COMMONPLACE

BOOK
___
Tormenta de mares y estrellas
Por: Lightning on the Wave

[Capítulo 13]

❖ La única conspiración exitosa es aquella que nunca se descubre.

❖ Un riesgo alcanzado es un triunfo que vale la pena.
❖ Una razón plausible en la superficie vale cualquier cantidad de mentiras.

[Capítulo 14]

❖ Si me preocupo por las consecuencias de cada acción, entonces me volveré loco con la
incertidumbre, siempre preguntándome si podría haber hecho algo mejor o más rápido de lo que
lo terminé haciendo.
❖ El discurso conducía al sufrimiento pero el silencio conducía a uno mayor.
❖ —Creo que la única forma de amarnos de verdad es pensar y lidiar con todo esto.
Constantemente. Eso significa que hablamos del futuro así como del pasado, y en este momento,
el futuro es más interesante para mí.
❖ —Entonces puedo hacerte una promesa y tratar de vivir un día a la vez sin ponerte en peligro,
Draco —dijo—. Pero hay dos cosas que no van a cambiar. Nunca voy a pensar que alguien que no
me haya hecho daño no vale la pena. Y nunca me voy a sentir cómodo matando. Lo haré porque
tengo que hacerlo. No puedes controlar mi actitud hacia eso, y no permitiré que lo hagas.
 A commonplace book of thoughts, memories, and fancies; original and
selected
Mrs. Anna Jameson

Año: 1855

Hay verdades que, por repetición perpetua, se han transformado en obviedades pasivas, hasta que, en
algún momento de sentimiento o experiencia, se encienden en convicción, comienzan a vivir y brillar, y la
obviedad se convierte nuevamente en una verdad vital.

Wilhelm Von Humboldt dice: "Las cartas viejas pierden su vitalidad".

No es verdad. Debido a que retienen su vitalidad, es muy peligroso guardar algunas cartas y tan brillante
quemar otras.

“¿Cuál es la diferencia entre ser bueno y ser malo? Los buenos no ceden a la tentación y los malos sí.”
Esta es a menudo la distinción entre lo bueno y lo malo con respecto al acto y la acción; pero no
constituye la diferencia entre ser bueno y ser malo.

A veces podemos amar lo que no entendemos, pero es imposible entender completamente lo que no
amamos.
Observo que en nuestras relaciones con las personas que nos rodean, perdonamos más fácilmente por
lo que hacen, actos evitables, que por lo que son, hechos inevitables.
 ✔Colombia: en busca de su propia novela negra[1]
Por: EMILIO ALBERTO RESTREPO

● En la novela policíaca clásica lo más importante era resolver el QUIÉN y el CÓMO del asunto. Un
detective súper dotado usaba el análisis para responder las dos interrogantes.
● En la moderna novela de crímenes o en la novela negra contemporánea, el investigador no es
necesariamente un detective profesional. Puede ser cualquiera que se ve involucrado por la
fuerza de las circunstancias en la resolución del delito, pero tiene que responder, además de los
dos interrogantes antes citados (imprescindibles, por lo demás), por el POR QUÉ y por el DÓNDE,
para entrar en los detalles de las motivaciones más íntimas del culpable, además de explorar el
entorno en el que suceden los acontecimientos.
● Se hace énfasis en lo urbano y en lo que puede perturbar el de por sí ya enrarecido ambiente de
La Ciudad: la corrupción, el odio, el racismo, la homofobia, la insolidaridad, el abuso de género, la
explotación sexual o laboral, etc.
● En la novela negra, la lógica del orden se desplaza, los límites del bien y el mal se desvanecen, y
lo marginal se realza; no se centra únicamente en la figura del detective invulnerable que
encuentra respuesta a todo, sino en las situaciones morales y sociales en las que el criminal y
sus víctimas se ven comprometidos. El crimen es un espejo de la sociedad en el que se ve la
decadencia de la misma.
○ Género policíaco: connota asesinato limpio y un manejo bien educado de los personajes..
○ Novela negra: implica violencia innecesaria, ambientes sórdidos y ciudades caóticas. [2]

Características del género novela negra[3]:

● La soledad de los individuos en las grandes ciudades, que gracias a los problemas de orden
sociopolítico han generado el desplazamiento indiscriminado de poblaciones que aumentan el
desarrollo demográfico de las ciudades que cada vez se hacen más grandes. Casi todos los
protagonistas o personajes son presos de la sensación de aislamiento, verbi gracia, en las
cuestiones amorosas, el encuentro con otros seres suele darse apenas en el campo sexual.
● Los personajes actúan mediante un desarrollo psicológico complejo, gobernado por la
ambigüedad o la contradicción; pueden pasar de unas actitudes injustificadamente crueles,
inexplicables, a unas extremadamente sensibles, lo que produce en el lector el sobresalto.
● Se centra más en el criminal, en la descripción y ejecución del crimen que en la solución e
investigación del mismo.
 ● El delito es el resultado de la contradicción entre la personalidad y la sociedad, que se presenta
en el individuo marginal como manifestación extrema y brutal del conflicto con la colectividad.

