Capote Milosz Chekhov Melville Hesse Garcia Marquez Nabokov, my top shelf Erotica.

Posted on February 19, 2013

Plays: 1,502

It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis.

Henry Miller in Of Art and the Future

Song: “Come to Terms” by Torres

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Posted on February 18, 2013 via literary jukebox with 59 notes

(via salitterdrying)

Posted on February 18, 2013 via séduisant with 1,442 notes

Source: Flickr / ardenwray

You have the lovers,
they are nameless, their histories only for each other,
and you have the room, the bed and the windows.
Pretend it is a ritual.
Unfurl the bed, bury the lovers, blacken the windows,
let them live in that house for a generation or two.
No one dares disturb them.
Visitors in the corridor tiptoe past the long closed door,
they listen for sounds, for a moan, for a song:
nothing is heard, not even breathing.
You know they are not dead,
you can feel the presence of their intense love.
Your children grow up, they leave you,
they have become soldiers and riders.
Your mate dies after a life of service.
Who knows you? Who remembers you?
But in your house a ritual is in progress:
it is not finished: it needs more people.
One day the door is opened to the lover’s chamber.
The room has become a dense garden,
full of colours, smells, sounds you have never known.
The bed is smooth as a wafer of sunlight,
in the midst of the garden it stands alone.
In the bed the lovers, slowly and deliberately and silently,
perform the act of love.
Their eyes are closed,
as tightly as if heavy coins of flesh lay on them.
Their lips are bruised with new and old bruises.
Her hair and his beard are hopelessly tangled.
When he puts his mouth against her shoulder
she is uncertain whether her shoulder
has given or received the kiss.
All her flesh is like a mouth.
He carries his fingers along her waist
and feels his own waist caressed.
She holds him closer and his own arms tighten around her.
She kisses the hand beside her mouth.
It is his hand or her hand, it hardly matters,
there are so many more kisses.
You stand beside the bed, weeping with happiness,
you carefully peel away the sheets
from the slow-moving bodies.
Your eyes are filled with tears, you barely make out the lovers.
As you undress you sing out, and your voice is magnificent
because now you believe it is the first human voice
heard in that room.
The garments you let fall grow into vines.
You climb into bed and recover the flesh.
You close your eyes and allow them to be sewn shut.
You create an embrace and fall into it.
There is only one moment of pain or doubt
as you wonder how many multitudes are lying beside your body,
but a mouth kisses and a hand soothes the moment away.

Leonard Cohen, “You Have the Lovers” (via beautyisanillusion)

(via beautyisanillusion)

Posted on January 15, 2013 via down for you is up with 70 notes

the-final-sentence:

January 3 - John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Bio: Born on January 3, 1892, J. R. R. Tolkien was an English writer, poet, philologist, and professor. More than almost anyone else, his cycle of works—including The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion—have left an indelible influence on high fantasy to this day. Tolkien fought in WWI, and taught at the University of Leeds and the University of Oxford. In addition to his fantasy work, he translated numerous works of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. In 1972, he was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He passed away on 29 November 1971, at the age of 82.

Anecdotes:

The tombstone of Tolkien and his wife bears the names Beren and Lúthien, two characters from his legendarium.

Tolkien constructed the grammar and vocabulary of at least fifteen Elvish languages and dialects.

At times, he began classes by appearing in chain mail, bellowing the opening lines of Beowulf. “According to one of his students, ‘He could turn a lecture room into a mead hall.’”

Tolkien was also very involved in reconstructing ‘extinct’ languages, such as Medieval Welsh and Lombardic. The poem “BagmÄ“ BlomÄ” (“Flower of the Trees”) might be the first original work written in the Gothic language in over a millennium.

He has been published almost as prolifically after his death as he was when he was alive.

Tolkien began work on The Hobbit early in the 1930s while marking School Certificate papers. He found a blank page and, with sudden inspiration, wrote the words, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

Final Sentences:

The sun went down, and Morwen sighed and clasped his hand and was still; and Húrin knew that she had died.

From The Children of Húrin

[…“You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!”] “Thanks goodness!” said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco-jar.

From The Hobbit

Then shouldering their burdens, they set off, seeking a path that would bring them over the grey hills of the Emyn Muil, and into the Land of Shadow.

From The Fellowship of the Ring

Frodo was alive but taken by the Enemy.

From The Two Towers

“Well, I’m back,” he said.

From The Return of the King

[Here ends the SILMARILLION.] If it has passed from the high and the beautiful to darkness and ruin, that was of old the fate of Arda Marred; and if any change shall come and the Marring be amended, Manwë and Varda may know; but they have not revealed it, and it is not declared in the dooms of Mandos.

From The Silmarillion

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4

Posted on January 3, 2013 via The final sentence. with 1,906 notes

I realized this is what the holidays will be like. Christmas. New Years. Thanksgiving, Easter, Birthdays. I sit in the middle of a room full of silly ghost-toys.

Posted on December 25, 2012 with 1 note