Saturday 26 July 2008
Essence of all desire
I have come from town this week tired, weary and worn.
I have come from town this week, my soul, faith and hope, bruised, beaten and sore.
And as I type these words I wonder how our ladies are feeling their way through those same streets tonight.
Nakedness, Anger, Resentment, Bitterness, Greed, Jealousy, Swearing, Shame, Fighting, Fury, Panic, Disgust, Retaliation, Desperation, Lies...big fat ugly lies.
A man kicked off the street because his desire is to be a woman.
A woman kicked off the street because her desire is for cocaine.
Emma and I kicked off the street because our desire is for beauty.
Though absent long,
These forms of beauty have not been to me,
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
As may have had no trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man’s life;
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten’d:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
(Wordsworth)
I have come from town this week, my soul, faith and hope, bruised, beaten and sore.
And as I type these words I wonder how our ladies are feeling their way through those same streets tonight.
Nakedness, Anger, Resentment, Bitterness, Greed, Jealousy, Swearing, Shame, Fighting, Fury, Panic, Disgust, Retaliation, Desperation, Lies...big fat ugly lies.
A man kicked off the street because his desire is to be a woman.
A woman kicked off the street because her desire is for cocaine.
Emma and I kicked off the street because our desire is for beauty.
Though absent long,
These forms of beauty have not been to me,
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,
And passing even into my purer mind
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,
As may have had no trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man’s life;
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten’d:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame,
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
(Wordsworth)
Saturday 12 July 2008
love wounds
"There is no love that does not pierce the hands and feet. Love's exquisite happiness is also love's exquisite pain. I do not seek pain but there is pain. I do not seek suffering but there is suffering. It is better not to flinch, not to try to avoid those things in love's direction. It is not easy, this love, but only the impossible is worth the effort."
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