Starting over when the story's got an astounding twist

Happy 202nd Beethoven's Ninth Day!

In the Moment

Now:

Out of your whole life give but a moment! 

All of your life that has gone before, 

All to come after it, —so you ignore, 

So you make perfect the present,—condense, 

In a rapture of rage, for perfection’s endowment, 

Thought and feeling and soul and sense—

Merged in a moment which gives me at last 

You around me for once, you beneath me, above me—

Me—sure that despite of time future, time past,—

This tick of our life-time’s one moment you love me! 

How long such suspension may linger? Ah, Sweet—

The moment eternal—just that and no more—

When ecstasy’s utmost we clutch at the core,

While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and lips meet! 

Robert Browning.

#throwbackthursday

Old Man Nugget.  (2020)

Don’t worry all about me

I don’t need you at all.

Though the Mountains Divide And the Oceans Are Wide

Minuscule Things:

There’s a crack in this glass so fine we can’t see it,

and in the blue eye of the candleflame’s needle

there’s a dark fleck, a speck of imperfection

that could contain, like a microchip, an epic

treatise on beauty, except it’s in the eye of the beheld.

And at the base of our glass there’s nothing

so big as a tiny puddle, but an ooze, a viscous

patina like liquefied tarnish. It’s like a text

so short it consists only of the author’s signature,

which has to stand, like the future, for what might

have been: a novel, let’s say, thick with ambiguous life.

Its hero forgets his goal as he nears it, so that it’s

like rain evaporating in the very sight of parched

Saharans on the desert floor. There, by chance, he meets

a thirsty and beautiful woman. What a small world!

William Matthews.

I think that somehow, somewhere inside of us

We must be similar, if not the same.

Boundaries

Venus, Or Maybe Mercury:

The evening star, that is not a star,
comes out, but was there all the time,
over the sunset, that is really
the earth's turning;
and this is what we wish on:
may things be what they are not,
may blessings uncover themselves,
may we be restored to our rightful place
in the center of things,
the sky inflamed with our desires,
crowded with messengers
anxious to carry them out.

Robin Shectman.

There's another way to leave the Garden of Eden

And I'm inclined to try.

Sometimes

They Come:

Sometimes when you have worked day and night,

dog tired, and want to have a good sleep

after a shower and an extra nightcap,

they come. They change the color of your dream:

you moan for the wounds on your body,

you weep for the fates of others.

Only now you dare to fight back with your hands,

but a “bang” or an “ouch”

brings you back to silence and sleeplessness again.

 

See, they come.

Ha Jin.

Give me something I can hold

Give me something to believe in.

More Subtil than Any Beast of the Field

Fruit of Loneliness:

Now for a little I have fed on loneliness
As on some strange fruit from a frost-touched vine—
Persimmon in its yellow comeliness,
Or pomegranate-juice color of wine,
The pucker-mouth crab apple, or late plum—
On fruit of loneliness have I been fed.
But now after short absence I am come
Back from felicity to the wine and bread.
For, being mortal, this luxurious heart
Would starve for you, my dear, I must admit,
If it were held another hour apart
From that food which alone can comfort it—
I am come home to you, for at the end
I find I cannot live without you, friend.

May Sarton.

We Live in a Lovely Neighborhood

NASA HAS RELEASED OVER 12,000 IMAGES OF THE ARTEMIS II MISSION.

Unbelievable perspectives captured by the Crew! The aurora on the eclipse is incredible. pic.twitter.com/deI9LlQ0Jc

— Matt Mullin (@matthewwmullin) May 3, 2026

Incredible stuff.  And so many joyless, ignorant fuckwits in comments.

That's all I got, still suuuuuuper busy.  Go check out all the beauty of our cosmos, captured by brave humans who journeyed so far to offer us an updated overview effect.  

Please don't come for me

I really like this version.  And that one.  And this other one.  I think I've only blogged the middle one before.  Regardless, I really like this song.

In the absence of reliable ghosts

Birthplace with Buried Stones:

Through the portals of that larger chaos,

What we can scarcely conceive of in our minds—

We'd rather think of starry nights with biting flames

Trapped inside tree trunks, a wellspring of desire

Igniting men and gods,

A lava storm where butterflies dance—

Comes bloodletting at the borders,

Severed tongues, riots in the capital,

The unspeakable hurt of history:

So the river Ganga pours into the sea.

Meena Alexander.