaybird found this for you @ 16:39 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
The (Complete) Travels and Surprising Adventures of Baron Muchausen. jaybird found this for you @ 17:20 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
The spoken word poetry of Taylor Mali jaybird found this for you @ 11:16 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
The Aberdeen Bestiary Project [via Blort] The Aberdeen Bestiary is considered to be one of the best examples of its type. The manuscript, written and illuminated in England around 1200, is of added interest since it contains notes, sketches and other evidence of the way it was designed and executed. jaybird found this for you @ 12:44 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Zapatista Literary Life [via Wood's Lot] "Flor y Canto" (literarily 'flower and song'), the literary and musical expression of the indigenous peoples of Meso-America, is close to the heart of the Zapatista rebellion. No rebel celebration is complete without harps and accordions, songs and anthems, dramatic recitations, parodies, and poetry, and the 11th anniversary of the uprising marked this past New Year's eve at the "caracol" of Oventic, the Zapatistas' most public cultural-political center in the highlands above San Cristobal de las Casas, was no exception. Guided by its silver-tongued mouthpiece Subcomandante Insurgent Marcos, the Zapatista rebellion can be interpreted as an 11 year-long literary workshop informed by Mayan Indian tradition and the culture of revolutionary struggle. jaybird found this for you @ 21:02 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Annie Dillard: Write Till You Drop [via MeFi] Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality? jaybird found this for you @ 19:58 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
A lovely translation of one of the workd's finest poets, Rainer Maria Rilke. (via wood's lot) Yes, the springtimes needed you. jaybird found this for you @ 07:44 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
David Sedaris: Old Faithful One time in France we were lucky enough to catch an identical stomach virus. It was a twenty-four-hour bug, the kind that completely empties you out and takes away your will to live. You’d get a glass of water, but that would involve standing, and so instead you just sort of stare toward the kitchen, hoping that maybe one of the pipes will burst, and the water will come to you. We had the exact same symptoms, yet he insisted that his virus was much more powerful than mine. I suspected the same thing, so there we were, competing over who was the sickest. “You can at least move your hands,” he said. “No,” I told him, “it was the wind that moved them. I have no muscle control whatsoever.” “Liar.” “Well, that’s a nice thing to say to someone who’ll probably die during the night. Thanks a lot, pal.” jaybird found this for you @ 15:14 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
What it's all about, according to scores of respondants to the "Real Meaning of Life Project." Love those who mean the most. Every life you touch will touch you back. Treasure every sunrise, every raindrop that hits your nose, every slobber of your dog, the feeling of sand between your toes. Be moved by the tears of a child, and try to fix the cause. Be grease, not glue. Breathe deep, exhale slowly and never miss a chance to help another fellow while on jaybird found this for you @ 11:08 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
What follows is a conversation between Kurt Vonnegut and out-of-print science fiction writer Kilgore Trout. It was to be their last. Trout committed suicide by drinking Drano at midnight on October 15 in Cohoes, New York, after a female psychic using tarot cards predicted that the environmental calamity George W. Bush would once again be elected president of the most powerful nation on the planet by a five-to-four decision of the Supreme Court, which included “100 per-cent of the black vote.” jaybird found this for you @ 10:47 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Think about the word mother: does it make you burst into a fantastic smile as you think of the woman you will love with a passion for all eternity, she who guides your destiny towards freedom, liberty and perhaps tranquility? jaybird found this for you @ 22:02 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Arundhati Roy: Peace?... If you think about it, this is an alarming shift of paradigm. The difference is that notions of equality, of parity have been pried loose and eased out of the equation. It's a process of attrition. Almost unconsciously, we begin to think of justice for the rich and human rights for the poor. Justice for the corporate world, human rights for its victims. Justice for Americans, human rights for Afghans and Iraqis. Justice for the Indian upper castes, human rights for Dalits and Adivasis (if that.) Justice for white Australians, human rights for Aboriginals and immigrants (most times, not even that.) It is becoming more than clear that violating human rights is an inherent and necessary part of the process of implementing a coercive and unjust political and economic structure on the world... jaybird found this for you @ 07:07 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
"The Raven" (via Edgar Allen Poe) Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only, Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer `Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! - `Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! `Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting - And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting jaybird found this for you @ 23:26 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
This poem by one of my most beloved poets is making the rounds, a battle cry for the inevitable shift in national consciousness that will earn us a legitimate, more honorable government. With six (gulp) days left, go John go! "Let America Be America Again" Let America be America again. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-- (It was never America to me.) O, let my land be a land where Liberty (There never has been equality for me, I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the young man, full of strength and hope, I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream The free? Who said the free? Not me? O, let, America be America again-- Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-- O, yes, Out of the rack of ruin of our gangster death, jaybird found this for you @ 07:19 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
