“Hitler, as the point of convergence for so many nostalgias, resentments and anxieties, became a historical figure.”
– Joachim Fest, Hitler
In the wake of the Sandy Hook School Shooting in 2012, President Obama gave a press conference during which he beseeched Americans to support the introduction of basic mental health screenings for gun buyers. Continue reading
My love sets her jaw upon her anger
Sits with her back towards the High street
Collagen asymmetry, botox rictus
Her cheek a chiaroscuro of hunger
I sit opposite, without an answer
Observed by the pitiless eye of my espresso
Until the afternoon is torn in two
By raucous farting from a steely sphincter
A demon-fish, regal, mauls the bitumen
But not the crystal blankness of its eye
Nor the callous forgery of its heart
Hold any more room for love than friction
My love, an orchid of licentious hunger
Swoons toward the sound of summer thunder
An ex-girlfriend of mine turns 28 tomorrow. I have spent the last few weeks writing her a sonnet, to the surprise and consternation of the friends with whom I have discussed it. Continue reading
Your voice is a caress most definite
On velvet footfalls your words descend
The vertiginous staircase within my head
To take up mysterious residence Continue reading
4.
‘Wrapping my coat around me like my own sweet shadow, I unscrewed the bottle of pills and began taking them swiftly, between gulps of water, one by one by one.
At first nothing happened, but as I approached the bottom of the bottle, red and blue lights began to flash before my eyes. The bottle slid from my fingers and I lay down.
The silence drew off, baring the pebbles and shells and all the tatty wreckage of my life. Then, at the rim of the vision, it gathered itself, and in one sweeping tide, rushed me to sleep.’
p.163 Continue reading
3.
“I thought I would swim out until I was too tired to swim back. As I paddled on, my heartbeat boomed like a dull motor in my ears. I am I am I am.”
P. 152
I watched my grandmother Joanna die, day by day. Continue reading
2.
“A dispassionate white sun shone at the summit of the sky. I wanted to hone myself on it till I grew saintly and thin and essential as the blade of a knife.”
– The Bell Jar Page 90.
Simone De Beauvoir writes in The Second Sex that because men are encouraged to fight, they come to trust themselves and their ability to grapple with the world and its challenges. Continue reading
