"Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know."
— Pema Chodron
"They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried."
— Tim O’Brien (The Things They Carried)
"
There’s a saying, “go with the flow”
and I say, “don’t drink the water!”
The river is polluted,
the river of life in which we all
find ourselves in.
Finding beauty in this broken world
defiled by greed and arrogance,
a solitary flower clinging
to a wire fence-
growing.
In the background a gasoline station
and old city buildings stacked side by side.
San Francisco.
It’s not a flower
that lives in the country side
bathing in the sun,
birds singing,
and butterflies,
my dear.
The little child
with wide innocent eyes
looks in wonder
at everything around her.
Soon she will have grown enough
to wonder why
flowers bloom and die.
After I left her
I found myself watching
falling leaves
frolicking and playing in the streets
with a furtive winter breeze.
My father passed away,
a few years later
my mother followed.
Both died as if they had
no son,
and I continue to live
as if I had no mother or father.
Only in memory now-
two strangers,
and I a stranger too.
And where is love?
Does the flower seek the sun
not knowing why?
— poem found while cleaning
"Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine."
— Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
Tanganyika laughter epidemic of 1962
"Even after all this time the sun never says to the earth, ‘You owe me’. Look what happens with a love like that. It lights up the whole sky."
— Hafiz
"People empty me. I have to get away to refill."
— Charles Bukowski
(Source: clairvoyant---disease, via gussieup)
Sometimes I wish I could sleep the day away like my cat and go on adventures all night. “Fuck everything I’m doing at home, I’m going out late at night to have an affair with the streets…”
