on the shore

"when we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be alone on an empty shore."

arcadia ~ tom stoppard

finding happy

"i was happy but happy is an adult word. you don’t have to ask a child about happy, you see it. they are or they are not. adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. talking about it is the same as trying to catch the wind. much easier to let it blow all over you. this is where i disagree with the philosophers. they talk about passionate things but there is no passion in them. never talk happiness with a philosopher. "

jeanette winterson, the passion

you know me, i'm impulsive

"i'm rash and impulsive. it's a flaw."

~ buffy sommers, buffy the vampire slayer

obsession and other love alternatives

keep art alive; art by joshua petker

"what is the difference between love and obsession? didn't both make you stay up all night, wandering the streets, a victim of your own imagination, your own heartbeat? didn't you fall into both, headfirst into quicksand? wasn't every man in love a fool and every woman a slave?

love was like rain; it turned to ice, or it disappeared. now you saw it, now you couldn't find it no matter how hard you might search. love evaporated; obsession was realer; it hurt, like a pin in your bottom, a stone in your shoe.

it didn't go away in the blink of an eye. a morning phone call filled with regret. a letter that said 'dear you, good-bye from me.'

obsession tasted like something familiar. something you'd known your whole life. it settled and lurked; it stayed with you."

~ alice hoffman, the ice queen

stuff that life is made of

"the not-knowings, not-understandings, and not-endings are part of the mystery of life, the things that keep us all guessing."

ghosts of block island ~ fran migliaccio

little things

my cup of tea ~ eisley

"those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others."

the book of tea ~ okakura kakuzo

dreams gave me away

"if i could dream at all, it would be about you, and i'm not ashamed of it."

twilight ~ edward cullen

ghosts

"who wants to see life as it is? it's the three gorgons in one. you look in their faces and turn to stone. or it's pan. you see him and you die--that is, inside you--and have to go on living as a ghost."

long day's journey into night ~ eugene o'neill

soul mates

keep art alive; art by audrey kawasaki

"“people think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. but a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. a true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. but to live with a soul mate forever? nah. too painful. soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank god for it.”

eat, pray, love ~ elizabeth gilbert

what you want

keep art alive; photograph by fabrizio sciami

"nobody knows what you want except you. and nobody will be as sorry as you if you don’t get it. wanting some other way to live is proof enough of deserving it. having it is hard work, but not having it is sheer hell.”

~ lillian hellman

quote found here.

looking away

keep art alive; art by joshua petker

“we grew still and stared at each other. it seemed incredibly dangerous to look into each other’s eyes, but we were doing it. for how long can you behold another person? before you have to think of yourself again, like dipping the brush back in for more ink. for a very long time; you didn’t need to get more ink, there was no reason to get anything else, because she was as good as me, she lived on earth like me, she suffered as i did. it was she who looked away and pulled the sheet to her chin.”

no one belongs here more than you ~ miranda july

special thanks to achtung baby for posting this amazing quote

keep art alive; art by melanie moore

"i have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had. some people's emanations are very strong, some people create themselves afresh outside of their own body. this is not fancy. if a potter has an idea, she makes it into a pot, and it exists beyond her, beyond its own separate life. she uses a physical substance to display her thoughts. if i use a metaphysical substance to display my thoughts, i might be anywhere at one time, influencing a number of different things, just as the potter and her pottery can exert influence in different places. there's a chance that i'm not here at all, that all the parts of me, running along all the choices i did and didn't make, for a moment brush against each other."

oranges are not the only fruit ~ jeanette winterson

sea-girls

"we have lingered in the chambers of the sea,
by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown,
till human voices wake us,
and we drown."

