December 2011
12 posts
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You must change the whole pattern at once
There are too many complaints about society having to move too fast to keep up with the machine. There is great advantage in moving fast if you move completely, if social, educational, and recreational changes keep pace. You must change the whole pattern at once and the whole group together — and the people themselves must decide to move.
Margaret Mead, in Time magazine, 1954
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The Eye of Picasso
Formerly the eyes had been dissected, distorted, masked, hollowed out, uncovered so as to show their unfathomable depths or covered by the architectural facets of the head, but now this new freedom opened up new situations in which the eyes could become interchangeable with other features. An eye could become a mouth — a devouring eye with aggressive teeth instead of soft protective lashes. It...
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Woman in her own terms
I would like to convert the diary into a long novel. From it I have already borrowed the themes of Winter of Artifice and Under a Glass Bell. I do want to dramatize the conflicts of woman. Conflict between maternal love and creation. Between romanticism and realism. Between expansion and sacrifice. The conflicts of woman in present-day society. Theme of development of woman in her own terms, not...
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Gunshot wound
Fighting the pain only made it worse. Gambol paid attention to the pain, to its shape, its location, and its travels, and tried to stay relaxed. A doorbell rang. Voices spoke in another world, where people had thoughts worth voicing. Laughter. Silence. She came to him with a hypo and said, “The cavalry has arrived.” By this time the pain had conquered every physical part of him and...
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A hiding game
At first piecemeal, then point-blank, he let his attention be drawn to a little scene that was being acted out sublimely, unhampered by writers and directors and producers, five stories below the window and across the street. A fair-sized maple tree stood in front of the girls’ private school — one of four or five trees on that fortunate side of the street — and at the moment a child of...
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Woollen socks, woollen socks!
Shrinking Song Woollen socks, woollen socks! Full of colour, full of clocks! Plain and fancy, yellow, blue, From the counter beam at you. O golden fleece, O magic flocks! O irresistible woollen socks! O happy haberdasher’s clerk Amid that galaxy to work! And now it festers, now it rankles Not to have them round your ankles; Now with your conscience do you spar; They look expensive, and...
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Between me and the rising sun
Cobwebs Between me and the rising sun, This way and that the cobwebs run; Their myriad wavering lines of light Dance up the hill and out of sight. There is no land possesses half So many lines of telegraph As those the spider-elves have spun Between me and the rising sun.
Edith L. M. King
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Preparing to listen
Celia halted, raised her clasped hands though she knew his eyes were closed and said:
‘Will you please pay attention to this, tell me what it means and what I am to do?’
‘Stop!’ said Mr Kelly. His attention could not be mobilized like that at a moment’s notice. His attention was dispersed. Part was with his caecum, which was wagging its tail again; part with his...