"…we are all entering unspoken contracts with each other, all the time, negotiating these delicate, intricate webs of mutual need and expectation, and sometimes the terms of our agreements can only be revealed to us in the moment of the breach – that’s the uncanny thing about betrayal, right? Some heretofore invisible boundary flares neon red. The violation reveals the contract to both the traitor and the betrayed party: you silently vowed x to me, and you failed to deliver it. They trusted me to do y, I trusted myself to do y, and I failed myself, and them. You walk through the spiderweb and discover its existence in that instant."

Karen Russell (via egryan)

"Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self."

Middlemarch is really great, guys. (via ughwhocares)

summeromegadeth:

“Damn look it’s Summer of Megadeth!”

“Oh shit are they going to talk about goth again?”

“They are, baby, they are.”

“Hey guys—”

“Shut up, Beyonce.”

"Time heals, but it does so through erasure."

Mark Rowlands (via philk)

Sit around the house and make fake plans and then walk down to the Wagon Wheel.

More on personal journalism. →

michelledean:

Sullivans I and II, and McClelland, don’t tell “their stories” a propos of nothing. Their stories, such as they are, are inherently linked to the more “classical” journalism they do. Even at their most personal, this is the case. McClelland wrote an essay about her PTSD from reporting in conflict zones, that obviously couldn’t have been written if she did not, you know, report in conflict zones; Andrew Sullivan writes about his life as a gay man because existing as a gay man in this political climate is in itself a political act; John Jeremiah Sullivan, even when he’s writing about his brother’s aphasia in his recovery from electrocution, is really writing about his great personal subject, which is the nature of faith in the modern world. They do not write hermetically-sealed memoir, I am saying. Their stories are told from an impulse larger than the personal importance of “getting my story out there.” And that slight variation of impulse is all the difference in the world.

On the day the world ends

poortaste:

A bee circles a clover,
A Fisherman mends his glimmering net.

Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rain spout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it always should be.

On the day the world ends

Women walk through fields under their umbrellas
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of the lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street

And a yellow-sailed boat comes near the island,
The voice of the a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder,
Are disappointed.

And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.

As long as the sun and moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born

No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man,
who would be a prophet,
Yet is not a prophet,
for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes;

There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.

-Czeslaw Milosz

(via hikergirl)

taoistdrunk:

writing on writing on writing on writing, or, don’t read:

tangentially on the topic of the sheila heti piece, and also I guess tangentially on her book (which I did not like, sorry) (also, more directly on the subject of the thing she wrote: i think it is totally fine to write about writing, and for artists to talk about art, and that art is destined to be bad if no one talks about how to make it): writing about one’s own life is not an inherently artistic act — it can be self-indulgence, it can be kitsch, it absolutely can be narcissistic. literature broadens; journaling narrows. “To me, literature implies the transformation of life into meaning. She seems to insist in transforming life into meaninglessness,” a friend said about an accomplished person whose work is not unique in this way. It is not brave to write one’s own story, or maybe it is. It certainly isn’t necessary or important without at least an effort to make a connection. Sure, it’s unwise to try to universalize each of one’s own experiences — that can only lead to the yawning horror of being erased.

I remember (TO ME) a time when I was filling out a form only to discover I had forgotten my own social security number and could only remember my husband’s, which I used often for health insurance reasons, way back before they gave us an ID number unrelated to SSNs. I had memorized his social security number at the expense of my own. The word for that feeling, i was convinced, was despair, and this came to mind, from “Tumble Home”: I saw a movie in which two girls share an apartment. One day, one of the girls opens the other’s diary and makes an entry in it as though she is the diary owner. It scared me, that scene, because what—except for dying—could be scarier than merging? 

I thought of this story, I thought of Betty Draper, I thought of Lenore Beadsman, I thought hard and called my mother, who I thought would know it. I managed to remember before she called me back.

But I didn’t put it on the blog because I thought others would be able to relate, or because I felt at the time it was an experience that could transform into meaning; I put it on the blog because it’s a blog. It’s a journal, a diary. If I’d written it better, could it have been literature? Was it literature if someone read that and felt my despair, too? Would it have been literature if that’s what I had been thinking of? I don’t have the answer to these questions, but I know for sure that taking your life and putting it on a page does not constitute art. The looking is not enough. I don’t begrudge anyone their taste, and if I am wrong and each and every diary is a brave telling of one’s own story that resonates in the world, if it really is impossible to write a narcissistic thing,  if meaning is generated by the very telling, if you become an artist when you realize you have the power to look, and do, then I am wrong about this. This is a blog post; it’s all very to me.

From Merriam-Webster:

pomander   \POH-man-der\   noun

1 : a mixture of aromatic substances enclosed in a perforated bag or box and used to scent clothes and linens or formerly carried as a guard against infection; also : a clove-studded orange or apple used for the same purposes

2 : a box or hollow fruit-shaped ball for holding pomander

Examples:

Tuck a homemade pomander in a gift basket to lend it that wonderful holiday aroma.

“Apple pomanders are still much used to scent linen closets and store with furs to prevent moths.” — From an article by Ellen Probert Williamson in the Roane County News (Kingston, Tennessee), October 1, 2012

In earlier times, there was more at stake in the use of an “apple of amber” (the literal meaning of Anglo-French “pomme de ambre,” modified to “pomander” in Middle English) than the addition of holiday spirit. Pomanders were used to offset foul odors and were also believed to protect against disease. Early pomanders were usually mixtures of fragrant spices, herbs, etc. in small metal containers, and they were often worn on chains, as jewelry, around the neck or at the waist. Today, we no longer believe pomanders ward off infections, but we still like nice-smelling things, and the word “pomander” survives to name the modern version of this aromatic, decorative object.

"In a novel in which every parent betrays his child in one way or another, and every child is estranged from his parents, and there are certainly no mutually devoted spouses or couples in love or loyal friendships that do not eventually get sundered, the highest form of human relations is this example of adults who are not related by blood or marriage, or even especially fond of each other, who nonetheless take care of each other with dutiful good humor."

Elaine Blair on Infinite Jest

(Source: nybooks.com)