alexduringer-blog-blog - Tumblr blog

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"Attention must finally be paid to such a person." -Arthur Miller; Death of a Salesman

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"Baby BIrch" by Joanna Newsom

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“He was never without misery, and never without hope.” -Joseph Heller; Catch-22

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"I don't tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth" -Tennessee Williams; A Streetcar Named Desire

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This Hour and What is Dead

by Li-Young Lee

Tonight my brother, in heavy boots, is walking through bare rooms over my head, opening and closing doors. What could he be looking for in an empty house? What could he possibly need there in heaven? Does he remember his earth, his birthplace set to torches? His love for me feels like spilled water running back to its vessel. At this hour, what is dead is restless and what is living is burning. Someone tell him he should sleep now. My father keeps a light on by our bed and readies for our journey. He mends ten holes in the knees of five pairs of boy's pants. his love for me is like sewing: various colors and too much thread, the stitching uneven. But the needle pierces clean through with each stroke of his hand. At this hour, what is dead is worried and what is living is fugitive. Someone tell him he should sleep now. God, that old furnace, keeps talking with his mouth of teeth, a beard stained at feasts, and his breath of gasoline, airplane, human ash. His love for me feels like fire, feels like doves, feels like river-water. At this hour, what is dead is helpless, kind and helpless. While the Lord lives. Someone tell the Lord to leave me alone. I've had enough of his love that feels like burning and flight and running away.

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“Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.” -Cormac McCarthy; Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West

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"She keeps me close to her heart in a locket; I keep her close to my cock on a picture in my pocket. I cannot stop not matter how I try."

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“It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.” -J.D. Salinger; The Catcher in the Rye

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“There is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer.” Angela Carter; The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

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"I feel like the word shatter." -Margaret Atwood; The Handmaid's Tale

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"First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air." -Virgina Woolf; Mrs. Dalloway

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"What makes a man spend his whole life in disguise? I think I might know." -City and Colour; "What Makes a Man?"

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"He said it was impossible; all men believed in God, even those who turn their backs on him. That was his belief, and if he were ever to doubt it, his life would become meaningless." -Albert Camus; The Stranger

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"I feel their losses pile up like dirt thrown on a box after it has been lowered into the earth." -Julia Alvarez; How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

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"As much as I live I shall not imitate them or hate myself for being different to them." -Orhan Pamuk; Snow

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"Oh my love, won't you sing along?" -Greg Laswell

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Elevator Operator, Danville, Virginia, 1964

by Claudia Emerson All day she ferried them—almost all women, all white—as they rose to fall in strict passage, the gondola close to airlessness, curefew-dark. She filled the forward corner, perched on a small, fold-down door. All day she closed them in like perfumed birds rustling nylons, shopping bags, purses—and released them again to the few destinations she had to repeat, announcing: third floor—men's wear, mezzanine—unseen, steel cables controlling all of them in endless, storied looping. Only children saw her until most learned not to, looking up instead to the dial above the door, its face an eclipsed compass, the ornate, brass needle of her voice sweeping east to west to east by the northern route—as though the south were never there.