these things i like

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— James Baldwin

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Scrapbook of John Singer Sargent (circa 1874 –80) 

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Egon Schiele, Woman and Girl Embracing (1918) Charcoal on paper

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Resurrection music,     silence,      and surf

No longer speaking Listening with the whole body And with every drop of blood Overtaken by silence

But this same silence is become speech With the speed of darkness.

Between        between the man : act     exact woman : in curve   senses in their maze frail orbits, green tries,      games of stars

shape of the body speaking its evidence

______________

Poetry:  Muriel Rukeyser, (I, II, V) from The Speed of Darkness

[wastedwinter]

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Osmar Schindler, Germanic warrior with helmet (1902)

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La femme au couteau (The Woman With a Knife, 1969), dir. Timité Bassori

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Statue of the goddess Nike of Samothraki. Currently held by the Louvre Museum. 

[wastedwinter]

– Ansel Elkins, “Autobiography of Eve”

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– Franny Choi, from ‘Catastrophe Is Next To Godliness’

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On his birthday.

[wastedwinter]

Edward Quigley, Gelatin Silver Print, 1930 Allan Chasanoff Photographic Collection

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[...] we lay on the river-bank, learning the lines of each other's bodies anew. This, and this and this. We were like gods, at the dawning of the world, and our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.

Madeline Miller, from The Song of Achilles

[wastedwinter]

I focused on my breathing, you were allowed to do that. You could even count the breaths. And then at the end you could just think about anything, anything you wanted, but after five minutes of counting my breath, I didn’t want to think. My mind felt empty, like the inside of a glass jar. I was appropriating my fear of total disappearance as a spiritual practice. I was inhabiting disappearance as something that could reveal and inform, rather than totalise and annihilate. A lot of the time my meditation was unsuccessful.

 Sally Rooney, “Conversations With Friends”

[wastedwinter]

Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.

Alain de Botton, Twitter (2014)

[wastedwinter]

She wonders if / he is listening too. The cruel thing is, she falls asleep / listening.

Anne Carson, from “Autobiography of Red”

[wastedwinter]

Sometimes a journey makes itself necessary.

Anne Carson, “Autobiography of Red”