INTANGIBLE WORDS

The Age of String

2012-01-23T02:28:00.001-05:00

So many words get lost. They leave the mouth and lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days you can hear their chorus rushing past: IwasabeautifulgirlPleasedon'tgoItoobelievemybodyismadeofglassI'veneverlovedanyoneIthinkofmyselfasfunnyForgiveme...

There was a time when it wasn't uncommon to use a piece of string to guide words that otherwise might falter on the way to their destinations. Shy people carried a little bundle of string in their pockets, but people considered loudmouths had no less need for it, since those used to being overheard by everyone were often at a loss for how to make themselves heard by someone. The physical distance between two people using a string was often small; sometimes the smaller the distance, the greater the need for the string.

The practice of attaching cups to the end of the string came much later. Some say it is related to the irrepressible urge to press shells to our ears, to hear the still-surviving echo of the world's first expression. Others say it was started by a man who held the end of a string that was unraveled across the ocean by a girl who left for America.

When the world grew bigger, and there wasn't enough string to keep the things people wanted to say from disappearing into the vastness, the telephone was invented.

Sometimes no length of string is long enough to say the thing that needs to be said. In such cases all the string can do, in whatever its form, is conduct a person's silence.

nicole krauss

East Harlem

2012-01-15T00:07:00.000-05:00

Sound is the color I know
Sound is what keeps me looking for your eyes
And sound of your breath in the cold
And the sound will bring me home again

zach condon, beirut

Cleopatra (1963)

2012-01-10T01:28:00.005-05:00

"How strangely awake I feel, as if living as been a long dream. Someone else's dream, now finished at last. But now I will begin a dream of my own, which will never end. Antony."

REM- We All Go Back To Where We Belong

2011-12-12T22:50:00.005-05:00

Everything is Illuminated

2011-10-05T23:47:00.000-04:00

Brod discovered 613 sadnesses, each perfectly unique, each a singular emotion, no more similar to any other sadness than to anger, ecstasy, guilt, or frustration. Mirror Sadness. Sadness of Domesticated Birds. Sadness of Being Sad in Front of One's Parent. Humor Sadness. Sadness of Love without Release...

... Brod's life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release. Table, ivory elephant charm, rainbow, onion, hairdo, mollusk, Shabbos, violence, cuticle, melodrama, ditch, honey, doily... None of it moved her. She addressed her world honestly, searching for something deserving of the volumes of love she had within her, but to each she would have to say, I don't love you. Bark-brown fence post: I don't love you. Poem too long: I don't love you. Lunch in a bowl: I don't love you. Physics, the idea of you, the laws of you: I don't love you. Nothing felt like anything more than what it actually was. Everything was just a thing, mired completely in its thingness...

... So she had to satisfy herself with the idea of love- loving the loving of things whose existence she didn't care at all about. Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for. It was not the world that was the great and saving lie, but her willingness to make it beautiful and fair, to live a once-removed life, in a world once-removed from the one in which everyone else seemed to exist.

jonathan safran foer

in california

2011-09-12T23:52:00.000-04:00

I don't belong to anyone. My heart is heavy as an oil drum, I don't want to be alone. My heart is yellow as an ear of corn and I have torn my soul apart from pulling artlessly with fool commands. Some nights I just never go to sleep at all, and I stand shaking in the doorway like a sentinel, all alone, bracing like the bow upon a ship, and fully abandoning any thought of anywhere but home; my home. Sometimes I can almost feel the power and I do love you. Is it only timing that has made it such a dark hour, only ever chiming out, "cuckoo, cuckoo"?

My heart, I wear you down I know. Gotta think straight, keep a clean plate, keep from wearing down. If I lose my heart, just where am I going to lay it? For it has half-ruined me, to be hanging around, here among the Daphne, blooming out the big brown. I am native to it, but I'm overgrown. I have choked my roots on the earth, as rich as roe, here down in California.

All Thoughts Are Prey to Some Beast

2011-09-12T23:35:00.001-04:00

The leafless tree looked like a brain
The birds within were all the thoughts and desires within me
Hoppin' around from branch to branch, or snug in their nests listening in

An eagle came over the horizon and shook the branches with its sight
The softer thoughts; starlings, finches, and wrens
The softer thoughts, they all took flight

The eagle looked clear through the brain tree, emptying thoughts saved for me
Maybe I'll make this one my home, consolidate the nests of the tiny
Raise a family of might like me

Then something struck him, wings of bone
Sweet desires and soft thoughts were all gone
The eagle shrieked, "I'm alone"

Well i was time to flee the tree
The eagle snuck up on the wind one talon at a time
Being sky king of the sky, what did he have to fear

All thoughts are prey to some beast
Sweet desire and soft thoughts, return to me

bill callahan

In California

2011-08-18T23:07:00.002-04:00

But there is another who is a little older
When I broke my bone
He carried me up from the riverside
To spend my life in spitting distance,
Of the love that I have known,
I must stay here in an endless eventide.

And if you come and see me
You will upset the order
You cannot come and see me,
For I set myself apart
But when you come and see me, in California
You cross the border of my heart.

The Shadow of the Wind

2011-08-12T09:16:00.001-04:00

Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it's an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day.

carlos ruiz zafon

Lionel Essrog

2011-08-12T09:10:00.000-04:00

Lionel, my name. Frank and the Minna Men pronounced it to rhyme with vinyl. Lionel Essrog. Line-all.

Liable Guesscog.
Final Escrow.
Ironic Pissclam.
And so on.

My own name was the original verbal taffy, by now stretched to filament-thin threads that lay all over the floor of my echo-chamber skull. Slack, the flavor all chewed out of it.

Motherless Brooklyn

2011-08-12T09:06:00.001-04:00

Like the G Train, the BQE suffered from low self esteem, never going and into citadel Manhattan, never tasting the glory.

jonathan lethem

Portnoy's Complaint

2011-07-22T21:34:00.000-04:00

"American society," she said, dropping her knapsack and bedroll on the floor, and continuing the lecture she had begun as we drove around the bay to Haifa, "not only sanctions gross and unfair relations among men, but it encourages them. Now, can that be denied? No. Rivalry, competition, envy, jealousy, all that is malignant in human character is nourished by the system. Possesions, money, property-on such corrupt standards as these do you people measure happines and success. Meanwhile," she said, perching herself cross-legged upon the bed, "great segments of your population are deprived of the minimal prerequisites for a decent life. Is that not true, too? Because your system is basically exploitive, inherently debasing and unjust. Consequently, Alex"- she used my name as a stern teacher would, there was the thrust of admonition in it- "there can never be anything resembling genuine equality in such an environment. And that is indisputable, you cannot help but agree, if you are at all honest."

Philip Roth

Hey, that's no way to say goodbye

2011-07-07T00:10:00.000-04:00

I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm
Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm
Yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new
In city and in forest, they smiled like me and you
But now it's come to distances and both of us must try
Your eyes are soft withy sorrow
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye

I'm not looking for another as I wander in my time
Walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme
You know my loves goes with you as your love stays with me
It's just the way it changes like the shoreline and the sea
But let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie
Your eyes are soft with sorrow
Hey, that's not way to say goodbye

leonard cohen

John Waters

2011-04-24T17:10:00.002-04:00

Sagal: Could you describe to those who weren't lucky to see what a John Waters movie is, in a quintessential way?

Waters: I think it just worships um, well it's a political action against the tyranny of good taste.

wait wait don't tell me

Good Woman

2011-04-03T21:17:00.000-04:00

I want to be a good woman
And I want for you to be a good man.
This is why I will be leaving
And this is why I can't see you no more
I will miss your heart so tender
And I will love this love forever

cat power

Moving Pictures Silent Films

2011-03-13T23:28:00.000-04:00

Oh wake me please when this is over
When the ice is melted away
And the hunger returns
I will be the same but older
And may be twice the bear that I thought I was

Where have you been and what have you done?

I've been under the ground
Eating prayers from this old book I found
Under the ground, saving it up
And spending it all on
moving pictures, silent films

Is this a dream I've been saving?
Where the hearts beat slower and slower
to almost nothing

great lake swimmers

Hi, How Are You

2011-01-31T23:41:00.000-05:00

I keep getting these letters and ever since the movie came out [The Devil and Daniel Johnston] I get 4 or 5 letters a week and it says "Hi Daniel, I love your music. I too am mentally ill."

daniel johnston

Siddharta

2011-01-26T02:52:00.000-05:00

-and none of it was worthy of his glance. It was all a lie, it all stank, it was all putrid with lies. Everything pretended to meaning and happiness and beauty, but it was all only putrescence and decay. The taste of the world was bitter. Life is pain.

Siddharta had one single goal before him- to become empty, empty of thirst, empty of desire, empty of dreams, empty of joy and sorrow. To die away from himself, no longer to be "I," to find the peace of an empty heart, to be open to wonder within an egoless mind- that was his goal. When every bit of ego was overcome and dead, when in his heart all cravings and compulsions had been stilled, then the ultimate must awaken, that innermost essence in one's being that is no longer ego, the great mystery.

herman hesse

Play It Again, Sam

2011-01-06T12:15:00.002-05:00

"The two of you should get married and move into a hospital."

Paulo Coelho

2011-01-04T15:33:00.002-05:00

"Life is about forgetting the answers and enjoying the questions."

Night Before Mutiny

2010-12-27T14:37:00.000-05:00

Drifting, land in sight. Never nearer the marina. Did they curse old Serafina? Still we will not stand ashore. We should dive in, I should dive in. Not spend my only nights trying to keep calm. Far below deep waters' rising, rising. They left me here with a ship to sink. Queen of a wide open sea. I kissed the captain but the cabin boy was the one that did for me. Once more we will lie, lie once more will we. Don't close the book before sleep. And you'll be swallowed, you'll be swallowed. Not broken down but eaten up whole. Why am I slowing down now? Why am I feeling so worn out? I don't care whatever you're talking about. They left me here with ship to sink. Queen of a wide open sea. I kissed the captain but the cabin boy was the one that did for me. Once more we will lie, lie once more will we.

serafina steer

Albert Einstein

2010-12-08T15:27:00.002-05:00

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

Lady Chatterley's Lover

2010-12-07T23:14:00.000-05:00

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

d.h. lawrence

Harper Lee

2010-12-07T17:09:00.001-05:00

"Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptop, cell phones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books."

Emily

2010-11-29T18:33:00.002-05:00

Anyhow I sat by your side, by the water
You taught me the names of the stars overhead
that I wrote down in my ledger
Though all I knew of the rote universe were those
Pleiades loosed in December
I promised you I'd set them to verse so I'd always remember

That the meteorite is a source of the light
And the meteor's just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire
that propelled it to thee

And the meteorite's just what causes the light
And the meteor's how it's perceived
And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void
that lies quiet in offering to thee

joanna newsom

Sergei Rachmaninoff

2010-11-27T20:28:00.003-05:00

"Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music."

Stranger than Paradise

2010-10-24T21:17:00.001-04:00

Eddie: You know it's funny when you come to someplace new and everything looks just the same.

Does Not Suffice

2010-09-28T11:03:00.001-04:00

You saw me rise to our occasion
And so deny the evidence
Caused me to burn and twist and grimace against you
Like something caught on a barbed wire fence

Now you can see me fall back here redoubled
Full bewildered and amazed
I have gotten into some terrible trouble
Beneath your blank and rinsing gaze

It does not suffice for you to say I am a sweet girl
Or to say you hate to see me sad because of you
It does not suffice to merely lie beside each other
As those who love each other do

joanna newsom

Of the Sea

2010-09-21T00:31:00.001-04:00

And the crush of the deep, our secrets will keep
And the mermaids, they drift in the dark
With the salt all ablaze and the ships where they lay
There must be great fear in the spark

So here we will stay, all the demons at bay
From our arms and our eyes it seems
Away from the dirt, beneath the skirt of the sea
We won't wake from our dreams

aa bondy

Jean-Dominique Bauby

2010-08-12T00:22:00.000-04:00

Once I was a master of recycling leftovers. Now I cultivate the art of simmering memories.

Since the demarcation [paralysis] runs across my mouth, I can only half-smile, which fairly faithfully reflects my ups and downs.

