Wednesday, November 16, 2022

sigh

 ““The appeal of finding beauty in darkness is something really interesting. There’s an old Italian term called terribilita, which was used to describe a beauty in nature that could be terrifying. For example, you have a really dangerous storm and this is a very different kind of beauty that can kill you. This is the thing that I really love.””

— -Abel Korzeniowski

 


Before my grandfather died, I asked him what sort 

of horse he had growing up. He said, 

Just a horse. My horse

with such tenderness 

it rubbed the bones in the ribs all wrong. 

I have always been too sensitive, a weeper 

 from a long line of weepers. 

I am the hurting kind. I keep searching for proof.





Monday, September 24, 2018

Hell Explained by a Chemistry student !

HELL EXPLAINED BY A CHEMISTRY STUDENT

Topic: Humor via laugh out loud news

The following is an actual question given on a University of Arizona chemistry mid-term, and an actual answer turned in by a student.
The answer by this student was so ‘profound’ that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well:
The Question:

Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle’s Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving, which is unlikely. 
I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. 
Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let’s look at the different religions that exist in the world today.
Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. 
Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle’s Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. 
If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
2. 
If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 
‘It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,' 
and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. 
The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct….. …leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa repeatedly kept shouting 
'Oh my God, I’m coming!’

”THIS STUDENT RECEIVED AN A+”

by reddit user PirbyKuckett 


Monday, January 9, 2017

Slim darling...

one can learn to understand people when one finds themselves in their shoes_ S.L.



Slim darling, you came along and into my arms and into my heart and all the real true love I have is yours – and now I’m afraid you won’t understand and that you’ll become impatient and that I’ll lose you – but even if that happened, I wouldn’t stop loving you for you are my last love and all the rest of my life I shall love you and watch you and be ready to help you should you ever need help.
All the nice things I do each day would be so much sweeter and so much gayer if you were with me. I find myself saying a hundred times a day, ‘If Slim could only see that’ or ‘I wish Slim could hear this.’ I want to make a new life with you – I want all the friends I’ve lost to meet you and know you and love you as I do – and live again with you, for the past years have been terribly tough, damn near drove me crazy. You’ll soon be here, Baby, and when you come you’ll bring everything that’s important to me in this world with you.
— Humphrey Bogart’s letter to Lauren Bacall


Friday, November 11, 2016

ξέρω ότι ξεχνάω τα λόγια 
μου μένει μόνο η στιγμή, πού ήμασταν, πώς ήμασταν, πώς μ΄έκαναν να νιώσω 

κάποτε ίσως ξεχνάω και τι έφαγα χτες, ίσως να μην γνωρίζω πώς να μαζέψω τα κουράγια μου ή πώς να πάω παρακάτω, ίσως να τρώω το palmolive σαν τη μαμά του Νίκου που γύριζε στην εθνική ξυπόλυτη

φοβάμαι μην ξεχάσω ότι 

αθώα μέσα από τα γέλια μας είπε: 

εμείς θα πεθάνουμε μαζί 
(του ρίχνω 19 χρόνια) 

και λίγο αργότερα
πριν καν μιλήσει το τζακ (τα πίνει όλα straight χωρίς παγάκια και άλλες μαλακίες) :

να τώρα θέλω να σε ζωγραφίσω, έτσι όπως πέφτει το φως στο πρόσωπό σου, θέλω να βγάλω το μπλοκ και να σε ζωγραφίσω εδώ που καθόμαστε, έτσι όπως γελάς, έτσι όπως κάθονται οι σκιές από την απο κει μεριά, και πέφτουν πάνω στα βυζιά σου και στα μάτια σου, εδώ και ώρα σε κοιτάω, έχω απομνημονεύσει κάθε σου έκφραση, κάθε γραμμή, πως γυρίζεις το πρόσωπο, πως κοιτάζεις, πως στρίβεις το λαιμό σου, και τις προάλλες που καθόμασταν στον ημιόροφο και έπεφτε πάνω σου το φως το ίδιο έκανα, γαμώτο θέλω να σε ζωγραφίσω _ 









Thursday, October 6, 2016

a thank you note

my friend

I know you aren't good with words
that's where I casually do better 
given the time ahead I've had 
to state the implicit 

that's my wont 
yours is a good edit 

I first noticed how you did it 
back in the day when you took me 
out of town 
we walked so much that day 

you painted walls 
I brought them down with words

your hands performing what 
your eyes see, things I can't even _
my mouth performing what
my head gets, rock- paper-scissors_

