Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children.
Sylvia Plath
A subject that is beautiful in itself gives no suggestion to the artist. It lacks imperfection.
Oscar Wilde
After a lot of thought I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t know myself at all. I’m like a living piano, with lots of wires and mechanical bits inside me in the dark; I never know who comes and plays it, and it is difficult to completely comprehend why as well, I can only know what is playing—whether it’s happiness or sorrow, soft note or sharp, in rhythm or not—just that much. And I know how far up or down my octave will extend. No, do I even know that much? I’m not even sure if I’m a sympathetic grand piano or a cottage piano.
Life is, soberly and accurately, the oddest affair; has in it the essence of reality. I used to feel this as a child—couldn't step across a puddle once, I remember, for thinking how strange—what am I?
The unknownness of my needs frightens me. I do not know how big they are, or how high they are, I only know that they are not being met. If you want to find out the circumference of an oil drop, you can use lycopodium powder. That’s what I’ll find. A tub of lycopodium powder, and I will sprinkle it on to my needs and find out how large they are. Then when I meet someone I can write up the experiment and show them what they have to take on. Except they might have a growth rate 1 can’t measure, or they might mutate, or even disappear.
[...]try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue. Do not now strive to uncover answers: they cannot be given to you because you have not been able to live them. And what matters is to live everything. Live the questions for now.
I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.
André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name / Rabindranath Tagore, Letters From A Young Poet / Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe / Before Sunrise / Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary / Jeannette Winterson, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit / Maggie Nelson, Bluets / Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet / Ethan Hawke / Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Second of September, I ate the last berry of summer, the sun still dreaming it's July twenty-first
also, I love it so here, and have so little relaxed time to saturate myself with the minor pleasures and daily epiphanies of life that I may just stay at the apartment into the middle of september to cook and read at widener and observe the plethora of vivid details of life which I generally have to ignore for the sake of economy of time
when summer turned to ash / from Ventimiglia to Salerno / and nothing else was left / and we were free / to run away, to play dumb or cry / one September night.
Do not faint in September/ or you will wake up in a dead city
I had a terror—since September—I could tell to none, and so I sing, as the Boy does by the Burying Ground—because I am afraid.
Another day; another Friday; another twentieth of March, January, or September. Another general awakening.
•••
Ethan Gilsdorf, The Imprint Of September Second / Joe Brainard, I remember, Three Pansies / Anne Carson, The Glass Essay / Virginia Woolf, A Writer's Diary / Sylvia Plath, letter to Gordon Lameyer / Robert David Cohen, September / Frank W. Benson, Autumn (1895) / Franco Fortini, One September Night / Anne Sexton, The Sermon of the Twelve Acknowledgement / Emily Dickinson, letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson / Virginia Woolf, The Waves / Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)
#september#web weaving#ethan gilsdorf#the imprint of September second#joe brainard#i remember#three pansies#anne carson#the glass essay#virginia woolf#a writer's diary#syliva plath#sylvia plath letters#autumn#frank benson#robert david cohen#franco fortini#anne sexton#emily dickinson#emily dickinson letters#the waves#jackson pollock#autumn rhythm#parallels#**