South Seas

This is my third post from a Believer article that I just read, but...

Only one dream
has stayed in his blood: once, when
he worked
as a stoker on a Dutch fishing
boat, the Cetacean,
he saw the heavy harpoons sail in
the sun,
and saw the whales as they fled in
a frothing of blood
and the chase and the flukes lifting,
fighting the launches.

Sometimes he mentions it.

-Cesare Pevase

On a more positive note...

"There is hope. Infinite hope. Just not for us."

Kafka

Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy's Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota

This James Wright poem reminds me a little of that Nabokov quote I just posted, only not nearly as good:

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

Nabokov

"During the eight years that Pnin had taught at Waindell College he had changed his lodgings about every semester. The accumulation of consecutive rooms in his memory now resembled those displays of grouped elbow chairs on show, and beds, and lamps, and inglenooks which, ignoring all space-time distinctions, commingle in the soft life of a furniture store beyond which it snows, and the dusk deepens, and nobody really loves anybody."

The way I feel after reading this quote reminds me of the way I feel after reading the last paragraph of "The Dead".

The friendliest monkey and tiger in the world

Runners up:

The scariest story in the world

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, is said to have seen his double wearing a gray suit, trimmed in gold, riding towards him in the opposite direction while on his way to Drusenheim. Eight years later, while riding from Drusenheim on the very same road, he realized he was wearing the exact outfit that he had seen on his double eight years earlier.

The most charming inscription from a boxer in the world

"To Steve from Muhammad Ali. Love is the net, where the hearts are caught like fish."


signed on a picture of Ali knocking out Joe Frasier. Via Paper Cuts
More interesting inscriptions are here

The happiest babies in the world

(Via Meghan)
(Okay, the second one doesn't look as happy, but Obama does.)

the most beautiful place in the world

I can't believe that neither Stephanie or I have written a post about Barcelona. We loved it so much we got tattoos.

This is La Sagrada Familia.



You can't tell how high it towers over the city in that picture, but here you can.



This is paella, which is so good in Barcelona that you will LOVE IT even if you are freaked out by eating shellfish like me.



Parc Guell. It wasn't this pretty when we saw it.



Ciutadella Park.

The smallest little pigs in the world