I want to remind you that you CAN walk away. More so, you HAVE to. From people that makes you feel small and sad. From religions that locks you up with their too many rules. From workplace that makes you cry when you wake up. From family that never supported you.

I know how you feel, and i know that it is hard to go away, but i promise that you will find your path, and never be alone.

Sure, a lot of people hate geminis. But can you spell gemini without ‘gem’? I don’t think so..

if not, winter by sappho // ampio orizzonte by ettore tito // lesbos by sylvia plath

wuthering heights by emily brontë.

i made you my temple, my mural, my sky

now i’m begging for footnotes

In the story of your life

tolerate it, taylor swift.

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Its amazing how I constantly seek out book recommendations when there’s a whole pile waiting to be read.

What if I left little notes in books at bookstores saying “If you are reading this you have amazing taste in books.”

I don’t belong here

But my beloved, neither do you.

Goodbye, my almost lover.

Goodbye, my hopeless dream.

Your hands on my back,

Slow tenderness to soothe me.

How did you learn all this?

I keep remembering- I keep remembering.

My heart has no pity on me.

If you must die, I’ll envy the earth

That wraps around your body.

You have known that I love you for so long.

Why do you torture me?

Shameless and callous I love you.

Out of indifference I love you.

But the gods wanted you,

The gods wanted you back.

Speak of her over my grave

And watch how she brings me to life.

On the edge of madness

Why are you full of rage?

Because you are full of grief.

Anne Sexton said, “As for me, I am watercolor. I wash off.” and Emily Dickinson said, “I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.” and Chuck Palahniuk said, “If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character… Would you slow down? Or speed up?” and Vita Sackville-West said, “Homesick we are, and always, for another And different world.” and Clarice Lispector said, “For one has the right to shout. So, I am shouting.” and Chelsea Hodson said, “I might be better as an idea, you said, and it was hard not to agree- everyone is better as a theory.” and Charles Bukowski said, “We have come so far and gone nowhere. We have lived so long and hardly at all.” and Jose Saramago said, “And here I am, trapped between today and the future and with no hope in either of them.” and Virginia Woolf said, “Do you still believe in life by the way?” and I am thinking about how badly I want to feel like I take up space.

Thinking about the Achilles Come Down lyrics, “You crave the applause yet hate the attention then miss it, your act is a ruse.” And how that feels like when Donald Miller said, “Who trusts people to love who they really are? Who is willing to take the risk? Nobody steps onto a stage and gets a standing ovation for being human. You have to dance or something.” But he also said, “I act less than before and get less applause but feel slightly more loved.” And I don’t know what to do with that.

Claude Monet said, “Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.” and Vincent Van Gogh said, “The way to know life is to love many things.” and “If I am worth something later, I am worth something now.” and Kurt Vonnegut said, “If this isn’t nice, I don't know what is.” and Fyodor Dostoevsky said, “Compassion was the most important, perhaps the sole law of human existence.” and James Wright said, “God, sometimes I am so happy I don't know what to do with me.” and I am really working on this happiness. 

“We, Freida and I, both send our love, for the New Year, the Year 1 of the new world. The Old year had to die.” -D.H. Lawrence

“And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been.” -Rainer Maria Rilke

I have been thinking about when Charles Bukowski said, “Find what you love and let it kill you.” and when R.Y.S. Perez said, “People should love in the same way that they should write; insistently, fervently, forever.” and when they said, “I will show you all the ways in which you are easy to love.” and when Yves Olade said, “I wanted to talk about love. You wanted to become it.” and when Pablo Neruda said, “I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.” and when Clive Barker said, “Wherever I go, I will speak of you with love.” and when Anne Sexton said, “I don’t care, I love you anyhow. It is too late to turn you out of my heart. Part of you lives here.” and when Christopher Citro said, “I love you. I want us both to eat well.”

I’ve been thinking about how Elle Emerson said, “No one is watching. So why does it have to be beautiful? You in pain are no closer to god than you in the drive thru or you, checking your email, or you, holding your own hand.” and how James Wright said, “God, sometimes I think I’m so happy I don’t know what to do with myself.” and how Margaret Atwood said, “If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next- if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions- you’d be doomed. You’d be ruined as God.” and how Fyodor Dostoyevsky said, “To love someone means to see them as God intended them.” and how Andres Cerpa said, “I couldn’t draw my own face if God asked.”

Ashe Vernon said, “You are a language I am no longer fluent in but still remember how to read.” and Anne Sexton said, “I like you; your eyes are full of language.” and Salma Deera said, “My love translated sounds like a dead language.” and Czesław Miłosz said, “Language is the only homeland.” and Alice Notely said, “I can’t translate myself into language anymore.” and Hishaam Siddiqi said “One day I woke up and we no longer spoke the same language. I haven’t heard from you since.” and Jane Austen said, “and sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in.” and Henry James said, “She is written in a foreign tongue.” and I am in awe of language. 

