sentence chords

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from ursula leguin’s introduction to the left hand of darkness:

the artist deals with what cannot be said in words.  the artist whose medium is fiction does this in words.  the novelist says in words what cannot be said in words…a sentence or paragraph is like a chord or harmonic sequence in music: its meaning may be more clearly understood by the attentive ear, even though it is read in silence, than by the attentive intellect.

and, the story’s first sentence:

i’ll make my report as if i told a story, for i was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of imagination.

dao and poo.

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How can you get very far,
If you don’t know Who You Are?
How can you do what you ought,
If you don’t know What You’ve Got?
And if you don’t know Which to Do
Of all the things in front of you,
Then what you’ll have when you are through
Is just a mess without a clue
Of all the best that can come true
If you know What and Which and Who.

–Benjamin Hoff, from the Tao of Pooh

sirens

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There were so many
So many sirens today
Screaming emergency
When maybe
It
 Isn’t
                Maybe
Everything will just be okay
Oh say
It’s all
Going to be okay
I wanted
I wanted
To warn you
Those sirens
So false and glittering
Get out now
That black water
Swallows us
We deserve to swim
In a lake of peace
With waterfalls
And the wherewithal
To keep
Some semblance of grace
Don’t make me trace out
These phantoms for you
My love is true
I know when to walk away

gods

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by nabokov is one of my new favorite short stories, and it reminds me of what i read as his high I(mpressions)P(er)H(our) (though the Institute for Preparations of the Hereafter is what he is  referring to with that acronym…so maybe…as they say with that phrase i hate…same difference) in Pale Fire.  this is the setting he seems most generally tuned to.

intersection

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There is a girl standing on the corner of the intersection, waiting to cross the street.  She has the face of a child but her hair is all gray.  Her body is small and her clothes sort of hang off her.  Her sodden shoes are letting the rainwater in.
The cars are moving constantly, but the stream is just endless.  There is no way a careful girl like her could cross.  She sits down finally in exhaustion.  The patch of grass underneath her feels cool and pliable.  She senses a spider dance up her bare leg.  She looks at her crumbling shoes so long that they start to change.  They slither a circle and swallow themselves and make themselves into rings.  She imagines the circles so hard that the rings glint and spin and become solid wheels.  She stands up unsteady but the wheels propel her promptly through the intersection.  She’s been standing still for so long that the movement itself feels good.
The cars slam their brakes in confusion, as they are only their own drivers.  They signal unsure, but feel like the light hadn’t changed.
The girl’s long hair circulates into the most emerald of greens, and the sunlight glints off it like seawater and trees.  Her clothes slip off and she spirals through the streets, naked and like a goddess at peace.

only dreams

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things brushed past, and from the shadows on the wall they seemed to be horses with spindly legs and waving manes.  and there were shadows of huntsmen, ladies and gentlemen, on horseback.  ‘those are only dreams,’ said the crow.  ‘they come to take the thoughts of their royal masters off to the chase.’  the dreams on horseback pranced into the room again. 

from hans christian andersen’s the snow queen