Now, strengthen my hands

27. Here and there.

[weltenwellen]

Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

[wovi]

[missinyouiskillingme]

[mournfulroses]

Fyodor Dostoevsky, from a letter featured in "Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to his Family & Friends,"

[mournfulroses]

Louise Glück, from a poem titled "Prism," featured in Averno: Poems, originally published in 2006

[nixscriptum]

[nixscriptum]

Everything lovely reminds me of you.

[nousrose]

The opposite of anxiety is not calmness, it is desire. Anxiety and desire are two, often conflicting, orientations to the unknown. Both are tilted toward the future. Desire implies a willingness, or a need, to engage this unknown, while anxiety suggests a fear of it. Desire takes one out of oneself, into the possibility of relationship, but it also takes one deeper into oneself. Anxiety turns one back on oneself, but only onto the self that is already known. There is nothing mysterious about the anxious state; it leaves one teetering in an untenable and all too familiar isolation. There is rarely desire without some associated anxiety: We seem to be wired to have apprehension about that which we cannot control, so in this way, the two are not really complete opposites. But desire gives one a reason to tolerate anxiety and a willingness to push through it.

Open to Desire

Mark Epstein

[letsbelonelytogetherr]

— Traci Brimhall, Dear Eros

[nousrose]

There is a very simple secret to being happy. Just let go of your demand on this moment. Any time you have a demand on the moment to give you something or remove something, there is suffering. Your demands keep you chained to the dream state of conditioned mind. The problem is that when there is a demand, you completely miss what is now. Letting go applies to the highest sacred demand, and even to the demand for love. If you demand in some subtle way to be loved, even if you get love, it is never enough. In the next moment, the demand reasserts itself, and you need to be loved again. But as soon as you let go, there is knowing in that instant that there is love here already. The mind is afraid to let go of its demand because the mind thinks that if it lets go, it is not going to get what it wants - as if demanding works. This is not the way things work. Stop chasing peace and stop chasing love, and your heart becomes full. Stop trying to be a better person, and you are a better person. Stop trying to forgive, and forgiveness happens. Stop and be still.

Emptiness Dancing

Adyashanti

[feral-ballad]

Anne Michaels, from Skin Divers; “Ice House”

[soundlessl-y]

[ID:

We mourn in a place no one knows; it's right that our grief be unseen.

I love you as if you'll return after years of absence. As if we'd invented moonlight.

Still I dream of your arrival.

/end ID]

[sapphicrs]

[two-bees-poetry]

[mournfulroses]

Anaïs Nin, from a letter to Joaquin Nin, featured in Reunited: The Correspondence of Anais and Joaquin Nin, 1933-1940

[weltenwellen]

Maya C. Popa, from “There Must be a Meaning”, Wound Is the Origin of Wonder

[ruhsal-deactivated20200416]

İstanbul'un Kubbeleri

[guzgecesi]

[weltenwellen]

Jenny Slate, Little Weirds