For Nothing Is Fixed

James Baldwin

For nothing is fixed, forever, forever, forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

Today's Flickr photo with the most hits: this locator map in the Planetarium, Chicago.

Road Trip

Kurt Brown

The new road runs along the old road. I can see it still imprinted on the earth, not twenty feet away as I drive west past silos and farmsteads, fruit stands and hogs. Once in Kansas, I stood in a field and watched the stars on the horizon revolve around my ankles. People are always moving, even those standing still because the world keeps changing around them, changing them. When will the cities meet? When will they spread until there is a single city—avenue to avenue, coast to coast? What we call "the country" is an undeveloped area by the side of the road. There is no "country," there is no "road." It's one big National Park, no longer the wilderness it was. But the old world exists under the present world the way an original painting exists under a newer one. The animals know: their ancient, invisible trails cross and re-cross our own like scars that have healed long ago. Their country is not our country but another place altogether. Anything of importance there comes out of the sky. In Amarillo the wind tries to erase everything, even the future. It swoops down to scrape the desert clean as a scapula. Here among bones and bleached arroyos the sun leans through my window at dawn to let me know I'm not going anywhere. There's no more anywhere to go.

Celestial Energy

Amiens - "I am just a harmless little queer kid from New Jersey trying to whittle a home out of my own bones. My hobbies include poetry, Disney, computer games, and sandwiches.

I'd like to be a pirate when I grow up".

grains of dirt

and motes of stardust

lay dormant beneath my fingernails.

i remember

digging in the garden

where the planets grow

and asking

if i could cultivate a home here,

among the brilliance and

the twinkling of the

burning luminous plasma palaces

Solid Earth

William Rose Benet

SCURVY doctrine, that the world is a bubble -  It is much more solid than that! A monument built out of rubble,  If you will—a high silk hat With the inevitable brick inside,  A perfect whale of a brick! Love to make you vain, and pride  To make you sick. Scurvy doctrine, that love’s a tambourine. A  Love that is fond and true Is exactly like a tame hyena  (I’m telling this to you!) - A perfectly tangible hyena,  With perfectly ponderable paws. You could climb a mountain in Argentina,  But you’d know it was. Scurvy doctrine, that joy is fleeting -   Joy is howling aloud At everyone, in every meeting,  In every crowd! Joy is what the heavens shake with  At the earth beneath. Joy is the thing you tame the snake with—  And grit your teeth.

La Siesta

Juan Gil-Albert: paradoxes

If someone should ask me one day, when I reach that secret boundary: what is the earth? I would say a place where it’s cold to those whom the strong oppress, a place where the weak cry out, where like a shadow injustice moves with billowing cape, gathering up the rich man’s loose change and the tragedy of the homeless: a sudden place. But also I would say that other times in clear but changing situations, when summer comes and the land seems to dispense a somnolence and one grows tired without knowing why, while high above, a dazzling blue sky hums, and fruits appear in succession on white tables, under great, half-open windows, in cool penumbral light, we look for a corner where we might surrender ourselves to this sweet weight, then yes, I would say that the earth is an irreplaceable good, a flowing happiness, an entrancing touch. Like a temptation without precedent, made of both ardor and renunciation. A pleasant immersion, a slow acting love potion.

Song in Space

Adrian Mitchell

When man first flew beyond the sky He looked back into the world's blue eye. Man said: What makes your eye so blue? Earth said: The tears in the ocean do. Why are the seas so full of tears? Because I've wept so many thousand years. Why do you weep as you dance through space? Because I am the mother of the human race.

La Siesta

from Juan Gil-Albert

When I arrive at that secret confine and they question me, “What is the Earth?” I should say a cold place where the dictator overbears and the oppressed cry long tears and where, in shadows and gold teeth, injustice does the rounds taking up his profits from the men of property and mankind’s permanent tragedy; it is a wasteland. But again, I should have to say, when in clear altering situations the land exhales the somnolence of not knowing the source of one’s fatigue, when the blue sky pulses like an hallucination and fruit follows fruit on the white tables and great windows set ajar cool in the semi-light, we seek out a bower where we may fall beneath that soft weight. It is then that I should tell them that the Earth is an original happiness, an inward impulse, like an unprecedented temptation, composed both of ardour and renunciation, a giving up and a giving in, a slow love potion.