the dance most of all

the imperfect dancing in the beautiful dance (this is a secret blog, trying to heal myself with words- don't assume i want to be found.) (archive)

[thedancemostofall]

Devin Kelly on Longing

[thedancemostofall]

We're crying for softness. We're yearning and migrating to softness. We're all yearning for something that's warm, welcoming and soft in the hard hard world.

[reverie-quotes]

A woman must stay alone for a long while until the hate men have for women has left her, and even longer until the jealousy women have for other women has left her, and longer still until the anger her children have for her has left her—until she is no longer a woman altered by the resentment of men, women, and children, no longer what others have forced her to be, but empty as a skull or a shell, filled only by whatever she pleases, forest air perhaps.

— Kiran Desai, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

[soracities]

Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch (trans. Gregory Rabassa)

[Text ID: “As if you could pick in love, as if it were not a lightning bolt that splits your bones and leaves you staked out in the middle of the courtyard.”]

[thedancemostofall]

Isabelle Correa

[thedancemostofall]

“And I think this is how I would most like to imagine romance, friends, or should I say lovers. In praise of all my body can and cannot do, I wish to figure out how it can best sing with all of yours for a moment in a room where the walls sweat. I wish to lock eyes across a dance floor from you while something our mothers sang in the kitchen plays over the speakers. I want us to find each other among the forest of writhing and make a deal. Okay, lover. It is just us now. The only way out is through.” ― Hanif Abdurraqib

[thedancemostofall]

April, in much of the country, is liminal, vacillating between winter and spring, refusing to resolve cleanly. If you look closely, you can observe this tension: the tulips quivering in the gusting wind; people in shorts and people wearing mittens on the same block; stepping onto the porch to see a robin and instead seeing your own breath. The internal work is much the same. Sitting quietly, paying close attention to the weather inside, you can observe the hope that blows in with the fear, the lightness and heaviness that seem to be competing. The psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Brach advises greeting each experience that arises within us with the phrase “this too,” accepting what’s there, even if it’s uncomfortable.

from nytimes on poetry month

[thedancemostofall]

[thedancemostofall]

Notes for Radical Living

by Tilda Swinton

Make friends with chaos Hold a calm mind Let things shake Forgive human frailty Champion second chances Defy kindness Reverence fellowship Listen to the quiet Respect the young Seek growth Trust in change Treasure learning Inspire faith in evolution Reach beyond the binary Be wary of the doubtless Honor the bright headed Grow plants Attend to the weather Be electric Cherish language Celebrate silence Dance daily Bless the handmade Sing into pain Challenge assumptions Follow the wind Look upwards Swoon under clouds Feel your courage Face forward Read history Open your ears Drop your shoulders Bend your knees Raise the roof Keep breathing Be trustworthy Take care of yourself Believe in goodness Head for the light

[thedancemostofall]

[thedancemostofall]

Simone Weil on attention

[thedancemostofall]

Dark Forest thoughts - Erin Kissane

Maggie Appleton

The Dark Forest and the Cozy Web

An illustrated diagram exposing the inner layers of the dark and cozy web

[thedancemostofall]

t sends me three poems he recorded aloud

when it falls as all empires do (!)

his recording goes straight into his set "From a record store in nagoya"

This is the Nonsense of Love | Mindy Nettifee

“This is the Nonsense of Love” Mindy Nettifee

Our kiss is a secret handshake, a password. We love like spies, like bruised prize fighters, like children building tree houses.

Our love is serious business. One look from you and my spine reincarnates as kite string.

When I hesitate to hold your hand, it is because to know is to be responsible for knowing.

II. There is no clean way to enter the heavy machinery of the heart.

Just jagged cutthroat questions. Just the glitter and blood production.

III. The truth is this: My love for you is the only empire I will ever build.

When it falls, as all empires do, my career in empire building will be over.

I will retreat to an island. I will dabble in the vacation-hut industry. I will skulk about the private libraries and public parks.

I will fold the clean clothes. I will wash the dishes. I will never again dream of having the whole world.

[thedancemostofall]

“Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness” by Mary Oliver

Every year we have been witness to it: how the world descends into a rich mash, in order that it may resume. And therefore who would cry out to the petals on the ground to stay, knowing as we must, how the vivacity of what was is married to the vitality of what will be? I don't say it's easy, but what else will do if the love one claims to have for the world be true? So let us go on, cheerfully enough, this and every crisping day, though the sun be swinging east, and the ponds be cold and black, and the sweets of the year be doomed.

[thedancemostofall]

It’s true, I think, that what we build to protect ourselves can often end up hurting others. It’s true, too, that we often make ourselves more alone in our efforts to save ourselves from hurt. It’s true, sadly, that we live, sometimes, in isolation even among the many we live among. It’s true, in many ways, that we look out windows while we sit next to locked doors. It’s true, I know, that we have made this world a dangerous place to be a bird simply because we think this world is a dangerous place to be a human.

― Devin Kelly

[thedancemostofall]

Carl Phillips

[thedancemostofall]

Henry Nouwen