I’m Listening

[squareah]

“Time’s passage through the memory is like molten glass that can be opaque or crystallize at any given moment at will: a thousand days are melted into one conversation, one glance, one hurt, and one hurt can be shattered and sprinkled over a thousand days. It is silent and elusive, refusing to be damned and dripped out day by day; it swirls through the mind while an entire lifetime can ride like foam on the deceptive, transparent waves and get sprayed onto the consciousness at ragged, unexpected intervals.”

— Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

[wordscanbeenough]

“But what about when you lose someone who is still alive? When you lose track of the person you know within a person they’ve become –what kind of grief is that?”

— Catherine Lacey, Pew

[macrolit]

“And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on.”

— Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Lord Byron (b. 22 January 1788)

[macrolit]

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”

— Edith Wharton (b. 24 January 1862)

[willowofthewilderness]

Desires are ghosts that dissolve as soon as you light the lamp of good sense.

“The Escape” by Clarice Lispector

[no-longer-another-bondi-blonde]

[yesdarlingido]

“And I said to my body, softly, I want to be your friend.” It took a long breath and replied, “I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.”

— Nayyirah Waheed

[thoughtkick]

“Be softer with you. You are a breathing thing. A memory to someone. A home to a life.”

— Nayyirah Waheed

[quotemadness]

“expect sadness like you expect rain. both, cleanse you”

— Nayyirah Waheed

[facinaoris]

nejma, nayyirah waheed

[toskka-deactivated20210124]

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

Devotions: ‘In Blackwater Woods’ by Mary Oliver

[hauntedbystorytelling]

Clarice Lispector, Paris, 1946 [unknown photographer]

related post, here

[toskka-deactivated20210124]

Villette, Charlotte Brontë

[toskka-deactivated20210124]

It is impossible to truly understand another without making room for that person within yourself.

The Road Less Travelled, M. Scott Peck

[toskka-deactivated20210124]

Whenever you see flies or insects in a still life — a wilted petal, a black spot on the apple — the painter is giving you a secret message. He’s telling you that living things don’t last — it’s all temporary. Death in life. That’s why they’re called natures mortes. Maybe you don’t see it at first with all the beauty and bloom, the little speck of rot. But if you look closer — there it is.

The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt

[toskka-deactivated20210124]

how intricately love crosses love; love makes knots; love brutally tears them apart. I have been knotted; I have been torn apart.

The Waves, Virginia Woolf

[mysteriousartcentury]

James Sant (1820-1916), Courage, Anxiety and Despair: Watching the Battle, 1850, oil on canvas, 121.9 x 152.4 cm. In a private collection.