April 2012
March 2012
“What is your favorite word?”
“And. It is so hopeful.” —An interview with Margaret Atwood
“And. It is so hopeful.” —An interview with Margaret Atwood
“sunlight pouring across your skin, your shadow
flat on the wall.
the dawn was breaking the bones of your heart like twigs.
you had not expected this,
the bedroom gone white, astronomical light
pummeling you in a stream of fists.
you raised your hand to your face as if
to hide it, the pink fingers gone gold as the light
streamed straight to the bone,
as if you were the small room closed in glass
with every speck of dust illuminated.
the light is no mystery,
the mystery is that there is something to keep the light
from passing through.” —Richard Siken, Visible World (via rockwriteon)
flat on the wall.
the dawn was breaking the bones of your heart like twigs.
you had not expected this,
the bedroom gone white, astronomical light
pummeling you in a stream of fists.
you raised your hand to your face as if
to hide it, the pink fingers gone gold as the light
streamed straight to the bone,
as if you were the small room closed in glass
with every speck of dust illuminated.
the light is no mystery,
the mystery is that there is something to keep the light
from passing through.” —Richard Siken, Visible World (via rockwriteon)
“We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was native has been stolen from us… we can practice being gentle with ourselves by being gentle with each other. We can practice being gentle with each other by being gentle with that part of ourselves that is hardest to hold, by giving more to the brave bruised girlchild within each of us.”
—Audre Lorde (via mmmajestic)
“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
—Ernest Hemingway (via asterisk-)
“I wanted to forget the past, but it refused to forget me; it waited for sleep, then cornered me.”
—Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle
“When you become aware of silence, immediately there is that state of inner still alertness. You are present. You have stepped out of thousands of years of collective human conditioning.”
—Eckhart Tolle
“Go on and do the thing that scares the hell out of you, because in this world…the gamble is almost as safe a bet as the sure thing.”
—Callie Khouri (via brillodelsol)
“Stories never really end…even if the books like to pretend they do. Stories always go on. They don’t end on the last page, any more than they begin on the first page.”
—Cornelia Funke, Inkspell (via libraryland)
“Sometimes I touch the things you used to touch, looking for echoes of your fingers.”
—I Wrote This For You (via creatingaquietmind)
“You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.”
—Aristotle
“
You’re going to discover that conversations are best at 4am. The heavier the eyelids, the sincerer the words. Those are the talks you’ll remember. It’s ok not to know the answer and silence is not awkward.
It’s shared, so share it more often than not.
” —Jeff Stuckel (via blindbonesbradley)
“
Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?
When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life—
What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
“I don’t know when we’ll see each other again or what the world will be like when we do. We may both have seen many horrible things. But I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.”
—Arthur Golden (via misswallflower)
“Your ignorance keeps dismembering every piece of patience I have left.”
—Andrea Gibson (via thenewwomensmovement)
Once Again I Fail to Read an Important Novel
Instead, we sit together beside the fountain,
the important novel and I.
We are having coffee together
in that quiet first hour of the morning,
respecting each other’s silences
in the shadow of an important old building
in this small but significant European city.
All the characters can relax.
I’m giving them the day off.
For once they can forget about their problems—
desire, betrayal, the fatal denouement—
and just sit peacefully beside me.
In the afternoon,
at lunch near the cathedral,
and in the evening, after my lonely,
historical walk along the promenade,
the men and women, the children
and even the dogs
in the important, complicated novel
have nothing to fear from me.
We will sit quietly at the table
with a glass of cool red wine
and listen to the pigeons
questioning each other in the ancient corridors.
“Last night, within my heart I heard your whispers of love, and my heart is still quivering to know you were there.”
—Hāfez (via loveyourchaos)
“The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clearing, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in the abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.”
—from The Awakening by Kate Chopin.
“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”
—Nathaniel Hawthorne (via misswallflower)
“Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.”
—Zora Neale Hurston
“You have witchcraft in your lips.”
—Henry V, William Shakespeare
“It’s okay to be afraid.
It’s even okay to fail.
But if you refuse even to try, well, then— that’s simply unacceptable.” —Jonathan Hickman (via ronen-v)
It’s even okay to fail.
But if you refuse even to try, well, then— that’s simply unacceptable.” —Jonathan Hickman (via ronen-v)
Love Sonnet XI
“I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.
I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.
I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,
and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
Like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.”— Pablo Neruda
“Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder…”
—Henry David Thoreau (via usremainsimpossible)
“It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded.”
—Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (via thechocolatebrigade)
