When I quote others to better express myself.
As sunlight is attributed to the moon, so is the Beloved’s form ascribed to the lover; but in truth
each image painted
on the canvas of existence
is the form
of the artist himself.
Eternal Ocean
spews forth new waves.
“Waves” we call them;
but there is only the Sea.
Fakhruddin Iraqi
I have a rather embarrassingly high stack of unread books. Mj’s got it right when he says I’ll probably ask for a bunch of books for my mehr. They are at once my weakness and strength. So thumbing through one volume that’s served its time on my side table, I’ve come to love reading all over again-not that we ever revoked each other, reading and I, but this adulthood thing has led me to have a mind too full, days too busy and inclinations that are recalcitrant of previous affirmations. The reward has been learning all over again what makes reading so special, the vindication of thoughts, one-time ideas and “I would never say that alouds,” leadng one to feel less deserted of common-sense and infinitely more human.
Mirror
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see, I swallow immediately.
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful –
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me.
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
Rebel- The surly,ungroomed, tobacco chewing biker on a road to nowhere with scruffy boots and matted clothes that are a narrative of otherness in a world of people rushing blindly towards a plateau of sameness. But there’s another rebel, softer, a more subtle version, the person who forces their way past boundaries, who challenges socialisation practices, who battles the fiercest opposition from those who mean well but essentially, mean otherwise, these rebels must duck, dive, swim with fish, and find more empathy from hibernating bears and yet trudge through, searching for an elusivity but forging an individuality all the same. And with a heart full of thankful sighs to a higher being for the opportunity to realise that, the rebel’s on the right path.
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforth in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore–
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning