Unfinished Sky Quotes

You build your world around someone, and then what happens when he disappears? Where do you go- into pieces, into atoms, into the arms of another man? You go shopping, you cook dinner, you work odd hours, you make love to someone else on June nights. But you're not really there, you're someplace else where there is blue sky and a road you don't recognize. If you squint your eyes, you think you see him, in the shadows, beyond the trees. You always imagine that you see him, but he's never there. It's only his spirit, that's what's there beneath the bed when you kiss your husband, there when you send your daughter off to school. It's in your coffee cup, your bathwater, your tears. Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you, and a man who swears he'll love you forever isn't finished with you until he's done.

I loved you, so I drew these tides of Men into my hands And wrote my will across the Sky and stars To earn you freedom, the seven Pillared worthy house, That your eyes might be Shining for me When we came Death seemed my servant on the Road, 'til we were near And saw you waiting: When you smiled and in sorrowful Envy he outran me And took you apart: Into his quietness Love, the way-weary, groped to your body, Our brief wage Ours for the moment Before Earth's soft hand explored your shape And the blind Worms grew fat upon Your substance Men prayed me that I set our work, The inviolate house, As a memory of you But for fit monument I shattered it, Unfinished: and now The little things creep out to patch Themselves hovels In the marred shadow Of your gift.

We're the unmended, the untended, cold soldiers of the shoe. We're the neglected, the never resurrected, agonies of the few. We're the once kissed, unmissed and always refused. Because we're the unfinished and feared and we're never pursued. And just that easily, on my behalf, I come around. Because I'm burning. The beast of War feeds only on the meats of War. And now I'm for carnage. Here's how my anguish frees. Destroy everyone of course. Because I'm unwanted and unsafe. And I'll take tears away with torments and rape, killings and fears not even the dead will escape. Encircling the Guilty, Ashamed, Blameless and Enslaved. Absolved. Butchering their prejudice. Patience. Their Value. Because I'm without value. I'm the coming of every holocaust. Turning no lost. Rending tissue, sinew and bone. Excepting no suffering. By me all levees will break. All silos heave. I will walk heavy. And I will walk strange. Because I am too soon. Because without Her, I am only revolutions Of ruin. Because I am too soon. Because without You, I am only revolutions Of ruin. I'm the prophecy prophecies pass. Why need dies at last. How oceans dry. Islands drown. And skies of salt crash to the ground. I turn the powerful. Defy the weak. Only grass grows down abandoned streets. For a greater economy shall follow Us and it will be undone. And a greater autonomy shall follow Us and it too will be undone. And a greater feeling shall follow Love and it too we will blow to dust. For I am longings without trust. The cycloidal haste freedom from Hailey forever wastes. Dust cares for only dust. And time only for Us. Because I am too soon. Because without Her, I am only revolutions Of ruin. Because I am too soon. Because without You, I am only revolutions Of ruin. We are always sixteen...

To get through the night, I sometimes imagined the sky filled with a canopy of stars. I imagined that each star contained the soul of a girl or boy who had died too young, and the light the stars gave off was their brightness.

The paint doesn’t move the way the light reflects, so what’s there to be faithful to? I am faithful to you, darling. I say it to the paint. The bird floats in the unfinished sky with nothing to hold it.

I love you more than all the stars in the sky,

Death takes us by surprise, And stays our hurrying feet; The great design unfinished lies, Our lives are incomplete But in the dark unknown, Perfect their circles seem, Even as a bridge's arch of stone Is rounded in the stream. Alike are life and death, When life in death survives, And the uninterrupted breath Inspires a thousand lives. Were a star quenched on high, For ages would its light, Still traveling downward from the sky, Shine on our mortal sight. So when a great man dies, For years beyond our ken, The light he leaves behind him lies Upon the paths of men.

A blue sky, a jostling wind, a murky dream, a smiling moon, and a cup of coffee with a song unfinished in those eyes twinkling away a story untold.

