bless my mind, I miss being told how to live

Choose Life over the other stuff. Get out of your head. Live. Dress up. Eat. Touch people. Help out. Give up. Love people. Give your best away. There’s more. What’s the problem? Relax. You’re going to die. Throw a party. Eat off my plate. Sing to me. Meet me in the bedroom. Get a massage. Give one. Let your amazement out into the room. Pry open the box you hide your joy in. Be a poem.

-John Patrick ShanleySomething sad keeps moving

So I wandered around.
I fell in love with the burden
Holding me down.

Bless my mind, I miss
Being told how to live.
What I learned without knowing
How much more I owe than I can give.

This is how I tell it
Oh, but it’s long.
One Sunday morning

One son is gone.

-Wilco, One Sunday Morning

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”

-Neil Gaiman

“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.”

—Benjamin Franklin

I am waitin’ ‘til I don’t know when, cause I’m sure it’s gonna happen then.

“One night in June 1944, I tried to exorcize death with words. I excerpt some of my notes here, just as they came from my pen:

‘I was lying in bed, my stomach resting on the mattress, my knees and feet pressed against the ground. The silence of the night turned to a sound of water and rustling leaves, characteristic noises from my childhood. Death closed over me. A little patience yet, and I would drift to the other side of the world, enter that region which never reflects light. I would be alone, far from the rest of mankind, in that state of pure being that is, perhaps, the diametrical opposite of death, and which I scarcely knew save in my dreams. Vainly I seek it, at times, in the wilderness of mountains and high plateaux; solitude retreats elusively the instant you seek it open-eyed…’”

- Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life

“Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can’t take it in all at once.” -Audrey Hepburn

“A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more.” 

John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“I love snow for the same reason I love Christmas: It brings people together while time stands still. Cozy couples lazily meandered the streets and children trudged sleds and chased snowballs. No one seemed to be in a rush to experience anything other than the glory of the day, with each other, whenever and however it happened.

Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares

“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.”

E. S.

and it shakes your pretty little clavicle

“Enjoy it.Because it’s happening.” -The Perks of Being a Wallflower

That secret that we know that we don’t know how to tell

I’m in love with your honor,

I’m in love with your cheeks

What’s that noise up the stairs, babe?

Is that Christmas morning creaks?

And I know it well, I know it well

-Blood Bank, Bon Iver

“I don’t know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, ‘Well, if I’d known better I’d have done better,’ that’s all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, ‘I’m sorry,’ and then you say to yourself, ‘I’m sorry.’ If we all hold on to the mistake, we can’t see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can’t see what we’re capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one’s own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that’s rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don’t have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.” - Maya Angelou

“And I thought that all those little kids are going to grow up someday. And all of those little kids are going to do the same things we do. And they will all kiss someone someday. But for now, sledding is enough. I think it would be great if sledding were always enough, but it isn’t.”

-Steven Chbosky

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.” 

-Anaïs Nin

“I was thinking how amazing it was that the world contained so many lives. Out in these streets people were embroiled in a thousand different matters, money problems, love problems, school problems. People were falling in love, getting married, going to drug rehab, learning how to ice-skate, getting bifocals, studying for exams, trying on clothes, getting their hair-cut and getting born. And in some houses people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered.” 

-Jeffrey Eugenides

Christmas Time is Here

Christmas time is here
Happiness and cheer
Fun for all that children call
Their favorite time of the year

Snowflakes in the air
Carols everywhere
Olden times and ancient rhymes
Of love and dreams to share

Sleigh bells in the air
Beauty everywhere
Yuletide by the fireside
And joyful memories there

Christmas time is here
We’ll be drawing near
Oh, that we could always see
Such spirit through the year
Oh, that we could always see
Such spirit through the year…

quote of the week

“Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.”

- Mark Twain