That Girl's Words

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no! It is an ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of town. If this be error and upon me prov’d, I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

I have been in love more times than one, thank the Lord. Sometimes it was lasting whether alive or not. Sometimes it was all but ephemeral, maybe only an afternoon, but not less real for that. They stay in my mind, these beautiful people, or anyway beautiful people to me, of which there are so many. You, and you, and you, whom I had the fortune to meet, or maybe missed. Love, and love, and love, it was the core of my life, from which, of course, comes the word for the heart. And, oh, have I mentioned that some of them were men and some were women and some--now carry my revelation with you-- were trees. Or places. Or music flying above  the names of their makers. Or clouds, or the sun which was the first, and the best, the most loyal for certain, who looked so faithfully into  my eyes, every morning. So I imagine such love of the world--its fervency, its shining, its innocence and hunger to give of itself--I imagine this is how it began.

Friendship is a gift...You are seen - you  are safe.

i want more 'men' with flowers falling from their skin. more water in their eyes. more tremble in their bodies. more women in their hearts than on their hands. more softness in their height. more honesty in their voice more wonder. more humility in their feet.

is that one must leave before the other  and one always gets there first.

Not long ago you are in a room where someone asks the philosopher Judith Butler what makes language hurtful. You can feel everyone lean in. Our very being exposes us to the address of another, she answers. We suffer from the condition of being addressable. Our emotional openness, she adds, is carried by our addressability. Language navigates this. For so long you thought the ambition of racist language was to denigrate and erase you as a person. After considering Butler's remarks, you begin to understand yourself as rendered hypervisible in the face of such language acts. Language that feels hurtful is intended to exploit all the ways that you are present. Your alertness, your openness, and your desire to engage actually demand your presence, your looking up, your talking back, and, as insane as it is, saying please.

Distance is an illusion. Thank God for you.

There are moments in time when years go by and it feels as though nothing happens, and then there are times like this: weeks go by and it feels as though years are happening.

When they go low, we go high.

Grief and resilience live together

Give yourself 6 months of hard focus

Eventually all waves settle.