When you left you left behind a field of silent flowers under a sky full of unstirred clouds...you left a million butterflies mid-silky flutters You left like midnight rain against my dreaming ears Oh and how you left leaving my coffee scentless and my couch comfortless leaving upon my fingers the melting snow of you you left behind a calendar full of empty days and seasons full of aimless wanders leaving me alone with an armful of sunsets your reflection behind in every puddle your whispers upon every curtain your fragrance inside every petal you left your echoes in between the silence of my eyes Oh and how you left leaving my sands footless and my shores songless leaving me with windows full of moistened moonlight nights and nights of only a half-warmed soul and when you left... you left behind a lifetime of moments untouched the light of a million stars unshed and when you left you somehow left my poem...unfinished. (Published in Taj Mahal Review Vol.11 Number 1 June 2012)

The past is like the Gran Cavallo and you can’t fix the Gran Cavallo, right? I mean, sure, who doesn’t fantasize about drawing in the rest of the horse, and maybe the sky around the horse. But what would the painting be worth then? Absolutely nothing. So it is what it is. Imperfect, unfinished, forever. We just have to move on, call it a masterpiece, even if it’s not, and start working on a new goddamned painting.” “I suppose I didn’t realize that’s what it would feel like getting older,” Phoebe confesses.

Look through the unfinished entrance facade, note blue sky where the stained-glass windows would have been, and ponder the struggles, triumphs, and failures of the human spirit.

She believes that her daughter was in agony and that she chose not to suffer; she needs to believe that through her death Kim now lives on a higher plane. "Why else are flowers so beautiful?" she says to me. "why is the sky such a perfect shade of blue? There has to be more than the here and now.

I hope this email finds you well I hope this email finds you calm. I hope this email finds you unflustered about your inbox. I hope this email finds you in a state of acceptance that this email isn’t exactly important in the cosmic scheme of things. I hope this email finds your work happily unfinished. I hope this email finds you beneath a beautiful sky with the wind tenderly caressing your hair like an invisible mother. I hope this email finds you lying on a beach, or maybe beside a lake. I hope this email finds you with the sunlight on your face. I hope this email finds you eating some blissfully sweet grapes. I hope this email finds you well but, you know what, it is okay if it doesn’t because we all have bad days. I hope this email finds you reading a really good poem or something else that requires no direct response from you. I hope this email finds you far away from this email.

Was that the point of suffering: to understand, in some way, what you still had? To clarify it, to rip the stars from the sky and hold them in the hand like diamonds‒to darken all the rest but the most glittering, glad memories? Was that the way to live a sunny life?

What happened in the village of Golden Waters will never be mentioned in history books. Only the grandchildren of the survivors will remember. It will remain unvoiced in their unfinished sentences, uneasy silences, resurfacing nightmares. The memory of the massacre will be carefully handed down from one generation to the next, like passing someone a lit match protected from the wind in the shelter of your palm.

And then as the knives and forks began to clank softly above the white tablecloths, the violins would rise alone, now suddenly mature although tentative and unsure just a short while before; slim and narrow-waisted, they eloquently proceeded with their task, took up again the lost human cause, and pleaded before the indifferent tribunal of stars, now set in a sky on which the shapes of the instruments floated like water signs or fragments of keys, unfinished lyres or swans, an imitatory, thoughtless starry commentary on the margin of music.

Of course, we are challenging nature itself... and it hits back. It just hits back. That's all. And that's grandiose about it. And we have to- to accept that it is much stronger than we are. Kinski always says it's full of... erotic elements. I don't see it so much erotic. I see it more full of obscenity. It's just- Nature here is vile and base. I wouldn't see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and asphyxiation... and choking and fighting for survival... and growing and... just rotting away. Of course, there's a lot of misery. But it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think they- they sing. They just screech in pain. It's an unfinished country. It's still prehistorical. The only thing that is lacking is- is the dinosaurs here. It's like a curse weighing on an entire landscape. And whoever... goes too deep into this... has his share of that curse. So we are cursed with what we are doing here. It's a land that God, if he exists... has-has created in anger. It's the only land where- where creation is unfinished yet. Taking a close look at - at what's around us... there - there is some sort of a harmony. It is the harmony of... overwhelming and collective murder. And we in comparison to the articulate vileness... and baseness and obscenity... of all this jungle - Uh, we in comparison to that enormous articulation - we only sound and look like... badly pronounced and half-finished sentences... out of a stupid suburban... novel - a cheap novel. And we have to become humble... in front of this... overwhelming misery and... overwhelming fornication... overwhelming growth... and overwhelming lack of order. Even the- the stars up here in the-in the sky look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe. We have to get acquainted to this idea that... there is no real harmony as we have conceived it. But when I say this, I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It is not that I hate it. I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgement." -Werner Herzog, "Burden of Dreams" (taken from the movie)