Does the cosmos contain keys for opening up my diving bell? A subway line with no terminus? A currency strong enough to buy my freedom back? We must keep looking. I'll be off now.

Damage

2010-08-07T20:25:00.000-04:00

It takes a remarkably short time to withdraw from the world. I traveled until I arrived to the life of my own. What really makes us is beyond grasping. It's way beyond knowing. We give into love because its given us some sense of what is unknowable. Nothing else matters, not in the end.

2010-07-29T00:20:00.001-04:00

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.
Art is knowing which ones to keep.

scott adams

Sing Me to Heaven

2010-07-23T23:24:00.005-04:00

In my heart's sequestered chamber
lies truth stripped of poet's gloss
Words alone are vain and vapor
And my heart is mute.
In response to aching silence
memory summons half-heard voices,
And my soul finds primal eloquence
and wraps me in song.

bei mir bist do schon

2010-07-05T22:28:00.001-04:00

I could say Bella, bella, even sehr wunderbar
Each language only helps me tell you how grand you are

I've tried to explain, bei mir bist do schon
So kiss me and say that you will understand

Rothko & Ken

2010-06-30T00:23:00.002-04:00

So, now what do you see? Be specific- no, be exact. Be exact, but sensitive, you understand? Be kind. Be a human being, that's all I can say. Be a human being for once in your life. These pictures deserve compassion and they live or die in the eye of a sensitive viewer. They quicken only if the empathetic viewer would let them. That's what they cry out for; that is why they were created. That is what they deserve. Now, what do you see?

Red.
But do you like it?
Yeah.
Speak up.
Yes.

Yes, yes of course you like it. How can you not like it? Everybody likes everything nowadays. They like the television or the photograph, the soda pop, the shampoo and the cracker jack. Everything becomes everything else and it's so nice and pretty and like-able. Everything is fun in the sun, hm? Where's the discernment? Where's the arbitration that separates what I like from what I respect? What I deem worthy? What has, listen to me, significance?

Red, john logan

Ode: Intimations of Immortality

2010-06-12T12:45:00.000-04:00

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory of the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind

william wordsworth

Memory Gardens

2010-06-06T01:16:00.002-04:00

Well while I'm here I'll
do the work-
and what's the Work?
To ease the pain of living
Everything else, a drunken
dumbshow.

allen ginsberg

Benny & Joon

2010-06-05T23:25:00.000-04:00

Because you know, it seems to me, well beside being a little mentally ill, she's pretty normal.

Hummingbird

2010-05-31T13:47:00.001-04:00

When it's cold it's too cold here
When it's hot it's too hot, dear
We were up for a while
Now it's come time to fold

I've been leaning on you
Without reason or truth
Now I'm dreaming of leaving my demons
And the first one I'm leaving is you.

langhorne slim

Freight Train

2010-05-01T20:35:00.001-04:00

Please don't tell what train I'm on
So they don't know what route I've gone

elizabeth cotton

Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording...

2010-04-24T08:45:00.001-04:00

"In the early days, the Beatles would travel from one ill-paying provincial gig to the next, huddled together in the back of a small, unheated van. Whenever one would start to become discouraged at the apparent hopelessness of the situation, John Lennon would buck them up by asking the questions, "Where are we going, lads?" to which they would respond with a rousing, "To the top, Johnny! To the toppermost of the poppermost!"

geoff emerick

Thieves

2010-03-17T12:03:00.007-04:00

And I know
And you know too
That love like ours
Is terrible news

she & him

The Last Kennedy, 1980

2009-09-07T18:30:00.003-04:00

"And may it be said of us, both in dark passages and in bright days, in the words of Tennyson that my brothers quoted and loved, and that have special meaning for me now:

'I am a part of all that I have met
Tho much is taken, much abides
That which we are, we are --
One equal temper of heroic hearts
Strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.'

For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end.

For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

Ted Kennedy

Resurrection Fern

2009-06-29T20:33:00.003-04:00

And we'll undress beside the ashes of the fireBoth our tender bellies are wound around in baling wire
All the more a pair of underwater pearls
Than the oak tree and its resurrection fern

iron & wine

Come here

2009-06-16T00:36:00.002-04:00

There's a wind that blows in from the north,
And it says that loving takes its course.