the love song of j. alfred prufrock ~ t.s. eliot

before we forgot the songs

keep art alive; art by amy sol


"underneath this city, there is another city, one more modern, more recent in its origin. here, in these dark tunnels where pomegranates fall, all these thoughts fly around like moths, lured by light, by sweet smell of decay, trapping themselves by their own free choice in the confined space of their making: it can’t already be june, it can’t already be monday, that’s what they say, that’s what people keep muttering to themselves this morning as they cradle the last of the sleep in their coffee cups, for the precious moments in which they huddle in themselves before they must sign off their lives to something they don’t believe in, to something they think they cannot escape from. as they rock in the rhythm of the train, someone thinks, a moth in spider’s nest, though she does not see the intricate weaving of the thin threads, ready to untangle between our fingers, snapping the threads. but it’s like this: it’s already june, i’m already 28 and i haven’t done anything, many are talking, comforting us in these minutes of our lives when we descend down to darkness, to darkness so dark that we are helpless, our bodies swaying left to right, left to right as if we’re rocking in prayer, but we are not praying. we’re boxed in the freight, we’re boxed in a subway car, this is the death train, but unlike them, forced away from their homes because of blood, we chose this train, we chose to be on it, we are boxed in, we’re as helpless, we tell ourselves, positioning ourselves to the gravity, the pull of the train. our highest dreams thrown out like our last night’s dinner, a woman’s dream flies past, landing silently on the subway floor like the last note of an aria, i wish someone loved me, i wish he loved me, a thought so light it floats quietly down, hovers an inch or two above the floor, then lands, landing as someone steps on it. i wish somebody loved me, but i'm not pretty enough, i’m not smart enough, she closes her thoughts from us, she looks down to the book on her lap, the thick one, heavy like her sadness, but she doesn’t stop her reading, the thick book stays where it is, the woman, though, reads so little, doesn’t really read, just daydreams, her hopes going where we are going, she stays where she is, on the seat across. we are all going somewhere we have to each day, pulled by the invisible strings, and we say, i can go no other place, this is where i belong. no, we go to places only if we must, but must is a habit, after all, we can go anywhere as long as we let ourselves, anywhere we want to, only if we want to, she can stretch her arms as if in flight, and leave, leave this train, this city…only if she wants to. we think there’s no way out, our lives guided by some invisible lines only fate has right to hold, right to control. but we are closer to grace, we are closer to where we were before we were born, before we forgot the songs, before we forgot the promises, we are closer to grace in the darkness of our own making, we are not of time—only if we let it, only if we let the watch unshackle us, but we forget, as we have forgotten, as soon as we open our eyes. many are called and many do not hear."

many are called ~ mariko nagai

i keep trying to remember not to forget this

"the more you know who you are,
and what you want,

the less you let things upset you."

bob harris ~ lost in translation

kiss

"but one kiss levitates above all the others. the intersection of function and desire. the i do kiss. the i'll love you through a brick wall kiss. even when i'm dead, i'll swim through the earth, like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones."

the archipelago of kisses ~ jeffrey mcdaniel

gifts

"people who have only good experiences aren't very interesting. they may be content, and happy after a fashion, but they aren't very deep. it may seem a misfortune now, and it makes things difficult, but well--it's easy to feel all the happy, simple stuff. not that happiness is necessarily simple. but i don't think you're going to have a life like that, and i think you'll be the better for it. the difficult thing is to not be overwhelmed by the bad patches. you must not let them defeat you. you must see them as a gift--a cruel gift, but a gift nonetheless."

someday this pain will be useful to you by peter cameron

spin

from my starbucks cup:

"childhood is a strange country. it's a place you come from or go to - at least in your mind. for me it has an endless, spellbound something it it that feels remote. it's like a little sealed-vault country of cake breath and grass stains where what you do instead of work is spin until you're dizzy."

~ lyall bush, executive director of richard hugo house, a center for writers and readers

i look to you to see the truth

fade into you ~ mazzy star (the video)

(somehow listening to this while reading the following just makes sense to me)

"i know i am a fool, hoping dirt and glory are both a kind of luminous paint; the humiliations and exaltations that light us up. i see like a bug, everything too large, the pressure of infinity hammering at my head. but how else to live, vertical that i am, pressed down and pressing up simultaneously? i cannot assume you will understand me. it is just as likely that as i invent what i want to say, you will invent what you want to hear. some story we must have. stray words on crumpled paper. a weak signal into the outer space of each other.

the probability of separate worlds meeting is very small. the lure of it is immense. we send starships. we fall in love.”- gut symmetries ~ jeanette winterson

thank you, achtung baby, for posting this awe-inspiring quote.

you-ward

summons (or this won't hurt you a bit, and it'll cheer me up) ~ mary karr

for an instant i looked away, and an ocean
blossomed between us, 3000 miles
of wild silk rippling. on the other side

your unreachable body. listen,

the globe's meridians bore me,

and i deplore time zones and the lone heart's

metronome without your broad chest

thumping close counterpoint. no breath i draw

will properly fill my lungs till your fine spirit

again issues into me. no eyes will level pierce

this heart's core till your gaze again

sends the deep arrows flying. darling,

remember: our faces in proximity make

a pure small space -- a vessel or goblet

that could hold the whole atlantic. always

i stare you-ward: come spill yourself in me.