Traps at every turn

Outside in the snow, the For Sale sign looks fresh as the day it was hammered home. No one knows what the house is worth now. No one will buy it, so that's how much it is worth. Nothing. Despite which, we will owe tax based on that 'two and a bit'. For a house that is currently worth whistling for. I can't figure out the fake money from the real. I walk around this magic box, this trap, with its frost-flowered windows, weeping condensation as the morning proceeds. I gather my briefcase from the console table in the hall. I open the same door I have opened since I could reach the latch. And I head out to earn some money.

Anne Enright, The Forgotten Waltz (London: Jonathan Cape, 2011), 148.

The extra mile

There is no other place from which empathy
can begin but in negative space.
And perhaps that's what it means
to go the extra mile,
to get the right amount of distance

between how you started out
and where you arrive. Driving back
from the airport, she started thinking aloud,
wondering if the reason Blake gave Behemoth
such a remarkably human ear was to say:

only we know creation is a brilliant atrocity.
Yes, Job replies, glancing in the wing mirror,
the point being, when we remember this, something'll give -
time, most likely - a torn veil which uneclipses
the heavenly bodies, cures the navel gaze.


From 'The Extra Mile'.

Rachael Boast, Sidereal (London: Picador, 2011), 31.

Ed Sheeran - The A Team (Official Music Video) OUT NOW!

"...there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save."
— Mary Oliver

My love, leave yourself behind Beat inside me, leave you blind My love, you have found peace You were searching for release You gave it all, into the call You took a chance and You took a fall for us You came thoughtfully, loved me faithfully You taught me honor, you did it for me Tonight you will sleep for good You will wait for me my love Now I am strong You gave me all anekatips You gave all you had and now I am home My love, leave yourself behind Beat inside me, leave you blind My love, look what you can do I am mending, I'll be with you

"If you’ve come here to help me, you’re wasting your time. But if you’ve come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."
— Elder Lilla Watson

Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.

"Play the game for more than you can afford to lose…only then will you learn the game."
Winston Churchill

"Being born a woman is an awful tragedy… Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars - to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording - all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night…"
Sylvia Plath

B.

Take My hand. We can hide in the corner.

Like it or not, we either add to the darkness of indifference and out-and-out evil which surrounds us or we light a candle to see by

The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not understood it.
John 1v5

"I have always tried to let the truth irradiate the history", (Philip Pullman).

Good to see you R...

As I seek to give R's story a shape that our society might find acceptable, I myself am altered, bruised, crushed.

"An endless stream of people dragged the story behind them but were yet drawn forward by it", (Ismail Kadare).

R, as I bring your story with me, may I only ever be drawn forward.

x

Picking up broken words
Snipping the tips off
Grinding down the long ones
That wind around your eardrums
Dangerous plastic words
For crowd dispersal
And dumb dumb words
That could blow your head off
This is a story 'bout the three of us
Down by the water and the tide is rising
This world is burning and I'm terrified
I need a little more time with you, oh
I just need a little more time with you
One fine day you'll sing
Your inevitable love song
Inevitable lie song
Inevitable cry son

"It wasn't necessary to win for the story to be great, it was only necessary to sacrifice everything."

"...sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself..."
— Donald Miller

chasing Hallelujah...

I was giving up. I would have given up – ... if a voice hadn't made itself heard in my heart. The voice said, "I will not die. I refuse it. I will make it through this nightmare. I will beat the odds, as great as they are. I have survived so far, miraculously. Now I will turn miracle into routine. The amazing will be seen every day. I will put in all the hard work necessary. Yes, so long as God is with me, I will not die. Amen."
(2.53.5, Life of Pi, Yann Martel)

I had to stop hoping so much that a ship ... would rescue me. I should not count on outside help. Survival had to start with me. In my experience, a castaway's worst mistake is to hope too much and do too little. Survival starts by paying attention to what is close at hand and immediate. To look out with idle hope is tantamount to dreaming one's life away.
(2.58.9, Life of Pi, Yann Martel)

"That people get too reckless
That even with the simplest of crimes
They leave, blood behind"