insomnia: drowning in the temporal

day night evanish

I never sleep days before a full moon. I wander the night air. Ph. Francesca Woodman

the bards Six Birds. William Kentridge, 2014

Chessmaster (taken) Harold Hollingsworth, 1992

interior wander, with coffee

night air rife with dream Art by Christian Schloe

An entire mythology is stored within our language. Wittgenstein

What if a whisper were inferred, as a gesticulation. Is this a form of utterance?

I always speak the truth. Not the whole truth, because there's no way, to say it all. Saying it all is literally impossible: words fail. Yet it's through this very impossibility that the truth holds onto the real. Jacques Lacan

We want ourselves to be seen and to have been seen as we are; and we want just as much to veil ourselves and remain unknown, for behind every determination of our being lies dormant the unspoken possibility of being different. Helmuth Plessner, Grenzen der Gemeinschaft

There is another world, and it is in this one. Paul Éluard

it was quiet and the murmuring of her heart was loud

My heart is a little larger than the entire universe. Fernando Pessoa, 1934: tr. Richard Zenith

moon language

You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart. -Franz Kafka

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. T. S. Eliot

blue of dusk, good night

Okakura Kakuzo, The Book of Tea

What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams? Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning

In the mirror it's Sunday, in dream there is room for sleeping, our mouths speak the truth. Celan, Corona; tr. Joris

in wild wind and rain

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. Keats. Endymion, Book I Ph. Minor White

... language is never innocent. Roland Barthes

I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me. Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

In those days, living as we did in the country, without the dubious benefits of radio or television, we had to rely on such primitive forms of amusement as books, quarrelling, parties, and the laughter of our friends, so naturally parties- Gerald Durrell, The Corfu Trilogy

Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships. Borges

If you are in difficulties with a book, try the element of surprise: attack it at an hour when it isn't expecting it. H. G. Wells

T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets (Burnt Norton)

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat held for it by a row of ancient trees; Rainer Maria Rilke, Evening; tr. Stephen Mitchell

the night blue cloud

Rose is a *devastating* genius and so the books will, in fact, alter your psyche, soul and heart

The air was blue, you could hold it in your hand. Blue. Marguerite Duras, The Lover; tr. Barbara Bray

Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

Alice Oswald, Falling Awake

Salvador Dali Illustration: Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays (1947)

Other people do not see you at all, but guess at you by uncertain conjectures. Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays; tr. Charles Cotton

Each moment is a place you've never been. Mark Strand

earlier wander, with coffee

small rain wild wind

There is no instinct like that of the heart. Byron

a dark and windy night

I wrote a book about mythography, or being lost with the gods, or close reading, or thereabouts. It would be an excellent festive gift for a smart girl, or someone who'd like to twist the current frenzy for retelling myths. it's available here mabibliotheque.cargo.site/Isabella-Str...

vestige

Wind warns November’s done with. The blown leaves make bat-shapes, Web-winged and furious. Sylvia Plath, The Collected Poems

We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down. Vonnegut

Perhaps many things inside you have been transformed; perhaps somewhere, someplace deep inside your being, you have undergone important changes while you were sad. Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

I learned not to fear infinity, The far field, the windy cliffs of forever, The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow, Theodore Roethke, The Far Field