pocketful of wisdoms

‘The roof of the sky was a stuck clock, moving across, frozen on its hinges of air.’

‘She smelt of dancing cinnamon moving about on the burned edge of dark rooms.’

‘The trees stood without effort and even the air lacked ambition.’

‘He stood, pacing in his mind, watching the slush of the corner for a sign, as if sanity were a pair of idle hands with nothing to fidget with.’

‘Work is the most overused excuse for not being able to live any other way.’

Dow Mossman - The Stones of Summer

flotsam and jetsam

‘That day it didn’t really rain: the sky just sort of dripped, as if the gray ceiling of clouds had a thousand little leaks.’

Arthur Nersesian

littoral - Of, relating to, or on a coastal or shore region, especially a seashore. A coastal region, especially the zone between the limits of high and low tides.

one more for the road

Further to the circumnavigator discussion of this book -

‘I have realized that an exile has no place anywhere, because there is no place, because the place where we started to dream, where we discovered the natural world around us, read our first book, loved for the first time, is always the world of our dreams. In exile one is nothing but a ghost, the shadow of someone who never achieves full reality. I ceased to exist when I went into exile; I
started to run away from myself.’

Before Night Falls - Reinaldo Arenas

a good haul

bombinate \BOM-buh-nayt\, intransitive verb:To buzz; to hum; to drone.

cerebration \ser-uh-BRAY-shuhn\, noun:The act or product of thinking; the use of the power of reason; mental activity; thought.

glabrous \GLAY-bruhs\, adjective:Smooth; having a surface without hairs, projections, or any unevenness.

otiose \OH-shee-ohs; OH-tee-\, adjective:Ineffective; futile. Being at leisure; lazy; indolent; idle. Of no use.

pablum \PAB-luhm\, noun:Something (as writing or speech) that is trite, insipid, or simplistic.

pleonasm \PLEE-uh-naz-uhm\, noun:The use of more words than are necessary to express an idea.

Recently appreciated quotes

‘The mind is infinitely larger than the world it inhabits. There is more to the human brain than machinery or meat.’

Liz Jensen


‘The past and the future are dangerous countries’

‘The anguish that rolled down then was like the first feeling ever to touch me: its rawness, its power, was almost like love.’

Damon Galgut