now for the afternoon:

the dramatic altercation and conflict between the visible and the shadows. it's as if visible things begin twisting, going insane. afternoon weakens us, eats away at us, abuses us, but because of its persistence the streets recover their human meaning, their tragic meaning of volition that manages to last in time, time whose very essence is change. the afternoon perturbs the day, and for that reason it agrees with us, because we too are perturbed. the late afternoon prepares the easy decline of our spiritual electricity. it's by force of afternoon that the city goes about entering us.

jorge luis borges, on argentina

KATARINA SOPČIĆ

Panda Bear "Slow Motion" (Unofficial) from Asha Tamirisa on Vimeo.

These New Puritans - Elvis from Morgan Huang on Vimeo.

Warpaint - Elephants from PuddingPop on Vimeo.

Active Child - When Your Love is Safe from Yours Truly on Vimeo.

We have seen that the act of love requires of woman profound self-abandonment; she bathes in a passive languor; with closed eyes, anonymous, lost, she feels as if borne by waves, swept away in a storm, shrouded in darkness : darkness of the flesh, of the womb, of the grave. Annihilated, she becomes one with the Whole, her ego is abolished. But when the man moves from her, she finds herself back on earth, on a bed, in the light; she again has a name, a face: she is one vanquished, prey, object.

This is the moment when love becomes a necessity. As when the child, after weaning, seeks the reassuring gaze of its parents, so must a woman feel, through the man's loving contemplation, that she is, after all, still at one with the Whole from which her flesh is now painfully detached. [...] In giving her pleasure the man increases her attachment, he does not liberate her. As for him, he no longer desires her, but she will not pardon this momentary indifference unless he has dedicated to her a timeless and absolute emotion. Then the immanence of the moment is transcended; hot memories are no regret, but a treasured delight; ebbing pleasure becomes hope and promise; enjoyment is justified; woman can gloriously accept her sexuality because she transcends it; excitement, pleasure, desire are no longer a state, but a benefaction; her body is no longer an object : it is a hymn, a flame.

Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1949
Simone de Beauvoir in Chicago, 1952, Art Shay

the world is a mess but your hair is perfect

i miss you dad, happy birthday

love that

I write this now partly (for once) to relieve my feelings - partly because you were (or affected to be) surprised at what I said.

Listen - I love you in the most absolute sense possible. I would do anything for you, be anything you wished me, come to you at any time or place if you visited it for a moment.

If I thought I stood the faintest chance, vis-à-vis de toi, I would fight and struggle savagely.

Iris Murdoch writing to Raymond Queneau, August 24th, 1952

heartache to heartache we stand

 

Now & always I remain your calm tender devoted reader & friend,

Iris

dear mushrooms,

please forgive me having neglected your existence for the past twenty six years.
you bring joy to my table and make everything so much easier. I don't know how I've been without you.
thank you for coming into my life.

yours truly,
joana

in bed with Samuel Clemens

há um desequilíbrio entre os livros, sempre ao final do dia.

And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her, and to whom she is grateful. I should have thought that I, at least, might have been safe from all that. I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me is in love with me. *

Middlemarch, George Eliot

* shamelessly stolen from Michelle

'cause I wouldn't mind

a little romance

there are so many tictoc
clocks everywhere telling people
what toctic time it is for
tictic instance five toc minutes toc
past six tic
Spring is not regulated and does
not get out of order nor do
its hands a little jerking move
over numbers slowly
                                we do not
wind it up it has no weights
spring wheels inside of
its slender self no indeed dear
nothing of the kind.
(So, when kiss Spring comes
we'll kiss each other on kiss the kiss
lips because tic clocks toc don't make
a toctic difference
to kisskiss you and to
kiss me) 

e e cuummings

there we were holding hands
singing through the hole in the ceiling

into the heavens

I'm in your church at night

the pleasures and sorrows of work #2

today I sold a couple of Žižek's books to Žižek himself.

the pleasures and sorrows of work #1

hoje vendi um Lucio's Confession. e nem fui eu que recomendei.