theturnofthephrases

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Tower of Babylon by Ted Chiang, from Stories of Your Life and Others

Hillalum thought of the story told to him in childhood, the tale following that of the Deluge. It told of how men had once again populated all the corners of the earth, inhabiting more lands than they ever had before. How men had sailed to the edges of the world, and seen the ocean falling away into the mist to join the black waters of the Abyss far below. How men had thus realized the extent of the earth, and felt it to be small, and desired to see what lay beyond its borders, all the rest of Yahweh's Creation. How they looked skyward, and wondered about Yahweh's dwelling place, above the reservoirs that contained the waters of heaven. And how, many centuries ago, there began the construction of the tower, a pillar to heaven, a stair that men might ascend to see the works of Yahweh, and that Yahweh might descend to see the works of men. It had always seemed inspiring to Hillalum, a tale of thousands of men toiling ceaselessly, but with joy, for they worked to know Yahweh better. He had been excited when the Babylonians came to Elam looking for miners. Yet now that he stood at the base of the tower, his senses rebelled, insisting that nothing should stand so high. He didn't feel as if he were on the earth when he looked up along the tower. Should he climb such a thing?

#Tower of Babylon #Ted Chinag #Stories of Your Life and Others #*lokasi #*gagasan

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Tower of Babylon by Ted Chiang, from Stories of Your Life and Others

Were the tower to be laid down across the plain of Shinar, it would be two days' journey to walk from one end to the other. While the tower stands, it takes a full month and a half to climb from its base to its summit, if a man walks unburdened. But few men claim the tower with empty hands; the pace of most men is slowed by the cart of bricks that they pull behind them. Four months pass between the day a brick is loaded onto a cart, and the day it is taken off to form a part of the tower.

#Tower of Babylon #Ted Chiang #Stories of Your Life and Others #*lokasi

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On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

With Lan, one of my tasks was to take a pair of tweezers and pluck, one by one, the grey hairs from her head. "The snow in my hair," she explained, "it makes my head itch. Will you pluck my itchy hairs, Little Dog. The snow is rooting into me." She slid a pair of tweezers between my fingers, "Make Grandma young today, okay?" she said real quiet, grinning. For this work I was paid in stories. After positioning her head under the window's light, I would kneel on a pillow behind her, the tweezers ready in my grip. She would start to talk, her tone dropping an octave, drifting deep into a narrative ... A familiar story would follow, punctuated with the same dramatic pauses and inflections during the moment of suspense or crucial turns. I'd mouth along with sentences, as if watching a film for the umpteenth time—a movie made by Lan's words and animated by my imagination. In this way, we collaborated.

#ocean vuong #on earth we're briefly gorgeous #*relasi #*tubuh

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On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

... I fled my shitty high school to spend my days in New York lost in library stacks, reading obscure texts by dead people, most of whom never dreamed a face like mine floating over their sentences—and least of all that those sentences would save me.

#ocean vuong #on earth we're briefly gorgeous #*deskripsi #*gagasan

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At My Least and Most Aware by Durga Chew-Bose, from Too Much and Not The Mood.

I’m still a difficult woman who startles easy. I still forget to wash the apple before I eat it. I’m still oddly thankful for the rush of hot air let off from the sides of buses. Like things could be hotter, grosser. I’m still doubtful my stories possess a clear point. The sound of men gulping water still bothers me. I still interrupt. I’m still unprepared for how unusual it feels to receive a postcard; the traveled touch of card stock; of tapered handwriting chasing vertically up the side, allowing for a squished, tender sign-off. Thinking of you. Miss you. An unforeseen Yours. Even the faint sound of a postcard falling through my mail slot and landing on my floor is, somehow, still enchanted. 

I still prefer counting to fourteen instead of ten. I still don’t mind, perhaps I even like, ice cream’s cold swallow rising up my throat so I can swallow it back down again. I still only have nightmares when I take naps. I still wonder what stops me, what version of me would exist had I let someone take my picture when I was younger, wearing a bikini with my hair up, while in the background an out-of-focus lake contrives to mislay the mood. Because hanging over pictures of lakes and girls and summer is the impression, often, of a missing person.

I still have trouble discerning between loneliness and solitude, and Sundays, and Schubert’s sonatas. I’m still dismally unfunny; restless when I sit on grass; too much of a daughter to forget about the dead. Even though I own none, I still love the size of LP records. Their square, tactile bigness. And I still believe that people who buy them and collect them aren’t snobs at all, but true blues. A record sleeve is unwieldy. To hold one is to sometimes appear like you’re hugging one.

#durga chew-bose #at my least and most aware #too much and not the mood #*karakterisasi

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Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others by Connie Burk and Laura van Dernoot Lipsky

The work was intense, difficult, and often very sad, but the feeling we had working together was amazing. There were people who were radiant, who sang while they worked, who took time to catch up daily on each other’s families, who lovingly greeted everyone with whom they came in contact, who remained inspired in spite of the despair around them.

#Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others #Connie Burk #Laura van Dernoot Lipsky #*relasi #*proses

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Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others by Connie Burk and Laura van Dernoot Lipsky

Not everyone stands on top of cliffs wondering how many people have jumped. Not everyone feels like crying when they see a room full of people with plastic lids on their to-go coffee containers. Not everyone is doing background checks on people they date, and pity is not everyone’s first response when they receive a wedding invitation.

#Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others #Connie Burk #Laura van Dernoot Lipsky #*gagasan #*interioritas

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Cala Ibi oleh Nukila Amal

...berkali-kali aku menatap wajah seorang pria dengan bekas luka di wajah, di meja sebelah. Bekas lukanya membujur turun dari pelipis ke rahang, biru ungu. Aku menatap sinar kuning yang melintas turun dari atas kepalanya, jatuh di sepanjang pipi kanan dan bahu, berpikir, akhirnya, inilah seorang pria yang bisa kucinta. Akhirnya, inilah seorang pria yang pernah berdekatan dengan kematian, menatap gelap raut maut, segelap wajahnya segelap Bacardi Cola dalam gelas. Akhirnya, inilah pria dengan luka, manusia, yang tak coba menyembunyikan duka di wajahnya. Hampir mati, hampir marti, selamanya martir, untuk sesuatu sebab yang diyakininya begitu rupa hingga bertaruh nyawa ...

Ia berdiri, martirku berdiri, aku melihat punggungnya menjauh. Punggungnya seluas sabana, mungkin ada bekas luka lain di sana, panjang seperti ilalang (aku ingin menyusuri garis ungu itu dengan jariku, dengan bibirku). Pria terluka kembali. Ia berjalan dengan langkah pelan di antara umat manusia, seakan waktu telah dibuangnya, tak ada lagi, tanpa benam matahari bulan purnama. Ia duduk bersandar (seperti lelah), menyulut sebatang rokok. Pemantik menyala sejenak memperlihatkan pipinya biru ungu, rerumputan tundra di rahang dan dagunya, kerut gelombang laut di dahinya. Helai-helai rambut jatuh di gelombang laut dahinya, bagai layar-layar tipis hitam, ia tanpa angin tanpa kapal tanpa pelabuhan tanpa utara tanpa lentera (seperti lelah, ia ingin menepi). 

#Cala Ibi #Nukila Amal #*tubuh #*karakterisasi #*gestur

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Cala Ibi oleh Nukila Amal

Aku bersetelan. Aku bercelana panjang, rok selutut, stoking hitam, skarfku melingkar di leher, motif pakis, garis, tartan; baju-baju zirahku menghadapi dunia. Aksesori di telinga dan jari. Serasi. Rapi jali. Bibir dan kuku cat warna bunglon, berubah-ubah warna sesuai setelan, situasi, juga suasana hati (mengapa ada pakaian dinamai blazer, mengingatkanku pada mobil penjelajah gurun pasir sungai lumpur—tak mengena). Aku tampak menarik, metalik. Tapi aku paling manis ketika bangun di pagi hari, tanpa segala rias dan aksesori, rambut jatuh ke mana-mana; di bantal, mata, wajah, senyum. Aku tersenyum, ingat semalam aku bermimpi manis sekali.

#Nukila Amal #Cala Ibi #*tubuh

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Fresh Water for Flowers by Valérie Perrin (translated by Hildegarde Serle)

Throughout my childhood, I’d had this obsession with having lovely white teeth like the girls in the magazines. When child-welfare workers visited my foster homes and asked me if I needed anything, I always requested an appointment with the dentist, as if my future, my whole life, would depend on the smile I had.

#fresh water for flowers #Valérie Perrin #*karakterisasi #*tubuh

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The Fall by Albert Camus (translated by Justin O’Brien)

Holland is a dream, monsieur, a dream of gold and smoke—more gilded by night. And night and day that dream is peopled with the Lohengrins like these, dreamily riding their black bicycles with high handle-bars, funeral swans constantly drifting throughout the whole land, around the seas, along the canals. Their heads in their copper-colored clouds, they dream; they cycle in circles; they pray, somnabulists in the fog’s giolded incense; they have ceased to be here. 

#The Fall #Albert Camus #*lokasi

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The Fall by Albert Camus (translated by Justin O’Brien)

The more I accuse myself, the more I have a right to judge you. Even better, I provoke you into judging yourself, and this relieves me of that much of the burden.  Ah, mon cher, we are odd, wretched creatures, and if we merely look back over our lives, there’s no lack of occassions to amaze and horrify ourselves. Just try. I shall listen, you maybe sure, to your own confession with a great feeling of fraternity

#The Fall #Albert Camus #*gagasan #*karakterisasi

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The Fall by Albert Camus (translated by Justin O’Brien)

Authors of confessions write especially to avoid confessing, to tell nothing of what they know. When they claim to get to the painful admissions, you have to watch out, for they are about to dress the corpse. 

#The Fall #Albert Camus #*gagasan

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The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

It was more of a stammer, slowing down the flow of speech, stressing or highlighting every word he uttered whether he wanted to or not. He obviously felt himself doing it, and his cheeks, which had barely regained their natural pallor, turned scarlet again. 

#the unbearable lightness of being #Milan Kundera #*gestur

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The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

What is unique about the “I” hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The individual “I” is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered. 

#the unbearable lightness of being #Milan Kundera #*gagasan

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The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Tomas held the paper out to the secret policeman as if he were afraid to keep it in his hands another second, as if he were worried someone would find his fingerprints on it.

#the unbearable lightness of being #Milan Kundera #*gestur

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The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

[Lives] are composed like music. Guided by his sense of beauty, an individual transforms a fortuitous occurence... into a motif, which then assumes a permanent lace in the composition of the individual’s life ... Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress

#the unbearable lightness of being #milan kundera #*gagasan