A Fraction of the Whole

  "People are always saying that a person's character is unchangeable, but mostly, it's the persona that doesn't change, not the person, and underneath that changeless mask exists a creature who's evolving like crazy, mutating out of control...Honestly, anyone who says a friend of theirs hasn't changed in years just can't tell a mask from an actual face."

Beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. It’s the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you see both their beauty and their death.
...Does this mean that this is how we must live our lives? Constantly poised between beauty and death, between movement and its disappearance?
Maybe that’s what being alive is all about: so we can track down those moments that are dying.

-The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Rumi

The minute I heard my first love story,

I started looking for you, not knowing

how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere,

they're in each other all along.






(photosource)

The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath

   She is the portrait of a woman confined by what her society says is best. Esther Greenwood comes to a place where she begins to truly discover herself; And when her ambitions don't match up with what others tell her is acceptable, she loses hope. Thankfully, the story doesn't end there. Her journey from depression into a suicide attempt is painful to read, but her metamorphosis post attempted suicide is beautiful. Her story is tragic and raw, but she ends it fiercely as her own person and ultimately content that way.

I savored the last page today in the middle of our busy student center.

I was ready for it to end, but I wanted the last page to be just right. 

And it was.  

"There ought, I thought, to be a ritual for being born twice- patched, retreaded and approved for the road."

La Douleur Exquise

Words From Una Bella Vita

"it’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does." 

I check This Lovely Blog almost every day, and today I just had to "re-tweet" part of her post. It was just that good.

Postsecret from Sunday

 

I couldn't have said it better.

A Conversation with Darcy

"And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody."

And yours," he replied with a smile, "is willfully to misunderstand them."

-Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice) 

Darling Jane has done it again. Words from 1813 continue to reflect my own life experiences.

From the pages of "Speak", by Laurie Halse Anderson

I crouch by the trunk, my fingers stroking the bark, seeking a Braille code, a clue, a message on how to come back to life after my long undersnow dormancy. I have survived. I am here. Confused, screwed up, but here. So, how can i find my way? Is there a chain saw of the soul, an ax i can take to my memories or fears? I dig my fingers into the dirt and squeeze. A small, clean part of me waits to warm and burst through the surface. Some quiet Melindagirl I haven't seen in months. This is the seed I will care for.

I reread parts of the book a night ago. I am not Melinda, and I haven't had her experiences, but this passage spoke to me. Like Melinda, my pain and fear has made me dormant. 

But it doesn't have to stay that way. The time has come to speak.

To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. -Agnes DeMille

I went swing dancing over Christmas break. Until then, I had forgotten how much I love ballroom dance. I miss it. It's a shame that so many guys are not well-versed in this activity.

For of all sad works of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: 

"It might have been!"

-John Greenleaf Whittier

"Beware of artists, for they mix with all classes of society and are therefore most dangerous." 

-Darling Queen Victoria

Kooser

Alone by a

window or a door,

driving in a car,

sitting in a house

or when conversation

suddenly stops,

I am pulled close to

a fierce, hungry sunset,

I, a wild, lavender

weed of a woman,

push out of cement

cracks, leaves, stems,

sticky blooms radiating

city landscape,

lovely sky.

Limbo

Fishermen at Ballyshannon

Netted an infant last night

Along with the salmon.

An illegitimate spawning,

A small one thrown back

To the waters. But I'm sure

As she stood in the shallows

Ducking him tenderly

Till the frozen knobs of her wrists

Were dead as the gravel,

He was a minnow with hooks

Tearing her open.

She waded in under

The sign of her cross.

He was hauled in with the fish.

Now limbo will be

A cold glitter of souls

Through some far briny zone.

Even Christ's palms, unhealed,

Smart and cannot fish there.

Seamus Heaney, you make me want to be a poet too.

"They all say 'the ordinary reader does not want Theology; give him plain practical religion.' 

I have rejected their advice. 

I do not think the ordinary reader is such a fool." 

-Clive Staples Lewis

Satis eloquentiae, sapientiae parum.

1918

“Art in its execution and direction is dependent on the time in which it lives, and artists are creatures of their epoch. The highest art will be that which in its conscious content presents the thousand fold problems of the day, the art which has been visibly shattered by the explosions of last week, which is forever trying to collect its limbs after yesterday’s crash.  The best and most extraordinary artists will be those who every hour snatch the tatters of their bodies out of the frenzied cataract of life, who, with bleeding hands and hearts, hold fast to the intelligence of their time.” 

-Richard Huelsenbeck,  First German Dada Manifesto

Porcelain

everything i love
was made of porcelain,
ready to break.
but the bright, staggering light,
it anxiously waits inside.
like nesting dolls, the secret hides.
and like every birth,
it was a necessary pain
i know, i know
it's all worth the wait, worth the weight.

Are you wasting away in your skin

Are you missing the love of your kin

Drifting and floating and fading away

You have it all, the poise and the strength that we can't fake

But don't you ever tire of walking that wire

To know that we'll move on as you break