4
" God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing - or should we say " seeing" ? there are no tenses in God - the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath's sake, hitched up. If I may dare the biological image, God is a " host" who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and " take advantage of" Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves. "
8
" Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where St Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stock of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him crying: 'Stetson!
You, who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,
Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
You! hypocrite lecteur!-mon semblable,-mon frere! "
― T.S. Eliot , Selected Poems
9
" I measure every Grief I meetWith narrow, probing, Eyes;I wonder if It weighs like Mine,Or has an Easier size. I wonder if They bore it long,Or did it just begin?I could not tell the Date of Mine, It feels so old a pain. I wonder if it hurts to live,And if They have to try,And whether, could They choose between, It would not be, to die. I note that Some -- gone patient long --At length, renew their smile.An imitation of a LightThat has so little Oil. I wonder if when Years have piled,Some Thousands -- on the Harm Of early hurt -- if such a lapseCould give them any Balm; Or would they go on aching stillThrough Centuries above,Enlightened to a larger PainBy Contrast with the Love. The Grieved are many, I am told;The reason deeper lies, --Death is but oneand comes but once,And only nails the eyes. There's Grief of Want and Grief of Cold, --A sort they call " Despair" ;There's Banishment from native Eyes,In sight of Native Air. And though I may not guess the kindCorrectly, yet to meA piercing Comfort it affordsIn passing Calvary, To note the fashions of the Cross,And how they're mostly worn,Still fascinated to presumeThat Some are like My Own. "
10
" Nothing is a masterpiece - a real masterpiece - till it's about two hundred years old. A picture is like a tree or a church, you've got to let it grow into a masterpiece. Same with a poem or a new religion. They begin as a lot of funny words. Nobody knows whether they're all nonsense or a gift from heaven. And the only people who think anything of 'em are a lot of cranks or crackpots, or poor devils who don't know enough to know anything. Look at Christianity. Just a lot of floating seeds to start with, all sorts of seeds. It was a long time before one of them grew into a tree big enough to kill the rest and keep the rain off. And it's only when the tree has been cut into planks and built into a house and the house has got pretty old and about fifty generations of ordinary lumpheads who don't know a work of art from a public convenience, have been knocking nails in the kitchen beams to hang hams on, and screwing hooks in the walls for whips and guns and photographs and calendars and measuring the children on the window frames and chopping out a new cupboard under the stairs to keep the cheese and murdering their wives in the back room and burying them under the cellar flags, that it begins even to feel like a religion. And when the whole place is full of dry rot and ghosts and old bones and the shelves are breaking down with old wormy books that no one could read if they tried, and the attic floors are bulging through the servants' ceilings with old trunks and top-boots and gasoliers and dressmaker's dummies and ball frocks and dolls-houses and pony saddles and blunderbusses and parrot cages and uniforms and love letters and jugs without handles and bridal pots decorated with forget-me-nots and a piece out at the bottom, that it grows into a real old faith, a masterpiece which people can really get something out of, each for himself. And then, of course, everybody keeps on saying that it ought to be pulled down at once, because it's an insanitary nuisance. "
― Joyce Cary , The Horse's Mouth
18
" She was decidedly attractive, he saw, but in an ill-natured, ungracious way. Because of his connection with Fitzgerald, Carstairs & Scott, Johnnie had an extensive knowledge of the external appearance and different modes of behavior of a great variety of attractive women: they came up to the office in shoals, with their nails dipped in blood and their faces covered with pale cocoa. And some were charming and simple beneath their masks, and some were complex and arrogant. This girl belonged to the latter type, the type which would ignore or stare surlily at him if he spoke to them, until they learned that the actual money came through him, when their manner sweetened wonderfully. This girl wore her attractiveness not as a girl should, simply, consciously, as a happy crown of pleasure, but rather as a murderous utensil with which she might wound indiscriminately right and left, and which she would only employ to please when it suited her purpose. They were like bad-tempered street-walkers, without walking the street. "
