I am a man of God and a man of the devil. To each his due. Nothing eternal, nothing absolute. Before me always the image of the body, our triune god of penis and testicles. On the right God the Father; on the left and hanging a little lower, God the son; and between and above them the Holy Ghost. I can never forget that this holy trinity is man-made, that it will undergo infinite changes - but as long as we come out of wombs with arms and legs; as long as there are stars above us to drive us mad and grass under our feet to cushion the wonder in us; just so long will this body serve for all the tunes that we may whistle.

     It is the third or fourth day of spring and I am sitting in Place Clichy in full sunshine. Today, sitting here in the sun; I tell you it doesn't matter a damn whether the world is going to the dogs or not; it doesn't matter whether the world is right or wrong; good or bad. It is - and that suffices. The world is what it is and I am what I am. I'm not saying it like a squatting Buddha with legs crossed; but out of a gay, hard wisdom, out of an inner security. This out there and this in me; all this; everything; the resultant of inexplicable forces. A chaos whose order is beyond comprehension.

- Black Spring, Henry Miller

Crunchie Oats.

These are Crunchie Oats. Crunchie Oats are the future. Crunchie Oats™ #crunchieoats

Recipe for a Pretty Great Night of Solitude.

1. Solitude.

Memorable Weekend Quotes.

No one had anything to say this weekend. And so we roll with some knowns.

   "But man must have something concrete to strive with. The furniture of a poor man is a symbol of his liberty," said Gerald.
   "Quite. Liberty, a matter of possessions! The free soul is the soul that possesses a certain income. But it is a vicious circle. What is there inside that liberty? Nothing. Nothing. We build a wall round nothingness. We spend our days in embracing pure sterility."
   "What isn't sterility then," asked Gerald at last.
   "Beauty, truth, and pure relationship.—Tell me, what is you want in your heart of hearts? What is it essentially you want?"
- D.H. Lawrence, The First Women in Love

Our calling is where our deepest gladness and the world's hunger meet.
- Frederick Beuchnar

Nigel: It really puts perspective on things, though, doesn't it?
David: Too much, there's too much fucking perspective now.

Slice me off a bit of Abbie Cornish any day.

Introduction to Treeleggery.

Grahamstown. National Arts Festival. 2008.

An uncanny set of frog legs appear upside down in a tree as beautiful and clear as Johannesburg tap water.
Beside them, a little way on, a business man's lengthy pins stretch upwards, his pants woody and pockmarked.

 

 

 

About Last Night.

Lauren and I are going to meet Jared for a drink on Malibongwe Drive in Johannesburg I am driving a scooter that isn’t mine my legs side-saddle Lauren is facing me bunched up in the limited frontal space of the scooter so that we are almost hugging. Lauren is directing us with her iPhone holding it up to her face her smile is large and talking all the while which presents somewhat of an obstruction as I fumble and reach around to grasp at the handlebars. In particularly lovely moods both of us we continue down indefinite roads that I do not recognise past dark facades empty warehouses smoke-filled air with not a soul in sight. We turn down one particularly shady concrete strip that ends with unlit vagueness and I decide then to sit properly struggling my legs past her legs attempting to change gears – I haven’t been changing gears this whole time??! – I try to put on the headlight flipping gears levers. I tell Lauren it would be best to stop so I slow to an end figuring out how to click the faint yellow headlight on just in time to see that we have stopped thirty cm away from a crevasse the concrete road cracked and crumbling and petering off into an absolute abyss of black night.
 

Shocked we laugh turn to find our way to civilisation and we are no longer in monochrome space but in a parking lot filled with cars and young people packing up tents in fast forward motion one or two folds laughing blond heads. The parking lot belongs to an old style flat rectangular building resembling a clubhouse from the eighties white-framed windows and drab paint. The young people are friendly rambunctious proper Southern Joburgers who are up for drinking smoking sex drugs little sleep not much effort-required conversation. Lauren immediately gets talking to one handsome guy who is the friendliest of the lot shaggy haired beer-drinking while I wander over to my car smiling shaking my head thinking what a crazy story I am at my door with keys in hand when a tall tall white-barked tree with flailing green leaves thunders down not four metres away I am shocked my mouth drops I hear before I see an older guy with sitcom hair yelling out hi-de-ho about a hundred metres away standing out bold in a cluster of people. Before I say anything another huge tree different more leafy crashes not far away from the first and I see they are cutting them down all around. I think we should leave I get into my car wait patiently Lauren jumps in soon enough with the shaggy-haired man’s number and a smile she is happy. I smile back my smile feels large different lovely on my face I try to navigate my way out of the parking lot away from the crashing trees I inch forward back forward back around but we are very much parked in there is no way out. 

We give up respond to an invitation from the shaggy-haired man walk away from the lot down some stairs to sit on the street of Malibongwe Drive but it’s not Malibongwe Drive not really and Jared has found us! I feel comfortable and secure I slide down the glass wall of a closed store to sit with my knees up on the pavement that is not a pavement and not a street but much like a tiny thin little street in a European country. People are talking a group of boys are about to roll some marijuana I see large white paper one of them asks everyone who would like some to put up their hands which I think quite sensible and very friendly. Jared says this place has beer let's stay! we all walk back up to the parking lot it has some shade now in the form of awnings a wooden picnic table and the group of people seems to have grown in size they are constantly streaming everywhere back forth around in front of next to behind me like ants moving moving moving quickly quickly quickly all non-descript until up close. I stand next to a girl with dark hair twisted on top of her head it is dyed grey in some places orange-blond in others while Lauren runs to places I don’t know where. This girl lights the joint I watch her smoke three-quarters of it herself and I am more amazed than impatient there are so many people who want some strange that she would do that but who am I to question when it finally comes to me I take two light puffs hand it over.

I am in a circle of people then sitting at the picnic table leaning back slightly a faded green covered foam mattress lies flat behind me I don’t look back but I know it’s there in line with the bench I sit on. My eyes are closed people are talking I am blissed out I hear nothing but the indistinct hum of conversation. Softly suddenly there is the back of a women’s hand lightly pressed against the side of my face which I only now realise is flushed and warm. It is cool wonderful I sink into the feeling the hand moves lightly up my cheekbone her fingertips slim beautiful the bend of her knuckles slight wondrous and cool so cool. Her standing presence radiates beside me I feel her move I feel her move closer lean down bend her head closer to mine I picture her hair fall forward over her shoulder over her face all I want to do is look at her but my eyelids are heavy too too heavy no matter how much I try I cannot open them. Her face is then in front of mine I can feel her breath mix with my breath and I know what she is going to do so why isn’t she doing it yet I want it so I lean forward eyes closed press her mouth with mine now she is pressing back harder and we tumble fall slowly slowly as if in slow motion onto the mattress behind me and her hair is drifting I can feel it in slow motion frozen in time and in the infinite seconds before I hit the foam my eyes open and it is glorious. 

Then we are back sitting at the picnic table she is to my right I can see her auburn hair black pants a face I cannot describe beautiful lovely without in any way presumptuous with eyes that gaze at me knowing the small upturned corners of her mouth. A guy across the table hands her something and she presses three large round pills into my palm with a smile they look like strong multivitamins dark green and mottled when I ask her what they are she laughs replies with I don’t know. I want to take them but I know that I am driving and not knowing what they are worries me so I start getting up from the table thinking I look so awkward not sexy at all I say that I’m going inside to get some water to take them with. No no she gestures me down you don’t need water you can take them as they are it’s easy but I insist because the water is just pretence I actually want to go inside decide whether to take them or not I don’t want to look inexperienced feel silly in front of her. So she watches me as I leave her eyes are heavy hot I pretend to pop one after another into my mouth but as I get indoors I have only put one in my mouth I feel it crumbling on my tongue. I split it in half and I am worried about what it will do to me I remove the half even the broken little remnants and I put these and the other two into my shallow pocket and open myself up to the house heading to the back where I know the toilets are.

