Offering up this gem from China Miéville’s Kraken in response to the “What is your favorite combination of swear words?” thread on Reddit.
[ 5 . 17 . 2013 ]
[ 5 . 17 . 2013 ]
spun outwards like a galaxy - notes from the W.S. Merwin reading on 5/12/13 at the 92nd Street Y
I was enraptured from the moment W.S. Merwin mentioned that the first time he was at the 92nd Street Y was when he was there introducing Borges. I love the fact that events on both ends of my husband’s and my often disparate-seeming spectrum of aesthetics have included references to Borges - William Gibson mentioned him as well in his talk at the NYPL. Merwin alluded to Borges again when he placed him in the long lineage of writers and poets who, like himself, faced the prospect of losing their sight (or were blind from birth). Rather than asking or inviting sympathy, Merwin (who is 87) seemed to accept and even welcome the challenges of his deteriorating vision and referenced the fact that literacy actually limits memory (something I’d never heard before, nor had I considered literacy being a physical as well as mental capability). Instead of giving a ‘reading’ he followed up his conversation with J.D. McClatchy by reciting a number of his poems - from memory.
Some memorable quotes:
“Poetry continues to try to express the things that cannot be expressed - the thing that ‘just got away’”
“She lost everything, over and over again - I was the first thing she thought she might be able to keep” (on his mother’s love after losing her husband and many other family members)
“So old that it’s in the oral tradition”
[ 5 . 16 . 2013 ]
A heads up to all you octopus enthusiasts out there - I’m offering 25% off everything in my Etsy shop for the rest of the month of April with coupon code 99OCTOPODES. If you enjoy my work, now’s a great time to get your hands on a print or two!
https://www.etsy.com/shop/AnOctopusADay(And as always, if there are any octopuses you like that you don’t see listed in my Etsy store, feel free to ask me to put it up for you!)
[ 4 . 26 . 2013 ]
notes on gibson @ nypl - for @tdelucci
“literary experiences ARE experiences” - on his ‘omnivorous’ reading of everything he could get his hands on in his youth
the ‘temporal split’ of living in a modern world but surrounded by very retro culture
“living in someone else’s past” - the knowledge that our shiny gadgets will be someone else’s junk
burroughs + borges!
loving on springsteen’s darkness on the edge of town - who knew?
Proust on telephones
“the miracle with which I wish to amaze my reader would be an invisible banality to my reader” - on writing about cyberspace
“orgasmic experiences with pure information” - how his protagonists experience cyberspace
“i don’t think we can know how technology affects us. as soon as it affects us we become that which has been affected.”
[ 4 . 21 . 2013 ]
Don’t know what I’m going to do with this one yet. Also kind of dig the fragments of calendar around the edges. In actuality they’re from the mousepad I was using to flatten the page while scanning it, but they still look unreasonably cool.
[ 4 . 12 . 2013 ]
Birthday present for my mom - a portrait of her sister. I hope I did her justice. Miss her so much.
[ 1 . 25 . 2013 ]
Then it occurred to him that reality seldom coincides with the way we envision it beforehand; he inferred, with perverse logic, that to foresee any particular detail is in fact to prevent its happening. Trusting in that frail magic, he began to invent horrible details — so that they would not occur; naturally we wound up fearing that those details might be prophetic.
[ 12 . 19 . 2012 ]
- Jorge Luis Borges, The Secret Miracle.
So you see, it’s not that I’m a pessimist per se….
[ 12 . 19 . 2012 ]
