Commonplaces

Devoe pears.

I note that it's been ten years since I started my commonplace book. It's still in the same 100 page composition book, so I've been frugal. Here are some recent entries:

"One world at a time." Thoreau on his deathbed, when a local divine asked him if he could see Paradise.

"A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us." Kafka

"We are lovers of beauty and economy." Pericles

"The cat is an anarchist, while the dog is a socialist. He is an aristocratic, tyrannical anarchist, at that." Carl Van Vechten

"It's always night, or we wouldn't need light." Thelonious Monk

"Complimenti, you bitch. I am wracked by the seven jealousies." Ezra Pound to T.S. Eliot

"Be regular and orderly in your life, like a good bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work." Flaubert

"[It] grows like a tree -- more beautiful the older it becomes." Derek Jarman

"It took all winter to get through summer." Tom Petty (possibly misheard)

"And his idealism was tempered with a deep pessimism, or rather, lucidity about the nature of humanity." J.V. Halperin on Felix Feneon

"If you behave, I'll give you permission to think of a bear." J.L. Borges to 5-year old nephew

Cook these with tomatoes and garlic and time.