You have come out of the trees so recently, and your kinship with the monkeys and lemurs is still so strong, that you tend toward abstraction without being able to part with the palpable - firsthand experience. Therefore a lecture unsupported by strong sensuality, full of formulas telling more about stone than a stone glimpsed, licked, and fingered will tell you - such a lecture will either bore you and frighten you away, or at the very least leave a certain unsatisfied need familiar even to lofty theoreticians, your highest class of abstractors, as attested by countless examples lifted from scientists' intimate confessions, since the vast majority of them admit that, in the course of constructing abstract proofs, they feel an immense need for the support of things tangible. jaybird found this for you @ 16:01 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Umberto Eco: Notions of beauty For their part, the mass media no longer present any unified model, any single ideal of beauty. They can retrieve - even for an advertising campaign destined to last only a week - all the experimental work of the avant garde, and at the same time offer models from the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, even in the outmoded forms of automobiles from the mid-century. The media continue to serve up warmed-over versions of 19th-century iconography - the Junoesque opulence of Mae West and the anorexic charms of the latest fashion models; the dusky beauty of Naomi Campbell and the Nordic beauty of Claudia Schiffer; the grace of traditional tap dancing in A Chorus Line and the chilling futuristic architectures of Blade Runner; the femme fatale of dozens of television shows or advertising campaigns and squeaky clean girls-next-door such as Julia Roberts or Cameron Diaz; Rambo and RuPaul; George Clooney with his short hair and neocyborgs who paint their faces in metallic shades and transform their hair into forests of coloured spikes, or shave their heads. jaybird found this for you @ 15:34 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
The Household Cyclopedia (ca. 1881, The Household Cyclopedia (ca. 1881, via MeFi) When a person is wet he ought never to stand, but to continue in motion till he arrives at a place where he may be suitably accommodated. Here he should strip off his wet clothes, to be changed for such as are dry, and have those parts of his body which have been wetted, well rubbed with a dry cloth. The legs, shoulders, and arms, are generally the parts most exposed to wet; they should, therefore, be particularly attended to. It is almost incredible how many diseases may be prevented by adopting this course. Catarrhs, inflammations, rheumatisms, diarrhoeas, fevers, and consumptions, are the foremost among the train which frequently follow an accident of this kind. jaybird found this for you @ 17:08 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
"I walked right on up "I walked right on up to that bear, 'cause I was God's Own Drunk and I loved everything in this world." God's Own Drunk by Lord Buckley jaybird found this for you @ 19:40 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Burroughs, Gysin, and Ginsburg on Burroughs, Gysin, and Ginsburg on the 'Cut Up' method of automatic literature. (flash, 10mb) jaybird found this for you @ 17:14 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Anyone can share a story Anyone can share a story of any kind at A Million Stories... some really fascinating reads. jaybird found this for you @ 23:01 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
The Invisible Library The Invisible The Invisible Library is a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library's catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound. jaybird found this for you @ 19:23 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Words Without Borders is an Words Without Borders is an online magazine for international literature. This issue features religious lit of many faiths. Thanks Ellen for the link! jaybird found this for you @ 23:27 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Pablo Neruda: a Life Consumed Pablo Neruda: a Life Consumed by Poetry and Politics Neruda, born Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto in the lonesome town of Parral, Chile, proclaimed that "there is no insurmountable solitude." He added: "All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song." jaybird found this for you @ 07:14 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
A comprehensive list of banned A comprehensive list of banned and challenged books over at the The Forbidden Library, via MeFi. jaybird found this for you @ 08:35 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Short, sweet: constrained.org is a Short, sweet: constrained.org is a community site for short stories that adhere to various literary constraints, ranging from the well-known (anagrams, acrostics, palindromes) to the obscure and arbitrary... jaybird found this for you @ 07:27 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Why in the world 
Why in the world does Tom Robbins write, jaybird found this for you @ 16:36 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Audio entry: this is part Audio entry: this is part 1 of several clips from the Tom Robbins festivities today: here, Tom gets vaguely semi-autobiographical. [2.2mb mp3 file] jaybird found this for you @ 03:00 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Anonymous is one prolific author! Anonymous is one prolific author! jaybird found this for you @ 17:26 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Remembering the amazingly mature poetry Remembering the amazingly mature poetry of Mattie Stepanek: national goodwill ambassador with muscular dystrophy, and 13 year old prodigal wordsmith.
