Juan Diaz de Solis, chief pilot on the Spanish expedition to discover the Moluccas Islands, set out in October 1515.
His hopes were raised when he discovered the estuary of the River Plate in 1516, shortly before being tragically captured, along with the majority of his companions, and more than likely eaten by the Guarani Indians.
— Conquistadores: A New History of Spanish Discovery and Conquest, p. 88
Excerpt from Alcohol
— translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps
On the terrace the left-over cups of tea
are filling up with rain water
and cigarette butts,
you and I share a cold
you and I share long conversations —
you don’t notice the morning rain
you go to sleep late
and you wake up late
I write poems about how I love
this woman, and I invent
newer and newer words
to avoid
telling her.
Serhiy Zhadan is the most popular poet of the post-independence generation in Ukraine. His work speaks to the disillusionment, difficulties, and ironies brought by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Much thanks to Life of B for hosting Walking Squares!
It is cold. Today it is too cold (and blustery) to walk. These pictures of Lake Annaghmakerrig are from two days ago.
Books We’ve Never Read (an Excerpt)
— translated from the Ukrainian by Askold Melnyczuk
Books we’ve never read are opening for us.
Towns shimmer in the night air.
Cold dawns. Warm autumn train stations.
The roads turn like pages. Eyes reddened by wind.
_____________
Marjana Savka is a writer, publisher, community activist, and chief editor and co-founder of Vydavny Staroha Leva (Old Lion Publishing House). Born in the village of Kopychyntsi, Ternopil oblast, she currently lives and works in Lviv. Savka is the author of the poetry collections Oholeni rusla (Naked River Beds, 1995), Hirka mandrahora (Bitter Mandragora, 2002), Kokhannia i viina (Love and War, 2002, together with Marianna Kiianovska).
Is everyone addicted to extremes? How do people stay married? Surely they reach a compromise between infatuated and withholding. I never thought of Marc as a boyfriend. Boyfriends were people who fled. Marc stuck around. I was his boyfriend; he wasn’t mine.
— John weir’s “katherine mansfield,” in the collection your nostalgia is killing me
Here she is last night, at the post-rehearsal reception, in one of San Francisco’s premiere Tiki Bars, Pagan Idol on Bush.
It seems only yesterday when she wrote me a note: “Tita, I’m accepting Stanford because of you.”
Posting for Debbie Smyth’s Six-Word Saturday Challenge.
Self’s favorite flower — dear blog readers all know what that is:
ROSES! ROSES! ROSES!
Because this year, she moved her container roses to just outside her French doors, and they have repaid that decision in spades. She greets them every day, and lavishes care and fusses. They love food, and sun, and warmth — which just so happen to be all the things self loves. And oh, yes, they love companionship. And they repay that companionship with the most gorgeous displays.
Here’s the prompt from Leya.
— Journeys with Johnbo, Lens-Artists Photo Challenge # 215
Below: the bus self took from Belfast to Downpatrick, Northern Ireland
In April, self visited NI for the first time. She did a residency at River Mill, near Downpatrick. Crushed the writing: finished her horror story/alien invasion story, The Rorqual, and completely re-wrote a few others. Placed a story while she was still there: “Residents of the Deep,” coming soon in J Journal.
Have been resisting this book for a good long time, finally got down to reading it today.
Oh, the voice is marvelous!
Circe and Prometheus have their first conversation while Prometheus is manacled to a wall, his back filleted by a Fury:
Prometheus: The only thing they share is death. You know the word?
Circe: I know it but I do not understand.
Prometheus: No god can. Their bodies crumble and pass into earth. Their souls turn to cold smoke and fly to the underworld. There they eat nothing and drink nothing and feel no warmth. Everything they reach for slips from their grasp.
A chill shivered across Circe’s skin. “How do they bear it?
Prometheus: As best they can.
CIRCE, by madeline miller, p. 22by
Andy Hertzfeld on his boss, Steve Jobs:
Walter Isaacson:
The thing is, self loathes Trump but understands Jobs. Jobs gave her laptops that traveled with her to Dharamsala, Venice, Pasadena, New York, the Philippines etc It did belly flops on concrete (It was brand new, too! Self thought for sure she’d have to get a new one, but no), got beer spilled on it, got left behind (once) at Shannon Airport in Ireland, got left behind again in Don Salvador Benedicto (Negros Island, central Philippines). The product is not a grift; it delivers. In addition: she can walk into an Apple store anywhere in the world — Paris, London, Dublin — and the staff there will know how to get her the right product to interface with her MacBook so that she is more efficient. This is beautiful. It’s better than a cult.
Walter Isaacson:
To Steve Jobs, making laptops was an art. He didn’t apply to Stanford because, he said, “The students were not artistic.” He had “a passion for making a great product, not a profitable one.”
Stay tuned.
Kanlaon 