Plus my only natural talent's wasted

[sovay]

I sat down to write up this weekend and the bits and pieces of news that I've been reminding myself to report since last Thursday, but my brain has gone to slurry.* Consequently, I am forced to fall back on other people's brains for my entertainment. Don't let me down here.

So. I saw this done once with icons. If you want to comment on this post, you must do so in quotation. If you want to respond to a comment, you must do so in quotation. Prose, poetry, film, television, song lyrics, academic criticism, all are fair game; the language is likewise left to your discretion, although I cannot promise that you won't be asked to provide translations. Neither will I stipulate that you must be able to identify the quotation to which you are responding, although more power to you if you can. Quote characters who are already speaking in quotation, if you feel like it.** Now watch a total radio silence fall.

"Is anybody there?" said the Traveler . . .

*I blame this partly on the fact that I'm reading what must be the perkiest whaler's journal ever. A sample entry: December 10. Saturday. Set in, bright & beautiful! 9 AM raised "Right Whales!!!!!" Lowered! The Larboard Boat went on & struck a fine one! He tried hard to get away but the lance "hurt his feelings" and in consequence, he was a dead whale at 22 AM!! 3 PM Cut in. 7 PM Boiling! You think I'm making those exclamation points up.

**And if you are Pamela Dean, you should properly be started with a handicap . . .

Comments

[dgr8bob.livejournal.com]

I am right here where you want me
Do what you brought me out here for
You can arm me to the teeth
You can't make me go to war

You're evidently at least somewhat up on your Mountain Goats lyrics.

[sovay]

I heard the old songs radiating from you

Pray, what authors should she read who in Classics would succeed?

[zdenka]

If you'd climb the Helicon,
you must read Anacreon,
Ovid's Metamorphoses,
likewise Aristophanes
and the works of Juvenal --
these are worth attention, all.

[sovay]

I can write a washing-bill in Babylonic cuneiform . . .

[zdenka]

On each of us thy learning shed,
on calculus may we be fed,
and teach us please to speak with ease
all languages, alive and dead.

[larryhammer]

For God's sake hold your tongues and let me love.

[zdenka]

Love ye who list, I force him not.

[larryhammer]

But every modern god will now extend
His vast prerogative as far as Jove.
To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend,
All is the purlieu of the god of love.

[sovay]

I cant help it. When you strike that noble attitude and speak in that thrilling voice, I admire you; but I find it impossible to believe a single word you say.

[sovay]

It doesn't have a proper name. It's a tongue of the dead, that's all.

[zdenka]

As winter starlings riding on their wings
form crowded flocks, so spirits dip and veer
foundering in the wind's rough buffetings,
upward or downward, driven here and there
with never ease from pain nor hope of rest.
As chanting cranes will form a line in air,
so I saw souls come uttering cries -- wind-tossed,
and lofted by the storm.

E come li stornei ne portan l'ali
nel freddo tempo, a schiera larga e piena,
cosi quel fiato li spiriti mali
di qua, di la, di giu, di su li mena;
nulla speranza li conforta mai,
non che di posa, ma di minor pena.
E come i gru van cantando lor lai,
faccendo in aere di se lunga riga,
cosi vid' io venir, traendo guai,
ombre portate da la detta briga . . .

[sovay]

Their voices, dying as they fly,
Thick on the wind are sown;
The names of men blow soundless by,
My fellows' and my own.

[clarionj.livejournal.com]

"The boy has to be born, understand?"
"But he's so all alone. Nine months alone. With whom will he talk?"
"With your mercies benz."
"Who?"
"The reader, just the reader."

[larryhammer]

If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desir'd, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

---L.

[clarionj.livejournal.com]

Ah, are you like that? Tell me if you have
a murmuring rumor of bees in your voice,
if your ears are like
curled rose petals...
Tell me if you cry, humbly,
when you look at distant stars,
whether white doves and golden canaries
grow sleepy in your slender hands.

[scanner-darkly.livejournal.com]

"Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering."
-- Saint Augustine

[clarionj.livejournal.com]

Stone upon stone, and man, where was he?
Air upon air, and man, where was he?
Time upon time, and man, where was he?
Were you too then the broken bit
of half-spent humankind, an empty eagle, that
through the streets today, through footsteps,
through the dead autumn's leaves,
keeps crushing its soul until the grave?
The meager hand, the foot, the meager life...
Did the days of unraveled light
in you, like rain
on pennants at a festival,
give off their dark food petal by petal
into your empty mouth?
Hunger, coral of humankind,
hunger, hidden plant, root of the woodcutter,
hunger, did your reef-edge climb
to these high and ruinous towers?

[clarionj.livejournal.com]

(and, okay, these little quotes are turning into passages--see what sovay opened up?)

[sovay]

What is deep, as love is deep, I'll have
Deeply. What is good, as love is good,
I'll have well. Then if time and space
Have any purpose, I shall belong to it.
If not, if all is a pretty fiction
To distract the cherubim and seraphim
Who so continually do cry, the least
I can do is to fill the curled shell of the world
With human deep-sea sound, and hold it to
The ear of God, until he has appetite
To taste our salt sorrow on his lips.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

If there's a "Woohoo!" in the whaler's journal, we can probably peg it as a fake.

This (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/books/04viol.html) will please you mightily.

[sovay]

If there's a "Woohoo!" in the whaler's journal, we can probably peg it as a fake.

And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head.

This will please you mightily.

The strange part is, they were forever running around yelling at people to get naked, to strip off their masks and let the sunshine in on their most secret faces, their true and deadly dangerous and lovely selves. Not me, boy—the more costumes, the better, you want my opinion. Masks on top of masks, images like layers of winter underwear, that's more like it. Costumes brighten the air, and they still let you get your practicing done. Naked people don't do either one, hardly ever.

[skotodes.livejournal.com]

...you're all nuts.

- Homer Simpson

[larryhammer]

It was a theme
For reason, much too strong for fantasy.

[zdenka]

That which is true is not always probable.

[sovay]

Where the wailing of a baby meets the footsteps of the dead
We're all mad here