No I'm not impossible to touch,
I have never wanted you so much.

Have I never laid down by your side?
Baby, let's forget about this pride.

Well, I'm in no hurry.
You don't have to run away this time.
I know that you're timid,
but it's gonna be all right this time.

kath bloom

picture of success

2009-04-29T21:44:00.001-04:00

I've got my best shoes on
I'm ready to go.

John Betjemen

2009-04-26T03:33:00.001-04:00

“Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows."

I'm just pulling on a line

2009-04-19T19:33:00.002-04:00

and sometimes it pulls on me.

The line, it inks across the freshly fallen snow,
Where only those embracing coldness would go
It whistles & it whispers, and sometimes it howls,
It sings to me sweetly from the trees & in vowels

The line, it writes itself across the dark sky,
In the electric flushes ending with a sigh
It weaves itself into a fabric so true,
and flows just like river, graceful and blue

great lake swimmers

Petit

2009-04-17T02:55:00.002-04:00

As for the false friends who helped and gave up, who helped and betrayed, they are merely guilty of not having had enough heart to move mountains. I forgive you. This is why I changed your names in the text and blackened your eyes in the photographs-to confuse the gods. Perhaps they will not recognize you.

Nicholas' eyes...

2009-04-02T14:41:00.003-04:00

"... became wet jewels
the hardest substance in the purest pain
as I fed him in his high white chair."

Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters

Mommie Dearest

2009-03-29T23:05:00.004-04:00

If you're acting, you're wasting your time. If you're not, you're wasting mine.

Cyrano de Bergerac

2009-03-24T16:00:00.004-04:00

Farewell Roxanne, because today I die-
I know that it will be today,
My own dearly beloved- and my heart
Still so heavy with love I have not told,
And I die without telling you! No more
Shall my eyes drink the sight of you like wine,
Never more, with a look that is a kiss,
Follow the sweet grace of you-

I remember now the way
You have, of pushing back a lock of hair
With one hand, from your forehead- and my heart
Cries out and keeps crying, "Farewell, my dear,
My dearest-
My own heart's own,
My own treasure,
I am never away from you, Even now,
I shall never leave you. In another world,
I shall be still that one who loves you, loves you
Beyond measure, beyond-

edmond rostand

The Worst Taste in Music

2009-03-19T15:00:00.005-04:00

He can't forget you
You're quite a find

But he's got the worst taste in music
If I didn't know this I'd lose it

radio dept

Oh No

2009-01-29T01:58:00.002-05:00

Arm and arm we are the harmless sociopaths
Arm and arm with all the harmless sociopaths

Little Person

2009-01-03T21:48:00.002-05:00

And somewhere, maybe someday
Maybe somewhere far away
I'll find a second little person
who will look at me and say,

"I know you
You're the one I've waited for
Let's have some fun."

We'll take a road trip way out west
You're the one I like best.

jon brion

Donna Donna

2008-12-31T16:09:00.004-05:00

On a wagon bound for market
There's a calf with a mournful eye
High above him there's a swallow,
winging swiftly through the sky.

"Stop complaining!" said the farmer,
Who told you a calf to be?
Why don't you have wings to fly with
like the swallow so proud and free?

Calves are easily bound and slaughtered,
never knowing the reason why
But whoever treasures freedom
like the swallow has learned to fly.

Mark Twain

2008-12-28T22:33:00.001-05:00

"Kindness is the language in which the deaf can hear and the blind can see."

Good Feeling

2008-12-04T14:10:00.001-05:00

Vague sketch of a fantasy,
laughing at the sunrise
Like he's been up all night
Oh slippin' and slidin'
What a good time but now,
have to find a bed
that can take this wait

Good feeling,
won't you stay with me just a little longer

violent femmes

Le Vent Nous Portera

2008-11-16T13:15:00.002-05:00

I asked you a question

2008-11-13T00:58:00.003-05:00

Tell everybody waiting for Superman
That they should try to hold on best they can
He hasn't dropped them, forgot them, or anything
It's just too heavy for Superman to lift

flaming lips

what dreams may come

2008-11-01T22:35:00.002-04:00

Thought is real. Physical is the illusion. Ironic, huh?

