Henry Crawford to Fanny with love

I am happier than I was, because I now understand more clearly your opinion of me.  You think me unsteady—easily swayed by the whim of the moment—easily tempted—easily put aside.  With such an opinion, no wonder that—But we shall see.—It is not by protestations that I shall endeavor to convince you I am wronged, it is not by telling you that my affections are steady.  My conduct shall speak for me—absence, distance, time shall speak for me.—They shall prove, that as far as you can be deserved by any body, I do deserve you.—You are infinitely superior in merit; all that I know.—You have qualities which I had not before supposed to exist in such a degree in any human creature.  You have some touches of the angel in you, beyond what—not merely beyond what one sees, because one never sees any thing like it—but beyond what one fancies might be.  But still I am not frightened.  It is not by equality of merit that you can be won.  That is out of the question.  It is he who sees and worships your merit the strongest, who loves you most devotedly, that has the best right to a return.  There I build my confidence.  By that right I do and will deserve you; and when once convinced that my attachment is what I declare it, I know you too well ot to entertain the warmest hopes—Yes, dearest, sweetest Fanny—Nay—(seeing her draw back displeased) forgive me.  Perhaps I have as yet no right—but by what other name can I call you?  Do you suppose you are ever present to my imagination under any other?  No, it is ‘Fanny’ that I think of all day, and dream of all night.—You have given the name such reality of sweetness, that nothing else can now be descriptive of you.

I have never seen a wild thing feel sorry for itself. A little bird will fall dead, frozen from a bough, without ever having felt sorry for itself.--D. H. Lawrence

She never lets me in
only tells me where she's been
when she's had too much to drink
I say that I don't care, I just run my hands
through her dark hair then I pray to God
you gotta help me fly away

sometimes awful things have their own kind of beauty

-a single man-

The Awakening

     Edna walked away on down to the beach rather mechanically, not noticing anything special except that the sun was hot. She was not dwelling upon any particular train of thought. She had done all the thinking which was necessary after Robert went away, when she lay awake upon the sofa till morning.
     She had said over and over to herself: "To-day it is Arobin; to-morrow it will be some one else. It makes no difference to me, it doesn't matter about Leonce Pontellier--but Raoul and Etienne!" She understood now clearly what she had meant long ago when she said to Adele Ratignolle that she would give up the unessential, but she would never sacrifice herself for her children.
     Despondency had come upon her there in the wakeful night, and had never lifted.  There was no one thing in the world that she desired. There was no human being whom she wanted near her except Robert; and she even realized that the day would come when he, too, and the thought of him would melt out of her existence, leaving her alone. The children appeared before her like antagonists who had overcome her; who had overpowered and sought to drag into the soul's slavery for the rest of her days. But she knew a way to elude them. She was not thinking of these things when she walked down to the beach.
     The water of the Gulf stretched out before her, gleaming with the million lights of the sun. The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude. All along the white beach, up and down, there was no living thing in sight. A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water.
     Edna had found her old bathing suit still hanging, faded, upon its accustomed peg.
     She put it on, leaving her clothing in the bath-house. But when she was there beside the sea, absolutely alone, she cast the unpleasant, pricking garments form her, and for the first time in her life she stood naked in the open air, at the mercy of the sun, the breeze that beat upon her, and the waves that invited her.
     How strange and awful it seemed to stand naked under the sky! how delicious ! She felt like some new-born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known.
     The foamy wavelets curled up to her white feet, and coiled like serpents about her ankles. She walked out. The water was chill, but she walked on. The water was deep, but she lifted her white body and reached out with a long, sweeping stroke. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.
     She went on and on. She remembered the night she swam far out, and recalled the terror that seized her at the fear of being unable to regain the shore. She did not look back now, but went on and on, thinking of the blue-grass meadow that she had traversed when a little child, believing that it had no beginning and no end.
     Her arms and legs were growing tired.
     She thought of Leonce and the children. They were a part of her life. But they need not have thought that they could possess her, body and soul. How Mademoiselle Reisz would have laughed, perhaps sneered, if she knew! "And you call yourself an artist! What pretensions, Madame! The artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defies."
     Exhaustion was pressing upon and overpowering her.
     "Good-by--because, I love you." He did not know; he did not understand. He would never understand. Perhaps Doctor Mandelet would have understood if she had seen him--but it was too late; the shore was far behind her, and her strength was gone.
     She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again. Edna heard her father's voice and her sister Margaret's. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore tree. The spurs of the cavalry officer clanged as he walked across the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air.

