thibaudet

I measure time by how a body sways

[thibaudet]

Listen,

It could have happened. It had to happen. It happened earlier. Later. Nearer. Farther off. It happened, but not to you. You were saved because you were the first. You were saved because you were the last. Alone. With others. On the right. On the left. Because it was raining. Because of the shade. Because the day was sunny. You were in luck - there was a forest. You were in luck - there were no trees. You were in luck - a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake, A jamb, a turn, a quarter-inch, an instant... So you're here? Still dizzy from another dodge, close shave, reprieve? One hole in the net and you slipped through? I couldn't be more shocked or speechless. Listen, how your heart pounds inside me.

-- Wislawa Szymborska

[thibaudet]

From the train a'comin' through the clouds and the rain, on the evening following the day out of town, a poem.

I live up here And a little bit to the left And I go down only For the accidents and then Never a moment too soon Just the same it's a life it's plenty The stairs the petals she loves me Every time Nothing has changed Oh down there down there Every time The glass knights lie by their gloves of blood In the pans of the scales the helmets Brim over with water It's perfectly fair The pavements are dealt out the dice Every moment arrive somewhere You can hear the hearses getting lost in lungs Their bells stalling And then silence comes with the plate and I Give what I can Feeling It's worth it For I see What my votes the mice are accomplishing And I know I'm free This is how I live Up here and simply Others do otherwise Maybe

W. S. Merwin

[thibaudet]

I Did Think, Let’s Go About This Slowly

I did think, let’s go about this slowly

This is important. This should take 

some really deep thought. We should take

small thoughtful steps. 

But, bless us, we didn’t.

Mary Oliver 

[thibaudet]

[thibaudet]

Rain

Suddenly this defeat. This rain. The blues gone gray And the browns gone gray And yellow A terrible amber. In the cold streets Your warm body. In whatever room Your warm body. Among all the people Your absence The people who are always Not you. I have been easy with trees Too long. Too familiar with mountains. Joy has been a habit. Now Suddenly This rain.

[thibaudet]

Interview with Clarice Lispector - São Paulo, 1977 (English subtitles)

Clarice Lispector’s first and only TV interview, from February 1977, when she appeared on TV Cultura in São Paulo. She’d arrived intending to appear in a program about film, apparently, when the station’s director summoned his nerve and asked for an interview. She died later that year.

Lispector is restless, and charmingly curt, throughout the interview—it seems as if she really, really doesn’t want to be there. Even under duress, though, she gives stronger, more meaningful answers than many writers give at their most accessible. “I write without the hope that what I write can change anything at all. It changes nothing … Because at the end of the day we’re not trying to change things. We’re trying to open up somehow.”

At one point, the interlocutor asks, “What, in your opinion, is the role of the Brazilian writer today?”

“To speak as little as possible,” she says, her head tilted, her thumb half-massaging her temple, a cigarette between her fingers.

Dan Piepenbring, The Paris Review Blog

[thibaudet]

Resolution

The temptation towards resolution, towards wrapping up the package, seems to me a terrible trap. Why not be more honest with the moment? The most authentic endings are the ones which are already revolving towards another beginning.

Sam Shepard

[thibaudet]

I like them, for they are double.

I like people who dream or talk to themselves interminably; I like them, for they are double. They are here and elsewhere.

Albert Camus

[thibaudet]

wintertime

[thibaudet]

Fictions

We live in a world of fictions of every kind.

J.G. Ballard 

source: but does it float

[thibaudet]

Whoever Brought Me Here Will Have to Take Me Home.

In Persian poetry the poet often refers to himself or herself by name at the end of a poem as a sort of signature. Rumi's variation on this is to refer instead to Shams (over a thousand poems end this way) or to silence. He gives the poetry to its true authorship, including the emptiness after as part of the poem. Five hundred odes conclude with khamush, silence. Rumi is less interested in language, more attuned to the sources of it. He keeps asking Husam, "Who's making this music?" He sometimes gives the wording over to the invisible flute player: "Let that musician finish the poem." Words are not important in themselves but as resonators for a center.

[thibaudet]

adronitis

n. frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone—spending the first few weeks chatting in their psychological entryway, with each subsequent conversation like entering a different anteroom, each a little closer to the center of the house—wishing instead that you could start there and work your way out, exchanging your deepest secrets first, before easing into casualness, until you’ve built up enough mystery over the years to ask them where they’re from, and what they do for a living. From, www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com

[thibaudet]

[thibaudet]

In Evil Hour

They thought it was reprehensible, but they never said a word as they watched the children of the town jump into the fountain, and sift through the coins to steal some water. Gabriel García Márquez, La Mala Hora

[thibaudet]

Keeping track

A cheapening of sorts, the perpetual influx of another living beings words that engage an offshoot of thoughts and eventually allow you to feel a sense of authorship. This temporary relief is enough to suggest connection to the external world where lives are being lived in a way easily substituted. Analogous parts that strap themselves onto your self-perception in a way that acts as a hefty playbook of passes and blocks.

[thibaudet]

Forgive me, I was only scratching my nose. Of course I’ve always been right to love you.

During the Age of Silence, people communicated more, not less. Basic survival demanded that the hands were almost never still, and so it was only during sleep (and sometimes not even then) that people were not saying something or other. No distinction was made between the gestures of language and the gestures of life. The labor of building a house, say, or preparing a meal was no less an expression than making the sign for I love you or I feel serious. When a hand was used to shield one’s face when frightened by a loud noise something was being said, and when fingers were used to pick up something someone else had dropped something was being said; and even when the hands were at rest, that, too, was saying something. Naturally, there were misunderstandings. There were times when a finger might have been lifted to scratch a nose, and if casual eye contact was made with one’s lover just then, the lover might accidentally take it to be the gesture, not at all dissimilar, for Now I realize I was wrong to love you. These mistakes were heartbreaking. And yet, because people knew how easily they could happen, because they didn’t go around with the illusions that they understood perfectly the things other people said, they were used to interrupting each other to ask if they’d understood correctly. Sometimes these misunderstandings were even desirable, since they gave people a reason to say, Forgive me, I was only scratching my nose. Of course I’ve always been right to love you. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss.

[thibaudet]