we all fall down slack-jawed to marvel at words

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

“Aphrodite’s thirst was never quenched; it was cruel and dreamy. It was certainly the most splendid kind of thirst.”

— Arthur Rimbaud, from Selected Poems & Prose; “Silence and Sacrifice,”

[marvel-at-words]

Before the railroad and the modern highways, crossing the Mojave Desert was a terrifying prospect - an obstacle to life itself - or, at best, a tedious bore across a boundless “sandscape.” Even today, with preparation and comforts, there lingers at the edge of travel the knowledge that the heat and aridity can kill you, and if they do not, you might die fromthe intimidating despair evoked by a vast emptiness that is wholly indifferent to your existence.

“AhaMakav Walkabout,” The Anthropology of Turquoise, Ellen Meloy

[marvel-at-words]

Some women lie easily in whatever beds they make. They marry or do not marry with equanimity. They divorce or do not. They can leave a bed and forget it. They sleep dreamlessly, get up and scramble eggs.

A Book of Common Prayer, Joan Didion

[dumpster-bitch]

Before human beings possessed fire or tools or language, the moon had been their ally. It would calm people’s fears now and then by illuminating the dark world like a heavenly lantern. Its waxing and waning gave people an understanding of the concept of time. Even now, when darkness had been banished from most parts of the world, there remained a sense of human gratitude toward the moon and its unconditional compassion.

1Q84, Haruki Murakami

[dumpster-bitch]

In the Thompson Grill, the counter radio was already playing songs about the heart, songs about women who let their men go as casually as a river through their fingers. The waitress with the tattoo gave him his coffee. The music this morning threw him across eras. He was eighteen again and he fell into a girl’s arms, drunk and full of awe during his first formal dance, painted moonlight on the ceiling, the floating lights through the scrims that bathed the couples translating them.

In the Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaatje

[marvel-at-words]

I read it on the walls of the flooded school, which is covered in the vanished teenagers’ hieroglyphics. Suck my dick. Lick my juicy pussy. Names that are still legible at low tide: Paola was here. Gabriel was here. Say my name. Hurt like I do. Kiss me, someone. Writing that survives the bodies that produced it is always haunted, I guess.

“The Gondoliers,” Orange World, Karen Russell

[dreamyvixen]

“You and I know each other in our bones,”

— Kurt Vonnegut, from a letter to Nanny Vonnegut wr. c. January 1973 (via violentwavesofemotion)

[dumpster-bitch]

Nevada is wide and bleak enough to mock all human politics. Desert in winter. He gazes in secret as she drives. She’s seasick with awe.

The Overstory, Richard Powers

[rohie-deactivated20191102]

https://www.instagram.com/p/ButqAc5FdB-/?igshid=nwl0jrc73xub

[salemwitchtrials-deactivated202]

Invitation, Mary Oliver

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

“Witches are moon-birds, Witches are the women of the beautiful moon.”

— Amy Lowell, from Poems; “Witch-Woman,” written c. November 1919

[journalofanobody]

“Moon, plum blossoms,this, that,and the day goes.”

— Kobayashi Issa (via dk-thrive)

[mesogeios]

“[…] and in longing she bites her tender mind”

— Sappho, excerpt of “Fragment 96″ from If Not, Winter (translated by Anne Carson)

[oumaimas]

The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1914-1923

[cruellheaven]

“Why does the mind do such things? Turn on us, rend us, dig the claws in. If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart. Maybe it’s much the same.”

— Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin  (via theliteraryjournals)

[bloodsiphoning]

“Darkening twillight is a sorcery,”

— Clark Ashton Smith, from “The Twilight Woods,” written c. October 1932 (via ravnna)

[aseaofquotes]

Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro