Wall Piece with 200 letters, by Mikko Kuorinki.

"Find a place you trust
try trusting it for awhile"



"Do animals
have less fear
because they
live without
words"



"We must travel
in the direction
of our fear"

You don’t walk away from a church when there is no other church to go to. But the only way to see if there are demons lurking outside the circle is to crawl over the boundary that protects you. This was the real start of a revelatory life. I can’t take credit for any of the revelations, but a hidden force inside me was invisibly preparing the way.

Bottom line - follow your bliss.

- Deepak Chopra (via)

explosions in the sky filling
the room with the
black marshmallow ceiling
the start of class with, "become more childlike,"
mat is the safe place, and
maybe i am the only one who sits in the dark at the end
holding back the tears
watching the silhouettes of everyone breathing
but
 r. saying that
we must believe there is a plan,
that we are exactly where we need to be,
that we should be nowhere else,
that when we believe
that everything is finished
that will be
the beginning.

and all i can think of
is the song title,
"your hand in mine."

“How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.”

— David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King 

"I think it’s so fascinating how human nature (objectively depending on what culture we’re speaking of) has names for everything we have. this is a desk. this is my femur. my tibia. my foramen magnum. this is a mug. we can’t see anything without naming it or else we ignore it because it is too much just to see the essence of something without categorizing it into something that we can just barely understand"

- via commovente

this morning my dad asked if i was going on a date instead of to work... because i put earrings on. maybe it's time to try to look a little prettier every day.

Separation
by W.S. Merwin


Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.





Two Cures for Love
by Wendy Cope


1. Don't see him. Don’t phone or write a letter.
2. The easy way: get to know him better.

Over the weekend, Fitzgerald. Today, more Fitzgerald, though everything has changed since then.


“One should . . . be able to see things as hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”

“Vitality shows not only in the ability to persist, but in the ability to start over.”

“Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes.”

“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.”

everything is perfect without you.
the morning begins with silence and sunlight.
there are no good mornings.
i let the emptiness fill all the crevices, i let it creep under my blankets next to me.

you sleep perfectly without me. on the side of the bed you prefer, underneath the turning fan. no body to make you unbearably hot in the middle of the night. no head cradled in your arms to make your shoulders ache. no tossing and turning to keep you awake. no cold hand warming up on your chest. no blankets stolen away from you.

everything is perfect without me.
your happiness will bloom, for it is spring.
you will find her, or maybe you already have.
you will give her a nickname, you will call her by that nickname fondly.
she will make you laugh again.
you will hold her, and layer by layer you will forget our past.

i stare out at the buildings, at cities, at empires that took decades to build and only a single moment to level.

you will do what you want to do. i will go the places i want to go. there will be no more rules.
everything is perfect. but our imperfections made me feel complete.

I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it’s these things I’d believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything.
-  F. Scott Fitzgerald

sometimes you just need someone to pass the lonely with.

and that is okay.

affection can be real and true and good and going absolutely nowhere.

some men will highlight your loneliness. draw attention to it, make it worse. their hand on your knee a distancing thing. and some men will raze that loneliness with a single glance. these are the men who will reveal themselves as home in the span of a night--in the length of time it takes to drink a glass of wine. these are the men who you will move mountains for--they are rare and remarkable and between the two of you a sort of alchemy takes flight.

and then there are the men who you want to kiss--the men you want to adore, but will never fall in love with. so kiss them. and go to breakfast with them. let them buy you dinner. take them to the movies and ruin summers with them.

people speak in directives about love. love entirely or not at all. take the whole of it or none of it. nothing in between.

but the thing is, sometimes the in-between is really good. it  is something-else-entirely and sometimes something-else-entirely is entirely right. for a time, it is entirely right. rich and fertile practice ground. a meaningful passing of the time.

sometimes something-else is the comfort of a man’s arm wrapped around you—the immediacy of its warmth and touch, but nothing else. it is not home and it is not the promise of home. but it is nonetheless healing and restorative. and it is your choice.

and that's okay.

man, i wish someone had told me it was okay a good long while ago.

you do not have to live your life according to the prevailing opinions about love and making a life. you have only to be ruthlessly honest with yourself about what it is you want and what it is you'll accept one-day-at-a-time.

- meg fee

Notes on traveling with a backpack.

- you will never regret bringing flip flops
- it will rain at some point
- it will get colder than you think it will
- become okay with having dirty hair for a few days
- pack a snack even when they claim the hike will only be "1 mile" (because it will really be 6)
- peanut butter is a food group
- be ready to climb trees
- the stars will be worth it
- hair rubberbands are useful
- pitching a tent is less daunting than you think it is
- bring more plastic bags than you think you'll need
- become okay with eating an apple that is slightly dusty
- put a log on the tent stake if it keeps coming loose
- when in doubt, don't leave your jacket behind
- be honest with yourself. if you don't want to go, don't. if you will regret it, go
- wear a hat even if it makes you look ridiculous
- there will probably be many early hours spent in your sleeping bag debating whether or not to get up into the cold air and go use the restroom
- when climbing upwards, don't be afraid to use your hands
- turn off your cell phone. stop worrying about getting reception.
- if there is a waterfall, walk into the water, even if it's cold, even if you have to laboriously take your boots and socks off.

