10/31/10

Maybe baby

"...maybe if I could have lived more peaceably… 
maybe if I’d met the right person years ago, maybe...
Maybe, baby, the promised land was there and I missed it

 
Look at it glittering in the light.
But the truth is I am inventing the maybe. 
I can only make the choices I make, 
so why torture myself with what I might have done, 
when all I can handle is what I have done.

The Maybe Islands are hostile to human life.

Photo by Marta Cernicka

Much of what I have done is left unfinished- 
not because I left it too soon, not because I was lazy,
but because it had a life of it's own that continues without me. 
Children, I suppose, are always unfinished business: 
they begin as part of your own body, and continue as seperate 
as another continent. 


The work you do,
if it has any meaning, passes to other hands.
The day slides into a night's dreaming.True stories
are the ones that lie open at the border,
allowing a crossing, a further frontier.

The final frontier is just science fiction - don't believe it.
Like the universe, there is no end."
~ Jeanette Winterson



 catmaSutra cat art: Wishing


;)

10/29/10

It won't happen again...




I keep thinking of you, you're on my mind.
For the fifty seven thousandth time this morning.
I keep seeing you in sheets of white.
I can't change anything, I can't change aaannyything.
Aaaaaaaannnnnyyyyything.

I was out on my own, for the first time.
It was here all along, that I cracked.
Now it won't happen again till the next time.
Yeah I think I can do this all by myself.

I've been thinking of you a lot this morning.
For the fifty seven thousandth time today.
I will see you in pictures dressed as I am.
I can change anything, I can change aaannyything.
Ooohhh aaaaaaannnnnyyything.

I would like to tell you, where I'm going to.
I've seen it before, I've seen it before.
I would like to tell you, this is not about you.
I've seen it before, I've seen it before.

I keep thinking of you, you're on my mind.

10/21/10

Divine Chaos

"Life is divine chaos. Embrace it. 
Forgive yourself. Breathe. 
And enjoy the ride"
~ Solbeam



"For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; 
for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness;
and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone."
~ Audrey Hepburn


;)

10/16/10

Lightness


"The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?"
~ Milan Kundera (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)
 
 


"We all need someone to look at us. we can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. the first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public. the second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. they are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. they are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. this happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. people in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need. then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. one day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. and finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. they are the dreamers."
~ Milan Kundera


;)

10/13/10

Love Song


"In different degrees, in every part of the town, men and women had been yearning for a reunion, not of the same kind for all, but for all alike ruled out. Most of them had longed intensely for an absent one, for the warmth of a body, for love, or merely a life that habit had endeared. Some, often without knowing it, suffered from being deprived of the company of friends and from their inability to get in touch with them through the usual channels of friendship—letters, trains, and boats. Others, fewer these... had desired a reunion with something they couldn’t have defined, but which seemed to them the only desirable thing on earth. For want of a better name, they sometimes called it peace."

~Albert Camus

"The Marquis De Sade said that the most important experiences a man can have are those that take him to the very limit; that is the only way we learn, because it requires all our courage. When a boss humiliates an employee, or a man humiliates his wife, he is merely being cowardly or taking his revenge on life, they are people who have never dared to look into the depths of their soul, never attempted to know the origin of that desire to unleash the wild beast, or to understand that sex, pain and love are all extreme experiences. Only those who know those frontiers know life; everything else is just passing the time, repeating the same tasks, growing old and dying without ever having discovered what we are doing here."

~Paulo Coelho
;) 

10/6/10

Foolish things...

A short story about nothing
from a long time ago ...

FOOLISH THINGS

Take my hand...
to a rain of dreams
to get away, I can
get away, I can
be home again.
touch? Love
you? Oui.

  

"It's raining again," says Cat. She pulls the covers over herself. Traces of an impending storm  float in through the open window. A scent of rain triggers something inside me. "Want some coffee?" I ask. My mind withdraws and expands. The smell of rain tickles my nose. I breathe it in - this air, this life, blown in from somewhere else. I look at Cat, as if I am apart from her reality. Cat is different from me. She doesn't complicate her life with superfluous dreams. She doesn't let foolish things depress her, and she hates coffee. How can anyone hate coffee?  And there is something about her that irks me - she feels more comfortable sleeping on my bed than I ever did or will. She says my bed gives her dreams to dream about. A flash flashes. A recurring dream: there is liquid in the air. Lightning cuts the air in a million places. The air breaks to the sound of thunders. The liquid fall, and I see myself in another life. I am kneeling in a desert. I raise my arms and ask for my salvation.



