headpats

this is what it is like or what it is like in words

[shisasan]

The Love Poems of Rumi, First published 1273

[64mpg]

“but if i communicate it perfectly then they will understand me” WRONG 10,000 years of suffering

[inkskinned]

beloved , on this the eve of your punishment (10 thousand years suffering immediately no parole), you may be tempted to think - but i really could have communicated it better, then they would have understood me.

you can try as long as you like to explain something: if the other person is not curious, kind, and willing to learn, no explanation will ever work. you would know if someone was trying their absolute best to understand you, despite the immortal problem of all humans being exactly the same and also never quite alike.

there is a difference between being heard and being listened to. i am a little blind in my left eye - you can explain what i do-not-see, but i will not be able to see it. i will listen, though, and you will feel heard. my perspective maybe not be exactly what you meant, perhaps, but no poem ever really escapes unscathed from the poet. the book i write about you will never really capture every facet. communication is imperfect and fluid; that's why it is behind all forms of art.

sometimes it is not even that you said something wrong, sometimes it is that you said something at all; and they do not respect you. sometimes it is that what you said is true, and they are scared to face that truth. sometimes it makes them feel wrong (guilty, ashamed), and they cannot listen or they will have 10 thousand years suffering in the personality equivalent of forced rhubarb growth.

ah. i see you rattling your chains. yes, my love, the hard part: this means the largest part of it was them, and their choice. after all, if you had been approached by someone pleading for understanding, wouldn't you have endeavored to at least attempt some degree of civil engagement? you would have, i know you. which means they saw you like that - desperate, wild, someone they were supposed to love - and they still thought this is not enough.

you have been begging them. they have watched you beg them for understanding, and they have not moved. you did not have a communication issue. the issue was with how they treated you.

this is the manner where we will begin your torture. what is immediately and impossibly evident to you is impenetrable to them: and that lack of understanding is, in all likelihood, at least a little bit on purpose.

i am sorry to say it because if you turn your eyes downwards to my ankles you will find i am also serving my 10 thousand years. i am saying this from the place you will be soon. before the dungeon swallows you, one final remark, i suppose: it wasn't your fault, and I love you.

[finelythreadedsky]

I’ve thought a lot about the fall of troy as the end of the world in terms of framing the odyssey and the aeneid as post-apocalyptic narratives, but I’m really grateful to christa wolf for pulling that into focus and asking what it means to the trojans to be living at the edge of the end of the world. building a life where there can’t be one. living happily during the war when they are bombing your houses. and the way she talks in the accompanying essays about living in east germany with such certainty of impending nuclear war and the annihilation of the entire continent of europe within the next three or four years at most—

the world is about to end. you wash the dishes. your lover comes home. you don’t talk about it. you go to the market. every so often something shifts and you see yourself clearly for a moment and it drives you insane. you get used to it.

[metamorphesque]

October, Louise Glück

[barstoolblues]

this is probably the former closing dishwasher in me but few things are as personally satisfying as washing the dishes at the end of the night . something something michael chabon “either a surrealistic nightmare of the ordinary or a plunge into the warm waters of beautiful of routine” quote

[barstoolblues]

the full quote from the mysteries of pittsburgh which has nothing to do with washing dishes but nevertheless has stuck with me

[great-and-small]

The red-winged blackbird’s song is deeply comforting and familiar it’s like walking into the marsh and hearing an old friend

[woolysocks]

[cersplace]

─ Hisham Siddiqi

[apocryphics]

Linda Pastan

[daily-spooky]

[crreature]

Always always always thinking of this quote from Dear Senthuran by Akwaeke Emezi

[juicemetal]

oh im gonna be weird about this for so long

[saintsebastiensbf]

Mary Oliver, Everything

[engulfes]

Ada Limón on Preparing the Body for a Reopened World

[flightcheck]

[apocryphics]

[kunosoura]

what's the opposite of feeling sand slip through your fingers because I feel this poem more and more as time passes

[weltenwellen]

Danez Smith, from "alive", Bluff

[apesoformythoughts]

"Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer. When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know. So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed. Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. Listen to carrion — put your ear close, and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts. So long as women do not go cheap for power, please women more than men. Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth? Go with your love to the fields. Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts. As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn’t go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection."

— Wendell Berry: "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front"