What a strange experience, to be back in the same physical location, but to have nothing else concrete to bind one's memories to.  The only thing that now remains of the old hallways and corridors, the only artefact that connects my past to this new present, is the antigue clock mechanism that they'd preserved from the old clock tower.  The ( Read more... )

Wow it's really coming down outside. Sky opaque, air heavy with liquid sound. Actually quite dramatic...everything shrouded in a misty solidity of rain, and now and then the whole scene is illuminated by blue flashes of lightning. And it's actually starting to flood. It's cathartic, this kind of storm. Such power. Such promise ( Read more... )

These books they have taught me how ( Read more... )

"We looked at each other, afraid to speak, afraid to load our feelings into words in case the words cracked and split.  I pinned my tongue to the roof of my mouth.  Hold in, hold in, one creack and the wall is breached.  I need now to be finite, self-contained, to stop this bacterial grief dividing and multiplying till its weight is the weight of ( Read more... )

To my pleasant surprise I looked outside and discovered that it's raining. The sound is soothing.

Something I picked off april-da-fool's journal, and she picked it off TVMobile...so maybe it's not totally useless after all...
"Desire is a stranger we all think we know, Truth is a game we all play to win"
I'm not sure what it means, but I've a ( Read more... )

People say the most intriguing things. Every time I am reminded that literature's big issues are everyone's issues, and that we're not all that different after all, despite our positions and credits and paraphenalia of one life, I see the importance of a sense of perspective. It sets things right, and rightly so, we need to be reminded to take ( Read more... )

Normally, I’d agree. But how could I not? I mean, when you get that feeling that everything’s more perfect than you’d ever dared to imagine was possible, when such a compelling symmetry between past experience and future potential dawned upon you, would you fight the inevitable ( Read more... )

There are two faces, both finely boned and sculpted. Crafted, with a wide border of straight hair across each smooth forehead. Their mouths are closed, but lax, the lips just lightly touching. Their large eyes are hooded, open just barely. One's skin is a shade darker than the other. The corners of their mouths and eyes determinedly reflect... ( Read more... )

A Military Exhibition
In the eyes of the boy staring over the rope at the grey flanks and slender snout of the staff of thunder and lightning, the magic word "artillery" bears no malice, the long reverberations echoing after the concussive shot bear no death.

"Hate is such a strong word.  It begins with a hiss and ends with a spit!"
 - from an A ( Read more... )

This bit, from Philip Roth's The Human Stain, about Coleman interviewing an attractive young French graduate for the post of literature professor: "It isn't difficult to understand what she intends for him to understand, especially as Coleman knew something of Paris from being a young professor with family on a Fulbright one year, and knows ( Read more... )