30 November 2012
'the inner freedom from the practical desire, the release from action and suffering, release from the inner and the outer compulsion, yet surrounded by a grace of sense, a white light still and moving, erhebung without motion, concentration without elimination, both a new world and the old made explicit, understood in the completion of its partial ecstasy, the resolution of its partial horror. yet the enchantment of past and future woven in the weakness of the changing body, protects mankind from heaven and damnation which flesh cannot endure. time past and time future allow but a little consciousness. to be conscious is not to be in time but only in time can the moment in the rose-garden, the moment in the arbour where the rain beat, the moment in the draughty church at smokefall be remembered; involved with past and future. only through time time is conquered.'
/ from section ii of 'burnt norton' from ts eliots 'four quartets'
25 November 2012
14 November 2012
'time present and time past
are both perhaps present in time future
and time future contained in time past.
if all time is eternally present
all time is unredeemable.
what might have been is an abstraction
remaining a perpetual possibility
only in a world of speculation.
what might have been and what has been
point to one end, which is always present.
footfalls echo in the memory
down the passage which we did not take
towards the door we never opened
into the rose-garden. my words echo
thus, in your mind.'
are both perhaps present in time future
and time future contained in time past.
if all time is eternally present
all time is unredeemable.
what might have been is an abstraction
remaining a perpetual possibility
only in a world of speculation.
what might have been and what has been
point to one end, which is always present.
footfalls echo in the memory
down the passage which we did not take
towards the door we never opened
into the rose-garden. my words echo
thus, in your mind.'
/ excerpt from ts eliots 'the four quartets' from section I: burnt norton
11 November 2012
06 November 2012
03 November 2012
02 November 2012
14 October 2012
'i recall an august afternoon in chicago in 1973 when i took my daughter, then seven, to see what georgia o'keeffe had done with where she had been. one of the vast o'keeffe 'sky above clouds' canvases floated over the back stairs in the chicago art institute that day, dominating what seemed to be several stories of empty light, and my daughter looked at it once, ran to the landing, and kept on looking. 'who drew it,' she whispered after a while. i told her. 'i need to talk to her,' she said finally.
my daughter was making, that day in chicago, an entirely unconscious but quite basic assumption about people and the work they do. she was assuming that the glory she saw in the work reflected a glory in its maker, that the painting was the painter as the poem is the poet, that every choice one made alone - every word chosen or rejected, every brush stroke laid or not laid down - betrayed one's character.'
/ excerpt from the essay 'georgia o'keeffe' from the white album by joan didion
my daughter was making, that day in chicago, an entirely unconscious but quite basic assumption about people and the work they do. she was assuming that the glory she saw in the work reflected a glory in its maker, that the painting was the painter as the poem is the poet, that every choice one made alone - every word chosen or rejected, every brush stroke laid or not laid down - betrayed one's character.'
/ excerpt from the essay 'georgia o'keeffe' from the white album by joan didion
05 October 2012
04 October 2012
'for, after all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments. and all the time your soul is craving and longing for something else. and in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams, raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him!'
/ fyodor dostoyevsky, white nights: and other stories
my birthday is in two days
/ fyodor dostoyevsky, white nights: and other stories
my birthday is in two days
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
