Perpetually in progress

I am a bonafide neophiliac with a young canine companion whose energy and sweet eyes remain unrivaled. I can be a bit manic and frequently say depressing things at inappropriate times. I love old furniture and hearing my grandma sing in the kitchen.

[kaitscadence]

For Women Who Are Difficult to Love

no copyright infringement intended poem and narration by warsan shire

[elenamorelli]

{ the scent of autumn time }

[kaitscadence]

The forest, it calls to me.

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Cause even though I know there's hope in every morning song, I have to find that melody alone.

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A note about love and appreciation

A student in one of my college classrooms recently lost his mother. He spoke up one day and this is what he said (paraphrased):

I hear people complaining all the time about their parents and how much they hate them and fight with them. And don't get me wrong, my relationship with my mom wasn't perfect but there isn't a day that goes by that I don't wish she was here with me again.

I'm pretty sure I teared up while he spoke. It made me reflect on all of the things I have in my life that I don't even think about on a daily basis. It made me think about the things I have lost recently and how cruel it is to know with more certainty than ever that you want something at the precise moment that it's passing you by, like a freeway sign when you're driving too fast down a desert road, no turnoffs for miles. There are things that I have lost that I would give nearly anything to draw close to me again. And this is its own type of tragedy. But there are things that I have in these existing moments that are right here; tangible, good, exhilarating moments with excellent people and bursting at the seams with good things. My cup is brimming over and I see it now.

A man I deeply love once implored that if you have love and appreciation for someone "tell them. Make it emphatic and often."

These moments are transitory.

[kaitscadence]

I let it go. It’s like swimming against the current. It exhausts you. After a while, whoever you are, you just have to let go, and the river brings you home.

—      Joanne Harris, Five Quarters of the Orange

[kaitscadence]

1. The day you left was the day I thought that I could not continue living if it meant living without you. 2. On the second day of your prolonged absence nothing seemed worth doing. Not as long as you were not doing it with me. 3. On the third day I realized there would be no sign of your return and that I would have to keep going. Even if that meant going on without you. 4. On the fourth day my hands finally had the strength to open the blinds and to rid of everything that reminded me of you. It was difficult and it took me most of the day to be able to push all of the memories beneath my bed. 5. On the fifth day of living on my own, I worked up the courage to tell all of our friends what had really happened. How you just left one morning without looking back, or even locking the doors. They haven’t heard from you since. 6. On the sixth day your best friend asked me out for coffee, said he knew where I could find you. I said I didn’t want to know. I would rather have you lost than to know you were out there somewhere without me with you. 7. On the seventh day I woke up to a still empty bed and when I rolled over on your side I could no longer feel where your body used to lay. 8. On the eighth day I took all of your belongings to the end of the driveway for the trash man to take. I didn’t care if you still wanted any of it. 9. On the ninth day you texted me, and it took me half of the day to summon the courage to even open it. Inside it read, ” I still love you. I’m sorry. Please, let me come home.” I never replied. 10. On the tenth day I changed the garage combination, the locks on the doors, my telephone number and the color of my hair that you loved so much. You are no longer welcome in my home, in my head and in my heart.

"It took me 10 days to get over you," - Colleen Brown

[kaitscadence]

Better to be a pilgrim without a destination, I figured, than to cross the wrong threshold every day

Sy Safransky

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I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.

Alice Walker

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And summer's lease hath all too short a date

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and this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything

-William Shakespeare

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Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

[kaitscadence]

"And I am, chasing a ghost And I am, A fool

And I am, falling, Falling for you Ever since, I first laid eyes on you."

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The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'awww!'

Jack Kerouac, "On the Road"

[kaitscadence]

AZ day/night

The desert floor glitters with broken windshield glass and the stars have never been brighter than from my grandmother's back porch.

[kaitscadence]

Song of Myself

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance, Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy.

[kaitscadence]

Change the focus of the eye. When you have done that, then the end of the world as you formerly knew it will have occurred, and you will experience the radiance of the divine presence everywhere, here and now.

Joseph Campbell, On Being Human

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They come and go like muffled and veiled figures sent from a distant friendly party; but they say nothing, and if we do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away

Ralph Waldo Emerson