http://growing-orbits.tumblr.com/

hiddenshores: There are hidden shores within us. Places we will never reach, places that will reach...

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 18:47:57 +0100

hiddenshores:

There are hidden shores within us. Places we will never reach, places that will reach us instead.

A sort-of goodbye I need to move on from growing orbits, to somewhere new, unscathed. Perhaps we...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 13:06:00 +0100

A sort-of goodbye

I need to move on from growing orbits, to somewhere new, unscathed.

Perhaps we will find each other there. x

by Elger Esser

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 12:54:04 +0100

by Elger Esser

"To stand in the shadow of the scar up in the air. To..."

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 12:06:00 +0100

“

To stand in the shadow
of the scar up in the air.

To stand-for-no-one-and-nothing.
Unrecognized,
for you alone.

With all there is room for in that,
even without
language.

”

- Paul Celan, “To stand”, translated by Michael Hamburger

"How weightless words are when nothing will do."

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:01:36 +0100

“How weightless
words are when nothing will do.”

- Philip Levine, from “Gospel”

Favourite final sentences

I don’t mean to sound so gloomy, but this space has been getting to me. I find it increasingly...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 20:55:00 +0100

I don’t mean to sound so gloomy, but this space has been getting to me. I find it increasingly fleeting, anonymous and irritating. At the moment I am trying to find reasons to stay and it’s not coming easy.

Life is stressful, work is hard and my heart is receiving some form of life support. I have been trying to lift myself, with good company, healthy food, lots of exercise, and as always, books, films and music.

Forgive me if I’m not following your posts as much as I would like, but I can’t keep up with this hundred miles an hour dashboard (I don’t think I was ever quite able to do so).

I would like to say, meet me for coffee, but you are all so very far away. Or write to me, though I might never reply.

I will stay, for now. Or perhaps I have already gone.

"Regarding myself as a mere echo, Cave-like, unintelligible, nocturnal…May 27,..."

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 20:45:49 +0100

“Regarding myself as a mere echo,
Cave-like, unintelligible, nocturnal…

May 27, 1956
Hospital
Moscow”

- Anna Akhmatova, from The Complete Poems, translated by Judith Hemschemeyer

You tell me it’s summer, you tell me that there are skies so blue it hurts to look at them....

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 20:37:00 +0100

You tell me it’s summer, you tell me that there are skies so blue it hurts to look at them. Here it seems like winter still, despite all the annoying blossoms. I feel out of place, I want to rip whatever beat there is left out of my chest. Take it, I don’t need it no more.

selander

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 20:32:00 +0100

selander

Absence See also: the state of being away, absent-minded, leave of absence, perhaps I was never...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 20:26:00 +0100

Absence

See also: the state of being away, absent-minded, leave of absence, perhaps I was never really here and I don’t know how to return.

"i In view of the fading animals the proliferation of sewers and fears the sea clogging, the..."

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:48:00 +0100

“

In view of the fading animals
the proliferation of sewers and fears
the sea clogging, the air
nearing extinction

we should be kind, we should
take warning, we should forgive each other

Instead we are opposite, we
touch as though attacking,

the gifts we bring
even in good faith maybe
warp in our hands to
implements, to manoeuvres

Put down the target of me
you guard inside your binoculars,
in turn I will surrender

this aerial photograph
(your vulnerable
sections marked in red)
I have found so useful

See, we are alone in
the dormant field, the snow
that cannot be eaten or captured

iii

Here there are no armies
here there is no money

It is cold and getting colder,

We need each others’
breathing, warmth, surviving
is the only war
we can afford, stay

walking with me, there is almost
time / if we can only
make it as far as

the (possibly) last summer

”

- Margaret Atwood, “They are hostile nations”

Philippe Rousseau, A Valley (detail), ca. 1860

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 12:36:19 +0100

Philippe Rousseau, A Valley (detail), ca. 1860

I wish I could grow outside my skin sometimes, pack bags, spread wings. I equally yearn for the...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 20:19:46 +0100

I wish I could grow outside my skin sometimes, pack bags, spread wings.

I equally yearn for the metaphorical and the literal.

"That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be..."

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 19:32:00 +0100

“That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it.”

- Joan Didion, from Slouching Towards Bethlehem

"I wish I wrote the way I thought Obsessively Incessantly With maddening hunger I’d write to the..."

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 18:14:00 +0100

“I wish I wrote the way I thought
Obsessively
Incessantly
With maddening hunger
I’d write to the point of suffocation
I’d write myself into nervous breakdowns
Manuscripts spiralling out like tentacles into abysmal nothing
And I’d write about you
a lot more
than I should”

- Benedict Smith, “I Wish I Wrote The Way I Thought”

"Every day the sun rises out of low word-clouds into burning silence."

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 17:55:21 +0100

“Every day the sun rises
out of low word-clouds
into burning silence.”

- Rumi, from “Secret Places”, translated by Coleman Barks

Posted on the-final-sentence

"Lovers find secret places inside this violent world where they make transactions with beauty."

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 17:52:00 +0100

“Lovers find secret places
inside this violent world
where they make transactions
with beauty.”

- Rumi, opening lines to “Secret Places”, in Bridge to the Soul, translated by Coleman Barks

A weekend walk

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 17:44:00 +0100

A weekend walk

"What are days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over. They..."

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 21:43:56 +0100

“What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?”

- Philip Larkin, from “Days”

"I didn’t choose poetry: poetry chose me."

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 20:16:30 +0100

““I didn’t choose poetry: poetry chose me.””

- Philip Larkin