Writer Between Worlds

Soulful writing about humans and places

Category: Life

  • Oamenii

    Oamenii

    (a poem in Romanian) Oamenii se taie cu aplomb unii pe alții Oamenii scot cuțitele și le înfig unii în alții se spintecă sfârtecă eviscerează își produc cicatrici lungi răni adânci găuri prin care poți vedea în zare o bucățică mică mică de albastru Oamenii își cară pumni se învinețesc își rup unii altora nasul…

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  • Quote of the day

    Quote of the day

    “I had been continually exhorted to define my purpose in life, but I was now beginning to doubt whether life might not be too complex a thing to be kept within the bounds of a single formulated purpose, whether it would not burst its way out, or if the purpose were too strong, perhaps grow…

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  • Carpathian cow-keeper

    Carpathian cow-keeper

    Come, come look at the cows, he says, just cross this little brook, don’t worry it is not too cold, and never mind this blue rope here, I will untie it in no time. I wrap it ‘round the bushes so the cows think it’s electric and don’t get away I tend to about 20…

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  • 11 million electric bikes

    11 million electric bikes

    The age of sweat is over. The age of skid marks is here. Deep trenches crisscrossing the country. Every which way, everyone’s rushing – each one of us thinking that we can squeeze more life into that cracked hourglass: 61 seconds to the minute (going on 62), can pedal faster than the rest and come…

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  • As mourning follows night*

    As mourning follows night*

    back home I sleep with my ears unplugged the windows flung wide open into the guzzling night I remain watchful here, in the places my people have – one by one –trickled into the fatty earth I dive into the holes they left – deep dark enticing pools of fresh darkness – I eavesdrop: the…

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  • (Be)longing

    (Be)longing

    belonging is not something you do. it is something that is done to you as early as your mother’s womb before it cramps and convulses and rips out its own lining to reveal breath. belonging is not something you chose. it is something the not-you chooses to surround you with, so your voice, screaming, can…

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  • Have you?

    Have you completed the sacraments of life? Have you bowed to the April sunrise? Have you worshipped the brightness and the honeyed light dripping on the fresh leaves? Have you helped a blind mole across the gravel road and kept it safe from the fury of bikers? Have you touched bark or beetle and gladly…

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  • Springtide

    Heat. April heat. Deep, penetrating. This afterwinter sky – unfamiliar, molten, aglow – splurges on timid leaves, permeates clothes,and burrows into skin. Out by the river I am sitting on a log. The gulls have just taken off, shrieking, treading water, flapping their wings against the dormant, mirror-cold, reflected images of trees. Seconds later, suspended,…

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  • Quote of the day

    “When we refuse to admit the interchangeable character of ideas, blood flows… Firm resolves draw the dagger; fiery eyes presage slaughter. No wavering mind, infected with Hamletism, was ever pernicious: the principle of evil lies in the will’s tension, in the incapacity for quietism, in the Promethean megalomania of a race that bursts with ideals,…

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  • Quote of the day

    “A century ago, the physical environment was for most of humanity that of the natural world, with its rhythms and cycles, its organic, ever-growing and ever-changing interdependent life, a world to which it seemed intuitively obvious that we belong; now it has been replaced for many by an unyielding, inert, confrontational environment of non-living surfaces,…

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  • Times

    Are you disillusioned because the world has gotten worse? Or has the world gotten worse because you’re disillusioned? Was it ever beautiful, spellbinding, full of magic, fresh, or were your eyes just kinder then? Were you under the spell of youth? Did you believe in fairies and princes and happy ends, and the pale pinkness…

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  • Roamers

    I like the people here, by the river: wood-roamers, quiet-seekers, seekers of quiet truths that need no explanation, hunters of oxygen and light and the late-rising brume, dog-walkers, gatherers of solace, birdwatchers – seekers of the trilling heart, vagrant explorers, yielders to the humming fullness, finders of quiet joy contained in greens and blues. no…

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