Ricardo Legorreta, Museum of Science and History, Fort Worth, TX, 2009
All at once his eyes became alert. Without warning the rain had stopped. The silence was heavy as if the downpour had been hushed by violence. He remained motionless, only his eyes turning. Into the silence came the distinct click of a key turning in the front door lock. The sound was a very deliberate one. It drew attention to itself and held it as if it were controlled more by a mind than by a hand.
There was something he was searching for, something that he felt he must have, some last significant culminating experience that he must make for himself before he died—make for himself out of his own intelligence. He had always relied on himself and had never been a sniveler after the ineffable.
Flannery O’Connor, “The Enduring Chill,” 1958
nickkahler reblogged
Doug Wheeler, “PSAD Synthetic Desert III” Installation at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, 2017
The discovery of the sea is a precious experience that bears thought. Seeing the oceanic horizon is indeed anything but a secondary experience; it is in fact an event in consciousness of underestimated consequences.
Paul Virilio, Bunker Archaeology, 1975
Firewood becomes ash, and it does not become firewood again. Yet, do not suppose that the ash is future and the firewood past. You should understand that firewood abides in the phenomenal expression of firewood, which fully includes past and future and is independent of past and future. Ash abides in the phenomenal expression of ash, which fully includes future and past. Just as firewood does not become firewood again after it is ash, you do not return to birth after death.
Dogen, “On Philosophy,” c. 1240
nickkahler reblogged
Zeller & Moye and Katie Paterson, “Hollow” at the University of Bristol, Bristol, England, 2016 (via hifructose)
Source: hifructose.com
Once you've lived the inside-out world of espionage, you never shed it. It's a mentality, a double standard of existence.
John le Carre, “On Espionage,” c. 2000
You feel that your life is being lost in a room where sound dies. We need reverberation.
Windows are not just about light and views but also about letting in air and, by implication, the rest of the world. They are transparent membranes and portals.
An expensive, solid wood door sounds better than an inexpensive hollow one, partly because its heavy clunk reassures us that the door is a true barrier, corresponding to the task it serves.
Deep down, I care for nothing in the world now but a few churches, two or three books, scarcely more paintings, and the light of the moon when the breeze of your youth brings me the fragrance of the flower beds that my old eyes can no longer distinguish.
A little tap on the window pane, as though something had struck it, followed by a plentiful light falling sound, as of grains of sand being sprinkled from a window overhead, gradually spreading, intensifying, acquiring a regular rhythm, becoming fluid, sonorous, musical, immeasurable, universal: it was the rain.
The doorknob of my room, which differed for me from all other doorknobs in the world in that it seems to open of its own accord, without my having to turn it, so unconscious had its handling become for me.