[elucubrare]

what if the fall of Satan had never happened

Adam touches the bark of the tree & does not eat the apple.

Eve twirls a leaf between her fingers & does not eat the apple.

Time passes and nothing changes.

God watches, hoping that one of them will wonder what the fruit will taste like – that Adam, looking up and thinking what it would feel like as his teeth crisp through the red skin, will reach for it without analysis and bite.

The animals do not eat the apple. Adam and Eve do not eat the apple.

God sends a breath of wind to move the leaves to uncover the apple. Goosebumps wave over Adam and Eve’s skin, and Eve crosses her arms over her chest. They do not eat the apple.

The seasons do not change.

Adam looks up. The apple is smooth and green. Light shines off the skin and shows the paler dapples. His hand snakes up and breaks the twig. The apple rests in his hand.

He bites, and History begins.

[endophoras]

“Keats writes about the tendency of poets to annihilate their own identities by the chameleon-like absorption of other, more ‘poetic’ identities. Emily Dickinson delights in the meeting of another Nobody: ‘I’m Nobody! Who are you? / Are You—Nobody—Too?’ Walt Whitman asks—and answers—with self-assurance, ‘Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)’ T. S. Eliot sees poetry as ‘an escape from personality.’ Faulkner wishes for a ‘markless’ life that could be summari in one sentence, ‘He made his books and died.’”

— Katia Mitova, from “The Pessoa Syndrome”

[adrasteiax]

“Stars. Or rather, the drains of heaven–waiting. Little holes. Little centuries opening just long enough for us to slip through.”

— Ocean Vuong, from Immigrant Haibun in “Night Sky With Exit Wounds”

[violentwavesofemotion]

“How I loved her and loved her. Distant mother, sea, endlessly passionate sea, nothing but water and moon, nights and nights.”

— Juan Ramón Jiménez, tr by Robert Bly, from “Nocturne,” wr. c. 1916

[bllanchedubois]

2019 mood is tenderness

[edenliaothewomb]

Emily Blunt, photographed by Richard Phibbs for Harper’s Bazaar UK, Jan 2019.

[dxncingtilldxwn]

Emily Blunt is my new aesthetic

[adrasteiax]

“Crisp scent of white narcissus: January, and full snow. (…) dreaming of sunlight,”

— Margaret Atwood, from January in “The Door”