La novela negra en Colombia

● Abad Faciolince dice que es raro que en un país como Colombia, en que la violencia es tan dura y
normal como el pan de cada día, no se escriba tanta novela negra. Y la define como “esa novela a
la que también se conoce como novela policíaca o detective thriller, pero en su vertiente más
dura, más cruda, más radical(...). Toda novela negra se pone una máscara de austeridad, de
modestia, casi de literatura de tono menor, que puede hacer pensar a algunos que no es un
género serio. Sí lo es, al menos en este caso, pues en esta trama de suspenso se va colando una
buena radiografía de la Colombia de hoy, de esta sórdida Colombia actual donde más vale decir
la verdad en un libro ficticio, en la mentira de la literatura, mediante las técnicas del thriller, que
en la verdad verdadera del periodismo.[4]”
● La novela negra no ha pegado en Colombia, hay muchos libros que se tildan en el género
(Rosario Tijeras, La Virgen de los Sicarios) pero son más del sicaresco.
● Para que haya un asesinato debe haber un asesino, y a veces ese trabajo se delega en un sicario,
pero en el género negro eso es un asunto meramente circunstancial que ocupa un segundo
plano de interés. Lo importante es el crimen y su entorno, sus motivaciones, el medio social que
lo circunda, la personalidad de los involucrados, sus amores, odios y circunstancias. Eso va
mucho más allá que la simple anécdota o el ejecutor.

Algunos autores de novela negra:

● Santiago Gamboa
● Mario Mendoza
● Hugo Chaparro
● Alberto Duque López
● Octavio Escobar
● Gonzalo España

[1] http://otrolunes.com/31/este-lunes/colombia-en-busca-de-su-propia-novela-negra/
[2] Documental “La Nueva Novela Negra en Colombia”:
[3] GUSTAVO FORERO QUINTERO, "Indefiniciones y sospechas del género negro"
[4] (Héctor Abad, El Tiempo, 11 de Octubre de 1998)
[5] https://elpais.com/diario/2008/01/05/babelia/1199494217_850215.html
 ✔16 novelas policíacas recomendadas por Fernando Savater[5]
❏ Los crímenes de la calle Morgue, de Edgard Allan Poe.
❏ La piedra lunar, de Wilkie Collins.
❏ El sabueso de Baskerville, de Arthur Conan Doyle.
❏ El misterio del cuarto amarillo, de Gaston Leroux.
❏ Arsenio Lupin contra Herlock Sholmes, de Maurice Leblanc.
❏ El candor del Padre Brown, de G. K. Chesterton.
❏ El asesinato de Rogelio Ackroyd, de Agatha Christie.
❏ Los nueve sastres, de Dorothy L. Sayer.
❏ El tribunal de fuego, de John Dickson Carr.
❏ El monasterio encantado, de Robert van Gulik.
❏ El caso Saint-Fiacre, de Georges Simenon.
❏ El hombre demolido, de Alfred Bester.
❏ El percherón mortal, de John Franklin Bardin.
❏ El nombre de la rosa, de Umberto Eco.
❏ Huye rápido, vete lejos, de Fred Vargas.
❏ Corpus delicti, de Andreu Martín.
✔Sólo muere quien es olvidado
Autor: José de Arias Martínez

No es la muerte quien mata las almas

Nadie muere por ser enterrado
El recuerdo y el alma no mueren
Sólo muere quien es olvidado

Si tu vida fue recta y valiosa

Si has amado con toda tu alma
Si has sembrado el camino de huellas
Has escrito una historia sagrada

No te importe morir algún día

Ese día tu cuerpo habrá muerto
Nunca muere quien supo vivir
Y ha dejado en la tierra un recuerdo

Si has escrito una historia de vida

Si has dejado en los rostros sonrisas
Si has sembrado tus campos de flores
No te importe partir algún día

Sólo teme la muerte si tu alma

Se olvidó de vivir cada día
Si ha dejado de amar y soñar
Y se fue sin saber qué quería

Sólo teme la muerte si llegas

Hasta el fin con tus manos vacías
Si no has dado de ti lo más noble
Sin saber el porqué de esta vida

Si tu vida ha valido la pena

Quedará tu recuerdo grabado
Para siempre por siempre en las mentes
De los hombres a quien tú has amado

No es la muerte quien mata las almas

Sólo muere quien es olvidado.
 Lo que fue de ella
Autor: Gayle Forman

[...]Por un segundo pienso en esa línea de Casablanca donde

Bogart dice: De todos los bares del mundo, ella tuvo que entrar
en el mío. Pero luego recuerdo que yo entré en el bar de ella.

La he culpado de todo esto, por irse, por arruinarme. Y tal vez

eso fue la semilla de esto, pero de esa pequeña semilla creció
esta especie de tumor de planta con flores. Y yo soy el que la
nutre. Yo la cuido.

[...] La dejé envolverse alrededor de mi cuello, asfixiándome. Yo

he hecho eso. Por mí mismo. Todo por mí cuenta.

Primero me inspeccionaste, luego me diseccionaste, entonces

me rechazaste. Espero el día en el que me resucites.

Tengo que cumplir mi promesa. La promesa de dejarla ir. [...]

