@mmcgovern | ask | sounds + stories | trntbl | ex.fm
note: i respond privately to comments/questions left in the "ask" box within a few days. email often takes longer: mauramcgovern at gmail
i dreamed i called you on the telephone
to say: be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer
the waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself
i have always wondered about the left-over
energy, the way water goes rushing down a hill
long after the rains have stopped
or the fire you want to go to bed from
but cannot leave, burning-down but not burnt-down
the red coals more extreme, more curious
in their flashing and dying
than you wish they were
sitting long after midnight
- for the dead by adrienne rich | via xoplusm [emphasis mine]
sucking at morning running, started a new job so i would have to get up at 5 to make it to work on time, more of a vision than a goal.
- from a friend in response to my question: morning running? [emphasis mine]
![i always had this idea that doing art was just a masturbatory activity, and didn’t really help anybody. i was teaching kids in the california youth authority, an honor camp where they send kids instead of sending them to prison. one kid came to me one day and asked if i would open up the arts and crafts building at night so they could work. i said, “if all of you guys will cool it in the classes, then i’ll baby-sit you.” worked like a charm. here were these kids that had no values i could embrace, that cared about art more than i. so, i said, “well, i guess art has some function in society,” and i haven’t gotten beyond that yet, but it was enough to convince me that art did some good somehow. i just needed a reason that wasn’t all about myself.
- john baldessari | via thenewgraphic: nevver [emphasis mine]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1lxqujx341qz6f9yo1_400.jpg)
i always had this idea that doing art was just a masturbatory activity, and didn’t really help anybody. i was teaching kids in the california youth authority, an honor camp where they send kids instead of sending them to prison. one kid came to me one day and asked if i would open up the arts and crafts building at night so they could work. i said, “if all of you guys will cool it in the classes, then i’ll baby-sit you.” worked like a charm. here were these kids that had no values i could embrace, that cared about art more than i. so, i said, “well, i guess art has some function in society,” and i haven’t gotten beyond that yet, but it was enough to convince me that art did some good somehow. i just needed a reason that wasn’t all about myself.
- john baldessari | via thenewgraphic: nevver [emphasis mine]
i dream about a kind of criticism that would try not to judge but to bring an oeuvre, a book, a sentence, an idea to life; it would light fires, watch the grass grow, listen to the wind, and catch the sea foam in the breeze and scatter it. it would multiply not judgments but signs of existence; it would summon them, drag them from their sleep. perhaps it would invent them sometimes — all the better. criticism that hands down sentences sends me to sleep; i’d like a criticism of scintillating leaps of imagination. it would not be sovereign or dressed in red. it would bear the lightning of possible storms.
- michel foucault | via viafrank [emphasis mine]
break ties | kins | via yvynyl: musicfansmic
definitely this.
i think all college students, maybe before college even, but certainly by college, should read letters to a young poet. it cuts through to the heart of what’s of value in life. to really be true to your own spirit. to be awake and develop patience so that you truly understand what it is you’re trying to do, desire, and who in fact you really are. that is not what you’d get from a polemical essay. somebody trying to sway you on how many ears of corn you can grow if you collectivize. it’s a wonderful gift to the planet.
- alice walker, this is the time for poetry [emphasis mine]
![laurel pantin [aka 1010woodland on tumblr] for intothegloss.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1i4idk5lJ1qhax9fo1_1280.jpg)