jaybird found this for you @ 07:02 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Three Q & A sessions Three Q & A sessions with the crazy guru in town next week, Mr. Tom Robbins: 1, 2, 3. jaybird found this for you @ 20:39 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Revel in Joycean exaltation, for Revel in Joycean exaltation, for it's 100 years of Bloomsday today. Every year since at least 1954, fans of author James Joyce have celebrated Bloomsday on June 16-- the date (in 1904) when his Ulysses takes place. (Even in 1924 the word was used by friends presenting Joyce a bouquet.) In many cities, attempts are made to read the entire book out loud. In Dublin, tourists dress up and retrace the routes of Joyce's characters. Everywhere, alcohol is consumed in quantity. jaybird found this for you @ 06:57 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Gnosis By Christopher Pearse Cranch Gnosis We, like parted drops of rain, jaybird found this for you @ 16:14 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
The I's Have It An An amiable sun shines down. Clad in khakis, plaid sports jacket and a crayon-yellow turtleneck, Updike, arguably among the most talented living writers in the world, has a toothy smile on his red face. His hair is gray-white. He is amused: At the past. At the present. At the country. At long races. At short stories. At human foibles of all colors. "Writing is a way of taming the world," he says, "turning the inchoate, often embarrassing stream into a package." It's a construct that enables him to remain amused, and amazed. Putting the world on the page has made a good living for him and for countless professors around the world who teach his books. jaybird found this for you @ 11:27 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Kurt Vonnegut: Cold Turkey I Kurt Vonnegut: Cold Turkey I have to say this in defense of humankind: No matter in what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got there. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these crazy games going on, which could make you act crazy, even if you weren’t crazy to begin with. Some of the games that were already going on when you got here were love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf and girls’ basketball. jaybird found this for you @ 13:11 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Another classic poem, that stirs Another classic poem, that stirs up goosfeathers in my soul, in celebration of the last day of National Poetry Month: WILD GEESE by Mary Oliver You do not have to be good. This is one of the most moving and inspiring poems... it's like a mantra that moves soft like breath-steam over a cool morning. It uplifts while it also reintegrates you with the fundamental, base nature of our animation. jaybird found this for you @ 15:26 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
In celebration of the concluding In celebration of the concluding day of National Poetry Month, I present one of the finest and most ecstatic poems of the 20th Century's most wonderful poet, Pablo Neruda... [about Pablo, more poems] POETRY by Pablo Neruda And it was at that age...Poetry arrived I did not know what to say, my mouth And I, infinitesmal being,
Also, being the last day of National Poetry Month, it seems fitting to announce that my target date for submitting my manuscript for the new book, retitled Rainbow Over Crossroads, is May 31st- a month from now. I've not had much time to work on it lately, but it's so very nearly done that I'm brimming with anticipation for the moment I hit send and it flies away. jaybird found this for you @ 10:10 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
The Ern Malley Poetry Hoax: The Ern Malley Poetry Hoax: The greatest literary hoax of the twentieth century was concocted by a couple of Australian soldiers at their desks in the offices of the Victoria Barracks in Melbourne, land headquarters of the Australian army, on a quiet Saturday in October 1943. "Ern's" poems here. [via monkeyfilter] jaybird found this for you @ 19:54 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Shakespeare's Coined Words Now Common Shakespeare's Coined Words Now Common Currency • Method in the madness jaybird found this for you @ 12:06 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
From the Murky Depths : From the Murky Depths : Fathoming the lasting appeal of Saint-Exupéry and "The Little Prince." In 2000, divers off the coast of Marseille discovered the wreck of a Lockheed Lightning P38 plane that crashed into the sea in 1944. Last week the news went round the world that the wreck's serial number had been confirmed as belonging to the plane of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944), aviator and author of "The Little Prince." First published in 1943 in French and English, "The Little Prince" is said to be one of the best-selling books in the world, surpassed only by the Bible and "Das Kapital." Sixty years after its first appearance, "The Little Prince" still sells over a million copies each year. Still, the overwhelming interest in this wreck and its pilot is extraordinary. What motivates the sainted exuberance of Saint-Exupéry's many fans? jaybird found this for you @ 07:24 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Massive list of important authors Massive list of important authors and their contributions to the literati. Astounding! [via Reality Carnival] jaybird found this for you @ 10:14 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