Para que podamos seguir los dos.
 ✔Ride
AUTOR: Lana Del Rey
ÁLBUM: Born to Die - The Paradise Edition
AÑO: 2012

I was in the winter of my life

And the men I met along the road were my only summer
At night I fell asleep with visions of myself dancing and laughing and crying with them
Three years down the line of being on an endless world tour
And my memories of them were the only things that sustained me
And my only real happy times

I was a singer, not a very popular one

I once had dreams of becoming a beautiful poet
But upon an unfortunate series of events
Saw those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky
That I wished on over and over again, sparkling and broken
But I didn't really mind because I knew that
It takes getting everything you ever wanted
And then losing it to know what true freedom is

When the people I used to know found out what I had been doing
How I had been living, they asked me why
But there's no use in talking to people who have a home
They have no idea what it’s like to seek safety in other people
For home to be wherever you lie your head

I was always an unusual girl

My mother told me that I had a chameleon soul
No moral compass pointing me due north
No fixed personality
Just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean

And if I said I didn't plan for it to turn out this way I'd be lying
Because I was born to be the other woman
Who belonged to no one, who belonged to everyone
Who had nothing, who wanted everything
With a fire for every experience and an obsession for freedom
That terrified me to the point that I couldn't even talk about it
And pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me

Every night I used to pray that I'd find my people

And finally I did
On the open road
We had nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore
Except to make our lives into a work of art
Live fast
Die young
Be wild
And have fun

I believe in the country America used to be

I believe in the person I want to become
I believe in the freedom of the open road
And my motto is the same as ever
"I believe in the kindness of strangers"

And when I'm at war with myself

I ride
I just ride
Who are you?
Are you in touch with all of your darkest fantasies?
Have you created a life for yourself where you can experience them?
I have
I am fucking crazy
But I am free
 ✔Urbanología
AUTOR: Nach
ÁLBUM: A través de mí
AÑO: 2015

y es que ahí fuera hay tanto tinte, tanto tonto que aparenta ser
perfecto,
tantos que fingen y atentan contra mi intelecto;
es la causa-efecto, cuando el falso afecto inunda el aire.
ahora sé que cuando nadie te odia es porque no eres nadie.

todo el mundo habla, todo el mundo juzga,

pero después todos se cagan cuando vienen curvas;
todos buscamos a tientas sitios donde el miedo duerma,
porque todo se reduce a nuestro miedo a sufrir;
todos buscamos un dios, un más allá, una vida eterna,
porque todo se reduce a nuestro miedo a morir

y a mi inocencia la perdí en algún despiste,

hoy el niño que un día fui me habla mientras insisten
que disfrute del trayecto, dicen, que nada es perfecto,
que o me divierto o soy hombre muerto, y morir es triste,
la vida un chiste o una putada, no sé,
sólo sé que no creo en nada y nada calma mi sed

cómo aceptarme si soy tan complejo,

si me atrae más la ventana que el espejo

knockin' on the heaven's door pero nadie abre,

el infierno quizás abra porque mis palabras arden;
¿quién vence a la desgana en este melodrama,
si el miedo te llama a los pies de la cama?
por eso corre y llama a quien te dé la gana,
qué más da, si nos vamos a morir mañana,

cambié de perspectiva y desde entonces no hay misterio,

hoy la cosa que me tomo más en serio en esta vida
es a no tomar la vida demasiado en serio.

✔Norman Fucking Rockwell!

Lana Del Rey
 Año: 2019

They mistook my kindness for weakness

I fucked up, I know that, but Jesus
Can't a girl just do the best she can?
Mariners Apartment Complex

I watch the guys getting high as they fight

For the things that they hold dear
To forget the things they fear
How To Disappear

You're scared to win, scared to lose

I've heard the war was over if you really choose
The one in and around you
California

Happiness is a butterfly
Try to catch it like every night
It escapes from my hands into moonlight
Every day is a lullaby
Happiness is a butterfly

Don't ask if I'm happy, you know that I'm not

But at best I can say I'm not sad
'Cause hope is a dangerous thing
For a woman like me to have
But I have it
hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have - but i have it

There's a new revolution

A loud evolution
That I saw
Born of confusion
And quiet collusion
Of which mostly I've known
A modern day woman
With a weak constitution
 'Cause I've got
Monsters still under my bed
That I could never fight off
A gatekeeper carelessly dropping
The keys on my nights off
hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have - but i have
it
 ✔Residente
Residente
Año: 2017

Lo más feo de la flor es el tallo

La belleza se alimenta de fallos
Somos Anormales

Como nos vemos curiosos

Ponemos a los lindos nerviosos
Que toda la gente nos señale
Lo que no es igual, sobresale
Somos Anormales

Lo que es impuro no se puede duplicar

La raza se arregla cuando se daña
Somos de la tribu que con sucio se baña
Somos Anormales

La mitología quería que fuéramos perfectos

Hasta que la realidad nos convirtió en insectos
Una Leyenda China

Venimos de lo simple, de lo que no se sueña

Somos la grandeza de las cosas pequeñas
Y nos reproducimos en miles de formas
Cada vez que nos besamos nuestro cuerpo se transforma
Una Leyenda China

Hoy las lágrimas lloran antes de morir

Y a los libros de historia los pongo a escribir
Que le tiemblen las piernas al planeta tierra
Hoy yo vine a ganar y estoy hecho de guerra
Guerra
 La guerra con camuflaje se viste
Así nadie ve cuando se pone triste
Guerra

La guerra pierde todas sus luchas

Cuando los enemigos se escuchan
La guerra es más débil que fuerte
No aguanta la vida, por eso se esconde en la muerte
Guerra

Nunca es tarde para nada, la mañana está esperando

Si te perdiste el tren puedes llegar caminando
Las oportunidades ahí están
Pero son como las olas, llegan y se van
Milo

