Crystal White

“This is what I am: watching the spider
rebuild - "patiently", they say,

but I recognise in her
impatience - my own-

the passion to make and make again
where such unmaking reigns

the refusal to be a victim
we have lived with violence so long

Am I to go on saying
for myself, for her

This is my body,
take it and destroy it?”
― Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language

“No one who survives to speak
new language, has avoided this:
the cutting-away of an old force that held her
rooted to an old ground
the pitch of utter loneliness
where she herself and all creation
seem equally dispersed, weightless, her being a cry
to which no echo comes or can ever come.

But in fact we were always like this,
rootless, dismembered: knowing it makes the difference.
Birth stripped our birthright from us,
tore us from a woman, from women, from ourselves
so early on
and the whole chorus throbbing at our ears
like midges, told us nothing, nothing
of origins, nothing we needed
to know, nothing that could re-member us.”
― Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”
― Frank Zappa

“The first draft of anything is shit.”
― Ernest Hemingway