Sol LeWitt to Eva Hesse

If you’ve never read Sol LeWitt’s advice letter to Eva Hesse please go read it in full here: https://guildess.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/sol-lewitt-letter-to-eva-hesse/ (Or go watch Benedict Cumberbatch read it on Letters Live on YT) because it is just wonderful. 

“You seem the same as always, and being you, hate every minute of it. Don’t! Learn to say “Fuck You” to the world every once in a while. You have every right to.”

“You belong in the most secret part of you.”

“I have much confidence in you and even though you are tormenting yourself, the work you do is very good. Try to do some BAD work – the worst you can think of and see what happens but mainly relax and let everything go to hell – you are not responsible for the world – you are only responsible for your work – so DO IT. And don’t think that your work has to conform to any preconceived form, idea or flavor. It can be anything you want it to be. But if life would be easier for you if you stopped working – then stop. Don’t punish yourself. However, I think that it is so deeply engrained in you that it would be easier to DO!”

“You also must believe in your ability. I think you do. So try the most outrageous things you can – shock yourself. You have at your power the ability to do anything.”

When they said, “You think attention is love and that’s why you suffer so deeply.” and when Mary Lambert said, “I only know how to exist when I am wanted.” and when Chuck Palahniuk said, “And I hate how I don’t feel real unless people are watching.” and when he said “What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody.” and when Alice Hoffman said, “She liked to disappear, even when she was in the same room as other people.” and when Vita Sackville-West said, “She loves in a way that will make her suffer horribly.” and when Tahereh Mafi said, “I want you to make a list of all your favorite things, and I want to be on it.” and when Charles Bukowski said, “With me, you’re number one and there isn’t even a number two.” and when- 

I will be welcoming the new year with Henry James’ letter to Grace Norton. “I don’t know why we live- the gift of life comes to us from I don’t know what source or for what purpose; but I believe we can go on living for the reason that (always of course up to a certain point) Life is the most valuable thing we know anything about and it is therefore presumptively a great mistake to surrender it while there is anything left in the cup.” I hope to enter into 2022 remembering that darkness will come, “but it is only a darkness. It is not an end, or the end.”  and recalling the words of wisdom he wrote to her “Don’t melt too much into the universe but be as solid and dense and fixed as you can.” “You will do all sorts of things yet, and I will help you. The only thing is to not melt in the meanwhile.” 

Dear my future self, 

“You are marked out for success, and you must not fail. You have my tenderest affection and all my confidence.”

I have always loved words. I mean that in the way my mom says it to her friends after I write a good essay or give some type of compelling presentation. I mean it as a girl who got into theatre in middle school because storytelling through monologues and song lyrics is one of the most beautiful things I can think of. I mean it in the self-deprecating way I will tell people that “I just like the sound of my own voice” when they make comments about how much I talk. There is a Michael Ondaatje quote that goes: “she had always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.” That, I think perhaps sums it up better than I ever could. Isn’t it amazing that one of the most innate human experiences can be the thing that brings us reason? In a cover letter, written to go before a resume submitted for a job application, Robert Pirosh wrote about his decision to leave his old job and life in New York and travel abroad to study in Europe. He concluded with this, “I have just returned and I still like words. May I have a few with you?” This is the thing that brings me reason. Words, exhausting and intimate and terrifying as they are, the opportunity to speak and be spoken to, the chance to write and read and share words provide purpose unlike any other I have ever known. It becomes all too easy at times to resign myself to the idea that “I can’t translate myself into language any longer.” (Alice Notley). I am envious of those who can translate themselves into music or beautiful poems, but I often find myself returning to read diaries and love letters, speeches, and intimate accounts of life events, real people sharing words of life and purpose, and daily recounts of the mundane that are so personal even despite their simplicity that they must be expressed. I have always wanted words, here I hope to share some. 

delicate details by pierre carrier-belleuse.

Sonder. Its the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as you do. We may feel as if we alone precedes this world. We strive to be the main character. When in fact, we all have our differences. Life for me may feel like I’m living in a Donna Tartt novel. On the other hand, the eclectic old man I often see in my local bookstore would say that he is a lone ranger fighting off wicked men from the Wild West. The said old man is just one of the many figures I distinctly remember in my book-hunting escapades. These strangers— those I often see in bookstores made me realize that I am many things in a person’s life. A Hero. Villain. or simply a spectator.

people

take your book everywhere

don’t distract them, they’re on a date

libraries should be open all night

moments in love

reading in bed