cf. Curt Lang, “Granville Theatres” (1972)
Chapter 18: In which our hero walks aimlessly around town on a rainy summer evening with a heart full of despondency and ennui…
Tag: street
“Follow the path your genius traces like the galaxy of heaven for you to walk in.”
Photograph by Skitterphoto via Pixabay
“…follow the path your genius traces like the galaxy of heaven for you to walk in.”
—Emerson, Greatness
Thought you’d never miss me ’til I got a Fat City address
Alfred Stieglitz, “A Snapshot, Paris” (1911)
Tell me why I never seem to make you happy though heaven knows I try
cf. Childe Hassam in Joseph Pennell, “Modern Illustration” (1895)
“Thus oft the hour of parting seems more vivid than a sweet reunion”
Ernst Halberstadt, “Commonwealth Avenue between Arlington and Berkeley Streets” (1973)
The season’s final blossoms bring
More dear delight than buds of spring.
They stir in us a live communion
Of sorrowfully poignant dreams.
Thus oft the hour of parting seems
More vivid than a sweet reunion.
—Aleksandr Pushkin
Let’s move before they raise the parking rate
Wil Blanche, “Springtime Scene…” (1973)
Blues
cf. Edward Fletcher Stevens, “The American hospital of the twentieth century…” (1918) and
treetreeplant, Vancouver rainstorm August 29 2013 – YouTube
Blues
I sat on the edge of the bed
in the dark
spotlight sheet of rain traveling down the street
I remembered another night
when I looked at the rain
a long time ago
at home
–J.S.
My baby takes the morning train
William B., “Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) Construction…” (detail) (1900)
“Let us go then, you and I…”
cf. Remo Farruggio, Basin Street (1938) and LIFE, 1968
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
–T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (excerpt)
I was captured by your style but I could not catch your eyes
cf. Photograph by Christian Koch via Unsplash
She said, “How are you Harry?” I said, “How are you Sue?”
cf. Henrique Pinto, Yellow cab (2008)
The World Is Too Much With Us
Charles O’Rear, Las Vegas street scene (1972)
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.–Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
–William Wordsworth
One time a thing occurred to me…
“Midnight shakes the memory as a madman shakes a dead geranium.”
Twelve o’clock.
Along the reaches of the street
Held in a lunar synthesis,
Whispering lunar incantations
Dissolve the floors of memory
And all its clear relations,
Its divisions and precisions,
Every street lamp that I pass
Beats like a fatalistic drum,
And through the spaces of the dark
Midnight shakes the memory
As a madman shakes a dead geranium.
—T.S. Eliot, Rhapsody on a Windy Night (excerpt)
If this is what’s real
If this is what’s true
Tell me how come
I keep forgetting we’re not in love anymore…
cf. from W. H. Broadwell, “Night Photography” (ca. 1909)
“For no one in the world loves you…except for me.”
ALFREDO:
Oh, if I only had the right,
I’d be the most watchful guardian
Of your dear life.VIOLETTA:
What a thing to say!
Who cares what happens to me?ALFREDO:
(ardently)
For no one in the world loves youVIOLETTA:
No one?ALFREDO:
… except for me.
—Francesco Maria Piave (after Alexandre Dumas fils), “La Traviata”
I loved you since I knew you
I wouldn’t talk down to you
I have to tell you just how I feel
I won’t share you with another boy…
cf. Lesser Ury, Nocturnal Street Scene (ca. 1920)
Summertime Girls
I just wanna watch the girls go by
It’s like poetry in motion
Against a hot summer sky
I’m in love at least every minute or two
Until the next time a girl walks by
I think I love her too
Oh I, I can’t help myself
But I just lose my head
Every time you see ’em walkin’ by…
John Sapiro 