Sleepers A Poem by Nick Trombley m o t i o n l e s s m o t i o n l s e s m o t i o n s l e s m o t i o s n l e s m o t i s o n l e s m o t s i o n l e s m o s t i o n l e s m s o t i o n l e s s m o t i o n l e s s o m t i o n l e s s o m t i n o l e s s o m t n i o l e s s o m n t i o l e s s o m n t o i l e s s o m n o t i l e s s o m n o t l i e s s o m n o l t i e s s o m n o l i t e s Concrete poetry sleepeuphony
Because we have to sleep Two nights later, as he was getting ready to bed down, the boy looked for the star they followed every night. He thought that the horizon was a bit lower than it had been, because he seemed to see stars on the desert itself. "It's the oasis," said the camel driver. "Well, why don't we go there right now?" the boy asked. "Because we have to sleep." Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist sleep
To carve a volume into the void of darkness The nocturnal sound is a reminder of human solitude and mortality, and it makes one conscious of the entire slumbering city. Anyone who has become entranced by the sound of dripping water in the darkness of a ruin can attest to the extraordinary capacity of the ear to carve a volume into the void of darkness. The space traced by the ear in the darkness becomes a cavity sculpted directly in the interior of the mind. Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses sounddarknesssleepsolitude
Traced in the summer skies Yes, it was the hour when, a long time ago, I was perfectly content. What awaited me back then was always a night of easy, dreamless sleep. And yet something had changed, since it was back to my cell that I went to wait for the next day…as if familiar paths traced in summer skies could lead as easily to prison as to the sleep of the innocent. Albert Camus, The Stranger sleepcrime
Delight in the imperfect An Article by David R. MacIver drmaciver.substack.com I think part of the difficulty in allowing ourselves to properly delight in the imperfect, comes from conflating delighting in something with wanting it to happen. This isn’t the case. You can appreciate something as it exists while acknowledging its problems. You can see that a fire is beautiful without becoming a pyromaniac, and you can appreciate the absurdity of your political situation without thinking it’s good. Even if a delight in the imperfect causes you to want more imperfection in your life (and it should), there is no shortage of imperfection to seek out. The imperfect is not scarce, it’s abundant. If you find imperfection delightful, you will never be short of things that delight you, even if you fix any given problem. Solving problems and smoothing out imperfections doesn’t remove the source of delight, it merely opens up new vistas for it. You could give yourself over totally to delight in the imperfect and never run out of things to explore, even without creating your own. flawshumorproblems