Having sailed for many days and many nights, I realized that the West has no end, but moves along with us, we can follow it as long as we like without ever reaching it.
{Antonio Tabucchi, The Woman of Porto Pim}
Plate photographed through ripped tissue.
From p. 516 of Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to the Families of the State of Massachusetts, v. 1, ed. by William Richard Cutter and William Frederick Adams (1910).
{Via theartofgooglebooks}
"[In the margin and underlined:] ‘It’s a question of being alone, in writing.’ V Woolf (letter to Vita [Sackville-West], Nov. 1925)"
Susan Sontag, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh
(via sketchofthepast)
"There are some things a place will not tell you, as if it conspires with its past."
{Philip Hoare, Leviathan or, The Whale}
Posted 1 month ago
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Spring.
Posted 1 month ago
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{Stanley Crawford in correspondence with Noy Holland, from Always Apprentices: The Believer Magazine Presents Twenty-Two Conversations Between Writers.}
I am also really scared of crosswind gusts. “You don’t have to arrive,” the instructor said, bitterly, when I must have seemed to concentrate too gravely, on a windy day. “You’re just supposed to land.”
{Renata Adler, Speedboat}
(Via)
March is a month in which everything thaws or it doesn’t; the year is nearly half over or it’s not nearly half over yet; it comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb or it doesn’t; it comes in like a lamb and goes out like a lion or it does neither, or both; Julius Caesar was killed or he wasn’t; someone drove the snakes out of Ireland or they didn’t; it’s spring or it’s winter; it’s one hour of the evening or it’s another; someone died or no one did; it’s light or it’s dark when it’s time to eat dinner; I write or I don’t.
On Nantucket
New England is these words, the kind that simultaneously offer innate comfort in their rhythm and require the formation of the alphabet’s most forceful letters. Nantucket. Angela Carter wrote of New England: these names like meals of stones. Nantucket. The word itself is an island, an obtrusive rock, a sturdy presence, a decision. Nantucket. A forceful aunt comes to mind, one you’d want on your side in both dinner conversations and end times. Nantucket. The sound of the waves is there too, though not a peaceful lull of breaking and receding, but waves that enter rocks and are slow to leave, knock around in the crannies and become a sloshing part of the land itself. Nantucket. A boat putters along. Nantucket. A dog fetches, has a thick scruff and good legs, stays outside. Nantucket. The “ah” provides an opportunity to rest, thank heavens. Nantucket. It does sound hidden, doesn’t it, nestled, tucked, of course. Nantucket. It always appealed to me more than Martha’s Vineyard, which sounds like a person put a white mailbox there and they don’t like the neighbors in their affairs, it sounds like it was named by a committee of people who loved Martha or were scared of her or both. Nantucket. Every syllable knows every other intimately. Nantucket. It would seem to pre-date us; a comforting feature in geography. Nantucket. It also sounds tenuous, small, wash-over-able. Nantucket sounds like a place where you could go to sleep and drown among the rocks. I’ve never been.
***
But March, forgive me —
And all those hills you left for me to Hue —
There was no Purple suitable —
You took it all with you —
{Emily Dickinson}
