Porcellanopagurus is one of the many attempts of Nature to evolve a crab.
—Lancelot Alexander Borradaile
CRUSTACEA. PART II.–PORCELLANOPAGURUS: AN INSTANCE OF CARCINIZATION. 1916
Category: Italian meringue
Flirty and Thriving
Little by little, and also by great leaps
life happened to me, and how insignificant this business is.
These veins carried my blood, which I scarcely ever saw,
I breathed the air of so many places without keeping a sample of any.
In the end, everyone is aware of this:
nobody keeps any of what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bones.
—Pablo Neruda, October Fullness
It’s my 30th birthday today! Now begins my journey to thirty, flirty, and thriving.
Garden Full of Lust and Bees
the June nights are long and warm; the roses flowering; and the garden full of lust and bees,
Virginia Woolf, letter to Vanessa Bell
Silver as the Rainbow Scales
“I’m afraid of getting older”, that’s what I learned to say
‘Cause society has given me the words to think that way.
The message spins and spirals, “Don’t get saggy, don’t get grey”
But the soft and lovely silvers are now falling on my shoulders.
My mother and my grandma, my great-grandmother too
They wrinkle like the river, they sweeten like the dew
And as silver as the rainbow scales that shimmer purple blue.
How can beauty that is living be anything but true?
So let gravity be my sculptor, let the wind do my hair,
Let me dance in front of people without a care.
—Incomprehensible, Big Thief
Happy birthday to me (from me).
Might Laurel Grow
When we have run our passion’s heat,
Love hither makes his best retreat.
The gods, that mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race:
Apollo hunted Daphne so,
Only that she might laurel grow.
—Andrew Marvell, The Garden, 1681
Douzième
And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.
You need distance, interval.
The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon.
The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
Happy twelfth birthday to La Pêche Fraîche.
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.
Pockets of My Childhood
Each year is like putting a new coat over all the old ones.
Sometimes I reach into the pockets of my childhood and pull things out.
—Simon Van Booy, “Little Birds”
Happy birthday (to me, from me).
Onzième
Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion.
Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.
—Anne Rice
Happy eleventh birthday, La Pêche Fraîche!