To The Hand” What the eye sees is a dream of sight what it wakes to is a dream of sight and in the dream for every real lock there is only one real key and it’s in some other dream now invisible it’s the key to the one real door it opens the water and the sky both at once it’s already in the downward river with my hand on it my real hand and I am saying to the hand turn open the river

You build your world around someone, and then what happens when he disappears? Where do you go-into pieces, into atoms, into the arms of another man? You go shopping, you cook dinner, you work odd hours, you make love to someone else on June nights. But you're not really there, you're someplace else where there is blue sky and a road you don't recognize. If you squint your eyes, you think you see him, in the shadows, beyond the trees. You always imagine that you see him, but he's never there. It's only his spirit, that's what's there beneath the bed when you kiss your husband, there when you send your daughter off to school. It's in your coffee cup, your bathwater, your tears. Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you, and a man who swears he'll love you forever isn't finished with you until he's done.

The school bus didn't actually go all the way out to the edge of Canyon Shadows, where Boris lived. It was a twenty minute walk to his house from the last stop, in blazing heat, through streets awash with sand. Though there were plenty of Foreclosure and "For Sale" signs on my street (at night, the sound of a car radio travelled for miles) — still, I was not aware quite how eerie Canyon Shadows got at its farthest reaches: a toy town, dwindling out at desert's edge, under menacing skies. Most of the houses looked as if they had never been lived in. Others — unfinished — had raw-edged windows without glass in them; they were covered with scaffolding and grayed with blown sand, with piles of concrete and yellowing construction material out front. The boarded-up windows gave them a blind, battered, uneven look, as of faces beaten and bandaged. As we walked, the air of abandonment grew more and more disturbing, as if we were roaming some planet depopulated by radiation or disease.

The school bus didn't actually go all the way out to the edge of Canyon Shadows, where Boris lived. It was a twenty minute walk to his house from the last stop, in blazing heat, through streets awash with sand. Though there were plenty of Foreclosure and "For Sale" signs on my street (at night, the sound of a car radio travelled for miles) -- still, I was not aware quite how eerie Canyon Shadows got at its farthest reaches: a toy town, dwindling out at desert's edge, under menacing skies. Most of the houses looked as if they had never been lived in. Others -- unfinished -- had raw-edged windows without glass in them; they were covered with scaffolding and grayed with blown sand, with piles of concrete and yellowing construction material out front. The boarded-up windows gave them a blind, battered, uneven look, as of faces beaten and bandaged. As we walked, the air of abandonment grew more and more disturbing, as if we were roaming some planet depopulated by radiation or disease.

There is no word to describe exactly what the High Line is to the non-architects among us, nor the collective reframing process required to see beyond its dingy path. 24 The promenade’s landscaping and minimal architectural interference is meant to find a balance between “melancholia and exuberance,” Diller told me. “Whatever that intermediate thing is, it’s ineffable and is kind of what makes the High Line so popular.” “Part of what is so successful about the High Line is that it looks like it’s about nothing,” Diller said. Everything is prohibited on the promenade but the act of moving forward or stopping to look at the vistas from that vantage point. A dedicated place for strolling, where there are no dogs, no bicycles, or wheeled objects of any kind, it is “radically old fashioned,” designed to let us do what we ordinarily don’t, like taking time to linger and gaze at passing traffic. There is even a “sunken overlook” viewing station with movie-theater-style rows of descending seats and a window instead of a screen to see Tenth Avenue’s traffic instead of a featured film. Looking at the path beneath our feet and the view before us are the High Line’s activities. The High Line’s path will extend up the island in nearly interminable stages, “perpetually unfinished.” 25 As if to underscore it, on the west-facing side of the High Line, with views of the skyline and the Hudson River, sculptor Anatsui erected a monumental mural, Broken Bridge II, a three-dimensional painting the size of a city block made of flattened, dull-finish tin and mirrors with expert placement and hours of scaling. The vista in its upper reaches blends sky and land “in such a way that you do not know where mirrors end and sky begins.” 26 Anatsui, known for his radiant, monumental murals with a unique luster, fashioned as they are out of recycled metal bottle caps from his studio in Nigeria, starts his work from an approximate center with exquisite discards. He then builds outward, unscrolling the once-scattered shards so that they shine in their new form, as if they could unfurl to the full extent of vision.

