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scrapofpaper2013-12-29 10:42 pm
two-grey-rooms.livejournal.com) wrote in scrapofpaper2013-12-29 10:42 pm
Entry tags:
woke up in a magic nigger movie with the bright lights pointed at me as a metaphor
"It is a condition of monsters that they do not perceive themselves as such. The dragon, you know, hunkered in the village devouring maidens, heard the townsfolk cry 'Monster!' and looked behind him."
--Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone
"When you're nothing, you're free to believe anything."
--Jerry Spinelli, Milkweed
"The cow had become something to believe in or not to believe in. Like angels. Mothers. Oranges. How could something as large as a cow live in the ghetto and not be seen? How could it survive? What would it eat? Rubble dust?
"And yet so great was the cry for milk for children that the cow seemed to materialize from the very hunger of the people, until one could almost see the animal loping down the street. Of course, no one really did see it, and the more we did not see it, the more we believed in it. Almost every day someone claimed to have heard a mysterious moo."
--Jerry Spinelli, Milkweed
"[...]it seemed I believed whatever I heard myself say."
--Jerry Spinelli, Milkweed
"Replica"
You've wasted another evening
siting with imaginary friends,
discussing the simplest possible
arrangement of an iris.
The sky, too, like a delicate dress
streaked with bleach, has been thrown away.
Once you wanted to be someone else
or another thing altogether: an iris in April,
or only its pistil, just that, a prayer so small
it was only rumored. What can it matter?
You know now your own life doesn't belong to you,
the way a child defects into his childhood
to discover it isn't his after all.
Still, on this and other evenings,
only another replica of thoughts
has been lost:
your life has its own, intact, far distant,
and unknowingly you have devoted your lives
to each other:
at Izura, toward dawn,
someone walks down to the sea
astonished you have taken so long.
--Mary Ruefle
"Barbarians"
Here and there, between trees,
cows lie down in the forest
in the midafternoon
as though sleep were an idea
for which they were willing
to die.
--Mary Ruefle
"Heaven on Earth"
My heaven will be spent on earth up until the end of the world.
--Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897)
i
You know, Mother, I have always wanted to be a saint. Ever since Celeste held up a basket of dress scraps, crying "Here my little sisters, choose!" And I chose--all. There are always children spinning themselves into statues, having to choose in the terrible stillness what am I before being able to move the enactment: had you not brought me up so well, I would never have cried when choosing to be his plaything.
ii
A hoop of no value, an even smaller ball--something he might lose, nothing with a string. I beg to be stolen!
iii
Whenever the boys spoke to me, I hid my fingers in my muff and there I would make small imitations of Christ. These little acts of love formed a flower bud out of my face. Although I was barely fourteen, I felt it best to leave the world at once.
iv
What an interesting study the world becomes when one is ready to leave it: a skirt, a set of kitchen utensils, little parcels. The yellow shop on rue Demi-Lune where there's an éclair in the window waiting for me! And the libraries where I would have broken my head.
v
Now all my Sisters are sealed round the bed like a row of onions: vocation of the Carmelite, sister, spouse, mother, warrior; the priest and the doctor. I would that all of their torments were reserved for me. But I am too small to climb the stairs! I want to seek out a means of going to heaven by a little way, a way that is very straight, very short, and totally new. I want to ride in an elevator.
vi
Believe me, don't wait until tomorrow to begin becoming a saint. I oblige you to take your wooden tops and go play for at least an hour in the attic. I must stay here in my bed. I'm waiting for the Thief, you know.
vii
I wonder what he will do at my death to surprise me. Will he sip me up like a dewdrop? So, I'm already thinking that, if I am not surprised enough, I will pretend to be surprised just to please him.
viii
I'm suffering very much, it's true, but I am suffering well, that's the point. Take silence for example--what failures in clarity it prevents. I speak especially about silence because it's on this point that I fail the most.
ix
Are peaches in season? Are they selling plums in the street? Violets from a cart? Only in the kingdom of heaven will it no longer be necessary to have some souvenir.
x
No line has ever given me more pleasure to write than this one in which I have the good fortune to tell you he is very nearly through unpetaling me!
xi
They think I have difficulty in breathing! I am pretending to take little sips to let him know that I am drinking in his words.
xii
Scarcely had I laid my head on the pillow when I felt a bubbling stream on my lips. My blood was like a plaything. When God abandoned it, he fell asleep and dreamt he was still playing with it.
--Mary Ruefle
"The Pedant's Discourse"
Ladies, life is no dream; Gentlemen,
it's a brief folly: you wouldn't know
death's flashcard if you saw it.
First the factories close, then the mills,
then all the sooty towns shrivel up
and fall off from the navel.
And how should I know, just because my gramma
died in one? I was four hundred miles away,
shopping. I bought a pair of black breasts
with elastic straps that slip over the shoulder.
I'm always afraid I might die at any moment.
That night I heard a man in a movie say
I have no memories and presumably he meant it.
But surely it was an act. I remember my gramma's
housedress was covered with roses. And she
remembered it too. How many times she turned
to her lap and saw the machines: the deep folds
of red shirts endlessly unfolding while they dried.
Whose flashcard is that? So, ladies and gentlemen,
the truth distorts the truth and we are in it up
to our eyebrows. I stand here before you tonight,
old and wise: cured of vain dreams, debauched,
wayward, and haggard. The mind's a killjoy, if
I may say so myself, and the sun's a star,
the red dwarf of which will finally consume us.
--Mary Ruefle
"Instrument of the Highest"
CHAIM SOUTINE (1893-1943)
--Mary Ruefle
--Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone
"When you're nothing, you're free to believe anything."
