a miscellaneous and Pantheistic whole
“He did not see that there is no such thing as a standard for the
creative spirit; that no one great book must ever be separately
regarded, and permitted to domineer with its own uniqueness upon the
creative mind; but that all existing great works must be federated into
the fancy; and so regarded as a miscellaneous and Pantheistic whole. .
. .
—Herman Melville, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, 1852.
the heart of a man
“Deep, deep, and still deep and deeper must we go, if we would find out
the heart of a man; descending into which is as descending a spiral
stair in a shaft, wthout any end, and where that endlessness is only
concealed by the spiralness of the stair, and blackness of the shaft.”
—Herman Melville, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, 1852.
The food of thy soul
“The food of thy soul is light and space; feed it then on light and space.”
—Herman Melville, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, 1852.
where the two blues meet
“‘Don’t let us stop here,’ cried Isabel. ‘Look, let us go through
there! Bell must go through there! See! see! out there upon the blue!
yonder, yonder! far away—out, out!—far, far away, and away, and away,
out there! where the two blues meet, and are nothing—Bell must go!’”
—Herman Melville, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities, 1852.
A River Runs Through It: The White River Badlands
simple colors
“I want a joy that takes simple colors, street organs, ribbons, flags,
not a joy that takes one’s breath away and throws one into space.”
—Anais Nin, The Diary of Anais Nin, Volume Three, 1939-1944, 1969.
Typesetting is like film cutting
“Typesetting is like film cutting. The disciplilne of typesetting and printing is good for the writer.”
—Anais Nin, The Diary of Anais Nin, Volume Three, 1939-1944, 1969.
the swimmer—and the bather
“A flesh-colored moon, as ripe as any ‘vine-ripe’ tomato, was
skinny-dipping in a lake of its own light. Leaning back, Lisa watched
it slowly swim out of sight, languid, naked, and unashamed. The
occasional stars were like inflamed eyeballs, spying on the swimmer—and
the bather—through peepholes in an anthracite curtain.”
—Tom Robbins, Villa Incognito, 2003. Lisa is taking a bath, and merging with the universe.
the Unknowable
“As anybody who knows anything about the Unknowable well knows, ‘God’
and ‘gods’ are interchangeable. The exclusivistic patriarchal
Jehovah/Allah freaks are not incorrect then whey insist that there is
but one Supreme Being and that ‘he’ is immutable and absolute. However,
neither are the wide-eyed inclusive pagans and primitives wrong when
they recognize gods of fire alongside gods of rivers; honor a moon
goddess, a crocodile spirit, and deities who reside in, among countless
other places, tree trunks, rain clouds, peyote buttons, and neon
lighting (especially the flashing whites and the greens).”
—Tom Robbins, Villa Incognito, 2003.
A yellow cab
“A yellow cab, like a smoker’s tooth in the cottony mouth of morning, flashed into view.”
—Tom Robbins, Villa Incognito, 2003.