Hoy es nuestro momento para que el presente evolucione

Lo que siento ahora es lo que siento y que el futuro nos
perdone
El Futuro Es Nuestro
 Páginas libres
Manuel González Prada
Año: 1896

→ Hay aquí una juventud que lucha abiertamente por destrozar los vínculos
que nos unen a lo pasado; una juventud que desea matar con muerte violenta
lo que parece destinado a sucumbir con agonía importunamente larga. (pag
25)

Aquí nadie tiene que arrogarse el título de maestro, porque todos somos
discípulos o aficionados (pag 27)

Todos los pecadores en política, todos los hijos prodigios de la democracia,

todos los hombres que sienten ya en su carne el olor a polvo de tumbas,
acuden a buscar perdón y olvido en quien olvida y perdona, se refugian en
esas casas de misericordia llamadas partidos retrogradas. (pag 29)

El filósofo no retrocede, sigue adelante, penetra en el templo y rasga el velo,

porque sabe que en el santuario no hay más que un sacerdote con todas las
flaquezas de la humanidad, y un ídolo sin labios para responder a las
amenazas de nuestros labios, ni brazos para detener los formidables golpes
de nuestros brazos. (pag 30)

(…) si hay algo más fuerte que el hierro, más duradero que el granito y más
destructor que el fuego, es la palabra de un hombre honrado. (pag 30)

En nuestro desquiciamiento general, la pluma tiene la misma culpa que la

espada. (pag 30)

Hablar hoy con idiotismos y vocablos de otro siglos, significa mentir, falsificar
el idioma (pag. 31)

La palabra que se dirija hoy a nuestro pueblo debe despertar a todos, poner en
pie a todos, agitar a todos, como campana de incendio en avanzadas horas de
la noche. (pag 32)
 hallelujah
Autor: Bea Miller
Album:
Año: 2020

I don't wanna keep running around like a chicken with her head cut off, oh
Violent metaphors are bringin' me down but they're the only ones I'm thinkin' of
And am I the only one who hears a baby cry and fantasizes ways that I can shut them up?
Heh, I don't really like the way that sounds but it's too late now (Too late now)

Do I need help?

Maybe I been smokin' too much

Maybe I been sleepin' not enough
Should I say (Hallelujah)?
Should I say (Hallelujah)?
Maybe I been alone too much
Pretendin' that I never needed love
Should I say (Hallelujah)?
Should I say (Hallelujah)?

How am I supposed to work on myself when there are Nazis in a big white house?
Uh, it seems ridiculous to live in hell but I guess that's what we're doin' right now
And maybe I should see a therapist but the apocalypse is probably gonna take us out
Uh, I don't really like the way that sounds but it's too late now (Too late now)

I might need help

Maybe I been smokin' too much

Maybe I been sleepin' not enough
Should I say (Hallelujah)?
 Should I say (Hallelujah)?
Maybe I been alone too much
Pretendin' that I never needed love
Should I say (Hallelujah)?
Should I say (Hallelujah)?

Maybe that'll save me (Hallelujah)

Maybe that'll save me (Hallelujah)
Maybe that'll save me, oh (Hallelujah, hallelujah)
Can someone save me?

Only time I've gotten on my knees I wasn't praying, huh

But maybe I been smokin' too much (Maybe I been smokin' too much)
Maybe I been sleepin' not enough (Not enough, mm)
Should I say (Hallelujah)?
Should I say (Hallelujah)?
Maybe I been alone too much (Alone too much)
Pretendin' that I never needed love (Never needed love)
Should I say (Hallelujah)?
Should I say (Hallelujah)?
Playlist: “we drink the poison our minds pour for us and wonder why
we feel so sick."
by: ssilvics

● Peach Pit - Alrighty Aphrodite

● The Orion Experience - The Queen of White Lies*
● Tally Hall - The Bidding*
● Isak Danielson - Power
● Hozier - Arsonist's Lullaby*
● The Crane Wives - The Hand That Feeds
● Florence + The Machine - Seven Devils*
● Rosenfeld - Do It For Me
● Ellise - 911*
● Shayfer James - Villainous Thing *
● Willyecho – Smoke*
● Will Jay - I Need Control
● The Strokes - Call It Fate, Call It Karma
● Lola Blanc - The Magic*
● Kevin McAllister - Play Dirty
● Oh The Larceny - Real Good Feeling*
● Royal Deluxe - Bad
● Silverberg - Reaper
● The Hush Sound - Honey
● Valley Of Wolves - Lions Inside
 El arco y la lira
Autor: Octavio Paz
Año:

→“El idioma está siempre en movimiento, aunque el hombre, por ocupar el

centro del remolino, pocas veces se da cuenta de este incesante cambiar.”
Pág 17.