It's been perfection, hasn't it?
not that I'm counting days, I'm not
but I just wanted to say thanks 
for the drinks last night 

for all these rides, the crazy walks
the madness in the lyrics, the rail tracks
and the things one dares not do unless 
the other tags along and bullies you one bit

and 
thank you 

for the city lights, the small town high
the soft mumbles once the rows were done
for smelling my neck and not biting 
for scrapping your knees down with me

thank you for the romance that takes
a mardy bum and a bullet to the gut 
for laughing like a motherfucker 
when it did 

thank you for seeing beyond the gaps
and for your painted fingers 
for every single rotten joke
for getting pissed and a tad smitten

above all for it never, ever, ever 
being quite enough for either 
but contemporarily adequate for both
thank you for our being 

such creeps and weirdos together _  

 







Friday, February 19, 2016

"I LOVE YOU, YOU SMELL NICE"

Writer Steve Friedman on falling in love—forever—with the scent of a woman 

ELLE MAGAZINE OCTOBER 19,  2011 


When we say "You smell good," here's what we mean:
You make me think of fireflies and precisely five tiny beads of sweat on her Coppertoned neck, which was mine one weekend long ago. You make me taste buttered popcorn and Junior Mints and feel the scuffed movie theater seat on my bare calves, and you inspire visions of barbecued hamburgers and pudgy strawberries, purple soap and faded blue sheets.
We mean you smell pure and sweet.
When we say, poleaxed, "What's that perfume? I really like it," here's what we mean: Stealing a kiss in a cab, drinking a Manhattan, which I have never drank before, in Manhattan, where I have never been before tonight. A marbled lobby, a cavernous club, shivering at her hot breath on my cheek when she whispers something about literature on the dance floor, and then another cab, another kiss, freely given, stumbling up narrow, steep stairs in what people of this loud, pushy, wondrous city where I have been one night and want to live out my days call a "walk-up," which sounds as exotic to my midwestern ears as "prewar" or "schmear." Her hand on the back of my head, my hand exploring the small of her back, us leaning against a wall in the entryway, fumbling with keys, whispering. Closing my eyes, wondering why people here say "on line" instead of "in line," feeling drunk, being drunk, having found my future wife, wanting to breathe her in forever.
We mean you smell sophisticated, and a little dangerous, like you know things we don't but want to.
When we lean toward you and close our eyes and inhale deeply, and it looks like we're happy for no apparent good reason, here's what we mean: The crickets are making a racket outside the open windows, and we are rising and falling, rising and falling (it's the '80s and it's a water bed; don't judge) and James Taylor is singing "Sweet Baby James" and the record skips in the places I know by heart. There, a hiccup between "moonlight" and "ladies" and I swear I can see the sound waves in the clouds of marijuana smoke, and Huxley, her aged German shepherd, is twitching by the door. There's a sweet, yeasty stench of beer and bacon and fried cheese and onions from the sub shop where she works, and there is her shiny black hair, all the way down her back, and the deep, delighted voice of St. Louis Cardinals ­announcer Jack Buck coming from the tinny transistor radio in the window next door, as he bids "Adios!" when slugger Jack Clark clubs yet another tiny ball and it spins into the thick, black Missouri night.
We mean you smell like musky abandon, like surrender.
When we're shopping for a sweater at a mall or watching our nephew run at a middle school track meet and in the middle of a crowd, we suddenly stop, dazed, here's what we mean: I'm 15 and she's the nice lady who works in the candy store in town where counselors in training go on days off and she gives me free Cherry Cokes. She invites me to water-ski with her at her cabin by the lake next week, and next week comes and there's a drumming thunderstorm on the roof and when she drives me back to camp she tastes like grape, because it's the flavor of the lipstick she applies before she gives me the first kiss of what seems to me at the time to be my undeserving but abundantly blessed life.
We mean you smell like a vanilla milk shake.
When you are asking what looks good on the menu and we slump, and we're staring at something that's not there? Here's what that means: Gigantic, impossible blobs of color, purple and yellow, red and green, splotching and dripping and filling up the starry sky. Fresh-cut grass and the scent of gasoline from the pump behind the camp kitchen. Sweaty palms—mine and hers, the summer camp director's daughter—and we kiss, not knowing that 17-year-olds looking up at the aurora borealis should keep looking, should hold tight to the vision, because we'll never see it again. She wants to be a lawyer and we talk about raising children and she smells like hot milk cake and I imagine all the summers of my life unspooling in the sky, in northern Wisconsin, in the tall grass up the gentle hill from deep, green Towanda Lake, until the assistant camp director strides out to the athletic field and smacks his clipboard against his thigh and yells at us both to get back to our cabins; do we want him to get fired?
We mean you smell like the summer sky—and hot milk cake.
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, "No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart." I submit that he had the wrong organ. Looks matter. What you say is important. Actions count most, at least to any reasonable man. But for summoning memories, for transporting us to distant times, for evoking and stirring feelings that we didn't know were still there, there is scent.
There is only scent.