late night long time hazy lingerings, and memories

"We both developed a passion for cigarettes. Tobacco is difficult to find here, and terribly expensive when you do, but Sam had made a number of black market connections while compiling the research for his book, and he was often able to find packs of twenty for as low as one or one-and-a-half glots. I am talking about real, old-fashioned cigarettes, the kind that are produced in factories and come in colorful paper wrappers with cellophane on the outside. The ones Sam bought had been stolen from the various foreign charity ships that had docked here in the past, and the brand names were usually printed in languages we could not even read. We would smoke them after it got dark, lying in bed and looking out through the big, fan-shaped window, watching the sky and its agitations, the clouds drifting across the moon, the tiny stars, the blizzards that came pouring down from above. We would blow the smoke out of our mouths and watch it float across the room, casting shadows on the far wall that dispersed the moment they formed. There was a beautiful transience in all this, a sense of fate dragging us along with it into unknown corners of oblivion. We often talked about home then, summoning up as many memories as we could, bringing back the smallest, most specific images in a kind of languorous incantation--the maple trees along Miro Avenue in October, the Roman numeral clocks in the public school classrooms, the green dragon light fixture in the Chinese restaurant across from the university. We were able to share the flavor of these things, to relive the myriad incidentals of a world we had both known since childhood, and it helped to keep our spirits up, I think, helped to make us believe that some day we would be able to return to all that."


- Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things

nice words # 16

widdershins

nice cd cover # 20

Junip - Fields

the skylight of rock

"There's also a story that claims the city wasn't really destroyed at all. Instead, through a charm known only to the King, the city and its inhabitants were whisked away and replaced by phantoms of themselves, and it was only these phantoms that were burnt and slaughtered. The real city was shrunk very small and placed in a cave beneath the great heap of stones. Everything that was once there is there still, including the palaces and the gardens filled with trees and flowers; including the people, no bigger than ants, but going about their lives as before -- wearing their tiny clothes, giving their tiny banquets, telling their tiny stories, singing their tiny songs.

The King knows what's happened and it gives him nightmares, but the rest of them don't know. They don't know they've become so small. They don't know they're supposed to be dead. They don't even know they've been saved. To them the ceiling of rock looks like a sky: light comes in through a pinhole between the stones, and they think it's the sun."


- Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

a series of sea pics # 2

pic of paris # 1

line of lyrics # 6

But I love
the bones of you.
That I will

never escape.


And it's you
and it's

May

And we're sleeping
through the day


And I'm
five years ago

and three thousand
miles away


And I

can't move my arm
for fear

that you will wake


And I'm five years
ago
and three thousand
miles

away.



(Elbow - The Bones of You)

nice cd cover # 19

Johan Johansson - And in the Endless Pause There Came the Sound of Bees

the air had a bite

"I was beyond the traffic noise, the intermittent stir of factories across the river. So at least in this they'd been correct, placing the graveyard here, a silence that had stood its ground. The air had a bite. I breathed deeply, remained in one spot, waiting to feel the peace that is supposed to descend upon the dead, waiting to see the light that hangs above the fields of the landscapist's lament.

I stood there, listening. The wind blew snow from the branches. Snow blew out of the woods in eddies and sweeping gusts. I raised my collar, put my gloves back on. When the air was still again, I walked among the stones, trying to read the names and dates, adjusting the flags to make them swing free. Then I stood and listened.

The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have a presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? They are also in the ground, of course, asleep and crumbling. Perhaps we are what they dream.

May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan."


- Don Delillo, White Noise

an end, once more. a start, even more.

happiness # 61:

no matter what has happened, no matter what happens -- i'm still here. i'm always here. it's the one thing i can be sure of - to be here, to be now - and all else fades into oblivion. no, forget that. all else comes into existence, in the best way possible.

sadness # 9:

no matter what has happened, no matter what happens -- i'll always still be here. even though i sometimes want to be nowhere. (but that is just a responsability i have to take up.)

song of the day:

Goldfrapp - Clowns

nice words # 16:

hymn

nice cd cover # 18:

Pink Floyd - Meddle