This is what you shall do:

2008-10-30T20:09:00.001-04:00

Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men-go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers or families-re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.

walt whitman

Michael Caine

2008-10-18T18:11:00.002-04:00

Elliot: For all my education, accomplishments and so-called wisdom, I can't fathom my own heart.

hannah and her sisters

somewhere i have never traveled

2008-10-17T22:01:00.011-04:00

somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

ee cummings

The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life

2008-10-15T16:25:00.004-04:00

“A human being may well ask an animal, ‘Why do you not speak to me of your happiness but only stand and gaze and me?’ The animal would like to answer and say, ‘The reason is I always forget what I was going to say,’ but then he forgot that answer too, and stayed silent.”

The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life Nietzsche

Gloomy Planets

2008-10-13T15:38:00.003-04:00

I don't blame it on the front row
don't blame it on them ruin class
cause i know they stay
don't blame it on the signals
don't blame it on the logbooks
cause i know they stray
like all the cars in new york
like all the lights on new year
like all these gloomy planets
you know they stay
anyway

notwist

My Blueberry Nights

2008-10-05T17:54:00.001-04:00

Dear Jeremy,

In the last few days I've been learning how to not trust people. And I'm glad I failed. Sometimes we depend on other people as a mirror to define us and tell us who we are. And each reflection makes me like myself a little more.

Elizabeth

Cyrano de Bergerac

2008-10-02T01:11:00.002-04:00

... but sing, dream, laugh,
move on, be alone, have a choice,
have a watchful eye and a powerful voice,
wear my hat awry, fight for a poem if I like
and perhaps even die

Never care about fame or fortune and even travel
to the moon
Triumph by chance on my own merit
Refuse to be the clinging ivy nor even
the oak or the lime.
Perhaps I'll not get far
But I'll get there alone.

Be Near Me When My Light Is Low

2008-09-13T16:43:00.005-04:00

Be near me
When my light is low
When the blood creeps
And the nerves prick and tingle
And the heart is sick
And all the wheels of being slow
Be near me
When the sensuous frame
Is wracked with pangs
That conquer that...
And time
And manic scattering dust
And life
Of fury slinging flame
Be near me
When I fade away
To point the term of human strife
And the twilight
Of eternal days
And on the low dark verge of life.

lord alfred tennyson

Young Folks

2008-09-10T12:29:00.001-04:00

usually when things has gone this far
people tend to disappear
no-one will surprise me unless you do

peter bjorn & john

Emily Dickinson

2008-07-28T20:32:00.001-04:00

Ample make this bed
Make this bed with Awe
In it wait till Judgment break
Excellent and Fair.

Be its Mattress straight
Be its Pillow round
Let no Sunrise' yellow noise
Interrupt this Ground.

Daphne Du Maurier

2008-07-28T20:27:00.003-04:00

"Happiness is not a possesion to be prized. It is a quality of thought, a state of mind."

Karen Eiffel

2008-07-09T00:59:00.001-04:00

"As Harold took a bite of Bavarian sugar cookie, he finally felt as if everything was going to be okay. Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren't any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten Danish, soft-spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange, but I also know that it just so happens to be true. And, so it was, a wristwatch saved Harold Crick."

stranger than fiction

Better Together

2008-06-20T15:40:00.001-04:00

There's no combination of words
I could put on the back of a postcard
No song that I could sing
but I can try for your heart
Our dreams and they are made out of real things
like a shoebox of photographs
with sepiatone loving

jack johnson

Endgame

2008-05-15T11:27:00.002-04:00

"You're on earth. There's no cure for that."

samuel beckett

love & some verses

2008-04-13T23:38:00.003-04:00

Love is a dress that you made long
To hide your knees
Love to say this to your face
I'll love you only
For your days and excitement
What will you keep for to wear?
Someday drawing you different
May I be weaved in your hair?

Love and some verses you hear
Say what you can say
Love to say this in your ear
I'll love you that way
From your changing contentments
What will you choose for to share?
Someday drawing you different,
May I be weaved in your hair?

