Whenever I travel, I bring or preread a book by a writer who hails from the place I’m going. For a trip this month to Midlands, England, I landed on Wysten Hugh Auden. If I don’t get a chance to preread the chosen book and am truly steeped in the journey, sometimes I don’t delve in until my return, as was the case with “Another Time.” In this case I think I’m more receptive to the work now that I’m home than I was when I first cracked the petite 90th anniversary hardcover before I went. Rambling aimlessly around East Midlands countryside and towns was perhaps the perfect time-travel key to unlock my appreciation of this work, which coincidentally marked Auden’s move to the States.
The first section of poems is as far as I’ve read so far [as with short stories, I believe poetry should be consumed slowly], and many struck me as timeless explorations of the same topics burbling most in my being in recent times. Here are a few. (Poems are not all titled, but distinguished by Roman numerals. Ellipses indicate an excerpt as opposed to the full piece.)
I. Wrapped in a yielding air, beside The flower’s soundless hunger, Close to the tree’s clandestine tide, Close to the bird’s high fever, Loud in his hope and anger, Erect about his skeleton, Stands the expressive lover, Stands the deliberate man…
XII. Herman Melville …Who now had set him gently down and left him. He stood upon the narrow balcony and listened; And all the stars above him sang as in his childhood ‘All, all is vanity,’ but it was not the same; For now the words descended like the calm of mountains – – Nathaniel had been shy because his love was selfish – But now he cried in exultation and surrender ‘The Godhead is broken like bread. We are the pieces.’
And sat down at his desk and wrote a story.
XV The hour-glass whispers to the lion’s paw, The clock-towers tell the gardens day and night, How many errors Time has patience for, How wrong they are in being always right.
Yet Time, however loud its chimes or deep, However fast its falling torrent flows, Has never put the lion off his leap Nor shaken the assurance of the rose.
For they, it seems, care only for success: While we choose words according to their sound And judge a problem by its awkwardness;
And Time with us was always popular. When have we not preferred some going around To going straight to where we are?
XVII. Voltaire at Ferney … Night fell and made him think of women: Lust Was one of the great teachers; Pascal was a fool. How Emilie had loved astronomy and bed; Pimpette had loved him too like scandal; he was glad. He’d done his share of weeping for Jerusalem: As a rule It was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
Yet, like a sentinel, he could not sleep. The night was full of wrong, Earthquakes and executions. Soon he would be dead, And still all over Europe stood the horrible nurses Itching to boil their children. Only his verses Perhaps could stop them: He must go on working. Overhead The uncomplaining stars composed their lucid song.
XVIII Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm; Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral: But in my arms till break of day Let the living creatures lie, Mortal, guilty, but to me The entirely beautiful.
Soul and body have no bounds: To lovers as they lie upon Her tolerant enchanted slope In their ordinary swoon, Grave the vision Venus sends Of supernatural sympathy, Universal love and hope; While an abstract instinct wakes Among the glaciers and the rocks The hermit’s sensual ecstasy.
Certainty, fidelity On the stroke of midnight pass Like vibrations of a bell, And fashionable madmen raise Their pedantic boring cry: Every farthing of the cost, All the dreaded cards foretell, Shall be paid, but from this night Not a whisper, not a thought, Not a kiss nor look be lost.
Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of sweetness show Eye and knocking heart my bless, Find the mortal world enough; Noons of dryness see you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.
XXI. Museé Des Beaux Arts About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters: how well they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their diggy life and the torturer’s horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
XXII. The Composer All the others translate: the painter sketches A visible world to love or reject; Rummaging into his living, the poet fetches The images out that hurt and connect.
From Life to Art by painstaking adaption, Relying on us to cover the rift; Only your notes are pure contraption, Only your song is an absolute gift.
Pour out your presence, O delight, cascading The falls of the knee and the weirs of the spine Our climate of silence and doubt invading;
You alone, alone, O imaginary song, Are unable to say an existence is wrong, And pour out your forgiveness like a wine.
XXVI As I walked out one evening, Walking down Bristol Street, The crowds upon the pavement Were fields of harvest wheat.
And down by the brimming river I heard a lover sing Under an arch of the railway: ‘Love has no ending.
I’ll love you dear, I’ll love you Til China and Africa meet And the river jumps over the mountain And the salmon sing in the street.
I’ll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky.
The years shall run like rabbits For in my arms I hold The Flower of the Ages And the first love of the world.’
But all the clocks in the city Began to whirr and chime: ‘O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time.
In the burrows of the Nightmare Where justice naked is, Time watches from the shadow And coughs when you would kiss.
In headaches and in worry vaguely life leaks away, and Time will have his fancy Tomorrow or today.
Into many a green valley Drifts the appalling snow; Time breaks the threaded dances And the diver’s brilliant bow.
O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist; Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you’ve missed.
The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the tea-cup opens A lane to the land of the dead.
Where the beggars raffle the banknotes And the Giant is enchanting to Jack, And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer And Jill goes down on her back.
O look, look in the mirror, O look in your distress; Life remains a blessing Although you cannot bless.
O stand, stand at the window As the tears scald and start; You shall love your crooked neighbour With all your crooked heart.’
It was late, late in the evening, The lovers they were gone; The clocks had ceased their chiming And the deep river ran on.
XXIV, Song Warm are the still and lucky miles, White shores of longing stretch away, The light of recognition fills The whole great day, and bright The tiny world of lovers’ arms.
Silence invades the breathing wood Where drowsy limbs a treasure keep, Now greenly falls the learned shade Across the sleeping brows And stirs their secret to a smile.
Restored! Returned! The lost are borne On seas of shipwreck home at last: See! in the fire of praising burns The dry dumb past, and we The life-day long shall part no more.
XXXI Underneath the leaves of life, Green on the prodigious tree, In a trance of grief Stand the fallen man and wife: Far away the single stag Banished to a lonely crag Gazes placid out to sea, And from thickets round about Breeding animals look in On Duality, And the birds fly in and out Of the world of man.
Down in order from the ridge, Bayonets glittering in the sun, Soldiers who will judge Wind towards the little bridge: Even politicians speak Truths of value to the weak, Necessary acts are done By the ill and the unjust; But the Judgment and the Smile, Though these two-in-one See creation as they must, Non shall reconcile.
Bordering our middle earth Kingdoms of the Short and Tall, Rivals for our faith, Stir up envy from our birth:
So the giant who storms the sky In an angry wish to die Wakes the hero in us all, While the tiny with their power To divide and hide and flee, When our fortunes fall Tempt to believe in our Immortality.
Lovers running each to each Feel such timid dreams catch fire Blazing as they touch, Learn what love alone can teach: Happy on a tousled bed Praise Blake’s acumen who said: ‘One thing only we require Of each other; we must see In another’s lineaments Gratified desire’; That is our humanity; Nothing else contents.
Nowhere else could I have known Than, beloved, in your eyes What we have to learn, That we love ourselves alone: All our terrors burned away We can learn at last to say: ‘All our knowledge comes to this, That existence is enough, That in savage solitude Or the play of love Every living creature is Woman, Man, and Child.’
Here are the quotes I compiled this year — their mix of levity and poignancy is a year-turning reminder that such a balance is key to self-sustenance and sustaining what we love and value in our shared lives and wondrous world.
Twillingate, Newfoundland, Canada
Nature/Science
“It’s not about how intelligent they are, it’s about how they are intelligent.” – re the octopus’ mind network (distributed intelligence to all suckers)
“Just touching a tree can be very profound, and allow us to slow down. … “Out here, life blooms. This place [Timbisha/Death Valley] represents one of the jumping off places of my story, that’s opened up areas of my life that I didn’t even imagine” – Baratunde Thurston, “America Outdoors”
“When an observer doesn’t immediately turn what his senses convey to him into language, into the vocabulary and syntactical framework we all employ when trying to define our experiences, there’s a much greater opportunity for minor details, which might at first seem unimportant, to remain alive in the foreground of an impression, where, later, they might deepen the meaning of an experience.
“It is also the act of paying attention to these things, of entering a state of concentration, of focus, a state of being open to epiphany and rapture and communion. It is a seeking, so to speak, of the capacity to seek, with a kind of devotion that steadies the concentration. You arrive at a place, then you arrive at an awareness, then perhaps arrive at an understanding, which opens up the world to you and opens you up to the world. Finally, perhaps you arrive at a relationship.” -Introduction by Rebecca Solnit, Barry Lopez, Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World (posthumous essays)
“The question for me really isn’t whether I’m afraid, it’s whether I wish to commit. Once I’ve committed I’ve crossed the starting line, and my thoughts turn swiftly to how incredibly beautiful, confounding, mysterious, and elevating the natural world is—the raging seas, the Antarctic benthos, the remote and dark wood.
“Like everyone else, I’ve no simple way to measure where I’ve been between these episodes of childhood and middle age. I’ve traveled through thirty-five countries, ended a thirty-year marriage, and written fourteen books. I believe that I could easily have become an orchardist as a writer. I simply found a different shape to the passion I felt as a child, watching things grow and wanting to participate in the cultivation and harvest. Rebecca Solnit
“Most days I walk down to the river to say my prayers, but stiffened joints no longer allow me to walk the woods every day, and so I miss a lot. But I am comfortable here, even as the particularity of my knowledge of this landscape shrinks. If I hear the crack of a limb breaking, and the limb crashing though the canopy, the whump as it hits the forest floor, I think: Me, too. If I see a fledgling osprey drop a writhing fish it has caught because it’s too heavy and then try to regain its place in the air, I think: I’ve done that. If I see the afternoon sun light up the surface of the river like a sheet of gyrating metal, I close my eyes against the glare and think: One day I will enter right there and not return.”– Barry Lopez, Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World (posthumous essays)
“The great Siberian river, the Lena. Just picture a huge lazy Siene, like an assembly line running backward, gradually coming to pieces at each new dollhouse settlement until it reaches its destination somewhere up north, broken down into its component parts and spread out over an estuary 120 miles wide. It’s the only highway in this land without highways. …
“All around us the Siberian earth swarms with beckoning signs, and we felt it was deeply symbolic that the first living creatures sent into space were Siberian dogs: the Laikas. Switching from sleds to rockets is the Siberian way of keeping abreast of the times. I’m writing you this letter from a distant land, where charred trees and empty wastelands are as dear to me as her rivers and flowers. Her name is Siberia. She lies somewhere between the Middle Ages and the 21st Century, between the earth and the moon, between humiliation and happiness. After that, it’s straight ahead.” – Letter From Siberia, Chris Marks, 1957
“Butterfly wings’ iridescence is caused by RUSOSITIES, deviations in the smoothness of the insect’s skin creating STRUCTURAL COLOR. When light bounces off that, our eyes perceive it as a metallic or shiny color. … Staying dry is a matter of life and death to butterflies [SO WHERE DOES THE MOTHERFLOCKING BUTTERFLY GO WHEN IT RAINS?]. Mist and rain would quickly drown them if they weren’t waterproof. ‘A butterfly must not get wet. If the wings were wet, they would stick together.’ Water forms beads that roll off, cleaning the wing.” – Serge Bertheir, physicist, NOVA Butterfly Blueprints
“For the Paracas the colors have meaning. And the way they organize them is important. It’s part of their identity. There is a symbolism we haven’t deciphered yet, but is definitely there.” – NOVA: Nazca Desert Mystery 3Nov22
“Virtually all of the plants and animals of these forests evolved to survive and thrive and even quite often depend on fire for their survival and reproduction. Here’s a small conifer seedling… so you see, as quickly as the forest is destroyed, the seedlings come right back; it’s magnificent, isn’t it?” – Boone Kauffman, Ecosystems Ecologist, OSU; OR Field Guide
“This is the Cano Crystalis River in Colombia, the most beautiful river on earth. These plants are Red Macarania, sometimes called the orchid of the falls. They cling to the riverbed not with their roots but with their stems, glued to the rock’s surface by one of the most powerful adhesives in nature. The rock itself will break before these anchors lose their grip.” – David Attenborough, Green Worlds S1E2 Water Worlds
“Marimo [algae spheres] in this Japanese lake use water currents to become increasingly circular and rotate to stay clear of debris and spread light around their body to continue to grow (!).” – David Attenborough, Green Worlds S1E2 Water Worlds
“Mother trees recognize their own offspring and will channel their resources to them.” – Green Planet, S1E3 Seasonal Worlds, David Attenborough (supine on his side in a meadow x2 😊)
“The question is, can we curb climate change sufficiently such that the seasons will continue [for plants that rely on cyclical nature to survive]” – Green Planet, S1E3 Seasonal Worlds, David Attenborough
“Surfing: to ride energy that is completely natural, and that you have to be there for as it’s leaving its last breath – is a profound experience.“ – Baratunde Thurston, America Outdoors
“Everything is rushing to complete their lives before the moisture is gone” – Green Planet, S1E4, Desert Worlds, David Attenborough
“These strands will combine as they grow, sharing nutrients and resources and becoming stronger than a lone strand could ever be. “So the roots that are tied together are like the connection between the Khasi people. So the roots that are connecting is like a person who helps each other. The roots become an ever-strengthening living bridge.” – Shining Star Kongthaw, Green Planet
“The smoke that thunders” = Victoria Falls
“When nesting season arrives, they carve deep into trees, hollowing out a family stronghold. These are their universal trademark: every woodpecker of every kind makes a hole for a home, and it’s what makes them such significant citizens of the forest.” – Nature S41E3
“There is a solution in the natural world. For every ailment, the plants have an answer, b/c that’s how the world was created. You can build a relationship with everything around you and become part of the ecosystem (and not apart from it).” – Saskia Vanderhoop: Sassafras Earth Education, Newshour 23Aug22
“The sagebrush for me has its own energy. I feel like it glows and if you can soften your eyes and just breath really slowly, the whole mountain will breathe with you.”… – Brenna Tyler, Union OR area, OR Experience “I visited a buffalo preserve and had some pretty extraordinary experiences. Absolutely phenomenal creatures: power and gentleness, just depending on the second.”
Culture/Philosophy/Arts
“Just do what you like when you like if you like.” – Grace Jones
“When you do things for your soul, you feel a river moving in you.” – Rumi (13th-century Persian poet and mystic)
“My mother taught me that you can look at something, and people, and scenarios, endlessly and still find something new.” – Ocean Vuong, Newshour
“This is Sam Cooke. Like me, you can see he’s awfully pretty.” – Cassius Clay, “Sam Cooke: Legend”
“There’s a lot of footwork involved and all of that is good for the brain. It’s good for your joy, it’s good for your happiness, for your heart. It’s like that sound of the jingle dress, the sound the regalia makes, it ripples outward and people feel it. Powow dancing has just been a gift for everyone.” – Acosia Red Elk, Umatilla jingle dancer and yoga instructor, Oregon Experience
“I’ve often said it spoiled me. B/c now I want that when I start any film, that experience of acting on instinct – ‘from the pancreas,’ as you put it.” “You all changed my life too. Life is a constant exchange. We are all molecules connected in the same magnetic field.” – Gael Garcia (as credited in the film) in convo with Alejandro González Iñárritu on Amores Perros’ 20th anniversary in 2020
“Try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to focus on looking upward.” – Charlotte Bronte
“The mad see the unseen, what the collective suspects but can’t express: a perpetual frictionless swing from object to object.” – Lucy Corin, novelist “The Swank Hotel” (New Yorker Briefly Noted Book Reviews 31Jan 2022)
“Remember: the evening light, something I have never seen before, not to such an extent. The whole world, sea and moor and hill, dipped in turquoise, like a day, laking in levels of a brilliant exquisiteness beyond belief – a physical rapture.” – Mary Butts (13Dec1890 – 5 Mar1937) on the Celtic Sea
“What one hears in [such journal] entries is a desperate plea for beauty to keep oblivion at bay. If only she could catch the spirit of the sea with words, then perhaps time would spare her. There is pathos in the fact that she failed – that she was in the end merely mortal. She died in pain, alone, unprotected and destitute. – Merve Emre, “Bewitched: the Mystical Modernism of Mary Butts, The New Yorker
“Half dead from want of being cared for” – Butts expressing the disillusionment of her generation living through WWI
“There are two ways to be a light: be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it.” – Edith Wharton
“You see in films a death rattle. But Alvin breathed in and never breathed out. So we’re his breath out.” – American Masters, Alvin Ailey
“Wonder is the first of all the passions.” – Rene Descartes
“If we wonder often, the gift of knowledge will come” – Arapahoe teaching
“A quiet hour is worth more to you than anything you can do in it.” – Sarah Orne Jewett
“It speaks to the larger aspect of lineage in my work. I can’t really do anything without thinking about where I am in this place and I wouldn’t be where I am in this place without the people who came before me, so I’m constantly thinking about the ways in which I honor my lineages, but also the ways in which I deviate from those lineages.” – Kara Jackson, Brief But Spectacular, Newshour, 11Mar22
“I like the dance in the studio. I can involve my whole body and I sort of tune out and just let the tools and the ideas and the materials work together and not think about it too much, but be in the rhythm of the process.” – Keith Jellum, OR Art Beat
“We’re all makin things happen together and we’re listening to music. All while we’re learning about the mission we’re trying to accomplish in the neighborhood. … But, if they see something that makes them feel happy and connected, feel like I actually did this in my neighborhood, they’re committed to a project and mentally they’re committed to moving and shaping the community. So we connect, that’s how I use art. And there are amazing things that happen when we connect.” – Shawn Dunwoody, activist/artist, Rochester NY
“People who are more reticent don’t like it when you take up space.” … “Fundamentalist Christians of the variety that I was associated with don’t really respect other human beings, especially non-Christians. They are in the world but not of the world.” – Simone Leigh, Earlham College Peer of Sculpture and 1st Black woman to represent the US at the Venice Biennale
“I don’t need anything except hope, which I can’t find by looking backwards or forwards, so I suppose the thing is to shut my eyes.” – Zelda Fitzgerald
“I’m still thinking about some sweet summer plums I ate in Italy last summer known as nuns’ thighs.” … “I wish I didn’t waste my patience so endlessly in my living life, b/c there is never enough left for study or play.” – Francesca Woodman’s diary, photographer, The Woodmans
“19Jan81, last journal entry: This action that I foresee has nothing to do with melodrama. It is that life as lived by me now is a series of exceptions. I was (am?) not unique but special. This is why I was an artist. … I was inventing a language for people to see the everyday things that I also see. … and show them something different. Nothing to do with not being able ‘to take it’ in the big city or with self doubt or b/c my heart is gone. And not to teach people a lesson. Simply the other side.” – Francesca Woodman’s diary, photographer, The Woodmans
“And things come to me all the time. I write em down and lose the paper promptly and forget about it. But every once in a while you find this thing and think it’s a great idea and start doing it.” – Aldwyth, Fully Assembled, PBS
“I like to find something on the historical record that, if you made it up, would be implausible. It needs to be a story where you can know some fascinating things but you can’t find out everything, so I’m looking for those voices that imagination has to be deployed to fill. It’s like Mark Twain said, ‘ Fiction is obliged to stick to possibility; truth is not.’” – Geraldine Brooks, Newshour 8Jul22
“I came to the conclusion it was better to make the attempt than to leave the story [of Black horsemen] untold. And any attempt at empathy, no matter how imperfect it might be, shouldn’t be despised, b/c we need more attempts at empathy, not fewer.” – OR Exp?
“And we are but a tiny speck.” – Judy Woodruff in her last year as Newshour host, on Webb Telescope’s first pics 12Jul22
“Build a private school for poor people, and you’ll be close to the solution. That’s the point of my center: flood the place with sunlight, give them gourmet food and world-class art and Herbie Hancock’s music, and you can cure cancer of the spirit. – Bill Strickland, founder, Manchester Bidwell Corp
“Joseph Frank Keaton, b 4Oct1895, Pickway Kansas, son of vaudevillians Myra and Joe Keaton, a married comedy team touring the country. Literally born in a trunk, considered part of the company of A Family Medicine Show, which his parents were in, at 11 months. He wandered on stage one day and bothered them doing their act and the audience thought it was funny. By the time he was 4, little Joe Frank Keaton had become a star. The three Keatons’ act consisted mainly of throwing little Joe everywhere imaginable on the stage, and once, famously, even at a heckler. Houdini or someone said “That’s some Buster [fall] your child took.” – The Great Buster, 2018, Peter Bogdonavich
“The middle will take care of itself.” – Buster Keaton, on making a picture
“It’s not one director, it’s this group that has come the distance together, has taken this road together. Therefore, they can make astounding personal choices, quite remarkable decisions about how that part of the film could look.” – Christopher Doyle, cinematographer, Fallen Angels, 1995, Wong Kar Wai
“Nothing more or less than a complicity of people who love each other very much but don’t know how to share it except by the films that we make, that’s it. … I think that’s probably a very Asian thing: the complicity, the sense of self, the sense of us, the sense of what we’re doing together and the trip we’ve taken together is so clear and so strong that, why use words to destroy it? … So that’s why we have no script, no storyboards – we don’t need it [cackle]. So for better or worse, it’s all of our film, and no matter what genre it should be, it’s still a Wong Kar Wai film, made by us. … WKW has all the responsibilities, and we have all the freedom. We can do whatever we like, and he has to pay for it [chuckle]. .” – Christopher Doyle, cinematographer
“Catch the world doing the right thing and let that also spread.” – David Bornstein, Brief But Spectacular 16Aug22
“The horse jumped over the fucking fence.” – Kurt Vonnegut thumbing his nose at sports writing in Sports Illustrated (“Unstuck in Time” 2021)
“I have finished my course. I have ceased to enjoy and suffer. Please transfer your love and benevolence to your living fellow men. The memory of the one, as well as of the other, is appreciated and honored.” [to be read at a funeral] — Kurt Vonnegut, “Unstuck in Time“
History/Politics
“I didn’t wake up in Auschwitz one day. … It took 20yrs of the maturation of this behavior! First the books were burned, all the literature, everything. Somebody once said, people who are capable of burning books eventually are capable of burning people … and people have to somehow get into the sight of their psychic [psyche?] and you want to be there and to save the human race and not kill it. And we’re not there yet.” – (SO FECKING CHILLING) Tova Friedman bSept1938, Newshour 6Sept22
“I am writing this letter from the land of childhood, between the ages of 5 and 10 this is where we were chased by wolves, blinded by Tartars, carried away on the Trans-Siberian Express with our pistols and our jewelry. The Trans-Siberian is the longest railway in the world; it has carried away Anton Chekov… — Letter From Siberia, Chris Marks 1957
“I imagine people in Blue states going to Red states and Americans in Red states going to Blue states, worried about what’s going to come next.” “So you’re saying just citizens going to places in the country where they feel safer from their fellow citizen? I agree.” “Yeah, I mean, we’re the most heavily armed country in the world. 48% of Americans think a civil war is likely, a 5th of Americans think we’re headed for some kind of collapse.” – Real Time with Timothy Synder, Yale history professor
“There’s not enough ‘big dick’ energy coming from the Democratic party.” – Maher
“Being undocumented and being vocal about it is just one of my identities. The immigration system – many people say it’s broken. It’s not broken – it’s exactly working how it was designed to work, and that is to work to dismantle the systems that are oppressing us beyond citizenship. … We’re here b/c you’re there. The US has put their hands in our countries for many many years .. thru policies, interventions and for me it’s important to have that context in mind to then work toward abolishing it, b/c it’s not working for us. We know that. We’ve seen that. … The resources don’t really come unless you’re demanding them. … Justice means the criminal justice system not collaborating with ICE to deport us.” – Gaby Hernandez, Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition, Newshour Brief But Spectacular
“The people I work with every day, they’re mentally hopeful b/c the news keeps tellin them to be hopeful. But the reality of it is that they’re in despair. Face to face, one on one, they’re scared, they’re very scared. They’re scared what tomorrow will bring.” — Jo Anna Schroer, constable, Graves County, KN, Newshour 28Jan22
[William Brangam: A large cinder block wall fell on him and many others, trapping them in a pile of debris]. [Chance Potts, former candle factory employee: “I’m sandwiched btwn the floor and other people underneath me, the walls and all the metal on top of me. Soon as it first happened, I prayed to god to let me live. And then after it got done I was able to reach into my pocket and call my wife and tell her I loved her and I didn’t know if I was gonna make it home.” “What did she say back to you?” “To please not say that and I told her that I didn’t wanta say it but we was being crushed by the moment.” – Newshour
“We’ve just got to look to tomorrow and see how we can make tomorrow better.” – Constable Schroer
“I mean, the slave master had his way with women, and so you would take the girls. You figured the boys could kinda defend themselves, but the girls were just there for the taking, for the picking, for the liking, for the evening, so you’d grab the meekest and you run.” – Rev Velma Maia Thomas, author and public historian, The William Tell Story: Underground Railroad
“Freedom Island = name Black Americans fleeing to Canada give it after passage of Fugitive Slave Act [3k flood across border; 17 escapees in 1856] “And while we have the stories that are true and we have the wonderful wonderful story of people’s humanity, helping one another, if it had not been for William and his writing, we would not have known about that.” – The William Tell Story: Underground Railroad
“It is a responsibility to approach each case with an open mind and an awareness that the court’s decisions matter in the ways that are manifold to the lives of the people that we serve. “ — CA State Supreme Court Justice Leanara Kruger (at 38 among youngest in state history and only 2nd Black woman on that court – AND Supreme Court shortlist nominee 2022)
“And what’s national is local, and what’s local is national, and it’s all mixed together and it’s just a whole lot of outrage.” – Tamara Keith, Newshour, 7Mar22
“This term was the culmination of this battle for conservative control, but it also wasn’t the end of it. Next term also looks to be shaping up to be a blockbuster. We’re going to see the end of affirmative action in higher education, we’re going to see religious liberty prioritized over gay rights, the further shredding of the voting rights act. Just buckle up.” – Ruth Marcus, WaPo, Newshour 1July22
“One more thing that’s going to happen from all of this is the further bifurcation of America to two different countries. We’re gonna have different abortion regimes. We may, b/c of the other Supreme Court decisions … see ourselves with two different sets of economies, two different sets of values and two different sets of governing policies, sort of held together by string.” – David Brooks, Newshour
“When I see news videos, I’m crying. And I’m trying to be positive with my daughter. And sometimes when I go to sleep I’m crying a little bit. Make my stress come out. And every morning when I get up, I say Hi, my daughter, trying to make em as comfortable here, and we don’t hear what is goin on up there. I don’t know if I will be okay. I from time to time think I’m dreaming. And I have to wake up. And this is … I’ve never felt this feeling. – Inna Zrbub, Khrakiv, Ukraine spring 2022 (Newshour)
“The number of ways that people deal with trauma is the number of people who exist and experience trauma.” – Dr Arash Jarambakht, Newshour 20Jul22
“After 9/11 I was forced to reckon with a different standing. I was also forced to reckon with the fact that I hadn’t reckoned with it before now…. That really got me thinking how easy it is to really be complicit in something and then to be forced to grapple with it when you’re unable to easily access those benefits. … I began to see similarities in different places. The fetishization of ‘the real people,’ whether in Ergdoyan’s Turkey or Putin’s Russia, or in Pakistan or America, was happening all over the place – that we were increasingly sorting ourselves into groups, and that we are increasingly prone to thinking these groups are real and meaningful … I try to imagine the world differently … but all these things are a way to making the world more hospitable to my way of being I guess. Fiction is really important right now.” – Mohsin Hamid, The Last White Man (author of Exit West)
“We need to continue to keep these discrepancies before the public. I remember one of Jim Lehrer’s great quotes: If you inform the people with good information, they will do the right thing.” – Charlyne Hunter-Gault, Newshour, 11Oct22
“The Taliban may have taken the country but in Afghanistan history shows the pen always outlives the sword.” – Newshour 15Oct22, Ali Rogan
Movies and Shows
“A little sun in my hair and you had to water your neck.” – Miss O’Shea (Barbara Stanwyck to Gary Cooper, Balls of Fire, Hawks 1941)
“Just go slow. Go slow, dammit.” – Jim Carrey/Luke Trimble, The Majestic (2001, Frank Darabont)
“Even more than cherry blossoms scattered by the breeze, memories of the passing spring brings unbearable regrets.” … “Like our fathers before us, we have served in this castle for many years. From the paintings on the doors to the trees in the garden, everything here bears special memories. This is the last time any of us will see these things. Quietly bid them all farewell.” – The 47 Ronin 1941 (director Kenji Mizoguchi)
“Wow. Too much. He fell. He fell, he fell. – Midnight Cowboy (Schlesigner 1969)
“From the eternal sea he rises, creating armies on either shore. Turning man against his brother til man exists no more. … Kathy is dead. I want Damian to die too.” – The Omen (Richard Donner,1976), Gregory Peck and my namesake [from Days of Wine and Roses] Lee Remick
“Through deserts and mesas, across the endless miles of open range, we made our headlong way, steering by the telephone lines toward the mountains of Montana.” … “Afterwards he took and buried some of our things in a bucket. He said that nobody else would know where we’d put them and we’d come back someday and maybe they’d still be sitting here just the same, but we’d be different. And if we never got back, well somebody might dig em up a thousand years from now and wouldn’t they wonder?” – Badlands, Mallick (Spacek, Sheen)
“See what I mean?” “No.” “Well, I shouldn’t expect miracles, should I?” – Badlands
“Instead I sat in the car and read a map and spelled out entire sentences with my tongue on the roof of my mouth, where noone could read em.” — Badlands, Spacek
“To quote Tennyson, ‘kind hearts are more than coronets and simple faith and Norman blood.’” “Will you have enough cliches to get your through the visit?” “If not, I’ll come to you.” – Isabel and Violet, Downton Abbey movie
“Sheila, I consider that a very unreasonable attitude.” “Really?” “Yes, unreasonable and stupid. Haven’t you any respect for my judgment?” “How about my judgment?” “Darling, you’re only a woman. You’re not expected to have either judgment or intelligence.” … [headed for the liquor over the hors d’oeuvre offered]: “Oh no, I never eat on an empty stomach.” – Repeat Performance, 1947
“You’re jealous of the rabbi!? He was in Buchenwald, throw him a bone.” – Midge, Marvelous Mrs Maisel S1E1
“Now I’m just a single, grey-haired ex-con drinkin hooch and eatin old nuts in someone else’s shoes.” “Are you kidding me? 9:30. I got up at 9:30. In the morning! You know the last time I was up at 9:30 in the morning? It was the last time I stayed out all night and I got home at 9:30 in the morning!” – Miriam and Suzie, upon the latter bailing out the former, at 9:30. In the morning! Maisel S1E1
“You know, when my sister’s husband died young, she started volunteering at the old ladies’ nursing home, you know, reading stories, teaching cha cha classes, things like that. Helped her get through the long lonely days. And at night – jigsaw puzzles. Portraits. Baskets of puppies was a big one.” – Kevin Pollock, Maisel
“Don’t forget to sit on the baby.” – Maisel S1E3
“Okay, I’ll admit that sometimes I tune people out. But mostly because they rarely have anything useful or interesting to say.” – Maisel S2E1, Tony Shaloub
“I haven’t had anyone look at me that coldly since I had my mother deported.” – Maisel S3E5, Sophie Lennon (Jane Lynch)
“I’m excited. Not as excited as I was for that threesome with Vincent Price and Ethel Merman, but excited.” – Maisel S3E7, Sophie Lennon (Jane Lynch)
[to children]: “Do not walk on the plants. Do not under any circumstances touch that tree.” – Maisel S3E8, Kevin Pollock
“You know, when I was a boy I had a sock, as my toy. I stuck my hand in it and said ‘where do my fingers go?’ And that was the game! And, nobody cares.” “Well said, Moishe.” – Maisel S4E1, Kevin Pollock
“A book.” “Is it Peter Rabbit?” “It is not Peter Rabbit.” “I read Peter Rabbit.” “Next up, Proust!” – Maisel, Tony Shaloub
“Are these [croissants] from Costco?” “I don’t know! But Nestle owns Maybelline and that’s not even a food; I mean Nestle is everywhere.” – Together Together, Julio Torres and Pattie Harrison
“Do not name your kid Jessie!” “Why?” “Because I knew a Jessie who did not know what tumble dry low was.” – Together Together, Julio Torres and Ed Helms
“I feel so good. Life is running around in me like a squirrel!” “Ah Penny. We’ve had enough wailing for one day.” – Jean Arthur/Lionel Barrymore, You Can’t Take It With You (Capra, 1938)
“Well, I support the view that you just don’t think about the major issues. You do whatever you can about the misery that’s in front of you, add your like to the sum of like.” – Linda Hunt, Year of Living Dangerously (Peter Weir, 1982) “All is clouded by desire. As a fire by smoke, as a mirror by dust. Through these, it blinds the soul.”
