Life on the road, poetry and coffee || Charlotte Eriksson || The

Author • Songwriter • Wanderer ☽ signed books • instagram ☽ my writings

[theglasschild]

Starting to share chapters from my new book on Patreon. I've been sitting on it for too long, it's time to let it find the souls who want to find it ♡ Go here to read it.

[thoughtkick]

“You cannot use someone else’s fire; you can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe you have it.”

— Audre Lorde

[theglasschild]

“…. by the time they have reached the middle of their life’s journey, few people remember how they have managed to arrive at themselves, at their amusements, their point of view, their wife, character, occupation and successes, but they cannot help feeling that not much is likely to change anymore. It might even be asserted that they have been cheated, for one can nowhere discover any sufficient reason for everything’s coming about as it has. It might just have well as turned out differently. The events of people’s lives have, after all, only to the last degree originated in them, having generally depended on all sorts of circumstances such as the moods, the life or death of quite different people, and have, as it were, only at the given point of time come hurrying towards them” ― Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities

[theglasschild]

It’s midnight. I turned the music off to not wake the neighbors up. Every fifth minute a lonely car passes by. I made a list to push you on, you need it:

1. I know the last year was unkind, weighing you down though you tried hard to stay flying. Stubborn like a dreamer in the sky. It’s over now, kid. Things will get better. You made it through.

2. What do you learn from loving someone? You learn to let go when it’s time. Did you let go yet? Did you love him a little more? Keep loving, keep letting go. Don’t stop.

3. You keep searching for something to do, something you’re good at. Something that makes people stop and say, “You’re good at this!” and this is it.

Words. That’s it. Stick to your words, kid. They flow as easily as a breath and they have since your very first one and they always come back, saving you when you no longer know where to go or what to do and you can arrange them as easily as 1–2–3 and you don’t even have to think, you see?

Stick to those words, kid. Write it all down, what happens after is not your business now. Just write it all. The stories, the novels, the poems, the thorns.

Finish Persuasion, I think it will do you good.

4. The music is always there. You sing but no one can hear. Stop searching for an audience so desperately. The audience will come when you learn to let go. Close your eyes and sing, that’s all you can do.

5. Where do you go when you can go everywhere? Where do you start? The answer is little by little. One step forward and go from there. You’ll find it soon, kid. Just go where you can, today, and you’ll get somewhere one day.

6. It’s not what you thought and it’s not what you hoped for, but it’s all good. It’s all okay.

// from my book “He loved me some days. I’m sure he did.” 💭 www.CharlotteEriksson.com ☽

[theglasschild]

“You start dying slowly if you do not travel, if you do not read, if you do not listen to the sounds of life, if you do not appreciate yourself. You start dying slowly When you kill your self-esteem; When you do not let others help you. You start dying slowly If you become a slave of your habits, Walking everyday on the same paths… If you do not change your routine, If you do not wear different colours Or you do not speak to those you don’t know. You start dying slowly If you avoid to feel passion And their turbulent emotions; Those which make your eyes glisten And your heart beat fast. You start dying slowly If you do not change your life when you are not satisfied with your job, or with your love, If you do not risk what is safe for the uncertain, If you do not go after a dream, If you do not allow yourself, At least once in your lifetime, To run away from sensible advice…”

— Pablo Neruda

[theglasschild]

“Speech, tennis, music, skiing, manners, love- you try them waking and perhaps balk at the jump, and then you're over. You've caught the rhythm of them once and for all, in your sleep at night. The city, of course, can wreck it. So much insomnia. So many rhythms collide. The salesgirl, the landlord, the guests, the bystanders, sixteen varieties of social circumstance in a day. Everyone has the power to call your whole life into question here. Too many people have access to your state of mind. Some people are indifferent to dislike, even relish it. Hardly anyone I know.” ― Renata Adler, Speedboat

[theglasschild]

“What is the point. That is what must be borne in mind. Sometimes the point is really who wants what. Sometimes the point is what is right or kind. Sometimes the point is a momentum, a fact, a quality, a voice, an imitation, a thing that is said or unsaid. Sometimes it's who's at fault, or what will happen if you do not move at once. The point changes and goes out. You cannot be forever watching for the point, or you lose the simplest thing: being a major character in your own life. But if you are, for any length of time, custodian of the point-- in art, in court, in politics, in lives, in rooms-- it turns out there are rear-guard actions everywhere. To see a thing clearly, and when your vision of it dims, or when it goes to someone else, if you have a gentle nature, keep your silence, that is lovely. Otherwise, now and then, a small foray is worthwhile. Just so that being always, complacently, thoroughly wrong does not become the safest position of them all. The point has never quite been entrusted to me.” ― Renata Adler, Speedboat

[theglasschild]

“That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.” ― Renata Adler, Speedboat

[vivalasigh]

[theglasschild]

You feel lonely and see it as a void, a painful emptiness that must be filled by another person. When a man appears, you push him into that void to stop the horrible feeling. This is the 'clinging.' It is a frantic attempt to use another person as insulation against yourself. I felt that same void. But I learned to see it not as an absence, but as a space. An empty room. And I understood that my life's primary task was not to find someone to move into that room with me, but to furnish it myself. – Charlotte Eriksson

[theglasschild]

But if your heart doesn’t have any fear it will cease to grow in time for fear is the thing, dear.

Fear is the thing that makes the heart pump, eyes open and mind swell, and fear makes the safety worth chasing. Adventure awaits on the other side of that fall, in that fall, and if you knew the outcome of each and every thing the point would cease to be.

Fear is the thing, my dear. Fear is the thing that makes the heart grow.

// from my book You're Doing Just Fine ♡ www.CharlotteEriksson.com

[theglasschild]

Aug 24

Slept badly, dreamt of a staircase that led nowhere.

[theglasschild]

I don’t think I will ever become what I thought I would.

[theglasschild]

Wrote one line I didn’t hate. Immediately ruined it by adding another.

[theglasschild]

I avoid people so I can think, then waste the silence.

[theglasschild]

We mistake being seen for being known.

[mournfulroses]

Sinéad O'Connor, from her book titled "Rememberings," originally published in June 2021