She was a woman of dunes

She was a woman of dunes

Her hips were ancient sands

And her flowing hands

Were deltas in the monsoon

Her skin traced desert lands

And her eyes dark moons

She was a woman of dunes.

Her legs figured a labyrinth

Of two winding mountain slitheroads

I've never smelt a hyacinth

But each and every of her skinfold

Had the scent of Sumerian codes.

Her lips tasted of hyacinth.

My mouth parched for the clouds of her tongue.

My hands roamed the tundra of her neck

In her pupils were taigas and snowspecks

The instant was neither short nor long.

It lasted.

Nought wasted.

My mouth quenched on the clouds of her tongue.

She was a woman of dunes

Her nude feet arched over me

Like pontoons over the sea

Her stillgaze was that of runes

Eidolon on the slow lea

She sleeps like sands on ruins

She is a woman of dunes.

to F.

Story of someone's life

"Moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world's champions."

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., novelist (1922-2007)

No half measures

"Among men, it seems, historically at any rate, that processes of co-ordination and disintegration follow each other with great regularity, and the index of the co-ordination is the measure of the disintegration which follows. There is no mob like a group of well-drilled soldiers when they have thrown off their discipline. And there is no lostness like that which comes to a man when a perfect and certain pattern has dissolved about him. There is no hater like one who has greatly loved."

John Steinbeck, novelist, Nobel laureate (1902-1968)

alt-J (∆) Breezeblocks

On second forethought

"There is not less wit nor less invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought."

Pierre Bayle, philosopher and writer (1647-1706)

Dans le restaurant

Le garçon délabré qui n’a rien à faire
Que de se gratter les doigts et se pencher sur mon épaule:
  ‘Dans mon pays il fera temps pluvieux,
  Du vent, du grand soleil, et de la pluie;
  C’est ce qu’on appelle le jour de lessive des gueux.’
(Bavard, baveux, à la croupe arrondie,
Je te prie, au moins, ne bave pas dans la soupe).
  ‘Les saules trempés, et des bourgeons sur les ronces—
  C’est là, dans une averse, qu’on s’abrite.
J’avais sept ans, elle était plus petite.
  Elle était toute mouillée, je lui ai donné des primevères.’
Les taches de son gilet montent au chiffre de trentehuit.
  ‘Je la chatouillais, pour la faire rire.
  J’éprouvais un instant de puissance et de délire.’

  Mais alors, vieux lubrique, à cet âge …
‘Monsieur, le fait est dur.
  Il est venu, nous peloter, un gros chien;
  Moi j’avais peur, je l’ai quittée à mi-chemin.
  C’est dommage.’
     Mais alors, tu as ton vautour!
Va t’en te décrotter les rides du visage;
Tiens, ma fourchette, décrasse-toi le crâne.
De quel droit payes-tu des expériences comme moi?
Tiens, voilà dix sous, pour la salle-de-bains.

Phlébas, le Phénicien, pendant quinze jours noyé,
Oubliait les cris des mouettes et la houle de Cornouaille,
Et les profits et les pertes, et la cargaison d’étain:
Un courant de sous-mer l’emporta très loin,
Le repassant aux étapes de sa vie antérieure.
Figurez-vous donc, c’était un sort pénible;
Cependant, ce fut jadis un bel homme, de haute taille.

 

T.S. Eliot, from Poems (1920)

Her name says it all

"Don't be yourself. Be someone a little nicer."

Mignon McLaughlin, journalist and author (1913-1983)


I could say this to many a people, including some of my customers...

Chucked out

"On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero."

Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club (1996)

Man o' nine tales

"No man was ever more than about nine meals away from crime or suicide."

Eric Sevareid, journalist (1912-1992)

Negative Capabillity

"The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed."

Ernest Hemingway, author and journalist, Nobel laureate (1899-1961)