7/13/25

I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer.

You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away.

What other answer would suffice?

Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis

7/12/25

Man is the measure.

“The Machine Stops” by EM Forster

7/11/25

Men, ye seem the years; so brimming life is gulped and gone. Steward, refill!

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

7/10/25

To carry something was to hump it, as when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps. In its intransitive form, to hump meant to walk, or to march, but it implied burdens far beyond the intransitive.

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

7/9/25

Be near me now,

My tormenter, my love, be near me—

At this hour when night comes down,

When, having drunk from the gash of sunset,

darkness comes

With the balm of musk in its hands, its diamond

lancets,

When it comes with cries of lamentation,

with laughter with songs; Its blue-gray anklets of pain clinking with every step.

At this hour when hearts, deep in their hiding places,

Have begun to hope once more, when they start their vigil

For hands still enfolded in sleeves;

When wine being poured makes the sound

of inconsolable children who, though you try with all your heart,

cannot be soothed. When whatever you want to do cannot be done,

When nothing is of any use;

—At this hour when night comes down, When night comes, dragging its long face,

dressed in mourning,

Be with me,

My tormenter, my love, be near me.

”Be Near Me” by Faiz Ahmed Faiz

7/8/25

“Their greenness was apparent at a glance…Their uniforms hung light on them, without the greasy sag of a thousand sweat baths.”

In Pharoh’s Army by Tobias Wolff

7/7/25

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—I could not bring

My passions from a common spring—

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow—I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone—

And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—

Then—in my childhood—in the dawn

Of a most stormy life—was drawn

From ev’ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still—

From the torrent, or the fountain—

From the red cliff of the mountain—

From the sun that ’round me roll’d

In its autumn tint of gold—

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass’d me flying by—

From the thunder, and the storm—

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view—

“Alone” by Edgar Allan Poe

7/6/25

"But yield who will to their separation,

My object in living is to unite

My avocation and my vocation

As my two eyes make one in sight.

Only where love and need are one,

And the work is play for mortal stakes,

Is the deed ever really done

For Heaven and the future's sakes.”

Excerpt from “Two Tramps in Mud Time” by Robert Frost

7/5/25

“To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;

To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause—there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.”

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

7/4/25

“For we cannot tarry here,

We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,

We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,

Pioneers! O pioneers!

O you youths, Western youths,

So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,

Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the fore-

most,

Pioneers! O pioneers!

Have the elder races halted?

Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond

the seas?

We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,

Pioneers! O pioneers!”

“Pioneers! O Pioneers!” from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

7/3/25

“My library was dukedom large enough.”

Prospero from The Tempest by William Shakespeare

7/2/25

“The past is never dead. It's not even past.”

William Faulkner

7/1/25

Then a mason came forth and said, Speak to us of Houses.

And he answered and said:

Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness ere you build a house within the city walls.

For even as you have home-comings in your twilight, so has the wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone.

Your house is your larger body.

It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it is not dreamless. Does not your house dream? and dreaming, leave the city for a grove or hill-top?

Would that I could gather your houses into my hand, and like a sower scatter them in forest and meadow.

Would the valleys were your streets, and the green paths your alleys, that you might seek one another through vineyards, and come with the fragrance of the earth in your garments.

But these things are not yet to be.

In their fear your forefathers gathered you too near together. And that fear shall endure a little longer. A little longer shall your city walls separate your hearths from your fields.

And tell me, people of Orphalese, what have you in these houses? And what is it you guard with fastened doors?

Have you peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power?

Have you rememberances, the glimmering arches that span the summits of the mind?

Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain?

Tell me, have you these in your houses?

Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master?

Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires.

Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron.

It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of the flesh.

It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistledown like fragile vessels.

Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.

But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed.

Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.

It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye.

You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down.

You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living.

And though of magnificence and splendour, your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing.

For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.

“On Houses” in The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

6/30/25

“For a Khan of the plank, and a king of the sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was Ahab.”

Moby Dick, Hermen Melville

6/29/25

“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.”

Proverbs 25:2, NKJV

6/28/25

“Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.”

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

6/27/25

“I am a cage, searching for a bird.”

Franz Kafka

6/26/25

“There was an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate, unsurrenderable willfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance…And not only that, but moody strikes Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his face; in all the nameless regal over-bearing dignity of some mighty woe.”

Moby Dick by Herman Melville

6/25/25

Then said Almitra, Speak to us of Love.

And he raised his head and looked upon

the people, and there fell a stillness upon

them. And with a great voice he said:

When love beckons to you, follow him,

Though his ways are hard and steep.

And when his wings enfold you yield to

him,

Though the sword hidden among his

pinions may wound you.

And when he speaks to you believe in

him,

Though his voice may shatter your dreams

as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he

crucify you. Even as he is for your growth

so is he for your pruning.

Even as he ascends to your height and

caresses your tenderest branches that quiver

in the sun,

So shall he descend to your roots and

shake them in their clinging to the earth.

“On Love” from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

6/24/25

A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?

“Song of Myself 6” in Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman