memoryslandscape:

And why does the loom of our memories,
[…], seem to spin and
whirl independently of our wishes?

I’ve forgotten most of my life, though
perhaps the fact that I can remember
anything at all should be pondered with

gratitude. Still, many of the moments
I hoped to savor are gone, while plenty
of humdrum scenes in nameless days

are tucked safely away, clear, nearly
violent in their detail. As I hike
among that solitude of soil and branch

and leaf, those grand trees lifting up the
afternoon, I sense the buoyant emptiness
of all I’ve still yet to experience, of all

the blessings I’ve yet to be given. How
could I know even later that year, I’d
crane my neck for an hour as the sun

sinks somewhere in a Bolivian desert,
trying to memorize an unbroken field
of clouds burning blood red across

the entire sky; or that I’d gaze for the
first time at the bare curve of a lover’s
back, the soft arc a fiddle’s body, the

skin taut and vibrating like strings
ready to be drawn across; or that I’d
drive with her down a road out West,

snaking through an aspen-gold valley
while on either side of us mountains–
that existed eons before these Alerce

trees—open upward to the sky, that
we would feel old and young, lost yet
found as the miles slid beneath us, as

we forged ahead, hearts also opening to
stem and stone, and sky. What words
would we exchange like precious gems?

Ben Groner, from “Alerce Trees,” Gravel (December 2018)

metaphorformetaphor:

“[…] when I had so much to say, I don’t know how to express myself.”

—

Clarice Lispector, from “Excerpt,” The Complete Stories ( New Directions, 2015)

violentwavesofemotion:

Wings of Desire (1987)
dir. by Wim Wenders

(Source: vilus)

wirginia-voolf:

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet.

soracities:

i feel like every year just seems to get progressively more surreal to me so at this point i really am just waiting to disconnect from the flow of time entirely

(Source: baby-vintage)

soracities:

J.P. Berame, from This Year

soracities:

“I want to love a person freely, including all her secrets. I want to love in this person someone she doesn’t know. I want to love outside (the) law: without judgment. Without imposed preference. Does that mean outside morality? No. Only this: without fault. Without false, without true. I want to meet her between the words, beneath language.”

— Hélène Cixous, Tancredi Continues, from Coming to Writing and Other Essays
(via oblivion-soave)

(Source: intraducibile)

thesaddestchorusgirlintheworld:

The thing that always gets me is how we still frame the idea of trying to be a good caring person as a huge laborious inconvenient inherent sacrifice instead of deeply comforting and rewarding and beneficial to one’s own self and a fundamental human need. Like joke really is on us, the loneliness of modern life is not mysterious. 

violentwavesofemotion:

“The life-changing force that would seize me in a hundred places at once—it came from you, you who were real beyond words.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, from a letter to Lou Salomé witten c. August 1903