beauty and terror

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

--Rilke

You get so alone at times it just makes sense.
- Bukowski

maybe this is all places, all people

"Los Angeles is a city dedicated to the telephone. In part, everyone is constantly on the phone because they are continually making, breaking and changing their deals. They're constantly on the phone because here, in the City of Angels, where the elect have ascended, they often find themselves perched on cliff tops, on canyon tops and hilltops, absolutely alone."
Kate Braverman, Lithium for Medea

substitute people

"I'm impossible to forget, but hard to remember."
- Claire, Elizabethtown

still out of order

"The reality of long-term relationships is that they can be beautiful, they can be brutal, and they can be everything in-between."
- Eric Stoltz

"Come to bed. I hate sleeping without you."
- Lorna, Out of Order

"The brain will do anything to avoid dealing with trauma. It represses things. … [W]hen the brain doesn’t want you to revisit the dark place, it distracts you with backaches, neck pain, insomnia. The brain has many weapons in its arsenal. Anything to avoid that place."
Mark, Out of Order

she must be tired

Step out the front door like a ghost into the fog
where no one notices the contrast of white on white.
And in between the moon and you, the angels get a better view
of the crumbling difference between wrong and right.
I walk in the air between the rain through myself and back again
Where? I don’t know.
Maria says she’s dying, through the door I hear her crying
Why? I don’t know.

Round here we always stand up straight
Round here something radiates

Maria came from Nashville with a suitcase in her hand
She said she’d like to meet a boy who looks like Elvis
She walks along the edge of where the ocean meets the land
Just like she’s walking on a wire in the circus
She parks her car outside of my house
Takes her clothes off
Says she’s close to understanding Jesus

She knows she’s more than just a little misunderstood
She has trouble acting normal when she’s nervous

Round here we’re carving out our names
Round here we all look the same
Round here we talk just like lions
But we sacrifice like lambs
Round here she’s slipping through my hands

Sleeping children better run like the wind
Out of the lightning dream
Mama’s little baby better get herself in
Out of the lightning

She says, it’s only in my head
She says, shhh, I know, it’s only in my head

But the girl on the car in the parking lot says,
"Man, you should try to take a shot.
Can’t you see my walls are crumbling?"
Then she looks up at the building and says she’s thinking of jumping
She says she’s tired of life, she must be tired of something
Round here, she’s always on my mind
Round here, hey, man, got lots of time
Round here we’re never sent to bed early
And nobody makes us wait
Round here we stay up very, very, very, very late
I can’t see nothing, nothing round here
Catch me if I’m falling

- Counting Crows, "Round Here"

ask the dust

small conversation in the afternoon with John Fante

he said, "I was working in Hollywood when Faulkner was
working in Hollywood and he was
the worst: he was too drunk to stand up at the
end of the afternoon and so I had to help him
into a taxi
day after day after day.

"but when he left Hollywood, I stayed on, and while I
didn't drink like that maybe I should have, I might have
had the guts then to follow him and get the hell out of
there."

I told him, "you write as well as
Faulkner."

"you mean that?" he asked from the hospital
bed, smiling.

- Charles Bukowski

every new beginning

"In the end, it is important to remember that we cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are."
- Max DePree

handle with care

"Words and eggs must be handled with care. Once broken, they are impossible things to repair."
- Anne Sexton

the right true words

Words lead to deeds... They prepare the soul, make it ready, move it to tenderness.
- Saint Teresa

"[T]ry then, as you work out your individual destinies, to remember that words, the right true words, can have the power of deeds. Remember, too, that little-used word that has just about dropped out of public and private usage: tenderness. It can't hurt. And that other word: soul--call it spirit if you want. If it makes it any easier to claim the territory. Don't forget either. Pay attention to the spirit of your words, your deeds. That's preparation enough. No more words."
- Raymond Carver, "Meditation on a Line from Saint Teresa"

Still on a Rilke kick

Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
- Rainer Maria Rilke

"To be nobody but yourself -- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
-- e.e. cummings

divine disclosure

"God, thou who conceal Thyself in the clouds, disclose my soul, show me my path."
- Marc Chagall, 1908

at this point, it's countless

Robert: How many days have you lost?
Catherine: 33.
Robert (banging the table): Be precise!
Catherine: ...I slept until noon today.
Robert: Then let's call it 33 1/4.
- Proof