#peege

Peege :: @bloodsigns

Peege :: @bloodsigns

Peege :: @bloodsigns

Nikita Gill • Where Hope Comes From

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer • The Unfolding

Peege :: @bloodsigns

Peege :: @bloodsigns

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It was winter and in the condominium where we lived, old apartment buildings built in the 20s — their brick plaster walls poorly insulated and my quilt would freeze to the wall. my mother had painted the walls of delicate ballet pink, which I had outgrown along the walls were cabinets that she purchased (we would be so familiar with them now, like IKEA, but rare in the 80s and expensive, more than we could afford) my mother and I had been fighting. She hated my dead Kennedy’s T-shirt, the eyeliner [..]

She had thrown out a red coat with a leopard print collar that I had found in the barrels at Ragstock … and it might’ve been the last time she ever laid a hand on me. I remember looking at the things of childhood which I had long outgrown and all I knew to do was to go to my books, it’s all I had ever known to do. My brother had given it to me for my birthday. I remember illustration on the cover … his inscription on the inside … I had taken to reading a few over and over [...]

On Children, of course — thinking to myself that I did not belong to her, that I belonged only to myself … and then On Joy and Sorrow

poets.org

On Joy and Sorrow

Kahlil Gibran

1883 –1931

Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow. And he answered: Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives? When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.” But I say unto you, they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy. Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced. When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

[..]

And I remember standing in front of my students in those drafty high ceilinged classrooms in Missoula … whether I was reading Richard Hugo Degrees of Grey in Phillipsburg or Donald Hall’s Without … and you might ask me … but Peege, to fifth graders? But here’s what I knew … that some of those fifth graders were carrying the world on their shoulders and in their heads they weren’t fifth graders …and what they needed was an honest voice that said I see the world you live in, and here is language that can help you find your way beyond it … and still