Poem 943
A Coffin—is a small Domain,
Yet able to contain
A Citizen of Paradise
In its diminished Plane.
A Grave—is a restricted Breadth—
Yet ampler than the Sun—
And all the Seas He populates
And Lands He looks upon
To Him who on its small Repose
Bestows a single Friend—
Circumference without Relief—
Or Estimate—or End—
- Emily Dickinson
Yet able to contain
A Citizen of Paradise
In its diminished Plane.
A Grave—is a restricted Breadth—
Yet ampler than the Sun—
And all the Seas He populates
And Lands He looks upon
To Him who on its small Repose
Bestows a single Friend—
Circumference without Relief—
Or Estimate—or End—
- Emily Dickinson
Precious
"People had more than they needed, we had no idea what was precious or wasn't, we threw away things people would kill each other for now."
- The Book of Eli
- The Book of Eli
Daughter
So can you understand?
Why I want a daughter while I'm still young
I wanna hold her hand
And show her some beauty
Before this damage is done
Why I want a daughter while I'm still young
I wanna hold her hand
And show her some beauty
Before this damage is done
- Arcade Fire, The Suburbs
Hell
CS Lewis thought hell was an endless, desolate twilight city upon which night is imperceptibly sinking.
Real life is not like the movies
We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness'.
Thank you, science fiction, for spoiling my childhood
I can't read regular fiction. I've tried. I don't care if it's won a Booker. I turn the page and there's this guy meeting his literary agent in a bar, and I wait for the Deleutherian delegation in their lightgrav suits, but they never appear.
Thank you, science fiction, for spoiling my childhood.
Thank you for making me want to die on the moon when I was 8 years old. The first science fiction story I read was Requiem. It was in a book without a cover, a book a grandaunt's friend had brought home from the Clark Air Base library. In Requiem, a man dies on the moon, alone. I didn't understand why, but I thought it was grand. "Home is the sailor, home from sea / and the hunter home from the hill."
Thank you for making me disobey my mother. We were not allowed to watch TV on school nights. I broke the rule for Star Trek.
Thank you for encouraging me to copy Ray Bradbury. Oh, how I wanted to write like him, all run-on sentences and mysterious inhalations, little green men and wicked prognostications, sipping dandelion wine and munching golden apples until my belly ached and my fingers were sticky-sad with late October and someone else's word-and-world whimsy.
Thank you for making me over-confident in my numeracy. I had read so much about interstellar warp drives that I really believed I could calculate how to make one work. (This explains why I hold no grudge towards my trigonometry, algebra and calculus teachers.)
Thank you for making me different. I grew up understanding how different we all are, and that difference is never a reason to dislike or discriminate. I can peacefully co-exist with humans, Martians, Hortas, the ghosts of Frogstar B, mechanical dragons, loose arrangements of psychokinetic matter, sentient ships, my parallel selves.
Thank you for scaring the shit out of me. All those science fiction book covers with skeleton robots and man-eating sandworms and planets cracking apart.
Thank you for corrupting my innocence. All those science fiction book covers with babes in metal bikinis being chased by BEMs. Amazing. Astounding.
Thank you for making me gullible. You hardwired into my childbrain an unshakable belief that everything is possible, and quite possibly plausible. I believe in parallel universes. I believe in biocomputing. I believe in silicon-based life forms. I believe in The Three Laws of Robotics. I believe in science, and in magic being science we don't just get yet. I believe this is why I seem unreasonably optimistic to people.
Science fiction, I think you are why I don't know how to give up. If my math doesn't compute, the math in another universe does. When my computer gives me the Spinning Beachball of Death in the middle of a client presentation, at least it's not trying to take over the world and turn us all into Triffids. Or perhaps it is just figuring out how to make a proper cup of tea.
(You are also why when a meme like "Fifteen Books" goes around on Facebook, instead of banging out a list, I write this structured essay. Because there is a little voice inside my head asking, "What Would Asimov Do?")
Most of all, thank you for telling me that it's okay to make things up. All fiction asks us to suspend our disbelief, but for you, we suspend the logic of the universe. And that's okay. Because here comes the Deleutherian delegation, and the universal translator isn't working, and that tentacle looks like it's wrapped around a particle accelerator.
- Leigh Reyes, My Life as a Verb
Thank you, science fiction, for spoiling my childhood.
Thank you for making me want to die on the moon when I was 8 years old. The first science fiction story I read was Requiem. It was in a book without a cover, a book a grandaunt's friend had brought home from the Clark Air Base library. In Requiem, a man dies on the moon, alone. I didn't understand why, but I thought it was grand. "Home is the sailor, home from sea / and the hunter home from the hill."
Thank you for making me disobey my mother. We were not allowed to watch TV on school nights. I broke the rule for Star Trek.
Thank you for encouraging me to copy Ray Bradbury. Oh, how I wanted to write like him, all run-on sentences and mysterious inhalations, little green men and wicked prognostications, sipping dandelion wine and munching golden apples until my belly ached and my fingers were sticky-sad with late October and someone else's word-and-world whimsy.
Thank you for making me over-confident in my numeracy. I had read so much about interstellar warp drives that I really believed I could calculate how to make one work. (This explains why I hold no grudge towards my trigonometry, algebra and calculus teachers.)
Thank you for making me different. I grew up understanding how different we all are, and that difference is never a reason to dislike or discriminate. I can peacefully co-exist with humans, Martians, Hortas, the ghosts of Frogstar B, mechanical dragons, loose arrangements of psychokinetic matter, sentient ships, my parallel selves.
