#flesh – @nickkahler on Tumblr

The book struck her directly over her left eye. It struck almost at the same instant that she realized the girl was about to hurl it. Before she could utter a sound, the raw face came crashing across the table toward her, howling. The girl’s fingers sank like clamps into the soft flesh of her neck. She heard the mother cry out and Claud shout, 'Whoa!' There was an instant when she was certain that she was about to be in an earthquake. All at once her vision narrowed and she saw everything as if it were happening in a small room far away, or as if she were looking at it through the wrong end of a telescope.

Flannery O’Connor, “Revelation,” 1965

nickkahler

It is dark. I can hear wood, silence: I know them. But not living sounds, not even him. It is as though the dark were resolving him out of his integrity, into an unrelated scattering of components –snuffings and stampings; smells of cooling flesh and ammoniac hair; an illusion of a coordinated whole of splotched hide and strong bones within which, detached and secret and familiar, an is different from my is. I see him dissolve - legs, a rolling eye, a gaudy splotching like cold flames and float upon the dark in fading solution; all one yet neither; all either yet none. I can see hearing coil toward him, caressing, shaping his hard shape - fetlock, hip, shoulder and head; smell and sound. I am not afraid.

William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying, 1930

#william faulkner #quote #lit #literature #as i lay dying #dark #wood #silence #knowedge #him #integrity #smell #flesh #body #secret #difference #dissolve #i am not afraid #fear

nickkahler

[Directors are] projecting a future by imagining how it would look in ruins. All the flesh has been removed and you just see the architectural bones. I've always thought Portman's buildings would make very beautiful ruins, because the essence of them is so powerful and so direct.

K. Michael Hays, “On John Portman and Dystopian Atlanta,” GA, 2015

#k. michael hays #architecture #john portman #dystopia #utopia #atlanta #georgia #director #film #project #future #imagination #ruin #flesh #bone #design #beauty #essence #power #direct #quote #history #time #space

nickkahler reblogged

passade

gwranda

We ate the birds. We ate them. We wanted their songs to flow up through our throats and burst out of our mouths, and so we ate them. We wanted their feathers to bud from our flesh. We wanted their wings, we wanted to fly as they did, soar freely among the treetops and the clouds, and so we ate them. We speared them, we clubbed them, we tangled their feet in glue, we netted them, we spitted them, we threw them onto hot coals, and all for love, because we loved them. We wanted to be one with them. We wanted to hatch out of clean, smooth, beautiful eggs, as they did, back when we were young and agile and innocent of cause and effect, we did not want the mess of being born, and so we crammed the birds into our gullets, feathers and all, but it was no use, we couldn't sing, not effortlessly as they do, we can’t fly, not without smoke and metal, and as for the eggs we don’t stand a chance. We’re mired in gravity, we’re earthbound. We’re ankle-deep in blood, and all because we ate the birds, we ate them a long time ago, when we still had the power to say no.

Margaret Atwood, The Tent, 2006 (via mayahansens)

#margaret atwood #quote #literature #lit #song #throat #flesh #club #chance #sing #clean #beautiful #metal #smoke #gravity

nickkahler

The railways sliced through the pliant flesh of the city, creating enormous linear barriers the carved cities into zones, spreading tremendous pollution by smoke, noise, and fear.

Michael Sorkin, Twenty Minutes in Manhattan, 2009

#michael sorkin #quote #city #barrier #boundary #zone #smoke #noise #fear #flesh #fabric #pattern #railroad #architecture

nickkahler

Jana Sterbak, Vanitas: Fleshdress for an Albino Anarectic, 1987 (via lizzyhill)

#jana sterbak #sculpture #art #performance art #meat #flesh #dress #fashion #lady gaga #albino #anaretic

nickkahler

Francisco Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son, 1819-23

#painting #art #history #myth #mythology #francisco goya #saturn #kronos #time #flesh #human figure

nickkahler reblogged

What is certain is that believing is no longer believing in another world, or in a transformed world. It is only, it is simply believing in the body. It is giving discourse to the body, and, for this purpose, reaching the body before discourses, before words, before thigs are named [..] Our belief can have no object but ‘the flesh’ […] We must believe in the body, but as in the germ of life, the seed which splits open the paving-stones, which has been preserved and lives on in the holy shroud or the mummy’s bandages, and which bears witness to life, in this world as it is.

Gilles Deleuze, The Time Image, 1989 (via trivial-brew)

#gilles deleuze #quote #philosophy #world #body #flesh #time #image