multicade

"Take pictures of yourselves, he had said, pictures every moment of the day. That's
what you should do, that's what you do do. You drop them and they lie around and other people get into them and turn them into art. Every second take a picture and so you will see that the lives we lead consist of still moments
and nothing but. There are many still moments, all different. Be awake but inwards
sleeping. You have all these alternatives. Think that way and you will discover still more. Cast out serpents. I am here but equally I am elsewhere. I don't need so much economy--it's the pot-training of the child where the limitation starts. Forget it, live in all regions, part, split wide, be fuzzy, try all places at the same time indecisivise time itself; shower out your photographs to the benefit of all. Make yourself a million and so you achieve a great still trajectory, not longwise in life but sideways, a unilateral immortality. Try it, friends, try it with me, join me, join me the great merry multicade!"

from Barefoot in the Head by Brian Aldiss

just something I stumbled across shifting SciFi the other day.

Rasputina

In the beginning of the twentieth century
Russia found itself at a rasputiye, (crossroad)
When all of a sudden there appeared a rasputnik (debauched person)
And Russia became mired in a rasputitsa. (season of horribly muddy roads)

M. Tarlova

from Rasputin's Daugher by Robert Alexander

me & my lovely

with a gemlike flame

"To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ectasy, is success in life...We are all under sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve...we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more...our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time. Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love...Only be sure it passion--that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake."
Walter Pater, The Renaissance

UnAnswered Prayers

Somewhere in this world there exists an exceptional philosopher named Florie Rotondo.

The other day I came across one of her ruminations printed in a magazine devoted to the writings of school children. It said: If I could do anything, I would go to the middle of our planet, Earth, and seek uranium, rubies, and gold. I'd look for Unspoiled Monsters. Then I'd move to the country. Florie Rotondo, age eight.

Florie, honey, I know just what you mean--even if you don't: how could you, age eight?

Because I have been to the middle of our planet; at any rate, have suffered the tribulations such a journey might inflict. I have searched for uranium, rubies, gold, and, en route, have observed others in these pursuits. And listen, Florie--I have met Unspoiled Monsters! Spoiled ones, too. But the unspoiled variety is the rava avis: white truffles compared to black; bitter wild asparagus as opposed to garden-grown. The one thing I haven't done is move to the country.


Unanswered Prayers, Truman Capote