AC Quinlan

@acquinlan.bsky.social

187 Followers 206 Following

“a fearless finder of the names of things” author of ENTANGLED TRACES (haiku collection) www.bit.ly/EntangledTraces

the twin that must be met again, changeling need, blazing in color somewhere, flying yellow into the forest with its lucid edict: take to the world, this is the honor of your flesh, the offering of strangers, the faces of cities, honor of all your wish. I say in my own voice. These prophecies may all come true, out of the beaten season. I look in Rotten Lake wait for the flame reflection, seeing only the free beast flickering black along my side animal of my need, and cry I want! I want! rising among the world to gain my converted wish, the amazing desire that keeps me alive, though the face be still, be still, the slow dilated heart know nothing but lack, now I begin again the private rising, the ride to survival of that consuming bird beating, up from dead lakes, ascents of fire. — Muriel Rukeyser “First Elegy: Rotten Lake” (1939)
Discipline of following desires, 𝘢𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 doing what you want to do, is hardest. It presupposes self-knowledge of motives, a careful balance of free action and sense of where cultural taboos lay — knowing whether a particular “desire” is instinctive, cultural, personal, a product of thought, contemplation, or the unconscious. Blake: if the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, ’til all he sees is through narrow chinks of his caverns. Ah. the frustrate bumblebee turns over clambers the flower’s center upside down furious hidden buzzing near the cold sweet stem. In a culture where the aesthetic experience is denied and atrophied, genuine religious ecstasy rare, intellectual pleasure scorned — it is only natural that sex should become the only personal epiphany of most people & the culture’s interest in romantic love take on staggering size.
Excerpts from The Fifth Sacred Thing (1994) by Starhawk: I can't carry my own pain, let alone the weight of all of yours. Diosa, I have too many ancestors, one history of oppression would be enough to inherit. Leave me alone! "Then listen, listen to us, we are your ancestors too. I sold my daughter to the slavers, I loaded the cattle cars, I smashed the temples of the heathens, I applied the lash, I raped. We are your ancestors, we are the unquiet dead. Feed us, heal us, listen to our stories. Or we will feed on you." … hell worlds after hell worlds to be lost in, too many of them, the underside of the last five thousand years of history, and he could find no way out… "No, we want you to sing for us, speak for us, redeem our lives," the ghosts clamored, victims and victimizers, their voices intertwined.
a photo of myself taken September 28, 2024 gender-transformed with FaceApp software
The Boy Who Reversed Himself by William Sleator
Some are like water, some are like the heat Some are a melody and some are the beat Sooner or later, they all will be gone Why don't they stay young? It's so hard to get old without a cause I don't want to perish like a fading horse Youth's like diamonds in the sun And diamonds are forever So many adventures couldn't happen today So many songs we forgot to play So many dreams swinging out of the blue We'll let 'em come true Forever young I want to be forever young Do you really want to live forever? Forever, and ever Forever young I want to be forever young Do you really want to live forever? — from “Forever Young” by Alphaville released Sep. 20, 1984
Anndolen Calben Mithsenn 🤍 [words from Sindarin, Tolkien's Elvish language]
Can you hold the door of your tent Wide to the firmament? Can you, with the simple stature Of a child, breathing nature, Become, notwithstanding, A man? Can you continue befriending With no prejudice, no ban? Can you, mating with heaven, Serve as the female part? Can your learned head take leaven From the wisdom of your heart? If you can bear issue and nourish its growing, If you can guide without claim or strife, If you can stay in the lead of men without their knowing, You are at the core of life. — Tao Te Ching (chapter 10) by Lao Tzu translated by Harold Witter Bynner
It was funny and it was to become contractual. Insofar as I, or rather my body, was an image, an image of the comedy of the girl in thought, I discovered an image to be a composite inner stance or posture. It wasn’t a sign; its meaning was not fixed. The image was synthetic, made, and so mutating and potent. I was not a sign; therefore, I wasn’t a woman either. The image was a fecund entanglement, an infraction that acted within the person, and between persons, and between eras also, a complex of memory, minerals, sensation, and lust. Everything that happened to me then lingered within me, latent, to next spontaneously transform the image of what I’m now saying. The reading girl, the soft action of her fingers in the text, will become philosophy, will become poetry, in a passive but total infiltration. — Excerpt from The Baudelaire Fractal by Lisa Robertson
Martha Bussey White (1778-1809)
Charity – daughter of Jane and Isaac – Do you know what came of the other woman’s child, from before you were wed? Your husband claimed your inheritance, but your blood endures in our veins, a longer legacy. Martha – called Patty by your friends – You grew up without your father; then, a young widow, you raised your babies without theirs – going on 40 more years without him. Lavinia – a strong name of Rome, once given to a king’s daughter – You parted ways from your husband’s blunders and steered the family onward. Sarah – sweet Sadie, half-Irish girl – in that vast city also without a father, you were reckless, twice, or was it love? You knew none of these souls before you, nor after; beginning with your son. Angela – who nearly became a nun – Did you know a different side of the tyrant (and his abandoned heart) than others could see? It’s no excuse for failing to protect the young. Rose – faithful as the sun on golden plains, our home and happiness in days that used to be –
My kiss is a poem When I cannot find the words To tell you it's okay To whisper soft the memory And wile away the day My smile is an encouragement When I cannot find the voice To break the sky The circling storm clouds So near and yet so high My hug is a countercurse When the magic is holding fast To free the myth held, Life's mystery bound, Wordless and yet spelled My hand is an offering When the altar bare is laid For nothing comes Of nothing got Truth in measured sums So leave me, Oh false prophecy When silent night has broke I am alone, The happy child Of which none have spoke (April 4, 2004 – by KLS)
1905 photo of the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), as he gazes directly into the camera; his left hand on his crossed knee and his right hand holding his lowered eyeglasses. He is seated and turned away from his desk, looking toward us, with a picture of three figures (women?) hanging in the background.
Colorized photo of the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926), as he gazes directly into the camera; his left hand on his crossed knee and his right hand holding his lowered eyeglasses. He is seated and turned away from his desk, looking toward us, with a picture of three figures (women?) hanging in the background.
Concert Pianist at Sacred Heart Agnes Clune Quinlan Printed in The News Journal – Lancaster, Pennsylvania – January 3, 1924
“He was a new beginning and every new beginning returns the world. In him, the rain forests were pristine and the sea had not been blunted. He was a map of clear outlines and unnamed hope. He was time before or time after. Time now had not spoilt him. In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance. . . . I live in the space between chaos and shape. I walk the line that continually threatens to lose its tautness under me, dropping me into the dark pit where there is no meaning. At other times the line is so wired that it lights up the soles of my feet, gradually my whole body, until I am my own beacon, and I see then the beauty of newly created worlds, a form that is not random. A new beginning. . . . This was the little bit of evolution that endlessly repeats itself in the young and new-born thing. In this moment there are no cars or aeroplanes. The Sistine Chapel is unpainted, no book has been written…" — from The World and Other Places by Jeanette Winterson (1998)
Wearing a fluorite bracelet on my left wrist — a gift from my daughter. Calcium fluoride, CaF2, “impurities usually make it a colorful mineral”.