Stormy days

(via) vi.sualize

I loved the weather today. Gray skies, cool wind and open windows.
Rustling leaves, clouds and cold fingertips.
Today brought the butterflies back.

Unbearable

"In the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable."
-- quote from The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Maybe that was me.
A shifting drifter who's not meant to fit in anywhere. I lack the necessities needed to belong to a community, I'm too in my head, too aloof, too inside my own individual self trying to sort my insides out.
I won't force it.
I will not bend my malleable self into a perfect shape to fill the vacant spaces. I'm not that person anymore, I know better.
Instead I will travel endlessly, take in all that I can. Breathe in life, breathe out meaning.
Life is not an island.
No, it is not. That I know.
But some lives are islands. Stranded in the middle of an ocean with no escape.
And the commonalities that connect us, the bridges that span waters that seem to stretch to infinity-- music, the arts, literature, poetry, all of the aesthetics of the world are my blood supply, their blood supply, the fluid in our veins keeping us alive.
We'd fly forever but we can't because we're merely kites, complete with strings anchoring us to our islands, and we can never fly unless the wind's just right.

P.S. Sorry I haven't been writing. I've been feeling lousy. My brain is too cluttered and I often feel as though I have nothing worthwhile to say so I just sit and write down quotes on scrap pieces of paper and paint the future inside my head.

Today

I went on a shopping spree and ended up buying 5 books.
It was a good day.

The Awakening by Kate Chopin
A Room With a View by E.M. Forster
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (I read this already but I wanted my own copy)
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
White Oleander by Janet Fitch (I read this as well but again I wanted my own copy.)

And on Friday, I bought The Grand Surprise: The Journals of Leo Lerman. I'm kind of smitten with it, hence the long passage from my previous post.

I now have an immense love for used book stores.

What's wrong

"I am starting this in an effort to return into myself. It is as though a glass ball has dropped between me and myself. Extrinsically, it looks the same as it has before--the picture seems unchanged--but this is untrue. I am in danger of becoming one of those amputated ones--with all my days and nights given up in the pursuit of wages--not creation. I mean no writing that illuminates--and no true writing at all--not even book reviews. Into those I can work something seedlike. For [Harper's] Bazaar, I can give, thus far, only sterility. The surface coruscates, but it is sterile. How to live? I am so luxury-loving. Anaïs [Nin] said today that she could only write a little book behind the door: She gave later; I give here and now. But this is no consolation. She said that she couldn't see how I would have anything left for a book because I was so flamboyant and prodigal. I said that is what's wrong."
--excerpt from The Grand Surprise: The Journals of Leo Lerman

Honesty: Take 7

I want to write a book someday.
Maybe I will.
But...

(via) mmmustache

It's Monday

it’s a new day by *nerdynotdirty

Distinct

"That was one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was-- I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that's why it happened right there and then, that strange red afternoon."
--excerpt from On the Road by Jack Kerouac

It was

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
And it really was.
The best of self-discovery. A list of everything I used to be. Scratch them out. Bury them under a mess of lines. Make room for a self somewhere in between, not who I was, not who I could become.
But there's no time to think about what's coming, no time to worry about anything.
Life wasn't a blend of sleep, thought, and music anymore.
It was day and night, socks, shoes, breakfast, lunch, dinner, bells 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, clock alarms, minutes, seconds, hours, cement walls dividing time.


There used to be floods of sunshine. Then the rain poured for days, washed our footprints away.
Now the wind just blows.
These crumpled-up secrets poised to take flight.
Whisper, whisper.
What's that sound?
They say it's just the leaves changing, falling to the earth.
It's just the trees becoming bare, preparing for the long winter, preparing for the new.

A message

dear friend, i think i can understand your loneliness. sometimes i’m so afraid to cry. because i think i’m scared that when i’m done crying no one will be there to hold me tight. sometimes i also feel so desperate that i want to take anything that will cover up this emptiness in my heart, but we must be careful. i hope you’ll be careful. please don’t do anything that will harm you. i am so grateful that you took the time to write this, and i am so grateful that it was me who you decided to write to. i am not sure if my words can help you, but i wish with all my heart that it will give you a bit of peace, at least. just know this, although i’m sure that i cannot completely and fully understand you (no one can), i know a part of what it feels to go through that. and though it’s ridiculously hard to believe, i don’t think we’re as lonely as we think we are. there is still love in the air. i promise you that. hold on tight. just know that tonight i will be thinking about you. know that i will keep you in my heart. because sometimes it feels good to know that even though sometimes there is no one to hold your hand, there is someone who is thinking about you and hoping the best for you and sending you love. stay strong <3
--via tree castles

Even the Moon is lonely

This could be an excerpt from my future biography.
It's not.
But it could be.

"She loved the arts, music, paint, nature. Hans Christian Anderson, Van Gogh, Tchaikovsky. They were her favourites. She loved Tchaikovsky because he made his sadness into warmth, Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Symphony No.6. She loved Vincent because she felt his loneliness in his paintings. But she couldn't look at his sunflowers for too long, the yellows stung her eyes. Feeling too much Feeling is too much sometimes. She told me how she thought it was weird you know, that all these people who created such beautiful things were so sad. How sometimes the sadness was so strong that they ended their own lives. Their last work of art. She said she thought that most geniuses were lonely. I said I thought everyone was lonely. That even the Moon is lonely, and that's why it pulls on the tides."
--(via) Tiger Lily

The good won't come out

You say I choose sadness
That it never once has chosen me
Maybe you're right
--Lyrics from the song The Good That Won't Come Out by Rilo Kiley
Click to listen below

Always

(via) vi.sualize

It's a new month.