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‘A pact with the world that isn’t part of the accepted historical record, but a steady referent, like a faraway star. The boat moves, and the star stays still. Time passes, generations rise and fall, but even with the changes something stays the same—truth and the conspiracy that keeps the truth hidden.’
When I was little my mother had to coax me back out of the marsh—its water and air—with her love, and with berries dipped in honey, and with stories. I wanted her touch, her smell, her voice, her view of things more than I wanted to live in scales or fur or feathers. I had her long enough and loved her well enough to learn to be human and remain human.’
Ten minutes later a loose-bellied beige cat came and plopped itself down on Taryn’s doorstep in the sunlight and stayed there, blinking and purring, as if Taryn had caught and reeled it in on a thread of love she didn’t even know was dangling from her tightly knitted adult soul.
I saw that the moon was rising directly above the miles-long parting in the rushes, as if it was the moon that had made the path by rolling across the sea and reeds to finally bump at the doorway of the witch’s hut.
‘You can see librarians’ failure to try even that as the start of German society’s treachery towards itself. Yes, it’s meaningful that books were piled on bonfires, and what books they were, and who had written them. But that librarians collaborated, and why they did, is more than a fact that bears remembering; it’s a question we should keep asking. Why do we sometimes decide that the things our ancestors have made, and kept, and cared for are suddenly too many mouths to feed, or of bad character and a menace to society? Why, for instance, is it unremarkable that we have warehouses full of
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A book for the general reader on an esoteric subject has to argue for its own interestingness by being interesting. And never argue for its own importance, which a work of scholarship may do. I consider the balancing act of “being accessible” a discipline rather than a limitation.
Just had a discussion about this with my son in regards to Gravity's Rainbow. Sums up my thoughts on that book perfectly.
There is a school of thought that claims that, because of the internet, we are awash in uncurated information, and that has made us lose our appetite and judgement. I’m not sure that’s true. But I do think we forget what’s not there. Which is a tautology. I mean, we forget what isn’t on the internet. We even neglect the idea of what’s not there. Or we acknowledge what’s been destroyed, while not trying quite as hard as we might to find what’s lost or misfiled.’
O happy the isle of the great sea Which the flood reaches after the ebb! As for me, I do not expect Flood after ebb to come to me. There is scarce a little place to-day That I can recognise: What was on the flood Is all on ebb. ‘The Lament of the Old Woman of Beare’, Anonymous, tenth century
Purgatory wasn’t forever living with your mistakes; it was forever defending your decisions.
Glaring absences were a sense people didn’t tend to get until adulthood—if ever.
He had never seen the abbey. It stood on the far side of the river below them. Its grass-floored broken rooms looked like livestock pens. Vaults and end walls rose above the green squares. It looked not like a remnant, but a planned thing, as if it had been built to be ruined.
Perfect description of Tintern Abbey