> :: Burroughs Special ::" Apocalypse But Pan lives on in the realm of imagination. In writing, painting, and music. Look at van Gogh's Sunflower's, writhing with pretentious life. Listen to the Pipes of Pan in Jajouka. Now Pan is neutralized, framed in museums, entombed in books, and relegated to folklore. But art is spilling out of its frames into subway graffiti. Will it stop there? [kinda sorta via MeFi] jaybird found this for you @ 18:22 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
A very good interview with A very good interview with Arthur C. Clarke What was it Oscar Wilde said? "Someone who knows the price of everything knows the value of nothing." Some things have eternal value, and compassion is one of them. I hope we never lose that. jaybird found this for you @ 11:01 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Mockingbirds, by Mary Oliver In Mockingbirds, by Mary Oliver In Greece, jaybird found this for you @ 16:16 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Lady of Lesbos Poet, courtesan, Poet, courtesan, bisexual, victim... look beyond the labels for the essence of Sappho jaybird found this for you @ 07:51 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom Thought cleaves the interstellar gloom ~Robert Frost, from "Bond and Free" jaybird found this for you @ 12:58 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Now, to cancel out the Now, to cancel out the dubious commercial nature of the previous poem, here's beautiful piece from Pablo Neruda: "Love" Because of you, in gardens of blossoming flowers I ache from the jaybird found this for you @ 18:52 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
other people's stories [via MeFi] other people's stories [via MeFi] jaybird found this for you @ 19:52 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Arthur Miller: A Visit With Arthur Miller: A Visit With Castro, observations on Cuba and it's leader by the playwright. The city itself has the beauty of a ruin returning to the sand, the mica, the gravel and trees from which it originated. The poverty of the people is obvious, but at the same time a certain spiritedness seems to survive. Poor as they are there is little sense of the dead despair one finds in cities where poverty and glamorous wealth live side by side. But this is all appearances, which do count for something but not everything. jaybird found this for you @ 07:37 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Let it Snow by David Let it Snow by David Sedaris. jaybird found this for you @ 06:47 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
"Short Story: The Spell" His day... that is, the day of the old cretin, the maniac, the ancient paper-skinned recluse, was listless and pointless. He did not leave the house. He rarely ever did. Instead, he refilled the pepper grinder, played games with his tired cats, tried to fix the toilet, read two chapters of an erotic novel, made a pot of chai which he never got around to drinking, organized his pens by color and ink type, and tried, to no avail, to sleep. That is just my assumption, mind you, but I have it on good authority to be true. I'm demonstrably not mad. Yet my commerce is words, print, which in this day and age to communicate as such is daft, I hear. I do it nonetheless. I've recorded this story as an epistle to the general time of life that spawned my thusfar fair efforts. The hours passed by the window as a washed-out picture-show of unrealized possibilities. The clouds that yawned through the slumbering branches existed solely as potentials; he watched, but was unaffected by the shapes and tendrils that ran by, kissing the blue of mid-afternoon. Newspapers covered the floor, and he tried to walk around the house by stepping only on certain letters. He did not know why. It’s just what he did all day, that Tuesday, which might be yesterday or tomorrow for all I know. I suppose these were word games, or maybe he was trying to spell something. As his neighbor, by circumstance mind you and not by choice, it was I that brought him his letters. He always accepted it, kindly, said that I was prettier today than before, and promptly burned the unopened envelopes to ashes in his oven. I know this because I watched him, secretly, as his habits intrigued me. It’s not the custom of a woman of my class to spy upon urban hermits, but his gnarled knuckles and words compelled me. I think this man, whom I shall not name to preserve the scraps of dignity that remain attached to his history, noticed me. Perhaps he even welcomed my intrusions. I believe this to be the case because I was the only person that acknowledged him. Every Earth needs a moon to orbit it. You might say, “what about the letters?” Those letters were always from the same sender, in the same handwriting, from the same address; his own. You may even question my sanity when I tell you this, but I believe that on the day he left this oft troubling world, in that dank place where he tiptoed upon yellowed and torn papers of distant news, he burned no letters. I found the envelope that I’d delivered that morning of the floor, atop the trodden newspapers. In it was a letter; it read, ‘hello.’ jaybird found this for you @ 21:36 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Chilling and spooky: Jean-Paul Sartre's Chilling and spooky: Jean-Paul Sartre's The Wall via Alamut jaybird found this for you @ 20:41 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Go Terry go! On an Go Terry go! On an unforgettable Fresh Air today, Terry Gross interviewed, rather, attempted to interview, the UltraCon windbag Bill "Shut-up!" O'Reilly, with hysterical consequences (WM format. FF to about 3 minutes toward the end). Metafilter's thread on the subject is exquisite and about as funny as the jaybird found this for you @ 20:41 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
