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two-grey-rooms.livejournal.com"You want tangible, social benefits to writing fiction? There are people walking around today because other people wrote words that spoke to them. That'll do."
--Warren Ellis
"He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing."
--Sherman Alexie, The Toughest Indian in the World
2. How I Would Paint Happiness
Something sudden, a windfall,
a meteor shower. No--
a flowering tree releasing
all its blossoms at once,
and the one standing beneath it
unexpectedly robed in bloom,
transformed into a stranger
too beautiful to touch.
--Lisel Mueller, from "Imaginary Paintings"
If my voice is not reaching you
add to it the echo--
echo of ancient epics
And to that--
a princess
And to the princess--your beauty
And to your beauty--
a lover's heart
And in the lover's heart
a dagger
--Afzal Ahmed Syed
"War and drink are the two things man is never too poor to buy."
--William Faulkner
"First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you."
--F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The Story"
( trigger warning: gruesome wartime violence, civilian death )
--Kim Addonizio
"There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out."
--Russian Proverb
"Brotherhood"
Homage to Claudius Ptolemy
I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.
--Octavio Paz
"To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours--that is what you must be able to attain. To be solitary as you were when you were a child, when the grownups walked around involved with matters that seemed large and important because they looked so busy and because you didn't understand a thing about what they were doing."
--Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Observe the wonders as they occur around you.
Don't claim them.
Feel the artistry moving through and be silent.
--Rumi
"[...]this sound, which had lasted now half an hour and had taken its place soothingly in the scale of sounds pressing on top of her, such as the tap of balls upon bats, the sharp, sudden bark now and then, 'How's that? How's that?' of the children playing cricket, had ceased; so that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts and seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again as she sat with the children the words of some old cradle song, murmured by nature, 'I am guarding you--I am your support,' but at other times suddenly and unexpectedly, especially when her mind raised itself slightly from the task actually in hand, had no such kindly meaning, but like a ghostly roll of drums remorselessly beat the measure of life, made one think of the destruction of the island and its engulfment in the sea, and warned her whose day had slipped past in one quick doing after another that it was all ephemeral as a rainbow--this sound which had been obscured and concealed under the other sounds suddenly thundered hollow in her ears and made her look up with an impulse of terror."
--Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
"Then beneath the colour there was the shape. She could see it all so clearly, so commandingly, when she looked: it was when she took her brush in hand that the whole thing changed. It was in that moment's flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her that often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child. Such she often felt herself--struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to say: 'But this is what I see; this is what I see,' and so to clasp some miserable remnant of her vision to her breast, which a thousand forces did their best to pluck from her. And it was then too, in that chill and windy way, as she began to paint, that there forced upon her other things, her own inadequacy, her insignificance, keeping house for her father off the Brompton Road, and had much ado to control her impulse to fling herself (thank Heaven she had always resisted so far) at Mrs. Ramsay's knee and say to her--but what could one say to her? 'I'm in love with you?' No, that was not true. 'I'm in love with this all,' waving her hand at the hedge, at the house, at the children. It was absurd, it was impossible."
--Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
--Warren Ellis
"He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing."
--Sherman Alexie, The Toughest Indian in the World
2. How I Would Paint Happiness
Something sudden, a windfall,
a meteor shower. No--
a flowering tree releasing
all its blossoms at once,
and the one standing beneath it
unexpectedly robed in bloom,
transformed into a stranger
too beautiful to touch.
--Lisel Mueller, from "Imaginary Paintings"
If my voice is not reaching you
add to it the echo--
echo of ancient epics
And to that--
a princess
And to the princess--your beauty
And to your beauty--
a lover's heart
And in the lover's heart
a dagger
--Afzal Ahmed Syed
"War and drink are the two things man is never too poor to buy."
--William Faulkner
"First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you."
--F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The Story"
( trigger warning: gruesome wartime violence, civilian death )
--Kim Addonizio
"There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out."
--Russian Proverb
"Brotherhood"
Homage to Claudius Ptolemy
I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.
--Octavio Paz
"To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours--that is what you must be able to attain. To be solitary as you were when you were a child, when the grownups walked around involved with matters that seemed large and important because they looked so busy and because you didn't understand a thing about what they were doing."
--Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Observe the wonders as they occur around you.
Don't claim them.
Feel the artistry moving through and be silent.
--Rumi
"[...]this sound, which had lasted now half an hour and had taken its place soothingly in the scale of sounds pressing on top of her, such as the tap of balls upon bats, the sharp, sudden bark now and then, 'How's that? How's that?' of the children playing cricket, had ceased; so that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts and seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again as she sat with the children the words of some old cradle song, murmured by nature, 'I am guarding you--I am your support,' but at other times suddenly and unexpectedly, especially when her mind raised itself slightly from the task actually in hand, had no such kindly meaning, but like a ghostly roll of drums remorselessly beat the measure of life, made one think of the destruction of the island and its engulfment in the sea, and warned her whose day had slipped past in one quick doing after another that it was all ephemeral as a rainbow--this sound which had been obscured and concealed under the other sounds suddenly thundered hollow in her ears and made her look up with an impulse of terror."
--Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
"Then beneath the colour there was the shape. She could see it all so clearly, so commandingly, when she looked: it was when she took her brush in hand that the whole thing changed. It was in that moment's flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her that often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child. Such she often felt herself--struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to say: 'But this is what I see; this is what I see,' and so to clasp some miserable remnant of her vision to her breast, which a thousand forces did their best to pluck from her. And it was then too, in that chill and windy way, as she began to paint, that there forced upon her other things, her own inadequacy, her insignificance, keeping house for her father off the Brompton Road, and had much ado to control her impulse to fling herself (thank Heaven she had always resisted so far) at Mrs. Ramsay's knee and say to her--but what could one say to her? 'I'm in love with you?' No, that was not true. 'I'm in love with this all,' waving her hand at the hedge, at the house, at the children. It was absurd, it was impossible."
--Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
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