A Supermarket in California


What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the
streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit
supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles
full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! --- and you,
Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the
meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price
bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and
followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting
artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does
your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel
absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to
shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in
driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you
have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and
stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

Allen Ginsberg

...all tapes left in a car for more than about a fortnight metamorphose into Best of Queen albums.

Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

Daffodils

I wander’d lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,
in such a jocund company:I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth

Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.

Michael Caine

Hide not your talents,

they for use were made.

What’s a sun-dial

in the shade? “

Benjamin Franklin

I sort of sympathise with them looking for weapons of mass destruction, because I'm like that with scissors. Honestly, I just turn the house upside down. Of course the difference is, I know I have got some scissors.

Linda Smith

Happy the man

Happy the man, and happy he alone,
He who can call today his own:
He who, secure within, can say,
Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
Be fair or foul or rain or shine
The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine.
Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,
But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

John Dryden

" I don't know what to do," he said.

"No harm in that. I've never known what to do," said Rincewind with hollow cheerfulness. "Been completely at a loss my whole life." He hesitated. "I think it's called being human."

-Terry Pratchet, Sourcery

"Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket--safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable"

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

~Louis-Hector Berlioz

Through the constant build and collapse of the music the noises let through the silence. It is the silence you can hear in a wood, despite the chatter of birds and leaves and tree growth.

Jonathon Baggaley
Seen on the wall at:
Cafe 1001, Brick Lane, London

My scream got lost in a paper cup…

~Silent All These Years, Tori Amos

When you drop a glass or a plate to the ground it makes a loud crashing sound. When a window shatters, a table leg breaks, or when a picture falls off the wall it makes a noise. But as for your heart, when that breaks it’s completely silent. You would think as it’s so important it would make the loudest noise in the whole world, or even have some sort of ceremonious sound like the gong of a cymbal or the ringing of a bell. But it’s silent and you almost wish there was a noise to distract you from the pain.

If there is a noise, it’s internal. It screams and no-one can hear it but you. It screams so loud that your ears ring and you head aches. It thrashes around in your chest like a great white shark caught in the sea; it roars like a mother bear whose cub has been taken. That’s what it looks like and that’s what it sounds like; a thrashing, panicking great big beast, roaring like a prisoner to its own emotions. Butt hat’s the thing about love – no-one is untouchable. It’s as wild s that, or as raw as an open flesh wound exposed to salty sea water, but when it actually breaks, it’s silent. You’re just screaming on the inside and no-one can hear it.

Cecelia Ahern, Chapter 32, If You Could See Me Now

I have had the world lie beneath my clumsy boots and saw the red sun slip over the horizon after the dark Antarctic winter.

I have been given more than my share of excitement, beauty, laughter and friendship.

But for me the most rewarding moments have not always been the great moments - for what can surpass a tear on your departure, joy on your return, or a trusting hand in yours?

Ed Hillary

Let me tell you what happens when you cook down the syrup of loss over the open fire of sorrow: It solidifies into something else. Not grief, like you would expect, or even regret. No, it gets as thick as paste, black as ash; yet it isn't until you dip your finger in and feel that sharp taste dissolving on your tongue that you realise that this is anger in its purest form, unrefined; a substance to be weighed and measured and spread.

Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts, pg 87

I wrap my hand in plastic to try to look through
it.

from E-Bow the Letter by REM