In Want of the Words

if you’ve the yen to pluck then pluck us both for we who...

Tue, 14 May 2013 11:33:00 -0400

if you’ve the yen to pluck

then pluck us both

for we who have lived as one wish to die as one

High on a Rocky Ledge - Moondog

“Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work...

Tue, 07 May 2013 12:40:00 -0400

“Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring […] All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys.”

—Ulysses, pg. 181

awritersruminations: Final page of the manuscript for “The...

Fri, 03 May 2013 15:27:10 -0400

awritersruminations:

Final page of the manuscript for “The Dead” by James Joyce

you’re my only one.

Thu, 02 May 2013 17:33:00 -0400

you’re my only one.

Photo

Thu, 02 May 2013 05:02:06 -0400

—Ulysses, pg. 110

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 17:47:33 -0400

—Ulysses, pg. 110

Photo

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 22:12:20 -0400

We will exhaust the age. After us not another book—not for a generation at least. Heretofore...

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 15:18:28 -0400

We will exhaust the age. After us not another book—not for a generation at least. Heretofore we had been digging in the dark, with nothing but instinct to guide us. Now we shall have a vessel in which to pour the vital fluid, a bomb which, when we throw it, will set off the world. We shall put into it enough to give the writers of tomorrow their plots, their dramas, their poems, their myths, their sciences. The world will be able to feed on it for a thousand years to come. It is colossal in its pretentiousness. The thought of it almost shatters me.

For a hundred years or more the world, our world, has been dying. And not one man, in these last hundred years or so, has been crazy enough to put a bomb up the asshole of creation and set it off. The world is rotting away, dying piecemeal. But it needs the coup de grace, it needs to be blown to smithereens. Not one of us is intact, and yet we have in us all the continents and the seas between the continents and the birds of the air. We are going to put it down — the evolution of this world which has died but which has not been buried. We are swimming on the face of time and all else has drowned, is drowning, or will drown. It will be enormous, the Book. There will be oceans of space in which to move about, to perambulate, to sing, to dance, to climb, to bathe, to leap somersaults, to whine, to rape, to murder. A cathedral, a veritable cathedral, in the building of which everybody will assist who has lost his identity. There will be masses for the dead, prayers, confessions, hymns, a moaning and a chatting, a sort of murderous insouciance; there will be rose windows and gargoyles and acolytes and pallbearers. You can bring your horses in and gallop through the aisles. You can butt your head against the walls—they won’t give. You can pray in any language you choose, or you can curl up outside and go to sleep. It will last a thousand years, at least, this cathedral, and there will be no replica, for the builders will be dead and the formula too. We will build a town around it and set up a free commune. We have no need for genius—genius is dead. We have need for strong hands, for spirits who are willing to give up the ghost and put on flesh…

—Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

Photo

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 19:44:49 -0400

As Boston has bravely demonstrated, only by terrifying itself to the point of paralysis can a city...

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 13:09:00 -0400

As Boston has bravely demonstrated, only by terrifying itself to the point of paralysis can a city truly vanquish the terrorist.

Photo

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 05:04:11 -0400

Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 04:43:49 -0400

Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann…

Because maybe posting this will be the necessary exorcism to...

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 03:01:00 -0400

Because maybe posting this will be the necessary exorcism to free my mind of the rhythm that has so quickly come to command my minute-to-minute flow of thoughts for three days straight…but although yes no probably not.

“The higher truths are, the more cautious one must be with them; otherwise they are converted...

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 03:54:49 -0400

“The higher truths are, the more cautious one must be with them; otherwise they are converted into common things, and common things are not believed.”

—Nikolai Gogol, “A Question of Words”

i wish you could sprout.

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 11:53:00 -0500

i wish you could sprout.

when cool was.

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 01:28:00 -0500

when cool was.

“The Rue of Ruby Whores” - Michael Hurley

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 18:58:44 -0400

“The Rue of Ruby Whores” - Michael Hurley

If I were doing my Laundry I’d wash my dirty Iran I’d throw in my United States, and...

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 12:48:33 -0400

If I were doing my Laundry I’d wash my dirty Iran

I’d throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap,

scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in

the jungle,

I’d wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,

Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,

Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly

Cesium out of Love Canal

Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain the Sludge

out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,

Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little

Clouds so snow return white as snow,

Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie

Then I’d throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood &

Agent Orange,

Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out

the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state,

& put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an

Aeon till it came out clean.

—“Homework”, Allen Ginsberg, Collected Poems: 1947 - 1997

“La Mer (El Mar)” done by Julio Iglesias, live at...

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 21:42:20 -0400

“La Mer (El Mar)” done by Julio Iglesias, live at The Olympia in Paris 1976

A photograph is a universe of dots. The grain, the halide, the little silver things clumped in the...

Tue, 15 May 2012 16:56:00 -0400

A photograph is a universe of dots. The grain, the halide, the little silver things clumped in the emulsion. Once you get inside a dot, you gain access to hidden information, you slide inside the smallest event.

This is what technology does. It peels back the shadows and redeems the dazed and rambling past. It makes reality come true.

—Underworld, Don DeLillo (pg. 177)