memories in groups

Lone chimes speak silence, memories in groups beneath the trees,
cows sad in the dusk. Behind the young shepherds a cloud
was bleating at the sunset.

"Engraving," Yannis Ritsos

[Chicago Avenue and Damen Avenue]

out so early

“One summer morning at sunrise a long time ago I met a little girl with a book under her arm. I asked her why she was out so early and she answered that there were too many books and far too little time. And there she was absolutely right.”
~ Tove Jansson

[Chicago Avenue east of Damen Avenue]

blue nights

"Vanish. Pass into nothingness: the Keats line that frightened her. Fade as the blue nights fade, go as the brightness goes. Go back into the blue... I know what the frailty is, I know what the fear is. The fear is not for what is lost... The fear is for what is still to be lost. You may see nothing still to be lost. Yet there is no day in her life on which I do not see her."

"Blue Nights," Joan Didion

[Thessaloniki]

acquainted with the night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
A luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

"Acquainted with the Night," Robert Frost

[Armitage Avenue looking east at Spaulding Street]

most delusive

‎



When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.

~ 
George Bernard Shaw

[Chicago Avenue west of Damen Avenue; Damen Avenue and August Avenue]

i just don't have the time

The odd thing about my life is that I have three full-time jobs and none of them really mix. In the theatre I'm known as a playwright. In Hollywood I'm known as a screenwriter. At the BBC I'm known as a writer of "quality TV drama". None of the people I work with know who the other people are or care. It's like bigamy. I have three jobs which I try to do all at once and it's sometimes hard to explain to people why I might be busy in LA or New Mexico or Shepherd's Bush next week, and therefore unavailable. In my house in Somerset where I write, I don't have a phone, TV or the internet. It's annoying, I admit, and it drives people crazy, but I just don't have the time.

~ Joe Penhall

[66 CTA bus, west of Western Avenue]

the only response

The only response
to a child’s grave is
to lie down before it and play dead

"Minor Poem," Bill Knott

[Damen Avenue at Chicago Avenue]

How little we know,
and when we know it!

"Like A Sentence," John Ashbery

[Chicago Avenue at Hoyne Avenue]

debauched irreparably by hollywood

"[I]nterspersed randomly throughout all of this, action shots from various poster advertisements for Technicolored and black-and-white movie epics wherein mayhem, sex, blood, torture, sadism, and skulduggery had reigned supreme—the bachelor's pad of a man who had been debauched irreparably by Hollywood..."

"A Fan's Notes," Frederick Exley

(Patio Theater)

[Chicago Avenue east of Hoyne Avenue]