--Jerry Spinelli, Milkweed
"The cow had become something to believe in or not to believe in. Like angels. Mothers. Oranges. How could something as large as a cow live in the ghetto and not be seen? How could it survive? What would it eat? Rubble dust?
"And yet so great was the cry for milk for children that the cow seemed to materialize from the very hunger of the people, until one could almost see the animal loping down the street. Of course, no one really did see it, and the more we did not see it, the more we believed in it. Almost every day someone claimed to have heard a mysterious moo."
--Jerry Spinelli, Milkweed
"[...]it seemed I believed whatever I heard myself say."
--Jerry Spinelli, Milkweed
"Replica"
You've wasted another evening
siting with imaginary friends,
discussing the simplest possible
arrangement of an iris.
The sky, too, like a delicate dress
streaked with bleach, has been thrown away.
Once you wanted to be someone else
or another thing altogether: an iris in April,
or only its pistil, just that, a prayer so small
it was only rumored. What can it matter?
You know now your own life doesn't belong to you,
the way a child defects into his childhood
to discover it isn't his after all.
Still, on this and other evenings,
only another replica of thoughts
has been lost:
your life has its own, intact, far distant,
and unknowingly you have devoted your lives
to each other:
at Izura, toward dawn,
someone walks down to the sea
astonished you have taken so long.
--Mary Ruefle
"Barbarians"
Here and there, between trees,
cows lie down in the forest
in the midafternoon
as though sleep were an idea
for which they were willing
to die.
--Mary Ruefle
"Heaven on Earth"
My heaven will be spent on earth up until the end of the world.
--Saint Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897)
i
You know, Mother, I have always wanted to be a saint. Ever since Celeste held up a basket of dress scraps, crying "Here my little sisters, choose!" And I chose--all. There are always children spinning themselves into statues, having to choose in the terrible stillness what am I before being able to move the enactment: had you not brought me up so well, I would never have cried when choosing to be his plaything.
ii
A hoop of no value, an even smaller ball--something he might lose, nothing with a string. I beg to be stolen!
iii
Whenever the boys spoke to me, I hid my fingers in my muff and there I would make small imitations of Christ. These little acts of love formed a flower bud out of my face. Although I was barely fourteen, I felt it best to leave the world at once.
iv
What an interesting study the world becomes when one is ready to leave it: a skirt, a set of kitchen utensils, little parcels. The yellow shop on rue Demi-Lune where there's an éclair in the window waiting for me! And the libraries where I would have broken my head.
v
Now all my Sisters are sealed round the bed like a row of onions: vocation of the Carmelite, sister, spouse, mother, warrior; the priest and the doctor. I would that all of their torments were reserved for me. But I am too small to climb the stairs! I want to seek out a means of going to heaven by a little way, a way that is very straight, very short, and totally new. I want to ride in an elevator.
vi
Believe me, don't wait until tomorrow to begin becoming a saint. I oblige you to take your wooden tops and go play for at least an hour in the attic. I must stay here in my bed. I'm waiting for the Thief, you know.
vii
I wonder what he will do at my death to surprise me. Will he sip me up like a dewdrop? So, I'm already thinking that, if I am not surprised enough, I will pretend to be surprised just to please him.
viii
I'm suffering very much, it's true, but I am suffering well, that's the point. Take silence for example--what failures in clarity it prevents. I speak especially about silence because it's on this point that I fail the most.
ix
Are peaches in season? Are they selling plums in the street? Violets from a cart? Only in the kingdom of heaven will it no longer be necessary to have some souvenir.
x
No line has ever given me more pleasure to write than this one in which I have the good fortune to tell you he is very nearly through unpetaling me!
xi
They think I have difficulty in breathing! I am pretending to take little sips to let him know that I am drinking in his words.
xii
Scarcely had I laid my head on the pillow when I felt a bubbling stream on my lips. My blood was like a plaything. When God abandoned it, he fell asleep and dreamt he was still playing with it.
--Mary Ruefle
"The Pedant's Discourse"
Ladies, life is no dream; Gentlemen,
it's a brief folly: you wouldn't know
death's flashcard if you saw it.
First the factories close, then the mills,
then all the sooty towns shrivel up
and fall off from the navel.
And how should I know, just because my gramma
died in one? I was four hundred miles away,
shopping. I bought a pair of black breasts
with elastic straps that slip over the shoulder.
I'm always afraid I might die at any moment.
That night I heard a man in a movie say
I have no memories and presumably he meant it.
But surely it was an act. I remember my gramma's
housedress was covered with roses. And she
remembered it too. How many times she turned
to her lap and saw the machines: the deep folds
of red shirts endlessly unfolding while they dried.
Whose flashcard is that? So, ladies and gentlemen,
the truth distorts the truth and we are in it up
to our eyebrows. I stand here before you tonight,
old and wise: cured of vain dreams, debauched,
wayward, and haggard. The mind's a killjoy, if
I may say so myself, and the sun's a star,
the red dwarf of which will finally consume us.
--Mary Ruefle
"Instrument of the Highest"
CHAIM SOUTINE (1893-1943)
Ah the truth,
is the rank lustful lives of men and women
going after it
in all its red--
it is just this nipple exposed beneath the rag
puce with lava-milk,
it is just this beef-stink in the studio,
the popped-out eyes of rotting salmon,
a particular chicken: the scrawniest one in the shop,
long neck and blue skin
I’m going to hang it up by the beak with a nail.
In a few days it should be perfect.
It must be very very dead.
Even the red gladioli
have passed over into that garden where things shout
don’t look at me!
Everything startled into still thinking
it is alive.
What else is spirit but the hectic orifice
of the still unwilling
to admit they are excruciatingly gone?
A conniption fit of fact?
Still nothing new.
What is more beautiful than that?--Mary Ruefle