--Kate Chopin--

I feel my skin drip off of me with every step until there is nothing left but bare bones. My skeleton shivers and trudges on.

Murder of One

I dreamt I saw you walking up a hillside in the snow Casting shadows on the winter sky as you stood there counting crows One for sorrow Two for joy Three for girls and four for boys Five for silver Six for gold and Seven for a secret never to be told There's a bird that nests inside you Sleeping underneath your skin When you open up your wings to speak I wish you'd let me in All your life is such a shame All your love is just a dream Open up your eyes You can see the flames of your wasted life You should be ashamed

Wild Horses

I know I dreamed you a sin and a lie I've got my freedom but I don't have much time A faith has been broken, tears must be cried Let's do some livin', after love has died

-The Rolling Stones-

but I'm not a situation that has a solution. i have no definitions. there's just me. and maybe at the end of years you may still feel like you don't exactly know me. but baby you're just wrong. maybe you can't look into my eyes and read my thoughts as plainly as i read yours. maybe i still do things that completely throw you. maybe when you hold me you still feel my body tense in fight or flight. but you know my sleepy eyes. and you know i love jazz when it rains and when it snows. and you feel my body search for yours before it's really awake. and you know that you've crawled and nestled your way into the innermost of my heart and if i attempted to rip you out you would carry a large portion of the mass in your grasping "little" hands. so why, why is this not enough of me for you?

Sappho

as the sweetapple reddens on a high branch high on the highest branch and the applepickers forgot-- no, not forgot: were unable to reach

The inward fire eats the soft marrow away, And the internal wound bleeds on in silence. Unlucky Dido, burning, in her madness Roamed through all the city, like a doe Hit by an arrow shot from far away By a shepherd hunting in the Cretan woods-- Hit by surprise, nor could the hunter see His flying steel had fixed itself in her; But though she runs for life through copse and glade The fatal shaft clings to her side. The Aeneid

I have looked into your eyes with my eyes. I have put my heart near your heart. everything that is beautiful, John

Then everything that was, was different, and everything that had been brought a new light. She looked down at her fingers, laced in perfect harmony with his, and watched as the blood trickled down, from her perfect cuticles to the tips, and she knew. beyond knowing. that this reality, she could never believe in. and the words he said would never be truth.

"I know this much, is all," Franny said. "If you're a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean you're supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything.The ones you're talking about don't leave a single, solitary thing beautiful. All that maybe the slightly better ones do is sort of get inside your head and leave something there, but just because they do, just because they know how to leave something, it doesn't have to be a poem, for heaven's sake. It may just be some kind of terribly fascinating, syntaxy droppings--excuse the expression. Like Manlius and Esposito and all those poor men."
~Salinger, Franny and Zooey

this beautiful world

(background: on my run sometimes I'll stop at favored park benches to look at the river/city especially at sundown. Tonight an adorable older man, with a bowtie, sat next to me. His opening line: My wife and I used to sit here nearly every night during the summer at about this time. we eventually got to the following; one of those perfect conversations with a perfect stranger that force you to fall in love with this perfect, even when it doesn't appear to be, world.)

Me: How did you know you were in love?
LovelyOlderMan: There was no other way to know Her. But I think I loved her before I ever even knew I did.
M: Did you ever believe you were in love before?
LOM: I thought I was in love with another. Kind, Sweet, very Pretty--the whole nine yards; we were supposed to get married. Then I saw Her cry.
M:
LOM: I never knew my heart could break so much or hurt so badly.
M:
LOM: 55 years and She stops my heart everytime. (chuckle) and she knows it. I'm wrapped around her little finger. (smile) but I get to hold it too, so it's ok.
M: Do you ever think what if you had stayed with the other girl?
LOM: My life might have been a lot simpler (chuckle). But then... She brings...she brought... Beauty to...everything. No. There would have been no life without Her. No...no life at all.

(maybe it's corny... maybe he's a crazy old man who made the entire thing up. or maybe he just belonged to a different time when life was... just lovelier. Either way, he was wonderful and that moment will remain perfect in my mind forever)

just illusions
there was a point in my insanity when i deeply believed you loved me. it was a test i had failed. the thing is i knew you didn't. but i had to believe. for me. it was great. great. it's an awful word. it's an ugly word. appearance wise. great. awful. it grates on your teeth like a first grade teacher who patronizes you with those little colorful stickers you are supposed to treasure and place on the inside cover of your notebook. everyone knows it was only the scented ones that mattered at all. but the non recieved their place and forced love as well. it's a joke. a trip. being a kid. pretending to be a kid when all you wanted to do was give the sticker to the giggly girl next to you and tell her that she clearly needed it more. unless it was something orginal, something creative. not words or facts memorized but i story released from your own heart and appreciated by another's ears. then a sticker was golden. only if from one respected. otherwise the preference would easily be a confused smile. that look like they couldn't tell just what to make of it. or you. that was worth a hundred stickers. a thousand. my entire childhood. you gave me that crooked smile. then you walked away. but there was pain there, with the accustomed thrill. maybe i had wanted you to. you know, read me between the lines. or maybe i just believed i did. it's just an illusion. it doesn't mean anything. just little pieces of adhesive paper, once in awhile they simply smelled better--but it made your world.

I love the word hysteria. It makes me picture a woman laughing--a laugh so powerful it begins in her heart but there can be barely contained or bared, so it erupts forth in insanity.

Female hysteria was a once-common medical diagnosis, made exclusively in women, which is today no longer recognized by modern medical authorities as a medical disorder. Its diagnosis and treatment were routine for many hundreds of years in Western Europe. Hysteria was widely discussed in the medical literature of the nineteenth century. Women considered to be suffering from it exhibited a wide array of symptoms including faintness, nervousness, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in abdomen, muscle spasm, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and "a tendency to cause trouble".[1]

Since ancient times women considered to be suffering from hysteria would sometimes undergo "pelvic massage" — manual stimulation of the genitals by the doctor until the patient experienced "hysterical paroxysm" (orgasm).

(Big thanks to our friends at Wikipedia)

Honesty.

so simple. but we hide it, even from ourselves

what's the point of living in a world where you refuse honesty even within yourself?

the whole world would change

maybe that's what we are so afraid of

We stood there, facing each other. It was raining harder now, and the big, fat drops were running down my face, and his too, as he loomed over me.

"Just say it." His voice was tight and his teeth were clenched and I could see the muscle in his jaw working.

"What?" I lifted my shoulders, cocked my elbows, raised my palms to the weeping sky. "What do you want me to say?" Trying hard for insouciance.

"You're sorry. Just say you're sorry."

"Sloan, it's too late for apologies-"

"Fuck you!" He slammed his fist into the brick wall next to my head. "Fuck apologies. I don't want apologies. I just want to hear it. I want to hear once that you are sorry, like you really mean it. No fucking excuses. No explanations. Just once, that you are as sorry as I am..." He was crying, I think. I was too. I sank back against the wet brick and covered my face with my hands, then slid down the wall, like a body shot through the heart.

"I'm sorry," I sobbed. "You don't know how sorry-"

And then suddenly he was all around me, gathering me up and crushing me against the wet brick, kissing the rain. And I realized I'd never been gathered up before, never been so broken apart or so recovered, and it was shocking, but before I could think about it, we were walking really fast through streets that flowed like a river, to arrive, dripping, at the stolid Peabody. Up the brass elevator, across the densely carpeted hall, to the door where I fumbled for the key (remembering the last time I stood at a door at the Peabody, fumbling for a key), but before I could think about it, the door swung open and Sloan backed me through, across the room, and onto the big, redeeming bed.

It wasn't easy. It wasn't like we made love and it was this enormous flood that washed away all our sins and insufficiencies, although from time to time that was how it felt. Rather, we had to negotiate a way through layers of nakedness and conjunction, stopping and starting, asking questions, filling in gaps and testing the waters. But we did it. Dove, then rose again to reach a plateau where we could rest, breathing deep and easy. Until another accusation surfaced. A doubt insisted on address. And so we would start again, and so we continued, off and on, all night, until morning.

My Year of Meats Ruth L. Ozeki

I miss your smile.
I miss your laugh.
I miss your eyes,
I miss your joy

But most I miss this little entity, it was everything that was you, that would drift around your entire being and when I was near fill in me.
I feel incomplete without it
severed into only half of me
bleeding outwardly
the longing hurts beyond everything
if continued the only me I ever knew would end
So this is goodbye, and for as long as I can keep it
this is goodbye forever
you won't understand
but just please let me go
please, entirely, let go