Category Archives: lit

“The world was like a leather bag filled with water, he once wrote, and at the bottom of the world was a puncture: time seeped out of it, drop by drop.

Time was like a whirlpool.

Time could be stopped if you stood between the sun and a sundial.

The present moment could be sometimes like the Mekong or Bangkok’s Chao Phraya: a vast river. The past and future were tributaries that sometimes overflowed their own banks, and spilled into each other.

Time was like a palace’s great hall, with partitions that could be taken away. Every instant that would ever be, or had ever been, might be seen all at once.

Sand pouring from a woman’s shoe: the most enchanting hourglass in the world.

…

Will you abide in a world in which the spirit is dead and there is only a reverence for life?

“No eye may see dispassionately. There is no comprehension at a glance. Only the recognition of damsel, horse or fly and the assumption if damsel, horse or fly; and so with dreams and beyond, for what haunts the heart will, when it is found, leap foremost, blinding the eye and leaving the main of Life in darkness.”

-Peake, Titus Groan, pg. 96

“It is as if with bare hands your player has stopped a meteor, changing certain destruction into: Here we are sailing on a summer afternoon.
Suddenly you are in an alternate present. The ball is tracing a graceful arc back over the net. It is a kind of communication, your player’s return: a flirting. I’ve ignored that you tried to kill me, says your player’s impossibly gentle slice, and I like you. Tennis is not only sport but spell. By changing force, your player reshapes time.”

“…her contact hurt me as one is hurt by touching iron on a winter day: you do not know whether the pain comes from heat or cold”

The Old Chevalier, Isak Dinesen

”Well, really,” said Syme, “I don’t know of any profession of which mere willingness is the final test.”

“I do,” said the other– “martyrs. I am condemning you to death. Good day.”

And what is the point of praying to be somewhere else, someone else? You spend your whole life sweating in the heat, and you pray to be born again somewhere cold and you spend your next life freezing your ass off and wishing after warmth.

In the winter feel the flame inside your chest, and in the summer nurse the icy shards dangerously close to your heart. Never turn away cold drinks or a warm hearth.

Start to see that what you see in your heart, from there it is that you, that you start. Your perceptions define where you are at, at least perhaps more so than you thought.

“During the fruit season, we carry the fruits and bring them into the house. We carry, bring the fruits into the house, and eat them as usual. We bring them into the house…from each of these seven, seven, seven; from each species seven seeds are taken. One closes the skin; it is empty inside, since the seed has already been eaten…about a half an hour passes…earlier we had eaten the seeds; now the seeds have returned, the fruits have become hard. We eat again, swallowing the seeds once again.”

It Happens Like This by James Tate

I was outside St. Cecilia’s Rectory
smoking a cigarette when a goat appeared beside me.
It was mostly black and white, with a little reddish
brown here and there. When I started to walk away,
it followed. I was amused and delighted, but wondered
what the laws were on this kind of thing. There’s
a leash law for dogs, but what about goats? People
smiled at me and admired the goat. “It’s not my goat,”
I explained. “It’s the town’s goat. I’m just taking
my turn caring for it.” “I didn’t know we had a goat,”
one of them said. “I wonder when my turn is.” “Soon,”
I said. “Be patient. Your time is coming.” The goat
stayed by my side. It stopped when I stopped. It looked
up at me and I stared into its eyes. I felt he knew
everything essential about me. We walked on. A police-
man on his beat looked us over. “That’s a mighty
fine goat you got there,” he said, stopping to admire.
“It’s the town’s goat,” I said. “His family goes back
three-hundred years with us,” I said, “from the beginning.”
The officer leaned forward to touch him, then stopped
and looked up at me. “Mind if I pat him?” he asked.
“Touching this goat will change your life,” I said.
“It’s your decision.” He thought real hard for a minute,
and then stood up and said, “What’s his name?” “He’s
called the Prince of Peace,” I said. “God! This town
is like a fairy tale. Everywhere you turn there’s mystery
and wonder. And I’m just a child playing cops and robbers
forever. Please forgive me if I cry.” “We forgive you,
Officer,” I said. “And we understand why you, more than
anybody, should never touch the Prince.” The goat and
I walked on. It was getting dark and we were beginning
to wonder where we would spend the night.

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“As a result, this verb is considered a hapax legomenon, a word that occurs only once in a text, an author’s oeuvre, or a language’s entire written record.

The Satyricon contains a number of hapaxes, including “bacalusias” (possibly “sweetmeat” or ”lullabies”) and “baccibalum” (“attractive woman”).

The Song of Songs, which is the last section of the Tanakh and part of the Christian Old Testament, contains an especially high number of hapax legomena, forcing scholars to rely on the Greek version for translation hints. The Song of Songs is, at the surface, a story of love between a man and a woman, in which they describe their passion for each other. It has the greatest number of hapaxes in the Bible, rendering the book enigmatic and mysterious. For instance, in 4.13, the male compares the lady’s “selahim” to an orchard. The term is a hapax, but scholars have suggested “branches” as a translation, such that the text describes the woman’s body:

Your breasts are two fawns,

twins of a gazelle,

grazing in a field of lilies.

…

Your navel is the moon’s

bright drinking cup.

May it brim with wine!

…

Your vulva a rounded crater”

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“At her hob or her table, hospitality often holds hands with its brother word hostility. Both are birthed from ghos-ti, their ancient Indo-European root, which meant host, guest and stranger—the trio of roles through which we shift all our lives. So apt that this inescapable flux was once contained in a single word.”