― Patrick Hamilton , Hangover Square
19
" This night is going well." Hello there." I speak too soon.Dunstan enters, his two cronies behind him. Everyone standing around goes quiet. I flinch, but not for me; he's gazing at Ivy like a lion at a piece of meat. Ivy just keeps grinning." And may I say you are the prettiest girl I've seen all night," Dunstan says, not noticing the fact Ivy's already taken.Ivy stares down at her feet, a pale blush the color of pink roses brushed across her cheeks. " You don't mean that," she whispers, not knowing she's accidentally flirting." I really do," Dunstan continues in his oily, supposedly charming voice, and I roll my eyes. I want to pull Ivy away, but if I do, Dunstan will notice me. And without Melanie breathing down his neck, who knows what he'll try to pull?" So what's your name, beautiful?" Ivy blush deepens and i feel my nails dig into my skin. I'm the one whose supposed to tell her she's pretty, not this jerk." My name is Ivy," Ivy replies." Ivy. I like it. It suits you." I feel an arm on my shoulder and turning around, I see Aidan holding me back. Unconsciously, I've stepped forward, ready to challenge him." So what is your name?" Ivy asks, still shyly peering down at her shoeless feet.Acting all surprised he got asked this, Dunstan runs a hand through his hair. " My name is Dunstan." Ivy's flush instantly vanishes, the corners of her mouth turns down, and her eyebrows knit together." Dunstan? This is your name?" Quiet as she's being, I know there's anger there. I'd hate to be the recipient of this tone.But Dunstan the egotistical baboon butt isn't aware of the change. " Yep, that's me." " What is your last name?" I feel someone shaking. Aidan's still hanging on to me, and he's nervous, too.Dunstan still doesn't detect her malice. " Why, my last name's Lebelle. Dunstan Lebelle." He chuckles. " Perhaps you've heard of me?" " Oh yes," Ivy hisses, suddenly radiating ferocious fury. " I've heard much about the boy who nearly got Rylan Forester killed." Even with blaring music in the next room, you can hear a pin drop throughout the kitchen as everyone goes quiet, having lost all ability to talk due to flapping jaws. Someone whistles." Excuse me?" Dunstan sounds like he can't believe what he's hearing." You heard me." Ivy glares, knowing she has him caught. " You pushed Rylan into the swamp where the alligator attacked him. Sure, you can blame the alligator, but when you really think about, if you had not pushed him in, Rylan wouldn't have nearly died. Who, by the way," Ivy steps back, clasping my free hand in hers, " happens to be my friend and my date." Everyone bursts into titters—no one has ever spoken to Dustan Lebelle like that—as Dunstan stares at me wide-eyed, finally taking in my existence. But before he can do anything, Ivy pulls my hand." We're leaving," she declares, giving Dunstan one last stink eye. And with her nose in the air and me following, Ivy boldly walks right out the back door. "
20
" both you and paintings are layered… first, ephemera and notations on the back of the canvas. Labels indicate gallery shows, museum shows, footprints in the snow, so to speak. Then pencil scribbles on the stretcher, usually by the artist, usually a title or date. Next the stretcher itself. Pine or something. Wooden triangles in the corners so the picture can be tapped tighter when the canvas becomes loose. Nails in the wood securing the picture to the stretcher. Next, a canvas: linen, muslin, sometimes a panel; then the gesso - a primary coat, always white. A layer of underpaint, usually a pastel color, then, the miracle, where the secrets are: the paint itself, swished around, roughly, gently, layer on layer, thick or thin, not more than a quarter of an inch ever -- God can happen in that quarter of an inch -- the occasional brush hair left embedded, colors mixed over each other, tones showing through, sometimes the weave of the linen revealing itself. The signature on top of the entire goulash. Then varnish is swabbed over the whole. Finally, the frame, translucent gilt or carved wood. The whole thing is done. "
― Steve Martin , An Object of Beauty
