(w)holy

"And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and one will not be out of the other’s sight, as I may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole lives together; yet they could not explain what they desire of one another. For the intense yearning which each of them has towards the other does not appear to be the desire of lover’s intercourse, but of something else which the soul of either evidently desires and cannot tell, and of which she has only a dark and doubtful presentiment.

Suppose Hephaestus, with his instruments, to come to the pair who are lying side by side and to say to them, ‘What do you people want of one another?’ They would be unable to explain. And suppose further, that when he saw their perplexity he said: ‘Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night to be in one another’s company? For if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt you into one and let you grow together, so that being two you shall become one, and while you live live a common life as if you were a single man, and after your death in the world below still be one departed soul instead of two—I ask whether this is what you lovingly desire, and whether you are satisfied to attain this?’—there is not a man of them who when he heard the proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that this meeting and melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very expression of his ancient need.

And the reason is that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love."

Plato, Symposium

The Eclipse

"As long as we were in love, we understood each other. There was nothing to understand.” L’eclisse (1962)

father's day

She never lay in bed with me, and looked at my hands.

I woke this morning, feeling the soreness of cuts incurred from a week of carpentry. As I examined them, noting the stiffness and calluses, I recalled how she never lingered with me in bed, studying the details of my fingers . She did mention at least three times through the years that I had appealing, handsome hands. But she never held them, committing their details to memory. Of course, such acts cannot be demanded, but are born only of wonder, and love.

She never let me touch her face. Not with my own face, or with my hands.
She said it would cause blemishes.

She used to be a little hurt that I never did a drawing of her, though that complaint eventually ceased. But she forgets the one that I did that first autumn, as she sat nude, assembling a puzzle on the dining room table. I sat behind her, adoring the contours of her 23 year old form, flawless as a sailboat hull. In love with the exquisite line that flowed from the nape of her neck to fall over her shoulder, tracing with the graphite it's subtleties down her torso to her hip.

I soon learned of course, even in that first year, that those curves would never really be mine.

And so, eventually, I gave up studying them.

Adam

They say that the woman was taken from a wound in Adam's side.
If this is true, then all Adams have such wounds.
I know that this is true, because I have such a wound.

Longer than most, it runs from the top of my scalp down the length of my torso, slicing open my right inner thigh,
and terminating somewhere below the knee, on the face of my shin.

Deeper than most, it penetrates to bone,
the slowly thumping box containing my soul, mute in vivisection.


They say that god closed up the wound afterward.
but this is not true.
I know that this is not true, because my wound has never closed,
and remains a moist, sensitive, bloody gash.

Both a hemorrhage and a portal.
Not unlike a woman's bloody gash.

may my heart always be open to little

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

-e.e. cummings

a conversation

Son: "If it were possible to have extra limbs attached to your body, would you have it done?"

Father: "Hmmm. If they could do it so that it looked cool? Perhaps. Some extra arms maybe. But only if it could be done in a way that looked aesthetically pleasing."

Son: "Yeah. If they could do it so that it looked cool, I would definitely get two huge, muscled arms added. And then I would become a Space Pirate."

trees

"I begin to sigh too, for I feel that people are like trees that move, trees that have lost their roots and are always in search of the soil. I have a hazy idea that humans have come from trees that broke off in a wild whirlwind eons ago..."

"I have my bedtime book in my hand and my pocket light and walk toward the mountain over the edges of the moorland in rubber boots. The book is a relative of mine, I feel; it is made out of trees and human thought, and thus the relationship becomes twofold. These are ancient poems that I am taking to the mountains..."

from "The Book Collection" and "Night", by Gyrdir Eliasson

Nothing

I built on the sand
And it tumbled down,
I built on a rock
And it tumbled down.

Now when I build, I shall begin
With the smoke from the chimney.

-Leopold Staff

I often wonder, whether it might be better to pray to a false god who hears me, rather than to a true god who does not.

want

Obscenely expensive; I can't imagine ever feeling free to spend so much on cutlery when there are people in the world who have nothing to eat. But it is heart-breakingly beautiful to look at...

You can see the original link here

cats

One of the greatest pleasures of being human is enjoying the company of a domesticated cat.

Issa

Here,
I'm here-
the snow falling.

Kobayashi Issa, 1805

Autumn

"In his autumn before the winter, comes man's last mad surge of youth." -vintage film line, quoted in "don't fall" by the Chameleons (U.K.).

Feeling a bit old of late. Looking, feeling, and thinking. Wondering what my life has been, and how the story of it will read when all the stories are told one day. This time of year is always sort of a sweet heartache for me. It has long been a favorite season, second only to winter in my estimation. The gray skies feel softer than the harsh light of summer, the damp air soothing, caressing the skin like the faint kisses of some quiet, unseen, but forgiving god.

Metaphorically of course, it is the season for looking backward; always the favored direction of my gaze. So I am sitting at home alone tonight, browsing iTunes for digital versions of the music of my youth.

Hence the quote.

Annie Dillard quotes

Some favorites:

"Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. "

"Cruelty is a mystery, and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power and delight, the canary that sings on the skull."

Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?" Priest: "No, not if you did not know." Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?"

She looked through the branches and she could see a million stars

"That night, when she went to bed, she was very tired. But she looked through the branches and she could see a million stars. The wind blew gently and rocked the tree like a cradle. It was very peaceful, and Miss Suzy was very happy once more."

-from Miss Suzy, by Miriam Young

snow

I love the sound of falling snow. The accumulated sound of each individual snowflake, imperceptible by themselves, together combine into a gentle, sibilant, shimmering murmur.

the beast

"THERE was once a witch who desired to know everything. But the wiser a witch is, the harder she knocks her head against the wall when she comes to it. Her name was Watho, and she had a wolf in her mind. She cared for nothing in itself -- only for knowing it." - George MacDonald, The Day Boy and the Night Girl

I used to have a recurring nightmare. In every variation of it, I am being chased by a vicious yet strangely intelligent wild animal. In the last version of it that I remember having - which was many years ago - I was in my grandmother's house. It had originally belonged to my mother's mother, and is now the home of my sister.

In the dream, I was being pursued through the house by what was essentially an enormous werewolf. He was a supernaturally large human/lupus hybrid with powerfully muscled broad shoulders and the body, strength and nature of a wolf; but he stood on two legs and possessed the height and intellect of a man. As I ran for my life up the attic stairs, I felt the hot, moist exhalation of his breath through bared teeth on the nape of my neck. He held nothing back as he stayed on my heels, and at the extremity of my ability I was just barely ahead of him. He roared in fury his intent to kill me. But more disturbingly I could sense his thoughts, as I felt that he could read mine. We almost seemed to share one mind. And I sensed no pause, no relenting, in his irrational, single-minded intent to devour me.

I took the top of the stairs a hairs breadth out of his reach, and as he bellowed with hatred and rage at me I managed to fling the last door closed in his face, enclosing myself in a small upper bathroom with no other exit.

Barricaded inside and with no other way out, I turned to watch the door shudder and rattle, almost leaving it's frame as he hurled his body heedlessly against it, refusing to accept that it could come between him and his prey. I was struck by how unlikely it was that the thin, antique wooden door should be able to withstand such a supernatural onslaught. But it was built, indirectly at least, by the loving hands of my grandmother, eventually coming to us through our mother. And for the moment, it seemed to be just enough to stand between me and my enemy.