“El poeta encanta al lenguaje por medio del ritmo. Una imagen suscita a
otra. Así, la función predominante del ritmo distingue al poema de todas
las otras formas literarias. El poema es un conjunto de frases, un orden
verbal, fundado en el ritmo.”
Pág 20.
 Copy of a copy of a copy
Louis Tomlinson
Año: 2020

It's an old curse, dreamers divin' head first

Broken beaks and dead birds
Can't get through the glass
There's no use cryin' over spilled blood
Carin' only kills love
A kiss won't bring it back

I know that the first blow hits you cold

Young man, hush your cry and dry your tears away
Nothing is original, there's nothing left to say
You won't be the first or be the last to bleed
Every broken heart as far as your eye can see
It's a copy of a copy of a copy
It's a copy of a copy of a copy

I can hear you, howlin' 'til your lungs hurt

So let this be your comfort
You're not the only one, no
In a strange way, all in this together
Been this way forever, you're not the only one

I know that the first blow hits you cold

Young man, hush your cry and dry your tears away
Nothing is original, there's nothing left to say
You won't be the first or be the last to bleed
Every broken heart as far as your eye can see
It's a copy of a copy of a copy
It's a copy of a copy of a copy

Young man, hush your cry and dry your tears away
Nothing is original, there's nothing left to say
You won't be the first or be the last to bleed
Every broken heart as far as your eye can see
It's a copy of a copy of a copy
It's a copy of a copy of a copy
It's a copy of a copy of a copy
It's a copy of a copy of a copy
 I spent a day with DEATH ROW SURVIVORS
Anthony Padilla
2021

I had no fear of death. But I was afraid to die without dignity.

Peter Pringle.

I became the most dangerous man [in prison] because I cared about men.
David Yarris.
✔ you're looking down on the world from olympus; a greek mythology
playlist
por: oliviaalee

willow; taylor swift

dionysus; tomo
achilles heel; j. maya
icarus; bastille
love story; sarah cothran
aphrodite; honey gentry
religion; lana del rey
ship in a bottle; fin
dying is a beautiful thing to do; easha

mischief managed; a marauders playlist

por: oliviaalee

as the world caves in ( introduction ); matt maltesse

all the young dudes; mott the hoople
good old fashioned lover boy; queen
beautiful boy; john lennon
apocalypse; cigarettes after sex
welcome home, son; radical face
cold, cold, cold; cage the elephant
fluorescent adolescent; arctic monkeys
devil town; cavetown
cigarette daydreams; cage the elephant
promiscuous; nelly furtado, timbaland
current joys; new flesh
hayloft; mother mother
teenage dirtbag; wheatus
marlboro nights; lonely god
 TBR (fics)
● https://archiveofourown.org/collections/PrettysRecommendations/works
● https://archiveofourown.org/collections/jdmcollection/works
● https://archiveofourown.org/collections/HLMpregFest2019
● https://my-drarry-recs.livejournal.com/390956.html
 TBR (ficción original)

❏ Cryer's War by Nina Varela

❏ Infinity Son by Adam Silvera
❏ Carry On by Rainbow Rowell (releectura)
❏ The Fascinators by Andrew Eliopulos
❏ Spellhacker by M.K. England
❏ Master of One by Jaida Jones & Dani Bennett
❏ The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi
❏ Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson
❏ All of Us with Wings by Michelle Ruiz Keil
❏ Shatter the Sky by Rebecca Kim Wells
❏ Beyond the Black Door by A.M. Strickland
❏ The Cerulean by Amy Ewing
❏ The Never Tilting World by Rin Chupeco
❏ We Set the Dark on Fire by Tehlor Kay Mejia
❏ The Merciful Crow by Margaret Owen
❏ Crown of Feathers by Nicki Pau-Preto
❏ The Red Scrolls of Magic by Cassandra Clare, Wesley Chu
❏ Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst
❏ Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova
❏ Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore
❏ Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan
❏ Outrun the Wind by Elizabeth Tammi
❏ Heart of Iron by Ashley Poston
❏ The Half Bad series by Sally Green
❏ A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro
❏ https://www.epicreads.com/blog/contemporary-ya-retellings/
We're Just Kids
Autor: Call Me Karizma
Año: 2019
We're just kids killing brain cells
Hurt ourselves taking pain pills
Bad advice makes good memories
Every night forget everything
Gettin' high, self esteem low
Young and dumb, what do we know?
Twenty five, actin' seventeen
I guess time is my enemy

Where do we go, when we die?

Into the ground or the sky
I better live forever, yeah
Me and you together, yeah
We're just people, who get high
To put our pain in the sky
It's hard to live forever, yeah
When we aren't together

And I don't wanna grow old

Scared to watch the time go

We're just kids killing brain cells

Hurt ourselves taking pain pills
Bad advice makes good memories
Every night forget everything
Gettin' high, self esteem low
Young and dumb, what do we know?
Twenty five, actin' seventeen
I guess time is my enemy

See my parents getting older

Feel the winters getting colder
Used to play out in the snow
Now I stay inside my home
I want to be a better man but act like I'm still a kid
Never had a backup plan, never had that many friends
I want it back, want it back, playing in the cul de sac
Everything was fun and games till grandpa had a heart attack
Mama had a drinkin' problem, daddy don't know how to act
But I'd rather have issues
Than "I miss yous" when they're gone and that's why

And I don't wanna grow old

Scared to watch the time go

We're just kids killing brain cells

Hurt ourselves taking pain pills
Bad advice makes good memories
Every night forget everything
Gettin' high, self esteem low
Young and dumb, what do we know?
Twenty five, actin' seventeen
I guess time is my enemy

We're just kids killing brain cells

Hurt ourselves taking pain pills
Bad advice makes good memories
Every night forget everything
Gettin' high, self esteem low
Young and dumb, what do we know?
Twenty five, actin' seventeen
I guess time is my enemy

a ti viva (fragmento)
VICENTE ALEIXANDRE

cuando miro a tus ojos, profunda muerte o vida

que me llama,
canción de un fondo que sólo sospecho;
cuando veo tu forma, tu frente serena,
piedra luciente en que mis besos destellan,
como esas rocas que reflejan un sol que nunca se hunde.

✔unidad en ella

Muero porque me arrojo, porque quiero morir,

porque quiero vivir en el fuego, porque este aire de fuera
no es mío, sino el caliente aliento
que si me acerco quema y dora mis labios desde un fondo.

Deja, deja que mire, teñido del amor,

enrojecido el rostro por tu purpúrea vida,
deja que mire el hondo clamor de tus entrañas
donde muero y renuncio a vivir para siempre.

Quiero amor o la muerte, quiero morir del todo,

quiero ser tú, tu sangre, esa lava rugiente
que regando encerrada bellos miembros extremos
siente así los hermosos límites de la vida.

some random quotes

✔ El hombre interior en la mayor parte de la humanidad está muerto. Nuestra mente enteramente
vertida hacia el exterior solo funciona ante el estímulo de los lugares comunes del día a día
ciudadano. [Gastón Soublette]
✔ (...) el fenómeno del crecimiento ilimitado transformó la ciudad moderna en un infierno mecánico
donde desapareció la noción misma de la felicidad.[Gastón Soublette]

✔ It can be sad to live in a world which is often so ugly and not properly looked after.

○ “It’s vital to remember who you really are. It’s very important. It isn’t a good idea to rely on
other people or things to do it for you, you see. They always get it wrong.” (Terry Pratchett –
Sourcery)

✔On perfectionism

https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/on-perfectionism/

"The sickness of perfectionism gestates in the fertile gap between our noble visions and our mediocre
reality.
And yet our problems do not ultimately arise in our love of perfection per se. They lie in our reckless
tendencies to under-budget for the difficulties of achieving it. The proper target for (gentle) criticism is
premature perfectionism."

"Our perfectionism starts to torture us when we lack information on how hard others had to work and
how much they had suffer before reaching their ideas of perfection. In the Utopia our culture would
endlessly draw to our attention the first drafts, and hidden labours of others, and properly alert us to the
true horrors exacted by anything worth doing. We would not then be impatient sickly perfectionists, we
would be patient resilient questers for excellence.

The problem isn’t that we’re aiming for perfection. It’s that we don’t have an accurately redemptive idea
of what perfection really demands."

Unlike modern readers

Unlike modern readers, who follow the flow of a narrative from beginning to end, early modern
Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and
assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then
they reread the copies and rearranged the patterns while adding more excerpts. Reading and writing
were therefore inseparable activities. They belonged to a continuous effort to make sense of things, for
the world was full of signs: you could read your way through it; and by keeping an account of your
readings, you made a book of your own, one stamped with your personality.

- Robert Darnton

People think that stories are shaped by people

People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around.

Stories exist independently of their players. If you know that, the knowledge is power.

Stories, great flapping ribbons of shaped space-time, have been blowing and uncoiling around the
universe since the beginning of time. And they have evolved. The weakest have died and the strongest
have survived and they have grown fat on the retelling… stories, twisting and blowing through the
darkness.

And their very existence overlays a faint but insistent pattern on the chaos that is history. Stories etch
grooves deep enough for people to follow in the same way that water follows certain paths down a
mountainside. And every time fresh actors tread the path of the story, the groove runs deeper.

This is called the theory of narrative causality and it means that a story, once started, takes a shape. It
picks up all the vibrations of all the other workings of that story that have ever been.

This is why history keeps on repeating all the time.

So a thousand heroes have stolen fire from the gods.

A thousand wolves have eaten grandmother, a thousand princesses have been kissed. A million
unknowing actors have moved, unknowing, through the pathways of story.

It is now impossible for the third and youngest son of any king, if he should embark on a quest which has
so fair claimed his older brothers, not to succeed.

Stories don’t care who takes part in them. All that matters is that the story gets told, that the story
repeats. Or, if you prefer to think of it like this: stories are a parasitical life form, warping lives in the
service only of the story itself.

It takes a special kind of person to fight back, and become the bicarbonate of history.

Once upon a time…

—Terry Pratchett’s Theory of Narrative Causality, Witches Abroad

some poems and quotes

Sometimes we have no beauty to offer but the words with which we present an ugly
thing. Nonetheless, that is beauty. Sometimes we have no beauty to offer but the
fact that we have survived to tell a tragic tale. Nonetheless, that is beauty.

-Magdalene Benveniste, “Letter from the Editor #1” from March Hare Magazine (c.
@godgum)

 If the body is an artefact

then what about the girl it inhabits?
Is she too a kingdom for the ghosts?
A thing that offers only quiet?
If her stomach becomes non-existent,
is she guilty of getting in the line
of crossfire? These are the questions
making a home in my mouth, the mirrors
stealing my teeth even as I thank
them for it. Some days the word food
sounds like profanity and some days
it sounds like prayer. 

-Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing, ‘If the Body Is an Artefact’
by Topaz Winters

Sing a song of cease. Of

ceasing to exist, and whatever definition
you will twist out of its ruins. Breathe in
and remember the circumstances of heartbeat,
then breathe out to begin the erasure. 