Pedro Calderon de la Barca

2008-04-13T22:24:00.001-04:00

For all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.

bob's 1965 tour

2008-01-15T13:19:00.001-05:00

In waiting room at London Airport, 1965

Reporter: How long is it since you were last in London?
Dylan: About a year.
Reporter: What's the lightbulb for?
(Dylan holds up an enormous industrial lightbulb)

Dylan: What's the lightbulb for? I thought you would ask me that. No I usually carry a lightbulb. Somebody gave it to me, you know.
Reporter: Sorry, I didn't quite catch the answer
Dylan: Someone gave it to me... a very affectionate friend.
Reporter: Oh, I see.
2nd Reporter: (to Bob Neuwirth) Are you folk?
Neuwirth: Who, am I folk? No, not me. I'm not folk.
3rd Reporter: (to Dylan) What is your real message?
Dylan: My real message? Keep a good head and always carry a lightbulb.
Reporter: Have you tried?
Dylan: Well, I plugged it into my socket and the house exploded.

clip from Don't Look Back

The Origin of Love

2008-01-12T21:50:00.002-05:00

Last time I saw you
We had just split in two.
You were looking at me.
I was looking at you.
You had a way so familiar,
But I could not recognize,
Cause you had blood on your face;
I had blood in my eyes.
But I could swear by your expression
That the pain down in your soul
Was the same as the one down in mine.
That's the pain,
Cuts a straight line
Down through the heart;
We called it love.
So we wrapped our arms around each other,
Trying to shove ourselves back together.
We were making love,
Making love.
It was a cold dark evening,
Such a long time ago,
When by the mighty hand of Jove,
It was the sad story
How we became
Lonely two-legged creatures,
It's the story of
The origin of love.
That's the origin of love.

john cameron mitchell

The Greatest

2007-12-26T10:31:00.001-05:00

Once I wanted to be the greatest
No wind or waterfall could stall me
And then came the rush of the flood
Stars of night turned deep to dust

Melt me down
Into big black armor
Leave no trace of grace
Just in your honor
Lower me down
To culprit south
Make 'em wash a space in town
For the lead
And the dregs of my bed
I've been sleepin'
Lower me down
Pin me in
Secure the grounds
For the later parade

cat power

Gauranteed

2007-12-24T19:58:00.001-05:00

Everyone I come across in cages they bought
they think of me and my wandering
but I'm never what they thought
got my indignation but I'm pure in all my thoughts
I'm alive

Leave it to me as I find a way to be
consider me a satelite forever orbiting
I knew all the rules but the rules did not know me
guaranteed

eddie vedder

Christopher McCandless

2007-11-25T13:41:00.000-05:00

"Happiness is only real when shared."

on relationships

2007-11-18T22:59:00.002-05:00

And I'm telling you right now, through all this stuff, I have not become a cynic, I haven't. Yes, I do happen to believe that love is mainly about pushing chocolate-covered candies and, you know, in some cultures, a chicken. You can call me a sucker, I don't care, 'cause I do...believe in it. Bottom line...is the couples that are truly right for each other wade through the same crap as everybody else, but, the big difference is, they don't let it take 'em down.

dr. cox

Into The Wild

2007-11-12T21:47:00.000-05:00

"If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed."

3:10 to Yuma (2007)

2007-10-01T01:03:00.000-04:00

Sometimes a man needs to be big enough to see how small he is.

Before Sunrise

2007-08-12T03:26:00.001-04:00

I guess that if none of your family or friends knew that you were dead, then it's not really being dead.

richard linklater

Masochist

2007-07-25T23:53:00.001-04:00

She says you're a masochist for falling for me,
So roll up your sleeves.

ingrid michaelson

I don't do crowds

2007-05-18T21:07:00.000-04:00

I'd like to have company during thunderstorms
I'd like you to fall for me but it'd soon turn lousy and wrong
I meant what I said
all I want is to be one of the best

camera obscura

tea for the tillerman

2007-05-10T00:18:00.000-04:00

Bring tea for the Tillerman
Steak for the sun
Wine for the women who made the rain come
Seagulls sing your hearts away
'Cause while the sinners sin, the children play

