Little by little, and also by great leaps
life happened to me, and how insignificant this business is.
These veins carried my blood, which I scarcely ever saw,
I breathed the air of so many places without keeping a sample of any.
In the end, everyone is aware of this:
nobody keeps any of what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bones.
—Pablo Neruda, October Fullness
It’s my 30th birthday today! Now begins my journey to thirty, flirty, and thriving.
“Anyway it will be autumn tomorrow or the next day: I can smell it in the air—summer smoldering.”
— J. L. Carr, from A Month in the Country (Harvester Press, 1980)
“The evening sky was awash with peach, apricot, cream: tender little ice-cream clouds in a wide orange sky.”
― The Golden Compass
the June nights are long and warm; the roses flowering; and the garden full of lust and bees,
Virginia Woolf, letter to Vanessa Bell
And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.
—Khalil Gibran
Happy 13th birthday to La Pêche Fraîche. Lucky lucky.
The thing about love is that we come alive in bodies not our own.
Colum McCann
The gateway to the worldThe gun in a trembling handWhere nature unmakes the boundaryThe pillar of myth still standsThe swan upon LedaOccupier upon ancient land
—Hozier
Another Pi(e) Day, come at last!
And her sweet red lips on these lips of mine
Burned like the ruby fire set
In the swinging lamp of a crimson shrine,
Or the bleeding wounds of the pomegranate,
Or the heart of the lotus drenched and wet
With the spilt-out blood of the rose-red wine.
– Oscar Wilde, “In the Gold Room – A Harmony.”
Oh, happy happy Valentine’s Day!
I hope you all had a day that included love and, at the very least, a little sweet treat.
Continue reading “Crimson Shrine”
I want
to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be
improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.
Starlings in Winter, Mary Oliver