“My name is Alan. I’ll be serving you.” “Can we call you Weird Al?” “Yes, I imagine you can.” – Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff, 2001, Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi)
“Yeah, we’re gonna get the ball rolling, what do you think I’m doing?! I’m working on it, right?! What does it look like?! You think it’s easy? You know, I gotta keep them cooled out, I gotta keep all you people happy, I gotta have all the ideas and I gotta do it all alone. I’m workin on it – you wanna try it!?” – Dog Day Afternoon (Sonny/Pacino, dir Lumet 1975)
“You’ve had a good life.” “I’ve had a life. Some of it was astonishing, some of it was sad. But, day and night, sun and rain – all makes up a life.” – Around the World in 80 Days, Masterpiece
“I thought you said you’d be right back.” “Time flies.”… “That one’s wilder than mountain scenery.” (re a wild cat) … “Whatever suits you just pickles me plumb to death.” – Henry Fonda/Glenn Ford, The Rounders (1965)
“If your mom seeded your political life, Orson, and your trips abroad peopled it, the rise of fascism made it ramrod. And so you came here, to Harlem. … It’s good to look at a life again, through another lens.” – The Eyes of Orson Welles (2019, [the inimitable] Marc Cousins)
“I can’t promise I’ll do any of it. But if I do, I shan’t be sober.” – Fiona Shaw, Killing Eve S4E1? Just Dunk Me
“Why sure it’s alright. Just think how peaceful you’re gonna sleep. If you ever get round to sleepin.” – Mitchum, Track of the Cat (1954, Wellman)
“Harry’s an artist without an art.” “Well that’s something that can make a man very unhappy, Mary. Groping for the right lever and the means with which to express himself.” … “300 pounds and it’s a life of ease and plenty.” … “– Night and the City (1950, Dassin)
“Sucker play or not, I musta turned her on something fierce b/c this dame was goin for broke. Or maybe it was her first time with a New Yorker, I don’t know. Anyway, nothin can beat good old American knowhow and I was givin the broad the stars and stripes forever.” – Heavy Metal (among the first R-rated films I saw on cable, unexpectedly “adult” for a Canadian sci-fi animated film)
“You’re alive.” “Well, I uh feel like an elderly badger’s died in my mouth, but I’m very much alive, yes.” – Masterpiece: Around the World in 80 Days S1E4, Tenant)
“Introducing Bash Liif – life, without the stress of living. … Before we introduce the founder and CEO of Bash, please remember to avoid direct eye contact, sudden movements, coughing or negative facial expressions.” – Don’t Look Up (McKay, 2021)
“Get your paws off. I soil easily.” – Susan Hayward, I Want to Live (1958, Robert Wise)
“The bedrooms are upstairs; the big one was in Scenes From a Marriage, a film that made millions of people divorce.” – Bergman Island (2021, Mia Hansen-Løve writer/director)
“Movies can be terribly sad, tough, violent, but in the end they do you good.” … “It just hurt me.” “Then why do you watch them?” “B/c I love them – I don’t know why, that’s all.” – Vicky Krieps, Tim Roth, Bergman Island
“What?” “Nothing. You keep changing your position and I’m just trying to figure out if I should agree with your or not.” “Well can’t she be both? Care deeply and be crazy? I mean, do people have to be all one thing?” – Jennifer Jason Leigh/Jack Black, Margot at the Wedding (Baumbach 2007)
“Wow, it’s like a film I saw in a language I don’t quite understand.” … “My mother was very beautiful. And when I was about Martha’s age, I felt like she hadn’t shared it, like in creating me she’d separated herself, like pushing a plate away if the food’s repulsive.” – Olivia Colman, The Lost Daughter (Maggie Gyllenhaal, 2021)
“Your ego is absolutely colossal.” “Yeah yeah, how’s yours?” – Colbert, Gable: It Happened One Night (Capra 1934)
“Actually we’re doing a movie right now called Lonely Room and Scot Glen plays a detective much like yourself.” “Is he a Black woman?” “No, actually I was drawing a comparison not based on race or gender.” – The Player (Altman 1992), Tim Robbins, Whoopi Goldberg
“It lacked certain elements we need to market a film successfully: suspense, laughter, violence, hope, love, nudity, sex, happy endings. Mainly happy endings.” – The Player
“I wonder if we always turn into our parents?” “I like to think of it as where my parents left off.” – Broken English (2007, Zoe Cassavetes), Parker Posey, Melvin Poupaud
“I hope you find ‘appiness.” “A penis?” – Broken English (2007, Zoe Cassavetes), Parker Posey, Melvin Poupaud
“I slaughter when I hit the water.” – Maya and the Last Dragon
“I’m jealous of everyone who gets to meet you down the road.” – Pamela Adlon, Better Things
“See, your mom has a generator. We are boots on the ground for when shit jumps off. Aren’t you proud of me? – Pamela Adlon, Better Things
“I thank the dear lord for allowing me to awaken well and cheerful this morning after a good sleep under thy protection, and for the enjoyment of a restful night. I beseech thee again today and everyday to let thine angels watch over and protect my little girl, whom in thy unfathomable wisdom tookest unto thyself into heaven.” – Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman, 1972)
“I have no need of pardon.” – Liv Ulman, Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman, 1972)
“The tragedy of those who believe in a god is that their faith rules their intellect. In my experience, religions often cause death and destruction.” … “Isn’t it terrible that nothing exists?” … “That’s why there’s so much.” … “And then love burst out everywhere.” … “The world is a hell inhabited by tormented souls and demons.” “Schopenhauer!?” – Antonia’s Line (1995, Marleen Gorris, female writer/director)
“Crooked fingers, bodies burned, and his ashes scattered on the earth. Nothing dies forever, something always remains. A little something from which new things grow. So life begins, without knowing where it came from.” “But why?” [small child] “Because life wants to live.” “Isn’t there a heaven either?” “This is the only dance we dance.” – Antonia’s Line, (1995, written and directed by Marleen Gorris)
“Do you know bees and dogs can smell fear? Did you know my next-door neighbor has three rabbits?” … “So that’s the difference between us – you think we’re fighting and I think we’re finally talking.” – Jacob Trembley/Cube Gooding Jr., Jerry Macguire (1996, written and directed by Cameron Crowe)
“Every piece of this is man’s bullshit. They call this war a cloud over the land but they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say, shit, it’s rainin’!” – Ruby/Renee Zellweger, Cold Mountain (2003, written and directed by Anthony Minghella, from Charles Frazier’s novel)
“Disappointed!! What do you have to do in this life to get people to trust you?!” … “What was the middle thing?” … “Isn’t it time to face up to certain realities? You’re a very attractive man, Ken. You’re smart, you’ve got wonderful… bones, … great … eyes and you dress really interestingly.” … “You are the vulgarian, you fuck!” – Kevin Cline/Otto/ Mr Manfredgensonsin, CIA operative, A Fish Called Wanda (1988, written by John Cleese)
“I like it flaccid. So I create the stiffness instead of having it thrust on me.” “That’s hurtful. I don’t know what to say.” – The Worst Person in the World (2021, writer/dir Joachim Trier)
“I grew up in a time when culture was passed along through objects. They were interesting b/c we could live among them, we could pick them up and hold them in our hands, compare them.” “And now that’s all I’ve got left – knowledge and memories of stupid futile things nobody cares about.” … “I have no future. I can only look back. And, it’s not even nostalgia. It’s fear of death, it’s because I’m scared. It has nothing to do with art, I’m just trying to process.” … “I’m sure I remember things about you that you’ve forgotten. When I’m gone, all that stuff about you will go with me.” – The Worst Person in the World (2021, writer/dir Joachim Trier)
“Fate played no part in this, it’s all a contrivance.”– Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994, written and directed by Stephan Elliott)
“What would it take to convince you I’m truly repentant?” “You could try drowning yourself.” – step siblings, Sanditon S2E2
“…the malevolent cupid, whose divine arrow brings havoc as much as it brings desire. The tale of Cupid and Psyche is thought of as one of the world’s great love stories, but what did Psyche have to do? She had to endure beatings, cross rivers, climb cliffs, and finally journey to the underworld. How far will Psyche go? And who will she have to become to appease her cosmic masters?” – Killing Eve S4 “Don’t Get Attached”
“Well, if you shoot me, you won’t get to hear all the clever things I have to say; think about that.”– Caroline, Killing Eve
“Take not thought so anxiously, careful one for your daily food or raiment. Never would you give a stone or serpent.” – church hymn, Babette’s Feast (1987, written by Karen Blixen)
“Afternoon sex is basically an errand.” – Starstruck S1E2
“Ok Boomer.” “For the last time, I am not a Boomer. I’m Generation X, we are the coolest generation. We know how to give change without a computer, we use paper. We are analog. We are the last golden generation.” … “Fellas, please – our brains are falling out of our ears, mine too!” – Adlon, Better Things S2E7, Family Meeting
“I can’t think of anything important. I can only think of silly thing.” “Then say silly things.” “I know what your father’d say.” “Say it.” “The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things. Of shoes and ships and ceiling wax, of carpenters and kings.” … – Kevin Pollack, Better Things S5E10 “I’m okay, yeah. I mean, what are the options?”
“What we’re about to do will be perilous. Very perilous. Some of us won’t be coming back. Others may be wounded. Still others may come back looking totally fine but in reality be mentally devastated by what they’ve witnessed.” – Rhys Darby, Our Flag Means Death (2022, created by David Jenkins)
“Why do you all show such loyalty to this … this… nothing?!” “I’d attribute quite a lot of it to a people-positive management style.” – Rory and Rhys, Our Flag Means Death, S1E9, Act of Grace
“Cats are terrifying, everyone knows that. Because they’re witches and they have knives in their feet. … Actually everybody knows cats are very evil b/c they steal children’s breath.” … – Barfly (1987, dir Barbet Schroeder, writer Charles Bukowoski) “Be realistic. There’s no reality to any of this. Another round of drinks!“
“Is that you, Baxter?! Bark twice if you’re in Milwaukie!” – Anchorman (4June22 ~2a, home and first movie viewed since before Atlantic Canada trip began 27Apr22)
“Were you a good bartender?” “I was the worst. But at the end of the night, I took home more tips than a moyle.” – Buddy Cole, S1E2, New Kids in the Hall
“What?! You’re been imagining my imaginary girlfriend?! … Did you imagine her digging her fingernails into the small of your back and crying out your name when she came?” “Well, I am now.” … “Hey, how do you think I feel? Every time I imagine I’m not with her, I can’t stop thinking about her!” [actors share questioning looks] “No, that’ works, that works.” – New Kids, Dave and Kevin
“I beguiled the time by dozing.” – Ann Lister, amid a meticulous diary account of a day, Gentleman Jack S2E3
“Apparently, railways are unhealthy. They cause headaches and biliousness and a cow exploded.” [quiet alarum] “Sorry?” “Apparently.” “Good heavens.” “In Hereford. They won’t catch on.” “Tell me about this cow.” “It exploded, in Hereford. Or was it Hartford? Hampshire? Whatever. It roared past at 15mph and this cow must have, you know, exploded.” “How?” “You know, from fright! Shock!” “Just the one? Is that possible?” “No.” “So, there’s a whole herd of them?” “I didn’t say there was a whole herd of them.” “… and just the one explodes?” “It might have been the only cow present, I don’t know, I wasn’t there.” “But if it was in a field on its own it’s more likely to have been a bull, surely.” “Whatever the sex of the beast, however many were present, this one apparently exploded.” “You’re painting a very confused picture there, Marion.” “It must have made a mess.” “Do you think someone’s pulling your leg?” “No! I think it’s the dizzying effect of a carriage with no horses pulling it, traveling past at such an abominable speed.” “Well you must stay inside, Marion. We don’t want you exploding.” [general laughter] – Gentleman Jack
“Weak sauce. Fuckhead. Fuckface. Fucknuts. Shit nuts. Shit fuck. Fuck fuck.” “Somebody called me a fuck fuck?” “Yeah. Rob Reiner. 1994, it was the Ghost of Mississippi audition; I specifically said I don’t want feedback.” – Barry S3E4, Gene Cousenou and his agent Fred Melamed)
“I’ve done everything a mother can do! I’ve locked her in her room, I’ve beat her with a car aerial – nothing changes her! It’s hard being a loving mother; I give her free food, a bed, clean underpants, what does she expect?!” – Divine, Female Trouble (1974, written and directed by John Waters)
“I’m sorry to come over at 2am drunk.” “But it’s 10pm and you’re sober.” “Oh I’m sorry. I’ll go get drunk and come back in 4 hours.” – E2, Dave and Kevin, New Kids in the Hall
“I never really wanted a baby. As a hobby, I make IUDs.” – Kevin McCarthy, E6, New Kids in the Hall
“Live like you’re going to live forever. Then, you know what? You’ll only be wrong once. … We had some good times, you know what? We get to keep those. Don’t spoil the memory of good days with the regret that they’re over – it’s all going to be over.” – The Time Traveler’s Wife S1E4
“What are you gonna do when you get out?” “Oh I got accepted to Harvard in cartography.” – 1986, Fire With Fire (hilarious example of 80s movie world-making, cuz that happens to young men in rural WA penal work camps all the time, which is so convenient when they meet nymphlike photographers in the woods)
“He’s dead. He’s really dead.” “Oh great, that’s all I need.” … – Eating Raoul, 1982, dir/writer/actor Paul Bartel) “Oh, and Paul, could you buy another frying pan? I’m just a little squeamish about cooking in the one we’re using to kill people.”
“Who is he?” “He’s an Asshole, sir.” “I know that – what’s his name?” “That is his name, sir. Asshole. Major Asshole.” “And his cousin?” “He’s an Asshole too, sir, that is a first-class Asshole.” “How many Assholes we got on this ship, anyway? [loud chorus of Yo!] I knew it, I’m surrounded by Assholes” … — Rick Moranis/George Wyner (Dark Helmet/Colonel Sandurz, Spaceballs, 1987, Mel Brooks) “I am your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roomate.”
“What’s that weird noise?” “It’s the bamboo. But there is a spirit here. I hear him outside at night. He came inside one night and spilled some baubles. The unseen is all around us, particularly here in Java.” … – Billy Kwan/Linda Hunt, Year of Living Dangerously (1982, Peter Weir) “Here on the quiet page, I master, just as I master in the darkroom, stirring my prints in the magic developing bath. I shuffle like cards the lives I deal with; their faces stare out at me. People who will become other people, people who will become old, betray their dreams. Become ghosts.”
“You’d think we were poor little pygmy people who never traveled from our fire. Though, in my case, of course she’s right.” – Emma, Romola Garai, 2009)
“Unable are the loved to die, for there is immortality.” – Hotel Portofino S1E3
“A decade of his life was gone, and with it what felt like a hundred seasons, a thousand holidays, ten thousand meals, 20 thousand Love You’s and just as many silent recriminations.” – Love Life S2E2, Paloma
“While friends of his caught up on TV shows they’ve been meaning to watch or taught themselves to bake bread or roast whole chickens, Marcus found himself over-burdened with an obscene amount of additional work.” – Love Life, S2E9
“As Marcus wipes regurgitated eggnog off the side of the Uber, he was warmed by a feeling of being needed. For he now knew being a man meant stepping up the plate not once, but in perpetuity. And even having a plate to step up to made him as lucky as a person can get.” “ — Love Life S2E10
“In California you can go see friends and enjoy the finest of all grasses. In Los Angeles you can see angels walking on the Pacific waters, but they’re really just blond guys on surfboards. … As for me, in Los Angeles I mostly saw walls – graffiti-covered walls as beautiful as paintings, signed by dozens of anonymous Kilroys, walls long as mythic serpents. This was the beginning of a surprising and joyful discovery, the painted walls, or murals, as they call them in the U.S. Murals as living breathing seething walls. Murals as talking, wailing, murmuring walls. Murals one cries out, the other doesn’t. But these walls don’t sell you anything. – Agnes Varda, Mur Murs
[long “bored and want to see dad cuz he buys me things” speech] “Listen, give me your hand. We can play marbles or we can have a bite to eat, or go out in the yard and skip around and dance the polka.” [sigh] “I like it when we’re sad and then we say we’ll go outside and dance. Don’t you?” – Agnes Varda, Documenteur, 1981
“I’m not leaving. I have nowhere to go. I have no family. I am a coward. I’m frightened of leaving and that’s the truth. All I see out in the world is loneliness, and it frightens me. That’s all my high principles are worth, Mr. Stevens. I’m ashamed of myself.” – Miss Kenton/Emma Thompson, Remains of the Day (James Ivory dir, Kazuo Ishiguro writer, 1983)
“Goddamn dipshit Rodrigues gypsy dildo punks!” – Harry Dean Stanton, Repo Man (1984, Alex Cox writer/director)
“A lot of people don’t realize what’s really going on. They view life as a bunch of unconnected incidences and things. They don’t realize that there’s a lattice of coincidence that lays on top of everything. … No explanation. No point lookin for one either. It’s all part of a cosmic unconsciousness. I’ll give you another instance. You know the way everybody’s into weirdness right now? Books in all the supermarkets about Bermuda Triangle and UFOs and how the Mayans invented television, that kind of thing? Well, the way I see it there ain’t no difference between a flying saucer and a time machine. People get so hung up on specifics, they miss out on seeing the whole thing. …” —– Harry Dean Stanton, Repo Man (1984, Alex Cox writer/director) “The more you drive, the less intelligent you are.”
“Cooter’s out, cooter’s out, cooter’s out.” “He was talking about my vagina.” “Yeah, I put that together after the third ‘cooter.’” – Plus One (2019, Maya Erskine, Anna Konkle)
“That’s enough of that smack and coddle style of yours, do you understand?” – Alan Bates, Far From the Madding Crowd (1967, Schleshinger)
“Brother, life’s a bitch and she’s back in heat.” … “What are they? Where do they come from?” “Well, they aint from Cleveland.” “Now look, man, I don’t need that shit!” “Maybe they’ve always been with us – those things out there. Maybe they love it, seeing us hate each other, watching us kill each other off, feeding on our own cold fucking hearts.” – Roddy Piper/Keith David, They Live (1988, John Carpenter)
“Christ, why do people say ‘Listen’ on the telephone. What else are you gonna do? – Falling in Love, 1984
“And that’s just what we need, Jack, water on the back of the neck, and the code.” – Peter Sellers as Captain Lionel Mandrake, Dr. Strangelove (1964 Kubrick)
“Dmitri, I’m sorry they’re jamming your radar and flying so low but they’re trained to do it, you know; it’s, it’s it’s… initiative. —– Peter Sellers as Pres Merkin Muffley, Dr. Strangelove (1964 Kubrick)
“Well boys, we got three engines out, we got more holes in us than a horse trader’s mule, the radio’s gone, and we’re leakin fuel. And if we were flyin any lower, why we’d need sleigh bells on this thing. But we got one little thing on them Ruskies: At this height they might harpoon us, but they dang sure aint gonna spot us on no radar’s clip. … “I’m gonna get them doors open if it hairlips everyone on Bear Creek.” – Slim Pickins, Major King Kong, Dr Strangelove (1964, Kubrick)
“You’re going to need more than one lesson, Kane. And you’re gonna get more than one lesson.” — Gettys to Kane, Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
“A toast, Jedidiah, to love on my terms. Those are the only terms anyone ever knows, his own.” Kane to Leland, Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
“The awful thing about life is this: Everyone has his reasons.” – The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939)
“My dear Christine, forgive me. He’ll receive my seconds in the morning.” “Mornings I sleep. I may have to throw them out.” “You won’t duel?” “Not with you.” “You won’t live it down.” That’s a laugh.” – The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939)
“Dying is a wild night and a new road.” – Emily Dickinson as quoted in Durrells of Corfu S3E2
“Snow is like a wild sea. One could go out and be lost in it, and forget the world and one’s self.” – Garbo, Queen Christina, 1933 “You cannot die an old maid.” “I have no intention to – I shall die a bachelor.”
