Where There Is No Death

What does the sentence “If you eat this fruit you will die” mean for Eve who is in a place where there is no death?

—Hélène Cixous, Readings: The Poetics of Blanchot, Joyce, Kakfa, Kleist, Lispector, and Tsvetayeva

Happy Halloween, I guess.

Continue reading “Where There Is No Death”

Where Madness Lies

When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies?
Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness.
Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

Continue reading “Where Madness Lies”

Three to The Third

Either a snail’s moist web of moonlight, or someone’s hot breath at four a.m. when the night has been too much, has eaten you whole.
This is my life.
It has been sifted through the bones of my body, through blood. It is all that I have.

—Joy Harjo

Happy birthday to me, from me.

Continue reading “Three to The Third”

Spice and Scent

Like this alabaster box whose art
Is frail as a cassia-flower, is my heart,
Carven with delicate dreams and wrought
With many a subtle and exquisite thought.

Therein I treasure the spice and scent
Of rich and passionate memories blent
Like odours of cinnamon, sandal, and clove,
Of song and sorrow and life and love.

—Sarojini Naidu

Continue reading “Spice and Scent”

Dixième

Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone can you become expert.

Dr. William Osler

ten years come and gone / I soon run short of fingers / a decade, complete

Happy tenth birthday to La Pêche Fraîche, this little sliver of my soul.
We have reached double digits together, readers, and I humbly thank you.

Continue reading “Dixième”