A buzzing comes across the sky. The red biplane rolls inward across the turquoise water, over a wispy pine isle with a scattering of sailboats close by. Fishing boats make froth lines as they enter the channel below. A windjammer heads out for a sunset cruise promising a marmalade sky. The buzz hardens and bursts into an immense whirling sound above the yachts and sport fishers at the marina docks—the plane now racing its elongated shadow over the waterfront restaurants and bars. A man on bicycle coming round by the schooner wharf looks up with the whoosh of the plane already over the tall palms and roof tin, disappearing now in a muted drone down toward the Southernmost.” From Chapter 1: An Unfinished Sunset

A grain of rice is the result of an uninterrupted cosmic process of germination and maturation, unifying the sky, the earth, the elements, and human action, following the rhythm of seasons, which is determined by the revolutions of our planet, the moon, and the sun. A grain of rice makes up a whole, an unfinished, perpetually transforming entity.

Dead leaves scatter, caught and swirling in smoky exhaust. Now the hiss of hydraulic brakes, the ticking blinker, the whine of straining gears as the bus disappears down the city hill like some mechanical land-whale sounding in a concrete sea. A young soldier stands alone on the curb. She thumbs her earbuds in, cranks her music up, slings her service pack on and walks the empty morning sidewalk toward home. Passing a pawnshop, she spots her reflection in the glass and stops to look—Taller, broader, her hair shorter than before—she isn’t sure who she is, who she has become. All she knows for sure is she isn’t who she was when she left. Nobody is, and nobody ever will be. The streets are quiet, even for the early hour. A digital clock on an unfinished bank building behind her blinks mindlessly, the red numbers reversed in the glass. She’s turning to read the time when she’s caught by the flash. A bright magnesium burn in the corner of the gray sky. Bright and then brighter. Then the heat hits. She stiffens, her skin crawling with searing pain. Weightless now, she’s floating above the blinding street, a garbage can suspended beside her, its contents already aflame. When she hits

High overhead, in the reflected glare of arc lamps, one of the unfinished Fuller domes shut out two thirds of the salmon-pink evening sky, its ragged edge like broken gray honeycomb. The Sprawl’s patchwork of domes tended to generate inadvertent microclimates; there were areas of a few city blocks where a fine drizzle of condensation fell continually from the soot-stained geodesics, and sections of high dome famous for displays of static-discharge, a peculiarly urban variety of lightning.

Nic walked to the end of the hallway and opened the door that led to the unfinished attic. She flipped on the light switch and gasped aloud. The attic wasn’t merely finished. It had been transformed. He’d chosen a mountain wildlife theme for the nursery that suited the space to a T, and he’d included two sets of everything—two cribs, two dressers, two changing tables, and even two full-size rocking chairs. Both rockers sported cushions that had been embroidered with two words: Mama Bear on one, Papa Bear on the other. “Oh, Gabe,” she said with a sigh. She sat in the Mama Bear rocker, rubbed her belly, and that’s when she saw the mural on the wall. Papa Bear, Mama Bear, two Baby Bears, and a crooked-tailed boxer sprawled at their feet. Papa Bear held a T-square. Mama Bear had a stethoscope draped around her neck. In the sky to the right, a happy-faced sun shined down upon them. In the sky to the left, two silhouettes with angel wings sat perched at the apex of a rainbow. Gabe

