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"Epithalamium," Nick Laird

You're beeswax and I'm bird shit. I'm mostly harmless. You're irrational. If I'm iniquity then you're theft. One of us is supercalifragilistic. If I'm the most insane disgusting filth you're hardly curiosa. You're bubble wrap to my fingertips. You're winter sleep and I'm the bee dance. And I am menthol and you are eggshell. When you're atrocious I am Spellcheck. You're the yen. I'm the Nepalese pound. If I'm homesteading you're radical chic. I'm carpet shock and you're the rail. I'm Memory Foam Day on Price-Drop TV and you're the Lord of Misrule who shrieks when I surface in goggles through duckweed, and I am Trafalgar, and you're Waterloo, and frequently it seems to me that I am you, and you are me. If I'm the rising incantation you're the charm, or I am, or you are

#Epithalamium #love #poem #Nick Laird #Zadie Smith

Some Things I Have Learned

- The fewer clothes you pack, the more books you can bring home. - Your integrity is measured as much by the promises you keep with yourself as by those you keep for others. - There is nothing on this earth more banal than calories. - From men, seek neither affirmation nor adoration. Seek respect. - Mail every letter the day you seal it. - The difference between a child and an adult is recognizing that other people are real. Other people feel, other people hurt, other people want, and other people do not stop existing when you walk away or hang up. - You have to be your own home, no matter how home-like someone else feels. - Keep a journal. It holds you accountable for doing exactly what you want. - To be in love is a state, and out of your control. To love is an action, and a decision you make and renew. A working definition for love: actively trying to understand and care for another person, as they change, as you change, constantly, always. - Your friends are your life partners. Treasure them, nurture them. Strong friendship is the true "'til death do us part", no matter what the scripts say. - If you're talking about it a lot, there's probably something wrong. Contentedness is a quiet tune you hum in your head. - Curiosity has a longer shelf-life than lust. - You are not who you think you could or should be; you are what you do. - To change the narrative frame is to change everything. - If a man looks at you with a certain glimmer in his eyes and say, "Let's just go to Paris": smile, dip your chin. Say nothing until the ticket is in your hand.

#Jennifer Schaffer #Advice #Curiosity #Lessons #Life lessons #paris

“You must go further than I did," Nedra said. "You know that." "Further?" "With your life. You must become free." She did not explain it; she could not. It was not a matter of living alone, though in her case this had been necessary. The freedom she meant was self-conquest. It was not a natural state. It was meant only for those who would risk everything for it, who were aware that without it life is only appetites until the teeth are gone.”

James Salter, Light Years

#James Salter #Light Years

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distractionetc1-blog

Cy Twombly, Scenes from an Ideal Marriage, 1986 Acrylic and pencil on paper

Along with a mindblowing rendition of Bolero, choreographed by the genius Marina Abramovic, we also saw Kanye West at the Opera. Fast iPhone fingers photo cred: Neli.

#Kanye West #Paris #Opera Garnier

Pigeons couldn't commit suicide, even if they tried. I've seen it.

Tu aime le champagne? my host father says.

Oui! I say, thinking he means les champignons, mushrooms.

He pours me a full glass.

"If you knew the algorithm and fed it back say ten thousand times, each time there'd be a dot somewhere on the screen. You'd never know where to expect the next dot. But gradually you'd start to see this shape, because every dot will be inside the shape of this leaf. It wouldn't be a leaf, it would be a mathematical object. But yes. The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is. It's how nature creates itself, on every scale, the snowflake and the snowstorm. It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing. People were talking about the end of physics. Relativity and quantum looked as if they were going to clean out the whole problem between them. A theory of everything. But they only explained the very big and the very small. The universe, the elementary particles. The ordinary-sized stuff which is our lives, the things people write poetry about--clouds--daffodils--waterfalls--and what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in--these things are full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks. We're better at predicting events at the edge of the galaxy or inside the nucleus of an atom than whether it'll rain on auntie's garden party three Sundays from now. Because the problem turns out to be different. We can't even predict the next drip from a dripping tap when it gets irregular. Each drip sets up the conditions for the next, the smallest variation blows prediction apart, and the weather is unpredictable the same way, will always be unpredictable.

from Arcadia, by Tom Stoppard

#Tom Stoppard #Arcadia

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Jellyfish might hold the secret of immortality

artmastered

Vanessa Bell, 1908-09, Iceland Poppies

When I was growing up, my favorite film was The Sound of Music. Because I was little, my mom would turn off the TV at the end of the wedding scene; for years, I thought that was how the plot ended, with a beautiful wedding. Imagine, if you will, my surprise when I saw the film through to the end for the first time, and love doesn't stop the Nazis from coming.

Lessons

- Crabs cannot retreat into their shells.

- Pearls cannot dissolve in wine.

- If a man tells you he wants to take you to Paris: smile, dip your chin. Wait until the ticket is in your hand.