October 30, 2022 Reading time: ~1 minute

So, friend, you think my face and legs in stone
Are signs that I have failed? Friend, think again.
When I ascended to my marble throne
The land was forest, meadow, lakeside glen.
I took it and I wasted it. This desert tract
Stands as my most expansive monument:
Dead-life, as blank as hope, as bald as fact.
I made a world of sand. And it's this spent
Stage-set, bleached clean, that I am proudest of—
More than my palaces and bling and war—
Because it's the perfection of my love
When my rule's push came to my people's shove.
We tyrants know what power's really for.
I made my desolation to endure.

—Adam Roberts

{x}

June 29, 2022 Reading time: ~1 minute

When she saw that she waited in vain,
that her hope was lost,
she took another of her cubs
and made him a young lion.

—Book of Ezekiel 19:5

(I read this verse out of context and it arrested me completely.  I've never read it before.  There's a kind of poetry here, in this out of context snippet, that suggests a fascinating story.)

June 18, 2022 Reading time: ~1 minute

All time exists. That is the truth beyond the legends the epopts tell. If the future did not exist now, how could we journey toward it? If the past does not exist still, how could we leave it behind us? In sleep the mind is encircled by its time, which is why we so often hear the voices of the dead there, and receive intelligence of things to come.

—Merryn,
The Claw of the Conciliator, Chapter XXXI,
Gene Wolfe

May 27, 2022 Reading time: ~1 minute

In Angel's Care (1931),
Paul Klee
{via}

January 29, 2022 Reading time: ~1 minute

The North-West Angle of the Facade of St Mark’s, Venice,
by John Ruskin (1819–1900)

{x} {via}

January 24, 2022 Reading time: ~1 minute

Is acher in gáith in-nocht,
fu-fúasna fairggae findfolt:
ní ágor réimm mora minn
dond láechraid lainn úa Lothlind.

Bitter and wild is the wind to-night
tossing the tresses of the sea to white.
On such a night as this I feel at ease:
fierce Northmen only course the quiet seas.
(transl. James Carney)

The wind is rough tonight
tossing the white combed ocean.
I need not dread fierce Vikings
crossing the Irish Sea.

—St. Gall Priscian, margin gloss.

{x} {xx}

January 19, 2022 Reading time: ~1 minute

Lord Nerevar Indoril, Hai Resdaynia!
Long forgotten, forged anew!
Three belied you, three betrayed you!
One you betrayed was three times true!

Lord Voryn Dagoth, Dagoth Ur
–steadfast liegeman, faithful friend–
bids you come and climb Red Mountain!

Beneath Red Mountain, once again,
break your bonds, shed cursed skin,
and purge the n'wah from Morrowind!

—The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

January 18, 2022 Reading time: ~1 minute

All is silence. The road is straight, without turning, in darkness. Now let there be an end to all things.

—Dreamer,
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind