I’m fine, Mom.
When every moment has led you to here, trying not to cry in front of the young woman who wants you sign up for a BMO credit card while you’re trying to pump $20 of gas into your car. You can’t even be annoyed with her – all earnest smile and name tag that reads, “Hi there, I am WONDERFUL.”
paintball machine gun
His pale face glowed (his father’s friend once joked that we would never lose our children in the dark) and his eyes were wide awake with stories. My favourite was the one about the copper sword —or was it glass— that caused a massive amount of damage but could only make one hit before shattering. “You have to use it wisely”, he whispered.
the thief
All your days painting the
catastrophe that will rob you of your days are lost just the same.
NaPoWriMo: day trying to catch up
Conflagration
“We have to put out the fire, not just blow on it.”
and here I thought
it was dying down
the cooling ground
accepting
my wary steps
and
I didn’t see the spark
NaPoWriMo late start: day one
I wasn’t going to do this, and then a crummy morning inspired me.
I owe three more.
I know your name.
As you slept I crept into
the error you made
Took nothing,
left
scattered
An “I was here”
your morning disquiet
whoa: Anaïs Nin on politics
My social consciousness is different from that of the Americans. It is not expressed in group work, in collective activity. It consists in giving help to the exceptional person who is struggling to educate himself, who is gifted but has no opportunities, no guidance.
My lack of faith in the men who lead us is that they do not recognize the irrational in men, they have no insight, and whoever does not recognize the personal, individual drama of men cannot lead them.
Psychology has ceased to be for me a mere therapy for neurotic moments. It is not only the neurotic who lives by irrational impulses rooted deeply in his experience, but everyone. This may or may less be masked by outward conventionalities. This individual irrational should be isolated and understood before it becomes an aggregate. The masses are merely an accumulation of such blind impulses. Nations, leaders, history, could be understood as nonrational behavior can be.
In fact, most of the time the leaders have been those who symbolized nonrational emotions for the masses and therefore their negative, or destructive tendencies. (Nin, Diaries – 1939-1944, 46)
belated International Women’s day post
This is an excerpt from The Diary of Anaïs Nin volume three (1939-1944) that would have been perfect for yesterday, but is still perfect today. I chuckled, and then I applauded.
At the Gotham Book Mart I met the old mystic Claude Bragdon. He took me to lunch…
After lunch, in his hotel he took me to the top floor, to a glass-enclosed garden of artificial plants. It seemed suitable that he should be sitting among unnatural plants, in a make-believe garden, at the top of twenty floors of concrete. And there he delivered his sermon:
“You are one of the Delphic women. I knew that as soon as I heard about you and knew it even more so after I met you. But you will destroy your powers of divination and your psychic intuition unless you separate yourself from human life, and above all things from sensuality. There is too much sensuality in you. You need to be purified. Let me help you. I have been able to renounce everything. You will need my help.”I renounced being a Delphic woman. (Nin, 15)
from The Wondrous Adventures of William the Walrus
William marveled at the sad strangeness of the humans in the city. They passed so much of their time shuffling papers at desks or standing in lines, or as guardians of ancient machines.
He wrote in his journal:
Received a new hat from Miss Erin. A bowler. I do believe my penmanship is improving under her tutelage.
W.W.
(p.s. Have finally tried ice cream. Wonderful!)
the Tithonus project: part two
a Tuesday
My therapist tells me that I am missing the point of the exercise by confining subject matter to rants about ducks and the weather. He told me I need to open up and share my story, my real thoughts and observations. I told him that this was never my half-baked idea in the first place, that I would write about whatever I damn well wanted, and that people ought to know about the ducks, though it be foul subject matter. I tell you, I almost up and walked out forever when he didn’t at least give a chuckle for that. I don’t trust people who can’t appreciate a good pun.
Nevertheless, a stern expression and doctor’s orders has me here clickety-clacking away again and trying to find a place to start. So, let’s see here…
My name is Charles Tithonus Reilly, and they call me “the first Immortal”. Hell of a claim for me to make. Surely, in spite of the new heart, the artificial spine (well, C5-C7 and a bit of a thoracic, anyway), and the TA-65 implant, I still bleed. A gunshot or a knife would do me in, if I or anyone else was so inclined, but no one dares to mention such things in the face of modern medical miracles. Nope. I turned 120, and they crowned me undying, God help me.
C.T.R.
let's wreck this ship 