love

"some people care too much, i think it's called love."

-winnie the pooh

to live even one day.

"she had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day."

-virginia woolf, mrs. dalloway

1

i thought once how theocritus had sung

of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,

who each one in a gracious hand appears

to bear a gift for mortals, old or young:

and, as i mused it in his antique tongue,

i saw, in gradual vision through my tears,

the sweet, sad years, the melancholy years.

those of my own life, who by turns had flung

a shadow across me. straightway i was 'ware,

so weeping, how a mystic shape did move

behind me, and drew backward by the hair;

and a voice said in mastery, while i strove,-

"guess now who holds thee?" - "death," i said. but there,

the silver answer rang,- "not death, but love."

-elizabeth barrett browning, sonnets from the portugese

and

"love suffer and work you dumb old bourgeois bag"

-jack kerouac

poetry and hums

“poetry and hums aren't things which you get,

they're things which get you. and all you can do

is go where they can find you.” -winnie the pooh

your seed pouch

lanterns

hang from the night sky

so that your eye might draw

one more image of love upon your silk canvas

before sleep.

words from him have reached you

and tilled a golden field inside.

when all your desires are distilled

you will cast just two votes:

to love more,

and be happy.

take the sounds from the mouth-flute of hafiz

and mix them into your seed pouch.

and when the moon says,

"it is time to plant,"

why not dance,

dance and

sing?

-hafiz of persia

and time yet for a hundred indecisions

and indeed there will be time
for the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
there will be time, there will be time
to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
there will be time to murder and create,
and time for all the works and days of hands
that lift and drop a question on your plate;
time for you and time for me,
and time yet for a hundred indecisions,
and for a hundred visions and revisions,
before the taking of a toast and tea.

-t.s.eliot, from the love song of j.alfred prufrock

timshel

"the king james translation makes a promise in 'thou shalt,' meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. but the hebrew word, the word timshel - 'thou mayest' - that gives a choice. it might be the most important word in the world. that says the way is open. that throws it right back on a man. for if 'thou mayest' - it is also true that 'thou mayest not.' don't you see?"

"my father said she was a strong woman, and i believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she has love in her heart. i guess a loving woman is almost indestructible."

-east of eden

who knows what she would do

what if she doesn't worry about her body and eats enough for all the growing she has to do? she might rip her stockings and slam-dance on a forged ID to the pogues, and walk home barefoot, holding her shoes, alone at dawn; she might baby-sit in a battered women's shelter one night a month; she might skateboard down lombard street with its seven hairpin turns, or fall in love with her best friend and do something about it, or lose herself for hours gazing into test tubes with her hair a mess, or climb a promontory with the girls and get drunk at the top, or sit down when the pledge of allegiance says stand, or hop a freight train, or take lovers without telling her last name, or run away to sea. she might revel in all the freedoms that seem so trivial to those who could take them for granted; she might dream seriously the dreams that seems so obvious to those who grew up with them really available. who knows what she would do? who knows what it would feel like?

-the beauty myth, naomi wolf

corner

"kiss me and you will see how important i am."

..sylvia plath

on love & other difficulties

"i tell you i have a long way to go before i am - where one begins...

you are so young, so before all beginning, and i want to beg you, as much as i can, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. and the point is, to live everything. live the questions now. perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

resolve to be always beginning - to be a beginner!"

rainer maria rilke, rilke on love and other difficulties

braver than you believe

"if ever there is tomorrow when we're not together.. there is something you must always remember. you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. but the most important thing is, even if we're apart, i'll always be with you."

-winnie the pooh

spilling open

"today we were sitting watching a video on mtv and he said she is all woman. my whole body was overcome with the ache of inadequacy. i kept thinking silently i'm not this tall, breathy, curvy, breasty, singer, woman, beauty. i shouldn't do this to myself. i don't have time in this life. i should not be filled with this type of judging of my body. this is the only body i have and it takes me on amazing adventures and i can't leave it. i can't abandon the only thing i can truly take care of."

-sabrina ward harrison

oh, talk to me

"i will read long books and the journals of dead writers. i will feel closer to them than i ever used to feel to people i used to know before i withdrew from the world. it will be sweet and cool this friendship of mine with dead poets. for i won't have to touch them or answer their questions. they will talk and not expect me to answer. and i'll get sleepy listening to their voices explaining the mysteries to me. i'll fall asleep with the book still in my fingers, and it will rain. i'll wake up and hear the rain and go back to sleep. a season of rain, rain, rain..."

*from talk to me like the rain and i'll listen by tennessee williams

uta hagen

we must overcome the notion that we must

be regular... it robs you of the chance to be

extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre.

isadora's blush

"you were once wild here.

don't let them tame you."

*isadora duncan

the king

every man must decide whether he will

walk in the light of creative altruism or

in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

so i hum

"young people, lord. do they still call it infatuation? that magic ax that chops away the world in one blow, leaving only the couple standing there trembling? whatever they call it, it leaps over anything, takes the biggest chair, the largest slice, rules the ground wherever it walks, from a mansion to a swamp, and its selfishness is its beauty. before i was reduced to singsong, i saw all kinds of mating. most are two-night stands trying to last a season. some, the riptide ones, claim exclusive right to the real name, even though everybody drowns in its wake. people with no imagination feed it with sex - the clown of love. they don't know the real kinds, the better kinds where losses are cut and everybody benefits. it takes a certain intelligence to love like that - softly, without props. but the world is such a showpiece, maybe that's why folks try to outdo it, put everything they feel onstage just to prove they can think up things too: handsome scary things like fights to the death, adultery, setting sheet afire. they fail, of course."

-toni morrison, love

1

who are you,little i

(five or six years old)
peering from some high

window;at the gold



of november sunset
(and feeling:that if day
has to become night

this is a beautiful way)

-e.e.cummings

Song

The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction

the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.

Who can deny?
In dreams
it touches
the body,
in thought
constructs
a miracle,
in imagination
anguishes
till born
in human--
looks out of the heart
burning with purity--
for the burden of life
is love,

but we carry the weight
wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
at last,
must rest in the arms
of love.

No rest
without love,
no sleep
without dreams
of love--
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines,
the final wish
is love
--cannot be bitter,
cannot deny,
cannot withhold
if denied:

the weight is too heavy

--must give
for no return
as thought
is given
in solitude
in all the excellence
of its excess.

The warm bodies
shine together
in the darkness,
the hand moves
to the center
of the flesh,
the skin trembles
in happiness
and the soul comes
joyful to the eye--

yes, yes,
that's what
I wanted,
I always wanted,
I always wanted,
to return
to the body
where I was born.

-Allen Ginsberg