Life and Death in the Garden of Eden
Oil pastel and ink on paper, + wibbly iphone scan
Fling the emptiness out of your arms
into the spaces we breathe; perhaps the birds
will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.
- Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies: The First Elegy
Lionel Terray said it the truest, I set it to music.
We’re all conquistadors of the useless.
- Charles Andrew Bothwell (Astronautalis, Contrails)
T.S. Eliot, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats:
He is quiet and small, he is black / From his ears to the tip of his tail;
He can creep through the tiniest crack / He can walk on the narrowest rail.
He can pick any card from a pack, / He is equally cunning with dice;
He is always deceiving you into believing / That he’s only hunting for mice.
(Source: optimismandcats)
They are passing, posthaste, posthaste, the gliding years—to use a soul-rending Horatian inflection. The years are passing, my dear, and presently nobody will know what you and I know. - V. Nabokov
To be born is anything but this:
Preemptive nostalgia of the possible but doubtful
—Yoni Wolf (Why?), Paper Hearts
In the wake of the storm ||
I love how people emerge, cautiously and amazed, after something cataclysmic. Don’t mean that in a schadenfreude way—just how everyone pretends to be so normal, even though we all know how NOT normal it really feels.
Oh hard-boiled city, you’re wonderful.
Translation | How to Understand Garment Labels
Translation* by anothermagpie, of Géraldine’s excellent article, “How to Read Clothing Tags“ (Café Mode). With thanks to lovely Garance Doré, for pointing us to Geraldine.
Yesterday, Mathilde came to the office with a gorgeous sweaterdress. “What’s this material?” I immediately asked her. She shrugged in response, thrown off by my question. I gaped at her. “You never look at the tags?” “Nope. I cut them off because they itch me, and anyway I have no idea what they’re saying.” I launched into a mini remedial course for Mathilde, but then I thought to myself that maybe some of you might find it interesting too. So here’s what I can say on the subject, though I have to say I’m no expert. I’m just an obsessee of beautiful materials, religiously retaining my classes from my dear Professor of Fabrics at the IFM [transl: Institut Francais de la Mode].
“You must have gone there about the time Biloxi went to New Haven.”
Another pause. A waiter knocked and came in with crushed mint and ice but the silence was unbroken by his “thank you.” and the soft closing of the door. - F.S.F.
No, the Internet doesn’t need another inquisitive blog with “magpie” in the title.* I make up for it by pointing you to a remarkable painting by Brueghel the Elder.
… before them were the sands, with rocks and little pools of salt water, and seaweed, and the smell of the sea and long miles of bluish-green waves breaking for ever and ever on the beach. And oh, the cry of the seagulls! Have you ever heard it? Can you remember? - C.S. Lewis
(Source: urbanoutfitters, via moltobenebell)
It’s cheating a little, because this year an early snow ruined everything… But last year’s colors are just as good.
Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the
still point, there the dance is:
—T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton
