“We have scarcely gotten home ... when our children's sneezes greet us, skinned knees bleed after waiting all day to do so. There is the bellyache and the burned-out basement bulb, the stalled car and the incontinent cat. The windows frost, the toilets sweat, the body of our spouse is one cold shoulder and the darkness of our bedroom is soon full of the fallen shadows of our failures.” MenChildrenHomeBodyLightAgeTimeWaitingDarknessCarFailureColdShadowCatWindowPatienceOur ChildrenShouldersKneesFallenSweatBurnedBedroomSpouseToiletsFrostBasementsBulbsDarkness To LightBurned OutCold ShoulderSkinned Knees Author:William H. Gass
“But the body fails us and the mirror knows, and we no longer insist that the gray hush be carried off its surface by the cloth, for we have run to fat, and wrinkles encircle the eyes and notch the neck where the skin wattles, and the flesh of the arms hangs loose like an overlarge sleeve, veins thicken like ropes and empurple the body as though they had been drawn there by a pen, freckles darken, liver spots appear, the hairah, the hair is exhausted and gray and lusterless, in weary rolls like cornered lint.” KnowsSelfBodyEyeRunningFailingHairArmsSkinsMirrorsAgingSurfaceFleshFatsSpotsNecksPensGrayWearyExhaustedVeinsRopeSleevesWrinklesLiverHushNotchesFrecklesCornered Author:William H. Gass
“One may decide that the nipple most nearly resembles a newly ripened raspberry (never, be it noted, the plonk of water on a pond at the commencement of a drizzle, a simple bladder nozzle built on the suction principal gum bubble, mole, or birth ward, bumpy metal button, or the painful red eruption of a swelling), but does one care to see his breakfast fruit as a sweetened milky bowl of snipped nips? no.” MayDoeBodyCareWaterSimpleBirthBuiltRedFruitPainfulBreastsBreakfastMetalsBubblesBowlsPrincipalButtonsPondsGumCommencementMolesSwellingNipplesEruptionBladderRaspberriesDrizzle Author:William H. Gass
“So to the wretched writer I should like to say that there’s one body only whose request for your caresses is not vulgar, is not unchaste, untoward, or impolite: the body of your work itself; for you must remember that your attentions will not merely celebrate a beauty but create one; that yours is love that brings it own birth with it, just as Plato has declared, and that you should therefore give up the blue things of this world in favor of the words which say them” WorldGivingShouldWritingBodyRememberAttentionThis WorldBirthGiving UpBlueFavorsCelebratePlatoVulgarWretchedRequestCaress Book:On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry Source: On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry
