If you see beauty in something, don’t wait for others to agree.
– Sherihan Gamal
Ill-timed.
“April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain.”
— T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land)
A Poet’s Words
Each word means more
than what it seems,
The one writing
feel it gleams,
You, the one reading
and what you’re getting,
Multiply it,
and it’s what we’re feeling.
Invitation.
“… and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald
Impediment.
“I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let people fool themselves. They didn’t bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn’t argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn’t.”
– Marilyn Monroe
It was a real problem. But instead of sitting back and not do anything, instead of being comfortable with this faux attention, I choose to communicate. I choose to put the truth out there, for the likeminded to come forth. I might lose more than I actually gain, but that’s okay. I wanna be known for me, the one who’s truly in there that wants to connect deeply. And if I were to leave the world, I leave knowing I’ve received encouragement and attained courage from people in all different walks of life.
Because I was not afraid, because I tried.
I lived.
Inspire.
“I like you; your eyes are full of language.”
– Anne Sexton
Intellection.
“With a memory capacity superhuman, how do I forget the taste of those lips?”
Memory can be a gifted curse.
Impassioned.
I don’t understand how someone could express my thoughts half a century earlier and double a dozen times clearer.
I frequently mentioned that if I had a choice, I would choose to be born a boy. However I wasn’t given that choice and I always believed in taking things in stride. I’ve appreciated what I’ve been given and never considered being anything less than a woman, except, I believe in female strength and equality. As kids, we were all told to have our own big dreams and creating our special impact in this world we co-exist in. Somewhere though, I believe things went a little awry and people conform to stereotypes, stereotypes of race, gender. People were told where they belong and how to be themselves.
Standing at 5 foot 2, I came from a protective Asian family with siblings one to two decades older and my parents, almost 3 times older. The following quote sits especially well with me.
“Yes, my consuming desire is to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regulars—to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording—all this is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always supposedly 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. Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody 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
Inscribed.
“It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty even when it’s not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.“
– Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Interim.
“A sea scent mingled with a hint of rain. Insects calling from the clumps of grass along the river. Everything brimming with a languid nostalgia. It seemed that it would rain any minute.
I guess it took someone as unreal as him to break through my own unreality. It struck me the very first time I met him. That’s why I liked him. Or maybe I only thought so after I got to like him. It amounts to the same thing either way.”
– Murakami
killgwen 