There's no half-life on love

Life in a mechanical age

I saw this quote while wandering the NSW Art Gallery this weekend. It was written in 1927 but it could be about now.

Our time is just electronic and wireless rather than mechanical. It surrounds us and influences much. It affects our sleep, relationships, thoughts and health.

I see commuters with their heads bowed over screens, those ubiquitous white wires trailing from their ears. Sometimes I am one of them.

Regina Spektor sings "you're using your headphones to drown out your mind" and I know it to be utterly true.

It's like the Matrix. We're all jacked in, more connected than ever. And more lonely than ever. I wonder why I was born to feel it all.

The true nature of resilience

Solar Eclipse

Each morning
I wake invisible.

I make a needle
from a porcupine quill,
sew feet to legs,
lift spine onto my thighs.

I put on my rib and collarbone.

I pin an ear to my head,
hear the waxwing's yellow cry.
I open my mouth for purple berries,
stick on periwinkle eyes.

I almost know what it is to be seen.

My throat enlarges from anger.
I make a hand to hold my pain.

My heart a hole the size of the sun's eclipse.
I push through the dark circle's
tattered edge of light.

All day I struggle with one hair after another
until the moon moves from the face of the sun
and there is a strange light
as though from a kerosene lamp in a cabin.

I put on a dress,
a shawl over my shoulders.

My threads knotted and scissors gleaming.

Now I know I am seen.
I have a shadow.

I extend my arms,
dance and chant in the sun's new light.

I put a hat and coat on my shadow,
another larger dress.
I put on more shawls and blouses and underskirts
until even the shadow has substance

Diane Glancy via Goodreads.com

Bleed

To be a survivor–first you must bleed. You bleed all that was inside of you: the pain, the memories, the fear, the wounds fusing together, the ties to what was in, all its forms. You bleed not once but several times. And when you are empty, you either fade into a shadow or find the strength, and courage to live. When you stand up again, you are for a time, hollow–empty, like a bottle of beer lying on the street, cracked and reeking of its bitter contents. Then you fill yourself up with the new, your recreate yourself–you reform. You don’t have the same heart or mind. The way you see the world is forever changed. 


Lynn Mari via The Last Straw

glimpses of home

"Home is not where you live, but where they understand you" Christian Morganstern

"Home is where it feels right to walk around without shoes" Unknown

Quotes via ThinkExist

A poet's work

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.
Salman Rushdie via Brainy Quotes