01UndatedTHE PRESOCRATIC PROBLEM[all snap flags]Parmenides named his gun The Hot Power of the Stars. His gun was one, uncreated, imperishable, timeless, changeless, perfect, spherical. Spherical was the problem.Anne Carson / quote ↗
03UndatedCome here, let me share a bit of wisdom with you.Have you given much thought to our mortal condition?Probably not. Why would you? Well, listen.There's no one alivewho can say if he will be tomorrow.Our fate moves invisibly! A mystery.No one can teach it, no one can grasp it.Accept this! Cheer up! Have a drink!You can let the rest go. Am I making sense?I think so. How about a drink.Put on a garland. I'm surethe happy splash of wine will cure your mood.We're all mortal you know. Think mortal.Because my theory is, there's no such thing as life,Anne Carson / quote ↗
04UndatedTo be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope.Anne Carson / quote ↗
05UndatedNow every mortal has painand sweat is constant,but if there is anything dearer than being alive,it's dark to me.We humans seem disastrously in love with this thing(whatever it is) that glitters on the earth--we call it life. We know no other.The underworld's a blankand all the rest just fantasy.Anne Carson / quote ↗
06UndatedHere we go mother on the shipless ocean.Pity us, pity the ocean, here we go.Anne Carson / quote ↗
07UndatedThat night we made love "the real way" which we had not yet attemptedalthough married six months.Big mystery. No one knew where to put their leg and to this day I'm not surewe got it right.He seemed happy. You're like Venice he said beautifully.Early next dayI wrote a short talk ("On Defloration") which he stole and had publishedin a small quarterly magazine.Overall this was a characteristic interaction between us.Or should I say ideal.Neither of us had ever seen Venice.Anne Carson / quote ↗
08Undated[Short Talk on Sylvia Plath] Did you see her mother on television? She said plain, burned things. She said I thought it an excellent poem but it hurt me. She did not say jungle fear. She did not say jungle hatred wild jungle weeping chop it back chop it. She said self-government she said end of the road. She did not say humming in the middle of the air what you came for chop.Anne Carson / quote ↗
09UndatedProwling the meanings of a word, prowling the history of a person, no use expecting a flood of light. Human words have no main switch. But all those little kidnaps in the dark. And then the luminous, big, shivering, discandied, unrepentant, barking web of them that hangs in your mind when you turn back to the page you were trying to translate...Anne Carson / quote ↗
10UndatedWords bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.Anne Carson / quote ↗
11UndatedThen the edge asserts itself. You are not a god. You are not that enlarged self. Indeed, you are not even a whole self, as you now see. Your new knowledge of possibilities is also a knowledge of what is lacking in the actual.Anne Carson / quote ↗
12UndatedWhat is a quote? A quote (cognate with quota) is a cut, a section, a slice of someone's orange. You suck the slice, toss the rind, skate away.Anne Carson / quote ↗
13UndatedCould you visit me in dreams? That would cheer me.Sweet to see friends in the night, however short the time.Anne Carson / quote ↗
15UndatedXXIV. And kneeling at the edge of the transparent sea I shall shape for myself a new heart from salt and mudAnne Carson / quote ↗
16UndatedKreon: here are Kreon's verbs for todayAdjudicateLegislateScandalizeCapitalizehere are Kreon's nounsMenReasonTreasonDeathShip of StateMineChorus: "mine" isn't a nounKreon: it is if you capitalize itAnne Carson / quote ↗
19UndatedNovels institutionalize the ruse of eros. It becomes a narrative texture of sustained incongruence, emotional and cognitive. It permits the reader to stand in triangular relation to the characters in the story and reach into the text after the objects of their desire, sharing their longing but also detached from it, seeing their view of reality but also its mistakenness. It is almost like being in love.Anne Carson / quote ↗
20UndatedThe words we read and words we write never say exactly what we mean. The people we love are never just as we desire them. The two symbola never perfectly match. Eros is in between.Anne Carson / quote ↗
22UndatedFriends disappear or they are powerless. This is what misfortune meansan acid test of friendship.I wouldn't wish it on anyone.Anne Carson / quote ↗
23UndatedHer marble tears run down her marble face.A stranger is someone who has no handkerchief.Who has no words to say.Whose shadow mind is burningas he sits watching her handsand thinks how rare!to see a Romantalkwith no gestures at all.Anne Carson / quote ↗
24UndatedGrief and rage--you need to contain that, to put a frame around it, where it can play itself out without you or your kin having to die. There is a theory that watching unbearable stories about other people lost in grief and rage is good for you--may cleanse you of your darkness. Do you want to go down to the pits of yourself all alone? Not much. What if an actor could do it for you? Isn't that why they are called actors? They act for you. You sacrifice them to action. And this sacrifice is a mode of deepest intimacy of you with your own life. Within it you watch [yourself] act out the present or possible organization of your nature. You can be aware of your own awareness of this nature as you never are at the moment of experience. The actor, by reiterating you, sacrifices a moment of his own life in order to give you a story of yours.Anne Carson / quote ↗