The house has a bar people scattered around it what seems like beds throw rugs large pillows textures everywhere. I round a corner to find a hallway of cubicle showers with brightly coloured patterned curtains and people getting in and out of the showers a girl in a thick white towel drawn back dark hair reaching for her toiletry bag. I now know that this is a backpackers hostel. There is music playing as I pass the showers I walk into a small two-stall bathroom with quite a few people there are always people everywhere so many of them streaking this way and that. I stand to wait as an old university classmate pushes past me her face smeared with drunkenness or worse she does not notice me I say hello she says hello! and immediately accuses me of pilfering something of hers in a project I had done but she stops herself I am in a good mood and normally she would frustrate me but I say no continue. She goes on to accuse me of taking a photo of weaponry – the photo flashes in my mind a close-up metal-grey image of densely clustered bulbous-ended grenade launchers – when she had already seen a documentary about weaponry aaaand – she knows she is being silly now but she’s not stopping I’m just smiling amused – we went to some [blank] together so it was half hers. I nod smile half-heartedly explain that it’s not really stealing but by then I’ve shaken my head I don’t care the stall is open so I go inside. I fiddle with the wire latch I turn around to look down upon the cubicle’s square floor of half bricks and half sand with a small puddle of urine having buried itself into the sand. There is the wooden door I have just closed a concrete wall to my left tin roofing to my right to my front the back end of the cubicle is just chicken-wire fencing with a patterned light blue scarf draped over it to the left drifting slowly again so slowly in the wind and I look right through the chicken-wire out onto the yard to see a group of people not far from the bathroom. I wonder if I want to expose myself to everyone I decide no then realise I have no urge to pee anyway that is lucky and great I unlatch and leave the stall.

Now I am feeling a bit strange I run into Kyle he’s happy happy happy I say woah Kyle I feel pretty weird hey he smiles large asks what’s going on I’m like I dunno I feel all weird dizzyish things are smearing in front of my eyes it’s difficult to focus but I’m smiling laughing the whole time Kyle says well if you don’t give me more information I don’t know what to doooo in a sing-song voice I whisper conspiratorially I took a piiiilllll he laughs I leave him he goes into the stall. I float back amongst the showers to a little area where Sradha is she looks consternated she expresses hope that she will be able to stay here that they won’t make her leave I laugh say but you wouldn’t want to stay at a backpackers forever but it seems she does indeed want to stay at a backpackers forever I am shocked and bemused. The owner of the hostel is there an older man with thick dark hair with a few wiry grey strands arranged in a women’s bob I immediately distrust him slightly it is just because he is not natural but I am friendly. He chats to us asks if we are going with all the people outside when they leave they are going to Wolves and I am shocked Wolves is so far away why would they go there to see a band?? but maybe I will go because I think upon the girl. I sit on a couch while the conversation goes nowhere the owner stares at us tries to keep it going I smile nod I dig in my bag and notice I am wearing an old sweater of mine from when I was a child with Mickey Mouse’s face printed all over it it’s tapered black at the wrists and I love it I love it so much and to wear it makes me happy.

I walk back outside happy there is and always has been a happy mist over me I dissolve into it. Now there really are people everywhere and everyone is partying stumbling the girl is next to me with other people but she is slightly different heavier in the hips squarer in the face I still want to be with her though just next to her and surprise Garth from primary school is walking towards me drunk holding champagne I gladly accept take a swig I notice it is non-alcoholic sparkling wine in a green bottle with a cheap white label I think it strange strange indeed and then surprise Ross from high school motors past me making a brrrr-brrr noise with his mouth he impresses a tiny acorn into my left arm near the elbow leaving an imprint a dappled imprint and a feeling that I rub at after he has passed. I am on my way to a picnic table where Trevor and Donovan from high school are sitting I sit down and they are speaking to my girl Trevor is coaxing her she is making a joke pretending to give a blow job gesturing the movements with her hand tonguing the inside of her mouth Donovan is drunk on wine hanging onto the bottle his eyes droopy his smile loose he is laughing laughing laughing she carries on and on I am smiling I can feel my face but it is confusedly she looks completely different I wake up.

These events occurred between 6:45am and 7:30am.

"Without you life is boring!"

I wish this was what pop music was all about.
A catchy song about something that I may hate in a few months or weeks or right after my next listen,
but right here, right now, played loud... Awesome.
       + wicked music video

Memorable Weekend Quotes.

"I said to her we should email, and then maybe 
  copulate. The email part worked out pretty well."

"Oh my gosh, is it a tooth!? It's a tooth!"
"No it's just a mielie."

"Yoh. Lay off the bulb."

White Mountain Music Festival.

 

 

 

"For there is only one great adventure and that is inward, toward the self, and for that, time nor space nor deeds even matter."

- Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn

Feeling Physical.

"Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. The stars died so that you could be here today." 

- Lawrence M. Krauss

Memorable Week(end) Quotes and Vistas.

"I want to bring back shit photography." 
"If anyone could bring it back you could."

"I can't tell the difference between a hipster and a normal person."

"Trust in the decisions you have made."

"Can you take a book to a trance festival?" 

I keep leaving cake in people's fridges wherever I go.

I try to make every meal more salad than anything else in order to maintain my monstrously dull personality.

"We the American working population
Hate the fact that eight hours a day
Is wasted on chasing the dream of someone that isn't us
And we may not hate our jobs,
But we hate jobs in general
That don't have to do with fighting our own causes.
We the American working population
Hate the nine to five day-in/day-out
But we'd rather be supporting ourselves
By being paid to perfect the pastimes
That we have harbored based solely on the fact
That it makes us smile if it sounds dope."

I took an anorexic to an all you can eat buffet once.

Creatives are so full of it.

Memorable Weekend Quotes.

"Hickley there was an earthquake right? 

  That night you slept in my bed."

"Your expression, it's a mixture of terror and awe. 

  I recognise it. I see it in dance halls all the time."

"Your whole life has been a fib! A dirty little fib!"

Decisions have been made.

        I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.  

        One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. 

        I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Circa 1978.

Thumbed.

A Day in Thoughts.

04:38 - Woke up sweating from a horrifying dream. Thought 'remember not to use
               your toilet it's getting fixed, walk down the hall'.

07:50 - Woke up groaning audibly, yet again from the same or similar horrifying 
               dream. Thought 'death' and 'dying' and 'tiring'.

09:57 - Walking to the bathroom thought 'my jeans are fantastically tight and I'm
               ready to party'.

10:09 - Thought 'fuck this fuck this fuck this'.

12:00 - Watching my creative director design a calendar thought 'yes', 'Investec' and
               'put a grid on it' in the same tone that I would have said 'put a bird on it'.

12:39 - Thought 'fuck this shit'.

12:44 - Thought 'I would almost marry you if we weren't completely different people
              and if you cared about me'.

12:44 + 3 seconds - Thought 'that was a lie thought'. 

13:03 - Looking at myself in the mirror thought 'my boobs are rocking' and 'wish my
              period boobs were my regular boobs'. 

13:36 - Locked eyes with a man also eating an apple in a crowded shopping mall and
              thought 'yes', 'we are different' and 'should we stop and chat'.

13:48 - Thought 'these shorts are nice but they're on the rail just as you walk into the
              shop and they're on the mannequin so lots of girls will buy them I don't want
              something everyone will have more so because others will look better in these
              than I will' but with no self-deprecation, just observation.

14:16 - Thought 'hot ham'. 

15:29 - Thought 'my goodness I am an adult this should not make me feel so trembly'.

19:52 - Buying cigarettes for my brother at the gas station thought 'do I look
              awkward because I feel it' and 'hate the fact that the guy behind me now thinks
              that I smoke'.

19:56 - Thought 'it would be good if people saw me singing into my hand microphone
              it would make them smile maybe and even lighten up' but instinctively lowered
              my hand when the next car drove by. Thought 'I am a disgrace'.

20:04 - Thought 'I do just imitate the singer's voice in a song' and 'I don't know what
               my own voice sounds like'.

20:08 - Thought 'everyone's stoned on the highway they're all driving at 80'.

20:10 - Thought 'I don't know what my own voice sounds like' but in an exclamatory
               way and 'it's hard to sing with it I don't even know how' in a sad way.

20:11 - Thought 'highway'.

20:56 - Thought 'this is what's wrong with the world' repeatedly.

21:15 - Walked on the treadmill and thought
              'Uni Freight'
              'Chipkins'
              'Sea World'
              'Triton Express'
              'Greyhound'

21:43 - Really felt like scrambled eggs, found two hard boiled eggs in a pan on the
              stove and thought 'yes' very happily.

21:45 - Cracked one of the eggs on the counter and raw egg ran out. Thought 'no'              
              very sadly.

22:16 - Thought 'sleep'.

23:07 - Thought 'sleep'.

Memorable Weekend Quotes.

"Everything's been said. 

 But not everything's been done."

Hugging aloneness.

Layover.

Making love in the sun, in the morning sun
in a hotel room
above the alley
where poor men poke for bottles;
making love in the sun
making love by a carpet redder than our blood,
making love while the boys sell headlines
and Cadillacs,
making love by a photograph of Paris
and an open pack of Chesterfields,
making love while other men – poor folks –
work.

That moment – to this. . .
may be years in the way they measure,
but it's only one sentence back in my mind-
there are so many days
when living stops and pulls up and sits
and waits like a train on the rails.
I pass the hotel at 8
and at 5; there are cats in the alleys
and bottles and bums,
and I look up at the window and think,
I no longer know where you are,
and I walk on and wonder where
the living goes
when it stops.

Charles Bukowski

Cognitive dissonance.

Fat Fredddddddddyy.

25/08.

I distinctly remember trying to trade a tampon for some sort of foodstuffs a gentleman had in my dream last night.

Sunday Morning.

Best enjoyed alone.
In a place that is not your own.
Lying in the bath, or on the floor. 
Heard softly through the closed door.

With the faint layer of human sound that is an apartment building,
creeping up the gap where the water drains.

Sunday Afternoon.

Nuclear family with two small boys sit near you in the park. They are foreign so you relax.
They are speaking a beautiful European language.

You ask what it is.
It is German.

You would have never guessed German.

Think how an international female spy would not only have known it was German, but would have been able to understand and fluently speak the language.

Sincerely and intensely for not the first time rue the fact that you never became an international female spy.

I would pretty much choose sleep over most things.

The flurry of movement behind the bar bathroom keyhole.

Memorable Weekend Quotes.

"I'm not making fucking art here, Amy. I'm just looking to make some money." Gold.

"He will break you and I will not intervene."

"They're obviously trying to make a point."

"You've got to be hardcore to be on crutches, and cause shit."

"We would have the deepest conversations on the beach."

"And in the split second before it happened I said, show me that you are here. And then right after that I said no, because faith is about not having to..."

I'd like some food brought to me please.

Like fish.

And chips.

With vinegar.

And salt.

Tomato sauce.

And greasy grey paper.

A lemon to squeeze.

No napkins.

I don't care for them.

It may come in a packet.

Or in a box.

It does not matter.

So long as it fills me.

And crunches when I bite it.

It must stay hot.

All these things.

Just these things.


...


It could also be cake.

Talk Less and Say More.

Song Off #3

Pink Bullets.

I was just bony hands as cold as a winter pole
You held a warm stone out new flowing blood to hold
Oh what a contrast you were
To the brutes in the halls
My timid young fingers held a decent animal.

Over the ramparts you tossed
The scent of your skin and some foreign flowers
Tied to a brick
Sweet as a song
The years have been short but the days were long.

Cool of a temperate breeze from dark skies to wet grass
We fell in a field it seems now a thousand summers passed
When our kite lines first crossed
We tied them into knots
And to finally fly apart
We had to cut them off.

Since then it's been a book you read in reverse
So you understand less as the pages turn
Or a movie so crass
And awkwardly cast
That even I could be the star.

I don't look back as much as a rule
And all this way before murder was cool
But your memory is here and I'd like it to stay
Warm light on a winter day.

Over the ramparts you tossed
The scent of your skin and some foreign flowers
Tied to a brick
Sweet as a song
The years have been short but the days go slowly by
Two loose kites falling from the sky
Drawn to the ground and an end to flight. 

Morose Mondamy.

 

124-130.

