From My Commonplace Book

"The man who cannot visualise a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot." - André Breton

From My Commonplace Book

"Life is a bucket of shit with a barbed-wire handle." Jim Thompson

From My Commonplace Book

"I have the feeling that I was born in Vienna in order to live in Paris." - Romy Schneider

From My Commonplace Book

And indeed I shall anchor, one day - some summer morning
of sunflowers and bougainvillea and arid wind-
and smoking a black cigar, one hand on the mast,
turn, and unlade my eyes of all their cargo;
and the parrot will speed from my shoulder, and white yachts glide
welcoming out from the shore on the turquoise tide.

And when they ask me where I have been, I shall say
I do not remember.

And when they ask me what I have seen, I shall say
I remember nothing.

And if they should ever tempt me to speak again,

I shall smile, and refrain.

Randolph Stow "Landfall"
 

 

From My Commonplace Book

He rode over Connecticut   

In a glass coach.   

Once, a fear pierced him,   

In that he mistook   

The shadow of his equipage   

For blackbirds.  

 

Wallace Stevens "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

 

[The picture shows "Homage to Wallace Stevens" - Sarah Doremus jewelry.]

 

From My Commonplace Book

"I'm an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard." - Raymond Chandler Philip Marlowe's Guide to Life.

From My Commonplace Book

"When not close enough to be killed, the atomic bomb is one of the most beautiful sights in the world." - from a US Army information film in the 1950s.

From My Commonplace Book

"Next, big soft girls will read Len Deighton aloud in jazz workshops." - from a review in LIFE April 1965.

Flâneur

He is the man who makes notes,
The observer in the tall black hat
Face hidden in the brim:
He has watched me watching him.

The street-corner in Buda and after
By the post-office a glimpse
Of the disappearing tails of his coat,
Gave the same illumination, spied upon,
The tightness in the throat.
 
Once too meeting by the Seine
The waters a moving floor of stars,
He had vanished when I reached the door,
But there on the pavement burning
Lay one of his familiar black cigars.

‘Je Est Un Autre’ – Lawrence Durrell

From my Commonplace Book

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.

TS Eliot "Burnt Norton"