   The scent of rain pierces and converges at a point between my eyes. I cough desperately to rid of the tainted air, the whiff of another life. Cat asks if I'm okay. I say yes. The room door creaks as I leave to make myself a cup of coffee, and a cup of tea for Cat, and a cup of milk for Angel, a silver-coloured cat from Tibet. They make such a lovely pair together, you know, Cat and Angel. They seem to have perfected the art of  sleeping (When one sleeps, time loses its grip. The concepts of past and future vanishes. Peace only happens when one is not eager to move forward or fall behind. Time becomes a friend). "Mmmmm, you're back..." Cat purrs as I stroke several strands of her hair over her ear. "Do you know what I like best?" I ask. Angel decides to drink her milk. A cold wind escapes into our room. "Rain," she replies at the very moment the drizzle erupts into a full-fledged storm, sending mystical vibes through my body. "You don't have to close the window..." Cat says as she gets up behind me and peers outside. Rain... it feels so good to be exposed to its touch, so free, so wild, and yet, it inevitably makes me sad.  Rain makes me remember clearly. It makes me remember the words that used to reverberate inside my head. Now those words and even those years seem so meaningless, so distant.



    "I do not have enough space."
    My voice is soft, almost lost in the rain and the music from the radio. Another recurring dream: Land becomes sea. Rain falls but I'm not wet. I wear a robe so white and soft that I feel like I'm wrapped in a cloud. I walk the waves and they walk me.  The sky is inside me. The sea is inside me, but when I get to shore, my legs collapse beneath my abominable weight. I kneel in the desert, alone and abandoned. And then I'm here, staring out into the window, unable to make sense of my life. The window seems to open a second time. I breathe in its reality.  I see myself working day and night, trying to make more money. I see rats in shirts and ties, stealing my dreams from under my nose. Anguish rises and squeezes my heart in his palm. Silently, from amongst the images, a cat jumps out and sits on the table beside me. It gazes at me with its sapphire eyes. I stroke its silver fur. Then the cat begins to speak inside my head. It says, as if in response to my anguish:



    "Space is a matter of perception."
     "I do not have enough freedom"
     "Freedom is a fool's concept"
     "I do not have enough time."
     "Because you make time your enemy"
     "I need money to buy freedom."
     "Freedom has no price. You are buying the wrong thing."


    The cat, having said her piece, jumps away to pursue her dreams of sleep on my dirty laundry. How easy it was when I was studying in the States. How easy it was to believe, to criticize, to dream, to hope, to be inspired, to change the world, to make a difference, to feel the power in one's hand. "Foolish things..." I let the words slip easily out of my lips. "Nobody bothers, nobody gives a damn - so why should I care?" Cat lowers the volume on the radio. The music fades and merges with that of the pouring rain. Sometimes, I haven't the faintest idea what's going on in my head any more.


    "Hey, you're okay?" Cat's voice invades my thoughts, and her face, my vision. I watch her quizzically, tilting my head as a dog would when spoken to in a tone that it does not recognize. "Don't do this to me..." she says, "I hate it when you are in this mood. You get so damned depressing and you will drag me down with you." I laugh and snap out of the cloud that I was in, and crack a stupid joke. The cat looks at us with a knowing look on her face as she circles my pile of laundry, exercises her claws, and settles in a circular sleeping position. I vow to try the ritual the next time I can't get to sleep…

***
Sometimes I do go walking in the clouds 
but it's just cold and wet and empty. 
But when you look out of a plane it's a special world...
and I like it."
~ Neil Gaiman
***

"You will receive everything you need
when you stop asking for what you do not need"
~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

***

10/3/10

One Short Trip

Life: One short trip


Do not let your fire go out,
spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swaps of the not-quite,
the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero
in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life
you deserved and have never been able to reach.
The world you desire can be won.
It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours."
~ Ayn Rand


****