learningfromthehands-blog

[learningfromthehands-blog]

For what is not connected with her to me? And what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped on the flags! In every cloud, in every tree – filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object, by day I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men, and women – my own features mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (via italktopencils)

[learningfromthehands-blog]

What are you doing here? Where are you going? A sense of being watched by things you didn't know about. Of being a disturbance. Life around coming to some conclusions about you from vantage points you couldn't see.

Alice Munro, "Train" in Dear Life

[learningfromthehands-blog]

William Wegman, “Contemplating the Bust of Man Ray,” 1978.

[learningfromthehands-blog]

No better love than love with no object, no more satisfying work than work with no purpose.

Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks

[learningfromthehands-blog]

[learningfromthehands-blog]

Regarding myself as a mere echo, Cave-like, unintelligible, nocturnal…May 27, 1956 Hospital Moscow

Anna Akhmatova, from The Complete Poems, translated by Judith Hemschemeyer (via growing-orbits)

[learningfromthehands-blog]

Three o’clock. Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.

Jean-Paul Sartre, La Nausée (via raspberrying)

[learningfromthehands-blog]

Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

Carl Jung

[learningfromthehands-blog]

After I had cut off my hands and grown new ones something my former hands had longed for came and asked to be rocked. After my plucked out eyes had withered, and new ones grown something my former eyes had wept for came asking to be pitied.

Denise Levertov, "Intrusion"

[learningfromthehands-blog]

i finished my undergrad degree in english last week which means any and everything i read from now on will be for my own pleasure. i've started a new job which means i'll be busy nonetheless, but still, i'm very much looking forward to using the time off i do have to read what i choose for myself, not what my professors choose.

the point of this is to say i'll probably be posting more often? 

[learningfromthehands-blog]

You have the lovers, they are nameless, their histories only for each other, and you have the room, the bed and the windows. Pretend it is a ritual. Unfurl the bed, bury the lovers, blacken the windows, let them live in that house for a generation or two. No one dares disturb them. Visitors in the corridor tip-toe past the long closed door, they listen for sounds, for a moan, for a song: nothing is heard, not even breathing. You know they are not dead, you can feel the presence of their intense love. Your children grow up, they leave you, they have become soldiers and riders. Your mate dies after a life of service. Who knows you? Who remembers you? But in your house a ritual is in progress: it is not finished: it needs more people. One day the door is opened to the lovers' chamber. The room has become a dense garden, full of colours, smells, sounds you have never known. The bed is smooth as a wafer of sunlight, in the midst of the garden it stands alone. In the bed the lovers, slowly and deliberately and silently, perform the act of love. Their eyes are closed, as tightly as if heavy coins of flesh lay on them. Their lips are bruised with new and old bruises. Her hair and his beard are hopelessly tangled. When he puts his mouth against her shoulder she is uncertain whether her shoulder has given or received the kiss. All her flesh is like a mouth. He carries his fingers along her waist and feels his own waist caressed. She holds him closer and his own arms tighten around her. She kisses the hand beside her mouth. It is his hand or her hand, it hardly matters, there are so many more kisses. You stand beside the bed, weeping with happiness, you carefully peel away the sheets from the slow-moving bodies. Your eyes are filled with tears, you barely make out the lovers. As you undress you sing out, and your voice is magnificent because now you believe it is the first human voice heard in that room. The garments you let fall grow into vines. You climb into bed and recover the flesh. You close your eyes and allow them to be sewn shut. You create an embrace and fall into it. There is only one moment of pain or doubt as you wonder how many multitudes are lying beside your body, but a mouth kisses and a hand soothes the moment away.

Leonard Cohen, "You Have the Lovers"

[learningfromthehands-blog]

stone songs

[learningfromthehands-blog]

Lucyna Kolendo, Camera Obscura, 2011-2012

[learningfromthehands-blog]

Everybody's a bit queer and slightly mad, but I'm sure that my compulsion to construct more and more unprofitable verses isn't anywhere near as screwball as the compulsion of business-men to make more and more money.

Earle Birney

[learningfromthehands-blog]

She says, 'I am content when wakened birds, Before they fly, test the reality Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings; But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields Return no more, where, then, is paradise?' There is not any haunt of prophecy, Nor any old chimera of the grave, Neither the golden underground, nor isle Melodious, where spirits gat them home, Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured As April's green endures; or will endure Like her remembrance of awakened birds, Or her desire for June and evening, tipped By the consummation of the swallow's wings.

Wallace Stevens, from: "Sunday Morning"

[learningfromthehands-blog]

O choir him, birds, and let him come to rest within this beauty as one rests in love, till pears upon the bough encrusted with small snails as pale as pearls hang golden in a heart that knows tears are a part of love. And choir me too to keep my heart a size larger than seeing, unseduced by each bright glimpse of beauty striking like a bell, so that the whole may toll, its meaning shine clear of the myriad images that still-- do what I will--encumber its pure line

P.K. Page, from: "After Rain"

[learningfromthehands-blog]

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would be utterly contemned.

Song of Songs