Thank you for scaring the shit out of me. All those science fiction book covers with skeleton robots and man-eating sandworms and planets cracking apart.
Thank you for corrupting my innocence. All those science fiction book covers with babes in metal bikinis being chased by BEMs. Amazing. Astounding.
Thank you for making me gullible. You hardwired into my childbrain an unshakable belief that everything is possible, and quite possibly plausible. I believe in parallel universes. I believe in biocomputing. I believe in silicon-based life forms. I believe in The Three Laws of Robotics. I believe in science, and in magic being science we don't just get yet. I believe this is why I seem unreasonably optimistic to people.
Science fiction, I think you are why I don't know how to give up. If my math doesn't compute, the math in another universe does. When my computer gives me the Spinning Beachball of Death in the middle of a client presentation, at least it's not trying to take over the world and turn us all into Triffids. Or perhaps it is just figuring out how to make a proper cup of tea.
(You are also why when a meme like "Fifteen Books" goes around on Facebook, instead of banging out a list, I write this structured essay. Because there is a little voice inside my head asking, "What Would Asimov Do?")
Most of all, thank you for telling me that it's okay to make things up. All fiction asks us to suspend our disbelief, but for you, we suspend the logic of the universe. And that's okay. Because here comes the Deleutherian delegation, and the universal translator isn't working, and that tentacle looks like it's wrapped around a particle accelerator.
- Leigh Reyes, My Life as a Verb
Drench
You sleep with a dream of summer weather,
wake to the thrum of rain—roped down by rain.Nothing out there but drop-heavy feathers of grass
and rainy air. The plastic table on the terrace
has shed three legs on its way to the garden fence.
The mountains have had the sense to disappear.
It's the Celtic temperament—wind, then torrents, then remorse.
Glory rising like a curtain over distant water.
Old stonehouse, having steered us through the dark,
docks in a pool of shadow all its own.
That widening crack in the gloom is like good luck.
Luck, which neither you nor tomorrow can depend on.
- Anne Stevenson
Insomnia
The moon in the bureau mirror
looks out a million miles
(and perhaps with pride, at herself,
but she never, never smiles)
far and away beyond sleep, or
perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.
By the Universe deserted,
she'd tell it to go to hell,
and she'd find a body of water,
or a mirror, on which to dwell.
So wrap up care in a cobweb
and drop it down the well
into that world inverted
where left is always right,
where the shadows are really the body,
where we stay awake all night,
where the heavens are shallow as the sea
- Elizabeth Bishop
To Autumn
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
John Keats
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
John Keats
To Kill a Mockingbird
"Let me also take a whack at To Kill A Mockingbird, also sentimental claptrap. Not a complex character in the bunch, not a shade of gray in the story. It is a children's story for not very bright children, which is one reason it's taught in schools. Effectively shot, but clearly designed to make the audience feel good about itself for being high minded."
The English Patient
We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves.
I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.
Michael Ondaatje
I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.
Michael Ondaatje
The Distant Future
Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress. To those who fully admit the immortality of the human soul, the destruction of our world will not appear so dreadful.
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin
It Will Never Be Finished
"It will never be finished, do you know that? I'm not going to have children and I am going to die."
A M Homes, short story
Remember
Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Christina Georgina Rossetti
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.
Christina Georgina Rossetti
Never did like those cars
<<
Had a previous girlfriend start spontaneously sobbing in the car as we were driving along. I had no idea what the problem was, so I asked. Eventually, she eeks out, "That's so sad, I've never seen a hearse built just for babies before." I looked in my rear-view mirror: a PT cruiser.
>>
The world forgetting, by the world forgot
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;
"Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;"
Desires compos'd, affections ever ev'n,
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to Heav'n.
Grace shines around her with serenest beams,
And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden dreams.
For her th' unfading rose of Eden blooms,
And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes,
For her the Spouse prepares the bridal ring,
For her white virgins hymeneals sing,
To sounds of heav'nly harps she dies away,
And melts in visions of eternal day.
Alexander Pope
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;
"Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;"
Desires compos'd, affections ever ev'n,
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to Heav'n.
Grace shines around her with serenest beams,
And whisp'ring angels prompt her golden dreams.
For her th' unfading rose of Eden blooms,
And wings of seraphs shed divine perfumes,
For her the Spouse prepares the bridal ring,
For her white virgins hymeneals sing,
To sounds of heav'nly harps she dies away,
And melts in visions of eternal day.
Alexander Pope
Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, Dune
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, Dune
Cowboy Bebop
"I'm not going there to die. I'm going to find out if I'm really alive."
- Spike Spiegel
And what's the real lesson? Don't leave things in the fridge."
- Spike Spiegel
- Spike Spiegel
And what's the real lesson? Don't leave things in the fridge."
- Spike Spiegel
Serial Experiments Lain
No matter where you are...
Everyone is always connected.
- Lain
Everyone is always connected.
- Lain
If you aren't remembered, then you never existed.
- Arisu
Close the world
- Lain
- Arisu
Close the world
- Lain
Neon Genesis Evangelion
"Man fears the darkness, and so he scrapes away at the edges of it with fire."
- Rei Ayanami
"I have nothing else."
- Rei Ayanami
"Ikiteitte ureshi? (are you happy being alive?)"
- Rei Ayanami
- Rei Ayanami
"I have nothing else."
- Rei Ayanami
"Ikiteitte ureshi? (are you happy being alive?)"
- Rei Ayanami
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