Ithakas

"An addict, if you don’t mind me saying so, is like a saint. What is a saint but someone who..."

Sun, 12 May 2013 01:09:00 +0800

“An addict, if you don’t mind me saying so, is like a saint. What is a saint but someone who has cut himself off, voluntarily, voluntarily, from the world’s traffic and currency? The saint talks to flowers, a daffodil, say, and he sees the yellow of it. He receives its scent through his eyes. Yes, he thinks, you are my muse, I take heart from your stubbornness, a drop of water, a dab of sunshine, and there you are with your gorgeous bloom. He enjoys flowers but he worships trees. He wants to be the banyan’s slave. He wants to think of time the way a tree does, a decade as nothing more than some slight addition to his girth. He connives with birds, gets his daily news from the sound the wind makes in the leaves. When he’s hungry he stands in the forest waiting for the fall of a mango. His ambition is the opposite of ambition. Most of all, like all addicts, he wants to obliterate time. He wants to die, or, at the very least, not to live.”

- Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis

musical-infusion: Bad Religion | Frank Ocean

Sun, 05 May 2013 12:28:28 +0800

musical-infusion:

Bad Religion | Frank Ocean

malacanan: “The Filipino woman is the equal of the best in the...

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:05:47 +0800

malacanan:

“The Filipino woman is the equal of the best in the world and there is no reason why she should not enjoy all the rights and privileges of women in more progressive countries.”

Prior to the plebiscite, President Manuel L. Quezon reiterated his desire for the approval of women’s suffrage in a speech broadcast from Washington, D.C. on April 4, 1937.

Among the avid listeners were Pilar Hidalgo-Lim and Josefa Llanes-Escoda (BOTTOM PHOTO, LOWER PANEL), both listening to the broadcast from their own homes.

thesavagesgallery: William Turner (1775-1851) Peace, c.1842....

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 07:08:44 +0800

thesavagesgallery:

William Turner (1775-1851)

Peace, c.1842. Oil on canvas, 87 x 86.5 cm.

Tate Gallery, London, UK.

Artist Biography

Audio

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 15:16:39 +0800

cityofmirrors: Francisco Goya, Fire at Night 1794. Private...

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 10:15:45 +0800

cityofmirrors:

Francisco Goya, Fire at Night

1794. Private collection.

You realize every time you suit up, every time we go out, it’s...

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 14:36:43 +0800

You realize every time you suit up, every time we go out, it’s life or death. You roll the dice, and you deal with it. You recognize that don’t you?

"since feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss..."

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 12:09:00 +0800

“

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

”

- e.e. cummings, “since feeling is first”

"In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a..."

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 16:44:03 +0800

“In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of of what is beautiful and what is acceptable—which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us.”

- Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

walk away now, and you’re gonna start a war

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 14:30:42 +0800

walk away now, and you’re gonna start a war

yafictionquotes: Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 22:44:08 +0800

yafictionquotes:

Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife

theparisreview: Ori Gersht, Blow Up. The photographs depict...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 16:30:33 +0800

theparisreview:

Ori Gersht, Blow Up. The photographs depict elaborate floral arrangements, based upon a nineteenth century still-life painting by Henri Fantin-Latour, captured in the moment of exploding.

theparisreview: They said, my saints, my slogan-sayers sang,Be...

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 23:29:21 +0800

theparisreview:

They said, my saints, my slogan-sayers sang,
Be good, my child, in spite of all alarm.
They stood, my fathers, tall in a row and said,

Be good, be brave, you shall not come to harm.
I heard them in my sleep and muttering dream,
And murmuring cried, How shall I wake to this?

They said, my poets, singers of my song,
We cannot tell, since all we tell you is
But history, we speak but of the dead.

And of the dead they said such history
(Their beards were blazing with the truth of it)
As made of much of me a mystery.

—David Ferry, from “Learning From History”
Art Credit Toshiko Okanoue, “Wind-Pollinated Water,” 1955.

Jan van Goyen, A Windmill by the River (detail), 1642 (x)

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 22:23:43 +0800

Jan van Goyen, A Windmill by the River (detail), 1642 (x)

"1. Offer the wolves your arm only from the elbow down. Leave tourniquet space. Do not offer them..."

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 21:26:25 +0800

“

1. Offer the wolves your arm only from the elbow down. Leave tourniquet space. Do not offer them your calves. Do not offer them your side. Do not let them near your femoral artery, your jugular. Give them only your arm.

2. Wear chapstick when kissing the bomb.

3. Pretend you don’t know English.

4. Pretend you never met her.

5. Offer the bomb to the wolves. Offer the wolves to the zombies.

6. Only insert a clean knife into your chest. Rusty ones will cause tetanus. Or infection.

7. Don’t inhale.

8. Realize that this love was not your trainwreck, was not the truck that flattened you, was not your Waterloo, did not cause massive hemorrhaging from a rusty knife. That love is still to come.

9. Use a rusty knife to cut through most of the noose in a strategic place so that it breaks when your weight is on it.

10. Practice desperate pleas for attention, louder calls for help. Learn them in English, French, Spanish: May Day, Aidez-Moi, AyÃºdeme.

11. Don’t kiss trainwrecks. Don’t kiss knives. Don’t kiss.

12. Pretend you made up the zombies, and only superheroes exist.

13. Pretend there is no kryptonite.

14. Pretend there was no love so sweet that you would have died for it, pretend that it does not belong to someone else now, pretend like your heart depends on it because it does. Pretend there is no wreck — you watched the train go by and felt the air brush your face and that was it. Another train passing. You do not need trains. You can fly. You are a superhero. And there is no kryptonite.

15. Forget her name.

”

- Fifteen Ways to Stay Alive, Daphne Gottlieb (via colinfirth)

poopstainedversace: Christian Dior spring/summer 2012 haute...

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 15:51:33 +0800

poopstainedversace:

Christian Dior spring/summer 2012 haute couture

sssandrak: Daughter - “Perth” (Bon Iver) vs “Ready for the...

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 16:30:28 +0800

sssandrak:

Daughter - “Perth” (Bon Iver) vs “Ready for the floor” (Hot Chip)

Just wow.

jessehimself: “Until the lions have their own historians, the...

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 12:18:54 +0800

jessehimself:

“Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” - Chinua Achebe

Chinua Achebe, who has died at the age of 82, was more than a novelist. He was a total man of letters, who wrote poetry and essays and oversaw a trailblazing series of books by African writers. But he will probably always be most famous for his career-making, legacy-defining debut novel, Things Fall Apart, which tells the story of Okonkwo, an Igbo man…

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/03/22/things_fall_apart_by_chinua_achebe_was_almost_lost_by_london_typists_the.html

cavetocanvas: Takashi Murakami, Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow,...

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 10:21:57 +0800

cavetocanvas:

Takashi Murakami, Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow, Blue and Death, 2010

poboh: L’ange guerrier, Odilon Redon. French Symbolist Painter...

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 22:37:49 +0800

poboh:

L’ange guerrier, Odilon Redon. French Symbolist Painter (1840 - 1916)