some things you want will just never be right

It's hard to listen to a hard hard heart
Beating close to mine
Pounding up against the stone and steel
Walls that I won't climb.

Sometimes a hurt is so deep deep deep
You think that you're gonna drown.
Sometimes all I can do is weep weep weep
With all this rain falling down.

Strange how hard it rains now
Rows and rows of big dark clouds
But I'm holding on underneath this shroud
Rain...

It's hard to know when to give up the fight
Some things you want will just never be right.
It's never rained like it has tonight, before...

Now I don't wanna beg you, baby
For something maybe you could never give.
I'm not looking for the rest of your life
I just want another chance to live.

Strange how hard it rains now
Rows and rows of big dark clouds
But I'm holding on underneath this shroud
Rain...

Strange how hard it rains now
Rows and rows of big dark clouds
But I'm still in love on underneath this shroud
Rain...

- Patty Griffin, "Rain"

love the questions like locked rooms

"I beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient to all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

chapters

"Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title."
- Virginia Woolf

stuck

"I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in."
- Virginia Woolf

here's hoping

"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."
- Nietzsche

sounds good anyway

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."
- Emerson

answers

"The magic moment is that in which a 'yes' or a 'no' may change the whole of our existence."
- Paulo Coelho

Miami: You make me sad, Skippy.
- Kicking and Screaming

We are destroyed by expecting more than there is.
- Charles Bukowski

Closer

Larry: Come home with me. It's safe. Let me look after you.
Alice: I don't need looking after.
Larry: Everyone needs looking after.

unfold

I'm too alone in the world, yet not alone enough
to make each hour holy.
I'm too small in the world, yet not small enough
to be simply in your presence, like a thing--
just as it is.

I want to know my own will
and to move with it.
And I want, in the hushed moments
when the nameless draws near,
to be among the wise ones--
or alone.

I want to mirror your immensity.
I want never to be too weak or too old
to bear the heavy, lurching image of you.

I want to unfold.
Let no place in me hold itself closed,
for where I am closed, I am false.
I want to stay clear in your sight.

I would describe myself
like a landscape I've studied
at length, in detail;
like a word I'm coming to understand;
like a pitcher I pour from at mealtime;
like my mother's face;
like a ship that carried me
when the waters raged.

- Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

and yet. and yet.

"There are enough signs. Of the lack of tenderness in the world. And yet. And yet. All you have to do is ask. Anyone here can extol the virtues of an onion. Where to get barbecue minced, pulled, or chopped. The hour of the day they have known the thorn of love."
- C.D. Wright, Deepstep Come Shining

sometimes they seem so real

I dream that he comes to me and tells me he is going on trial. He knows he will be convicted this time. His past crimes will all be revealed and he will be put in prison. He starts to cry and I feel bad. I know he never cries. I want to hug him, comfort him, tell him goodbye. He puts on my sunglasses and walks away. I say nothing.

living, reversing

"Homesickness is just a state of mind for me. I'm always missing someone or someplace or something. I'm always trying to get back to some imaginary somewhere. My life has been one long longing."

"Story of my life: I'm so self-destructive, I turn solutions into problems. Everything I touch, I ruin. I'm Midas in reverse."

- Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

"At this point in my life, I've done so many things wrong
I don't know if I can do right...

Although I've mostly walked in the shadows
I'm still searching for the light...

You see, I've been climbing stairs
but mostly stumbling down.
I've been reaching high,
always losing ground.
You see, I've conquered hills
but I still have mountains to climb.

And right now, I'm doing the best I can
at this point in my life."

- Tracy Chapman, "At This Point"

the missing

"We’re all lonely for something we don’t know we’re lonely for. How else to explain the curious feeling that goes around feeling like missing somebody we’ve never even met?" – David Foster Wallace

you and your face of night... without listening, hear what i say.

I posted this on my other blog, but it needs to be here as well. To borrow Scott's words, who says most things better than I can, this poem brings me to my knees.

As One Listens to the Rain - Octavio Paz

Listen to me as one listens to the rain,
not attentive, not distracted,
light footsteps, thin drizzle,
water that is air, air that is time,
the day is still leaving,
the night has yet to arrive,
figurations of mist
at the turn of the corner,
figurations of time
at the bend in this pause,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
without listening, hear what I say
with eyes open inward, asleep
with all five senses awake,
it's raining, light footsteps, a murmur of syllables,
air and water, words with no weight:
what we are and are,
the days and years, this moment,
weightless time and heavy sorrow,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
wet asphalt is shining,
steam rises and walks away,
night unfolds and looks at me,
you are you and your body of steam,
you and your face of night,
you and your hair, unhurried lightning,
you cross the street and enter my forehead,
footsteps of water across my eyes,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
the asphalt's shining, you cross the street,
it is the mist, wandering in the night,
it is the night, asleep in your bed,
it is the surge of waves in your breath,
your fingers of water dampen my forehead,
your fingers of flame burn my eyes,
your fingers of air open eyelids of time,
a spring of visions and resurrections,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
the years go by, the moments return,
do you hear the footsteps in the next room?
not here, not there: you hear them
in another time that is now,
listen to the footsteps of time,
inventor of places with no weight, nowhere,
listen to the rain running over the terrace,
the night is now more night in the grove,
lightning has nestled among the leaves,
a restless garden adrift-go in,
your shadow covers this page.

[Otis is an elevator.]

James spoke candidly and soberly to Otis, the way women speak to diaries. Often, as he sat and spoke, he took from his pocket the pair of opal earrings that were always on his person. He rubbed these opals between his thumb and forefinger as if they were rabbit's feet or some other talisman of fortune. Whether all this was helping him or not didn't concern James. He simply obeyed the impulse to speak to Otis every night the way some people drink alcohol or seek out chocolate or slice sharp metal across their wrists.
- David Schickler, "Telling it All to Otis," Kissing in Manhattan

it is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid

George Gray

I have studied many times
The marble which was chiseled for me--
A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.
In truth it pictures not my destination
But my life.
For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;
Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;
Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.
Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.
And now I know that we must lift the sail
And catch the winds of destiny
Wherever they drive the boat.
To put meaning in one's life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire--
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

- Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology

later you will be running after it

Nadya, pink-cheeked, happy, her eyes shining with tears in expectation of something extraordinary, circled in the dance, her white dress billowing and showing glimpses of her slim, pretty legs in their flesh-tinted stockings. Varya, thoroughly contented, took Podgorin by the arm and said to him under her breath with significant expression: "Misha, don't run away from your happiness. Take it while it offers itself to you freely, later you will be running after it, but you won't overtake it."
- Anton Chekov, "A Visit to Friends"

remembering

"It was then, after the rain.
The heaviness of it all was
heavier still; not washed
away. But in oceans all around.
And he stood soaking, beneath the
burden - yet pleased
with the weight."
- J.C.

as the rain dot blogspot dot com

I had a brief moment of feeling inspired to write. It left, but I'm hoping it takes a shorter hiatus than it had previously. Should it return, I'll post some stuff here, along with other writings. If not, I'll continue to post things I like from other people.

Until then.

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

e.e.cummings