“… But today the gulls are silver angels etching
great cursive blessings in a perfect sky—so Death & I
make believe we believe that, & amble on.”
–Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Late Afternoon Stroll on the Cliffs
Category: language
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Make believe we believe that, & amble on
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AG2023_1056169a or not places at all but abstractions
“and here—desolate, roughly surfaced, lined with eucalyptus and lemon groves—is Banyan Street.
[…]
into this perfect mold might be poured the inarticulate longings of a nation
[…]
one of those circumstances that satisfy one’s suspicion that life is indeed a scenario […] beautiful in its venality and in its devotion to immediate gratification
[…]
distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened, but I remain unconvinced that the distinction, for my purposes, matters
[…]
We must be aware of the dangers which lie in our most generous wishes
[…]
not places at all but abstractions”
-Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays
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AG2023_1056313a or engulfed in an immense ancient indifference
“The earth has turn her back
On one yellow middling star
To consider lights more various and far.
[…]
We are engulfed in an immense
Ancient indifference
That does not sleep or dream.
Call it Nature if you will
Though everything that is is natural–
(On Visiting a Borrowed Country House in Arcadia by A.E. Stallings)
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AG2023_1056137a or play until the end of this life
“I’m going to play until the end of this life.
[…]
It was never worth worrying about someone you didn’t love. And it wasn’t love if you didn’t worry.” -(GZ)
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AG2023_1056137a or you’d been waiting to hear
“Can you hear me? I gesture
mutely to the parking lot. The trees
do not answer; they’re trees,
and know better.”-Tarfia Faizullah, Poem Without Love
“… pause
and sprawl in the grass while I read to you
the poem you hadn’t known you’d been waitingto hear. I read until you finally slept”
-Tarfia Faizullah, The Poem You’ve Been Waiting For
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AG2023_1055953a or a matter of angles and resolve
“Beauty, after all, is almost always a matter of angles and resolve.
[…]
all things were knowable by anyone
anything was fixable if you took the time to figure out what was broken”
– (GZ)
Ramin Djawdi, Fate of the Kingdoms
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The obvious stole over us like awe
“Conflict is a condition of intellectual life, and, I believe, its pleasure.”
“… language—informed, shaped, reasoned—will become the hand that stays crisis and gives creative, constructive conflict air to breathe, startling our lives and rippling our intellect.”
“… the critical voice that upholds tradition and communal values and that also provides occasion for an individual to transcend and/or defy group restrictions.”
“just as we watch other life, other life watches us” (TM)
“The obvious stole over us like awe,
That it was our own silhouette we saw”
–A.E. Stallings, Sublunary
