The Wandering Islands

"This sentence is made of lead (and a sentence of lead gives a reader an entirely different sensation..."

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:44:42 +1100

“This sentence is made of lead (and a sentence of lead gives a reader an entirely different sensation from one made of magnesium). This sentence is made of yak wool. This sentence is made of sunlight and plums. This sentence is made of ice. This sentence is made from the blood of the poet. This sentence was made in Japan. This sentence glows in the dark. This sentence was born with a caul. This sentence has a crush on Norman Mailer. This sentence is a wino and doesn’t care who knows it. Like many italic sentences, this one has Mafia connections. This sentence is a double Cancer with a Pisces rising. This sentence lost its mind searching for the perfect paragraph. This sentence refuses to be diagrammed. This sentence ran off with an adverb clause. This sentence is 100 percent organic: it will not retain a facsimile of freshness like those sentences of Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe et al., which are loaded with preservatives. This sentence leaks. This sentence doesn’t look Jewish… This sentence has accepted Jesus Christ as its personal savior. This sentence once spit in a book reviewer’s eye. This sentence can do the funky chicken. This sentence has seen too much and forgotten too little. This sentence is called “Speedoo” but its real name is Mr. Earl. This sentence may be pregnant. This sentence suffered a split infinitive - and survived. If this sentence has been a snake you’d have bitten it. This sentence went to jail with Clifford Irving. This sentence went to Woodstock. And this little sentence went wee wee wee all the way home.”

- Tom Robbins (via the-rx)

the-rx: War/Peace Switch for a Thor Rocket loaded with an...

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 08:19:53 +1100

the-rx:

War/Peace Switch for a Thor Rocket loaded with an atomic warhead

(via giorney)

"The concept of liberty or humour or irony or happiness or love doesn’t exist. You are there simply..."

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 08:53:14 +1100

“The concept of liberty or humour or irony or happiness or love doesn’t exist. You are there simply as a prop for the State. And though used to be, as with any slave system, that they would feed you in return for your services. That compact broke down a couple of decades ago. Now they don’t feed you either. They barely clothe you. The so-called demilitarised zone, you’ve seen the word ‘demilitarised zone’ haven’t you, in the press even quite recently. Why do they call it demilitarised zone? Words lose their meanings so fast; it’s the most militarised zone on the planet. There are nuclear mines sown in the DMZ, there’s a concentrating of force and violence on either side of it that is unequalled anywhere, it’s the most militarised zone in the world. That’s the only place where North Korea and South Korean soldiers meet directly face-to-face, staring at each other across the table. They change guard about five or six times a day. The North Koreans naturally put up their best soldiers to stand there, to put the best, bravest, toughest face on North Korea. The best ones they can find are six inches shorter than the South Korean ones are. That’s what a famine state is, on top of a slave state. We now have millions and millions of North Korean children totally stunted in mind and body and will have to be dealt with at some point, who have been raised to believe that they live in a regime that is run by a god.”

- North Korea: no liberty, humour, irony … no love. Christopher Hitchens, 2009 (via mabelmoments)

the-rx: The following glossary was printed on the inside cover...

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:00:26 +1100

the-rx:

The following glossary was printed on the inside cover of “Boogie Woogie in Blue,” a 1944 album by jazz pianist Harry “The Hipster” Gibson. Most notable on its list is the very early definition of the word “hipsters.” Image courtesy of hyzercreek.

"Each time we don’t say what we want to say, we’re dying. Make a list of how many times you died this..."

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 18:26:16 +1100

“Each time we don’t say what we want to say, we’re dying. Make a list of how many times you died this week.”

- Yoko Ono (via involutus)

Bergman film.

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 08:06:43 +1100

Bergman film.

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude..."

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 07:50:35 +1100

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

- Louise Erdrich (via nuaira)

"Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting. The most exciting..."

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:00:23 +1100

“Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting. The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.”

- Andy Warhol (via 2straws)

Never give all the Heart W.B. Yeats Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth...

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 07:43:52 +1100

Never give all the Heart
W.B. Yeats

Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that’s lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.

East Coker (no 2 of Four Quartets)

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 20:02:22 +1100

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,

The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,

The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters,

The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers,

Distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees,

Industrial lords and petty contractors, all go into the dark,

And dark the Sun and Moon, and the Almanach de Gotha

And the Stock Exchange Gazette, the Directory of Directors,

And cold the sense and lost the motive of action.

And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,

Nobody’s funeral, for there is no one to bury.

I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you

Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,

The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed

With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,

And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama

And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away—

Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations

And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence

And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen

Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;

Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing—

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.

The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,

The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy

Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony

Of death and birth.

You say I am repeating

Something I have said before. I shall say it again.

Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,

To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,

You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.

In order to arrive at what you do not know

You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.

In order to possess what you do not possess

You must go by the way of dispossession.

In order to arrive at what you are not

You must go through the way in which you are not.

And what you do not know is the only thing you know

And what you own is what you do not own

And where you are is where you are not.

"Wine comes in at the mouth And love comes in at the eye That’s all we shall know for truth Before we..."

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 17:11:33 +1100

“Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die
I lift this glass to my mouth
I look at you, and I sigh.”

- W.B. Yeats (via chughtai)

theswingingsixties: Salvador Dali as Batman.

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 10:30:36 +1100

theswingingsixties:

Salvador Dali as Batman.

Photo

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 18:53:29 +1100

Danger in familiarities! Conventions are the fences society has...

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 11:51:00 +1100

Danger in familiarities!

Conventions are the fences society has built to protect you and the race!

Familiarities arouse dangerous desires!

"Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be..."

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 19:01:39 +1100

“Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned, how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness. Unfortunately happiness is there. There is always the chance that another heart will come to mine. I can’t help hoping and keeping faith and loving beauty. Quite frequently I am not so miserable as it would be wise to be.”

- T.H. White (via nuaira)

“Sexual intercourse is not necessary to preserve health...

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 19:00:08 +1100

“Sexual intercourse is not necessary to preserve health and manly vigor.”

Well, that’s a relief.

“”Pick up” acquaintances often take girls...

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 18:58:19 +1100

“”Pick up” acquaintances often take girls autoriding, to cafes and to theatres with the intention of leading them into sex relations. Disease or child-birth may follow.”

"Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be!"

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 18:03:46 +1100

““Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be!””

- Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote de la Mancha, 1605-15

Egon Schiele, “Seated woman with bent knee” (1917)

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 17:48:56 +1100

Egon Schiele, “Seated woman with bent knee” (1917)

Frederick McCubbin, “Down on his luck”, 1889

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 17:40:03 +1100

Frederick McCubbin, “Down on his luck”, 1889