Oh Lord how they play and play
For that happy day, for that happy day

cat stevens

Fake Empire

2007-04-20T00:27:00.000-04:00

Stay out super late tonight picking apples, making pies
put a little something in our lemonade and take it with us

Turn the light out say goodnight
no thinking for a little while
lets not try to figure out everything it wants
It’s hard to keep track of you falling through the sky

we're half awake...

the national

Werner Herzog

2007-04-14T20:10:00.001-04:00

In his action movie mode, Treadwell probably did not realize that seemingly empty moments had a strange, secret beauty. Sometimes images themselves develop their own life, their own mysterious stardom.

grizzly man

Cries and Whispers

2007-04-06T14:51:00.001-04:00

David: Come over here Maria. Look at yourself in the mirror. You are beautiful... but you have changed. These days you cast rapid, calculating, sidelong glances. Your gaze used to be direct, open, and without any disguise. Your mouth is an expression of discontent and hunger. It used only to be soft. Your complexion has become pallid, you use make-up. Your fine, broad forehead now has four creases above each eyebrow... And this fine contour from the ear to the chin... it's no longer quite so evident. That's where complacency and indolence reside... Look here, at the bridge of the nose, why do you sneer so often, Maria? ...Beneath your eyes, those sharp, barely visible wrinkles of boredom and impatience.

Maria: (paraphrased) You read me so well only because you see it in yourself too.

Ingmar Bergman, Viskningar och rop

Lisa Simpson

2007-03-22T22:52:00.000-04:00

"You have to listen to the notes she's not playing."
"But, Mom! If you take our cartoons away, we'll grow up without a sense of humor and be robots."

"A man who envies our family is a man who needs help."

Big Fish

2007-02-05T14:33:00.000-05:00

"Truth is, I've always been thirsty."

"Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you're not too big? That maybe this place is just too small? "

"A man tells his stories so many times that he becomes the stories. They live on after him, and in that way he becomes immortal."

"I caught an uncatchable fish. "
"Sometimes, the only way to catch an uncatchable woman is to offer her a wedding ring. "

"They say when you meet the love of your life, time stops, and that's true. What they don't tell you is that when it starts again, it moves extra fast to catch up. "

"Most men, they'll tell you a story straight through. It won't be complicated, but it won't be interesting either. "

Sandra: You don't even know me.
Ed: I have the rest of my life to find out.

Peter Pan

2007-02-05T14:17:00.000-05:00

"To die would be a grand adventure!"

The Breakfast Club

2007-02-05T14:12:00.000-05:00

"Screws fall out all the time, the world is an imperfect place."

"We're all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it, that's all. "

Patch Adams

2007-02-02T14:40:00.000-05:00

Death. To die. To expire. To pass on. To perish. To peg out. To push up daisies. To push up posies. To become extinct. Curtains. Deceased. Demised. Departed. Defunct. Dead as a doornail. Dead as a herring. Dead as a mutton. Dead as nits. The last breath. Paying a debt to nature. The big sleep. God's way of saying, "Slow down." To check out. To shuffle off this mortal coil. To head for the happy hunting ground. To blink for an exceptionally long period of time. To find oneself without breath.To be the incredible decaying man.Worm buffet. Kick the bucket. Buy the farm. Take the cab.Cash in your chips.

Middlesex

2007-02-02T14:38:00.001-05:00

"Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness,""joy", or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that beings in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. I can't just sit back and watch from a distance anymore. From here on in, everything I'll tell you is colored by the subjective experience of being part of events. Here's where my story splits, divides, undergoes meiosis. Already the world feels heavier, now I'm a part of it. I'm talking about bandages and sopped cotton, the smell of mildew in movie theaters, and of all the lousy cats and their stinking litter boxes, of rain on city streets when the dust comes up and the old Italian men take their folding chairs inside. Up until now it hasn't been my world. Not my America. But here we are, at last."

jeffrey eugenides

Edward Teller

2006-10-29T23:52:00.000-05:00

When you come to the end of all the light you know, and it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: Either you will be given something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly.

Ecclesiastes 1:14

2006-04-11T15:44:00.000-04:00

i have seen all things that
are done under the sun,
and behold,
all is vanity& chase after the wind.