“Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness, how we go down into the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above our heads and wake thinking to find ourselves in the presence of the angels and the harpers when we have a tooth out and come to the surface in the dentist’s arm-chair and confuse his ‘Rinse the mouth—rinse the mouth’ with the greeting of the Deity stooping from the floor of Heaven to welcome us—when we think of this, as we are so frequently forced to think of it, it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.”
—Virginia Woolf, On Being Ill
July 2011
26 posts
June 2011
69 posts
“On the flipside of happy, the Nico net caught me early. Her voice equalled the sound of a body being thrown out of a window - entirely without hope, of this world, or the next, or the previous. Onstage, she moved like a big bleak creaking house, never once altering the direction of her eyes. I am in love. Her harmonium heaves and swells like crashing waves answering each other. If Nico could’ve laughed, she would’ve. But she couldn’t, so she didn’t.”
—Morrissey (2003)
Mad Girl's Lovesong
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
Sylvia Plath
Goodbye, my friend, goodbye
My love, you are in my heart.
It was preordained we should part
And be reunited by and by.
Goodbye: no handshake to endure.
Let’s have no sadness — furrowed brow.
There’s nothing new in dying now
Though living is no newer.
Sergei Yesenin (his suicide note)
- Daily Telegraph: Just how obsessed were you, as a teenager, with Patti Smith?
- Morrissey: I was very obsessed because I was very lonely and then therefore when I heard music that I felt was designed for me, it was so unusual that the gratitude I expressed was almost too much. With Patti Smith, when I bought that very first album [Horses, released 1976], I sat up all night listening to it on a very tiny stereo, and I couldn’t stop. And I thought it was extraordinary because it was the voice of somebody who perhaps had felt unattractive all their lives, in every way. Yet here they were, singing about it, and seemed to know a way to make the misfortune of their lives become attractive. And I felt that, well, I could therefore simply sing about my life and how I really feel, and perhaps it could transform itself into something acceptable.
“I have come to the conclusion that solitude is the last refuge of civilised people. It is much more civilised than social intercourse, really, although at first sight the reverse might appear to be the case. Social relations are just the descendants of the primitive tribal need to get together for purposes of defence; a gathering of bushmen or pygmies…”
—Vita Sackville West, From a letter To Virginia Woolf.
Cat Superstitions and Beliefs
Since being domesticated, cats have always been the subject of superstitions and folklore. This is a collection of the more interesting ones I found:
- If a cat continually looks out a window on any day, rain is on the way.
- Cats may be able to see the spectre of death.
- In Scotland, a strange black cat on your porch brings prosperity.
- Sacred cats kept in a sanctuary in ancient Egypt were carefully tended by priests who watched them day and night. The priests interpreted the cat’s movements - twitch of a whisker, yawn, or stretch - into a prediction of an event that would happen in the future.
- In Italy, a cat sneezing is a good omen for everyone who hears it.
- It was largely in the Middle Ages that the black cat became affiliated with evil. Because cats are nocturnal and roam at night, they were believed to be supernatural servants of witches, or even witches themselves.
- To reverse the bad luck curse of a black cat crossing your path, first walk in a circle, then go backward across the spot where it happened and count to 13.
- In Ireland, to kill a cat brings seventeen years of bad luck.
- To end even one of a cat’s 9 lives was to risk being haunted by that particular cat for the rest of the murderer’s life.
- If you drown a cat, you will fall victim to a drowning.
- Charles I, king of England, owned a black cat that he felt brought him luck. He was so afraid of losing it that he had it guarded day and night. As it happened, the day after the cat died, he was arrested.
- At one time, people believed that fur and blood drawn from various parts of the cat’s anatomy cured all ailments.
- Old English superstition: A cat on top of a tombstone meant certainly that the soul of the departed buried was possessed by the devil. Two cats seen fighting near a dying person, or on the grave shortly after a funeral, are really the Devil and an Angel fighting for possession of the soul.
- When you see a one-eyed cat, spit on your thumb, stamp it in the middle of your palm, and make a wish. The wish will come true.Dreaming of a cat
- If you dream of a tortoiseshell cat, you will be lucky in love.
- If you dream of a ginger cat, you will be lucky in money and business.
- If you dream of a black and white cat, you’ll have luck with children; may also mean the birth of a child.
- If you dream of a tabby, you will have luck for your home and all who live there.
- If you dream of a multicolored cat, you will have luck making friends.
- If you dream of a white cat, you will have good luck in general.
