To celebrate, let's spend the day burying profound musings inside nearly nonsensical word rhythms.
It seems like there isn't a rule, standard, or expectation she didn't completely and heroicly ignore. If you aren't familiar, I recommend reading The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas (with reservations: maybe most people wouldn't enjoy it).
Comes on like gangbusters (v.) plays, sings, or dances in a terrific manner, par excellence in any department. Sometimes abbr. to “That singer really comes on!”
Creeps out like the shadow (v.) “comes on,” but in smooth, suave, sophisticated manner.
From Cab Calloway's Hepster Dictionary (1939)
“Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks oblivion in vodka, cards, a fourth, in order to stifle fear and anguish, cynically tramples underfoot the portrait of his pure, beautiful youth? Why is it that, once fallen, we do not try to rise, and, having lost one thing, we do not seek another? Why?”
Anton Chekhov, The Complete Short Novels
"... For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been given to us, the ultimate, the final problem and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation."
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry
Highly Recommended: Darkness Sticks To Everything - Collected and New Poems by Tom Hennan (if you like poetry)
