Memorable Passages

“Son: Father, you are my father. You sired me. I have sired no one because I left the primordial. I left you, I studied, I suffered, and my visions were pure. Before me, my father, new horizons were opened.

Father: Yes, I am your father. I sired you and nowhere did I go. Where I was in the beginning, there I remained. I dwell in the old home, my estate is as it was. I spawned, I lived with your mother. Then I lived with peasant women and girls, spawning. I surrounded myself with chickens, roosters, turkeys. My poultry lay dozens of eggs a day. But I studied nothing, never did I suffer. My horizons remain the same, oh just the same. These spaces, ancient, veritably Russian, assembled around us are all — all just the same."

― Andrei Bely, The Silver Age of Russian Culture: An Anthology

“Margarita was never short of money. She could buy whatever she liked. Her husband had plenty of interesting friends. Margarita never had to cook. Margarita knew nothing of the horrors of living in a shared flat. In short... was she happy? Not for a moment.”

― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“I took a swing, remembering the lessons of Sharafutdinov, the heavyweight champ. I took a swing and fell on my back. I don't remember what happened. Either it was slippery or my centre of gravity was too high...In any case, I fell. I saw the sky, enormous, pale and mysterious. So far away from my problems and disappointments. So pure.”

― Sergei Dovolotov - Translator Antonnia W. Bouis

“He sleeps a long, unquiet sleep disturbed by quick dreams of woodland places. These come as no great surprise. He meets elves and sprites and clowning devils. Anxiety? He wakes at last to a new world and to a morning lost in heavy mist. Sorely his bones ache - he traces the length of the soreness with a long, dull, luxurious sighing. Which is very pleasant, as it happens. Though also he feels about ninety fucking six.”

― Kevin Barry, Beatlebone

And the song that I was writing is left undone, I don't know why I spend my days writing songs I can't believe, with word's that tear and strain to rime.and so you see I have come to dought all that I once held as true.I stand alone without believes, the only trueth I know is you.
And so as I watch the drops of rain weave their weary paths and die, I know rhat I am like the rain there, before the grace of you go I.
And the song that I was writing is left unsung.

“The earth makes a sound as of sighs and the last drops fall from the emptied cloudless sky. A small boy, stretching out his hands and looking up at the blue sky, asked his mother how such a thing was possible. Fuck off, she said.”

― Samuel Beckett

I haer the drizzle of the rain, like a melody it falls, soft and warm continuing taping on my roof and


walls.

Well I got a woman way over town that's good to me.. Ray Charles



Fish out

Hello darkness my old friend.

Some cats redid this tune . First I heard it I thought no. But on a second listen well for today it fits. Do you get that radio there? I did hear some Black Eyed Peas plaiyng in the shops on my last trip to that solar system.

All of the seasons and all of the days all of the reasons why I've felt this way, so long, so long.

Then lost in that felling I looked in your eyes , I noticed emotion and that you had cried

For me , I can see.

What would touch me deeper than tears that fall from eyes that only cry.

Would it touch you deeper than tears that fall from eyes that know why.

Rush 2112.

Waiting for the winds of change to sweep the clouds away.
Waiting for the rainbows end to cast its gold your way.
Countless ways, you pass the days.

Waiting for someone to come and turn your world around.

Looking for an answer to the questions you have found.

Looking for an open door.

What you have is your kingdom.
What you live is your own glory.
What you love is your own power.
What you live is your own story.

In your head is the engine, let it guideyou along. Let your heart be the answer and the beat of you song.

Well I don't have all this stuff memorized. Look it up. (Rush 2112) . Fish out.

“As I see it, life is an effort to grip before they slip through one's fingers and slide into oblivion, the startling, the ghastly or the blindingly exquisite fish of the imagination before they whip away on the endless current and are lost for ever in oblivion's black ocean.”

― Mervyn Peake

“Rob McKenna was a miserable bastard and he knew it because he'd had a lot of people point it out to him over the years and he saw no reason to disagree with them except the obvious one which was that he liked disagreeing with people, particularly people he disliked, which included, at the last count, everybody.”

― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Im just a poor fish though my story is seldom told,
I have squandered my resistance for a pocket full of ???????? Promises.

Laying low benieth reeds in the shallows where lesser people go, looking only for the places they would know.

When I left my home and my family I was no more than a fish, in the company of strangers in the quiet of the railroad station swimming scared.

Swimming scared, seeking out shallow mud holes where the smaller fishes go, searching only for the places we should know.

“This is the "burglar-alarm" theory of bioluminescence: by turning on its lights, an animal may create enough of a scene to draw the attention of its predator's predator, and thereby perhaps save itself. The corollary of the burglar-alarm theory is the minefield theory. It says the reason so many animals tend to hang motionless in the deep, even fish, is to avoid setting off light explosions that would expose them to their enemies - their predators or their prey. Life in the midwater, in this view, is a tense affair (though the denizens do not know it) in which everyone is waiting stealthily in the dark, moving slowly if at all, watching and waiting for someone to turn on a light and for something to happen.”

