I can't sleep…
we touch each other.
how?
with wings that beat…
— Rainer Maria Rilke, in an inscription to Marina Tsvetaeva, from Letters Summer 1926: Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Rilke
Photo: DK. Gull. 6:56 am, February 14, 2021. 28° F, feels like 20° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
You can never have too much sky.
You can fall asleep and wake up drunk on sky, and sky can keep you safe when you are sad.
—Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street
Notes:
I looked at the photograph he had shown me, the shadowy ridged declivity in the blasted planetary surface…I felt change far beneath me, moving deep beneath the surface of things, like the plates of the earth blindly moving in their black traces.
— Rachel Cusk, Transit (Picador; December 19, 2017)
Notes:
Life on Earth is quite a bargain.
Dreams, for one, don’t charge admission.
Illusions are costly only when lost.
The body has its own installment plan.
And as an extra, added feature,
you spin on the planets’ carousel for free,
and with it you hitch a ride on the intergalactic blizzard,
with times so dizzying
that nothing here on Earth can even tremble.
Just take a closer look:
the table stands exactly where it stood,
the piece of paper still lies where it was spread,
through the open window comes a breath of air,
the walls reveal no terrifying cracks
through which nowhere might extinguish you.
— Wisława Szymborska, from “Here”
Notes:
I sat on my patio, wrapped in a blanket…when I noticed that my room was not on the ground floor but on the subfloor beneath, making it closer to the edge where the beach began…I turned on the radio and Nina Simone was singing I Put a Spell on You. The seals were silent, and I could hear the waves in the distance, winter on the West Coast. I sank into bed and slept heavily.
~ Patti Smith, Year of the Monkey (Alfred A. Knopf, September 24, 2019)
Photo: Dream Inn Santa Cruz, CA by Angelo DeSantis