December 2008
“Sade makes pornograms. The pornogram is not merely the written trace of erotic...”
– Roland Barthes, from Sade, Fourier, Loyola, trans. R. Miller, 1971.
The Pornogram — Bookkake
On the Occasion of a Stranger's Death
Somebody famous once said something to the effect that poetry begins where philosophy dissolves, or maybe it was where philosophical systems touch tentative then move away. No, that’s too much. Maybe it’s that systems break down and in the scattering are words, or something. Maybe near Christmas you saw a young woman’s face in the obituaries and I told you, “It...
“What does a scanner see? I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart?...”
– Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly (via miseenabyme) (via luminol)
10 Mysterious People →
(via clothedinsky)
“…the other day they seized an odd man, who goes by the name of Count St. Germain. He has been here these two years, and will not tell who he is, or whence, but professes that he does not go by his right name. He sings, plays on the violin wonderfully, composes, is mad, and not very sensible. He is called an Italian, a Spaniard, a Pole; a somebody that married a...
“…A style, when it is no longer the natural mode of expression, gains a new...”
– Charles Rosen, “The Classical Style”
Modern Americans: Couldn’t Leave Her If I Tried
The Snow Man
One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; And have been cold a long time To behold the junipers shagged with ice, The spruces rough in the distant glitter Of the January sun; and not to think Of any misery in the sound of the wind, In the sound of a few leaves, Which is the sound of the land Full of the same wind That is blowing in the...
