Image description: Lightning as viewed from the balcony. Photo by Charles Earl
I continue to write my grief notes in response to the death of my dear friend and ex husband, Ron Saper. Toward the end of this week, the pain feels less accute and less physical. Now the grief comes in small waves as something reminds me of him. I am writing ongoing grief notes to help me cherish the good memories of my time with him from 1982 to 2024. In the meantime, here is another edition of quotes of the week. May they inspire you, sustain you, remind you that you are not alone, and send you down rabbit holes!
Sunday
An artist friend of mine was talking about the idea of what it is to experience rock bottom. And how, in those moments of emotional or psychic collapse or unravelling, we could be feeling a sense of exhilaration. Because they're so often followed by some kind of reawakening or reconfiguring. Often there needs to be some degree of collapse before a phoenix can rise from the ashes…
Eleanor Nairne, curator of Lee Krasner: Living Colour at the Barbican Art Gallery in Lee Krasner: Artistic Trailblazer, Was Lee Krasner the woman who made modern art? by Katy Hessel
Monday
Job security is a myth. There are shorter jobs and longer jobs and you never know which you have until you're fired.
Fain, a character in Anomia by Jade Wallace. P. 133
ps: please read this book. it’’s wonderful!
Tuesday
after so many years of let’s say epistemological oppression from the West, the West is opening up to understand the fact that the notion of space-time, the notion of language, the notion of what is the relationship, for example, between deer and flower, is not at all object-oriented. Now, you have a flurry of books, of explorations, of text. It’s like the Western world is opening up to the flower and at the same time, the Western world is exterminating all the flowers of the planet. We are at the very crucial moment of human history where it will be allowed for this opening to these multiple perceptions of what other worlds really are. We have the chance to shift human culture from destruction to loving, to caring for this extraordinary creation, which is this planet and us as part of the planet.
Cecilia Vicuña in her conversation with David Naimon on Between the Covers about her book the Deer Book and its connection to Jerome Rothenberg’s book The Flower World Variations.
I don’t listen to BtC as much as I used to but every time I do, I continue to be enchanted, inspired and thrilled by the wonderful conversations David has with his guests. I haven’t read Vicuña before, but I will now. I am intrigued by her work.
Wednesday
“I’m really curious about musicality. I’m really interested in the note. It carefully scored that novel. Usually, when I’m writing a novel about the first 90 pages, I just know it back to front and inside out because I’ve written and rewritten it, and I’ll take a word out, then I’ll put it back in and there are connections between a word that appeared three lines earlier. In that regard, it is like poetry, I suppose, but it’s not. It’s a novel. The question is that our concept of the novel is so limited. It’s unbelievable. Let’s think about visual art for a moment. We’re not going into galleries saying, “Art has to have a frame and art can only have a picture of a pear or flowers.” Our concept of what we’ll engage with in visual art is so much broader than what we will expect or anticipate to find in the novel.” Between the Covers Anakana Schofield Interview
https://tinhouse.com/transcript/between-the-covers-anakana-schofield-interview/
I could easily do a whole week of quotes from Between the Covers and more!
Thursday
I have done nothing all summer but wait for myself to be myself again.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Letter to Russel Vernon Hunter, 21st October 1933, as seen on FB on Joanna Penn Cooper’s page.
Friday
In the beginning, god created humanity.
When humanity got too proud, god created death.
When death got too proud, god created art.”
Arthur Flowers as quoted by NISHANT JAIN in “239. At the Sangama of Poetry & Song” in the Substack, The Sneaky Art Post
Saturday
Can we all just give up work, drink tea and write / read poetry to each other?
I cannot find any reason why the world would not be better for that?
@NellyBryce, Poetry Pals
If you have inspiring and intriguing quotes to share, please reach out. I’d love to include them here.
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