"How silently the heart pivots on its hinge."
- Jane Hirshfield

Twilight, along the highway--

The drone of cars speeding past, drowning my errant thoughts, the ghost of you slowly fading into the deepening dusk, my consciousness finding solace in the dull din of this confused, billboard-infested city.

‎"Set your life on fire. 
Seek those who 
fan your flames."
- Rumi

A strange lot

Funny habits of famous authors

Truman Capote

and 15 Writers' Bedrooms

via Apartmenttherapy.com

Sylvia Plath's bedroom

found on (where else?) Twitter

=)

Gandhi's Top 10 Fundamentals For Changing The World

via Explore

From thin air

March 17, 2012

2:01 a.m. 

Training room

Desultory thoughts

Your penmanship has changed 6 times on this page. You are a fickle-minded person, unreliable in relationships, you cannot be trusted. Your decisions change 47 times in a minute.

The person sitting at the corner of the room has been nodding off to sleep in the past hour.

The person speaking (who is very animated) has failed to rouse him from his journey to dreamland.

The person at the other corner of the room is also trying his best to keep his eyes open.

You smile. At 2:00 in the morning, can one expect less?

Population in the room: female-dominated.

There is an overpowering mix of scents. Woody, floral, fruity. 

You wonder about your perfume.

The table in the middle. Tumblers, coffee mugs, plastic bottles. Water, coffee, fruit juice.

Half-empty, half-full, empty, full.

The dominant colors are pink and black. Only one female is wearing a dress. The rest are in jeans, pants, trousers. You think of Celie from The Color Purple.

You remember that you have a meeting to attend in the next room. And the session here is only half-way done. 

Unearthed from your locker from the random security check of two hours ago: two empty bottles of perfume, an old scarf, your favorite mug (forgotten), your running shoes, three key chains (a bear, an orange, a red boot), two stress balls (one covered with writing).

Your coffee has grown cold.

Towards the end of the lecture, you suddenly remember your grandma.

You become sad.

Goobye, Adrienne Rich

Tonight, an August night, feeling
the apples yellow as young moons
on the tree behind the house,
I think of my winter—
- "The Corpse-Plant"
Adrienne Rich 
May 16, 1929 - March 28, 2012

Coffee

via Explore

Macy Gray, Covered

2012

Ms. Gray's "Covered" is definitely a whole crew of well-diffused sound waves. The perfect soundtrack for a 5:00-in-the-afternoon coffee shop meet-up with your quirkiest friends, or an early evening jaunt to some little-known, kitschy bar (again, with your quirkiest friends).

My favorites are: "Nothing Else Matters" (Metallica); "Wake Up" (Arcade Fire); "Love lockdown" (Kanye West); "Smoke Two Joints" (The Toyes); and "Maps" (Yeah Yeah Yeahs).

I'm not too crazy about "Bubbly" (Colby Caillat), and Radiohead's "Creep" has been covered enough times (my fave is Damien Rice's), but Ms. Gray still pulls off the dark charm and is able to put her spin on 'em.

Two thumbs up. Plus a glass of tequila rose on the side, if you will.
=)

The Decemberists - Down By The Water

"The season rubs me wrong/ the summer swells anon..."

via brainpickings

Blanks and blues

on random things and loneliness

The dust keeps settling too nicely on the floor. And now I need to wipe them off my books. I ask myself how it is that I keep forgetting, when I keep reminding myself to bring that notebook everywhere, but it's a lie. I often forget to remind myself. The thought seldom crosses my mind. But today I will put it in my bag and have it dig a snug space in my bag. 

Later, yes. 

I have just committed the sin of looking back at what I have written. I shouldn't have done it. But what gives, when this space is so tiny, the ceiling, not high enough? No matter, I have enough space inside to put things in, though there isn't much headroom for memories as there is for listlessness. 

Time, I steal--because I have to, because I want to. Twice, during the last eleven seconds, I typed spave, instead of space. 

Let's see:

It's March and yet much rain has already fallen. What is the world coming to? There isn't much to be seen where I am. There never is, but how come I see so much?

How many sunsets more?

Cohere

"Life is a sum of all your choices. So, what are you doing today?"
- Albert Camus

"Sometimes, from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to."
- William Stafford

"I still feel kind of temporary about myself."
- Arthur Miller, "Death of A Salesman"

"In many shamanic societies, if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions. When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?"
- Gabrielle Rothou

"Your sorrow is an infinite circle
that never begins and never ends."
- Nicanor Parra

"Each time you happen to me all over again."
- Edith Wharton

Always, Daphne.

It never ends.

Ah, daylight. Early morning, to be a bit more specific. Exact time, not important. The mildness that brushes everything is what matters: the lack of glare, the expectant coffee cup, the stirring households, the dew on the leaves, the distance from darkness. The newness of the day comforts the mind, that just an hour ago had been at odds with the unfriendly shade of dusk.

"We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it."
-Rainer Maria Rilke

This morning's Facebook status:

Conversations with my daughter are almost always sprinkled with her exclaiming (with those animated, beautiful eyes of hers), "Mommy I took so much after you!" And this is from all sorts of things, from outlook in life, to fashion sense, to socio-political view, to artistic elitism, to shoe choice, etc. My dear Jackie, Mommy's wish for you, among so many others, is that you would not have the sadnesses she's had, and that you would not make the wrong choices she's made. (teary-eyed, sniff sniff)

Lit Geek update:

What I'm reading now:

John Fowles, A Maggot, 1985
his last work of fiction

After the novels, after the teacups.../

To lead you to an overwhelming question...

Oh, do not ask, "What is it?

- T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

And if I were to be asked about it, I probably wouldn't know what to say.

The heart unknowingly pushes down names, thoughts, entire sentences of long scripts. Memory fades at desire's ferocity. And if it is forgetting which the heart decides on, surely, it can be done.

There are four corners to the typical room. More, to the unconventional ones. The outdoors can be limitless. There is so much space for the mind to roam in. The inanity of insistence at the same spot, of knocking on the same shut door, does not, and will not, make much sense to the remote, impervious day-after.

Unless pointlessness is what the heart is after. Unless it is pain that makes more sense? For, after all, the glory of torment has been much written about, and much fuss has been made out of its necessity.

But none of that for me, now, please.

I'd much prefer not digging at what is no longer there.

And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window panes;     There will be time, there will be time -T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

*title of post borrowed from T.S. Eliot

#19. Accept loss forever.

Jack Kerouac's "30 Cool Tips"

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

via Dodo Dayao.

Follow me on Twitter:

                                                     https://twitter.com/#!/chansonata

Minimalist has never been this cute!

I found this wonderful little link over at writer Maria Popova's twitter. Designer Christian Jackson created a series of minimalist posters for popular children's books. Such whimsy and delight!

Here are a few examples of his works:

=)

A Panorama of ‘Middlemarch’

A Panorama of ‘Middlemarch’

from the weekend couch:

Oh, Miles!

You fill my heart with joy. You're the best companion to anywhere and anything.
Don't you ever go away.

Every time we say goodbye, I die a little
Every time we say goodbye, I wonder why a little
Why the Gods above me, who must be in the know
Think so little to me, they allow you to go 
- Cole Porter, "Everytime We Say Goodbye"

It's Sunday morning, again. Still dark outside, and here, too. I will not look for where the sun will soon rise, do not care for that sliver of light heralding dawn. No, none of that for me.

Ella is crooning in the background, and Neil, singing along with her.

What sad thoughts fill the mind.

And would it have been worth it, after all, 
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, 
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, 
Would it have been worth while, 
To have bitten off the matter with a smile, 

- T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Your promises:

lackluster, empty,
as brittle as your will,
dust in my hands.

I dust off my hands.

“Your love should never be offered to the mouth of a stranger, Only to someone Who has the valor and daring To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife Then weave them into a blanket To protect you.”


- Hafiz