#M train

[dk-thrive]

I got some coffee and stood looking at the sky.

— Patti Smith, M Train: A Memoir (Vintage, October 6 2015) (via Thoughts)

[walkingdetroit]

Library

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Photograph of Patti Smith by Rebecca Miller.

* * * *

Memory. Creativity. Links to the past.

From 𝐽𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝐾𝑖𝑑𝑠 by Patti Smith.

"When I was very young, my mother took me for walks in Humboldt Park, along the edge of the Prairie River. I have vague memories, like impressions on glass plates, of an old boathouse, a circular band shell, an arched stone bridge. The narrows of the river emptied into a wide lagoon and I saw upon its surface a singular miracle. A long curving neck rose from a dress of white plumage.

"𝑆𝑤𝑎𝑛, my mother said, sensing my excitement. It pattered the bright water, flapping its great wings, and lifted into the sky.

The word alone hardly attested to its magnificence nor conveyed the emotion it produced. The sight of it generated an urge I had no words for, a desire to speak of the swan, to say something of its whiteness, the explosive nature of its movement, and the slow beating of its wings.

The swan became one with the sky. I struggled to find words to describe my own sense of it. 𝑆𝑤𝑎𝑛, I repeated, not entirely satisfied, and I felt a twinge, a curious yearning, imperceptible to passersby, my mother, the trees, or the clouds."

And from 𝑀 𝑇𝑟𝑎��𝑛:

"We seek to stay present, even as the ghosts attempt to draw us away. Our father manning the loom of eternal return. Our mother wandering toward paradise, releasing the thread. In my way of thinking, anything is possible. Life is at the bottom of things and belief at the top, while the creative impulse, dwelling in the center, informs all. We imagine a house, a rectangle of hope. A room with a single bed with a pale coverlet, a few precious books, a stamp album. Walls papered in faded floral fall away and burst as a newborn meadow speckled with sun and a stream emptying into a greater stream where a small boat awaits with two glowing oars and one blue sail."

Ecco Press Alfred A. Knopf Vintage Books & Anchor Books The Marginalian

[sirgawin]

did not have patti smith being a tennant fangirl on my bingo card this year

[dzgrizzle]

Happy 78th birthday to punk poet, award winning author, musician, playwright, the woman Salvador Dali once likened to “a gothic crow” – Patti Smith (born 30 December 1946). Seen here in a 1977 photo by Lynn Goldsmith. My favorite song by her is “People Have the Power” and my favorite album is BANGA. My favorite book by her is “M Train.” My copy is from her reading and impromptu acoustic concert at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta in 2015. I have an autographed copy of her book “Woolgathering.” She is a modern-day patron saint for memoirists, poets, and contemplatives.

[wordwhile]

Please stay forever, I say to the things I know. Don't go. Don't grow.

— Patti Smith, M Train

[agracefulfall]

Bought and started "M Train" today because I can't get enough of Patti.

[hangsawoman]

obsessed with how these sentences follow each other up. oh, to be reborn as something else. but alas, the snow continues, the world continues. we are here and alive and i go out to greet the world.

[ana103]

[lizlemondyke]

I believe in movement. I believe in that lighthearted balloon, the world. I believe in midnight and the hour of noon. but what else do I believe in? Sometimes everything. It fluctuates like light flitting over a pond. I believe in life, which one day each of us shall lose. When we are young we think we won't, that we are different. As a child I thought I would never grow up, that I could will it so. And then I realized, quite recently, that I had crossed some line, unconsciously cloaked in the truth of my chronology. How did we get so damn old? I say to my joints, my iron-colored hair. Now I am older than my love, my departed friends. Perhaps I will live so long that the New York Public Library will be obliged to hand over the walking stick of Virginia Woolf. I would cherish it for her, and the stones in her pocket. But I would also keep on living, refusing to surrender my pen.

Patti Smith, M Train, 2015

[hyperrealcartography]

Why Doesn't The M Loop in Queens?

In my efforts to build community support for the QueensLink, I find myself talking to people about extending the M train. Since the M loops back into Queens, some folks thought that we were planning on extending it from its Middle Village end, not from Queens Blvd. Once people realize this, the inevitable next question I get is, “Why doesn’t the M train loop up to Roosevelt Ave to make a…

[dk-thrive]

All I needed for the mind was to be led to new stations. All I needed for the heart was to visit a place of greater storms.

— Patti Smith, M Train: A Memoir (Knopf, October 6, 2015 (via Thoughts)

[abirdinacage]

Patti Smith

[hellohaters]

my thought processes had the destination futility of a child's locomotive - Patti Smith, M Train book

[athenasparrow]

Can I just say how I love the fact that you started the Jily M rated express and how you will end it! It’s like it was made just for you 😉 😳🔥

Thank you lovely anon! I believe @joyseuphoria and @practicecourts may have had similar thoughts, although I believe they expected I'd do smut instead of angst. 😂

I also get a turn in the middle! I'm very spoiled!

When there's not a train with smut, just derail another train 💅😝

[bruttoarchives]

patti smith via substack