A person’s life is a bounded thing that must end. We will leave this earth with unfinished business. Regardless of the outcome of this writing project, I toyed with it long enough. I reconnoitered the world of fantasy and reality, manipulated ideas into sentences, and linked sentences into paragraphs. I peered into the past, weighed the present, and calculated the ramifications of living to experience the future. I told personal lies searching for universal truths and took ample liberty of the notion of an artistic license to make believe. I kicked the dirt, gazed into the sky, and sat under a tree waiting for inspiration. I examined my capacity for mental stagnation and self-deception. I meditated on the aesthetics of despair. I traveled many mental tributaries, and exhausted myself exploring worlds made of vapor. What I was once certain about I am now full of doubt. What I once doubted I now trust. I wrote the way a drunken man walks, rambling, staggering, jerking, and falling down. I retraced my steps to find my way back to the beginning, and erased my steps to arrive at the finale. Thankfully, the ending is coming, and I am finally ready.

The unfinished part of the world had a stark beauty to it.

There is a place called 'heaven' where the good here unfinished is completed; and where the stories unwritten, and the hopes unfulfilled, are continued. We may laugh together yet... 55 Cecil Roth...himself came and called me at 10 to 7; so that I could go to Communion! It seemed like a fleeting glimpse of an unfallen world...the incursion of this gentle Jew, and his sombre glance at my rosary by my bed, settled it. 67 How stupid everything is!, and war multiplies the stupidity by 3 and its power by itself: so one's precious days are days are ruled by (3x)^2 when x=normal human crassitude (and that's bad enough). 73 Do 'ramble on'. Letters need not be only about exterior events (though all details are welcome). What you are thinking is just as important. 96 [H]e [Frodo] had... reached the conclusion that physical fighting is actually less ultimately good than most (good) men think it! Actually I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect 'history' to be anything but a 'long defeat'-though it contains... some samples or glimpses of final victory. 255 I do not feel quite 'real' or whole, and in a sense there is no one to talk to...we had shared all joys and griefs, and all opinions (in agreement or otherwise), so that I still often find myself thinking 'I must tell E. about this'-then suddenly I feel like a castaway left on a barren island under a heedless sky... 416 The... Fellowes' Garden looks like the foreground of a pre-Raphaelite picture: blazing green starred like the Milky Way with blue anemones, purple/white/yellow crocuses, and final surprise, clouded-yellow, peacock, and tortoiseshell butterflies flitting about...I have a faint hope that perhaps you and your wife could soon pick a fine day and visit me. Excuse scrawl. 417 [I]f lit. teaches us anything at all, it is this: that we have in us an eternal element, free from care and fear, which can survey things that in 'life' we call evil with serenity (that is not...appreciating their quality, but without any disturbance of our spiritual equilibrium)...in some such way, we shall doubtless survey our own story when we know it (and a great deal more of the Whole Story). 126-127.

Only love can bring the rain That makes you yearn to the sky Only love can bring the rain That falls like tears from on high Love, reign o'er me Rain on me, rain on me

Anyhow, I've begun on the story we discussed. I will not refer specifically to what you said, but I've decided that it will have as its author Hawthorne Abendsen, the novelist in my novel MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE who wrote THE GRASSHOPPER LIES HEAVY. I wrote & wrote . . . after all, I wrote my 4th novel EYE IN THE SKY in two weeks, so this merely shows I'm in love with what I'm doing. The title of Abendsen's yarn is, "A Man For No Countries," because he is unwanted in the USA where the Asshole Axis rule, and certainly not in Europe where Germany rules from . . . I did bio notes, the uncorrected carbons of which I'm enclosing; they were improved in a second draft, and can/will be cut as needed. And, as to the story, I finished the holographic first draft last night about the time our tomcat Pinky wants indoors to be fed, which is quite late, and at which time nothing, even Pinky, gets me out of bed. It is a short story, but I think a lot of it, Phil. I really do, and when I turn out a lousy one I usually know it and the other way around. I'll send you a carbon of the final, not of the rough, since the rough is in holo. Now, a technical problem. To whom do I send the yarn when I'm done? By contract, it must be to Scott Meredith; that is determined by law. But my own name must be on it, on the far left upper corner, not under the title, so he can see who sent it, and hence pay me. That is, receive pay. Who does pay, by the way? Ed Ferman or whoever buys it (if anyone)? Does it just go onto the market like all stories, OR—and this is crucial, maybe—should I mention to Scott Meredith that you should be involved . . . without mentioning certain details held in confidence between us? How do I handle it? I will sell it, in any case; I wrote MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE in 1961 and ever since "they" have begged (well, asked me) to do more as a sequel. This story is in fact a follow-up, of Abendsen's life since, besides being an intrinsic plot-idea-theme story. So it'll sell, and Ed Ferman does like my stuff; he has commissioned a set of three stories from me, the last three I have done, including one for FINAL STATE or EDGE or whatever with Malzberg, and so would tend to want to buy it. So advise me, as I type up the final. And thanks for getting my literary ass in gear; God bless, Phil. [The story was never completed or published.]

