Category Archives: Quote

Engleza de joi/ Womb

Womb = uterus; a place where something is generated.

“You look at trees and called them “trees,” and probably you do not think twice about the word. You call a star a “star,” and think nothing more of it. But you must remember that these words, “tree,” “star,” were (in their original forms) names given to these objects by people with very different views from yours. To you, a tree is simply a vegetable organism, and a star simply a ball of inanimate matter moving along a mathematical course. But the first men to talk of “trees” and “stars” saw things very differently. To them, the world was alive with mythological beings. They saw the stars as living silver, bursting into flame in answer to the eternal music. They saw the sky as a jeweled tent, and the earth as the womb whence all living things have come. To them, the whole of creation was “myth-woven and elf patterned.”
J.R.R. Tolkien

 

 

Art by Ian Miller.

Vanlifer of the heart

The heart has a puzzling shape
The moment you thought it broke
Becomes twofold.

The moment in a relinquishing evening
You thought it whole
It breaks
Until the morning
When the shape is restored
And your feelings pour like early April rain
Over thirsty lilacs…

“The heart is an organ of fire” –Michael Ondaatje

It flickers and lights the embers of any glib desire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Art by Georg Janny.

 

Love

“Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.”
Ray Bradbury (August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Art by David Wyatt.

Engleza de joi/ Asbestos

Asbestos = a soft, greyish-white material that does not burn, used especially in the past as a protection against fire and as a form of insulation.

“Some writers can handle lava with bare hands, but I’m not so tough, my skin is not asbestos. And in fact I have no interest in confession. My games are transformation and invention.”
Ursula K. Le Guin

 

 

 

 

 

 

Art by Dani Soon.

Engleza de joi/ Symbiotic

Symbiotic = involving interaction between two different organisms living in close physical association.

“Stories … are genuinely symbiotic organisms that we live with, that allow human beings to advance.”
Neil Gaiman

 

Art by Rob Rey.

Lure of the sea

There are countless lures in our lives or it may be that our lives are made of lures. Mine is the sea. I hear its song all over the year and like Ulysses’ sailors I am not wise enough to deafen my ears. I am trapped into its blue.

The sea knows things and is a cure. For loneliness, grief, unhappiness and love, as Mr. Somerset Maugham wisely put:

“You know, when one’s in love,’ I said, ‘and things go all wrong, one’s terribly unhappy and one thinks one won’t ever get over it. But you’ll be astounded to learn what the sea will do.

Well, love isn’t a good sailor and it languishes on a sea voyage. You’ll be surprised when you have the Atlantic between you and Larry to find how slight the pang is that before you sailed seemed intolerable.”
W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge

So when one’s in love, get on a boat… I cannot help but love Somerset’s magic realism.

I illustrate with pictures from my short May holiday in the Ionian.

The man with the crimson heart

I know someone
who kisses the way
a flower opens,
but more rapidly. – Mary Oliver

I know someone
who breathes as soft
as stories
find nests into lives.

I know someone
who touches
the sunset light
in the sycamores.

I know someone
who kisses
in Binary Code
One in spirit
One in flesh…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Art by Viktor Vasnetsov.