I wish in the city of your heart/ you would let me be the street/ where you walk when you are most/ yourself. - robley wilson

 (thanks to kristan)

"I realized something so basic, I mean, so basic -- I don't know you."

You don't know me?

"No."

To sum up the four hours of discussion that followed, it's not easy
being in a relationship, much less to truly know the other one with
all their flaws and baggage.

Jack confessed to me his fear of being rejected. If I truly knew him,
if he showed himself totally bare to me, Jack realized after two years
of being with me that he didn't know me at all, nor did I know him,
and to truly love each other, we needed to know the truth about each
other, even if it's not so easy to take. So I told him the truth,
which is I had never cheated on him, and I also told him that I had
just seen Mathieu that afternoon. He did not get mad at me because
nothing had happened, of course.

I confessed to Jack that the toughest thing for me was to decide to be
with someone for good, the idea that this is it, this is the man I'm
going to spend the rest of my life with. To decide that I will make
the effort to stay and work things out and not run off the minute
there is a problem is very difficult for me.

I told him I could not be with just one man for the rest of my life.
It was a lie, but I said it anyway. He asked me if I thought I was a
squirrel, collecting men like nuts to put away for cold winters. I
thought it was quite funny. Then he said something that hurt my
feelings. The tone changed drastically. Then I misunderstood what he
was saying. I thought he meant he didn't love me anymore, and that he
wanted to break up.

It always fascinates me how people go from loving you madly to nothing
at all, nothing. It hurts so much.

When I feel someone is going to leave me, I have a tendency to break
up first before I get to hear the whole thing.

Here it is. One more, one less. Another wasted love story. I really
love this one. When I think that it's over, that I'll never see him
again like this -- well, yes, I'll bump into him, we'll meet our new
boyfriend and girlfriend, act as if we had never been together, then
we'll slowly think of each other less and less until we forget each
other completely. Almost.

Always the same for me. Break up, breakdown. Drink up, fool around.
Meet one guy, then another, fuck around. Forget the one and only. Then
after a few months of total emptiness start again to look for true
love, desperately look everywhere and after two years of loneliness
meet a new love and swear it is the one, until that one is gone as
well.

There's a moment in life where you can't recover any more from another
break-up. And even if this person bugs you sixty percent of the time,
well you still can't live without him. And even if he wakes you up
every day by sneezing right in your face, well you love his sneezes
more than anyone else's kisses.

-- Julie Delpy's monologue in "2 Days in Paris"
(with thanks to S)

Silence, with Two Texts
by Sharon Olds

When we lived together, the silence in the home
was denser than the silence would be
after he left. Before, the silence
had been like a large commotion of industry
at a distance, like the downroar of mining. When he went,
I studied my once-husband’s silence like an almost
holy thing, the call of a newborn born
mute. Text: “Though its presence is detected
by the absence of what it negates, silence
possesses a power which presages fear
for those in its midst. Unseen, unheard,
unfathomable, silence dis-
concerts because it conceals.” Text:
“The waters compassed me about, even to
the soul: the depth closed me round
about, the weeds were wrapped about
my head.” I lived alongside him, in his hush
and reserve, sometimes I teased him, calling his
abstracted mask his Alligator Look,
seeking how to love him as
he was, under the law that he could not
speak—and when I shrieked against the law
he shrinked down into its absolute,
he rose from its departure gate.
And he seemed almost like a hero, to me,
living, as I was, under the law
that I could not see the one I loved
but only consort with him as a being
fixed as an element, almost
ideal, no envy or meanness. In the last
weeks, by day we moved through the tearing
apart, along its length, of the union,
and by night silence lay down with blindness,
and sang, and saw.

—from Stag’s Leap

this something that seemed longer than the minutes waiting for you. this something that dug deeper than your fingers in my hair. this something that drove me further than fear did. this something that bound together my legs stronger than your sheets when tangled in the mornings. this something that felt colder than the ice pack against my skin. this something that struck louder than brass bells at your church. this something that felt more empty than the hunger i felt in your absence. this something that resembled betrayal pooling together from my disbelief at your words. this something that felt more shallow than the lyrics you quoted me in place of conversation. this something that felt more substantial than the substance of your body.

there is a cycle here, i see it. it forms tirelessly in my mind, the mold you fit us to. i see it and i don't run.

“The quickest way for anyone to reach the sun and the light of day is not to run west, chasing after the setting sun, but to head east, plunging into the darkness until one comes to the sunrise.”

i make up in my head,
what winter don't break, spring will clean.

head down, thunder and rain outside. inside, brewing clouds.
your secret steps were almost melodic in their silence. it was easy to see the color of you, when you speak only in black in white.

most days i take your hands in mine, turn them over and over.
i remember thinking they were always cold, when you first touched me. i wondered if i would ever feel their warmth.

i remember your stormy temper, even then.

nowadays, i take what i can find, build my ships stronger. i take what i can find, build my ships faster.
it is slow, this building.
it is slow, this weathering.

harbor has seemed a safe bet, but i skip anchor completely and search for you in the storms.