Steven Millhauser, “Flying Carpets,” in The Knife Thrower and Other Stories (1998).
Related reading
All OCA Steven Millhauser posts (Pinboard)
Friday, June 2, 2023
“Way up in the dangerous air”
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Michael Leddy“Orange Crate Art” is a song by Van Dyke Parks and the title of a 1995 album by Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson. “Orange Crate Art” is for me one of the great American songs: “Orange crate art was a place to start.”
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Nancy, October 19, 1950.
“Who are we as a country?”
Michael Leddy
Don’t look for premiums or
coupons, as the cost of
the thoughts blended in
ORANGE CRATE ART pro-
hibits the use of them.
Comments are welcome, appended to posts or by e-mail. I moderate comments to keep out spam, so please be patient.
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Words to live by
Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
*
Νέος ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ ἥλιος. [The sun is new every day.]
Heraclitus
*
Every day is a new deal.
Harvey Pekar, “Alice Quinn”
*
Nos plus grandes craintes, comme nos plus grandes espérances, ne sont pas au-dessus de nos forces, et nous pouvons finir par dominer les unes et réaliser les autres. [Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.]
Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again
*
Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.
Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living
*
I don’t really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it’s always nice, I’ll grant you, if he has one.
J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction
*
I’m not afraid to get it right
I turn around and I give it
one more try
Sufjan Stevens, “Jacksonville”
*
L’attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la générosité. [Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.]
Simone Weil, in a letter
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
*
Νέος ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ ἥλιος. [The sun is new every day.]
Heraclitus
*
Every day is a new deal.
Harvey Pekar, “Alice Quinn”
*
Nos plus grandes craintes, comme nos plus grandes espérances, ne sont pas au-dessus de nos forces, et nous pouvons finir par dominer les unes et réaliser les autres. [Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.]
Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again
*
Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.
Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living
*
I don’t really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it’s always nice, I’ll grant you, if he has one.
J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction
*
I’m not afraid to get it right
I turn around and I give it
one more try
Sufjan Stevens, “Jacksonville”
*
L’attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la générosité. [Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.]
Simone Weil, in a letter
#1 hit
In memory of
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Nancy, October 19, 1950.
comments: 2
“When the newspapers reported a successful launch, it often simply meant that the balloon had lifted off on time and no one in the crowd had been killed. Lunardi’s reputation was badly damaged the following year, when on 23 August at Newcastle a young man, Ralph Heron, was caught in one of the restraining ropes, lifted some hundred feet into the air, and then fell to his death. The impact drove his legs into a flowerbed as far as his knees, and ruptured his internal organs, which burst out onto the ground. He was due to be married the next day.”
— The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes
https://a.co/ePoehky
That reminds me of the ghastly footage of the man trying to fly from the Eiffel Tower.
Carpets, at least in this story, are far more reliable. : )
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