gharbzadegi

(by matty17art)

If the oceans were ink.

oodoolay mine

(Labassa, via)

Pandemonium solo.

perusive alias

(Aleppo today, via newsweek dot com)

Our two teams. One is playing with a real football, the other an imaginary.

XANRI NAJO FATCI BOLCI KELGRI REMEI

austere curriculum

(Silence has Settled by Nikolay Dubovskoy, 1890 via David Irvine on Fb)

English into Volapuk into English again. On the same page: "If Miss Dickinson had undergone the austere curriculum indicated, she would, I am sure, had become an admirable lyric poet of the second magnitude." (1892)

A special book.

"JW: What your 5 favorite “experimental” novels?

WG: Here are six experimental (by my definition) novels I think have outstanding literary value, but I am reverse-engineering the experiment.

Denis Johnson, Jesus’s Son: Write a collection of short stories in which the reader can neither prove nor disprove that the protagonists are all the same person. Extra credit if a reader unfamiliar with the book cannot figure out a thing about the author, even whether they are male (“Dennis”) or female (“Denise”).

Thomas Bernhard, Extinction: Write a novel in two halves, each one paragraph, in which the first half is all interior monologue with no action, and the second half is action, like a toy being wound way too tight and then let go. Extra credit for Nazi anxiety.

Julio Cortazar, Hopscotch: Write a novel in which the chapters can be read in two different, explicitly stated orders, such that the ending is radically different each way. Extra credit if the writing is heartbreakingly lovely.

David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress: Write a novel in short, digressive paragraphs, that manages to avoid asking or answering the story’s silently screaming central questions. Extra credit if the book is infuriatingly unreadable the first time, and deliciously seductive by the third.

F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Great Gatsby. Write a novel in which the first-person narrator is the central character in the story, whose point of view the entire story is told from, but who somehow manages not to be the protagonist. Extra credit if this narrator, who writes beautifully, has no interest in writing.

Cormac McCarthy. Suttree. Write a difficult book that William Gillespie nevertheless reads five times, and cries each time from an emotion he can’t name." (via)

Yasusada--the movie.

"A novelist hears of a glass eye that can destroy all lizards, and dedicates her life to finding it." --@MagicRealismBot

Gillespie on Keeler.

"A forest in Tokyo is made of silence." --ibid

The sculpture of Shary Boyle.

"...in the age of the dying of the word compassion will pass as understanding." --Howard Jacobson, Zoo Time (2012)

Vesp.

(via @NASANewHorizons)

(blue image by alex schomburg via bruce sterling on ello)

astrobleme

(via planetary dot org)

"Monstrous child of the meeting of incompatible scales, queer progeny of impossible taxonomic breach, geophilia is the lithic in the creaturely and the lively in the stone."

"...whatever dark wet cellar-
hole we webbed up out of once..."

--Richard Kenney

Marcia Clark on the new OJ miniseries.

(via southerly journal)

The Seattle Archipelago. (via)

(Baikobur from the International Space Station, via darklyeuphoric on tumblr)

Gary Numan talks about Pledge.

owl fend askance

(vamana, via ancient ufo dot org)

"97. To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,--
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few."

Emily Dickinson

MU'E FINTI LO SASFLO .IJO ZASTI
FA SU'O VOMEI
SE XRULA .E SU'O BIFCE

.E SU'O ZA'I SANJYSNE
.I RI BANZU VA'O LENU
BIFCYCAU

('The act-of-creating a grass-field if-&-only-if there exists/ at-least-one fourfold/ flowering-plant, at-least-one bee,// & at-least-one state-of conscious-dreaming./ The latter suffices under-the-conditions-of beelessness.')

"It's a curse, the writing impulse, if it gets you early, and if it doesn't get you early it isn't a writing impulse." --Howard Jacobson

NA BANLI VAMJI .I
KO’A GOI LE ROZGU
PENDO BE MI CUSKU
DI’E .ITU’E CERNI
JBENA .I LE CTEJAU
MI TOLDAPMA .I XULPRA
.I GLEKYCAI JE NELCI
.I SOLRI GUSNI .IBABO
TOLCITNO VI LE VANCI

.ISENI’INAI CA
ZE’UPU NA MELBYMAU
RULPURDI ZASTI TU’U

.I NA BANLI VAMJI .I
KO’A CUSKU DI’E
.ITU’E KO SISKU CO RINKA
LENU MI STEDU NITCARNA
.I SE’O CA’A FARLU
.I .IA FARLU .I CINMO
CO PAVYSEI .I BAZI
MROBI’O .I CO’A CLIVA
LE RULPURDI TU’U

NA BANLI VAMJI .I TO’U
KO’A CERNI MROBI’O
.I CARMI GUSNI LUNRA
.IJE MI CAPU SENVA
LEDU’U LEKO’A TRAJI
JE LUNBE PRUXYSE’I
RU’I DANSU GA’UVU
LEI DILNU GI’E CISMA

NI’O TI’E ZO’E
KRICI .INI’INAIBO
BA’E MI PACNA GI’A
NA SE CANLU .UOCAI

.I NA BANLI VAMJI .I
KO’A DI’U CUSKU

   My good friend the Rose

It’s little enough to win
And my good friend the Rose
This morning said to me
With sunrise I was born
To baptize in its tears
I followed into bloom
Knew joy & love’s delight
In the full rays of the sun
Then twilight made me close
At dusk my time was done

Awhile I was so fair
Among the rest most fair
Of those the garden grew

It’s little enough to win
And my good friend the Rose
This morning said to me
Go question for the cause
That I should hang my head
I feel that I shall fall
I fear that I shall fail
My heart is almost bare
I’ve one foot toward my doom
Already I am less

A day ago we loved
And I will taste its dust
Forevermore & soon

It’s little enough to win
And my good friend the Rose
This morning’s turned to black
The moon so bright reveals
My love in shroud I dreamed
I saw the Rose in bloom
Dazzling & alone
A spirit born to dance
Far above the clouds
And smiling smiling smiling

Let those believe who may
But I must dwell in hope
Without it I’m no more

It’s little enough to win
And my good friend the Rose
The day before had said...

penguicorn

(via)

There is a tanka by Shunzei (here in LaFleur's translation):

'Right here and now!
I watch the sun slip away,
thoughts gone to the west
paradise of Amida, where
this is the sky of nightfall.'

Mine:

Here, now, this present
watching as the sun departs
thinking of the West
of Amida, out there, where
this is its high thesterness.

In Lojban:

DEI CA'A CABZVA
.I ZGANA LE SOLRI NOI
DARKLA .IJE MI
PENSI LE XARZDA STICI
POI SE TSANI CO NICTE