EXISTENTIAL SHEDDINGS // CELESTIAL DROWNINGS

EXISTENTIAL SHEDDINGS // CELESTIAL DROWNINGS | maps for non-geographical places

[existential-celestial]

(i am) laid down lover– in the shadows of the valley & in the eternal giving fire, here is my cup: fill it; here is my heart: hold it. (i am yours) laid down lover– no eye has seen, no ears have heard the presence of my beloved: his face, of roaring thunder; his robe, of raging water. (i am who you are) laid down lover– flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone, my mourning and my celebration, my sweetest among ten thousand, my battle and my surrender. come, every knee, every tongue, every creature! all foundations and firmaments shall fracture against the weight of what they behold: here is my lover; here is my friend,  the beginning and the end,  the purifying radiance of all the ineffable. 

[existential-celestial]

surrender to sleep to the sound of rain to the sound of my mind whirring in slow motion how i feel gossamer as if all the light can pass through me how i feel heavy hoping all the poison to seep right out blink the loaded lids to the view of sunset to the view of after-rain melted the walls into a slow fire coloured the sky into a faded denim at the window wondering how to be colossal without casting shadows how to be rain without leaving trails of water to be light and delicate, sustaining all these back-breaking feelings. – j. p. berame // no. 092516

[existential-celestial]

Ruin and Rising, Leigh Bardugo

[existential-celestial]

Limnology

sometimes you are endless currents flowing and ebbing and rising tides stirred, unholy tempest seeking shores to land bodies of stories and chances. i seek to walk calmly over your stormy oceans. sometimes i am hot tears streaming on cold cheeks bewitching, like silent waters dripping and tracing and digging rivers on frosted windows. i seek to land welcome on the topography of your sternum. let me be brave and study how my moonlight moves silver under your inland waters. – j. p. berame // no. 081416

[existential-celestial]

“the wind rises to cradle your face— love, i greet you with a holy kiss”

— j. p. berame // zephyr // no. 041316 

[existential-celestial]

i kiss your water, love

—no hearts martyred

in the rising ebb

[existential-celestial]

“Nothing feeds forgetfulness better than war […]. We all keep quiet and they try to convince us that what we’ve seen, what we’ve done, what we’ve learned about ourselves and about others, is an illusion, a passing nightmare. Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened, until the moment comes when we no longer recognize them and they return, with another face and another name, to devour what they left behind.”

— The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafón

[existential-celestial]

Louise Gluck, Mary Oliver, Jack Gilbert, Denise Levertov, Ocean Vuong, Ilya Kaminsky, Mahmoud Darwish, Christian Wiman, j.p.berame (@existential-celestial)

—

praise to our endurance 🌱✨

[firesiege]

[existential-celestial]

“Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch’d from,”

— Walt Whitman (b. 31 May 1819), “Song of Myself,” in WHITMAN (The Laurel Poetry Series).

[existential-celestial]

“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

— Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself,” in WHITMAN (The Laurel Poetry Series)

[existential-celestial]

“Your voice, with clear location of June days, Called me outside the window. You were there, Light yet composed, as in the just soft stare Of uncontested summer all things raise Plainly their seeming into seamless air.”

— Richard Wilbur, from “June Light” 

[swanjolras-blog-archive-deactiv]

gosh but like we spent hundreds of years looking up at the stars and wondering “is there anybody out there” and hoping and guessing and imagining

because we as a species were so lonely and we wanted friends so bad, we wanted to meet other species and we wanted to talk to them and we wanted to learn from them and to stop being the only people in the universe

and we started realizing that things were maybe not going so good for us– we got scared that we were going to blow each other up, we got scared that we were going to break our planet permanently, we got scared that in a hundred years we were all going to be dead and gone and even if there were other people out there, we’d never get to meet them

and then

we built robots?

and we gave them names and we gave them brains made out of silicon and we pretended they were people and we told them hey you wanna go exploring, and of course they did, because we had made them in our own image

and maybe in a hundred years we won’t be around any more, maybe yeah the planet will be a mess and we’ll all be dead, and if other people come from the stars we won’t be around to meet them and say hi! how are you! we’re people, too! you’re not alone any more!, maybe we’ll be gone

but we built robots, who have beat-up hulls and metal brains, and who have names; and if the other people come and say, who were these people? what were they like?

the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery; they called us curiosity; they called us explorer; they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important.

and they told us to tell you hello.

[swanjolras-blog-archive-deactiv]

this is far and away the most popular post i ever made on tumblr. people have asked me if they could illustrate it, people have asked me if they could turn it into a novella, people just messaged me to say it made them cry. that means more to me than i can say.

you probably heard that the mars opportunity rover died today. 

it was hard news to hear. i cried at my desk at work. it doesn’t make it easier that it was only supposed to run for 90 days at all; it doesn’t make it easier that it lived 14 years longer than it expected to. it lived a full life. it lived a very good life. it was the first set of eyes on miles and miles of mars. it was an explorer, it was tough, it was very, very brave. and none of that makes it easier, none of that makes it okay that it is not going to sing happy birthday to itself again.

about a year ago, my childhood cat died. i loved her more than anything. i don’t live near my family any more, and i wasn’t there for it, but my parents were, and they held her while her body gave out, and they say she knew she was with them, she knew she was loved.

i know opportunity was a computer inside a movable body, and not a person, or even an animal. still, i wish it had had people to hold it. i wish it had been with the people who cared for it. it seems very hard to me, to die so far from home.

but i think - to the extent to which we can say computers “know” things, which i think is a great deal; i think knowing is most of what computers do; i think if they have a consciousness, knowledge must be nearly all of it-

i think opportunity knew it was loved. 

every couple of months i dream that i’ve gone home and my cat’s there. even now, even though my grieving is over and done with, i visit her in my dreams, and i hold her, and every time, she purrs. she missed me. she’s so happy to be with me again.

that’s a very human thing, dreaming of what we’ve loved. what we’ve lost. dreaming things that outlast death. like robots, and singing.

[existential-celestial]

temporary rest // no. 032418

[unclefather]

Reblog if you’re a true 90s kid and you remember this tumblr

[existential-celestial]

@existential-celestial, morning light // no. 103020 | Mary Szybist, “In the Beginning God Said Light”

[existential-celestial]

“Poetry (like a grand personality) is a growth of many generations — many rare combinations. To have great poets, there must be great audiences too.”

— Walt Whitman (b. 31 May 1819), “Ventures, on an Old Theme,” in Complete Prose Works