fuse these pieces in your mind, and I will exist

We dreamed, I think, of a sound, of a song, that would say what we could not and that would at the same time excuse us from ever having to say anything.

And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.

I made my way as if in a state of delirium, no doubt seeking the same thing that I obtained there in my youth—the wisdom to be able to bear my suffering.

do you have any recommendations about kindness? i love your posts!

That people could come into the world in a place they could not at first even name and had never known before; and that out of a nameless and unknown place they could grow and move around in it until its name they knew and called with love, and call it HOME, and put roots there and love others there; so that whenever they left this place they would sing homesick songs about it and write poems of yearning for it, like a lover: remembering the grouping of old trees, the fall of slopes and hills, the lay of fields and the running of rivers; of animals there, and of objects lived with; of faces, and names, all of love and belonging, and forever be returning to it or leaving it again!

Deity is in the details & we are details among other details & we long to be  Teased out of ourselves. And become all of them.

All I know is that there was a change in me and, discovering that change in me, I would do anything to keep it unchanged I would not let it die in me. I had to keep listening, listening, listening to it, just as you listen to another thing in this shutter. The sawmill tried to drown it out, the cisternwheel tried to drown it out; I had to save it, hear it; so I went away. I don’t want to live if I can’t hear that voice.

Love has a range.

If I believe in anything, it is in the dark night of the soul. Awe is my religion, and mystery is its church.

Love is not consolation, it is light.

Sometimes I have wanted to know if there is an underside to life, & if it is inverted, so that there, we live inside of light rather than below it. I have found it better to believe in everything than nothing —

I realized that the basic thing in life is questioning death, wanting to know how we’ll act when our time comes, and that death, or rather this questioning of death, is a conversation that takes place between infinity and eternity, and how we deal with our own death is the beginning of what is beautiful, because the absurd things in our lives, which always end before we want them to anyway, fill us, when we contemplate death, with bitterness and therefore with beauty.

I have known only what I don't want. I’ve always had a thorn in my side, and I’ve always thought, When this thorn is removed I’ll think about what I want. But then that particular thorn would be removed, and I’d be left feeling emptied out. In a short time another thorn would be inserted into my side. Then, once again, all I had to think about was being free of the thorn in my side. I’ve never had time to think about what I want.

We were arguing. You want love to be like this every day don’t you? 92 degrees even in the shade. This intensity, this heat, sun like a disc-saw through your body.

Oh it is a crooked path I follow, Mama, but a straight wisdom comes from it once in a while; and once in a while a sure and beautiful joy comes from it and I will build my life on that wisdom and on that joy that comes once in a while. And give it all back to you and those who follow you, to mend all that is ruined and broken.

That’s how it is, isn’t it? The less love you put into things the more they resemble one another. The same goes for stories, everyone knows them by heart, but when someone tells them with love, I don’t know, they seem new.

We take almost all the decisive steps in our lives as a result of slight inner adjustments of which we are barely conscious.