Ever have the feeling...

you miss someone and you're not sure who it is?

It could be John Lennon. Or Leonard Cohen. My childhood. My childhood dog. Amelia Earhart or Annie Oakley. Princess Diana. The illusion of symmetry. A feeling I had late at night on a Thursday with a past boyfriend who told me that I looked like an angel in that light. It could be my sister's grilled cheese sandwiches. Or my high school neighbor who drove his car off a cliff. Or my mother, long ago and far away. It's a feeling like an exquisite emptiness--what drives me to write. It's the feeling that comes once the umbilical cord gets snipped. The feeling after Savannah the cocker spaniel knocks me into the pool, after the roller coaster ends, after the ex-lover drives away, after the drug wears off--:

I wanted safety, sanity, in the midst of the madness...but now that it's over, I want my fix again.

Image taken from The Land of the Silver Rain

A cage of my body

I am a bird of the heavenly garden,
I belong not to the earthly sphere.
They have made for two or three days
A cage of my body.
--Rumi

The Child of Solitude Grows Up

...This is the temple

of my adult aloneness

and I belong

to that aloneness

as I belong to my life.

~ David Whyte

Saintly ejaculations

"My me is God!"

—Catherine of Genoa

"The hero is always blind"

Charles Seliger, Don Quixote, 1944

In the dream I was in a house cluttered with lamps and tables, trinkets stacked in dim rooms and passageways. My bed seemed to be in a living room reminiscent of my childhood home. I can feel the direction it was facing in, the sense of being out in the open, unprotected despite the vague sense of people present in other rooms in the house; and the lack of privacy. I was trying to sleep, but some invisible beings were tormenting me. Poltergeist. What lingers are images of being pelted with rocks, hiding under the covers and the weight of something or someone sitting down next to me, trapping me in. I kept trying to yell, scream, call out, but my mouth emitted only the lamest of grunts. And then I was sitting on a man's lap (an energy similar to Gerard Depardieu's character in Maitresse); he was faintly paternal but also shadowy--I wasn't certain I could trust him, and on some level I knew that he could not protect me. I was telling him about the ghostly assaults, which he didn't seem to take very seriously. Speaking was hugely laborious--my breath wouldn't come, each word was an effort, and it felt terribly important to get him to understand--to convey the magnitude of my anger or shock or terror. I was under siege, plagued by the threat of a battle I had no chance of winning.

Frame plates

Because food is a work of art.

From d-vision (found via Funfurde)

SONG

under the burden

of solitude.

under the burden

of dissatisfaction.

the weight,

the weight we carry

is love.

who can deny?

in dreams

it touches

the body

constructs

a miracle

in imagination

anguishes

till born

in human––

looks out of the heart

burning with purity––

for the burden of life

is love,

but we carry the weight

wearily,

and so must rest

in the arms of love

at last,

must rest in the arms

of love.

no rest

without love,

no sleep

without dreams

of love––

be mad or chill

obsessed with angels

or machines,

the final wish

is love

–– cannot be bitter,

cannot deny

cannot withhold

if denied:

the weight is too heavy

–– must give

for no return

as thought

is given

in solitude

in all the excellence

of its excess.

the warm bodies

shine together

in the darkness,

the hand moves

to the center

of the flesh,

the skin trembles

in happiness

and the soul comes

joyful to the eye ––

yes, yes

that's what

i wanted,

i always wanted,

i always wanted,

to return

to the body

where i was born.

allen ginsberg

Life, Death and Time

  So fades the lovely, blooming flow’r,

      Frail, smiling solace of an hour,

      So soon our transient comforts fly,

      And pleasure only blooms to die.

- "Distress"

Memento mori

Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation by Hans Memling

Memento mori is a Latin phrase translated as "Remember you must die" (and the origin of the English word memento, which appeared as memento mori, "remembrance of death"). It names a genre of artistic creations that vary widely from one another, but which all share the same purpose: to remind people of their own mortality and the punishment they will receive if they transgress the rules of their religion. (From Wikipedia)

Dreamquote: A visit to the Underworld

"I flew down here to drink deeply of you, and now I have taken my last memento."