Original Artwork For Agalloch, By Fursy Teyssier Of Les Discrets

They were red, these pineapples, with traces of the yellow and the green you know of pineapples but much more of an ochre red, blossoms of rust. And they were not the monstrous things you find in supermarkets here, but small, scarcely bigger than an orange, all the better for sneaking into the small spaces where the light made it to the earth. In later months, when I saw a pineapple shining in a cone of sunlight, I would pick my way through the undergrowth, come up beside it, and look up to see what the pineapple could see, to find the sun that found this fruit.

Zia Haider Rahman In the Light of What We Know

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nadya_ka/6173951745/

You licked houmous off my fingers which is one way to win an argument — Shailja Patel, Love Poem for London

There are three opponents in wrestling — the self, the other wrestler, and time. In wrestling, you are judged for your activity. How aggressively are you seeking out your opponent? How much time are you spending in a submissive position? Are you trying to get out of that position? In poetry, simply scribbling does not move the score. Eyeing the subject, circling about it, and getting ready to surge forward will not put the poem in your grasp. Busyness doesn't move the judge. Simply scribbling, biding your time, reading, is seen as idleness to the non-writer. To the writer, it is a flurry of activity. The trouble, then, is that writing a long poem suffuses idleness and activity over a sustained period. Nothing happens. Everything happens

Oliver de la Paz Six Minutes and Onward: Wrestling, Long Poems, and Time

…unfortunately, it’s true: time does heal. It will do so whether you like it or not, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. If you’re not careful, time will take away everything that ever hurt you, everything you have ever lost, and replace it with knowledge. Time is a machine: it will convert your pain into experience. Raw data will be compiled, will be translated into a more comprehensible language. The individual events of your life will be transmuted into another substance called memory and in the mechanism something will be lost and you will never be able to reverse it, you will never again have the original moment back in its uncategorized, preprocessed state. It will force you to move on and you will not have a choice in the matter.

Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (via naranzarian)

Last rays in a snowy forest

niiloi

“Estonians have decided to translate AI as 'kratt', after a mythological creature.

A kratt is a creature crafted by humans, brought to life with just a little help from the devil, and it can fulfil any task you give it. Now, if you're real smart - a kratt will make you rich and successful. It will do your work, and create for you the life you always dreamed of. But if you give it the wrong task - you're definitely fucked.”

Braavo! Braavo! Kuula, Arkadi… just niiviisi peavad tänapäeva noormehed väljenduma! Ime oleks, kui teil jüngreid poleks! Varemalt tuli noormeestel mõndagi õppida, ei tahetud ju nõmedusega kuulsaks saada, tahes-tahtmata tehti tööd. Aga nüüd tarvitseb neil vaid öelda, et kõik maailmas on rämps, - ja asi kombes. Noortel hea meel. Ja tõepoolest - enne olid nad lihtsalt tobud, nüüd aga on neist järsku saanud nihilistid.

Ivan Turgenev “Isad ja pojad” (1862)