TEXTS

 

Emily’s House

 

I. I dwell in Possibility —

A fairer House than Prose — More numerous of Windows — Superior — for Doors —

Of Chambers as the Cedars — Impregnable of Eye —
And for an Everlasting Roof The Gambrels of the Sky —

Of Visitors — the fairest —
For Occupation — This —
The spreading wide my narrow Hands To gather Paradise —

 

II.The name — of it — is “Autumn” —

The hue — of it — is Blood — An Artery — upon the Hill — A Vein — along the Road —

Great Globules — in the Alleys — And Oh, the Shower of Stain — When Winds — upset the Basin — And spill the Scarlet Rain —

It sprinkles Bonnets — far below — It gathers ruddy Pools —
Then — eddies like a Rose — away — Upon Vermilion Wheels —

 

III. The bee is not afraid of me,

I know the butterfly ;
The pretty people in the woods Receive me cordially.

The brooks laugh louder when I come, The breezes madder play.
Wherefore, mine eyes, thy silver mists ? Wherefore, O summer’s day ?

 

IV. Within my Garden, rides a Bird

Upon a single Wheel —
Whose spokes a dizzy Music make As ‘twere a travelling Mill —

He never stops, but slackens Above the Ripest Rose — Partakes without alighting And praises as he goes,

Till every spice is tasted —
And then his Fairy Gig
Reels in remoter atmospheres — And I rejoin my Dog,

And He and I, perplex us
If positive, ‘twere we —
Or bore the Garden in the Brain This Curiosity —

But He, the best Logician, Refers my clumsy eye — To just vibrating Blossoms! An Exquisite Reply!

 

V. These are the days when Birds come back —

A very few — a Bird or two — To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies resume The old — old sophistries of June — A blue and gold mistake.

Oh fraud that cannot cheat the Bee — Almost thy plausibility
Induces my belief.

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear — And softly thro’ the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf.

Oh Sacrament of summer days,
Oh Last Communion in the Haze — Permit a child to join.

Thy sacred emblems to partake — Thy consecrated bread to take And thine immortal wine!

 

VI. I’m nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell! They’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day To an admiring bog!

 

VII. Wild Nights — Wild Nights!

Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be Our luxury!

Futile — the Winds —
To a Heart in port — Done with the Compass — Done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden —
Ah, the Sea!
Might I but moor — Tonight — In Thee!

 

VIII. Dawn

When Night is almost done — And Sunrise grows so near
That we can touch the Spaces — It’s time to smooth the Hair —

And get the Dimples ready —
And wonder we could care
For that old — faded Midnight — That frightened — but an Hour —

 

IX. Glee ! the great storm is over !

Four have recovered the land ; Forty gone down together Into the boiling sand.

Ring, for the scant salvation !
Toll, for the bonnie souls, — Neighbor and friend and bridegroom, Spinning upon the shoals !

How they will tell the shipwreck When winter shakes the door,
Till the children ask, “But the forty ? Did they come back no more ?”

Then a silence suffuses the story,
And a softness the teller’s eye ;
And the children no further question, And only the waves reply.

 

X. The Shelter

The body grows outside,— The more convenient way,— That if the spirit like to hide, Its temple stands alway

Ajar, secure, inviting;
It never did betray
The soul that asked its shelter In timid honesty.

 

Absent an Adjustment

 

It is, I promise, worse than you think.

 

Many sober-minded scientists, few of them inclined to alarmism, have quietly reached an apocalyptic conclusion, too: No plausible program of emissions reduction alone can prevent climate disaster.

 

Even when we train our eyes on climate change, we are unable to comprehend its scope. When it comes to contemplating real-world warming dangers, we suffer from an incredible failure of imagination.

 

The reasons for that are many:

the timid language of scientific probabilities;

the fact that the country is dominated by a culture that doesn’t see warming as a

problem worth addressing;

the way that climate denialism has made scientists even more cautious in offering

warnings;

the simple speed of change and, also, its slowness, such that we are only seeing effects

now of warming from decades past;

our uncertainty about uncertainty, which stops us preparing as though anything worse

than a median outcome were possible;

the way we assume climate change will hit hardest elsewhere, not everywhere;

the discomfort of considering a problem that is very difficult, if not impossible, to solve;

the incomprehensible scale of that problem, which amounts to the prospect of our own

annihilation;

simple fear.

 

It is, I promise, worse than you think.

Absent a significant adjustment to how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth will likely become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century.

 

But climate scientists have a strange kind of faith: we’ve found a way to engineer our own doomsday, and surely we will find a way to engineer our way out of it, one way or another, because we must.

 

Text adapted by written permission from “The Uninhabitable Earth” by David Wallace-Wells

New York Magazine, July 9, 2017, New York Media LLC

 

Preach Sister, Preach

 

Simone de Beauvoir

This has always been a man’s world, and none of the reasons that have been offered in explanation have seemed adequate. One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

 

Mae West

There are no good girls gone wrong—just bad girls found out.

When I’m good, I’m very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better.

There are no good girls gone wrong—just bad girls found out.

Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.

 

Gilda Radner

I’d much rather be a woman than a man.

Women can cry, they can wear cute clothes, and they’re the first to be rescued off sinking ships.

 

George Eliot

I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ‘em to match the men.

 

Lucille Ball

A man who correctly guesses a woman’s age may be smart, but he’s not very bright.

 

Daphne du Maurier

Women want love to be a novel, men a short story.

 

Lizz Winstead

I think, therefore I’m single

 

Leslie Jones

It’s hard to date now. Remember back in the day all you had to ask a man was: Are you single?…Now? It’s a whole interview. Are you single? Are you on drugs? Are you gay? Are you sure?

 

Ann Landers

Women complain about sex more often than men. Their gripes fall into two major categories:

1.  Not enough.

2.  Too much.

 

Gloria Steinem

A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after.

 

Natasha Scripture

The notion that wearing makeup is antifeminist is silly. Cleopatra pretty much invented the eyeliner, and she ruled a kingdom.

 

Lucille Ball

The secret to staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.

 

Tina Fey

If you retain nothing else, always remember the most important role of beauty, which is: who cares?

 

Ellen DeGeneres

Follow your passion. Stay true to yourself. Never follow someone else’s path…unless you’re in the woods and you’re lost, and you see a path. By all means, you should follow that.