        He walked slowly to the end of the gallery, staring at its contents and saying nothing; and then suddenly he broke out: "I hoped you wouldn't write to me that way."
        "It was the only way, Lord Warburton," said the girl. "Do try and believe that."
        "If I could believe it of course I should let you alone, but we can't believe by willing it; and I confess I don't understand. I could understand your disliking me; that I could understand well. But that you should admit you do-"
        "What have I admitted?" Isabel interrupted, turning slightly pale.
        "That you think me a good fellow; isn't that it?" She said nothing, and he went on: "You don't seem to have any reason, and that gives me a sense of injustice."
        "I have a reason, Lord Warburton." She said it in a tone that made his heart contract.
        "I should like very much to know it."
        "I'll tell you some day when there's more to show for it."
        "Excuse my saying that in the meantime I must doubt of it."
        "You make me very unhappy," said Isabel.
        "I'm not sorry for that; it may help you to know how I feel. Will you kindly answer me a question?" Isabel made no audible assent, but he apparently saw in her eyes something that gave him courage to go on. " Do you prefer some one else?"
        "That's a question I'd rather not answer."
        "Ah, you do then!" her suitor murmured with bitterness.
        The bitterness touched her, and she cried out: "You're mistaken! I don't."
        He sat down on a bench, unceremoniously, doggedly, like a man in trouble; leaning his elbows on his knees and staring at the floor. "I can't even be glad of that," he said at last, throwing himself back against the wall; "for that would be an excuse."
        She raised her eyebrows in surprise. "An excuse? Must I excuse myself?"
        He paid, however, no answer to the question. Another idea had come into his head. "Is it my political opinions? Do you think I go too far?"
        "I can't object to your political opinions, because I don't understand them."
        "You don't care what I think!" he cried, getting up. "It's all the same to you."
        Isabel walked to the other side of the gallery, and stood there showing him her charming back, her light slim figure, the length of her white neck as she bent her head, and the density of her dark braids. She stopped in front of a small picture as if for the purpose of examining it; and there was something so young and free in her movement that her very pliancy seemed to mock at him. Her eyes, however, saw nothing; they had suddenly been suffused with tears. In a moment he followed her, and by this time she had brushed her tears away; but when she turned around her face was pale and the expression of her eyes strange. "That reason that I wouldn't tell you-I'll tell you after all. It's that I can't escape my fate."
        "Your fate?"
        "I should try to escape it if I were to marry you."
        "I don't understand. Why should not that be your fate as well as anything else?"
        "Because it's not," said Isabel femininely. "I know it's not. It's not my fate to give up-I know it can't be."
        Poor Lord Warburton stared, an interrogative point in either eye. "Do you call marrying me giving up?"
        "Not in the usual sense. It's getting -getting- getting a great deal. But it's giving up other chances."
        "Other chances for what?"
        "I don't mean to marry," said Isabel, her colour quickly coming back to her. And then she stopped, looking down with a deep frown, as if it were hopeless to attempt to make her meaning clear.
        "I don't think it presumptuous in me to suggest that you'll gain more than you'll lose," her companion observed.
        "I can't escape unhappiness," said Isabel. "In marrying you I shall be trying to."
        "I don't know whether you'd try to, but you certainly would: that I must in candour admit!" he exclaimed with an anxious laugh.
        "I musn't-I can't!" cried the girl.
        "Well, if you're bent on being miserable I don't see why you should make me so. Whatever charms a life of misery may have for you, it has none for me."
        "I'm not bent on a life of misery," said Isabel. "I've always been intensely determined to be happy, and I've often believed I should be. I've told people that; you can ask them. But it comes over me every now and then that I can never be happy in any extraordinary way; not by turning away, by separating myself."
        "By separating yourself from what?"
        "From life. From the usual chances and dangers, from what most people know and suffer."
        Lord Warburton broke into a smile that almost denoted hope. "Why, my dear Archer," he began to explain with the most considerate eagerness, "I don't offer you any exoneration from life or from any chances or dangers whatever. I wish I could, depend upon it I would! For what do you take me pray? Heaven help me, I'm not the Emperor of China! All I offer you is the chance of taking the common lot in a comfortable sort of way. The common lot? Why, I'm devoted to the common lot! Strike an alliance with me, and I promise you that you shall have plenty of it. You shall separate from nothing whatever-not even from your friend Miss Stackpole."
        "She'd never approve of it," said Isabel, trying to smile and take advantage of this side-issue; despising herself too, not a little, for doing so.
...
        After it, without rejoining Henrietta and Ralph, she retreated to her own room; in which apartment, before dinner, she was found by Mrs Touchett, who had stopped on her way to the saloon. "I may as well tell you," said that lady, "that your uncle has informed me of your relations with Lord Warburton."
        Isabel considered. "Relations? They're hardly relations. That's the strange part of it: he has seen me but three or four times."
        "Why did you tell your uncle rather than me?" Mrs Touchett dispassionately asked.
        Again the girl hesitated. "Because he knows Lord Warburton better."
        "Yes, but I know you better."
        "I'm not sure of that," said Isabel, smiling.
        "Neither am I, after all; especially when you give me that rather conceited look. One would think you were awfully pleased with yourself and had carried off a prize! I suppose that when you refuse an offer like Lord Warburton's it's because you expect to do something better."
        "Ah, my uncle didn't say that!" cried Isabel, smiling still.

04/08.

"Does she know you love her?"

"Of course." 
I paused. The obstacle seemed unreal to me.
"If you love her," I said, "you'll love somebody else someday."

- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Song Off #2

This Morning I Realised.

I hate Bob Dylan's voice.
So much.
It drones, and wanes and WAILS.
It ball-drags.
Like chalk on my soul.
Up and down and up and down and up and down again.
Screeching as I try to enjoy my morning smoke.
Up and down and up and down and up and down again.

I hate Bob Dylan's voice.

I hate it.

- My dear friend Lauren on a Monday morning

You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.
 

- Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

Alice came to a fork in the road.  
"Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.
"I don't know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."
 

- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

The way the coffee cups clink against each other from the vibration of the microwave.

Postsecret.

Roygbiv.

Roy G. Biv is a mnemonic for the sequence of hues in the visible spectrum and in rainbows:

Red  Orange  Yellow  Green  Blue  Indigo  Violet

A rainbow spans a continuous spectrum of colours; and the distinct bands are an artifact of human colour vision. In Roy G. Biv, the colours are arranged in the order of decreasing wavelengths, with red being 650 nm* and violet being about 400 nm. The reverse VIBGYOR is used in many Commonwealth countries.

*A nanometer is a unit of length in the metric system, equal to one billionth of a metre. The nanometre is often used to express dimensions on the atomic scale: the diameter of a helium atom, for example, is about 0.1 nm, and that of a ribosome is about 20 nm. The nanometre is commonly used to specify the wavelength of electromagnetic radiation near the visible part of the spectrum: visible light, in particular, ranges from 400 to 700 nm.

Comic book writer Geoff Johns** created the idea of an Emotional Spectrum around "Roy G. Biv" for his Green Lantern comic series for DC Comics. Beginning with the central and most powerful colour of green, which is attached to willpower, he devised a sliding scale of emotional control, where the colours at the opposite ends of the spectrum, red (rage) and violet (love) are the most powerful and controlling over their users and their surroundings. Orange becomes the light of avarice (greed), yellow the colour of fear, blue is the light of hope, and indigo the personification of compassion. Each light has its corresponding Lantern Corps and power ring.

** Wiki tells us that Geoff Johns worked on The Flash and Superman.

Roy G. Biv was also a pseudonym for the evil mastermind behind the plot of Sam & Max Season One***.

***Sam & Max was mainly designed and written by a combination of Brendan Q. Ferguson, Steve Purcell and Dave Grossman****.

****Steve Purcell and Dave Grossman both worked at Lucas Arts during their adventure games era and Dave Grossman wrote and programmed The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (together with Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer****)*****. He later co-designed Day of the Tentacle. This is him at Comicon:

Dave Grossman > and/or = Guybrush Threepwood.

****Tim Schafer is best known as the designer - and it seems writer - of Full Throttle and Grim Fandango. 

******And so follows some of the classics from the Monkey Island series:

          Guybrush: At least I’ve learnt something from all of this.

Elaine: What’s that?

Guybrush: Never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game.

Elaine: A what?

Guybrush: I don't know. I have no idea why I said that.

Barkeep: Guybrush? Is that a French name?

Guybrush: No, actually it’s a fictional name.

 [Looking through a keyhole]

           Guybrush Threepwood: I see a diorama of the children of the world living in peace
            and freedom. No, wait. It can't be that. It's just too dark to make out what's in there.

          Guybrush: How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Carpenter: A woodchuck would chuck no amount of wood since a woodchuck can’t chuck wood.

Guybrush: But if a woodchuck could chuck and would chuck some amount of wood, 

what amount of wood would a woodchuck chuck?

Carpenter: Even if a woodchuck could chuck wood and even if a woodchuck would

chuck wood, should a woodchuck chuck wood?

Guybrush: A woodchuck should chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood, as long as a

woodchuck would chuck wood.

Carpenter: Oh shut up.

Roygbiv is also a song by Boards of Canada on their album Music Has the Right to Children (1998). They're Scottish. Wikipedia says many of the songs on Music Has the Right to Children utilise a number of field recordings******* and intense sound manipulation.

*******Field recording is the term used for an audio recording produced outside of a recording studio. Field recording of natural sounds is called phonography. "Field recordings" may also refer to simple monaural or stereo recordings taken of musicians in familiar and casual surroundings.

Roygbiv (more accurately Bocuma / Roygbiv) also has an unofficial video attached to it.