Refracted Neurons

Also, to be frank, I like dense cities best and care about them most.-Jane Jacobs The thrum of traffic sways you down, lays you gentle on concrete.  Look, the stars are scattered, in street lamps, the glow of signs, our moon a puddle; and that openness inside you rests, sated with the longings of thousands. ________________________ I am reading The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs right now.  I haven't even made it past the introduction and I'm already wowed. Like, check this shit out: So even though I'm in suburban Arizona right now, here's a poem about the city.

What's more, says Csikszentmihalyi, the openness and sensitivity of creative people can expose them to suffering and pain. As electrical engineer Jacob Rabinow told him, "Inventors have a low threshold of pain. Things bother them." And yet, few things in life bring more satisfaction and fulfillment than the process of creation. -From an article by Hara Estroff Marano 

"Lovers in the first stages of attraction speak in harmonic dissonance-echoing and remarking on things that make no sense to anyone but their intended." -George Hagen, Tom Bedlam ********************************************************** Evira: "Yup, the lyrics really are 'Your sex is on fire.'" Agnes: "If my sex was on fire, I would hope that you would call 911." 

Billy Collins makes me jump up and down.  This is from his book Nine Horses, called "Poetry": "Let the playwright with her torn cardigan and a dog curled on the rug move the characters from the wings of the stage to face the many-eyed darkness of the house. Poetry is no place for that. We have enough to do complaining about the price of tobacco, passing the dripping ladle, and singing songs to a bird in a cage. We are busy doing nothing- and all we need for that is an afternoon, a rowboat under a blue sky, and maybe a man fishing from a stone bridge, or, better still, nobody on that bridge at all."

"Oh, you're a Libra, that explains a lot!  I used to date Libras.  Man!  You'll find love with a Libra, whether you like it or not!"-One of my co-workers on Libras "It's not mindgames, it's empowerment, that's all." -Evira after being told by me that she was playing mindgames, boardgames, all kinds of games. "'I suffer,' he announced firmly. 'Then you really must find another job,' she urged him sympathetically, 'You certainly must be qualified for some work where you don't have to shoot people, or beat them or torture them to death.' 'Job?' he said, frowning . . . 'There is nothing wrong with my job.  It is my mistress who causes me torment.'" -Dorothy Gilman The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax 

"Music is none of my business." -Marge Simpson 

"In a Swedish newspaper poll taken last year, 40 percent of respondents said they'd like to be freeze-dried and used to grow a plant."-Mary Roach, Stiff "People were getting mugged going to church . . . then the city condemned the sanctuary . . . you know how it is."

"Oh no, you're doing a hip hop dance on my face."-Homestar Runner

"The only way to deal with bureaucrats is with stealth and sudden violence." -United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali "They don't want us to know their name, so they don't have a name. You can't fight back against something that don't have a name." -Dead Eye Dick, Kurt Vonnegut "How much of our life occurs simply because we don't step backwards fast enough?" -The Eye of the Cricket, James Sallis "Wisdom . . . To follow the word of God even when you cannot imagine an end and there is no light to your path, that is courage, and the beginning of understanding." -Tathea, Anne Perry