-Portrait of My Body as a Crime I’m Still Committing,  ‘Guidebook for Wild Things
Wishing toBe Tamed’ by Topaz Winters
 

you are plying grief from my gums

again,
hidden somewhere between the day old absolution and bitten fingernails.

we are kneeling in-front of the mirror, our holy altar, our unholy altering, our
dismemberment that hurts doubly so.

there are two mirrors, 

two reflections,
two wounds, 
two funeral processions on the highway for the body that could not come to terms
with its searing silence.

there are three cheers for the catastrophe of the craving carcass.

- mouthful of blood, Grace Moloney

i hold your heart in my hands

and feel the rush of blood flood into my dreams.
fluttering eyelids can no longer fight
against the sleep that begs to separate us.
our being is the dream. 

we’re in a car.
we’re holding our twisted hands on the twisted highways
that drag us along our desire that has derived itself from the doubling of you in me,
me in you. 
susan sontag might say it is ‘the doubling of self in dreams.’
margaret atwood might say, 'i blur / into you.’
i say, 'i see the glimmer of your smile that holds me
in the teeth that could consume me whole with total tenderness.’

 -one, Grace Moloney
you are infinity within creased knuckles,
wishbone from a body that is not yours
or one that was, once, until you traded it
for the memory of incandescence. 

-The Night You Are Diagnosed, Topaz Winters

 If you forbid anything loudly enough it’s bound

to come back to haunt you. Can I help it that I
am so full of rivers they spill ceaseless into
the sink—can I help it that porcelain is the only
god I recognise clearly enough to bow to. In
the mirror I see shadow-wifed, stomach-carved.
I stare at myself so long the lightbulbs burn out,
so long my hunger leaves my body and flits like
an angel into the glass of the mirror, trapped
long after I fall asleep, awake always and watching
for weakness. 

-and When I Say the Word Hunger You Know I’m Speaking of Resurrection, Topaz
Winters

 What else is the point of having a body, if not to see your own hurt completely and
love it anyway? 

-“If you forbid anything loudly enough it’s bound to come back to haunt you.” (a poem
for you), Topaz Winters

Don’t let despair sink its sharp teeth

Into the throat with which you sing.  Escalate your dreams.
Make them burn so fiercely that you can follow them down
any dark alleyway of history and not lose your way. 
-V'ahavta, Aurora Levins Morales

 Today I forgot what it was

I went looking for, my own face,
or the shape of something
I should love. I just watched
the leaves gather around my feet,
their small dead selves lighter
now, unselved. Perhaps this is
part of it, a willingness
to forget the way the world
has touched our bodies sharply,
so we can refill ourselves with
someone else (…) 

-Post-Op Letters in the Field Between Us, Molly McCully Brown and Susannah

Nevison

 The coffin in my chest

blows open in the wind,
and for once I think I know
what it’s like to be without
all our dead and heavy things. 

-Post-Op Letters in the Field Between Us, Molly McCully Brown and Susannah

Nevison

Perhaps we are always hurtling our body towards

the thing that will obliterate us, begging for love
from the speeding passage of time, 

-The Leash, Ada Limón

I am not a person, not really.
I am trying to be an emptiness. 

-American Vomitoria, Bronwyn Valentine

You are dying because you are so alive, 

-Dear Body, Bronwyn Valentine

I don’t mean to hurt anyone, but it’s been so long since I’ve had proof I’m not alone.
and what good would another body do me? I still won’t swallow light.

I want to see the sky. I want to know this thing that made me. Maybe, then, it will not
be my fault when water touches me and I flinch away. I want to pluck feathers from
the sky until my cruelty is something I can measure with my hands.

-Mama and I Talk About Salvation, Uma Dwivedi

 Memories are sharp. They bite. I have spent most of my life trying to grow a thicker
skin just to make sure I would not bleed out whenever I felt those teeth scrape up
against me. 

-i’ll bite the hands that feed me, Grace Moloney

 Where does the darkness lie?

It comes out of the person, (…)
A shadow tied and alive, trying to be. 

-‘Eighth Elegy. Children’s Elegy’ from the Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser
 I am slowly reaching into myself but never carefully enough. I had never been one to
keep my elbows off the table. The glass of my body broke somewhere between the
table salt and the grief. I would hold my shattered body up to the breaking light as if
to say, “Here. Look. Look at what I was able to mend back together as the pieces of
myself flew apart, as if in a dream.” I cannot see the way my hands burned from
holding onto all of that grace. My knees buckled under the pressure. No prayer could
keep my body from splitting apart in the middle of the night. 

-i’ll bite the hands that feed me, Grace Moloney

 And let’s not be deflected by concerns about our bodies, their images and their
illnesses, from what is most significant about our selves: that we can grow in
courage, in grit, in spirit, not in spite of who we are but because of who we are. 

-Carnal Acts;  ‘Challenge: An Exploration’ by Nancy Mairs 

Perhaps I am split, like her,

like that pomegranate, both dead and alive,

the in between purgatory of maybe.

-Mouth and Bee, Kara Dorris

Survival often depends on a specific focus: a relationship, a belief, or a hope

balanced on the edge of possibility. Or something more ephemeral: the way the sun
passes through the hard, seemingly impenetrable glass of a window and warms the
blanket, or how the wind, invisible but for its wake, is so loud one can hear it through
the insulated walls of a house. 

-The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, Elisabeth Tova Bailey

what i want most is to live
 the rest of my life desperately
 wanting to live it. 