“Do I make myself understood?” – Yaphet Kotto, Midnight Run (1988, Martin Brest)
“Sometimes it’s hard to talk when every word is understood, easy and then it’s not. At least it’s always been that way with me. … You have a way of walking that like water flowing in a little New England brook and you always have the fragrance of flowers about you.” – Enchanted Island, Dana Andrews, 1958
“I met someone.” “Why didn’t you just say that, instead of making me eat your steak?” – Jenny Slate, I Want You Back (2022)
“It’s like nature’s way of telling you to go the back of the cave.” [on menopause] – Hacks 2021, Jean Smart (and Hannah Einbinder)
“Did you ever run away from a scream? You can’t!” – Edward G Robinson, The Red House, 1947
“Frail as the leaves that shiver on a spray, like them we flourish, like them decay.” – Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, 1971
“The sky seemed so near. They didn’t speak, but they made love in that cold, sad hotel room, not knowing why – perhaps to bring the story to a close.” – Jules et Jim (1962, François Trouffaut)
“How’s your caprese? I was told the cheese here is made by a blind man in a basement.” – Jennifer Coolidge, The White Lotus S2E1
“I like persons better than principles, and persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.” … “I adore simple pleasures; they’re the last refuge of the complex.” – George Sanders/Lord Henry Wotton, Dorian Gray, 1945
“You are young, life has been kind to you. You will learn.” – Angela Lansbury/Nellie Lovett, Sweeney Todd, Sondheim for TV, 1982)
“To whom do you leave your empire?” “The strongest.” – Richard Burton, Alexander the Great (1956, Fredric March, Claire Bloom)
“As far as our marriage goes, we could do it over the telephone.” – Brokeback Mountain, Anne Hathaway (Ang Lee, 2005)
“I love you.” “Uhjhh, that’s so depressing.” “’I love you’ is depressing?” – White Lotus, S2E6
“You see, Mario, that sometimes the truth can be so simple that one has to have imagination to appreciate it.” – Betty Grable/Countess Angelina, That Lady in Ermine (1948, Lubitsch/Preminger)
Standup/Late Night
“I shouldn’t say I’m an atheist. I’m agnostic about my atheism.” – Neil Brennan, “Blocks” 2022
“Oh wait, oh geez, I forgot about revenge against my enemies! Okay, I need revenge against all my enemies, they should die like pigs in hell. That would be my 4th wish, and of course my 5th wish would be for all the children of the world to join hands and sing in a spirit of harmony and peace.” – Steve Martin SNL holiday classic sketch
“I had a birthday yesterday. I don’t see myself as getting older – I see myself as becoming a milder variant.” – Bill Maher, Real Time, first show 20th season, 21Jan22
“Making matters worse, we’ll need even more sand to protect us from the damage we’re doing to the environment by depleted sand. The extraction involves environmental, social and political challenges that we are to face. And it’s getting tougher to ignore, b/c even burying your head in the sand requires sand.” – Samantha Bee, Full Frontal 07Feb22
“NZ: a country that does seem to make a lot of smart choices, with the glaring exception of choosing a national bird, b/c what the fuck is up with the kiwi, by the way? It’s an incorrect duck. It’s what you get if a first-grader was assigned to draw a bird and then just forgot.” – Jon Oliver, Last Week Tonight, 21Feb22 [the curator takes offense and great joy at this description of their lifelong nickname]
“Do you like Franklin?” “I don’t know, I’ve never Frankled.” “I heard that joke on The Muppet Show in 1977.” – Colbert, on Ben
“My father was violent. I have a joke about how he tried to beat the [gay] out of me but all it did was make me like it rough.” – Scott Thompson, Kids in the Hall Comedy Punks documentary
“I went over and lay down with him and I kinda cuddled him, cradled him. And I said, You’re not gonna die. Mark’s gonna die. Cuz he sends back so much fucking wine. And you know who’s gonna die? Dave’s gonna die. Cuz his ex-wife’s going to kill him. And know what’s going to happen to Kevin? He’s going to blow out his heart doin an improv. And you know how I’m gonna die? I’m gonna die working to death. You’re gonna die last.” – Bruce when Scott was diagnosed with non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma during shooting of Kids in the Hall: When Death Comes to Town
“New rule: If your funeral takes 2 weeks, it’s no longer a ceremony – it’s a going out of business sale. 90% of people never knew a time QEII wasn’t queen, but all the babies born since she died have never known a world where she wasn’t being buried.” – Real Time, Bill Maher, 23Sept22
“America’s like a prison now, where the inmates think they need to join one of the gangs to survive, and we don’t dare walk on the wrong side of the yard.” – Real Time 7Oct22
“There are hierarchies [in jazz] – like, the drums are the president, the piano is the legislature, and the bass is the judicial branch. Now you have to deal with that.” – Winton Marsalis, Real Time 23Sep22
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you nicknamed your penis mike pence because it’s not hung like it should be.” – Maher to Donald
“But the real thing for me, and the troubles I’ve had, is that reality is an acquired taste. … I’ve been quieter, I’ve been able to think about what I wanted to say and it’s been all different … because you can’t give away what you don’t hate.” – Matthew Perry, Teal Time 16Nov22
“Democratic participation does not mean we get it right. It means there is a way to get it right sometimes. … People would rather feel angry than stupid.” – Tressie McMillan Cottom (Noah Daily Show)
“People will say to me sometimes, well what are you so angry about? What they think is anger is a real contempt that my fellow humans have made. I feel betrayed by the bullshit in America that’s all around us.” – George Carlin’s American Dream pt 1
“You didn’t sense he was lonely but he liked being alone.” – Tony Orlando on George Carlin
“It’s not just sorrow and loss; it’s savoring what you had.” – George Carlin on wife Brenda after her death
“I’m not in show business, I’m a comedian.” – Carlin to Chris Rock “We don’t really have philosophers anymore, we have comedians.”
“Take care of yourself, take care of yourself. And take care of someone else.” – Carlin’s final HBO special last line
Here’s my version of a review, taken (and lightly edited) from email to the friend who loaned me this unforgettable book, upon reading it during a solo Yachats, OR, beach stay the week after Labor Day, September 2022
[THERE ARE PLOT SPOILERS]:
“I finished both novellas in the book during my beach nights, listening to the unseen (and thus louder) ocean swell up and back from the offshore rocks thru the patio screen door as doggo Maddie conked out after the day’s hikes and beach rambles. Truly some of the most gut-smacking fiction I’ve read, he’s just so economically heart-rending and so much happens with so little fanfare but that’s how his simple prose reveals so much depth and mystery and ever-unfolding psychological context.
Maybe it’s the effect of the wild rocky coastland and mature rain forest solitude I’m immersed in, but the stories really stuck with me uncommonly strong. I’d have to work a lot longer to write meaningfully about what the novellas meant to me, but I can say OOFTA.
“Reading Turgenev” was a surprise derelict delight to me — the way we learned at the end (or intuited) that she architected a life of fantasy and acceptable comfort by living (and then assuring her dying) within the memory that mattered to her among such forces charged against her was touching, almost like a happy ending. The fact that the minister could hear her in a way her decent but drink-destroyed husband couldn’t — that at the end of it all, someone understood, was so poignant. (Also a Wharton similarity, as in Age of Innocence when Archer feels gratitude for his wife for seeing the longing he had, and denied, for Ellen. Clearly, I have a thing for longing in literature.)
Then “My House in Umbria” kicked all the air out of that frail fantasy of a life righted through twisted self-preservation. What a tragic and complex and too-familiar protagonist, our many-named Delahunty. I have to say she struck my innermost fears and pathos — what trials and self-preservation and time does to a person through choices and chance, how we can slip and slink into states we hardly recognize, and frame as best we can in whatever current state, how we twist and turn our stories of our lives as we survive them, how many chances at connection we fulfill and then fail, or fail to fulfill — the story covers so much.
But the gut punch to me was a woman who admits she doesn’t much care for the woman she is “but there you are.” The child is now in institutional care but we know she would have been worse damaged by staying with the woman whose damage was unlikely to lessen — the azaleas are dust in any of our hands; she’s just there to acknowledge it, and remember through the mists of her sodden mind that once some compatriots wanted to grow her garden. I mean, jayzus! All of everything is there.
You’ve put a big notch in “Irish” for my “Russian v Irish” contest for best literature, countered by a double notch for Turgenev. A grand lifelong debate for sure.
Now I’m thinking about how much suffering cultures accrue to get to that point of greatness, and wishing the world could be mild enough for all the literature to be shite. But only kinda, of course. Oofta!
[SPOILER INCLUSIVE] Excerpts, “Reading Turgenev”:
“‘It’s the way things are,’ Mr Dallon was given to remarking in the kitchen, a general-purpose remark that might be taken to apply to any aspect of life. With a soft sigh, he had employed it often during the war, when the BBC news was gloomy; and after the war when starvation was reported in Europe. But in spite of the note of pessimism that accompanied the observation Mr Dallon was not without hope: he believed as much in things eventually getting better as he did in the probability that they would first become worse. There was a cycle in the human condition he might have reluctantly agreed if prompted, although the expression was not one he would voluntarily have employed.”
“She smiled. A cigarette-butt left behind by one of the men had been inadequately extinguished. It smouldered in the ashtray, a curl of smoke giving off an acrid odour. Mary Louise wanted to put it out properly but didn’t feel like touching it with her fingers.”
“‘Let me read you this,’ he said, taking a book from one of the piles around him. It was time for her to go, but instead she watched him, opening the book, smiling, turning a page or two, raising his eyebrows before murmuring something about the length of the introduction, and then beginning:
‘A gentleman in the early forties, wearing checked trousers and a dusty overcoat, came out on to the low porch of the coaching-inn…‘
She believed she had never listened to a voice as beautiful. Delight caressed each word he uttered, gentleness or vigour matched phrase and sentence. If all he’d read was a timetable she would have been entranced.
‘The date was the twentieth of May in the year 1859…‘
It was later than it had been last week by more than two hours when Mary Louise left. On the outskirts of the town she dismounted and unscrewed the valve of her bicycle’s back tyre. She’d had a puncture, she said when she arrived in the dining-room. The meal was over, and had been for some time.”
“He had tortured himself while Mary Louise, in the presence of her already unconscious husband, undressed and crept woozily into her marriage bed. While she slept, virginal and alone, he had descended to the bitterest depths of melancholy.
‘What an irony it is!’ was all he observed in this respect, speaking softly in the graveyard.
‘You are the only person in the world I could have told.’
He kissed her gently, their lips just touching. Then he pushed himself to his feet and held his hands out to her. They walked back towards the house, not saying anything else. Both were possessed by a warmth that delighted them, the warmth of secrets at last shared while still remaining secrets, the intimacy of a private truth.”
“She has left the house before, on two occasions: for the funeral of her father, and a year and a half later for that of her mother. At both she’d been reminded of the death of her cousin, not that reminding was necessary; but the words of farewell were the same, the repetition causing her to reflect that the dead become nothing when you weary of doing their living for them. You pick and choose among the dead; the living are thrust upon you.”
“The television tells you what the world is like, old Sister Hannah used to say, the changes that have come. If you can be bothered to pay attention, the television will tell you all you want to know.
‘Over the shop’s the same,’ he says.
‘Yes, I’m sure it is.’
Sister Hannah’s the wise one. A person’s life isn’t orderly, Sister Hannah maintains; it runs about all over the place, in and out through time. The present’s hardly there; the future doesn’t exist. Only love matters in the bits and pieces of a person’s life.”
“Marriages collapsed for all sorts of reasons, but presumably you never really knew why unless you were involved in one. Not that it mattered if other people knew or not, Miss Mullover supposed, but still could not prevent herself from wondering about the future of Elmer Quarry and Mary Louise.”
“Memories possess the two old women, further souring their bitterness. There are echoes of a time that might so easily and so naturally have continued: he’d been the person in their lives when it seemed clear that no one else was waiting to transform their lives. Making cakes for him, roasting meat, darning and mending, changing his sheets, the presents given and received on Christmas Day, he in the accounting office, they receiving in the shop: once, like a promise, there was the perpetuity of all that. Modest enough, God knows; not much to ask.”
“He drapes the surplice over his left arm, smoothing the creases and watching them return. She has told him about reading the novels of Turgenev among the tombstones. She has told him that for eight years she has flushed the prescribed drugs down the lavatory, that she does not take them now because they are not necessary. As she stands in the pew, smiling up at him, her life seems as mysterious as an act of God, her innocence and her boundless love arbitrarily there, her last modest wish destined to go ungranted. The distress engendered in him by these thoughts turns into a familiar apprehension: contemplation of this woman’s life could tease away his faith more surely than all his empty churches.”
“There is a final prayer, a whispering sound that reminds her of a breeze. If he feels inclined, the fisherman keeps the caught fish in the water, still swimming although it’s netted.
‘I must go now,’ the clergyman says, but listens while she tells him about Turgenev’s fisherman. Inviting her into the world of a novelist had been her cousin’s courtship, all he could manage, as much as she could accept. Yet passion came, like consummation in the end. For thirty-on years she’d clung to a refuge in which her love affair could spread itself, a safe house offering sanctuary. For thirty-one years she passed as mad and was at peace.”
[SPOILER INCLUSIVE] Excerpts, “My House in Umbria”:
“You may consider I was fortunate to lack only a garden and a particular friend, and of course you are right. I was, and am, immensely fortunate. Not many of us acquire the means necessary to occupy a place such as this, to choose as I may choose, rarely to count the cost. Not many pass a winter and spring with only the death of a lame cat to grieve over.”
“But a plain girl can grow old gracefully, why ever not? ‘The peepshow of memory is what I mean by fragments’: I hadn’t been in my house more than a month before I caused the woman who had been the Sunday school girl to utter so.
In the soft warmth of that early morning I paused on the track that led to the heights behind my house. I looked back at the house itself, in that moment acutely aware of how the malignancy of the act had reached out to us, draining so much from the old man, rooting itself in Otmar, leaving sickness with the child. Then I pushed all that away from me and tried once more, though without success, to find a beginning for ‘Ceaseless Tears.’ I strolled on a little way before finally turning back.”
“‘You may find it strange,’ I remarked to Mr Riversmith, for what I had touched upon the day before had been on my mind in the night, ‘that we should be going out on a jaunt while still in the grip of the horror that has torn our lives asunder.’
He shook his head. In a conventional manner he said it was a sign of healing and recovery.
‘We long to escape our brooding, Mr Riversmith. We stitch together any kind of surface. But when we look into our hearts we see only a grief that is unbearable.’
I chose the words carefully, and did not add that the loss I’d suffered myself had been far less than that of the others because I’d had far less to lose. I didn’t go into detail because it wasn’t the time to do so. All I wished to make clear was that when, today, he observed his niece and Otmar and the old Englishman he was observing a skin drawn over human debris. Mr Riversmith said he wouldn’t put it quite like that, but didn’t offer an alternative form of words.
‘I just thought I’d mention it,’ I said, and left it at that. The debris of our times, I might have added, but I did not do so.”
“All the fustiness had gone from him. For the first time he appeared to be a normal human person, endeavouring to contribute to a conversation. He was not a loquacious man; no circumstances in the world would ever alter that. Yet this moving little account of family troubles had tumbled out of him in the most natural way — hesitantly and awkwardly, it’s true, but not the less naturally. I was aware of a pleasant sensation in my head, like faint pins-and-needles, and a pleasant warmth in my body. My first concern was to throw the ball back.”
“I was quite glad when eventually we descended the stairs again. Pictures of angels and saints, and the Virgin with the baby Jesus, are very pretty and are of course to be delighted in, but one after another it can be too much of a good thing.”
“It was pleasant sitting there, watching the people. A smartly dressed couple sat near me, the woman subtly made up, her companion elegant in a linen suit, with a blue silk tie. A lone man, bearded, read La Stampa. Two pretty girls, like twins, gossiped. ‘Ecco, signora!’ the waiter said again. It was extraordinary, the dream I’d had about Mr Riversmith, and I kept wondering how on earth I could have come to have such knowledge of anything as private as that, and in such telling detail. I kept hearing his voice telling me about the family dispute, and I rejoiced that we had at last conversed.
‘Bellissima!’ a salesgirl enthused a little later. I held between my hands a brightly colored hen. I had noticed it in a window full of paper goods, side by side with a strikingly coiled serpent and a crocodile. Each as a mass of swirling, jagged colours on what from a distance I took to be papier mache. But when I handled the animals I discovered they were of carved wood, with paper pressed over the surface instead of paint.
I bought the hen because it was the most amusing.”
“‘A garden should be have little gardens tucked away inside it. It should have alcoves and secret places, and paths that make you want to take them even though they don’t lead anywhere. What grows well, you cherish. What doesn’t, you throw out.’ …
Then, for the last time in my presence, the old man mentioned his daughter. We stood among the rank growth of that wasted area, to which the dilapidated old buildings and rusty wheels and axes lent a dismal air. The General stared down at the ground of which he expected so much. In his daughter’s lifetime he had resented the fact that what wealth he left behind would be shared with her husband. ‘I would happily give all the days remaining to me if it might be now,’ he murmured, and said no more.
So it was left. I had accepted gifts from men before, but never one like this, and never without strings that tied some grisly package. I was moved afresh by what was happening, by faith being kept in so many directions at once, by frailty turned into strength. The timbers of these useless buildings and the discoloured iron that had sunk into the ground would be scooped away, the fallen walls given an unexpected lease of life; an old man’s dream would spread on the hill beside the sunflower slope. He knew, as I did, that he would not live to see his garden’s heyday. But he knew if didn’t matter.”
“I explained that there was evidence, all around us, of what each and every one of us is capable of.”
This engrossing and all-too relatable historical fiction novel explores how the indifferent sweep of plague across 16th century England impacts the life and family of “Hamlet” author William Shakespeare, how a “marriage of true minds” is affected by ineffable loss, and what paths of nature and artistry healing may slowly wind through.
Excerpts (applied [editorial edits] to avoid any detailed spoilers):
“Skins hang from a rail. Hamnet knows enough to recognise the rust-red spotted hide of a deer, the delicate and supple kidskin, the smaller pelts of squirels, the course and bristling boarskin. As he moves nearer to them, the skins start to rustle and stir on their hangings, as if some life might yet be left in them, just a little, just enough for them to hear him coming. Hamnet extends a finger and touches the goat hide. It is unaccountably soft, like the brush of river weed against his legs when he swims on hot days. It sways gently to and fro, legs splayed, stretched out, as if in flight, like a bird or a ghoul.”
“Hamnet can feel the tip of [his grandfather’s anger] wander about the room, seeking an opponent, and he thinks for a moment of his mother’s hazel strip, and the way it pulls itself towards water, except he is not an underground stream and his grandfather’s anger is not like the quivering divining rod at all. It is cutting, sharp, unpredictable. Hamnet has no idea what will happen next, or what he should do.”
“He carried within him, always, the sensation of his father’s calloused hand enclosing the soft skin of his upper arm, the inescapable grip that kept him there so his father could rain down blows with his other, stronger, hand. The shock of a slap landing, sudden and sharp, from above; the flensing sting of a wooden instrument on the back of the legs. How hard were the bones in the hand of an adult, how tender and soft the flesh of a child, how easy to bend and strain those young, unfinished bones. The doused, drenched feeling of fury, of impotent humiliation, in the long minutes of a beating.”
“When she had taken his hand that day, the first time she had met him, she had felt–what? Something of which she had never known the like. Something she would never have expected to find in the hand of a clean-booted grammar-school boy from town. It was far-reaching: this much she knew. It had layers and strata, like a landscape. There were spaces and vacancies, dense patches, underground caves, rises and descents. There wasn’t enough time for her to get a sense of it all–it was too big, too complex. It eluded her, mostly. She knew there was more of it than she could grasp, that it was bigger than both of them. A sense, too, that something was tethering him, holding him back; there was a tie somewhere, a bond, that needed to be loosened or broken, before he could fully inhabit this landscape, before he could take command.”
“The bride walks in a straight line, not looking left or right. …She sees everything. The rosehips on the hedgerow that are turning to brown at their tips; unpicked blackberries, too high to reach; the swoop and dip of a thrush from the branches of an oak by the side of the track… She sees that Caterina has the gift or ability to make her life happy, and Margaret, to a lesser degree, but that Joanie does not. … She feels the prickle and shift of the herbs and berries and flowers of her crown, feels the minute trickle of water within the veins of their stems and leaves. She feels a corresponding motion within herself, in time with the plants, a flow or current or tide, the passage of blood from her to the child within. She is leaving one life; she is beginning another. Anything may happen.”
“She turns away before he reaches the bend in the road. It wil take him four days to reach London, less if he is picked up along the way by a willing farmer with a cart. She will encourage him to go but she will not watch him leave.
She walks back, more slowly, the way she came. How odd it feels, to move along the same streets, the route in reverse, like inking over old words, her feet the quill, going back over work, rewriting, erasing. Partings are strange. It seems so simple: one minute ago, four, five, he was here, at her side; now, he is gone. She was with him; she is alone. She feels exposed, chill, peeled like an onion.
There is the stall they passed earlier, piled high with tin pots and cedar shavings. There is the woman they saw, still making her decision, holding two pots in her hands, weighing them, and how can she still be there, how can she still be engaged in the same activity, in the choosing of a pot, when such a change, such a transformation has occurred in Agnes’s life? Her very world has cloven in two, and here is the same dog, dozing in a doorway. Here is a young woman, tying up clothing into bundles, just as she was doing when they passed. Here is her neighbor, a man with grizzled hair and a yellowish tinge to his thin face (he will not last the year, Agnes thinks, the fact flitting through her mind like a swallow across a sky), giving her a grave nod as he walks by. Can he not see, can he not read that life as she knows it is over, that he is gone?
The baby gives a swift, shrugging movement, pressing a palm, a foot, a shoulder against the wall of skin. She places a hand there–a hand outside, next to the hand inside–as if nothing has changed, as if the world is just as it was.”
“He has never learned to read so it is meaningless to him but, all the same, he likes the loops, the shapes, the dark cross-hatchings of ink, like the marks made when branches are shaken against an iced-over windowpane.”
“There is, she is starting to see, nothing more she can do. She can stay beside him, comfort him as best she can, but this pestilence is too great, too strong, too vicious. It is an enemy too powerful for her. It has wreathed and tightened its tendrils about her [child], and is refusing to surrender. It has a musky, dank, salty smell. It has come to them, [she] thinks, from a long way off, from a place of rot and wet and confinement. It has cut a swingeing path for itself through humans and beasts and insects alike; it feeds on pain and unhappiness and grief. It is insatiable, unstoppable, the worst, blackest kind of evil.”
“Anyone, Eliza is thinking, who describes dying as ‘slipping away’ or ‘peaceful’ has never witnessed it happen. Death is violent, death is a struggle. The body clings to life, as ivy to a wall, and will not easily let go, will not surrender its grip without a fight.”
“The sheet unravels, opens like an enormous flower, its petals wide, and Agnes is faced with its startling white expanse. The brightness of it is star-like, unavoidable, in this dark room.
She takes it. She presses her face to it. It smells of juniper, of cedar, of soap. Its nap is soft, enveloping, forgiving. …
Hard to fold [her child] in. Hard to lift the sheet’s corners and cover [her child], smother [them] in its whiteness. Hard to think, to know, that she will never again see these arms, these knuckles, these shins, that thumbnail, that callus, this face, after this.”
“Then she brings up a hand to his shoulder. She senses the hollow, the cave, made by her palm as it rests there. He takes the other hand and presses it to his face; she feels the resisting spring of his beard, his insistent and assertive kisses.
He will not be stopped, diverted; he is a man intent on one destination, on one action. He yanks and pulls at her shift, bunching its folds and lengths in his hand, swearing and blaspheming with the effort, until he has parter her from it, until she is laughing at him, the he covers her with himself and will not let her go; she feels herself as a separate being, a body apart, dissolve, until she has no idea, no sense of whose skin is whose, which limb belongs to whom, who hair it is in her mouth, whose breath leaves and enters whose lips.”
“After a few days, however, there will be a kind of thawing. … She will humour him, in the garden, answering his constant enquiries as to what is this flower, and this, and what is it used for? She listens as, holding an ancient-looking book, he compares her names for the plants to those in Latin. She will prepare a sage elixir for him, a tea of lovage and broom. She will carry it up the stairs, into the room where he is bent over his desk, shutting the door after her. She will take his arm when they walk together in the street. [The child] will hear laughter and talk from the outhouses. It’s as if [she] needs London, and all that he does there, to rub off him before she can accept him back.”
“Agnes is silent. The animal inside her flexes itself restlessly, starts to scrape at her innards with its needling claws.”
“At night, she rises from her bed and goes outside. She sits between the woven, rough sides of her skeps. The humming, vibrating noises from within, beginning just after dawn, seem to her the most eloquent, articulate, perfect language there is.”
Recently a New Yorker article I was reading mentioned that Portland’s own world-famous science fiction writer (who died in 2018 at the age of 88) authored a version of the millennia-old Taoist text that I first read in a religious studies course in college. Huh, what? ‘Le Guin was fluent in Chinese?,’ I wondered. Turns out, no. She used another English-language translation that included all the original characters and worked with a scholar over decades to produce what is one of the most admired publications of the “book about the way and the power of the way.” Her footnotes and comments add to the poignancy and give a glimpse into what the work meant to her personally. Rereading the text 30 years later was powerful for me personally as well.
Excerpts:
“Consider beginnings
Do without doing. Act without action. Savor the flavorless. Treat the small as large, the few as many.
Meet injury with the power of goodness.
Study the hard while it’s easy. Do big things while they’re small. The hardest jobs in the world start out easy, the great affairs of the world start small.
So the wise soul, by never dealing with great things, gets great things done.
Now, since taking things too lightly makes them worthless, and taking things too easy makes them hard, the wise soul, by treating the easy as hard, doesn’t find anything hard.”
“Lowdown
Lakes and rivers are lords of the hundred valleys. Why? Because they’ll go lower. So they’re the lords of the hundred valleys.
Just so, a wise soul, wanting to be above other people, talks to them from below and to guide them follows them.
And so the wise soul predominates without dominating, and leads without misleading. And people don’t get tired of enoying and priasing one who, not competing, has in all the world no competitor.”
“The sick mind
To know without knowing is best. Not knowing without knowing it is sick.
To be sick of sickness is the only cure.
The wise aren’t sick. They’re sick of sickness, so they’re well.”
“Hardness
Living people are soft and tender. Corpses are hard and stiff. The ten thousand things, the living grass, the trees, are soft, pliant. Dead, they’re dry and brittle.”
So hardness and stiffness go with death; tenderness, softness, go with life.
And the hard sword fails, the stiff tree’s felled. The hard and great go under. The soft and weak stay up.” (LeGuin footnote: In an age when hardness is supposed to be the essence of strength, and even the beauty of women is reduced nearly to the bone, I welcome this reminder that tanks and tombstones are not very adequate role models, and that to be alive is to be vulnerable.)
A tightly wrought, tantalizingly unspooled fever dream of beastly behavior indeed. The novella-length tale mesmerizes with its creepy seductive lure, flirtation with the grotesque, and mutlifaceted exploration of the nature of desire, obsession, jealousy, power, and what can lurk behind the drive to live an art-immersed life. Oates is fearless in plumbing psychological and sexual depths many writers wouldn’t dare touch.
A few quotes (spoiler-esque, fyi):
“I was dazed and disoriented. The wine had made me laugh like a frightened child but now the wine was making my head ache. Mr. Harrow had sent me to the women’s restroom on the first floor to ‘fix yourself up.’ In the mirror, my eyes failed to come into focus. My mouth was bruised. I’d vowed to Andre Harrow that I loved him, I loved him and I would die for him, and he’d laughed at these extravagant words and asked what good would I be to him them, a dead girl. And in the lavatory mirror there floated the waxy-pale face of the dead girl. Her bruised, aching mouth.”
“And so I returned to the house in the cul-de-sac of Brierly Lane. The old New England farmhouse nearly hidden by juniper pines, birches. Where snow-laden evergreens sagged with that look of winter stoicism. That indomitable will that is the will of all life to survive.”
“… the figure’s head [was] tilted at a slight angle backward, as if the empty eyes were lifted skyward. Basking in young, burgeoning sexuality. The delusion of young-female power. You believe that, in your beautiful new body, you might live forever.”
If you’re keen to peruse my 2021 categorized quotes, captured from things I’ve seen on screens, here you have it for your appreciation, amusement and, optimally, occasional enrichment.
In the days it takes each late December for me to compile and order this list from my year’s hand-written notebook, I feel the aggregated unconscious constructs and influences of my year vibrating back to me palpably as my fingers type out and order the quotes. It’s like I become a fascinated stenographer of my own experiences that struck me enough to record in pen on paper, not very long ago, and yet seem fresh from rediscovery. It’s a way I make sense of the year behind and center myself for the one ahead. Maybe it can do that to some extent for others. Or at least bring a chuckle or two.
/
Nature//Science
The skin of the sky is burning — Haida people’s story of Aurora
“Nothing could be satisfying to a romantic young man bred in cities than the semi-desert landscape that covers so much of the West. It’s as empty as the horizon and gleams with splendid meloncholy lights and haunting shapes.” – Alistair (Alfred) Cooke, on his first American road trip, 1932
“The rule of the valley is that those who get even the slightest edge survive. … There is always opportunity in change.” – Nature: Pumas – Legends of the Ice Mountains
“Wolves once hunted bison here in Europe, but after centuries without bison, European wolves have forgotten how to tackle such large prey. So these massive reintroduced herbivores are safe, for now. – Europe’s New Wild p1 Return of the Titans
Wild boars live in groups called SOUNDERS and are led by the dominant female
“And as I draw all these lines [btwn all the species in this single kelp forest spot], all these stories are being thrown at me. It’s almost like the forest mind, you could really feel it, that big creature thousands of times more awake and intelligent than I am. It’s like a giant underwater brain operating over millions of years that just keeps everything in balance.” – My Octopus Teacher
“A lot of her intelligence is built from the sheer # of prey she has to catch.” – My Octopus Teacher
[on his son] A strong sense of self, incredible confidence but most important, a gentleness. And I think that’s what thousands of hours in nature can teach a child.” – My Octopus Teacher
“What keeps me awake isn’t the question I haven’t answered yet, it’s the question I haven’t asked yet.” Neil Degrasse Tyson
“I don’t know if we have the wisdom to shepherd civilization into the future in a way that will ensure our survival. … Einstein’s theory of relativity tells us that we exist in time and space, so your world line are your coordinates at any time in time and space. ‘Let’s meet at 10 o’clock.’ ‘Where?’ But during the pandemic, space was no longer a constraining coordinate. I have attended more scientific talks than I ever have in the last 20 yrs! We have wrecked apart the Einsteinian spacetime continuum and made time the only important variable. That is a gift of covid to civilization going forward.” – Neil Degrasse Tyson, Corden “I didn’t think where, just what would I order. What if I could go to that really good place with the bacon.” – James’ reply
“I wanted to be part of this great revolution to find the god equation and its string theory that eluded Einstein for the last 30 years of his life.” “Everything, including us is actually an expression of a vibration of some sort of fiber that we can never see?” “The missing paradigm/theory/idea is MUSIC. Music of tiny particles. If I peer into an electron I would not see a dot, I would see a rubber band. And as it vibrates at a different frequency, it changes into a neutrino. It changes again into a quark. In fact, all the hundreds of subatomic particles we’ve seen are nothing but different vibrations of the same strings. So physics is the harmonies you can write on these strings. And chemistry is the melodies you can play on interacting strings. The universe is a symphony of strings, and the mind of god is cosmic music resonating thru hyperspace.” – Michio Kaku, Colbert
This organism, with a brain or a nervous system capable of making choices, solving complex problems, and devising strategies. Slime mold is forcing scientists to rethink single-celled organism intelligence as something that does not imply a need for a brain.” – NOVA Secret Mind of Slime
“But there are plenty of other por-poizes around.” – Ewan McGregregor’s hilarious pronunciation of porpoise, Storm Born s1e2
[reggiedoyouhaveaquestionforanyofourguests?] “Probabilism, determinism, waaa?” “I like the combination of the two, where you think something’s going to happen a certain way … and then you are confronted with something you didn’t anticipate and that’s where the innovation and creativity arises, b/c you are thrown these obstacles and you figure out how to scale them, how to climb under them, how to make them disappear. And that is the true engine of innovation in this world.” “I always say conflict is the engine of reality, and what you’re saying is groovy and it’s correct.” – Neil Degrasse Tyson + Reggie Watts 12Apr21
Left shoes tend to drift one way, and right t’other, in gyres (huge circular ocean currents). “Serendipity science. It forces you to ask questions that you never would have thought about, which is really good. The ocean, I think, speaks to us in what I call FLOTSAM TONGUE, and I’m here to read it.” -Kurt Evismire(?), world expert on flotsam
This organism – without a brain or a nervous system – seems capable of making choices, solving complex problems and devising strategies. [Slime mold] is forcing scientists to rethink single-celled organism intelligence as something that competes with fungi and bacteria and does not imply a need for a brain. – NOVA, Secret Mind of Slime
“Here on the island there’s an artistic blood in everybody. I mean everybody somehow sings and dances or plays an instrument and there’s nothing more natural or more true to the human being than art and music. Well I do block prints b/c, well, I like to make block prints. It’s a matter of finding something you like.” – Rapa Nui/Easter Island, Mahani Teave “With these amazing teachers, I was to find the maximum beauty I could in these pieces.”
October 2020 had a Blue Moon, a second full moon in one month… Every full moon has a name. In June the moon never gets too high in the sky so it takes on an amber color and is called the Honey Moon. – Neil Degrasse Tyson, Colbert
“A bum trip’s hallucinations can rear at any time, in all their original intensity, up to a year after the dose.” – hilarious anti-drug industrial film: Drug Stories “It’s my real secret that I strip away the layers of ego that shelter us all, and I can bring him into the incredible world of his own deep dreamscape.” – voiceover, LSD
Jane Wellenbring, geologist calling out harassment in the sciences on Newshour’s Brief But Spectacular: over half of female scientists experience sexual harassment during field work
“I want to understand that state and that energy that I have in me that I also feel in ants and in the land. I need the land. I need it. The energy and life that is flowing through the landscape, that intangible thing that is here and then gone. Growth, time, change, and the idea of flow in nature. – Rivers and Tides (Andy Goldsworthy)
“The two big influences in my work are the Sea and the River, both water. You would think that Time and Tide would be more compatible with the tide – tide and time, this daily up and down. But somehow I think there’s a lot to be learned about time by the river.” – Andy Goldsworthy
I think good art keeps you warm. The moon was out but it casts a shadow out here // And all that effort goes into making something that is effortless // All the time we’re losing [to walk to get stones] we’re losing time. So that makes for an interesting work. I really quite like that kind of tension. And there’s a risk, you know? I may be only this way up and the tide’s here and it’s like a marker to that time that’s comin on up behind me. I think the relentlessness of it. There’s no getting away from the fact that the sea is going to be here. – Goldsworthy
“What I have touched on this time is that I haven’t simply made something to be destroyed by the sea. It, the work, has been given to the sea, as a gift, and the sea has taken the work and made more it than I could have ever hoped for. And I think if I can see in that ways of understanding those things that happen to us in life, that changes our lives, that causes upheavals and shock [long pause], I can’t explain that. // And I think we misread the landscape when we think of it just being pastoral and pretty. There is a darker side to that. // The real work is the change.
The flame of the fire makes the energy of the fire visible. Well it’s the same with this black [stalk root]. It’s the result of the energy that’s taken place between the plant and the earth, and through that process there was an exchange of heat that gives it this – it looks charred, it looks painted but it’s not, that’s just the root as I found it. And I think at this time, when spring is beginning, it doesn’t begin on the surface, it begins below. So this idea of finding evidence of the heat within the ground is something about, is a way is my way of understanding what’s going on in the moment and even though these are stalks from last year’s plants and will not grow again this year, they are still connected to that root system underneath the ground. And the idea of what happened last year is being repeated this year and it’s going to come through this. – Andy Goldsworthy
“A neutrino is a type of elementary particle, a basic fundamental building block of the universe, and they come in 3 forms. Neutrinos are everywhere. They are produced in the sun, there are neutrinos that are left over after the big bang. The’ve no electrical charge, they’ve almost got no mass at all. They’re as near to nothing as you can imagine. They’re so reluctant to react with stuff, they pass thru the earth as if it wasn’t there.” – NOVA, Particles Unknown “Beta decay occurs when, in a nucleus with too many protons or too many neutrons, one of the protons or neutrons is transformed into the other. In beta minus decay, a neutron decays into a proton, an electron, and an antineutrino”
Plankton, these tiny plantlike organisms., produce up to 50% of our planet’s oxygen. And so it’s not just forest, but also the oceans, that are the lungs of our world. – Life From Above, Colorful World s1e2
Forest elephants spend most of their lives in small family group. – Life From Above s1e3 Patterned Planet. Zenga Bay = village of elephants
“One only sees magic when looking for magic. … Just outside a Black Hole the fabric of space itself stretches inward. // Einsten viewed the fabric of the universe not as something static, but instead as fluid, something that BENDS and WARPS around objects with mass. We call this space-time. Einstein’s insight is that these 2 things are intimately connected, that when an object has mass it not just bends space but changes the passage of time, to slow down time. – NOVA Universe Revealed: Black Holes
“The majority of black holes are strewn across and wander alone through space.
“Sagittarius A-star – starts at the heart of our galaxy, orbiting nothing. At the center of this storm of stars is darkness, a void. 4M times the mass of our sun at the heart of the Milky Way, around which entire galaxies spin. // At the heart of most galaxies we think there are block holes that weigh millions or billions of times what our sun does. 2 primal forces: gravity, and quantum mechanics. Black hole is where 2 forces meet – the mechanics of the very large and very small conflict. // supermassive black holes = integral features of the cosmos
Everything I see brings back memories. You always knew it was gonna bring you back. – OR Field Guide, “daughter boat” of The Peacock, George Wane Columbia Bar pilot // Don Nelsom = 50k bar crossings!!!
“A lot of people tell me, ‘You must know were every rock is in that bar.’ And I say ’No I don’t, but I know where it ain’t.” – George Wane Columbia Bar Pilot “[after 17 hrs in water after ‘big swole and rowboat lost to pilot boat]. “If the weather hadn’t broken around 5o’clock tha next morning, we’d a have never made it. … About a year later he fell off a Jacobs Ladder and drowned. Now that broke my heart. But that’s the ocean.”
“We are not defined by our individual loneliness, but by the web of relationships in which we are enmeshed.” – Ken Liu, mono no aware
The skin of the sky is burning — Haida people’s story of Aurora
“Nothing could be satisfying to a romantic young man bred in cities than the semi-desert landscape that covers so much of the West. It’s as empty as the horizon and gleams with splendid meloncholy lights and haunting shapes.” – Alistair (Alfred) Cooke, on his first American road trip, 1932
“The rule of the valley is that those who get even the slightest edge survive. … There is always opportunity in change.” – Nature: Pumas – Legends of the Ice Mountains
“Wolves once hunted bison here in Europe, but after centuries without bison, European wolves have forgotten how to tackle such large prey. So these massive reintroduced herbivores are safe, for now. – Europe’s New Wild p1 Return of the Titans
Wild boars live in groups called SOUNDERS and are led by the dominant female
“And as I draw all these lines [btwn all the species in this single kelp forest spot], all these stories are being thrown at me. It’s almost like the forest mind, you could really feel it, that big creature thousands of times more awake and intelligent than I am. It’s like a giant underwater brain operating over millions of years that just keeps everything in balance.” – My Octopus Teacher
“A lot of her intelligence is built from the sheer # of prey she has to catch.” – My Octopus Teacher
[on his son] A strong sense of self, incredible confidence but most important, a gentleness. And I think that’s what thousands of hours in nature can teach a child.” – My Octopus Teacher
“What keeps me awake isn’t the question I haven’t answered yet, it’s the question I haven’t asked yet.” Neil Degrasse Tyson
“I don’t know if we have the wisdom to shepherd civilization into the future in a way that will ensure our survival. … Einstein’s theory of relativity tells us that we exist in time and space, so your world line are your coordinates at any time in time and space. ‘Let’s meet at 10 o’clock.’ ‘Where?’ But during the pandemic, space was no longer a constraining coordinate. I have attended more scientific talks than I ever have in the last 20 yrs! We have wrecked apart the Einsteinian spacetime continuum and made time the only important variable. That is a gift of covid to civilization going forward.” – Neil Degrasse Tyson, Corden “I didn’t think where, just what would I order. What if I could go to that really good place with the bacon.” – James’ reply
“I wanted to be part of this great revolution to find the god equation and its string theory that eluded Einstein for the last 30 years of his life.” “Everything, including us is actually an expression of a vibration of some sort of fiber that we can never see?” “The missing paradigm/theory/idea is MUSIC. Music of tiny particles. If I peer into an electron I would not see a dot, I would see a rubber band. And as it vibrates at a different frequency, it changes into a neutrino. It changes again into a quark. In fact, all the hundreds of subatomic particles we’ve seen are nothing but different vibrations of the same strings. So physics is the harmonies you can write on these strings. And chemistry is the melodies you can play on interacting strongs. The universe is a symphony of strings, and the mind of god is cosmic music resonating thru hyperspace.” – Michio Kaku, Colbert
This organism, with a brain or a nervous system capable of making choices, solving complex problems, and devising strategies. Slime mold is forcing scientists to rethink single-celled organism intelligence as something that does not imply a need for a brain.” – NOVA Secret Mind of Slime
“But there are plenty of other por-poizes around.” – Ewan McGregregor’s hilarious pronunciation of porpoise, Storm Born s1e2
[reggiedoyouhaveaquestionforanyofourguests?] “Probabilism, determinism, waaa?” “I like the combination of the two, where you think something’s going to happen a certain way … and then you are confronted with something you didn’t anticipate and that’s where the innovation and creativity arises, b/c you are thrown these obstacles and you figure out how to scale them, how to climb under them, how to make them disappear. And that is the true engine of innovation in this world.” “I always say conflict is the engine of reality, and what you’re saying is groovy and it’s correct.” – Neil Degrasse Tyson + Reggie Watts 12Apr21
Left shoes tend to drift one way, and right t’other, in gyres (huge circular ocean currents). “Serendipity science. It forces you to ask questions that you never would have thought about, which is really good. The ocean, I think, speaks to us in what I call FLOTSAM TONGUE, and I’m here to read it.” -Kurt Evismire(?), world expert on flotsam
This organism – without a brain or a nervous system – seems capable of making choices, solving complex problems and devising strategies. [Slime mold] is forcing scientists to rethink single-celled organism intelligence as something that competes with fungi and bacteria and does not imply a need for a brain. – NOVA, Secret Mind of Slime
“Here on the island there’s an artistic blood in everybody. I mean everybody somehow sings and dances or plays an instrument and there’s nothing more natural or more true to the human being than art and music. Well I do block prints b/c, well, I like to make block prints. It’s a matter of finding something you like.” – Rapa Nui/Easter Island, Mahani Teave “With these amazing teachers, I was to find the maximum beauty I could in these pieces.”
October 2020 had a Blue Moon, a second full moon in one month… Every full moon has a name. In June the moon never gets too high in the sky so it takes on an amber color and is called the Honey Moon. – Neil Degrasse Tyson, Colbert
“A bum trip’s hallucinations can rear at any time, in all their original intensity, up to a year after the dose.” – hilarious anti-drug industrial film: Drug Stories “It’s my real secret that I strip away the layers of ego that shelter us all, and I can bring him into the incredible world of his own deep dreamscape.” – voiceover, LSD
Jane Wellenbring, geologist calling out harassment in the sciences on Newshour’s Brief But Spectacular: over half of female scientists experience sexual harassment during field work
“I want to understand that state and that energy that I have in me that I also feel in ants and in the land. I need the land. I need it. The energy and life that is flowing through the landscape, that intangible thing that is here and then gone. Growth, time, change, and the idea of flow in nature. – Rivers and Tides (Andy Goldsworthy)
“The two big influences in my work are the Sea and the River, both water. You would think that Time and Tide would be more compatible with the tide – tide and time, this daily up and down. But somehow I think there’s a lot to be learned about time by the river.” – Andy Goldsworthy
I think good art keeps you warm. The moon was out but it casts a shadow out here // And all that effort goes into making something that is effortless // All the time we’re losing [to walk to get stones] we’re losing time. So that makes for an interesting work. I really quite like that kind of tension. And there’s a risk, you know? I may be only this way up and the tide’s here and it’s like a marker to that time that’s comin on up behind me. I think the relentlessness of it. There’s no getting away from the fact that the sea is going to be here. – Goldsworthy
“What I have touched on this time is that I haven’t simply made something to be destroyed by the sea. It, the work, has been given to the sea, as a gift, and the sea has taken the work and made more it than I could have ever hoped for. And I think if I can see in that ways of understanding those things that happen to us in life, that changes our lives, that causes upheavals and shock [long pause], I can’t explain that. // And I think we misread the landscape when we think of it just being pastoral and pretty. There is a darker side to that. // The real work is the change.
The flame of the fire makes the energy of the fire visible. Well it’s the same with this black [stalk root]. It’s the result of the energy that’s taken place between the plant and the earth, and through that process there was an exchange of heat that gives it this – it looks charred, it looks painted but it’s not, that’s just the root as I found it. And I think at this time, when spring is beginning, it doesn’t begin on the surface, it begins below. So this idea of finding evidence of the heat within the ground is something about, is a way is my way of understanding what’s going on in the moment and even though these are stalks from last year’s plants and will not grow again this year, they are still connected to that root system underneath the ground. And the idea of what happened last year is being repeated this year and it’s going to come through this. – Andy Goldsworthy
“A neutrino is a type of elementary particle, a basic fundamental building block of the universe, and they come in 3 forms. Neutrinos are everywhere. They are produced in the sun, there are neutrinos that are left over after the big bang. The’ve no electrical charge, they’ve almost got no mass at all. They’re as near to nothing as you can imagine. They’re so reluctant to react with stuff, they pass thru the earth as if it wasn’t there.” – NOVA, Particles Unknown “Beta decay occurs when, in a nucleus with too many protons or too many neutrons, one of the protons or neutrons is transformed into the other. In beta minus decay, a neutron decays into a proton, an electron, and an antineutrino”
Plankton, these tiny plantlike organisms., produce up to 50% of our planet’s oxygen. And so it’s not just forest, but also the oceans, that are the lungs of our world. – Life From Above, Colorful World s1e2
Forest elephants spend most of their lives in small family group. – Life From Above s1e3 Patterned Planet. Zenga Bay = village of elephants
“One only sees magic when looking for magic. … Just outside a Black Hole the fabric of space itself stretches inward. // Einsten viewed the fabric of the universe not as something static, but instead as fluid, something that BENDS and WARPS around objects with mass. We call this space-time. Einstein’s insight is that these 2 things are intimately connected, that when an object has mass it not just bends space but changes the passage of time, to slow down time. – NOVA Universe Revealed: Black Holes
“The majority of black holes are strewn across and wander alone through space.
“Sagittarius A-star – starts at the heart of our galaxy, orbiting nothing. At the center of this storm of stars is darkness, a void. 4M times the mass of our sun at the heart of the Milky Way, around which entire galaxies spin. // At the heart of most galaxies we think there are block holes that weigh millions or billions of times what our sun does. 2 primal forces: gravity, and quantum mechanics. Black hole is where 2 forces meet – the mechanics of the very large and very small conflict. // supermassive black holes = integral features of the cosmos
Everything I see brings back memories. You always knew it was gonna bring you back. – OR Field Guide, “daughter boat” of The Peacock, George Wane Columbia Bar pilot // Don Nelsom = 50k bar crossings!!!
“A lot of people tell me, ‘You must know were every rock is in that bar.’ And I say ’No I don’t, but I know where it ain’t.” – George Wane Columbia Bar Pilot “[after 17 hrs in water after ‘big swole and rowboat lost to pilot boat]. “If the weather hadn’t broken around 5o’clock tha next morning, we’d a have never made it. … About a year later he fell of a Jacobs Ladder and drowned. Now that broke my heart. But that’s the ocean.”
“We are not defined by our individual loneliness, but by the web of relationships in which we are enmeshed.” – Ken Liu, mono no aware
Culture/Philosophy/Arts
When Nabokov attempted to translate Pushkin’s Oengin, he found the task impossible. He could get the meaning, but the meaning is not the poem.” – “Usher” film
Poetry is an art form, but it’s also a weapon, it’s also an instrument, it’s the ability to make ideas that have been known, felt and said – and that’s a real duty for a poet. One of my favorite writers, Audre Lorde, said there’s no new ideas, just new ways of making them felt, and that’s what I try to do.” – Amanda Gorman, 22, inauguration poet
“It is said we owe literature almost everything we are, and we have been. If books disappear, history will disappear, and human beings will also disappear. I’m sure you are right. Books are not just the arbitrary sum of our dreams and our memory – they also give us the model of self transcendence. So think of reading not only as a kind of escape – from the real every world to an imaginary world. Books are much more. They are a way of being fully human. – The Booksellers
“I think part of my affection is crawling around in the bookstore, which I still do, even though you’re not supposed to do that.” – Fran Liebowitz “You know what they used to be called, independent bookstores? Bookstores.”
People don’t have the patience to go look at a shelf of books like that. The average buyer wants to buy a particular book – I mean, it takes a certain kind of interest in books to begin with to even arrive at the stage of wanting to be surprised by something – you want to find what you aren’t looking for.” – The Booksellers
“I bought the most expensive America book ever sold, in 1989 – Poe’s first book: Tamerlane. They call it the BLACK TULIP of rare books of American Literature. There are a handful of copies. It had been found in a junk shop for $15” – The Booksellers
“The people who appreciate something rare in the world of books are generally just as rare as the things themselves.” – The Booksellers
“The relationship of the individual to the book is very much like a love affair. It’s hard to explain to other people – if you can at all – and it’s totally satisfying to yourself.” – The Booksellers
“I personally have never been able to throw away a book. I have seen books like in trash and to me it’s like seeing a human head in the trash, even if it’s a horrible book.” – Fran Liebowitz, The Booksellers
“A bottle of champagne, when opened, should sounds like a woman sighing.”
“In silence between writer and reader, a memory of word, hands take form. We learn substance and worth thru others’ eyes. Cloth flesh ink skin paper dust: these are but material forms in which ideas dwell. In the roar of a crowded shelf of books, desert sun and arctic night, distant seas of thoughts awaken, mingle, and are still. Minds meet where the reading hand grasps the void, and inks its passage in empty margins. Lost forgotten thumbed split: we bear the scars of patient decades and centuries’ dreams: whose hands will next hold me, I do now know. The book too reads its readers in real time.” – The Booksellers
“Improve in one talent and god will give you more. … To master a craft, apprentice three.” – Shaker expressions in Ethan Hawkes’ mother’s bathroom
“Acting has been the craft of my life but directing and writing to acting, but by apprenticing those other professions I learn a lot about my chosen field. I like the definition of amateur as somebody who does something for love. And I try to stay in touch with that while maintaining the discipline and integrity and reliableness of true professionalism.” – Ethan Hawke
“You take the guy who had a 50-yr career as a movie director, making films from The Graduate and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf to Working Girl and Silkwood and The Birdcage, and then imagine he had a parallel 50-yr career as a stage directors responsible for everything from The Odd Couple to Spamalot – and then consider that both those careers were preceded by a really big deal career [with Elaine May!] as a performing artist that changed the nature of improv comedy. So you add that up and you have a really unique figure.” – Mark Harris: Mike Nichols, A Life (Colbert)
“The only things I can remember are the things I’m not going to tell you.” – Elaine May on Mike Nichols to writer Mark Harris // Nichols was meant to play Carmela Soprano’s Talmudic therapist insisting she leave him and take the kids, and Mike told David Chase ‘You’ve got the wrong Jew.”
“The flame alive and the wound open are the same thing.” – Viggo Mortenson (“Falling,” Colbert)
“When the urge to exercise comes over me, I lie down until it passes away. And as to drinking, I have strict rules about that: when others drink, I like to help.” – Hal Holbrook (dead at 95) as Mark Twain
“We have had no revenue for 9mo and most likely for another 8mo. We are the first industry that went out and we’ll most likely be the last one in.” – Charlotte St Marin, Prez, Broadways League, to Jeffrey Browne, NewsHour
“You don’t age out of your passion … Shoot that shit … Don’t wait on those people. Danai Gareen (Michone, walking dead, playwright, more) once said to me ‘stop trying to make these people love you. Go where the love is.’” – Radha Blank, The 40 Year Old Version, Daily Show
“This country is going to enter a new age of work – of fixing, making and building things. An age when skilled workers are going to be in demand like never before. “You know, they good peoples, we’ve been lookin’ out and we just enjoy the happiness that’s around them and around us.” – Mudbone Farms, Corbett, OR / VA program mentoring future Black farmers), NewsHour
“I can go through a day, have all kinds of challenges, struggles, my body aches, but when I wake up the next day, sometime I have to try really hard to remember what were the things that really were bothering the days before – b/c I wake up every day refreshed, ready to start again. I feel like there is something healing about underneath, listening to these crickets and playing with this earth, microorganisms all over me, every day. I feel like it is doing something internally.”
“Even in our hardest moments, we never want to be the ones at the table, so we reach our hands out to invite more people in to theis movement around farming. – Arthur Shavers and Shantae Johnson, Farmers, Mudbone Grown, Corbett, OR, OR Field Guide 18Feb
When things get back to normal
“Coming from a former communist country, I will never do something for some reason. I will only do things b/c I like to do it. I have unstoppable urge to do this project, without any justification.” – Christo, The Gates, Maysles doc
[Daniel Kaluya, Golden Globe win for best supporting actor, Judas and the Black Messiah]: “And, man, this took it out of me, I gave everything. Like the great Nipsey Hustle says, we’re here to give til we’re empty. And I gave everything. And I couldn’t give it to a more noble man, and that’s chairman Fred Hampton. And I hope generations after this can see how brilliant he thought, and how brilliantly he spoke and how brilliantly he loved. And he taught me about myself and made me grow as a man and I appreciate him with all my heart and I hope people will grow and learn about how incredibly he lived. [I can’t believe I’m zooming with Bill Murray, man, that’s mad].”
“I’ve never lived alone. I’ve never laughed alone. And that has so much to do with my being here today, as anything else I know. … Thank you and bless you, Carol Burnett, for everything you’ve meant to me by way of joy, surprise, delight and laughter.” – Norman Lear, honorary GG
“I especially want to thank the nomads who shared their stories with us and I asked one of them – Bob Wells – to help me out here. This is what he said about compassion: ‘Compassion is the breakdown of all the barriers between us. A heart to heart bonding. Your pain is my pain, is mingled and shared between us.” – Chloe Zhao, creator of Nomadland, Golden Globe win speech
“When they [the Shoshone people] get up there and dance, it makes me feel good, it makes me feel good inside. Just relaxed, it makes me feel beautiful” – Ula Tyler, E Shoshone “We say, the drum’s been around since the beginning of time so we consider the drum our grandfather. We treat it just like we would treat our elders – we treat it with respect. I was always told, if you take care of the drum, you pray to it, it takes care of you, and it’s good medicine.”
“I think the thing with the drums is you don’t play the drums, you have to let them play you. The thing I anticipated the least was how we would normalize [it all], that it could get so bad but seem so normal. That sense of everything falling apart at every level all around you and yet you have to live, you have to survive, you just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other — the normalcy of the weirdness was the thing that, without living thru it, I don’t think I could have understood.” – Riz Ahmed, Newshour
“You just need to go 30 yrs ago and this [Mexican art/culture] was something only a few people were interested in, all around the world. And now it is part of the tools by which people are asking the questions they need to ask about their lives and their times.” – museum curator, Cuauhtemoc Medina
Social gospel = what we give each other – not one giant competition – Shaylyn Romney Garrett, Newshour 9Mar
“Yellow wash, Washeen, Klickitat: This water – the water of our mother here, the ground the earth. When you hear the sound, it’s alive and it has a big meaning. Water is life. So when they took the dam out that was a renewal … I could just put a camp right here and just listen to the sound of this river, its soothing; it soothes you. It renews your spirit, that’s what it does.” – OR exp
“History is precious. It doesn’t survive unless you choose to embrace it.” – Te Ping Chen, author Land of Big Numbers (stories)” brief but spectacular 18Mar
“I’m interested in people. Especially people whom other people don’t regard as interesting. The so-called marginalized, that’s where the stories lay [at the margins]. And that in hindsight is what’s propelled me thru several stories, first about inequity, you know, who considers who is proper, respectable? Questions of race become currency … I need access to the white and Black communities as a Brown kid – and also the notion of living btwn many worlds … and living it you understand both how useless nostalgia is but also how powerful it is, and the notion of exile alongside it, in cinema. Film can capture that sense of being btwn places or being like on a seesaw, which is what a state of mind and heart is often when you live in several languages and borders get blurred. In all these worlds I’m not an observer, I’m engaged and that’s a foundation of my work. – Mira Nair, Adventures in Filmgoing [dir Monsoon Wedding, inspired by La Dolce Vita] “Create density. B/c India is nothing but dense, and layered with the most unexpected layerings … the characters must feel as human and as unexpected and as extraordinary as ordinary life shows us that we are.”
“The Apu trilogy [Satyajit Ray] is like being dipped in a vat of something that I feel so pleased is my culture but also just to understand people and the poetry of simple things, but done so masterfully that they’re eternal. A lot of Ray’s work stays with me .. And I was so lucky to know him as well and to also see the struggle that sometimes one is inspired, and sometimes it’s gone. And how do you get back into that seesaw of what changes you again?” – Mira Nair on Ray
“You welcomed me destroyed and you gave me myself back whole” – Frida Kahlo, Viva La Vida
“I paint to paint” – Frida Kahlo, rebuilding her life with objects that surrounded her – with love of mariachi, tequila, the will to live. She turned her house her clothes her objects into art for herself (after Diego fucked her sister [!!!]).
Andre Breton came to Mexico and described Kahlo’s works as “a ribbon tied to a bomb” but she rejected the characterization, cared about representing Mexican underbelly thru cultural iconography.
Kahlo on painting The Bed (with skeleton hovering over her wrapped in vines): The skull smiled at us.” Fate gave us a second chance. A nice thing in Mexico is we play with death, we laugh with it, we eat it, we entertain ourselves with it.” – name lost of modern painter “People need to make up gods and heroes b/c they’re afraid of life and death.”
“We all keep discovering Frida.” – her niece. Re Frida imagining a friend beyond misted windows she’d trace doors on. “I remember her joy and I’d tell her my problems while she danced.” “The pain she paints is what’s in her soul.”
“These are the images that have marked me and leave me wondering still.” – Camera Person, Kristen Johnson 2016 — “I think of the camera not as protection, but permission. The camera allowed me to be with people and in places I would not have been allowed to be. And the camera allows transgression, proximity, intimacy, and makes things happen, is catalytic… I think what the camera does by its presence is remind us that we’ll die, that there’s a future and this camera is recording me, it has something that will go into the future with or without me and is catalytic to people’s relationships when in presence of a camera… images are relationships – in the making, and they shift over time. –Camera Person, Kristen Johnson
“I’ve been close to Billy [Wilder] for 35 years and I have never spent 30 seconds with him that were dull.” – Jack Lemon
“You are as good as the best thing you’ve ever done.” – Billy Wilder
“Well, I’m 96. How you sposed to feel at 96?! A lot of people don’t live that long and I’m here. Death doesn’t bother me. I don’t really think it ever bothered me. When I was 19 I was flying combat missions and they were shooting at me. I didn’t like being shot at – who the heck would? – but the idea of dying was not like “oh my god I might die!” and I still don’t feel that way about it. When the time to die, I’ll be quite content to understand or experience whatever comes next, or, if nothing, that.” – Steward Hoades (?) Brief But Spectacular “I was crazy about it and after the war I had the same experience hitting dance. I loved it. I felt that dancing and flying were 2 ways of getting to the same state. People don’t understand how much (?) can be similar but they do something to you. I think anything you do with every particle of yourself can be wonderful. And it can make you forget the world; it’s magic. How the heck am I supposed to describe it? Something happens it takes everything you’ve got. And for those brief moments that you’re dancing, you’re transported, in another world – you sense nothing but that moment, when it hits you, you want more. I can’t imagine dancing outside of being completely myself. – Stewart Hoades, Brief But Spectacular
“I feel obliged to be a good person and to bring good to the world. We owe the dead.” – Judith Dim Evans 1932-2020. “Language is what I turn to as a reader and a writer. And so I found, ever after my mother died, myself trying to say the unsayable. And writing is the only thing that helps me to do that. And reading. I should say reading as well.” – newshour 21June, Judith Dim Evans 1932-2020 Holocaust survivor Borat in Jew effigy costume meets in synagogue and is kind to him and de-escolates his shameful behavior by listening.
In memorium: Mary Annesteiner, the epitome of elegance. Born in Germany, escaped Nazi rule to NYC. After 100th birthday party she said just being alive was still so exciting. – newshour
Hemingway short story The Undefeated being taught to incarcerated men in NM: Its biggest intent is groups of men. He is interested in how men thing and function together and in particular what kind of language develops” – newshour
“Each and every single one of us is constantly trying to balance that in a male-dominant society – your masculinity and how you carry yourself and present yourself and mingle with a whole bunch of other men. In here, you have to be cautious with your words, so you have to find ways in expressing yourself so people can understand what’s beneath the surface b/c what’s beneath the surface is a lot of times our insecurities.” [wow!!!] – newshour, Jose, inmate
“These are the images that have marked me, and leave me wondering still.” – Kirsten Johnson, Cameraperson, 2016 “I think of the camera not as protection but permission. The camera allowed me to be with people and in places I would not have been allowed to be. And the camera allows transgression, proximity, intimacy, and makes things happen, is catalytic… I think what the camera does by its presence is remind us that we’ll die, that there’s a future and this camera is recording me, it has something that will go into the future with or without me and is catalytic to people’s relationships when in presence of a camera — images are relationships – in the making, and they shift over time. – Kirsten Johnson, Cameraperson
“Their sketches work the way that your memory works. You remember what the significant meat of the moment is, but your brain doesn’t need the lead up or the come down to make it make sense of yourself, so a lot of their sketches were showing this quick slice of madness and then we’re on to the next thing, which is kind of how you experience life, whether you want to or not.” – Patton Oswalt, Monty Python, Best Bits Celebrated
Simpsons writer George Meyer would always say surprise is the most important tool in a comedian’s toolbox and they knew that innately. They were always a step ahead of the audience.” – Dana Gould on Monty Python
“Father Pierre, why did you stay on in this colonial campari-land, where the clink of glasses mingles with the murmur of a million mosquitos? Where waterfalls of whiskey wash away the worries of a world-weary wanker? Where gin and tonics jingle in a gyroscopic jubilee of something beginning with J?” – Palin as a marooned international correspondent.
“They [Python] continue to break down the barriers – worrying if you’re in the ‘right section’ of a crucifixion. And that’s what satire does at its best, it gets us down to our essence. We’re one human race. And that’s where they were coming from and that’s what is the best, when you can unite people and not divide them.” – Jimmy Tingle, Best Bits Celebrated
“Your wife’s interested in photographs, you know what I mean? Photographs, he asked him knowingly.” “Photography?” “Yes, nudge nudge snap snap grin grin wink wink, say no more.” Idle/Jones, Monty Python
“If it wasn’t for Flying Circus – their transitions, their ridiculousness, their breaking down of incredibly large concepts into the most astute of social commentary, you wouldn’t have things like South Park, Mr Show, Robot Chicken wouldn’t exist.” – Seth Green on Monty Python
“Life is like jazz. It’s best if you improvise.” – Gershwin
“I wanted to have a very curious camera, but unobtrusive. … We wanted to embrace the disenchantment of the post-abundance, post-Depression, post-WWII era.” – Guillermo Del Toro on Nightmare Alley 2021
“The nature of Hong Kong is ‘make it today; it’ll be gone tomorrow.’” – Christopher Doyle, Wong Kar Wei cinematographer, on shooting Chunking Express
“Solutions always present themselves at the very last minute. Maybe they aren’t even real solutions but something always turns up to solve the problem.” Wong Kar Wei, on making Happy Together
“When you plunge into the heart of movement, the outer world dims b/c you’re so in the moment and everything else becomes peripheral. When you think about dance, too often people think of it not being a language but it is a language. Music is thought made audible. Dance is thought made visible. So music and movement or sound and vibration – they are the same.” – Alonzo King, Brief But Spectacular
“Why doesn’t the Earth fall? How can you walk upon it? It’s the music. It’s the music of the earth, of the sun and of the stars, the music of your self, vibratin’, yes you’re music too. You’re all instruments. Everyone’s supposed to be playin their part in this vast orchestra of the cosmos.” – Sun Ra, Space is the Place
“I think the original glamorizing of thought is the theatre.” – Olivier/Cavett 1973 (as the National Theatre was being constructed on the south bank of the Thames, near where I’d fall asleep in my not-cheap assigned seat through The Sorrow and the Pity 30+ years later) “The nearest approach I’ve got to a description of what acting really is, is that it’s a masochistic form of exhibitionism.” [sounds like he was an arse]
Roald Dahl (1916-1990) last words” “It’s just that I will miss you all so much. Ow, fuck.” – History of Swear Words S1E1
“I’m not angry. You can’t be angry for a long time and be healthy. But you think about it for a long time.” –Black woman displaced from Portland’s Albina neighborhood, OR Experience
“And even though it’s frustrating that the [intense yellow leaf] colors are gone overnight, I still love the fact that that [instant shed at first frost] happens. // The word that I’ve made here spans some fairly uh difficult years of my life. You know, and a lot of years have their own difficulties.” – Leaning Into the Wind, Andy Goldsworthy // “It just makes sense of my life.What I make, makes sense.” // And it just opened up this whole world and opportunity of ways of looking at everything. You know, you can walk on the path, or you can walk through the hedge and there’s 2 different ways of looking at the world, totally different. And I think that’s the beauty of art, that it just makes you step aside, off the normal way of walking or looking. // I love an overcast just grey calm day. It’s like time just stops for a little while, and it’s a relief.
“Being the son of a Southern Baptist woman even though I’m an atheist, I do believe there’s an [? other?] level of consciousness. Art can do that. It might not take away all the people’s pain, but it might do something else just as good: give people a context in which they can endure. That’s it: can you make something that invites people in to have a shared experience and keep living. That’s it – can you encourage people to keep living?” – Bill T Jones, dancer/choreographer Newshour 8Oct21
“Fair as an egret.” Description of mom by dad when first met. – Chimamanda Adiche, Notes on Grief (New Yorker). “Ndo” = Igbo (Nigerian) language word for sorry with a metaphysical heft
“Allow me to interpret this most interesting silence.” – Eleanor Catton’s fave line in Austen’s Emma, which she adapted for the 2020 Autumn de Wilde film // Johnny Flynn learned to play violin in the house where Jane Austen died [which KJL has stood outside of 😊]
“He himself generates the atmosphere. He’s a very quiet man, he’s a very meticulous man , he’s a charming man. And that goes right through the entire company.” – Richard Harris on Clint Eastwood, TCM docu
“So when I was down at the ranch I started stitching and stitching and I said, I’m gonna make me some chaps, I’m gonna make me this, I’m gonna make me that. So I was enthusiastic. Little horseshoes on every detail of this thing and it’s just amazing to , I mean I’m lookin at this thing like somebody else done it – lookit, little nostrils up there? And I’d never done this before. If you wanna do anything passionately enough, you can do it cuz it brings its own talent along with it – passion brings its own talent.” – The Maestro: King of the Cowboy Artists
“Ah, you have made friends with EW. I congratulate you. You may find her difficult but you will find nothing stupid in her and nothing small.” – Henry James to a new friend of famously hectic Edith Wharton
Jeff Walls [whose oversize lightbox photos KJL gawped at in Sydneythat lovely evening early in my visit]’s works are intricately constructed and composed. He uses the term ‘near documentary’ for photography of people at work, and also when they look deceptively simple, as in more recent works… Who are these people? Is there a story there? Wall has his own take: ‘I don’t write the story, I erase the story. The process of picture-making is the exact opposite of narrating. You’re stilling the narrative, you’re ending it, you’re congealing, stopping it, which means you’re un-writing it. Hence the viewer will come back in real time and rewrite the narrative. You can almost feel like you’re hovering in someone’s life [b/c pics depict lifesize near actors, often backlit so 3D] in a way you can’t really do actually. – Jeff Walls, Australian artist
“She danced even when her features were not moving. Some part of her was always in motion, if only her big rolling eyes.””– Adolph Zukor’s description of Clara Bow
“As a young woman Emily stated categorically, ‘I never had a mother. I suppose a mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.’ … Children who do not experience secure attachments as infants can grow up with either dismissive or anxious attitudes toward others, indifferent about intimate relationships or overly involved. … Although the family appeared to be close, in reality they led quite separate lives. Lavinia described: ‘While contributing to the maintenance of a solid front,… [we Dickinsons] all lived like friendly and absolute monarchs, each in their own domain.” – Shaggy Muses, Maureen Adams, Emily Dickinson and Carlo (Newfy)
“Dogs and daffodils alone retain their sanity.” – Virginia Woolf in one of her last letters to Vita Sackville West as WWII escalated and her life got hard. 1939
“So we Commanche and the horse are children of the sun / Namana = the people, the name implies those who like to fight – Native America – New World Rising s1e4
“Two animals come together: humans and horses. And learn to get along with each other, work with each other and help each other out. You treat them good and they’ll be good to you. Breathe in their nose, they know us from here, get use to us and small us, they know who we are. … Sharing stories across generations bind people and preserves culture in the face of colonization. Such seemingly small acts are a strategy of resistance, people in the Andes have been very clever in spite of all the conquest and the colonization.” – Puma Quispe Singona “To maintain our traditions thx to the process of interweaving their belief systems with the new belief system coming in.
“Incan language is still spoken: Qieswachacan is a place for me to walk up and down. Qieswachacan is a bridge for me to walk up and down. When I am no longer walking on the bridge, I wonder who might be walking here? (sung by a young girl) … the Inca tradition, knowledge, has never disappeared. It’s not a spirituality, it’s not a religion, it’s a way of life that we are still living in this way, in all of our communities – a powerful weapon against colonization.” – Native America: New World Rising (made by 3 white guys, it seems from credits)
“There’s a quote by Arthur C Clarke: The only way to find the limits of the possible is to go beyond them, to the impossible.” – NOVA Universe Revealed, Big Bang // Universe expansion = ever-accelerating
“Put him in the picture before I change my mind.” – Daryl Zanuck on Tyrone Power’s debut. “What Nightmare Alley really shows is that the ultimate noir landscape is the human mind – that’s where everyone is trapped.” – Imogen Sara Smith
“Nietzsche spoke of amor fati, or “love of fate,” an idea he drew from the stoics, who taught that it was possible to transform the turns of fortuna’s wheel into virtue or art. “Floods will rob us of one thing, fire of another, Seneca writes. These are conditions of our existence that we cannot change. What we can do is adopt a noble spirit.” – Meaghan O’Gieblyn, New Yorker, “What Doesn’t Kill Me” on Leigh Cowarts “hurt so good” Nov 2021 book
“After all, what a husband doesn’t know won’t hurt his wife.” – Dean Martin/Frank Sinatra’s last interchange
“I’d like to thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we’ve passed the audition.” – John Lennon, Apple Studios roof, last live Beatles performance, 30Jan69 (Let the Record Show, David Remnick, New Yorker Nov21)
“One time I made a project and my rows were kind of arced – and my aunt’s like, Rip it out now, and I was like okay, my aunt said this was not up to par, this was not good! Do I get mad at her and I get frustrated and you know, throw my project away, or do you persevere and go on? And you know, some people wouldn’t do that, they’d just give up, you know, and me, I was always like, I’m going to learn the lessons that I was taught and keep going. To this day, I mean, I’m not a perfect bead worker, I just try what I can do to the best of my ability and I can do it, and you know, if you make a mistake, and you leave that mistake, it’s going to be in your mind… And also if you rub it and it’s nice and smooth, they say that’s a good bead worker. You know, you pour your energy and your heart into something and you hope that it’ll find where it’s supposed to go.” – Annie Sage, N. Arapahoe
Jim Lehrer had a signature phrase – a note of encouragement, a reminder to keep going in good times and bad, with courage and conviction and faith.” – Onward: celebrating Newshours, 1973 watergate hearings uncut giving the station heft
Screens
“Now Lanyan, will you let me take this glass and leave without further question?” “I’ve gone too far not to see this through to the end.” “Thank you for your desire, doctor. Do you want to be left as you are or do you want your eyes and your soul to be blasted by a sight that would stagger the devil himself?” – Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931, March)
“I tried to kill myself, you know. I couldn’t.” “That’s ironic. I imagine many people have wanted to kill you over the years.” Durrells in Corfu
“Pain pain pain!” – Helga ten Dorp, Death Trap, dir Sydney Lumet
“Yet, with respect, brother, the lord will surely have some purpose in these ructions.” “I don’t require the lord’s intervention in my affairs. Nor yours. Now, if you’ll excuse me, the lord has seen fit to consign hundreds of souls to the bottom of the sea and I must try to discover if my friends are among them.” – Polkark S3E1
“It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” – All Creatures Great and Small S1E1
“Darling, I’ve been killing spiders since I was 30, okay?! [sees it off camera] It’s a very big spider, a lot of trouble. It’s 2 of them. I didn’t think it was that big but it’s a major spider, you got a broom or something, a snow shovel?” – Annie Hall [stumbled upon the scene on TCM after failing to capture and relocate a spider in my kitchen so big I saw it clearly out of my peripherals].
“First you take a physical test.” “I’m a policeman so I’m fighting fit.” “And I’m wily, which is just as important in an emergency.” “You will take a physical test.” Leslie and Laurence Durrell being instructed to become firefighters, S3E5)
“I truly believe I’m quite capable of something more – even when I am not allowed to have anything else.” – Daphne Bridgerton, S1E2
“Penelope Featherington! What did I tell you about cavorting with the … expectant?” – Bridgerton S1E3
“Everything I told the queen was true. I cannot stop thinking of you: from the mornings you ease to the evenings you quiet to the dreams you inhabit.” Bridgerton S1E6
“I shall listen out for cellos in the woods. Life is very fleeting. I’ve learned that. It has moments you should seize.” – Carey Mulligan, The Dig
“Shit is the shit. So to be THE shit is the dopest shit ever, but you can be shitty and then you ain’t shit. – History of Swear Words
“I loathe insects. So unimaginative. Gerry, nature’s a disgrace” “Well I’m intensely modern but what’s wrong with a bit of romance” – Laurence and Margeaux Durrell S3E6
“He seems to be a little on edge.” “Oh you think so!? Yeah, he’s driving me crazy with theories about mental illness.” “No I met his mother once. She had a face like a hatchet and she wouldn’t stop sighing. And she drank.” – Maggie’s Plan (Greta Gerwig, Maya Rudolf, Bill Hader)
“Do you even like me anymore?” “[snooze noise] What are you tryin to get me to say, huh?” “It sounds like I should be asking you that question.” – Maggie’s Plan, dir Rebecca Miller
“She gon be alright, ma?” “No thanks to you if she is. She was just good and damn tired of being bullied by you that’s what.” “What’re you getting on my back for?” “Clear outta here, you ain’t no help.” – Zandy’s Bride, 1974, Gene Hackman, Eileen Heckert [Rhoda, Alice, Mary Tyler Moore Show]
“Jesus Christ, you don’t have the brains god gave a common dog!” – Art Carney, The Late Show
“Boy, it’s really lucky for you that I’m such a self-destructive person.” – Lily Tomlin, The Late Show
“In life, and in the circus, we need to gasp.” – Durrells S3E8 “I know what your question is: Will I find love soon? And the answer is, you have already found it, but like the wind it is hard to carry home.”
I’m out the scaffold wearing two shirts so shivers aren’t mistaken for fear.” – Hugh Laurie, Personal History of David Copperfield “Hello, I’m Mr Dick, I’m partial to gingerbread.”
“This is who I am. If you don’t like it, mother had you, mother love you, mother fuck you … – this bitch was dying to give me stability and I was like, I don’t want that shit.” – Alda Rodrigues, They Ready S1E3
“He don’t wanna snuggle with you and be on your instagram – cuz he’s a fucking cat. And that’s what cats do: they leave. They walk out the fuckin house, they don’t look back. They’re like fathers – they go. – Alda Rodrigues, They Ready S1E3
“He’s got more trouble making up his mind as I do a bed, but he did it.” – Night Song, 1947 Merle Oberon/Dana Andrews
“Izzy my dear, it’s women like you who make the world liquid and even, still in beauty born. … Ripe plums are falling. I lay them in a basket.” – Crossing Delancey
“I was so happy I was going to see you tonight, I said the prayer for the planting of new trees – don’t ask me why.” – Crossing Delancey
“I’m going back to my novel. I’m going to write about this weekend.” What were you going to write about before?” “Last weekend.” – Goldblum/Close, The Big Chill
“How odd of you not to have noticed you were living with a stranger in the house.” – Brief Encounter
“Well, that about brings us up to date. Now my life’s an open book. It’s only one page.” – Love Affair, 1939, Irene Dunne/Charles Boyer
“I can’t understand how you could be married to her and still know so little about her.” “Can’t you?” “No, I can’t you.” – Philadelphia Story // “You’re lit from within, Tracy. You’ve got fires banked down in you. Hearth fires and holocausts.”
“Say something, Dext. Say anything. Oh Dext, I’m such an unholy mess of a girl.” “Well, that’s no good, that’s not even conversation.” – Philadelphia Story
“No one wants a child that is like them. That is like giving more bread to the bakers.” – Durrells, S4E1
“What’s his name?” “I can’t say it.” “How do you spell it?” “No, I can pronounce it, I don’t want to say it.” – Durrells S4E1
“Katie, you expect so much.” “Oh but look what I got.” – The Way We Were, 14Feb snowstorm
“Time to look the past as new.” – All Creatures S1E6
“You’re facing prejudice in your present career!? What must that be like?!” – Miss Scarlet and the Duke // “Stop being kind. It’s confusing.”
“And a husband cluttering up my room in the morning! [derisive head nod]” – Ilicit, Barbara Stanwick “I’m greedy of our happiness, I want to hold onto it as long as I can.” “You can’t lick the marriage institution.” “Dad, what would you do with a woman like that?” “I’d grab her any way I could.”
