(no subject)
Our words of wisdom for today come from Pamela Anderson and Charo.
"When in doubt, put it in your mouth." - Pamela Anderson
"Women should never go to sleep on their sides because spooning leads to forking." - Charo.
***
Also, poetry from Marc Chagall, Emily Dickinson, and love letters between Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf
To Bella
Marc Chagall
However my sun shines at night
when I sleep all covered with colors,
in a bed of pictures,
when your foot in my mouth
chokes me, tortures me.
I awake in despair
of a new day, my still undeveloped,
colorless desires.
I run up there,
towards my dry brushes
and, like Christ, I am crucified,
nailed to my easel.
Am I dead, I myself?
Is my picture finished?
Everything shines, everything clings, everything flows.
Stop! Another dab
of black.
Red, blue have settled in
and this worries me
Listen to me
funeral bed,
parched grass,
dying love.
To a new beginning
Listen to me.
***
GOING to him! Happy letter! Tell him--
Tell him the page I didn't write;
Tell him I only said the syntax,
And left the verb and the pronoun out.
Tell him just how the fingers hurried,
Then how they waded, slow, slow, slow;
And then you wished you had eyes in your pages,
So you could see what moved them so.
Tell him it wasn't a practised writer,
You guessed, from the way the sentence toiled;
You could hear the bodice tug, behind you,
As if it held but the might of a child;
You almost pitied it, you, it worked so.
***
Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf
...I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your undumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn't even feel it. And yet I believe you'll be sensible of a little gap. But you'd clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it would lose a touch of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is really just a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan't make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this--But oh my dear, I can't be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-ofish I can be with people I don't love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences, And I don't really resent it.
Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West
Look Here Vita--throw over your man, and we'll go to Hampton Court and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I'll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriad--They won't stir by day, only by dark on the river. Think of that. Throw over your man, I say, and come.
***
Tomorrow (or whenever I get the opportunity to log on):
Alfred de Musset to George Sand. George Sand is a girl, by the way.
Jack Kerouac to Sebastian Sampras. Both boys.
Dylan Thomas to Caitlin Thomas. Hetero.
Marcel Proust to Daniel Halevy. Slash.
All of these come from The 50 Greatest Love Letters of All Time
"When in doubt, put it in your mouth." - Pamela Anderson
"Women should never go to sleep on their sides because spooning leads to forking." - Charo.
***
Also, poetry from Marc Chagall, Emily Dickinson, and love letters between Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf
To Bella
Marc Chagall
However my sun shines at night
when I sleep all covered with colors,
in a bed of pictures,
when your foot in my mouth
chokes me, tortures me.
I awake in despair
of a new day, my still undeveloped,
colorless desires.
I run up there,
towards my dry brushes
and, like Christ, I am crucified,
nailed to my easel.
Am I dead, I myself?
Is my picture finished?
Everything shines, everything clings, everything flows.
Stop! Another dab
of black.
Red, blue have settled in
and this worries me
Listen to me
funeral bed,
parched grass,
dying love.
To a new beginning
Listen to me.
***
GOING to him! Happy letter! Tell him--
Tell him the page I didn't write;
Tell him I only said the syntax,
And left the verb and the pronoun out.
Tell him just how the fingers hurried,
Then how they waded, slow, slow, slow;
And then you wished you had eyes in your pages,
So you could see what moved them so.
Tell him it wasn't a practised writer,
You guessed, from the way the sentence toiled;
You could hear the bodice tug, behind you,
As if it held but the might of a child;
You almost pitied it, you, it worked so.
***
Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf
...I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your undumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn't even feel it. And yet I believe you'll be sensible of a little gap. But you'd clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it would lose a touch of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is really just a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan't make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this--But oh my dear, I can't be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-ofish I can be with people I don't love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences, And I don't really resent it.
Virginia Woolf to Vita Sackville-West
Look Here Vita--throw over your man, and we'll go to Hampton Court and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I'll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriad--They won't stir by day, only by dark on the river. Think of that. Throw over your man, I say, and come.
***
Tomorrow (or whenever I get the opportunity to log on):
Alfred de Musset to George Sand. George Sand is a girl, by the way.
Jack Kerouac to Sebastian Sampras. Both boys.
Dylan Thomas to Caitlin Thomas. Hetero.
Marcel Proust to Daniel Halevy. Slash.
All of these come from The 50 Greatest Love Letters of All Time