Lord of the Butterflies, ‘The Day You Died Because You Wanted To’ by Andrea
Gibson

I swear I don’t want to be cruel. I want to see my flesh as both delicate and resilient,
worthy of tenderness and restraint. 

My Spirit Burns Through This Body, Akwaeke Emezi

I am hit in the head and the heart by want. The want that chases me through the
crowds of half-eaten smiles as I try to choke back the day old despair of having
never quite known myself. 

i’ll bite the hands that feed me, Grace Moloney

In the diary torn from my fingers I had written:

What does love mean
what does it mean “to survive”
A cable of blue fire ropes our bodies
burning together in the snow
We will not live to settle for less
We have dreamed of this
all of our lives 

Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev, Adrienne Rich

Anger cracks us open. Small slits in the world bleeding out. Then comes a flood of
sadness to cauterize the wound. There’s not enough time to recover before the next
blow. There never is. 
Shadowboxing, Brighde Moffat and Cosi Nayovitz

You are not your age,

Nor the size of clothes you wear,
You are not a weight,
Or the colour of your hair.
You are not your name,
Or the dimples in your cheeks,
You are all the books you read,
And all the words you speak,
You are your croaky morning voice,
And the smiles you try to hide,
You’re the sweetness in your laughter,
And every tear you’ve cried,
You’re the songs you sing so loudly,
When you know you’re all alone,
You’re the places that you’ve been to,
And the one that you call home,
You’re the things that you believe in,
And the people that you love,
You’re the photos in your bedroom,
And the future you dream of,
You’re made of so much beauty,
But it seems that you forgot,
When you decided that you were defined,
By all the things you’re not.

-Not, Erin Hanson

“I didn’t know at the time that I was yearning to be held and to be lulled by love. I
didn’t know that longing for touch could be so reminiscent of an almost palpable
pain. I didn’t know that it was a hunger. (…) A hunger to be heard only to be rendered
silent by my own shame. A hunger to be seen and then to disappear completely. It is
hunger that is all consuming, so bad that I wound up devouring myself from the
outside in just in order to deny my appetite from life and love, to protect myself from
my own inherent wants and needs.”

-i’ll bite the hands that feed me, Grace Moloney

Don’t look now

I’m fading away
Into the gray of my mornings
Or the blues of every night

Is it that my nails
keep breaking
Or maybe the corn
on my secind little piggy
Things keep popping out
on my face or of my life

It seems no matter how

I try I become more difficult
to hold
I am not an easy woman
to want
They have asked
the psychiatrists . . . psychologists . . .
politicians and social workers
What this decade will be
known for
There is no doubt . . . it is
loneliness.

-Cotton on a rainy day, Nikki Giovanni

I’ve always wondered
What it would feel like
If one day we awaken and
The sun refused to shine.
If the tree leaves stood ramrod
Without the rhythm of the winds.
If the birds remained in their niches,
And the sky stood empty.

What would it feel like

If all the coffee shops lacked coffee,
(Decaf does not count),
If papers wouldn’t take up poetry,
If silence was the new “pollution”.
And noise became (what’s noise?)

-Without you, Ameena k.g.

i am told
i am not paying enough attention
to my body, its needs;
or, alternately (and sometimes by the same people)
that i am focusing too much on my body
and how it feels
(never how “i” feel,
although i am implored to “scrutinise my feelings” and
“analyse my thoughts”
as if these, too, are somehow separate
from my ‘true’ self).

i am told that being

-depressed
-angry
-exhausted
-in constant pain
is not a reason
to “overreact” or “take it out on others”.
funny how no one seems to listen
about what’s taken out of me,
by what others take out on me
(my body, my feelings, my me):
their anxieties
their demands for normativity
their refusal to see the shades of grey.

Now that  i am finally on my way to yes,

i see all the colours.
i wish they would step backward,
“because we live by inches
And only sometimes see the full dimension.

-INCHING TOWARDS YES BY STEPPING BACKWARDS, Monika Dryburgh

“Beat out continuance in the choking veins

before emotion betrays us, and we find
staring behind our faces, accomplices of death.
Not to die, but slowly to validate our lives      :
simply to move, lightly burdened, alone,
carrying in this brain survival, carrying
within these ribs, history,
the past deep in the bone.”

-‘The Blood is Justified’ from the Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser

“You ever think you could cry so hard

that there’d be nothing left in you, like
how the wind shakes a tree in a storm
until every part of it is run through with
wind? I live in the low parts now, most
days a little hazy with fever and waiting
for the water to stop shivering out of the
body. Funny thing about grief, its hold
is so bright and determined like a flame,
like something almost worth living for.”

-The Carrying; ‘After the Fire’ by Ada Limón

“I am holding onto a moment that has stretched itself thin to the point of breaking. It
is in this moment where I want to know how it feels to devour life. To take a
mouthful and feel it bleed into the bone. To be so full of it that I begin to burst and
embrace a fullness that I do not feel I ought to get rid of out of fear of feeling too
much. The insatiable need to be alive. To let it take hold of this body of mine that I
have spent far too long running away from, perpetually afraid that all the light I was
dying to protect would slowly seep out of the seams of the self that I had loosely
stitched back together with my own fever and faith. I am attempting to spill clumsily
out of a self and into another.”

-i’ll bite the hands that feed me, Grace Moloney