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“The world wasn’t real anymore. Everything in it was a fraudulent copy of what it should have been, and everything that happened in it shouldn’t have been happening. For a long time afterward, Ferguson lived under the spell of this illusion, sleepwalking through his days and struggling to fall asleep at night, sick of a world he had stopped believing in, doubting everything that presented itself to his eyes.”

— Paul Auster, 4 3 2 1

This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper

Utonulá / Drowned Woman, 1893 - pastel on cardboard. ― Jakub Schikaneder (Czech, 1855-1924)

“You create your own world by your inner attitude,”

— Margaret Atwood, from “The Year of the Flood,” published c. 2009

“Loving you was like going to war, I never came back the same.”

— Warsan Shire

Emilio Gola - In the Study (n.d.)

Beautiful ominous formations the other evening

Ulf Andersen Charles Bukowski 1978

there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you. there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I pour whiskey on him and inhale cigarette smoke and the whores and the bartenders and the grocery clerks never know that he's in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too tough for him, I say, stay down, do you want to mess me up? you want to screw up the works? you want to blow my book sales in Europe? there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep. I say, I know that you're there, so don't be sad. then I put him back, but he's singing a little in there, I haven't quite let him die and we sleep together like that with our secret pact and it's nice enough to make a man weep, but I don't weep, do you?

-- Charles Bukowski, "Bluebird" 1992

“Growing up, I used to climb out my window onto the roof and look up at the stars. There, in the quiet, I would write stories inside my head.”

— Christy Hall, The Little Silkworm