"IV. HE SHE THEY YOU YOU YOU I HER SO PRONOUNS
BEGIN THE DANCE THEY CALLED WASHING WHOSE NAME
DERIVES FROM AN ALCHEMICAL FACT THAT AFTER A
SMALL STILLNESS THERE IS A SMALL STIR AFTER
GREAT STILLNESS A GREAT STIR"

—Anne Carson, Beauty of the Husband

if by small stir you mean crying

if by great stir you mean this

"The Richter scale has neither a minimum nor a maximum threshold.
Everything depends on
the sensitivity of the seismograph."

—Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

I posted this over summer when I was so hung up on people I would literally catch on fire when they walked into a room. AC’s still right, she’s still got it, Geryon’s heart still beats like mine—but. But. You can retune your own seismograph. You can turn the dial, and one day the same people walk into your house and everything stays standing. And then it is time for them to go home now, please. Last call.  

“it’s a gap in the series the series is you” 

"I don’t understand this business of linguistics.
Make me cry.
Don’t make me cry.
I cry. You cry. We make ourselves cry."

—Anne Carson

The Truth About Tears, or, YUP

"To stay human is to break a limitation.
Like it if you can. Like it if you dare."

—Anne Carson

"stale peace of old bedtimes
filled the room. Love does not
make me gentle or kind. thought Geryon"

—Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

i said this was my favorite book when pressed. upon review, the statement remains true.

love does
NOT
make me gentle
or
kind

etc

“In Chapter 7 of The Autobiography of Red, Geryon meets Herakles for the first time. Anne Carson says they “recognized each other like italics.” Like the second they shared the same patch of air they were already leaning into each other. She also says their meeting was “one of those moments that is the opposite of blindness.” Like they couldn’t stop seeing each other once it had started, that they were so busy seeing each other everything else fell away. Like the world between them stopped, and the world around them just kept moving. I didn’t think that would ever happen to me, that I’d ever get to live like someone out of a book. Then, of course, I got to meet you.”

(Found this on my computer last night in a word document titled “Aftershock.” ….huh.)

"A wound gives off its own light
surgeons say
If all the lamps in the house were turned out
you could dress this wound
by what shines from it."

—Anne Carson

also: “flames licking along the floorboards.” the house, and the wound, and the Richter scale, and really just anything. 

"Much truer
The time that strays into photographs and stops."

—Anne Carson

OK YOU CAN KEEP GOING NOW! THANKS! BYE, TIME!