"Work, worry, toil and trouble are indeed the lot of almost all men their whole life long. And yet, if every desire were satisfied as soon as it arose, how would men occupy their lives, how would they pass the time? Imagine this race transported to Utopia, where everything grows of its own accord and turkeys fly around ready-roasted, where lovers find one another without any delay and keep one another without any difficulty: in such a place, some men would die of boredom or hang themselves... thus, for a race such as this, no stage, no form of existence is suitable other than the one it already possesses."
---schopenhauer, "on the suffering of the world"
"At that instant he saw, in one blaze of light, an image of unutterable conviction, the reason why the artist works and lives and has his being--the reward he seeks--the only reward he really cares about, without which there is nothing. It is to snare the spirits of mankind in nets of magic, to make his life prevail through his creation, to wreak the vision of his life, the rude and painful substance of his own experience, into the congruence of blazing and enchanted images that are themselves the core of life, the essential pattern whence all other things proceed, the kernel of eternity."
---thomas wolfe, "of time and the river"
there are the haves and the have nots,
the bodies whose limbs partake
in the aching rhythms,
the tethered passions,
the sidelong kisses
as steady as a bulleting monorail,
the kind whose desires burn off
the excitement of a stimulating phrase
that globes overhead,
a snow-drop of a lunar beam
that in all its glib quickness
manages a tender brush of its hand
against the very notion of eternity
---except from a poem of mine, 'the halves and the wholes'
I wish I could say I was the kind of child
who watched the moon from her window,
would turn toward it and wonder.
I never wondered. I read. Dark signs
that crawled toward the edge of the page.
It took me years to grow a heart
from paper and glue. All I had
was a flashlight, bright as the moon,
a white hole blazing beneath the sheets.
---dorianne laux, "facts about the moon"
At times it is a good life, with the evening sun
gilding the abbey tower, the brook's cold waterssliding past and every hour in my Book
a blank page, vellum pumice-stoned
to chalky lustres which my inks suffuse:
saffron and sandarach and dragon's blood,
azure and verdigris. Monsters and every type of beast
curl round the words. Each man here has a past,
and each man reasons for his faith. I wronged
a woman once and nothing I did after could atone
or throw a light upon the blackness of that deed,
whose harm lay in the telling, not the doing.
My floor is strewn with thyme and rosemary
to mask the odours of my craft – fish glue,
gum resins, vinegar and oils. With these I shape
the hosts of the redeemed, and every face
takes on the features of a face I've known
and every angel's face beneath the shadow
of its many coloured wings is hers alone.
---julia copus, "breaking the rule -- the art of illumination"
"I really believe that if there's any kind of God, he wouldn't be in any one of us -- not you, not me, but just this space in between. If there's some magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone else, sharing something. Even if it's almost impossible to succeed. But who cares? The answer must be in the attempt."
---from before sunrise
bobbie, 23. i'm a passionate person. would like to think i am a creative one. i want to be a graphic designer. i'm into psychology. i'm an avid chicago-sun times reader, and i like to read the new yorker, specifically the fiction section. sometimes i read the 'girly' magazines, but i prefer to cut them up for collages. i'm into the art of romance. i love art. i love poetry. i love music: old-school 80s dance and pop, indie, twee, electronic lo-fi, synth, shoegaze, dreampop. trembling blue stars are my favorite band. i've wanted to be a writer since i was 7 years old. i'm thinking about self publishing my own material. i have my own website. i am nothing you'd expect.i'm a lover, not a fighter, but i'm not afraid of confrontation. i get described as intense a lot. i was a vegetarian for 13 years, & am now a semi vegetarian. sometimes i spend hours in adobe photoshop. i can't be with anyone romantically who doesn't inspire me, or who doesn't make me want to write. i always make sure to express how i feel. i'm incredibly open & i wish more people were the same. i'd rather not be lied to because you think it will protect my feelings. i'm not a morning person by nature, but my job offers me no other choice, so i've become one. i have a strange affection for colored pencils. i can't live without my cell phone. i think introspection is terribly important. in the jealously realm, i'm the typical scorpio. etiquette is very important to me. people tell me i worry too much, or care too much. i really want to go to spain, & london, someday. i think there's nothing better than good conversation or a great connection. my favorite starbursts are the red ones.
my mom died of cancer when i was 18. for the first year after she died, i didn't think about it much. sometimes now, i miss her. i wish we'd been closer.
i work for a farmers insurance office in highland park, illinois, full time. i am gone 10-11 hrs a day, 5 days a week. i'm a property & casualty claims CSR. it's certainly not my dream job....but it's making me a decent living right now. insurance is actually more interesting than one might think. i've seen so many photos of smashed up cars!
I am more human than anything, but at times I don't feel like it. I'd rather be self aware than happy. I do as much as I can to celebrate life, to go for the things I want, to find my dreams, those constellations in the sky. I know what I want from life. I don't always know how to get it, but I'm doing everything possible, and probably fucking up a lot along the way. I'm too sensitive and too passionate and when I love something, or someone, I give my whole heart to it. I believe love is hard to come by, but I want it more than anything. I like challenges. I believe that when you want something so very much you will have it no matter the cost.
note: i usually don't friend people unless they message me first. unless i think you're incredibly interesting merely from your profile. and if you have no inert interest in speaking to ME as an individual....not just as part of your mass amalgamation of pixel-people....then go away. thanks. ;)
We don't fall in love: it rises through us
the way that certain music does -
whether a symphony or ballad -
and it is sepia-coloured,
like spilt tea that inches up
the tiny tube-like gaps inside
a cube of sugar lying by a cup.
Yes, love's like that: just when we least
needed or expected it
a part of us dips into it
by chance or mishap and it seeps
through our capillaries, it clings
inside the chambers of the heart.
We're victims, we say: mere vessels,
drinking the vanilla scent
of this one's skin, the lustre
of another's eyes so skilfully
darkened with bistre. And whatever
damage might result we're not
to blame for it: love is an autocrat
and won't be disobeyed.
Sometimes we manage
to convince ourselves of that.
"and when i speak of neurosis i really mean nothing more than what we used to call romanticism: that is, wanting the impossible and then being unhappy if it was found to be impossible."
...saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.
put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.
