Mythology of Blue

• 2024-06-02

  

  Library of Congress, The Floating Church of the Redeemer

• 2024-05-30

  This is the thing: If you have the option to not think about or even consider history, whether you learned it right or not, or whether it even deserves consideration, that’s how you know you’re on board the ship that serves hors d’oeuvres and fluffs your pillows, while others are out at sea, swimming or drowning, or clinging to little inflatable rafts that they have to take turns keeping inflated, people short of breath, who’ve never even heard of the words hors d’oeuvres or fluff.

  Then someone from up on the yacht says, “It’s too bad those people down there are lazy, and not as smart and able as we are up here, we who have built these strong, large, stylish boats ourselves, we who float the seven seas like kings.”

  And then someone else on board says something like, “But your father gave you this yacht, and these are his servants who brought the hors d'oeuvres.” At which point that person gets tossed overboard by a group of hired thugs who’d been hired by the father who owned the yacht, hired for the express purpose of removing any and all agitators on the yacht to keep them from making unnecessary waves, or even referencing the father or the yacht itself.

  Meanwhile, the man thrown overboard begs for his life, and the people on the small inflatable rafts can’t get to him soon enough, or they don’t even try, and the yacht’s speed and weight cause an undertow.

  Then in whispers, while the agitator gets sucked under the yacht, private agreements are made, precautions are measured out, and everyone quietly agrees to keep on quietly agreeing to the implied rule of law and to not think about what just happened.

  Soon, the father, who put these things in place, is only spoken of in the form of lore, stories told to children at night, under the stars, at which point there are suddenly several fathers, noble, wise forefathers. And the boat sails on unfettered.

  -Tommy Orange, There There

• 2024-05-29

  

  Portrait of Barbara Van Beck by an unknown painter

  Source: Wikipedia

• 2024-05-27

  I was being…a mom. Only I was doing it as a buffalo mom: banging my head on my calf, trying to stomp out of place for her, butting her along whatever path I thought would keep her safe or get her somewhere. I was being awkward and aggravating. I had no finesse. But I had love. Always had.

  -Louise Erdrich, The Sentence

• 2024-05-21

  

  natgeofound:

  A woman leans on the entrance to one of Bordighera’s gardens in Italy, 1928.Photograph by Hans Hildenbrand, National Geographic Creative

• 2024-05-16

  I now know pain
  is part of any journey-
  that this is the opposite
  of grief, but grief
  the only way I know
  to describe waiting
  and waiting without
  knowing, hoping one day
  joy will arrive.

  -Kevin Young, Book of Hours: Poems

• 2024-05-14

  The constant happiness is curiosity.
  
  -Alice Munro

• 2024-05-13

  Even though I had a deep conviction that I was good at writing, and that in some way I already was a writer, this conviction was completely independent of my having ever written anything, or being able to imagine ever writing anything, that I thought anyone would like to read.
  
  -Elif Batuman, The Idiot

• 2024-05-10

  Outside there was resounding silence, the black sky was a poem beyond meaning. This world is not conclusion. A species stands beyond, invisible as music but positive as sound.
  
  -Louise Erdrich, The Night Watchman

• 2024-05-02

  The sequence of doors we passed made me think of all the rooms of my past and future:
  The hospital where I was born in, classrooms, tents, churches, offices, hotels, museums, nursing homes, the room I’ll die in (Has it been built yet?). Cars are rooms, so are woods. Skies are ceilings, distances are walls, wombs are rooms made of mothers, graves are rooms made of soil. 
  
  -David Mitchell, Black Swan Green