Words Read in Times of Truant Disposition

“…every day above the dirt is to get farther than was meant…”

Second try at a dice tower. I think I’m figuring some design things out. This one has three ramps on the inside to randomize the rolls. I’m going to Raku it.

Just as the everyday use of our limbs makes us almost forget their existence and neglect the variety of their resources, and just as it happens that an artist in the use of the human body sometimes points out to us all their suppleness, at the cost of his life which he consumes in exercises and which he exposes to the dangers of his addiction, so the habitual use of language, the practice of reading at random, and the use of everyday expressions, weaken the understanding of these too familiar acts and banish the very conception of their power and of their possible perfection, unless some person survives and dedicates himself who is particularly disdainful of the easy ways of the mind, but singularly attentive to what he can produce that is most unexpected and most subtle.

Then it seemed, as if in a dream, that all the trees around my hut changed and took on a different appearance.  At the top of every tree sat a noble cavalier and the branches were covered with all kinds of men in place of leaves.  Some of them had long pikes, other muskets, short swords, halberds, banners, drums and fifes. It was a brave sight, all neatly arranged, descending row upon row.  The roots, however, consisted of people of little consequence, artisans, laborers, farmers and the like, who, nevertheless, gave the tree its strength, which they renewed whenever it needed it.  They even replaced the fallen leaves from among their number and to their own even greater detriment. All the while they complained about those who were sitting in the tree, and not without good reason, for the whole weight of the tree was resting on them and squeezing all the money out of their purses, even though they had seven locks. And if the money did not come, the commissaries would give them a good going over with a scourge they called a military execution, forcing sighs from their hearts, tears from their eyes, blood from under their nails and the marrow from their bones.

It began to seem that one would have to hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are: in the light of this idea, it goes without saying that injustice is a commonplace. But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power: that one must never, in one's own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one's strength. This fight begins, however, in the heart and it now had been laid to my charge to keep my own heart free of hatred and despair. This intimation made my heart heavy and, now that my father was irrecoverable, I wished that he had been beside me so that I could have searched his face for the answers which only the future would give me now.

Beginning with Sartoris I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it. It opened up a gold mine of other people, so I created a cosmos of my own."

Education was free. That subject my father had written about repeatedly, as comprising his chief hope for us children, the essence of American opportunity, the treasure that no thief could touch, not even misfortune or poverty. It was the one thing that he was able to promise us when he sent for us; surer, safer than bread or shelter. On our second day I was thrilled with the realization of what this freedom of education meant. A little girl from across the alley came and offered to conduct us to school.

I sometimes think that as Britain declines, dreaming of a sweeter past, entertaining few hopes for a finer future, her middle-classes turn increasingly to the fantasy of rural life and talking animals, the safety of the woods that are the pattern of the paper on the nursery room wall. Old hippies, housewives, civil servants, share in this wistful trance; eating nothing as dangerous or exotic as the lotus, but chewing instead on a form of mildly anesthetic British cabbage. If the bulk of American sf could be said to be written by robots, about robots, for robots, then the bulk of English fantasy seems to be written by rabbits, about rabbits, and for rabbits.

Stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood.

Most of the houses in which we had grown up had vanished, as had the stores from which we had stolen, the basements in which we first tried sex, the rooftops from which we had hurled tin cans and bricks. But houses exactly like the houses of our past yet dominated the landscape, boys exactly like the boys we once had been found themselves smothering in these houses, came down into the streets for light and air and found themselves encircled by disaster.

All day Joy sat on her neck in a deep chair, reading.  Sometimes she went for walks but she didn't like dogs or cats or birds or flowers or nature or nice young men.  She looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.

Had the world grown suddenly larger / because he'd consented to climb? / Had he, in fact, consented? / And what if there were no giant? / What if nothing remained but the beanstalk / and this insatiable, climbing self? / And what if, arriving at last, / he was forced to invent a language / for what he found up there?