bottleonthebookcase

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“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

— Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky.

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“A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don’t find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting.”

— J.M. Barrie, To The Five

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Jill McDonough, “Love and the Deli Counter”

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Michael Rosen, untitled poem from Carrying the Elephant, 2002.

[Transcript:

I swerve. There are humps and pot-holes. If I try

to drive straight over a hump, it scrapes the bottom

of the car. So it’s best to turn to the left or right so

that I take the hump at an angle. Not face on. The

pot-holes are harder. They hide, looking like ripples

in the road-surface, but as I get near they yawn.

My wheel rolls straight in, hits the far side and the

whole car jolts. What’s hard, is that the holes are often

on the down-side of the humps. So even as I dodge

the hump I land in the hole. Sometimes I spot

the hole on the other side of the hump and at the very

moment I’ve worked out how I’ll avoid it, I find

myself going straight over the hump, dead centre,

and it’s scraping the bottom off some vital out-of-sight

part of my engine. ]

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Epitaph

When I am dead, carve this upon my stone: Here lies a woman, fit root for flower and tree, Whose living flesh, now mouldering round the bone, Wants nothing more than this for immortality, That in her heart, where love so long unfruited lay A seed for grass or weed shall grow, And push to light and air its heedless way; That she who lies here dead may know Through all the putrid marrow of her bones The searing pangs of birth, While none may know the pains nor hear the groans Of she who lived with barrenness upon the earth.

Gwendolyn Bennett.

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Josephine Corcoran

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Kayleb Rae Candrilli, from Water I Won’t Touch

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Michael Rosen, untitled poem from Carrying the Elephant, 2002.

[Transcript:

It didn't work out the way it's supposed to. The four

of us on a platform. We were supposed to have

given up. We should have learnt that being

unconvinced is what counts for wise. But we're

here. Shocked again. Coming out of our kitchens

to say, if nothing else, everyone here is sick of the

age-old cruelties. We should have noticed that

history ended but we got distracted by some

massacres. So we're here again. It didn't work out

the way it's supposed to. ]

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Travelling in a Comfortable Car

Travelling in a comfortable car Down a rainy road in the country We saw a raggedy fellow at nightfall Signal to us for a ride, with a low bow. We had a roof and we had room and we drove on And we heard me say, in a grumpy voice: no We can’t take anyone with us. We had gone on a long way, perhaps a day’s march When suddenly I was shocked by this voice of mine This behaviour of mine and this Whole world.

- Bertolt Brecht.

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In a Parlor Containing a Table

In a parlor containing a table And three chairs, three men confided Their inmost thoughts to one another. I, said the first, am miserable. I am miserable, the second said. I think that for me the right word Is miserable, said the third. Well, they said, it's quarter to two. Good night. Cheer up. Sleep well. You too. You too. You too.

-Galway Kinnell.

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Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humour is just common sense, dancing. Those who lack humour are without judgement and should be trusted with nothing.

Clive James, Clive James On Television.

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In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.

Edith Wharton, A First Word.

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—Anna Akhmatova, The Last Toast, tr. by D. M. Thomas

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When you long with all your heart for someone to love you, a madness grows there that shakes all sense from the trees and the water and the earth. And nothing lives for you, except the long deep bitter want. And this is what everyone feels from birth to death.

Denton Welch

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People don't get their morality from their reading matter: they bring their morality to it. The assumption that ordinary people’s lives could be controlled and limited by what entertained them was always too condescending to be anything but fatuous.

Clive James, A Blizzard of Tiny Kisses, 1980.

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“The key is to keep asking yourself the same question, again and again and again: this is your life - what do you want to pay attention to?”

— Catherine Price, from How to Break Up with Your Phone