Ts Eliot - Tumblr Posts
12.08.22
“We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.” —T.S. Eliot
And so, as a year has passed, I’ve come full circle. Not a real circle. More like a freaky circle. I’m with family. I’m reading a good book. In a month I’ll start my third year of university. Nothing and everything changes. Cheers to everyone wherever you are. The Perseids this year are too dim to see because of the full moon, but they’re still there. We’re still here. We are not alone.
“When I was fifteen, all I wanted was to go off to some other world, a place beyond anybody’s reach. A place beyond the flow of time.’
- But there’s no place like that in this world.
- Exactly. Which is why I’m living here, in this world where things are continually damaged, where the heart is fickle, where time flows past without a break.” —Haruki Murakami

coffee spoons and teaspoons
i leave a spoon in the fridge while my mother’s throwing up. eliot measured our lives in coffee spoons, teaspoons, the things we love small enough to be scooped up and held inside our mouths. a sweater unraveling to leave me cold but still thinking i am warm. still capable of holding a spoon to my mother’s mouth, feed her panic with a soft voice to keep it from rearing its head. i wrap my lips around the edges of comfort and taste the metal of our loves. a white bowl does not mask the acrid scent of something bloody falling out from her body, something too large to kept in the same hollow space as her tongue and teeth and words. lovely how we fill our life-spoons with cough-syrup, sweet or bitter kisses, things that linger in a taste and still we can manage to have our mouths open, to fit the loving in. that we can hold everything inside us: a strawberry as big as my hand that leaves a spreading stain on the skin, the vomit dripping over the tiles, eight dry heaves in as many minutes, a shivering form only now realising it is cold, my own sweater i draped over her, the unraveling hem and sleeves, the nested spoons across a counter top with one missing in the fridge, the unspooling thread of time getting tangled up in things. was this once or as many as you can remember. each day i try to form the words in my mouth and find them a little less strange than before.
I think we are in rats’ alley Where the dead men lost their bones.
T. S. Eliot, excerpt of The Waste Land (via thewinedarksea)
You are the music while the music lasts.
T.S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages (via bookmania)
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language And next year’s words await another voice.
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets (via bookmania)
Şunu unutma!
Fazla fedakârlık
Fazla vefasızlık getirir.
/Eliot/
Let's build Jason a bookshelf !
Pride and Prejudice - homeboy is an Austen fan canonically, we need at least this one.
Hamlet -do I need to say more? Do I?
Water for the elephants: He won't admit it, but the book reminds him of Dick, and he reads it any time he misses him. It's angsty enough to maintain a front while actually being a romance with a satisfying ending.
The Outsiders: It's not just that the story is relatable and really well written; it's the themes of loyalty, grief and heroism, and the imagery and hopefulness shining through, and it's the way Johnny reminds him of Roy and sometimes, after Roy's death, he will close his eyes and picture the two of them together in an abandoned church, in that quiet space safe from the war raging outside, reading Gone With the Wind while Roy provides uncharitable commentary about the characters' decisions.
Under The Whispering Door (TJ Klune): This one was gifted to him by Tim because "the main character is an asshole ghost, I thought you might relate." Of course, these idiots could talk to eachother about emotions and go to therapy, but why do that when you can bait your brother into reading a story that will help him process a bit of his relationship with his own death and the family? The worst part is, it worked great, and Jason is so upset that it became one of his favourite books. (The part about the stages of grief is scientifically inaccurate, though. He would know.)
A compilation of TS Eliot's works: Maybe it's because I'm a big fan of TS Eliot and Jason, but every time I reread one of his poems, I think about Jason and I'm sad. The Hollow Men, in particular about the fallen soldiers from WWI, hits so hard as a Jason poem, especially when you consider he lived through the explosion but died of smoke inhalation.
Flowers for Algernon: After losing Bizarro, Jason rereads it often, sitting on rooftops, every time the sky is bright enough to see the stars. He reads it out loud, and the words burn his tongue and taste bitter every time every time, but he likes to pretend his friend is listening, and feels a little less alone.
The Oresteia: This one belongs to the list Jason has read many times and should probably read less, because he projects the tragedy onto his real life and it's a bad influence that comforts him in the idea that he was doomed from the start and might as well burn the remains of the bridges with his family. Good luck trying to pry it out of his hands though! He also loves the idea of being seen at his worst, in the midst of all his hopelessness, and being loved anyway, cradled with unwavering devotion.
Frankenstein : He's a huge Mary Shelley fan, both as a person and a writer. As for Hamlet and the Oresteia, he definitely projects maybe a little too much of some of the characters, but hey, not everybody can brag that they relate to the Creature on such a visceral level.
What else would you guys add?
"Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care,
Teach us to sit still.
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death,
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death."
TS Eliot, Ash Wednesday
(Don't mind me, just yet again pushing the Jason Todd ft T. S. Eliot agenda because I dislike the concept of happiness)