Michael > Recent Status Updates

“She had no faith in humanity. The look in someone’s eyes, the beliefs they espoused, the eloquence with which they did so, were, she knew, no guarantee of anything. She knew that the only life left to her was one hemmed in by niggling doubts and cold questions.”

“No matter if your interest is in ways of life, food or kimono, you can only really begin to understand something once you have studied it through all four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter. This is even truer of natural features such as mountains and rivers, which change far more often than seasonally, shifting their forms from morning to evening, in sunshine and in rain.”

“In Hokkaido’s natural forests, young Ezos rise from their fallen ancestors. Of course, the forests’ mature spruces scatter countless seeds upon the ground each year. But conditions in Hokkaido are harsh. Sprouting is no guarantee of success. The seeds which implant on fallen trees are the lucky ones: they have been granted better conditions for growth.”

“The world, according to Mallarme, exists for a book; according to Bloy, we are the versicles or words or letters of a magic book, and that incessant book is the only thing in the world: more exactly, it is the world.”

“The match to end the career of the old Master should have had in it the affectionate attention of his juniors, the finesse and subtlety of the warrior’s way, the mysterious elegance of an art, everything to maje it a masterpiece in itself; but the Master could not stand outside the rules of equality.”

“‘So,’ the Professor had gone on to explain, ‘if one accepts the idea that maps begin as dreams, pass through a finite life in the world, and resume as dreams again, we may say that these paramorphoscopes of Iceland spar, which cannot exist in great numbers if at all, reveal the architecture of dream, of all that escapes the net-work of ordinary latitude and longitude. . . .’”

“Not a wisp of smoke, not the last, wind-muted cry of a steam siren, only the good-bye letter waiting this morning on her work-table, held now like a crushed handkerchief in her pocket, in which he had given her his heart—but which she could not open again and read for fear that through some terrible magic she had never learned to undo, it might have become, after all, a blank sheet.”

“Lately Merle had been visited by a strange feeling that ‘photography’ and ‘alchemy’ were just two ways of getting at the same thing—redeeming light from the inertia of precious metals.”

“The sound stopped, and he was suddenly afraid. A chill passed over him, as if he had been notified that death was approaching. He wanted to question himself, calmly and deliberately, to ask whether it had been the sound of the wind, the sound of the sea, or a sound in his ears. But he had heard no such sound, he was sure. He had heard the mountain.”

“You can’t imagine what profound misery of a moral sort there is in the attempt, which so many people make, to confine everybody to a specialty. For my part, I find a tremendous advantage in living ‘from’ one activity and ‘for’ another…”

“In their walks, in their games, in their mutual friendships it was Joaquin, the more willful of the two, who seemed to initiate and dominate everything. Still, Abel, who appeared always to yield, always did as he pleased. The truth was that he found not obeying more important than commanding. The two almost never quarreled.”

“There’s nothing else anymore but victors and victims, my dear brother, on this disc we call Earth. And I’ve got a craving to know what I’ll find when I get driven over the edge.”

“He could not call up the faces of his own mother and father, who had died three or four years before. He would look at a picture, and there they would be. Perhaps people were progressively harder to paint in the mind as they were near one. Perhaps clear memories came easily in proportion as they were ugly.”

“The doors were open, and the girl was near the veranda.
Her brightness seemed to loght the far corners of the large, dusky room.
There were Japanese irises in the alcove.
There were Siberian irises on the girl’s obi. Perhaps it was coincidence. But irises were most ordinary flowers for the season, and perhaps she had planned the combination.”

“I owe my first inkling of the problem of infinity to a large biscuit tin that was a source of vertiginous mystery during my childhood. On one side of this exceptional object was a Japanese scene; I do not recall the children or warriors who configured it, but I do remember that in a corner of the image the same biscuit tin reappeared with the same picture, and in it the same picture again, and so on[.]”

“I stop for a moment and listen to the forest. We ought to pause more often, take more time to listen to the forest. Whole centuries of my life have gone by without my being able to listen to the forest. I stop and listen. That dull paralyzing joy takes root in the certainty of the absolute contingency of my presence here, of my radical uselessness. I’m not necessary for this rustling forest to exist[…]”

“For sixteen years I’ve tried to forget this voyage, and I did forget this voyage. No one around me thinks any more about my having made this voyage. But the fact is that I forgot this voyage while realizing full well that I would one day have to take it again.”

“‘I don’t believe in heaven or paradise, but I do want to believe in memories of love for those who have passed.’”

“Since first catching sight of the rainbow on the far shore of the lake, she had felt as though it were calling out to her. She was filled with a strange yearning to go to that country beyond the rainbow while still alive; or more realistically, to visit its shores.”

“‘The thing about zomes is,’ Riggs with a desperate grin, ‘is they can act as doorways to other dimensions. The F-105s, the coyotes, the scorpions and snakes, the desert heat, none of that bothers me. I can leave whenever I want.’ He motioned with his head. ‘All I have to do is step through that door over there, and I’m safe.’”

“On certain days, driving into Santa Monica was like having hallucinations without going to all the trouble of acquiring and then taking a particular drug, although some days, for sure, ‘any’ drug was preferable to driving into Santa Monica.”

“The sign on his door read LSD Investigations, LSD, as he explained when people asked, which was not often, standing for ‘Location, Surveillance, Detection.’”