Selected lines from a morning Americano's worth of reading:
"Regardless of our heritage, we carry from our mothers' wombs our own fanatic hearts."
"The bookish habits of Michel de Montaigne ought likewise to be imitated. (Already I've become more tolerant!) The essai, as the sixteenth-century Frenchman named it, is less a certainty and more a search, an attempt at sense-making, a setting forth, as if in a boat of words, to see if language will keep the thought afloat; a testing of the air for what rings true, an effort at illuminating grays."
"Our calendars, once full of feasts of virgins, martyrs, and confessors, now are crowded with unholy days. The day they struck our shining cities; the day we leveled theirs; the day they killed our innocents; the day we did the same to theirs. So to have a poem and some better news, every day, is no bad thing."
"We find in our theatres and times, like Vladimir and Estragon, that life is waiting, killing time, holding to the momentary hope that whatever's supposed to happen next is scheduled to occur--wars end, the last thin shelf of ice melts, and the lake is clear and blue, like the ocean we are always dreaming of crossing, we get it right, we make it home--if not today, then possibly tomorrow."
"There's something about the impulse to prune and plant body parts on the westernmost peninsula of a distant county in a far country that goes a step beyond your standard tourist class."
Posted by ghetto monk at August 3, 2005 07:18 AM | TrackBackemily's being willing to admit her ignorance, #6
what the heck is that last quote talking about?
does he mean set up residence or cut and bury other people's bodies?
Posted by: emily jane at August 3, 2005 10:37 AMej, it's intentionally de-contextualized. it's much funnier (to me) that way, sounding so absurd.
Posted by: jeremy at August 3, 2005 01:19 PMhi, jeremy. i like the quote about the "essai." It seems like a strange paradox how language can create limits (or mere approximations of "what is"), but then we try to use language to overcome its very limits. strange (at least to me).
also, if you choose to withdraw from blogging a bit, i can't say that i blame you. i know that horrid romanticism (i used to call it by a different name). while it could be a great thing, i've experienced and noticed that extremely creative individuals have a tendency to suffocate themselves with it. to tell you the truth, i'd rather not make a pimple look like a dimple. (excuse the dorky rhyme.)
Posted by: justin at August 4, 2005 09:10 PM