August 2012
41 posts
I’ve been kind of blank the past couple of weeks (the whole summer, even…) For some reason I just have nothing to write about. Hopefully this will change soon…
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Forgetfulness, by Billy Collins
The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones. Long ago you kissed the names of...
"It wasn't a coat hanger. It was a wire. The... →
(it’s a link)
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“I’ve never wanted to be an astronaut because of the helmets. If I were up...”
– Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry
The world’s a bit of a shithole, yeah. But I don’t mind. Sometimes I even like it.
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There’s never a time when I can’t go straight to sleep, no matter how many hours I get a night. It’s like, every minute a day I have to fight it. I’m never not-tired, even when I’m dosed with caffeine. And I can’t really do anything all the way, you know. Everything’s always the bare minimum and it stretches out day after day after day an endless chain, me...
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“Don’t worry. The acne will go away, sort of.
You will stop fighting with your...”
– Sierra DeMulder, “Reassurance to Sierra in High School”
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Something I remember
The first time my mother set me loose I was twelve, I think, and I was at the carnival our fire department hosted every year in a field where all life had essentially been plowed away, leaving us to walk on pale dirt the consistency of rocks or dust. We’d been having a fight, I think, and I’ve always been good at that, always better at the passion of an argument, knowing best where to...
I am such a hermit these days…
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“If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don’t bother to vote, you are in...”
– David Foster Wallace, “Up, Simba”
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Not weak; Not invincible
roggyscanvas:
I’m not weak but I’m not invincible. This sensitivity I keep around like Mary’s little lamb serves me to write without being mechanical about it. I’m not weak but I’m not invincible. I have a glass formation around my emotions that are encassed in my heart, which cries rivers that soak my sleeves. I’m not weak but I’m not invincible. I walk the fine balance between open and...
It’s the weirdest thing when you realize that people like you (that are your age) actually exist. And 100% of the time, they make you feel like a dumbass (mostly for feeling like you were special enough for them not to exist…and also because they’re so so much smarter than you).
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You Had Time by Ani DiFranco
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“They looked for one another when nothing else was happening, the way you pick up...”
– Lynne Rae Perkins, Criss Cross
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Watching the fish tank
Loneliness stings, And always has an awful aftertaste (Even if not much has been tasted). And it leaks in methodical kitchens Like a faucet in a motel room in the middle of the night.
It is a telephone cord twisted into knots a 1-800 number with no response.
It is the rattling freight trains that Jerks you out of a groggy night’s sleep.
It is an absent-minded old woman with heavy breaths...
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Personally, I’m no good with time. Half-hours are a bit like blinking for me, and it’s not like I’m spending my time living fast and falling hard or anything. I’m so boring, it’s like sometimes I simply forget that I’m still here, sitting in a chair, hair mussed, eating a peach. And I trick myself into believing this is okay, and I even like it at points. I talk...
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“Beauty is the promise of happiness.”
– Stendhal
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Sometimes all it takes is one novel and one parasitical idea in it to tear your life apart—a life you weren’t even aware of, one you’d been unconsciously constructing…
To what end?
Starting from scratch, now.
“We all have our little solipsistic delusions, ghastly intuitions of utter...”
– David Foster Wallace, Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way
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(Spoken wistfully)
Back then, my heart was different than a weight in my chest And it didn’t take three ibuprofens a night to clear my head.
Maybe we are all just waiting for a stranger, Then waiting for the person we’re supposed to know to Become stranger.
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Ethics, by Linda Pastan
In ethics class so many years ago our teacher asked this question every fall: If there were a fire in a museum which would you save, a Rembrandt painting or an old woman who hadn’t many years left anyhow? Restless on hard chairs caring little for pictures or old age we’d opt one year for life, the next for art and always half-heartedly. Sometimes the woman borrowed my...
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“She was calm and quiet now with knowing what she had always known, what neither...”
– Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road
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No signal, again
When I write, and it’s going well, that’s how I really am.
That’s why it hasn’t been going well. Because I can’t find her. It used to be easier. I could take her out and slip her on, like a glove or a sexy dress and then I could put her back in the drawer. I always knew where she was, so I didn’t have to think too much. Retrace my steps, my emotions, the edges of my personality, the bones in my...
Wow. I wish I was going to college this year so badly.
“Any person with any imagination is bound to be afraid.”
– This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
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I sink into autobiographies past midnight, intertwining my fingers around themselves—I’m always twitching slightly, like I’m on the verge of tears at every moment—but here’s a story I always wanted to tell: I’ve always wanted to go to Paris because I think of it as a magical land where girls don’t twirl eagles’ feathers in their hair but ride upon their backs, and at night, everyone is always...
In Defense of Symbolism
fishingboatproceeds:
(I thought I’d post this here as well as the Paper Towns Q&A blog. It contains no spoilers. Thanks to Tamar for making it possible for me to post this publicly.)
Where did the strings metaphor inPaper Towns come from?
Someone said it to me once, after a friend had attempted suicide, that “maybe all the strings inside him broke,” and I liked that image a lot because 1....
hipstersbleedroses:
Open question to the Internet: Why is it apparently mysogynistic of men to get excited about the Olympics women’s beach volleyball because there’s pretty ladies jumping about in tight sport bikinis, when half of the female Tumblr population has done little else this week but perve over the Olympic male swimmers in their tiny swimming trunks?
jawdust:
Because female athletes...
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Some days I am such a girl…