“The big one will be loud. And if you’re lucky you’ll be crushed and you’ll just die right then and there. Immediately, a never-ending void.” – Kajillionaire
“Life is nothing. Just let it go without really thinking about it, like you’re letting go of a piece of string. Just let it. It’s not that big of a deal. – evan rachel wood to a man trying to die
“I love her!” “I love her too.” “Not the way I love her – like a burning house!” – Gerry and pompous fop, Durrells, S4E2
“Spiro is a faithful husband as is right and proper. And rare and regrettable.” – Louisa, S4E2
“Have I been so terrible?!” “No! But you’re dominant.” “No I’m not!” — Durrells
“Hey, question! What has a thousand legs but can’t walk? 500 pairs of pants.” – Fozzy, intro to Candace Bergen Muppet Show S1E11
“Retire young and work old. Come back to work when I know wheat I’m working for.” – Holiday, Grant, 1938
“You wouldn’t care to step in to a waltz as the old year dies, would you Mr. Case?” “Yes I would, I’d love it.” – Holiday Hepburn/Grant
“There can be no doubt. B/c doubt causes chaos and one’s own demise. There’s fuckery afoot.” – Michele Dockery, The Gentlemen
“Choose love, then you feel it.” — Lee, When Calls the Heart S8E1
“You want to know the secret to a happy marriage? Me and my missus go out dancing every week. She goes Tuesdays and I go Thursdays.” – Miss Scarlet and the Duke, S1E6
“You put the lotion in my heart basket.” “That’ll do pig, that’ll do.” – The Great North, Will Forte, Dulce Sloan
“Either the clock is very loud or Dorset is very quiet.” – Durrells S4E3
“Faber in Latin means The forger of his own fate” – Voyager, Sam Shepherd
“What’s going on, is it the apocalypse?! Noone panic, we have 500yrs worth of rice and 2 Calvin & Hobbes books in the basement.” – The Great North, S1E4
“Crying helps me slow down and obsess over the weight of life’s problems.” – Sadness, Phyllis Smith, Inside Out
“We could lock the door and scream that curse word we heard. It’s a good one.” – Anger, Lewis Black, Inside Out
“For THIS we gave up that resilient helicopter pilot.” – mom’s brain, on dad being dim, Inside Out
“They do say that for a great many people, the evening’s the best part of the day, the part they most look forward to.” – Remains of the Day
“Husband. Comport yourself.” – Emma 2020
“Home. Is it just a word or is it something you carry within you?” – Nomadland, tattoo on Amazon worker
“I never said this to you b4 and maybe I should’ve. You know, when you were growing up you were eccentric to other people, you maybe seemed weird but it was just b/c you were braver and more honest than anybody else. And you could see me when I was hiding from everybody. And sometimes you could see me b4 I saw myself. I needed that in my life – and you’re my sister. I would have loved having you around all these years. You left a big hole by leaving.” “That one’s on me.” – Nomadland
“Our back yard looks out on this huge open space. It was just desert desert desert, all the way to the mountains. There was nothing in our way.” – Nomadland
“It’s like my dad used to say, what’s remembered, lives. I may have spent too much time remembering.” – Fern, Nomadland
“One thing I love about this life is there is no final goodbye. You know, I’ve met hundreds of people out here and you don’t ever say a final goodbye. I always just say I’ll see you down the road. And I do. … I can always look down the road and I’ll be certain in my heart that I’ll see my son again.” – Bob, Nomadland
“Either way, nothing good ever came out of a guy hiding in the bushes at a kids’ soccer game.” “I’m not hiding, I’m processing!” “And you can’t do that at Tesco?!” – 4 Weddings series S1E1
“It is a restless moment. She has kept her head lowered to give him a chance to come closer. But he could not, for lack of courage. She turns and walks away.” – In the Mood for Love intro
“The trickier you are, the more isolated you’ll become and the sadder you’ll get.” – Margeaux to pupil Maude, Durrells S4E4
La chapeaux ne par magic = the hat is not magic. The women must bring the great Karabai all their gold. Woe betide you if you keep a single nugget. — Kirikou and the Sorceress
“Don’t be salacious or I will come over and wash your mouth out.” “Ok. You first, then I do yours.” – Louisa and Spiro, Durrells, S4E5
“The fact of the matter is that war changes mens’ natures. The barbarities of war are seldom committed by abnormal men. The tragedy of war is that these horrors are committed by normal men in abnormal situations, situations in which the normal everyday flow of life is departed and replaced by a constant round of fear and anger, blood and death.” – Breaker Morant
“I like these fog hours. It makes me feel as if I was out of things altogether.” – Greta Garbo, Anna Christie, 1930, written by Francis Marion “Funny, I feel sort of strange tonight, sort of nutty. As if I’ve been living a long long time out here in the fog. I don’t know just how to tell you what I mean, but it’s like I’ve come home from a long visit someplace and I feel like I have forgotten all that’s happened, like it didn’t matter anymore. Haaaha, you’ll think I’m off my base.” – Anna Christie
“You can go to blazes, both of you. You’d think I was a piece of furniture. … Come on, here’s to the sea no matter what.” – Anna Christie
“I had the blues so bad, I sat right down on my floor. Daddy, daddy, please come home to me. I’m on my way, crazy as I can be.” – Ma Raineys Black Bottom // “That’s life’s way of talking. You don’t sing to feel better, you sing cuz that’s the way you’re understandin life. The blues help you get outta bed in the mornin, you get up knowin you aint alone – somethin else in the wolrd, there’s somethin that’s been added by that song. This’d be an empty world without the blues. I try to take that emptiness and fill it up with sumthin.” – Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
“I just sat down and I figured, I was a fool not to see that she needing somethin that I wasn’t givin her, else she wouldn’t’ve been up at the church in the first place. So yeah, Toledo been a fool about a woman – that’s part of makin life.” -– Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, August Wilson
“The game just got bigger. Did you?” – Helen Hunt World on Fire s1e1
“Dogged if I can understand the cold-out meanness. Well, boy, we’re obliged to follow. … There’s trouble waitin for ya, you’re just as good goin’ to meet it.” – Gregory Peck, The Yearling “Let’s be thankful we got any world at all.”
“Boy, life goes back on ya. Now you’ve seen how things go in the world of men, every man wants life to be a fine thing, and an easy thing. Tis fine, son, powerful fine, but taint easy. … I wanted you to frolic with your yearling, I know the lonesomeness be easy for ya. But every man’s lonesome. What’s he to do then, what’s he to do when he gets knocked down? Why, take it for its share and go on.” – The Yearling
“You cannot kill that which is naught. I have brought subjective and objective together into one. I have forgotten myself and merged with nothingness. I am but a piece of totality of inside and outside. Thus you cannot kill my body.” – Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in the Land of Demons “Show me the secrets behind all the secrets and reasons”
“Keep your 2 daggers, always shifting to match your opponent’s moves. Be flexible know that the spinning dagger is always above your head. You only need to lure the opponent into its path.” – Lone Wolf and Cub: White Heaven in Hell
“If you and your son ever ask for anything, those people will die. How sad. Wherever you go, father and son, you’ll invite bloodshed and massacre, and the winds of carnage will blow. We call this Tsuchigumo Give Wheels. The 5 expressions of human emotion will be annihilated – Joy Anger Sorrow Pleasure Fear – step by step, walk down the path of carnage. – Lone Wolf and Cub
Terrifying is IHO Ogami. The Tsuchigumo Five Wheels is defeated. I wish…when I die, at last, my face changes to show emotion. At last. – Lone Wolf and Cub
“Let me tell you, making a doormat of yourself never gets you anywhere. A man or a woman in love who clings, begs or follows, how little hope there is in it, how much pain. You’re a man, stand on your own feet. Have strength, restraint and a little pride. – Her Cardboard Lover, Cukor, 42, Norma Shearer/Robert Taylor // “We women all run at our unhappiness. If a woman’s been deceived by an inventor and beaten by a Russian, the next man she’ll fall in love with will be a Russian inventor.” – Norma
“If you don’t have good dreams, you got nightmares.” – Mickey Roarke, Diner
“Well, may your pulse beat as your heart would wish.” – I Know Where I’m Going
“When you’re scared or surprised, or both at once, there’s a funny glint in your eyes. I wanna sleep with you again b/c of that glint. – Breathless
“I’ve told women about everything a man can say. I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told a woman before: I wish I’d met you 10yrs ago.” – Gary Cooper, Morocco
“Mother did not spend all her time paying dull calls to dull ladies and sitting dully at home waiting for dull ladies to pay calls on her. She was always there, with us.” – The Railways Children 1970
“One never knows. Very beautiful and wonderful things do happen, don’t they? And we live most of our lives in the hope of them.” – The Railway Children
“That song, will you sing it for me?” “I don’t know, the acoustics aren’t good when you’re singing on top of a frog … [belts:] Do you ever hug your scales, shake your tail and make a lightshow, a disc of colors and you? Well, I do! Here right by your eyes, a bright kaleidoscope surprise. No moment is the same, and that is wonderful, oh… Hey hey, look at the world surrounding you, all possibility. Every moment we have is a chance at something new, yeah. To grow, to grow … If you release the past, you’ll move ahead and bloom at last. A heart grows and it knows, you can glow, you’re wonderful.” – Ken Jeong, Gobi the pangolin, Over the Moon
“Dad, what is this obsession with pussy crushing counting? I’m not comfortable with that term.” “Sorry. Snatch, whatever.” – Ben and Jerry Stiller, The Heartbreak Kid, Farrellys
“An imaginative lady. Fond of smells.” – Rafe Spall, Room With a View
“As the saying goes, those that marry, do well, and those who refrain, do better.” – Mr Beeve, Room With a View
“Always a catch.” – Constantine
“I got antiseptic for the sheep.” “That’s good.” “Ay and she’s doin’ a lo’ bet’er.” “Good.” “I thought you’d be pleased.” “I’m pleased you’re helping the sheep.” – God’s Own Country
“No, leave me, I’m fine! I wanted to be wi’ ya and that’s wha I needed to say.” “You’re a freak.” “So are you” “Faggot.” Fuck off, faggot.” – God’s Own Country
“I seem to cry a great deal these days. I never used to cry at all.” – Bathsheba Everdeen (Carey Mulligan), Far From the Madding Crowd
“Get lost! May all your shits have antlers!” – Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
“But if I have enormous titties, I do not have to learn how to swim.” “Your tittles will not keep you from drowning.” “They will protect me?” “How will they protect you? They’re titties.” -– Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
“I must protect my daughter’s vagine against America’s mayor!” -– Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
“Wa wa wee wa” – Borat
“Karen’s not happy.” “Oh no she’s killed Fauci! The Americans are victorious in their battle against science.” “For Kazakhstan TV, this is Tutar Sagdiyev.” And Borat Margaret Sagdiyev.” “Chinqui!” “You were amazing!” – Maria Bakalova and Sacha Baron Cohen, – Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
“Fine, I’ll ‘handle’ you to death!” – The Eagle Shooting Heroes, Wong Kar Wait, Tony Leong, Maggie Cheung “You jammed my thumb!” “You hurt my pinkie!” “Ah, no love and no sleep – kill me now.”
“What is love: a possession to be hoarded or a blessing to be given away? – Poldark S4E1 “It just struck me that, at the end, we just want to feel how beautiful life is.”
“All memories are traces of tears. She’d really liked him, and compared him to a bird that could never land… most of her affairs ended badly, but she didn’t mind bad ends.” – 2046
“They might want to cry, but tears won’t well up till next day. Watching her taught me something: when you don’t take no for an answer, there is still a chance you might get what you want.” – TonyL, 2046
“He didn’t turn back. It was as if he’d boarded a very long train headed for a drowsy future through the unfathomable night.” — 2046
“They might want to cry, but tears won’t well up til next day.” – 2046
“Watching her taught me something. When you don’t take no for an answer, there is still a chance you might get what you want.” – TonyL 2046
“Was he unhappy?” “I don’t know. I haven’t met that many happy people in my life. What are they like?” – Meg Tilly (Chloe), The Big Chill
“Mrs Durrells, you deserve the finest everything and that includes language.” – Spiro, S4E6
“You’re so cute. Ya hear that, Dad? [bottom half manifested spirit with puff coat/scarf/cap upper half]. He just doesn’t know how quests work.” – Onward
“Sadie, Sadie – what’s the first rule for being an agent?” “Never forget an actor killed Lincoln.” “Head of the class.” – Burgess Meredith, Minnie and Moskowitz
“He liked the fragility of those moments suspended in time. Those memories whose only function had been to leave behind nothing but memories. He wrote: I’ve been round the world several times and now only banality still interests me. // As always in Japan one admires that the walls between the realms are so thin that one can in the same breath contemplate a statue, buy an inflatable doll, and give the goddess of fertility the small offing that always accompanies her displays. // He wrote me that the Japanese secret, the poignancy of things, involved the faculty of communing with things, of entering into them, of being them for a moment… What then shall we call this diffuse belief according to which every fragment of creation has its invisible counterpart? There’s a ceremony for brushes, for abacuses, even for rusty needles. // Who remembers any of that? History throws its empty bottles out the window. // All women have a built-in grain of indestructibility. And men’s task has always been to make them realize it as late as possible. – Sans Soleil
“Yes, but see, these people are from places like … Idaho and, um, what’s the other one?” “I feel like it’s Wishigan?” “Yes, yes, their lives are football and ham, and everything they can put ham in. You know, sometimes when my partners ask me about Chile, it’s b/c they need Chile, their lives are such that when they hear a little bit about Chile they go nuts, so you gotta give them a little something.” – Julio Torres, Shrill S3E5
“From the shit the flowers grow, and you are covered in shit.” – Shrill S3E6
“You’re not alone, you’ve always got someone.” “Who’s that?” “Well, yourself.” – Motel Hell “You know as well as I do, it takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent’s fritters! Meat’s meat, man’s gotta eat.”
“Do you think they’re their real faces?” – Jennifer Coolidge, Austenland
“I have another moral. If you can’t accept people as they are, give them up. Don’t try to change them. Besides, it’s almost always too late.” – Jean Seberg, Donjour Trieste with David Niven
“Are we going to do anything spontaneous this holiday?” “I hadn’t planned on it.” – Us, Tom Hollander
“You know what? You live your life and I’m just gonna leave you fuckin to it, cuz that’s how you want it. I’m just a fuckin prop – I’m outta here.” – Master of None S3E2 “You just gotta keep searching til you find someone to put up with your mess (E5)
“The sky is blue and the larks are singing and the brooks are brimming full.” – Cathy/Oberon, Wuthering Heights
“A race? Are you crazy?! Jogging is something private, you don’t jog with an audience.” – Chungking Express “I usually go jogging to get sweaty so I have no more water for tears.”
“Knowing a person does not mean much. People change. A person may like a pineapple today and something else tomorrow.” – Chungking Express “On may 1, 1994, a woman wishes me happy birthday. For this, I’ll remember her all my life. If memory could be canned, would they also have expiration dates? If so, I hope they last for centuries.”
“Son of the white mare, known as Treeshaker, and his brothers got into an eggshell and rolled to their home on the diamond fields, where they loved in perfect bliss and harmony.” – Son of the White Mare, 1981, dir Marcell Jankovics, based on Hungarian folk tales
“To be a rich father, you must look to the sky and never at the ground.” – Paris Texas
“I’m not afraid of heights, I’m just afraid of falling.” – Harry Dean Stanton, Paris Texas “They will stake you in your beds. They will snap you from your [?], they will pluck you right out of your [fatuous ?] There is nowhere… from the range of my voice right here, clear out to the Mohave desert and beyond that – clear out past Barstow and everywhere else in the valley, almost Arizona, none of that area will be called a safety zone. I can guarantee you the safety zone will be eliminated. Eradicated. You will all be extradicted to the land of no return. It’s a navigation to nowhere, and if you think that’s going to be fun, you’ve got another thing coming. I may be a swine bucket but believe me, I know what the hell I’m talking about. I’m not crazy and don’t say I didn’t warn you.” – Paris Texas
“Don’t tell me those braindead lowlifes are coming here.” “They ARE your parents.” – Dan Hedaya/Alicia Silverstone, Clueless
“If it’s a concussion you have to keep her conscious, ask her questions.” “What’s 7 times 7?” “No! Stuff she knows!” – Clueless
“It’s so funny to think that all the racoons in the world are sleeping right now.” “What?!” “Listen, I don’t really know more than what I’ve already said, and some of what I’ve said I’m not even sure I actually know.” – Kristen (Star) Wiig,, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar (Chauna texted nostalgically after seeing and S dropped off netflix DVD same day randomly when picking up Mads for milestone bday beach trip to Char and Ron’s beach house, as Ron lay dying)
“I feel like I got a soul douche.” – Wendy McLendon-Covey
“You know those days you just see me staring at the carpet?” “Yes.” “Sometimes I daydream about life outside of this place. Maybe something’s telling us to do something different.” “Oy my gosh, yes. Shall we try those socks with individual toes?! What do they feel like, I’ve always wondered. I wonder how my toes would react – they’ve always been together. I think they’ll like it.” – Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar // “Haven’t you ever wondered if the real ocean sounds like our noise machine?” “The real ocean has strong currents, and people get swept out and they sink and they drown.” // “Remember that one time we went on the haunted hayride?” “And we got chased by that man with the jackolantern head and the chainsaw?!” “And then we heard later he wasn’t an actor, he just escaped from the local prison?!” “Yeah.” “He was a real killer, he was really trying to kill us, oooh, aahh.”
“There are good ships and wood ships and ships that sail the sea. But the best ships are friendships and may they always be.” — Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar
“What did you just do?” “Uh whaddya mean, I threw the rope over the wall.” “I didn’t mean ALL of it!” “Well, you never said that. I’m very literal.” “Oh, you don’t say!” “No, I do say, I just said that right then. Aren’t you listening?” – The Missing Link, Laika, Galifinakis and Jackman
“I had a glimpse of deep waters tonight, and I don’t like it.” – Death Takes a Holiday, Fredric March, 1934 “Seems incredible, doesn’t it? You see, I am not of your world. I am, how should I describe it, a sort of vagabond of space. I am the point of contact between eternity and time. Do I make myself clear?” “Evidently not.”
“To this household. To life. And to all brave illusion.” – Death Takes a Holiday
“How shall we spend the day?” “Is that what you do with a day, spend it?” “In my day we merely filled in the days – we spent the nights.” – 27 Missing Kisses, 2000 // “Has it ever occurred to you that death may be simpler than life, and infinitely more kind?”
“Tell your admirer, yellow roses lead to separation.” “Yellow roses! You have to hold them up to the moon and make a wish.” // “People are not the only ones who leave us. The sea leaves us too. It’s alive. It’s gone. [reading] ‘I recall a wondrous moment, you appeared before my eyes.’ That’s Pushkin.” – 27 Missing Kisses
“Leprosy’s no joke.” – day-drunk Steve Zahn, to strangers The White Lotus
“After a few years, sex just turns in to, like a, you know when they do one of those food challenges in a reality show, like eat a bowl of live worms and you gotta psych yourself up for it, like I can DO this, I’ll just hold my nose and suck it down as fast as I can so I don’t gag. But it’s natural. It’d be weird if it didn’t fade. Oh, this is my son Quinn. And I’m Mark.” “What are you talking about?” “Nothin’.” “Sex with your mom.” – White Lotus S1E3
“My poor mother, she had a beautiful house in Carmel, and she tried really really hard to be a good mother. Even though she didn’t have any maternal instincts, or skills.” – Jennifer Coolidge, evening-drunk to near-strangers. “Oh mother mother, mother, mother; my mother told me I would never be a ballerina, and that’s when I was skinny. What’s weird is I miss my poor mother even though she was a big jerk.”
“Goddamit, lady, you don’t throw oranges on an elevator!” – George Segal, California Split, Altman 1974, with Elliot Gould
“So few of us manage to even know ourselves during a lifetime, shifting from course to course, we search for a hunger to keep us moving, frightened of whatever it is that keeps us so unsure of ourselves. Finally we fall exhausted, entangled in a bed of remarkable excuses from which we are unable to extricate ourselves.” – Gordon Parks, Moments Without Proper Names 1987
“There are fragments, moments remembered. Several times I have crossed the world, and I remember each stone, and spring, each flower and century dying with the kind of dying even rivers can’t escape. I’ve been born again and again, always finding something or someone to love, to win or lose, to mourn or celebrate. Now, with life quieting down around me, I look back thru an orphan mind, searching the clear air for the roots of things I watched growing or expiring along the way, wherever my feet have taken me, I have found goodness and pain, and that’s all I have to give. I could depart with washed hands, keeping the silence and telling nothing, but I have no secret doors to hide the memories. – Moments Without Proper Names
“Speak to me of rainfalls at dusk, and how we walked, hushed violet beds listening to the wing brush of cicadas and doves complaining in the darkening trees. Let your voice run clear as mountain water and turn a spring gone black to rose and green again. – Gordon Parks
The prairie is still in me, in my talk and manners, I suspect. I still sniff the air for rain or snow. I know the loneliness of night. I distrust the wind when things get too quiet. Having been away so long and changed my face so often, I sometimes suspect this place no longer recognizes me, despite these cowboy boots and this western hat and my father’s mustache that I wear. It puzzles me that I live so far away from this old clapboard house out here, where is the oak shade I used to sit and dream of what I wanted to become? I always return here weary, but to draw strength from this huge silence that surrounds me, knowing that all I thought was dead is still alive here and that there is warmth here even when the wind blows hard and cold.” – Gordon Parks, Moments Without Proper Names
“I’m one of the few people you’ll meet who’s written more books than they’ve read.” – Darth Marenghi’s Darkplace, Matt Berry, s1e1 King Pastiche
“In the late afternoon Randall was over with the adults when he spotted a gull overhead. His eyes burst with emotion and he suddenly took off stumbling after it, tears streamed down his little face as he stretched his aluminum hooks as wide as he could towards the sun, howling ‘boon, boon’ and disappeared into the deep blue sea. The other kids were surprised he could even run that fast.” – It’s Such a Beautiful Day
“He’s having trouble sleeping again and realizes he’s been lying in the dark with his eyes open.” // “He died alone in a field one summer morning while dreaming of the moon. Six weeks later a sunflower grew out of his head.” – It’s such a beautiful day “It smells like dust and moonlight.”
“Piranha. ”Dammit, I told you not even to say that word! What is it!?” “They’re eating the guests, sir.”
“Our Friday night book club became a refuge to us, a private freedom to feel the world growing darker all around you but need only a candle to see new worlds unfold.” – The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, 2018
“Are you real, or born of a snowdrift?” “Whichever your majesty wishes.” “Snow vanishes. I prefer you real.” – Boyer (as Napoleon) and Garbo, Conquest 1937
“How bout this – just take a step without even thinking about it.” “I don’t know how to not think about something.” – Luca
“I’d like to be home right now, in the country. Yeah I miss the dogs, I miss the sandstone lining the treeline all the way down where those oak trees start. I didn’t sign up for this, layin in a hospital bed.” – Reservation Dogs S1E2
“Well, what should we hang: the holly, or each other?” – The Lion in Winter, unfolding drama at Christmastime
“Henry was 18 when we met and I was queen of France. He came down from the north to Paris with a mind like Aristotle and a form like mortal sin. We shattered the commandments on the spot.” – Eleanor of Aquitane/Hepburn, 3rd Oscar for A Lion in Winter
“You’re as dead as you are deadly.” – Richard (Anthony Hopkins)
“There’s no sense asking if the air is good when there’s nothing else to breathe.” – Peter O’Toole, Henry II
“I’ve suffered more defeats than you have teeth; I know one when it happens to me. Take your wormwood like a good boy, swallow it and go to bed.” – Eleanor to Richard // “Oh my piglets, we are the origins of war, not history’s forces nor the times, nor justice’s forces nor the lack of it, nor causes nor religions nor ideas nor kinds of government nor any other thing. WE are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it like syphilis inside, dead bodies rotting field and stream b/c the living ones are rotten.” — Eleanor
“I spent 2 years on every street in hell.” “That’s odd, I never saw you there.” – King of France (Dalton) and Prince Richard (Hopkins), former lovers
“Don’t blame me for your bad choices. Hair isn’t everything.” “Hair. … Is. Everything. We wish it wasn’t so we could think about something else on occasion, but it is. It’s the difference btwn a good day and a bad day. We’re meant to think that it’s a symbol of power, that it is a symbol of fertility. Some people are exploited for it, and it pays your fucking bills – hair is everything, Anthony.” – Fleabag to hairdresser, s2e5
“Hey Curly, what all happens in a hurricane?” “The wind blows so hard, the ocean gets up on its hind legs and walks right across the land.” – Key Largo
“What do you expect me to do?” “Understand?” “Why didn’t you lie to me?” “B/c we always said we’d tell each other the truth.” “What’s so great about the truth? Try lying for a change, it’s the currency of the world.” … “It’s kindness.” “No, cowardice. You haven’t got the guts to let him hate you.” – Jude Law/Julia Roberts, Closer
“You don’t know the first thing about love, b/c you don’t understand compromise.” – Owen, to Law
“It has nothing to do with the cats, like you thought.” “What about the four elephants? [to camera] For 750 years I believed that I knew the truth, that the earth rested upon the shoulders of four mighty elephants, who stood on the shell of a large and noble turtle, around which the sun and the moon and all the stars revolve.” “But now, thanks to modern science, Nandor understands that we’re all just temporary aggregations of dust and fluid camping out on a big rock that’s just one in an infinite number of equally unspecial big rocks that make up part of this vast and uncaring universe. … [now with pointers at wall hangings] This is science.” “But this is a turtle.” – Colin Robinson and Nandor, What We Do in the Shadows s3e4
“Do all lovers feel as if they’re inventing something? I know all the gestures. I imagined them all, waiting for you.” “You dreamt of me?” “No. I thought of you.” – Portrait of a Lady on Fire
“I was terrified that if I had another kid, then I could never leave.” “Why didn’t you talk to me about it?” “I couldn’t. You couldn’t either.” I couldn’t!?” “No. You were so angry at me, you couldn’t even admit that you were angry – how were we supposed to TALK about anything?” – Scenes From a Marriage, s1e3 “You haven’t lost your talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, that’s for sure.”
“Manners maketh man.” – Kingsmen: The Secret Service, Colin Firth 2014
“I’m not meditating. I’m despondently staring into the gaping void.” – Nine Perfect Strangers, Melissa McCarthy s1e2
“I’m bonkers. I guess it’s really just a matter of perspective, a trick of the mind b/c everything you think that you are is a story you tell yourself about yourself, right?” “The vomit was real.” – Nine Perfect Strangers, Michael Shannon s1e6
“When I woke up this morning, you know what I thought about? Painting my house, maybe getting a dog. Definitely taking you out to dinner.” “That was, um … if I ever do write romance again, I’m gonna steal that.” – Bobby Cannavale and Melissa McCarthy.
“I don’t have to drink that much, just a double at midnight. I almost got laid once. … Why can’t anyone in this town make a White Russian?” – overheard outside Beaverton Fred Meyer, spring
Colbert questionnaire to Ringo Starr: “you get one song to listen to the rest of your life” “Come Together. Loved that moment.” “The lyrics are mysterious at times.” “Oh yeah, weren’t they always?” “I wanna hold your hand – isn’t that mysterious.” “But which hand does he want to hold?” “You’re right, I apologize – why am I questioning Ringo Starr?”
Spike Milligan, unwell: “Oh Ringo! Tell me about every second of your life!”
“He’s gone. Only last night I had a mind to put him in a cure, only last night. He was a good guy and a well trooper.” – Nightmare Alley (original noir)
“It’s like trying to put the ocean into bottles.” “That’s right, that’s where I’ve been wrong, trying to put boundaries around this thing – it’s too big. It has no boundaries, no limits! It can’t have, can it? And be what it is?” – Nightmare Alley, 1947
“They all seem a bit loopy if you ask me.” “Ingenious is the word, darling, ingenious.” – Haunted Honeymoon “Let me take your stoat [tosses toward camera].”
“Oh well, some dance and some die. And some will do both.” – Mata Hari, Garbo, 1931
“Nothing really serious has caused my removal to a sanitarium. Do not be alarmed, b/c the only pain I feel is that of being ‘who you?’ – Mata Hari
“Oooh, the sea monkies I ordered have arrived!” “[Homer and family unfurl from car outside Shining-like hotel] Sir. They’re the new winter caretakers for the lodge.” // “This house has quite a long and colorful history. It was built on an ancient Indian burial ground and was the setting of satanic rituals, witch burnings … and five John Denver Christmas specials.” – Monty Burns and Smithers, Simpsons Halloween Special V
“It’s almost like he’s [Snake’s] killing from beyond the grave.” “I told you the death penalty isn’t a deterrent.” – Lisa/Marge, Treehouse of Horrors IX (1998)
“Here on the quiet page I master, just as I master in the dark room. … I shuffle like cards the lives I deal with – their faces stare out at me. People who will become other people, people who will become old, people whose dreams will become ghosts.” – Linda Hunt, The Year of Living Dangerously
“Love me, but don’t tell me so.” – Lily Bart/Gillian Anderson, House of Mirth “My dear, the world is vile.”
“[long opining] My old friend Walt Whitman said to me, you better put that thing away.” – Lazlo, s3e10/finale, What We Do in the Shadows
“He’s never understood. And yet he’s understood everything.” – I’m Your Man // “What’s it like to have an orgasm?” “It’s like dissolving and you’re part of something bigger.”