― Robert Kunzig

“People in the West like to shoot things. When they first got to the West they shot buffalo. Once there were 70 million buffalo on the plains and then the people of the West started blasting away at them. Buffalo are just cows with big heads. If you've ever looked a cow in the face and seen the unutterable depths of trust and stupidity that lie within, you will be able to guess how difficult it must have been for people in the West to track down buffalo and shoot them to pieces. By 1895, there were only 800 buffalo left, mostly in zoos and touring Wild West shows. With no buffalo left to kill, Westerners started shooting Indians. Between 1850 and 1890 they reduced the number of Indians in America from two million to 90,000.

Nowadays, thank goodness, both have made a recovery. Today there are 30,000 buffalo and 300,000 Indiands, and of course you are not allowed to shoot either, so all the Westerners have left to shoot at are road signs and each other, both of which they do rather a lot. There you have a capsule history of the West.”

― Bill Bryson

“The Babar the Elephant book is sitting in front of me. I pick it up and start reading it. I remember reading it as a small Boy and enjoying it and imagining that I was friends with Babar, his constant Companion during all of his adventures. He went to the moon, I went with him. He fought Tomb Raiders in Egypt, I fought alongside him. He rescued his elephant girlfriend from Ivory Hunters on the Savanna, I coordinated the getaway. I loved that goddamn Elephant and I loved being his friend. In a childhood full of unhappiness and rage, Babar is one of the few pleasant memories that I have. Me and Babar, kicking some motherfucking ass.”

― James Frey

“Of all African animals, the elephant is the most difficult for man to live with, yet its passing - if this must come - seems the most tragic of all. I can watch elephants (and elephants alone) for hours at a time, for sooner or later the elephant will do something very strange such as mow grass with its toenails or draw the tusks from the rotted carcass of another elephant and carry them off into the bush. There is mystery behind that masked gray visage, and ancient life force, delicate and mighty, awesome and enchanted, commanding the silence ordinarily reserved for mountain peaks, great fires, and the sea.”

― Peter Matthiessen, The Tree Where Man Was Born

“Blake was right. They're a force of nature, like a hurricane or an earthquake.'
Rose's smile faded as she registered the intensity of Jake's stare as he watched the tiger. It was as if he was trying to take in more about the animal than normal sight could give, trying to fit the essence of the thing through senses that weren't up to the task.
'Burning bright!' Jake whispered, nodding.”

― K. Valisumbra, Mortlake and Other Stories

“From sunrise to sunset, I was in the forest, sometimes far from the house, with my goat who watched me as a mother does a child. All the animals in the forest became my friends, even dangerous and poisonous ones. Thanks to my goat-mother and my Indian nurse, I have always enjoyed the trust of animals--a precious gift. I still love animals infinitely more than human beings.”

― Diego Rivera, My Art, My Life

“Papa, why are you selling our goats? I like these goats."

"A week ago the price was five hundred, now it's four hundred. I'm sorry, but we can't wait for it go any lower."

Mankhalala and the others were tied by their front legs with a long rope. When my father started down the trail, they stumbled and began to cry. They knew their future. Mankhalala looked back, as if telling me to help him. Even Khamba whined and barked a few times, pleading their case. But I had to let them down. What could I do? My family had to eat.”

― William Kamkwamba, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope

“You said something slightly off-color about her shoes and she brought up the fact that you had a slow eye and danced like a goat with a rock stuck in its ass. Ouch. You would just be playing and homegirl would be coming down on you off the top rope.”

― Junot Díaz

“The heroic and often tragic stories of American whalemen were renowned. They sailed the world’s oceans and brought back tales filled with bravery, perseverance, endurance, and survival. They mutinied, murdered, rioted, deserted, drank, sang, spun yarns, scrimshawed, and recorded their musings and observations in journals and letters. They survived boredom, backbreaking work, tempestuous seas, floggings, pirates, putrid food, and unimaginable cold. Enemies preyed on them in times of war, and competitors envied them in times of peace. Many whalemen died from violent encounters with whales and from terrible miscalculations about the unforgiving nature of nature itself. And through it all, whalemen, those “iron men in wooden boats” created a legacy of dramatic, poignant, and at times horrific stories that can still stir our emotions and animate the most primal part of our imaginations. “To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme,” proclaimed Herman Melville, and the epic story of whaling is one of the mightiest themes in American history.”

― Eric Jay Dolin, Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America

“Apropos of Eskimo, I once heard a missionary describe the extraordinary difficulty he had found in translating the Bible into Eskimo. It was useless to talk of corn or wine to a people who did not know even what they meant, so he had to use equivalents within their powers of comprehension. Thus in the Eskimo version of the Scriptures the miracle of Cana of Galilee is described as turning the water into blubber; the 8th verse of the 5th chapter of the First Epistle of St. Peter ran: ‘Your adversary the devil, as a roaring Polar bear walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.’ In the same way ‘A land flowing with milk and honey’ became ‘A land flowing with whale’s blubber,’ and throughout the New Testament the words ‘Lamb of God’ had to be translated ‘little Seal of God,’ as the nearest possible equivalent. The missionary added that his converts had the lowest opinion of Jonah for not having utilised his exceptional opportunities by killing and eating the whale.”

― Frederick Hamilton, The Days Before Yesterday

“People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.”

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.”

― Arthur Schopenhauer, The Basis of Morality