Kinski always says it's full of erotic elements. I don't see it so much erotic. I see it more full of obscenity. It's just - Nature here is vile and base. I wouldn't see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and... growing and... just rotting away. Of course, there's a lot of misery. But it is the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think they - they sing. They just screech in pain. It's an unfinished country. It's still prehistorical. The only thing that is lacking is - is the dinosaurs here. It's like a curse weighing on an entire landscape. And whoever... goes too deep into this has his share of this curse. So we are cursed with what we are doing here. It's a land that God, if he exists has - has created in anger. It's the only land where - where creation is unfinished yet. Taking a close look at - at what's around us there - there is some sort of a harmony. It is the harmony of... overwhelming and collective murder. And we in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle - Uh, we in comparison to that enormous articulation - we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid suburban... novel... a cheap novel. We have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication... overwhelming growth and overwhelming lack of order. Even the - the stars up here in the - in the sky look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe. We have to get acquainted to this idea that there is no real harmony as we have conceived it. But when I say this, I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It is not that I hate it, I love it. I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment.

Dedication to The Seven Pillars of Wisdom" I loved you, so I drew these tides of Men into my hands And wrote my will across the Sky and stars To earn you freedom, the seven Pillared worthy house, That your eyes might be Shining for me When we came Death seemed my servant on the Road, ’til we were near And saw you waiting: When you smiled and in sorrowful Envy he outran me And took you apart: Into his quietness Love, the way-weary, groped to your body, Our brief wage Ours for the moment Before Earth’s soft hand explored your shape And the blind Worms grew fat upon Your substance Men prayed me that I set our work, The inviolate house, As a memory of you But for fit monument I shattered it, Unfinished: and now The little things creep out to patch Themselves hovels In the marred shadow Of your gift.

THE TRUTH In summer there was something in the selfhood of the wasps that wanted to get inside the screened-in porch. It sent them buzzing against the wire mesh, probing under the eaves, crawling into the cracks between the boards. Each day we’d find new bodies on the sill: little failures, like struck matches: shrunken in death, the yellow color of cider or old varnish. The blue self of the sky looked down on the self of the wooden house where the wasps were perishing. The wind swept them to the ground. The wasps seemed to be extensions of one big thing making the same effort again and again. I can remember that feeling of being driven by some longing I could not understand to look for the passage through, —trying again and again to get inside. I must have left a lot of dead former selves scattered around behind me while I kept pushing my blunt head at a space that prevented my entering —and by that preventing delivered me to where I live now, still outside; still flying around in the land of the unfinished.

Anyway. Nothing can be done now. The past is like the Gran Cavallo and you can't fix the Gran Cavallo, right? I mean, sure, who doesn't fantasize about drawing in the rest of the horse, and maybe the sky around the horse. But what would the painting be worth then? Absolutely nothing. So it is what it is. Imperfect, unfinished, forever. We just have to move on, call it a masterpiece, even if it's not, and start working on a new goddamned painting.

I hope this email finds you well I hope this email finds you calm. I hope this email finds you unflustered about your inbox. I hope this email finds you in a state of acceptance that this email isn’t exactly important in the cosmic scheme of things. I hope this email finds your work happily unfinished. I hope this email finds you beneath a beautiful sky with the wind tenderly caressing your hair like an invisible mother.