Merely Anecdotal

Hey! You found my blog! Well I think it's great... Give us a snog! Ah ye bloody ingrate... But anyhoo, for those that do stay, Let me give you fair warning what lies yonder, nay? A bit of The Doctor in his blue box so keen, Sherlock and Watson, just friends, so it seems. Next, Harry Potter indeed made me cry, but as long as I’m posting in my mind no one died. Charlie Chaplin helped a nation throughout despair. They called him a commie, boy did America fuck up there. Let’s see what else? Ah the books that I read. The music I hear. And the photos I see. That’s all I can think of, my blog’s galore. But of course this is Tumblr, SO THERE’S PROBABLY MORE.

THE HUNGER GAMES

POTTERHEAD

WHOVIAN

SHERLOCKIAN

REBELLION

LOTR

THE HOBBIT

SALAD FINGERS

THE SIMPSONS

SPONGEBOB

Lovely, Lovely People

Posts tagged "memoir"

Her purse is half open, and I see a hotel-room key, a metro ticket, and a hundred-franc note folded in four, like objects brought back by a space probe sent to earth to study how earthlings live, travel, and trade with one another. The sight leaves me pensive and confused. Does the cosmos contain keys for opening up my cocoon? A metro line with no terminus? A currency strong enough to buy my freedom back? We must keep looking. I’ll be off now.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

“I have indeed begun a new life, and that life is here, in this bed, that wheelchair, and those corridors. Nowhere else.”

Photography by Chris Jones

On a table cluttered with empty cups stands a small typewriter with a sheet of pink paper stuck in the rollers. Although at the moment the page is utterly blank, I am convinced that someday there will be a message for me there. I am waiting.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

“Far from such din, when blessed silence returns, I can listen to the butterflies that flutter inside my head. To hear them, one must be calm and pay close attention, for their wingbeats are barely audible. Loud breathing is enough to drown them out. This is astonishing: my hearing does not improve, yet I hear them better and better. I must have the ear of a butterfly.”

Photography by Masha

Today it seems to me that my whole life was nothing but a string of those small near-misses: a race whose result we know beforehand, but in which we fail to bet on the winner.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

“I am fading away. Slowly but surely. Like the sailor who watches the home shore gradually disappear, I watch my past recede. My old life still burns within me, but more and more of it is reduced to the ashes of memory.”

Photography by John Shappell

Since Joséphine was still sleeping, I cautiously dressed and left to engage in one of my favourite pastimes: nightwalking. It was my personal way of battling misfortune: just walking until I dropped.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

All around us, a lifetime’s clutter has accumulated; his room calls to mind one of those old persons’ attics whose secrets only they can know - a confusion of ancient magazines, records no longer played, miscellaneous objects. Photos from all the ages of man have been stuck into the frame of a large mirror.

Photography by Tim Heffernan

Sweet Florence refuses to speak to me unless I first breathe noisily into the receiver that Sandrine holds glued to my ear. ‘Are you there, Jean-Do?’ she asks anxiously over the air.
And I have to admit that at times I do not know any more.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

Sometimes the phone interrupts our work, and I take advantage of Sandrine’s presence to be in touch with loved ones, to intercept and catch passing fragments of life, the way you catch a butterfly.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

As we emerged from a lift, having got off on the wrong floor, I saw it: tall, robust, and reassuring, in red and white stripes that reminded me of a rugby shirt. I at once placed myself under the protection of this brotherly symbol, guardian not just of sailors but of the sick-those castaways on the shores of loneliness.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

Reflected in the glass I saw the head of a man who seemed to have emerged from a vat of formaldehyde. His mouth was twisted, his nose damaged, his hair tousled, his gaze full of fear. One eye was sewn shut, the other goggled like the doomed eye of Cain. For a moment I stared at that dilated pupil before I realized it was only mine.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

Yet all these lofty protections are merely clay ramparts, walls of sand, Maginot lines, compared to the small prayer my daughter, Celeste, sends up to her Lord every evening before closing her eyes. Since we fall asleep at roughly the same hour, I set out for the kingdom of slumber with this wonderful talisman which shields me from all harm.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby. Design by Olávia Bonfim

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby. Design by Kyle