“Put a stopper in the bottle.” – One False Move
“Stab it a steer!” – Wild at Heart // “Sometimes, Sam, when we’re makin love, you just about take me right over that rainbow. You are so aware of what goes on with me, I mean you pay attention. And I swear, baby, you to the sweetest cock. It’s like it’s talkin to me when you’re inside, it’s like its got that little voice all its own. Oh and you get right on me.” – Laura Dern, Wild at Heart, 1990
“Why don’t you pray for him? You know that prayer to jews has been integral since getting out of Egypt.” “I would submit it’s as big a waste of time as watching the Kardashians.” “How do you know prayers don’t work?” “Because I’m bald.” – Curb Your Enthusiasm, s11(!)e5, Suzie to La
“I mean, didn’t you notice on the plane? When you started talking eventually I started reading a vomit bag?!” .. And here’s an idea! When you’re telling these little stories, have a point! It makes it so much more interesting for the listener!” – Planes Trains and Automobiles, Thanksgiving 2021
“You know, I’ve been thinkin. What we’re dealing with here is a small-time crook. He didn’t take the credit cards, right? So we charge our way home. What kind of plastic you carry?” … “Chalmers Big & Tall Man Shop. It’s a 7-outlet chain in the Pacific Northwest. Great stuff! Unfortunately it does us no good here.” – sitting on luggage outside Edelen’s Braidwood Inn
“… People train runs outta … Stubville.” “That’ll be fine just fine.” – Planes…
“Youre in a pretty lousy mood, huh?” “To say the least.” “You ever traveled by bus before?” “[shakes head]” “[swallows small chortle] Your mood’s probably not going to improve much heheheh.” – Candy/Martin
“They are filled with helium so they are very light.” – Del selling show curtains as earrings
“Welcome to Marathon, may I help you? [seeing his rage, thru gritted teeth] How may I help you?” “You can start by wiping that chirpy perky smile off your rose cheeks. … I want a car right now.” [AMC then -edited out all the rhythm of the humor of this scene] — Planes Trains, Edie McClurg
“Now are you gonna help me? Or are you gonna stand there like a slab of meat with mittens?!” – Neil Page in St Louis, trying to get a cab to Chicago
“I’ve never seen a guy get lifted up by his seat [nee balls, thx AMC] before.” – Del Griffith
“Well, Dell, your’e a charmed man.” “Nope.” “Oh, I know, you just go with the flow.” “Like a twig on the shoulders of a mighty stream”
“You know, you could’ve killed me slugging me in the stomach like that. That’s how Houdini died, you know.”
“I must assume that the lady’s silence means assent.” – Nightmare Alley, Tyrone Power
“If life was fair! … it would be … a fair, okay!? But I don’t see any carnival rides around here, do you?” – 8-Bit Christmas
“So you’re not gonna get what you wanted for Christmas. Not gonna lie, that’s a tough one, kid.” “You could give me the Nintendo you have in your trunk.” “I said you’re not gonna get what you wanted for xmas this year… you know one year, what I waned was a donkey, can you believe that?” “Yeah, it’d be kind of a weird thing to make up.” – David Cross, 8-Bit Xmas
“I’ve lost a woman. A whole woman!” – Lost in America
“$100k? over what period of time we talkin about?” “A year.” “A year?” “What’s so funny?” “Nothin! What brings you round these parts? Tryin to double up on that income, eh?” “No, I’ve come here to live. I’m trying to change my life.” “You couldn’t change your life on $100k?” – Lost in America
“Where do you think you’re going?” “I’m goin to find my mother.” “Your mom wasn’t perfect. She hogged the blankets somethin awful. She had a hard-to-remember birthday.” – The Simpsons, Mothers and Other Strangers s33(!)e9, 28Nov
“Your underwear, it’s threadbare beyond all normal usage. You’ve gotta have some underwear awareness.” – Larry to Josh Gad, Curb
“Various ways have been sought to present my stories to you. I thought the simplest way would be to tell you them myself. I’ve always loved the night and darkness. I’m delighted to speak to you in the dark, as if seated right beside you… and perhaps I am. You can imagine my anxiety, for these are old tales and you’re so terribly modern, as the living like to call themselves. But we shall see.” – Le Plasir, Max Ophuls, 3 tales by Guy Maupaussant
“What is it you see up there, Phil? Are there animals up there?” “Has anyone sle seen what you seen, Phil?” “Come on, Phil, what is it? There is something there, right?” “Not if you can’t see it, there aint.” – The Power of the Dog [first viewing streaming and please dog let it come to broader Portland theatres in award season]
“[visibly upset] What is it, George?” “[after turning away to compose himself] I just wanted to say how nice it is not to be alone.” – Power of the Dog
“What a death. What a chance. What a surprise. It is a weird lullaby, and so it is. It is mine.” – The Piano
“I am so very happy at … this dreadful news.” – Emma, Romola e3
“You may think that you’re normal. But you’re only a product of mutations. Your ancestors – our ancestors – were freaks who only survived b/c they were stronger than any other life forms around them… By making mutations of our choosing, we may change our species. Or improve it.” – The Mutations, Donald Pleasance, 1975
“Imagine a new species composed of the characteristics of plants AND animals. Well, use your imagination! Plants able to move in search of better conditions of light, soil, water. Animals able to harness the rays of the sun directly thru photosynthesis. A world without hunger. A world, therefore, of peace and tranquility, with time to develop our true human potential, even tho outwardly we might look like plants.” – The Mutations “Get back! Get back! Don’t you understand I’m one of you?!”
“Hey Kevin. Where were you?” “I was just at Sapphire and Rainbow’s [manitees’] place. It’s like floating on a cloud of dreams to an ethereal valley cast upon the moon of time.” – Cake s5e9
“He’s so dumb.” “He’s just a boy.” “That’s no excuse for being snooty.” – Intermezzo, 1937
“He was a remarkable fellow.” “Well, obviously. I’m not exactly in the habit of forcing things on people, but if I can be of any service?” – Cluny Brown, Lubitsch 1946 Charles Boyer, Jennifer Jones // “Nice girl, sits a horse well.”
“The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth like a gentle rain from heaven. To Shakespeare!” – Cluny to Mr Wilson
“Men just don’t marry plumbers. Mr Wilson had a long talk with me afterwards. He told me what he thought of me. Some of it was in Latin.”
“I fell down the chimney and landed on a flaming goose!” – Rizzo, Muppet Christmas Carol, songs by Paul Williams
“I told you we shoulda got a Zenith!” – Gremlins // “It’s supposed to be Christmas! What the hell is going on here?!”
“[reading feverishly] Wait a minute, it’s not that Freddy person; this is a new boyfriend altogether!?” “What the hell’s going on? Detroit’s disappeared! Good god! Detroit’s gone.” “What happened to her husband?” “What is it, Charlie?” “I was wondering what happened to Chelsea’s husband.” “It didn’t work out. … Hey [still reading letter] Hey, she’s , she says she’s in love with a dentist!” “Well, does her boyfriend know about this?” – On Golden Pond
“I hear you turned 80 today.” “That what you heard?” “Yeah. That’s really old.” “Euh, you should meet my father.” “Your father’s still alive!?” “No. But you should meet him.” – Young Jr to Old Jr, On Golden Pond
“It’s lovely though, it’s rustic.” “Yes, it’s lovely rusticity.” – Dabney Colman/ Bill Ray to Good God Fonda
“Your son hasn’t read Treasure Island!?” “No, but I intend to have him read it. His mother’s been the main force in his life lately, but I intend to eradicate, uh, some of the dishevelment.” – Colman/Bill Ray Sr.
“I’ve been tryin all day to draw some profound conclusions about living four score years. Haven’t thought of anything. Surprised it got here so fast. But I’m glad I got to spend so much time with this beautiful woman – what’s your name again?” – On Golden Pond, Henry Fonda
“My father is a goddamn bastard. Poop. Oooh Norman is a god-damned poop!” – Jane Fonda
“Don’t you think everybody looks back on their childhood with a certain amount of bitterness and regret? You don’t have to let it ruin your life … Aren’t you tired of it all? Bore, bore, bore. Life marches by, Chels. I suggest you get on with it.” – Kate Hepburn to Jane Fonda, mother to daughter tough love, On Golden Pond
“Billy, sometimes you have to look hard at a person and remember, he’s doing the best he can. He’s just trying to find his ways, that’s all, just like you.” – On Golden Pond, Henry
“I’m afraid of him.” “Well, he’s afraid of you too. You too should get along fine.” – Jane/Kate and the dynamic that sparked in my 11/12-year old brain
“Now you’re finally makin some sense, b/c this guy is like the Irish version of me. I mean, we’re into all the same shit, uh, cheese, ghouls. Ghouls, cheese, uh, holy shit man, this is crazy.” – Always Sunny, The Gang Goes to Ireland s15(!!!)e5
“Tell me, Colonel, were you ever young?” “Yeah. And just as reckless as you. Then one day something happened, made life very precious to me.” “What’s that? Or is the question indiscreet?” “No, the question isn’t indiscreet. But the answer could be.” – Clint Eastwood/Lee Van Cleef, For a Few Dollars More
“Gramps, where do people go when they die?” “[chuckles] Where the wood bine twineth.” // “Well, I’ll be dipped in gravy.” – On Borrowed Time, Lionel Barrymore
“I didn’t just come here to stuff pillowcases with ocelots. I came here to solve a mystery!” – John Hodgeman, Cake
“People say schplendid at least twice a day, it is fact.” – Bill Hader, Curb, S11E9, Igor, Gegor and TImor
History/Politics”
“I wish I could take a couple months off from the White House and come down here and live with them. Because I know I’d get full of health the way they have.” – FDR on the CCC
CCC = 9 years, 3.5M men, 800 state parks, 90k miles of telephone wire strung, 40M acres of farmland improved, 4B trees planted
It’s important to think about historical moments from their (enslaved people’s) perspectives. Kids can absolutely handle hard truths. Some of the best conversations I’ve had about history and the history of slavery have been with 5, 7, 9 year olds. I’ts so important that we know our history, that we teach all aspects, even the tough parts, the subjects that kame us uncomfortable, that make us feel ashamed about our nation – that’s when we can grow and live in a realistic space, and students don’t feel betrayed by their education.” – Dinah Ramsey Barrott, Brief But Spectacular
“Did you see Pelosi on 60 Minutes last night? When asked about AOC it was like a Nikky Minaj and Cardi B question. ‘I got rims too! I got plenty of MCs! Who cares about her?’ I was like, you seem really old and rich right now.” – Chris Rock on Colbert 20Jan
“Everything is going to be okay, b/c this is America – not a country made of rules by men, but a country ruled by laws, that men are bound to respect.” – NY AG Letitia James, Full Frontal 18Nov20 (watched after Capitol riot)
“He was so consistent, so confident, so just comfortable in his own skin and his own space that he literally floated into places, and he presented Vernon Jordan – and it was always the same, in a suit, in slack and a polo shirt, he was like a big oak tree who just put himself around. I met him in a corporate space and he wasn’t to me a corporate person or a financial, political, legal or finance person. He was all of them and I saw him operate in all those spheres without a break in form whatsoever. He was unbelievably consistent and just unbelievably strong.” – Newshour 2Mar, Ursula Burns on Vernon Jordan (memoir: “Vernon Can Read”) 😉 // “Every important moment throughout my life, Vernon Jordan was there. How do you do that? How do you be so complete a friend? He was present. He was serious about friendship. He was serious about providing me and people like me shoulders to stand on. He was serious about having the expectation that I do the same thing .. And he did it so gracefully and seamlessly. I try my best to emulate him b/c he was the perfect example of a friend.” His legacy = total and complete giving of one’s self to other people, literally without hesitation. If he grabbed on to you – and he did it to a lot of people – you were his. He took care of you, he gave you assurance to keep pushing forward and he believe that there was better to come.
“It was turrible turrible, it was bad times for me.” Henry Aaron on all he went thru in the MLB
“A lot of times in cultures we think of the ways we can cleanse ourselves with water – I think of the ways we can cleanse ourselves with words, meaning this poem was an opportunity to resanctify, repurify and reclaim not just the capitol building but American democracy and what it stands for .. that was my goal: to go back to the quintessence of what America can be. – Amanda Gorman, inaugural poet, Daily Show 27Jan
“I always say poetry stands as a great reminder of the past we stand on and the future we stand for. Poetry is at the forefront of the social justice movement – so poetry, b/c it’s inherently rebellious in its nature – really becomes the language and rhetoric of the people. We get to coopt it and play on it and use those words to realize our thoughts and transform those thoughts into actions. – Gorman
“We’re Here” – ship name, captain courageous “they who go down to the seat in boats” – 1623-1923
“Marjorie Taylor Greene said Satan runs the govt and Liz Cheney said, No my dad’s retired.” – Real Time
“Women have had to deal with the anxiety that the way they behave sexually could ruin their whole life – for millennia.” – Charlotte Aller
“When you come to realize that forgiving people who did bad things to you is a treat you give yourself, you set your mind free.” – Mohamedou Ould Salahi, Guantanamo Diary
“It will be found much better to leave the past to history – especially as I propose to write that history.” – Winston Churchill
“All too often, I fear Prince Philip has had to listen to me speaking. He is someone who doesn’t take easily to compliments. But he has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years.” QEII on his 99th bday
“I can’t convey strongly enough how RAW this still is – it’s the word I keep using and I think it’s the right one.” [on Capitol riot] – Lisa Dejardin 19May
“When I lived in Oregon I said it was nice for work, but it wasn’t no place for pleasure. If you’re lookin for pleasure, you’re gonna have to go somewhere else.” – Alrie Marsh, Maxville, OR, 1920s Black logger, OR Experience
“If you talk about how there are ways you communicate with people that send the wrong signals, then I’m all ears. Eric Hoffman (philosopher) said, ‘What starts out as a cause morphs into a business and ends up a racket.’” – James Carville, Real Time
“When you come to realize that forgiving people who did bad things to you is a treat you give yourself, you set your mind free.” – Mohamedou Ould Salahic “Guantanamo Diary” to “The Mauritaneian” by Kevin Macdonald [really, conflated or a trick of writing?]
“Mary Annesteiner: epitome of elegance. Born in Germany, escaped Nazi rule to NYC. At her 199th birthday party she said Just being alive was still so exciting.” – Newshour, presumably covid death stories
Hemmingway short story The Defeated taught to imprisoned men: Its biggest interest is groups of men. He is really interested in how men think and function together, and in particular what kind of language they develop. “Each and every single one of us is constantly trying to balance that in a male dominant society – is your masculinity and how you carry yourself and present yourself and mingle with a whole bunch of other men. In here you have to be cautious with your words, o you have to find what’s beneath the surface “And I know you cannot live on hope alone. But without it, life is not worth living.” – Harvey Milk
“Why ‘The Place to Be’? [memoir title] “B/c is was a perfect storm. It was a collection of principled, talented, honest, hard-working, very tough perfectionists, who all came together.” – Roger Mudd (dead at 93)
“He was a general who became a diplomat and an admirable figure who republicans and democrats all respected equally even when they had differences with him. // He was a man of the center, which may be an endangered species now. – upon the death of Colin Powell at 85, when myeloma blood cancer left him compromised to die from covid. // His most important legacy may be the kind of decency he brought to public service.
Fern Hobbs – private sec to Gov Oswald West. 1913 to DC to negotiate; first woman sent to US Capitol as official rep of a state. // Copperfield saloon shutdown subterfuge triumph, Fern got back on a train, went to Baker City, checked into the Geiser Grand [have had lunch there], and rebuffed all attempts to contact her [to ensure her work wasn’t undone]
“14th century plague: didn’t care if you were young or old, rich or poor. It’s a snapshot of all people of all ages being affected by one disease process”. – Secrets of Underground London // “Bacterium Yesenia Pestis is still alive today, living in fleas, infecting rats. One bite can infect a human. // Without these bones we’d never known it was a tiny microbe that could cause such widespread destruction.”
“By 1350 when the plague finally loosens its grip on the country, over 40% of London’s population – 30k people – have died. In 1666 the Great Fire burns 80% of London.” – Secrets of Underground London [KJL Spinal Tap/Elvis tombstone quote: ‘that’s too much fuckin perspective’]
“I believe that the blood memory was in her to survive out in the cold.” – The Art of Home: A Wind River Story, PBS
“How do you sleep after losing a presidential election?” “I sleep like a baby. I wake up screaming every 2 hours.” –Bob Dole, who lay in state 10Dec21, 5 weeks after Colin Powell
Standup/Late Night
“Now we’re all hoping someday the president will get his comeuppance but he seems bound and determined to keep his uppance un-comed.” Colbert 7Jan21
“But I’m a patriot; I wanna do my part so I scanned the photos and I think I recognize some of the people trying to destroy democracy. Like this guy – that might be Ted Cruz. To be fair, it could also be the bloated corpse of a drowned woodchuck. And I’m pretty sure this is MO Sen Josh Hawley – I recognize him from his Twitter handle: Peewee Herman Goerhing.” — Colbert
“Apples or oranges?” “I’m gonna go with oranges.” “You know you can’t put peanut butter on an orange, right?” “That’s not why I eat fruit. I don’t view fruit as a peanut butter delivery system.” “Describe the rest of your life in 5 words.” “A magnificent cavalcade of color.” – Tom Hanks, Colbert Questionnaire
“Is there a less festive sentence than ‘Mike Pence will attend.’? Trump’s basically one KFC ban away from a full-on mental breakdown.” – Corden, 11Jan, back in garage
“I’m Kamala Harris, your VP, your K-cup, your top cop, your Kama from a different mama, your prosecutee, your Kamala Sutra. I have a lot of nicknames but if you call me kaaah-mala, you can show yourself out.” Lily Singh 12Jan
“15k national guard troops mobilized to the capitol = 3x that in Iraq and Afghanastan. Well, the US is known for sending in troops to prop up failed states. Hopefully we’ll greet ourselves as a liberator.” – Colbert13Jan
“Because of the attack, Congress put in more metal detectors, which Republicans are sometimes rushing right through. Because that could violate their freedom, to overtake a legally elected govt by armed rebellion, and who wants to live in a country like that?” – Real Time 15Jan
“You thought Trump was going to be your bull in the china shop? Yeah, he was, but you were the china…. It shouldn’t be that surprising that America is full of fed-up unhappy people who just want to break shit.” – New Rules 15Jan
“At my house we don’t have bio-drills, we have white-o-drills. Ever since my kids were born, I’ve been getting em ready for the man. So everything in my house that’s the color white is either hot, heavy or sharp. So my kids know when they deal with anything that’s white, they gotta think about that shit.” – Chris Rock, Tambourine extended/Total Blackout // “You can be anything you’re good at – as long as they’re hiring. And even then it helps to know someone.”
“God doesn’t make mistakes!? Hush your mouth – you ever been to Mississippi? Mistake! MISTAKE! Just a big hunk of racist dirt. Fuckin Mississippi. I was there a couple months ago – I couldn’t even tell what YEAR it was.” – Chris Rock, Tambourine extended/Total Blackout
“Love hard or get the fuck out, okay, you hear me? I’m telling you right now. If you’re in a relationship, all you should be doin is fuckin and goin places, you could be comin and goin. People say relationships are tough. No they’re not! They’re only tough when one person’s working on em. Two people can move a couch real easy; one person can’t move it at all. You’re both there to serve, you’re in the service industry – you’re in a band. Sometimes you sing lead and sometimes you play tambourine, and if you’re on tambourine, play it right. Cuz nobody wants to see a bad tambourine player.” Chris Rock, Tambourine extended/Total Blackout. “How do you stay together? You have to fuck. You knew he didn’t do dishes but he gave you good dick. That was a swell trade. You got to fuck. Shit, I at pussy on 9/11 – where were you?!”
“You’re mad about an actual thing she did, and she’s just made that you had the nerve to react to the actual thing that she did.” Chris Rock, Tambourine extended/Total Blackout. “I once heard my grandmother say, a broke man is like a broke hand – can’t do nothin with it.”
“Nestle has recalled 762 pounds of Hot Pockets b/c they may have glass and plastic inside. Okay, but they still have cheese, right?” – Colbert
“In Wayland, MA, librarians are mystified by potatoes gathering on the front lawn. I think the word you’re looking for is accumulating, or appearing. Gathering implies they’re responding to some primal potato call to assemble for the great potato uprisings. ‘The cream may be sour but our revenge will be sweet!’ The library crew has been shaken by what they refer to as ‘random potatoes.’ Yes. These potatoes are neither expected nor orderly, these are potatoes of chaos.” – Colbert
“It’s psychologically effed up – noone’s said that about a film since Herbie the Love Bug.” – Conan/Aubrey Plaza
“You had a good run, malarkey, but it ends now. Imagine how Joe Biden’s feeling right now. He hasn’t been this excited since Peggy Sue invited him to share a sarsaparilla at the Sadie Hawkins dance.” – Corden
“So Barbie could be a lesbian, or she could be bi, but why are we putting her in a box? She already comes in one and maybe she wants to come in another one.” – Lilly Singh
“It was a tough four years for flags too!” – Colbert, inauguration night
“It’s so nice to have a president with a soul again. The previous one sold his to the devil and didn’t even get a GA out of it… And during that fireworks display – so large I think it even violates the Paris Climate Accords — I felt hopeful that things were going to get better. B/c yes there’s still a pandemic. And racism. And I bet dollars to donuts there’s actually seditionists in the Congress – but tonight the president of the United States stood on the balcony of the White House and wore a mask. Baby steps.
“It’s nice to have a president who’d hinged. We have hinged back!” – Real Time 22Jan
“So maybe the ultimate measuring stick is not having one.” – Lilly Singh 26Jan
The other day I was very happy to get my first dose of the Moderna vaccine at Dodger Stadium. It was a Deborah Birx bobblehead niight, so that was fun. I got an injection and a free scarf – Billy Crystal, Colbert 27Jan
“Trump’s been awfully quiet. Isn’t that a little alarming? It’s like in Jaws when the shark went out to sea for a while.” – Maher 29Jan
Frazzledrip – Marjorie Taylor Green [“R”-GA] belief of Hilary Clinton cutting the face off a teenage girl and wearing it like a mask (!!!)
“What do you call a lesbian dinosaur? Lickalottapus.” – Dan Levy, SNL 6Feb
“I had an opera coach…and I was studying cadence, btwn natural speech and giving speeches – identifying the differences but making it feel like the same person. His speech patterns were a clue into his thought patterns. – Daniel Kaluuya, Trevor 16Feb // “They [Panthers] not only protected themselves, they loved themselves.”
“A relationship is important to keep you stable, to have someone who will have your back, the person to support me, give me strength – Machel Montano – Trinibad and Tobego “Soca Michael Jackson” Lilly Singh 16Feb
“He used to say this thing about killing is easy, once you learn how to kill as a comedian, killing is easy. But that’s not what he wanted – he wanted the truth.” – Dennis Leary on Patrice O’Neal
“Standup is really about dissecting humanness, the flaws of being human, and Patrice had a very honest take on this destructive human being that’s on stage.” — Marina Franklin on Patrice O’Neal
“I’m not a big fan of making people laugh every five fucking seconds, I don’t even see myself as an entertainer. I realize, I’m not going to do everything I can so that you can have a good time, like I think a juggler’s an entertainer, cuz he just does what he does, but I don’t think a good comedian entertains anybody.” – Patrice O’Neal
“He goes, I aint there tellin jokes, fuck jokes. I’m up there explaining how I fucking feel, and a lot of times, how I feel is fucking complicated.” – Patrice O’Neal to Dennis Leary
“I don’t wanna sound like I’m bragging, but I have to put medicine on my back like a spatula.” – Brian Regan, On the Rocks
“My doctor said, Brian, you’re way too sedentary. So I vowed, in that moment, to get a dictionary. But I haven’t gotten around to it yet b/c I’ve just been lying around the house. Or is it laying?” – Brian Regan, On the Rocks
“Last month I went to an ear, nose and throat doctor. Last week I went to an arch of the foot small of the back nape of the neck doctor. I have fallen arches, my small’s too big and I have a trick nape.” – Brian Regan, On the Rocks
“I don’t have to alphabetize my books, I’m not out of my mind. I organize them chronologically. Bottom shelf = read, top shelf = to read, middle shelf = in reading progress. Must read full first page for shelf change (or turn page to finish sentence). I’m not out of my mind! How come when you want things in order they call that a disorder?” – Brian Regan, On the Rocks
“I asked where the self help section was and she said why don’t you try to find that yourself?” – Brian Regan, On the Rocks
“We unilaterally decided to smother everything you love in life with mushrooms! – Brian Regan, On the Rocks
“What if there is life on Mars but it’s teeny weensy and we’re just crushing it with our rovers? … We’re just mushing Martians into mulch.” – Brian Regan, On the Rocks
“We don’t know exactly what the Proud Boys are proud of, but it’s not their grades.” – Real Time 5Mar
“I’m thinking, wow there are a lot of young Black people in here, shoppin at Whole Foods – we comin up! And then I realized they’re shopping for other people. Then I was like damn, they’re puttin themselves at risk and gotta go home to their families, and it’s really puttin us at risk, but hey white people, enjoy your Chilean sea bass! Don’t even think about it.” – Wanda Sykes, Conan
“This just in: There was an interview from Feb that aired 2 days ago. Everyone, and I can’t believe I’m one of the every, is still taking about Oprah’s exclusive sit-down with the Duke and Duchess of Netflix, Harry and Meaghan, who accused the royal family of being racist. Tough charge. I’m sure that made hackles rise. One of the signs of inbreeding is a risen hackle.” – Colbert 9Mar
“Cruz would have returned from Cancun [after fleeing his state amid an epic weather catastrophe] even sooner, but it took him like 40 minutes to get out of a hammock.” – SNL Feb
“The worst I bombed? I opened for Melissa Manchester and I was pretty bad that night, hehehehe. I opened for Tiny Tim and I was pretty bad that night too. That’s a hard crowd to work.” – Eddie Murphy, Corden 12Mar
“I was sittin behind him [a few rows back on a plane] watchin him listen to my record. Afterwards he drove me to the house I was stayin at, and that’s how I met my idol.” – Eddie Murphy on Richard Pryor, Corden
“Like my grandfather used to say, it’s not the cough that carries you off, it’s the coffin they carry you off in.” – Conan, ides of march
[on whether a tomato is fruit or veg] “I have a simple metric: Is it sweet? Then it’s a fruit. … I grew up loving vegetables b/c I realized if I could love the things noone else wanted, then I would have more food.” – Trevor Noah to Michelle Obama (re Waffles and Mochii)
“New rule, someone has to tell me why all the signs of the zodiac look like IUDs. Does birth control come from space?” – Maher, 26Mar
“I also have friends where it looks like someone told em to try and go get it, that’s how they’re livin. I can tell you one thing that’s gone forever, it’s coughing in public. That’s uh a wrap. You drink water wrong at a restaurant, just go walk into traffic.” – Nate Bargatze, Greatest Average American
“I’ve had 3 concussions in my life and none of them b/c of sports. Just livin life, man, ya know, stuff happens to your head, what’re ya gonna do?” — – Nate Bargatze, Greatest Average American
[re Rastafarian founder] “You know you have influence when there’s an entire religion built around you. The only other Black person to accomplish that was Jesus. Now don’t argue with me about Jesus’ race, I know Jesus was Black. B/c the court found him guilty with no evidence – CP time.” – Roy Wood Jr
“Look, guys, I’m sorry, alright, don’t ask me, I’m not a fan of the show either – I mean it’s a mess back stage: dude with orange hair just blowin things up, penguin and chicken turds everywhere, it’s too madcap for my taste!” dkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk [kitten chaos, lost attribution]
“Would you guys keep it down up there?! We’re trying to do a show.” “Yeah, trying and failing!” – Keegan Michael Key/Statler/Waldorf, SNL
“The bill would make it illegal to hand out food or water to those waiting to vote in lines. Does it count as ‘offering food’ if I tell Georgia’s Brian Kemp to eat shit?” – Sam Bee
“Consumers want to know if you [brand] are willing to effect positive social change, which will create more brand awareness. The isn’t what are you selling or what service are you providing – the question is what do you stand for? Who ARE you, Bagel Bites?!” – Bo Burnam Inside // “Just be honest. Tell your customers that JP Morgan is against racism, in theory. The question is no longer, do you want to buy Wheat Thins, for example. The question is now, will you support Wheat Thins in the fight against Lyme Disease? There’s no sugar-coating it, the world is fucked up and you’ve got a choice as a brand: you can hide and bury your head in the sand and hope it fixes itself, or you can roll up your sleeves and get to work, selling Butterfingers.”
