We must learn from things; we have everything to learn from them. How to let things make themselves known by themselves, before any translation… — Hélène Cixous, Coming to Writing and Other Essays (Harvard University Press September 1, 1992) First published January 1, 1986.
And in the predawn when we had slept for centuries in a drenching sweet rain you touched me and the springs of clear water beneath my skin were new knowledge. And I loved you in this city of death. — Joy Harjo, from “The Myth of Blackbirds,” The Woman Who Fell from the Sky: Poems… Continue reading Joy Harj
All the lives we’ve ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves. — Virginia Woolf, The Waves (Harvest Books 1978) Originally published October 8th 1931.
[W]e must recognize that ethics requires us to risk ourselves precisely at moments of unknowingness, when what forms us diverges from what lies before us, when our willingness to become undone in relation to others constitutes our chance of becoming human. ― Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself (Fordham University Press Aug. 7th, 2009)
Mirror of the night.Your eyes green swords insidemy flesh… Your word travels the entirety ofspace and reaches my cellswhich are my stars, then goes toyours which are my light. —Frida Kahlo, to Diego from The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-portrait (Abrams, August 9, 2005) Originally published January 1, 1995.
Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon, like a black sun behind cloud cover. Like smoke from an unseen fire, a line… Continue reading Margaret Atwood
I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river, to me you’re everything that exists; the reality of everything. ― Virginia Woolf, Night and Day ( Independently published, September 17, 2021) Originally published October 20, 1919.
The melancholy river bears us on. When the moon comes through the trailing willow boughs, I see your face, I hear your voice and the bird singing as we pass the osier bed. What are you whispering? Sorrow, sorrow. Joy, joy. Woven together, like reeds in moonlight. — Virginia Woolf, from “The String Quartet,” Monday… Continue reading Virginia Woolf
Eat me, drink me; thirsty, cankered, goblin-ridden, I go back and back to him to have his fingers strip the tattered skin away and clothe me in his dress of water, this garment that drenches me, its slithering odour, its capacity for drowning. ― Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (Vintage, January 1,… Continue reading Angela Carter
Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon, like a black sun behind cloud cover. Like smoke from an unseen fire, a line… Continue reading Margaret Atwood
The Vale of Soul-Making 