Purple Musing

I appologize in advance for all the I's, me's, my's & mine's, and any other self-centered remark coming from the self-centered person I tend to be. --Link to 2nd Blog--

[purplemusing]

I’ll remind you

as you restlessly move in bed

feeling the clock tick away minutes off your sacred 6 hours of sleep

6 was 8′s compromise

compromises never work

I’ll remind you 

when your tea grows bitter as you wait for it to cool down

to not burn a tongue

you barely even use

it never touched coherence

nor did it ever touch the inside of someone else’s mouth

I’ll remind you 

when you stare into your reflection in the mirror

and when it makes you wish for different bones

when the lamp you study under starts heating up your neck

but the blood still flows in sluggish pulses

nothing vital, nothing intense

I’ll remind you when you hate how your nails don’t curve gracefully

and when you realize they’re shaped just like your dad’s

I’ll remind you at the times when you want to lose every connection

with every person you love

and at the times when you feel like making blankets out of their very skin

I’ll remind you

till your thoughts spin 

and spin a little more

till you desperately try to catch them

and you fail

then you try to tame them softly

and they slip

right between your index and thumb

then you give up, you watch them silently

to find nothing but shadows

cast by the ridges of your skull

they don’t need a source of light

they don’t exist

a nothing can not spin

This is how I remind you of the vagueness of reality

and the blessing of a distraction you think you despise 

and how empty it all is

emptier than the cups of coffee you hate and still gulp down

because they make you able to swallow more words at dawn 

you think words are tangible, you think at least those are real

But I’ll be there to remind you 

again and again 

of how futile your attempts are

at making something 

out of the dances of the void

[weltenwellen]

Maya C. Popa, from “Spring”, Wound Is the Origin of Wonder

[weltenwellen]

Mary Oliver, “Don’t Hesitate”, Devotions

[burkiningalerisi-deactivated202]

[optimisticdefendorsandwich]

The intimacy of hands

[lottereinigerforever]

Antonioni short film “Superstizione”

[weltenwellen]

Paige Lewis, "Diorama of Want"

[gogumagirl]

"The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other's light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another."

— Maria Popova, The Light Between Us (2022)

[innervoiceartblog]

Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment.

― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

[purplemusing]

[purplemusing]

“Every once in the bluest moon, if you are lucky, you encounter someone with such powerful and generous light in their eyes that they rekindle the lost light within you and return it magnified; someone whose calm, kind, steady gaze penetrates the very center of your being and, refusing to look away from even the most shadowy parts of you, falls upon you like a benediction. That we can do this for each other, but that it happens so rarely, is both the great miracle and the great tragedy, for there is no loneliness like the loneliness of having your light unmet.”

Maria Popova

[yooo-gehn]

افتتح ألبير كامو، أحد أقرب الفلاسفة لقلبي، روايته الأشهر "الغريب" بهذه الجملة: اليوم ماتت أمي، أو ربما ماتت بالأمس.. لست أدري.

ولطالما شعرت أن قائل هذا الكلام قد مات قلبه قبل أن تموت أمه. رد فعل بارد منعدم المشاعر. لا قيمة لحياة أمه لأنه لا قيمة لحياته نفسها. حتى ماتت أمي، وعرفت أن الشخصية فقط كانت تتصرف على سجيتها، وأن تناول القهوة أمام جثمان أمك لم يكن بالضبط علامة على اعتلال نفسي. يوم ماتت أمي، وبعد أن قلنا كل شيء وفعلنا كل شيء، وشعرنا بكل هذا الهول والعجز المطبق الذي نشعر به أمام الموت، كنت أتناول بضع بطاطس مهروسة بائتة وجدتها في الثلاجة!

ولكنها كانت ألذ وجبة التهمتها في حياتي!! كنت قبلها غارق حتى الثمالة في كابوس مظلم تتوالى فيه المصائب، وكانت البطاطس المهروسة هي هذا الشيء العادي، الذي لا ينتمي للكابوس، والذي يبطيء من وتيرة الأحداث. لا شيء ينقذنا في المصائب الاستثنائية كالحياة العادية.

كنت أمنح يدي شيئا تفعله، فمي شيئا يفعله، جسمي شيئا يفعله، بخلاف غرس خنجر موتها حتى المقبض في قلبي. علاقتي بالطعام أشبه بعلاقتي بأمي، كلاهما علاقة مَرَضية، غير أني كنت أجوع للطعام فآكل حتى أصاب بالتخمة، وأجوع لأمي فأنام دوما بمعدة خاوية. وما تعلمته في الطهي، هو أن الكثير من الأكلات تكون في ألذ مذاق لها وهي على حافة الاحتراق، ولكنها بعد هذه الحافة تتفحم.

اليوم وأنا أتذكر أمي، تذكرت أهمية ما تمثله البطاطس المهروسة التي كانت أبعد ما يكون عن التفحم. وتذكرت أني لا يجب أن أترك أي شيء يتجاوز حافة الاحتراق أبدًا.

[sinbad2021]

[feral-ballad]

Dulce María Loynaz, tr. by James O’Connor, from Absolute Solitude: Selected Poems

[Text ID: “There is still one difference left between us. You have a tenderness grown weary and I have a weariness grown tender.”]

[andrumedus]

“I would never tie you down, not even with garlands of roses. I don’t want anything from you that doesn’t come from your own impulse, like water from the springs.”

— Dulce María Loynaz, tr. James O’Connor, Absolute Solitude: Selected Poems; “XLVI”

[weltenwellen]

“Often I have such a great longing for myself. I know that the path ahead still stretches far; but in my best dreams I see the day when I shall stand and greet myself.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, Diaries of a Young Poet

[thepursuitofunderstanding]

“I desire violently, and I wait.”

— Anais Nin

[metaphorformetaphor]

“Perhaps we are each allotted only a certain amount of love—enough only for an initial meeting—a serendipitous clumsiness. When it leaves to find others, the difficulty begins because we are faced with our humanness, our past, our very being.”

— Simon Van Booy, from “The World Laughs in Flowers,” The Secret Lives of People in Love (Turtle Point Press, 2007)

[wanderlustgems]

Do not stand

By my grave, and weep.

I am not there,

I do not sleep—

I am the thousand winds that blow

I am the diamond glints in snow

I am the sunlight on ripened grain,

I am the gentle, autumn rain.

As you awake with morning’s hush,

I am the swift, up-flinging rush

Of quiet birds in circling flight,

I am the day transcending night.

Do not stand

By my grave, and cry—

I am not there,

I did not die.

- Claire Harner, Immortality