“So the guy who broke in. Now, I say it’s a guy, I don’t wanna be sexist – it could be a woman.” “uh huh.” [leans in to whisper] “So this bitch takes some personal things of mine.” – Kevin Nealon with Conan and Andy
“I’m also delighted that I dressed hastily and I realize I’m now dressed like … Andy, what do I look like” Howdy Doody? Or maybe a well-read cowboy? A ranch hand who’s read all of Emerson? Anyway, excited about that reference, I think you will be too. Well, probably b/c I’ve been making references like that for 28 years, we’re gonna be wrapping things up here at TBS on June 24, leaving the nightly format I’ve been basically thrashing about in for the last 28 years.” – Conan 10June21
“Tonight is very special – it’s my 6th to last show on my 4th to last network.” “We’re nomadic people.” – Conan/Richter 16June21
“Dark times but hopeful? Give me a second, I’m going thru the ol occipital rolodex. Got it, okay – Return of the King: Frodo and Sam have gotten into Mordor, over the Mountains of Shadow, they’re on the Plain of Gorgoroth, which is the barren plain right next to Mount Doom. Frodo’s passed out from the stress of the ring. He can’t go on, he can barely drag himself forward. And Sam’s looking over him. And he’s there at night and they’re hiding in a little crater of the plain. And Sam looks up at the sky. And Tolkein writes ‘There, peeping, among the cloud rack above the dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart and he looked up out of the forsaken land and hope returned to him. For, like a shaft clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the shadow was only a small and passing thing. There was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.” — Colbert
“My doctor called me and said ‘you have lyme disease and…’ And?! One at a time – everybody’s gonna get a turn!” – Mike Birbiglia, The New One
7 reasons not to have kids: “I don’t know anything. In third grade they taught us photosynthesis and I thought, this is not gonna stick. And it hasn’t; I’m not 100% sure why it rains. I’m not sure you are either. I don’t know anything for certain. I think it’s entirely possible consciousness is a hallucination. How do I explain that to a kid? ‘See that juicebox? Don’t be so sure.’ I can’t explain existence. // Kids hold us back. // I don’t think there should be any more children. We were given the earth and we failed.
“There’s rattles and a rain stick, in case your baby is a shaman.” – Little Astronaut – Jen Birbiglia? Stein (Clo) “A newborn rests her head on the earth of mother. Everything else is outer space”
“Watch me climbin’ – I’m going up a palm tree like a cat up a palm tree who’s decided to go up a palm tree. Seagull on the tire can you hear my prayer? I keep tryin but I’m getting nowhere. Head’s in a fog, I’m under her spell, am I in heaven or am I in hell?” – Jamie Dornan Seagull in the Sand
[on which would win in a fight] “Oh King Kong is formidable, you know, but Godzilla breathes fire and that would be the deciding factor, as the ape would be consumed in the conflagration.” – Ichiro to Bob Costas via interpreter. “Ichiro, what is your favorite American expression?” “[waves off interpreter] August in Kansas City is hotter than 2 rats in a fucking sock.”
Colbert questionnaire to Jon Oliver, one song: “Wow, for the rest of my life? So something you can’t be sick of. ‘Ashes to Ashes,’ David Bowie. B/c there’s so much going on in there, if you get tired of that song, it’s your fault.” “Describe the rest of your life in 5 words.” “I have no fucking idea?”
“I’m going to ask him [Chris Cuomo] about his brother being gone; you know, that’s an awkward Thanksgiving.” “Yeah, a lot of tension in that.” “A lot of tension, yeah. Families. I’m against em.” – Colbert and Batiste
Rose Matafeo, Horndog: horniness = girls putting 100% into something that is totally not worth it. // I just fundamentally think that teenagers should not have personalities. You can have interests, that’s fine; I loved Garfield as a kid. I honestly just think it’s a red flag when parents introduce their children with a strong personality identifier, like “This is [8 yr old] Caitlin, she’s very outspoken” – and she says that b/c you’re not allowed to call your own daughter a cunt, you know what I mean?
“These faux feminist slogans were just sold, I mean they don’t even mean anything, they’re just words next to each other at this point – my other unicorn’s a feminist … self care on fleek … what? // If a man can demonstrate even a moderate level of skill in anything, fuckin sign me up. If I see a man leaf-blowing, if a man can fold a fitted bedsheet, belissimo! I genuinely think that men with their shit together would be quite a popular porn category.” – Rose Matafeo, Horndog
“How are you going to Build Back Better when you don’t have any workers and you don’t have any tools (b/c supply chain)? – Bill Maher 8Oct
“A n—came up to me on the street and said, ‘Look out Dave – they’re after you!’ “Wait a minute, is that one they or several theys?” – Dave Chapelle, Closer (pilloried for anti-trans content)
Former “president” Trump was seen doing the tomahawk chop at a World Series game in Atlanta. Native American groups said they found it extremely offensive to see their culture associate with someone who can’t even run a successful casino.” – SNL Jost, 7Nov
“The sun came up, a squirrel walked in, we laughed and cried again. … Wow, what a [? Dorky?] day-night. Now every turkey day that comes they think of how they missed their chance. Our lives are short, our love is rare, and so we do the turkey dance.” – SNL, Steve Carrell
Literature, Lyrics, Poetry (and poetical prose), no less
“But I don’t wanna talk about anything, I don’t wanna talk about anything
I want to sleep in your car while you’re driving,
Lay in your lap while I’m crying – Adrienne Lenker (Colbert)
They buried us but they didn’t know we were seeds – Amanda Gorman
I never want to dally or diverge – Amanda Gorman
“Let America be America again, the land that never has been and yet must be again.” – Langston Hughes
“Truth, like love and sleep, resents all approaches too intense.” – Auden (re: Write America)
“I still believe we listen better to a whisper than a shout.” – Rita Dove, former US poet laureate, Newshour
Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that’s turning running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!
Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own
Down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving in a half forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!
Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head
Why did summer go so quickly, was it something that you said?
Lovers walking along a shore and leave their footprints in the sand
Is the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand?
Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragment of a song
Half remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong?
When you knew that it was over you were suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning to the color of her hair!
Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
As the images unwind, like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind!
Songwriters: Marilyn Bergman / Michel Legrand / Alan Bergman; performed by Noel Harrison – early Muppet Show, centrifugal legs gaining speed through sketch
“I have sometimes thought that a woman’s nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing room, where one receives format visits; the sitting room, where the members of the family come and go … but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows their way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.” – “The Fullness of Life,” early Wharton story
“I drove my car into a cop car the other day. Well just drove off, sometimes life’s okay. I ran my mouth off a bit too much, well what can I say? … And we’ll all float on, all right, all ready, we’ll all float on. Okay, don’t worry, even if things end up a bit too heavy we’ll all float on, all right all ready we’lll all float on.” – Modest Mouse SNL 13Nov04
On a clear understanding that this kind of thing can happen, shall we dance?” – The King & I
“I heard voices echoing through the forest of family trees.” – Bill Fay, How Long
“Wherever you have been
Wherever you will go
Just do the best you can
To be kind
Just try to do what you can today” – Brittany Howard, 13th Century Metal
Knock out, a knock out
Fouled tomato at the gate
Knock out, a knock out
Why did I go out?
Hey hey
Knock out, a knock out
Wrists affixed to the stake
Knock out, a knock out
Incredible to love you
…
Eyes, out a cage,
Frock, divorcee
Thighs, disarray
Light black, all the way
No matter what I take .. when did you get out? Hey hey
Knock out, a knock out, to be fleeing unrestrained …
Inconsiderate to love you
The rosette spoonbill flying pink
Into a yellowed tangle of the cypress dome
Killing a scorpion with an orthopedic tennis shoe
Against your hotel room tile
A crude and inaccurate drawing of your feet and ankle
And ankle brace
Shaking up and chucking bottles of Vincentka off the balcony at a burning star.” – Knock Out, Xiu Xiu, Alice Bang
“I repeat, we are all brothers and sisters.” – Brittany Howard, 13th century metal
“All I want is to fall apart
In the arms of someone
Entirely strange to me.
In your eyes I see to panoply
All the people I see inside of me.
What is it that you’re looking for in the looking glass?
It’s in the crosshairs of a stranger’s stare I’m lost at last.
Empty space is my escape, it runs thru me like a river
Wild time (while time?) spits in my face, turns us like stones into drifters.” – Cassandra Jenkins, “Crosshairs”
“Scouring the papers at Christmastime
And when it mattered, and it always did
At least we lived. And when it mattered, of course it did
At least we lived.” – Sleaford Mobs, Fishcakes
“Farewell purple mountains, I see a range of cumulus .. the skies replace the land with air.
No matter where I go, you’re gone, you’re everywhere.
The poetry, it’s not lost on me
I’m left asking how it found me
I walk around laughing in the street 3 -– Cassandra Jenkins, Crosshairs
Late summer, which languors through most of most of September here in Portland (despite media and all my friends’ and colleagues’ back to school posts calling summer a wrap), may be my favorite time of year. I used to take international trips in September, having waited out all the families who had to get home before Labor Day, but eventually I realized I was missing my favorite month in the Pacific Northwest and started savoring the home place during these imperceptibly shortening days when mid-80-degree weather somehow doesn’t cause a sweat due to the crisp air starting to send the dry leaves wafting from the trees in the woods by my house where I walk or jog every day.
Every day more apples ready to plop from trailside branches lowered under their weight, and footfalls crunch a bit more under maples and oaks and the long accumulating dry long pine needles duffing the narrow tree tunnel that leads to my favorite place.
It feels more like a deer track and involves a good portion of stooping as you navigate some of the lower limbs, but the dog loves the venture feel of it as much as I do, and she’s so proud to smell out the tiny side path that leads to a first creek crossing, where she drinks and prances to celebrate leading us to such wet bounty. From there a faint break in the ivy winds us up and around through dense tree cover to our spot.
We take this tunnel tree trail because it lets us escape the open meadow sun soonest when approaching the field from the west. But there’s a choice of three inconspicuous gaps in the flank of trees on its western edge that will lead you down to the creek. The most obvious path rolls down in two parallel twist-rolling hard-earthen humps that V to the dry rivulet revealing how the winter rains have shaped the course. You jog-hop back and forth as you make your way, avoiding the ankle wrench of the V. That’s the way we’ve traversed for nearing on 20 years. Tree tunnel is the least perceptible, northernmost, gap. The earth is level, but the course tight and treed and winding. I myself only spotted the opening this spring, and now it’s our favorite route to the creek and our special spot.
That’s pronounced “crick” in my mind, after the crick backing our yearlong home in Arvada, Colorado in my childhood, where the older neighbor boys rode their motorbikes. It’s crick because of my mom’s roots in the midwest. It’s crick because there’s always some inner harkening to “Where the Red Fern Grows” when I’m in woods with water. It’s a personal place, and I love having it to myself most of the time since few people know it’s there or see a reason to descend from the sunny expanse of the big meadow with little playground above. It means once we enter the bower, via whatever path, the dog can cavort off leash and plash about in the creek water, and I can do the same.
For a few years I’ve taken to jogging with a bandana that I use to cascade cool creek water up the back of my neck with my head upturned over the lightplay on the surface through the trees. Like so many of our most satisfying rituals in life, I don’t know why exactly I started doing it, but I can’t imagine stopping. The water wrung from the cloth hits that spot where the tendon in the center of the back of your neck dips behind the overcliff of cranium bone, and it’s just about the most restorative thing I do each week. I stand, legs slightly spread for balance as I lean over the source and wash bandana-ful after bandana-ful of water down my skull and watch the light sparkle through the streams that drip down from my forehead and around my ears. It never ceases to exhilarate and bring a huge grin to my face, no matter how sour or dour or subterranean my mood. Whenever I’m grinning stupidly, something is going right, and I’ve learned not to take that for granted over the half century of my life.
Literally stopping in my tracks like that lets me viscerally absorb the woods around me too, especially since this ritual has evolved into a blessed “creek bath,” where any rare passerby would spy me cascading bandana-fuls of water down my arms, up the back of my knees, up the back and down the front of my running top, around and beyond the waist of my shorts, and down the back of my down-turned head over and over. I luxuriate, and I look — from all the vantages the creek bath advantages. I’m not on the lookout for passersby (blissfully rare), but glorying in my sylvan surroundings, so familiar but new every day, every year, every moment — and such a gift, which lockdown and beyond has made me iteratively more aware of.
There are a couple spots I know in my neighborhood where you can access this creek, but this year the water is heart-rendingly low all along the creekbed I’ve traversed through various trails. Our other favorite spot (not that the dog gets to choose outright, but when we leave the house on a creek day she always urges toward tree tunnel) has piling leaves in a damp trickle where running water should be. But tree tunnel access leads to something miraculous that we return to every day we can.
I think it must have been some kind of water pumping station. The first thing you’d notice is a tiny shack on the trickling creek, and the brickwork and large-stone placement from half (or more) a century ago that situated it there and shored up the deepish pool. It’s blazoned with a few “private property” signs and tacked up boards covering holes likely bored by critters or vandals, and looks to have been unused in any proper sense for decades.
When I first saw the shack it reminded me of places I’d go in the woods as a teen in Willamette Valley country where you could canoodle with your erstwhile intended away from prying eyes, unless you counted the eyes of spiders and mice as prying. There’s some vandalism on the worn external wooden walls, and it rings to me like a place where kids (like I was) once snuck off to smoke pot or make out, but over time fell out of habit. (I actually root for more teens in the hood to tarry there and get up to innocent, phone-free, memory-making trouble.)
I loved the shack from when I first saw it, exactly because it reminded me of the random spots in the Dundee and Newberg woods I discovered in my teen ramblings for freedom. I had been just trying to get out of the house, but I’d discovered what felt like secret nature. Even as a 7-yr-old, the neighbor (Scott Wellenbrink, what became of you?) I crushed on up the hill in Dundee took me exploring the woods behind his house. He was like five houses up from me, but while my home bordered down on to a filbert orchard, his opened up to wildness. All in Dundee! It was like Narnia. At the age of 8 I was amazed that so close to home was such mystery! We explored a trunkful of magazines in a decrepit barn or outbuilding in his woods — and so forever decrepit shacks mean mystery and history and a tantalizing frisson of the unknown for me.
And so too resonated the mysterious shack in my little private wood as a grown-ass adult.
But beyond my middle-aged memories, what’s special about this square shanty in my woods is that it flanks a nearly perfectly circular pool of water maybe 2 foot deep, and clear. There’s a loosely 90-degree-angled pipe of some kind coming into and out of the shack from opposites sides and bending into the pool, but the pipe seems inoperative. The creek runs through all this somehow and then turns north, winding under a makeshift little bridge and another awesome boulder the dog and I love to hop across from creek bank to creek bank, and then along a scant ivy-choked trail that I now know leads to tunnel trail (if you hop the creek in a certain spot) but for years I thought just ended at a nest of impenetrable foliage that the creek trickles through (albeit that was in high-flow years; now it just seeps into earth somewhere — and maybe emerges again somewhere downstream).
In years past we spent more time at other points along the creek, but with the water so low I started noticing what’s going on by that wonky-angled pipe. I innately never trusted that pool, thinking it was as fouled as the building adjoining it seemed to be, but this year I finally saw that it’s fed by a trickle coming out of the ground from the opposite side (opposite of creek flow), seeping steadily steadily, slowly but consistently into the pool from under a massive square boulder flanked by a loose towering circle of cedars. The pool empties over a lip of stone, joining the northward flow of the creek.
Somehow I’d never noticed this pool was fed from other than the creek, or stopped to wonder “why shack, why pool?” But now, it feels a whole lot more pristine, coming from the underground aquifer, not seeping down the long creekbed. It’s now my go-to creek bath location, made richer by it feeling like a secret, tenuous rite that could be taken from me whenever climate change devours this aquifer too in its boundless scourge.
But for now, it’s there, now, and I’m there in all the nows I can muster — and it’s glorious, salvational.
The more I stand still, dousing myself with pool water, the more I look, and the more I wonder who first discovered this slight groundwater source, was it always slight, who build a pumphouse, if that’s what it was, what the pumphouse fed (farmers here, when?), when it went derelict and why, and exactly how many teens like me snogged in it feeling the clean mess of nature around them in every wild dared-at direction. The long unknowable history of the place streams out and around me, and just knowing it’s unknowable, and that it’s familiar to my roots, roots me and calms me and reminds me of all the things that nature doesn’t say out loud but we always need reminding of.
It’s all a reminder that yes, I’m nostalgic and love remembering when, but am also keen to keep creating the fresh “when” and “where” as long as I can.
When Maddie and I make our way back to the southernmost gap that leads back to the field, I sigh at the low level of the water. At the same time I marvel at how beautiful the place is with all the coloring leaves nestling in the creekbed, with a few shallow pools here and there refracting light in ways they didn’t before. Mads stumbles, as she often does, as we hop over the hollow log that crosses the trail before we ascend to the fat spine of earth that leads up out of the thickening ivy and back to the open sky. And then we’re moving away from water, which always feels in-the-bones wrong.
We pause under “Austen bough” — as I’ve named it because after my creek time I feel like Lizzie getting muddy en route to Netherfield when I duck under it and make a point to touch it with my hand — and we leash up. We head back into the light where other people are a bit more likely to be found, and who knows how they’ll feel about the free-range dog grinning as broadly as his doused and giddy human companion.
And that’s where the last of the blackberries may be found. Or maybe on the path north of the field before we get to tree tunnel but after we pass the goats and the turkeys at the house where the lilac grows in the summer. We’ll have already have passed the generous neighbors whose grape tomato plants offer their September bounty to any passersby, and I’ll have eaten a bunch while Mads snorts about their yard, and pocketed a few handfuls more in my shorts pockets.
But, for me, this time of year, the innate thoughtless hunt is for any last ripe blackberries on any of the bushes all around the paths we jog and traipse. Most of the berries are withered and shrunk by now. Others never ripened, shining plump and promising but remaining red or half-red on the vine. Some aren’t withered but are too tiny to be sweet, as you just know by the seeing.
So you slow as you go by the bushes on your path. You don’t scour the entire perimeter or backtrack; you want it to be more happenstance and surprise than toil and determination. And so maybe once on a Saturday, maybe twice on a post-Labor Day Sunday, you find an edible blackberry and you grin again. Often it’s sour but even that tastes marvelous because it could be the last, sour, blackberry of the season. But sometimes it’s perfect, and you think “I won’t eat another blackberry this year; I want to end on that perfect little taste.” But if you see another September blackberry, hanging delectably in its den of prickly branches, what do you do?
You try it, don’t you? And no matter how it tastes, don’t you grin?
These fictional people are trying to be their better selves as best they can ken it out, but their better selves have shit for brains, to quote “High Fidelity.” The chance to walk in their footsteps makes real shit-for-brains like me feel just a little less alone.
Bettering Myself:
“When it got dark I’d go out again for more forties and, on occassion, food. Around tem p.m. I’d switch to vodka and would pretend to better myself with a book or some kind of music, as though God were checking up on me. ‘All good here,’ I pretended to say. ‘Just bettering myself, as always.'”
“A night under a colored lightbulb over twenty-dollar cocktails, getting hit on by skinny Indian engineers, not dancing, a stamp on the back of my hand I couldn’t scrub off. I felt vandalized.”
“I dipped a finger in my beer and rubbed off my mascara. I looked around at the other women at the bar. Makeup made a girl look so desperate, I thought. People were so dishonest with their clothes and personalities. And then I thought, Who cares? Let them do what they want. It’s me I should worry about.”
“One day I went to the park and watched a squirrel run up a tree. A cloud flew around in the sky. I sat down on a patch of dry yellow grass and let the sun warm my back. I may have even tried to do a crossword puzzle.”
“I tidied up my apartment. I filled a vase with bright flowers. Anything good I could think to do I did. I was filled with hope. I bought new sheets and towels. I put on some music. ‘Bailar,’ I said to myself. Look, I’m speaking Spanish. My mind is fixing itself, I thought. Everything is going to be okay.”
“I hadn’t been around people in weeks. There were whole families siting down together, sipping on straws, sedate, mulling with their fries like broken horses at hay. A homeless person, man or woman I couldn’t tell, had gotten into the trash by the entrance. At least I wasn’t completely alone, I thought.”
Malibu
“If you have a weak jaw, grow a beard. If you can’t grow a beard, wear colors lighter than your skin tone. If you want something and can’t have it, want something else. Want what you deserve. You’ll probably get it. Above all, control yourself. Some days, to keep myself from eating, I’d hit my head against a wall or sock myself in the stomach.”
The Weirdos
“On our first date, he bought me a taco, talked at length about the ancients’ theories of light, how it streams at angles to align events in space and time, that it is the source of all information, determines every outcome, how we can reflect it to summon aliens using mirrored bowls of water. I asked what the point of it all was, but he didn’t seem to hear me. Lying on the grass outside a tennis arena, he held my face toward the sun, stared sideways at my eyeballs, and began to cry.”
“He always hid his shame and self-loathing under an expression of shame and self-loathing, swinging his fist back and forth, ‘Shucks,’ always acting, even then. I don’t think he ever experienced any real joy or humor. Deep down he probably thought I was crazy not to love him. And maybe I was. Maybe he was the man of my dreams.”
A Dark and Winding Road
“You could hear your own heart beating if you listened. I loved it, or at least I thought I ought to love it–I’ve never been very clear on that distinction.”
“When I got high, I felt as though a dark curtain had ben pulled across the world and I was left there alone to waver in its cold, dark shadows.”
“That girl was beautiful, could have been a movie star if she’d wanted to, but she just chewed gum and had dead eyes and seemed immune to all manner of flattery or abuse. And for that reason, I felt impelled to hurt her.”
“I went to a very dark place. The oceanic emptiness in my gut churned. I pictured my old body rotting in my coffin. I pictured my skin wrinkling and turning black and falling off my bones. I pictured my rotting genitals. I pictured my pbic hair filling with larvae. And after all that, there was infinite darkness. There was nothing.”
“Twenty years later, I still felt that the good things, the things I wanted, belonged to somebody else. I watched the waning light play in Michelle’s somber eyes. She returned my gaze for a moment. It was clear the curtain had fallen for her, too. We shared a moment of recognition, I think, along there in the darkening cabin.”
Slumming
“Half a dozen years had passed since that first summer in Alna, and almost nothing had changed. The town was still full of young people crashing junk cars, dirty diapers littering the parking lots. There were X’ed-out smiley faces spray-painted over street signs, on the soaped-up windows of empty storefronts, all over the boarded-up Dairy Quen long since blackened by fire and warped by rain.”
“She was probably around my age, but she looked like a woman with a hundred years of suffering behind her–no love, no transformations, no joy, just junk food and bad television, ugly, mean-spirited men creaking in and out of stuffy rooms to take advantage of her womb and impassive heft. One of her obese offspring would soon overtake her throne, I imagined, and preside over the family’s abject state of existence, the beating hearts of these young women’s pointlessness personified.”
“Each time seniors had me sign their yearbooks, I wrote, ‘Good luck!’ then stared off into space, thinking of all the wisdom I could impart but didn’t.”
An Honest Woman
“That was one way he knew to affect women–to seem overcome by his own unruly emotions, and then to apologize for them.”
“You know women. Stray cats, all of them, either purring in your lap or pissing in your shoes.”
“He was just sitting there, facing her yard as if it were a TV set. ‘Hey,’ she said. The soft, warm wind tousled her long, loose hair. She gathered it in her fingers, then turned her back to Jeb to light a cigarette.”
Nothing Ever Happens Here
“I’d give my mom a fur coat and diamonds for Christmas. Then she’d be sorry she ever doubted me. We crossed into Nevada, the blank desert like a spot on a map that had been rubbed away with an eraser. I stared out the window, imagining, praying.”
“At eighteen, what excited me most was a particular six-inch length of leg above a girl’s knee. I was especially inclined to study girls in skirts or shorts when they were seated beside me on the bus with their legs crossed. The outer length of the thigh, where the muscles separated, and the inside, where the fat spread, were like two sides of a coin I wanted to flip. if I could have done anything, I would have watched a woman cross and uncross her legs all day.”
“‘Stuff the crotch next time,’ she said. ‘You’ll feel silly but you won’t regret it. Half of a man’s power to seduce is in the bulge of his loins.’ ‘Where’s the other half?’ I asked. I was completely sincere.”
“This is how to succeed as an actor. Point out the hidden pattern. Find meaning in the mess. People will kiss your feet.”
The Surrogate
“Life can be strange sometimes, and knowing it can be doesn’t seem to make it any less so. I know I don’t have any real wisdom. I don’t have any wonderful ideas. I am lucky to have found a few nice people here and there.”
“We need some solid stuff to hold on to. When I look at you, I see fine loose threads, like a silk cushion that has been rubbed for a hundred years, poor girl.”
A Better Place
“When I look at Waldemar, he has gone back under his covers. I can see his chest rising and falling. My brain hurts too much to try to comfort him. And anyway, there is no comfort here on Earth. There is pretending, there are words, but there is no peace. Nothing is good here. Nothing. Every place you go on Earth, there is more nonsense.”
Punctum Riot 