April 17th, 2013
April 4th, 2013
Jerra lit a match, smelling the dead breath of its smoke, dropped it into the fuel tank and ran.
Tim Winton, from An Open Swimmer (via the-final-sentence)
April 1st, 2013
“Now consider the tortoise and the eagle.
The tortoise is a ground-living creature. It is impossible to live nearer the ground without being under it. Its horizons are a few inches away. It has about as good a turn of speed as you need to hunt down a lettuce. It has survived while the rest of evolution flowed past it by being, on the whole, no threat to anyone and too much trouble to eat.
And then there is the eagle. A creature of the air and high places, whose horizons go all the way to the edge of the world. Eyesight keen enough to spot the rustle of some small and squeaky creature half a mile away. All power, all control. Lightning death on wings. Talons and claws enough to make a meal of anything smaller than it is and at least a hurried snack out of anything bigger.
And yet the eagle will sit for hours on the crag and survey the kingdoms of the world until it spots a distant movement and then it will focus, focus, focus on the small shell wobbling among the bushes down there on the desert. And it will leap…
And a minute later the tortoise finds the world dropping away from it. And it sees the world for the first time, no longer one inch from the ground but five hundred feet above it, and it thinks: what a great friend I have in the eagle.
And then the eagle lets go.
And almost always the tortoise plunges to its death. Everyone knows why the tortoise does this. Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off. No one knows why the eagle does this. There’s good eating on a tortoise but, considering the effort involved, there’s much better eating on practically anything else. It’s simply the delight of eagles to torment tortoises.
But of course, what the eagle does not realize is that it is participating in a very crude form of natural selection.
One day a tortoise will learn how to fly.”
- Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
(via oprimer)
February 17th, 2013
This is an illustration based on Russell Edson’s poem, “Erasing Amyloo”.
“A father with a huge eraser erases his daughter. When he finishes there’s only a red smudge on the wall.
His wife says, where is Amyloo?
She’s a mistake, I erased her.
What about all her lovely things? asks his wife.
I’ll erase them too.
All her pretty clothes? …
I’ll erase her closet, her dresser—shut up about Amyloo! Bring your head over here and I’ll erase Amyloo out of it.
The husband rubs his eraser on his wife’s forehead, and as she begins to forget she says, hummm, I wonder whatever happened to Amyloo? …
Never heard of her, says her husband.
And you, she says, who are you? You’re not Amyloo, are you? I don’t remember your being Amyloo. Are you my Amyloo, whom I don’t remember anymore? …
Of course not, Amyloo was a girl. Do I look like a girl?
… I don’t know, I don’t know what anything looks like anymore…”Audrey Benjaminsen 2012
(via warsob)
December 24th, 2012
You don’t know anyone at the party, so you don’t want to go. You don’t like cottage cheese, so you haven’t eaten it in years. This is your choice, of course, but don’t kid yourself: it’s also the flinch.
Your personality is not set in stone. You may think a morning coffee is the most enjoyable thing in the world, but it’s really just a habit. Thirty days without it, and you would be fine. You think you have a soul mate, but in fact you could have had any number of spouses. You would have evolved differently, but been just as happy.
You can change what you want about yourself at any time. You see yourself as someone who can’t write or play an instrument, who gives in to temptation or makes bad decisions, but that’s really not you. It’s not ingrained. It’s not your personality. Your personality is something else, something deeper than just preferences, and these details on the surface, you can change anytime you like.
If it is useful to do so, you must abandon your identity and start again. Sometimes, it’s the only way.
Set fire to your old self. It’s not needed here. It’s too busy shopping, gossiping about others, and watching days go by and asking why you haven’t gotten as far as you’d like. This old self will die and be forgotten by all but family, and replaced by someone who makes a difference.
Your new self is not like that. Your new self is the Great Chicago Fire—overwhelming, overpowering, and destroying everything that isn’t necessary.
December 22nd, 2012
Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (via victoriousvocabulary)
December 20th, 2012
(Source: yeswecancan, via i-am-the-ocean-i-am-the-sea)
December 15th, 2012
It’s not that I can’t fall in love. It’s really that I can’t help falling in love with too many things all at once So, you must understand why I can’t distinguish between what’s platonic and what isn’t, because it’s all too much and not enough at the same time.
Jack Kerouac (via embryons)
(Source: just-likehoney, via warsob)
October 7th, 2012
Do you ever wonder whether people would like you more or less if they could see inside you? …I always wonder about that. If people could see me the way I see myself - if they could live in my memories - would anyone, anyone, love me?
John Green (via saddest-summer)
(via chiisai-feelings)
September 8th, 2012
Have you felt it too? Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you — except the things that count? And your most important is nothing to them; nothing, not even a sound they can recognize.
Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (via bookmania)
