Emmeline

“Listen: I am ideally happy. My happiness is a kind of challenge. As I wander along the streets and the squares and the paths by the canal, absently sensing the lips of dampness through my worn soles, I carry proudly my ineffable happiness. The centuries will roll by, and schoolboys will yawn over the history of our upheavals; everything will pass, but my happiness , dear, my happiness will remain,in the moist reflection of a street lamp, in the cautious bend of stone steps that descend into the canal's black waters, in the smiles of a dancing couple, in everything with which God so generously surrounds human loneliness.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Selected Letters, 1940-1977

“Aquinas said if you have knowledge you don’t need faith, and I think he was on to something, but for now all I can do is find the Church of Inadvertent Joy, and if and when I do, I’ll stumble in and drop fifty cents in the brass-plated poor box, ignite a beeswax candle and confess myself at the crossroads. Having professed my faithlessness, I will be blessed, and the psoriasis or eczema that’s thickened my feet and shattered the skin of my hands will instantly melt, for confession is good for the sole and fine for the fingers. Aquinas also said evil is a privation, ergo hell is a place that’s a void. The heavenly need for placement being motivation for all maps, including a face.”
― Vanessa Place, La Medusa

“My solitude doesn’t depend on the presence or absence of people; on the contrary, I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“One need not smoke
to inhale. The air
in bars holds its
load of tars in stale suspension.
Also jails. Jails
are a prison for
the person who
abhors smoke.
But happily
gorgeous thought
also hangs around
like that: you can
walk through a mist
of Brodsky and contact-
exist.”
― Kay Ryan, Erratic Facts