My friend Leigh has launched My friend Leigh has launched a portfolio of her writing... great stuff! jaybird found this for you @ 17:47 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Walt Whitman: When Science Walt Whitman: When Science and Mysticism Collide While science was a useful antidote to superstition, it was hampered by a sublunary narrowness of vision. Scientific facts, Whitman believed, had esoteric ramifications best elucidated by sages, seers and philosopher-poets—in other words, someone like him... jaybird found this for you @ 12:15 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Yup, Huxley and Heinlein write Yup, Huxley and Heinlein write pr0n: Parents seek to ban books “This is pornographic literature and we do not feel it has a place in any school funded by taxpayer dollars.” jaybird found this for you @ 06:50 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Madonna's new book tells  Madonna's new book tells children: don't be envious Madonna, 45, climbed on to a swing, with her children, and read for five minutes, then said anyone who wanted to learn the ending must shell out £12.99. The English Roses is the first of five morality tales by Madonna to be released before the end of 2004. All are based loosely on the teachings of the Kabbalah, which she follows. jaybird found this for you @ 06:46 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
From the ‘Song of the Open Road’ By Walt Whitman I FROM this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines, Here is the efflux of the Soul; All parts away for the progress of souls; jaybird found this for you @ 10:07 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Kevin Kling's Circus Tale was Kevin Kling's Circus Tale was on NPR tonight and was pure delight. Real Audio format jaybird found this for you @ 18:31 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
How can I keep my How can I keep my soul in me, so that ~Maria Rainer Rilke jaybird found this for you @ 16:43 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver Wild Geese by Mary Oliver "You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting..." jaybird found this for you @ 14:26 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Where Everything is Music by Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi Don't worry about saving We have fallen into the place
They derive
jaybird found this for you @ 22:38 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
2003 Results of the Bulwer-Lytton 2003 Results of the Bulwer-Lytton international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory if not the reputation of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), who has just enjoyed his bicentennial. The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for The Last Days of Pompeii (1834) and the phrase, "the pen is mightier than the sword," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night." jaybird found this for you @ 07:59 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
whichbook.net is a website using whichbook.net is a website using Flash to help you find new reading material. Stunningly accurate. My wishlist has grown by three so far. jaybird found this for you @ 18:02 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Meet The Invisible Writers "Over Meet The Invisible Writers "Over the years I've met a diverse collection of writers who have never been published or earned any academic credentials, yet whose claim to the title of artist is genuine. These invisible writers are soldiers and bakers, convicts and salesmen, winos, hairdressers, firefighters, farmers and waitresses. Their only qualifications to literary authenticity are their writings and their desire to write. Often the only time they have is stolen time, and their private scrawls end up on cocktail napkins, penciled in the margins of receipts, on any piece of paper handy. " jaybird found this for you @ 01:02 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Our Perfect Summer by David Our Perfect Summer jaybird found this for you @ 23:28 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
Wow. Since this is my Wow. Since this is my first official week working with children, I found this amazingly pertinent. Taylor Mali - What Teachers Make "I make parents tremble in fear when I call home: jaybird found this for you @ 20:45 in Authors, Books & Words | | permalink
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i am jay joslin: a spirit-fed mountain hopping lover of everything, an ordained lefty-veggie-homo, and bon-vivant go-go dancing with all the messenger mockingbirds of morning.
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