John's Dura Mater Blog

..."Listen, my wary one, it's far too late to unlove each other. Instead let's cook something elaborate and not invite anyone to share it but eat it all up very very slowly." - from "Misgivings," a poem by William Matthews

I lately lost a preposition: It hid, I thought, beneath my chair. And angrily I cried: "Perdition! Up from out of in under there!" Correctness is my vade mecum, And straggling phrases I abhor; And yet I wondered: "What should he come Up from out of in under for?" - Morris Bishop

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.  - Abraham Lincoln

After you've been to bed together for the first time, without the advantage or disadvantage of any prior acquaintance, the other party very often says to you, Tell me about yourself, I want to know all about you, what's your story? And you think maybe they really and truly do sincerely want to know your life story, and so you light up a cigarette and begin to tell it to them, the two of you lying together in completely relaxed positions like a pair of rag dolls a bored child dropped on a bed. You tell them your story, or as much of your story as time or a fair degree of prudence allows, and they say, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, each time a little more faintly, until the oh is just an audible breath, and then of course there's some interruption. Slow room service comes up with a bowl of melting ice cubes, or one of you rises to pee and gaze at himself with mild astonishment in the bathroom mirror. And then, the first thing you know, before you've had time to pick up where you le

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.” - Elie Wiesel, Romanian born American Writer.  Nobel Prize for Peace in 1986. b.1928