I’m a little tea pot

In a Russian monastery.

Maximov.

There are peasant women here, too, now. There, sitting on the ground near the wooden veranda. They’re waiting. And for the ladies two little rooms have been built on top of the veranda but outside the hermitage wall. You can see the windows up there. The elder goes to see them by an inner passage when he feels well enough. But, you see, it’s still outside the wall of the hermitage. There’s one lady waiting there now with her sick daughter. Mrs Khokhlakov, a Kharkov landowner. I expect he must have promised to come out to her, though lately he’s been so weak that he’s hardly gone out even to the common people.

Fyodor Karamazov.

Oh, so there is a secret passage from the hermitage to the ladies! Please, holy Father, don’t think I’m suggesting anything. I’m just making a statement of fact. You know, on Mount Athos - you’ve heard of it, haven’t you? - not only women but any creatures of the female sex are not allowed - no hens, no turkey hens, no calves…

Good for a hearty chuckle, I thought.

Arrival - 1991

“Are there dolphins in Galveston, Mommy?” Landyn asked, coloring a drawing of a boy riding on the back of a dolphin as it jumped out of the water.

“Lots, and lots of them, baby.” His Mother spoke, her hands on the steering wheel as she casually glanced at the rear-view mirror, seeing Landyn as he looked up into her eyes. His face held a smile she hadn’t seen in a long time, and in turn, made her smile widely.

(more…)

There is nowhere I can go that is more sacred than the hallowed halls of shelves and tiles in the library. I can lose myself there–and yet, somehow, that is the only place where I actually feel present. No stupid distractions. No idiotic sounds escape from my mouth. No Myspace, no Facebook, no compulsions. Only me and a book. I discover new worlds.

I am in awe of the expansiveness and quality of the library. It occurred to me today to look up several of the books I’ve been wanting to read but cannot find in the bookstores I visit from time to time–and don’t have money to buy, anyway. And I found them. I checked out three today:

I feel alive with passion and drive.  I just need to get my ass back to the library and devour it all.

From Puteoli:

Pansy boys, come out to play,
You’ve been cropped the Delian way:
Young or old, there’s room for you
And room for roaming fingers too!
Hips and bottoms, waggle away,
Pansy boys, come out to play.

From Death Is a Lonely Business by Ray Bradbury:

Venice, California, in the old days had much to recommend it to people who liked to be sad. It had fog almost every night and along the shore the moaning of the oil well machinery and the slap of dark water in the canals and the hiss of sand against the windows of your house when the wind came up and sang among the open places and along the empty walks.

Those were the days when the Venice pier was falling apart and dying in the sea and you could find there the bones of a vast dinosaur, the rollercoaster, being covered by the shifting tides.

At the end of one long canal you could find old circus wagons that had been rolled and dumped, and in the cages, at midnight, if you looked, things lived–fish and crayfish moving with the tide; and it was all the circuses of time somehow gone to doom and rusting away.

And there was a loud avalanche of big red trolley car that rushed toward the sea every half-hour and at midnight skirled the curve and threw sparks on the high wires and rolled away with a moan which was like the dead turning in their sleep, as if the trolleys and the lonely men who swayed steering them knew that in another year they would be gone, the tracks covered with concrete and tar and the high spider-wire collected on rolls and spirited away.

And it was in that time, in one of those lonely years when the fogs never ended and the winds never stopped their laments, that riding the old red trolley, the high-bucketeing thunder, one night I met up with Death’s friend and didn’t know it.

(Specifically the part with Diotima)

Diotima says that “there is nothing which men love but the good”–and “that they love the possession of the good.” Therefore, she says, “Love may be described generally as the love of the everlasting possession of the good.” This I find most disturbing. “Possession” is vague. I certainly don’t know what it means. How can you possess–truly possess anything?–let alone a person? It might be closer to the truth to say that what you love possesses you. In love, possession is incidental at best. I suspect that attempting to possess what you love is nonsensical, impossible.

Please tell me what you think. Yours is the opinion that matters most to me.

Here are the books I’ve bought so far:

One remains. It’s called Masochism. : P After going to my first day of classes, and emptying my pockets on these textbooks, I’m excited for this semester. I think it’ll be a good one.

“Take me, Olly!  Now!  Have me!”

And a minute later, flat among the flowers, cotton dress huddled up, eyes shivering, face twisted, changed from laughing–

“Hurt me, Olly! Hurt me–”

I did not know how to hurt her. As I beat my hasty tattoo in boyish eagerness, I was lost among the undulations, the contractings and stretchings of her body. She would not consent to any quick rhythm; only the long, deep ocean swell of an apparently boneless woman was accompanied by a turning away of the head, both eyes shut, forehead lined–a kind of anguished journey, concentrated on reaching a far spot, dark, agonizing and wicked. I was a small boat in a deep sea; and the sea itself was a moaning, private thing, full of contempt and disgust, a thing to which a partner was necessary but not welcome. I could no longer direct; and my boat was overwhelmed by waves, suddenly controlled by her, driven towards the rock, where a cry rose, loud and tortured, and I was among the breakers, ship-wrecked–

Golding, William. The Pyramid. London, Faber and Faber Limited: 1988. Page 79.