The film of evening light made the red earth lucent, so that its dimensions were deepened, so that a stone, a post, a building, had greater depth, and more solidity than in any daytime light; and these objects were curiously more individual- a post was more essentially a post, set off from the earth it stood in and the field of corn it stood out against. All plants were individuals, not the mass of crop; and the ragged willow tree was itself, standing free of all other willow trees. The earth contributed a light to the evening. The front of the gray, paintless house, facing the west, was luminous as the moon is. The gray dusty truck, in the yard before the door, stood out magically in this light, in the overdrawn perspective of a stereopticon.

The people too were changed in the evening, quieted. They seemed to be part of an organization of the unconscious. They obeyed impulses which registered only faintly in their thinking minds. Their eyes were inward and quiet, and their eyes, too, were lucent in the evening, lucent in dusty faces.


The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

"An' I got thinkin', on'y it wasn't thinkin, it was deeper down than thinkin'. I got thinkin' how we was holy when we was one thing, an' mankin' was holy when it was one thing. An' it on'y got unholy when one mis'able little fella got the bit in his teeth an' run off his own way, kickin' an' draggin' an' fightin'. Fella like that bust the holiness. But when they're all workin' together, not one fella for another fella, but one fella kind of harnessed to the whole shebang—that's right, that's holy. An' then I got thinkin' I don't even know what I mean by holy."

He paused, but the bowed heads stayed down, for they had been trained like dogs to rise at the "amen" signal. "I can't say no grace like I use' ta say. I'm glad of the holiness of breakfast. I'm glad there's love here. That's all." 

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

I found some pretty awesome Lord of the Rings fan art that I did in kindergarten. (My dad read it to us multiple times as kids - yes, we are a whole family of nerds.)

Very creative spellings here. The Lodhi of the Regs? Belbagns?

I like that I refer to Aragorn by his full, proper honorific: Arawgorn Son of Araton.

I contemplate a tree. 

I can accept it as a picture: a rigid pillar in a flood of light, or splashes of green traversed by the gentleness of the blue silver ground.

I can feel it as movement: the flowing veins around the sturdy, striving core, the sucking of the roots, the breathing of the leaves, the infinite commerce with earth and air--and the growing itself in its darkness.

I can assign it to a species and observe it as an instance, with an eye to its construction and its way of life.

I can overcome its uniqueness and form so rigorously that I recognize it only as an expression of the law--those laws according to which a constant opposition of forces is continually adjusted, or those laws according to which the elements mix and separate.

I can dissolve it into a number, into a pure relation between numbers, and eternalize it.

Throughout all of this the tree remains my object and has its place and its time span, its kind and condition.

But it can also happen, if will and grace are joined, that as I contemplate the tree I am drawn into a relation, and the tree ceases to be an It. The power of exclusiveness has seized me.

This does not require me to forego any of the modes of contemplation. There is nothing that I must not see in order to see, and there is no knowledge that I must forget. Rather is everything, picture and movement, species and instance, law and number included and inseparably fused.

Whatever belongs to the tree is included: its form and its mechanics, its colors and its chemistry, its conversation with the elements and its conversation with the stars--all this in its entirety.

The tree is no impression, no play of my imagination, no aspect of a mood; it confronts me bodily and has to deal with me as I must deal with it--only differently.

One should not try to dilute the meaning of the relation: relation is reciprocity.

Does the tree then have consciousness, similar to our own? I have no experience of that. But thinking that you have brought this off in your own case, must you again divide the indivisible? What I encounter is neither the soul of a tree nor a dryad, but the tree itself.

-Martin Buber, I and Thou

Source: http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Jewish_Holidays/Tu_Bishvat/Ideas_and_Beliefs/Rabbinic/Every_Person_is_a_Tree/I_and_Thou_a_Tree.shtml

Your love is different from mine. What I mean is, when you close your eyes, for that moment, the center of the universe comes to reside within you. And you become a small figure within that vastness, which spreads without limit behind you, and continues to expand at tremendous speed, to engulf all of my past, even before I was born, and every word I've ever written, and each view I've seen, and all the constellations, and the darkness of outer space that surrounds the small blue ball that is earth. Then, when you open your eyes, all that disappears.
I anticipate the next time you are troubled and must close your eyes again.
The way we think may be completely different, but you and I are an ancient, archetypal couple, the original man and woman. We are the model for Adam and Eve. For all couples in love, there comes a moment when a man gazes at a woman with the very same kind of realization. It is an infinite helix, the dance of two souls resonating, like the twist of DNA, like the vast universe.
Oddly, at that moment, she looked over at me and smiled. As if in response to what I'd been thinking, she said, "That was beautiful. I'll never forget it."

-Banana Yoshimoto, "Helix" (from her collection Lizard)

Mr. Tench's father had been a dentist too -- his first memory was finding a discarded cast in a wastepaper basket -- the rough toothless gaping mouth of clay, like something dug up in Dorset -- Neanderthal or Pitecanthropus. It had been his favourite toy: they tried to tempt him with Meccano, but fate had struck. There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in. The hot wet river-port and the vultures lay in the wastepaper basket, and he picked them out. We should be thankful we cannot see the horrors and degradations lying around our childhood, in cupboards and bookshelves, everywhere.

- Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory

Books/movies documentation, 2015

I've skipped a few years, but I'm determined to continue keeping lists of the books/movies that I've read and watched. This list will be updated as the year progresses.

2015

Books reread will be marked like this: Joyce's Voices*

Books read more than once will be denoted like this: Joyce's Voices (3x)

(These notations also apply to movies rewatched or watched more than once.)

Books
 JANUARY

1. The Dead Secret, Wilkie Collins (1857)
2. The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins (1859)
3. Sexing the Cherry, Jeanette Winterson (1989)
4. The Odyssey, Homer, tr. Fagles (hella old)*
FEBRUARY
5. The Book of Job, anon., tr. Scheindlin (hella old)*
6. Casino Royale, Ian Fleming (1953)
7. The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene (1940)*

8. Dr. No, Ian Fleming (1958)
MARCH
9. Lizard, Banana Yoshimoto (1993)
10. The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses, Kevin Birmingham (2014)
11. The Women of Brewster Place, Gloria Naylor (1987)
APRIL
12. I and Thou, Martin Buber (1937)
13. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck (1939)
14. The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins (1868)
MAY
:(
JUNE
15. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (1979)
16. The Happy Prince and Other Tales, Oscar Wilde (1888)
17. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Douglas Adams (1980)
JULY
18. The Witches, Roald Dahl (1983)
AUGUST
19. Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion (1968)

Movies
JANUARY

1. The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)*
2. Kingpin (Peter & Bobby Farrelly, 1996)
3. Repo Man (Alex Cox, 1984)*
4. Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1988)
5. House (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)
6. City Lights (Charlie Chaplin, 1931)*
7. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Weine, 1921)
FEBRUARY
8. A bout de souffle (Breathless) (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960) 
9. Joe Vs. the Volcano (John Patrick Shanley, 1990)
10. Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)*
11. We Are the Best! (Vi är bäst!) (Lukas Moodysson, 2013)
12. They Live (John Carpenter, 1988)*
13. Blue Velvet (David Lynch, (1986)*
14. Whiplash (Damien Chazelle, 2014) 

MARCH

15. Candyman (Bernard Rose, 1992)

16. Wait Until Dark (Terence Young, 1967)

17. The Visitor (Guilio Paradisi/Michael J. Paradise, 1979)
18. Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983)
19. Bram Stoker's Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992)
20. Mary and Max (Adam Elliot, 2009)
21. It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, 2015)
22. Phantasm (Don Coscarelli, 1979)
APRIL
23. My Dinner With Andre (Louis Malle, 1981)

24. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Mike Newell, 2005)*
25. Star Wars Episode VI Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand, 1983)*
26. Harvey (Henry Koster, 1950)*
27. Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston, 1948) (2x)
28. The Seven Year Itch (Billy Wilder, 1955)
29. The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky, 2012)
MAY
30. Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978)
31. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks, 1953)*
32. The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014)*
33. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962)*
34. In Bruges (Martin McDonagh, 2008)*
35. The Children's Hour (William Wyler, 1961)
36. Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989)*
JUNE
37. French Kiss (Lawrence Kasden, 1995)
38. Tampopo (Juzo Itami, 1985)
39. Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997)
JULY
40. Withnail and I (Bruce Robinson, 1987)*
41. Kung Fu Panda (Mark Osborne and John Stevenson, 2008)*
42. The Reader (Stephen Daldry, 2008)
43. Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)*
44. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks, 1953)*
AUGUST
45. 

There was a man of double deed
Sowed his garden full of seed.
And when that seed began to grow
'Twas like a garden full of snow.
When the snow began to melt
'Twas like a ship without a belt.
When the ship began to sail
'Twas like a bird without a tail.
When the bird began to fly
'Twas like an eagle in the sky.
When the sky began to roar
'Twas like a lion at the door.
When the door began to crack
'Twas like a stick across my back.
When my back began to smart
'Twas like a penknife in my heart.
When my heart began to bleed
'Twas death and death and death indeed.

(Anonymous)

It is well known that the ceiling of one room is the floor of another, but the household ignores this ever-downward necessity and continues ever upward, celebrating ceilings but denying floors, and so their house never ends and they must travel by winch or rope from room to room, calling to one another as they go.
The house is empty now, but it was there, dangling over dinner, illuminated by conversation and rich in the juices of a wild duck, that I noticed a woman whose face was a sea voyage I had not the courage to attempt.

-Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry

There was talk of witchcraft but what is stronger than love?

-Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry