QUOTABLE

"Forgetting all I know, I try to describe these things, and only then do I realise, yet again, that the past is incommunicable."

- from Birchwood by John Banville

PICTURE FROM WEHEARTIT

WHEN YOU COME BRING THE SUN

Been listening to El Perro Del Mar, revelling in its beautiful melancholy, feeling restless and smoking til my head spins...

PICTURES FROM GOOGLE, WEHEARTIT & HAW-LIN

A WORD ON WHAT TO WEAR

"Clothes," Virginia Woolf tells us in Orlando, have "more important offices than merely to keep us warm; they change our view of the world and the world's view of us."

"A FRACTION OF THE WHOLE" (STEVE TOLTZ)

"I had since devoured many philosophy books from the library, and it seemed that most philosophy was petty argument about things you just couldn’t know. I thought: Why waste time on insoluble problems? What does it matter whether the soul is made up of smooth, round soul atoms or of Lego, it’s unknowable, so let’s just drop it. I also found that, geniuses or not, most of the philosophers undermined their own philosophies, from Plato onward, because almost no one seemed willing to start with a blank slate or endure uncertainty. You could read the prejudices, the self-interest and desires of every single one. And God! God! God! The most brilliant minds coming up with all these complicated theories and then they say, ‘But let’s just assume there’s a God and let’s assume he’s good.’ Why assume anything? To me, it was obvious man created God in his own image. Man hasn’t the imagination to come up with a God totally unlike him, which is why in Renaissance paintings God looks like a skinny version of Santa Claus. Hume says that man only cuts and pastes, he doesn’t invent. Angels, for instance, are men with wings. In the same way, Bigfoot is man with big foot. This is why I could see in most ‘objective’ philosophical systems man’s fears, drives, prejudices and aspirations written all over them."

DON'T STOP TO SURRENDER...

COME AROUND TO MY WAY OF THINKING...

...it's only walking distance

"SWALLOW THE AIR"

"I remember what my mum had said to me once about worries. She said when we worry, when something is pulling us down, we should take a walk. A good walk, she said, a long walk. Rhythm tangles behind you, scurries up ahead, and somehow in between, something makes sense. One foot is your heart and one foot is your mind. Together, they can make your worries easy, clearer. 'Just walk,' she'd say, 'just gotta walk.'

I suppose in the end she couldn't find her feet.

And with the crying inside me, that I could not make out, of words or voice, I began to walk.

Listen, Issy had said.

I listened. And the voices would come out, emerging from button grasses, bark shavings and water. Mother. Brother. Anger. Fear. All soaked in sorrow. Intricate words like Joyce's photo tree of faces. Day doused them yellow, but night crawled the dark moons, hiding the light. And answers.

Each day I asked the voices, why I'm here? What I'm doing?

They did not answer. But I kept asking anyway, to make sure that it was ok. Still they did not tell."

-from "Swallow the Air" by Tara June Winch