The Curt Truth

"Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation."
-Andre Gide

Image: Charles Thurston Thompson, Autoportrait, 1853
Title: Carson McCullers, from The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Other Stories

I ‘saw’ the canvas turn blue as I put the paint down

“I was always inventing stories and machinations to make sense of things I didn’t understand, and I understood almost nothing.”

-	César Aira

Image: Gerhard Richter, Iceberg in the mist

Title: Sargy Mann

Caught between the tongue and the taste

“Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are 

 

always impossible.” 
-Doris Lessing

Title: Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red
Image: Found

To cross the border beyond

Having been blown away
by a book
I am in the gutter
at the end of the street
in little pieces
like the alphabet

-Mary Ruefle, from "White Buttons" as found in Trances of the Blast
Title: Octavio Paz, The Double Flame
Image: Trinity Site explosion, 0.016 seconds after explosion, July 16, 1945

Blind as we are to Seeing

     All words are masks and the lovelier they are, the more they are meant to conceal.

  -Steven Millhauser


Image: Claudia Drake, Moira, 2007
 

Title: Miguel Hernández