Quote on experimenting with life

Photo credit: taylorschlades from morguefile.com 

One word I would banish from the dictionary is 'escape.' Just banish that and you'll be fine. Because that word has been misused regarding anybody who wanted to move away from a certain spot and wanted to grow. He was an escapist. You know if you forget that word you will have a much easier time. Also you're in the prime, the beginning of your life; you should experiment with everything, try everything.... We are taught all these dichotomies, and I only learned later that they could work in harmony. We have created false dichotomies; we create false ambivalences, and very painful one's sometimes -the feeling that we have to choose. But I think at one point we finally realize, sometimes subconsciously, whether or not we are really fitted for what we try and if it's what we want to do.

You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too. No, I think there was too rigid a pattern. You came out of an education and are supposed to know your vocation. Your vocation is fixed, and maybe ten years later you find you are not a teacher anymore or you're not a painter anymore. It may happen. It has happened. I mean Gauguin decided at a certain point he wasn't a banker anymore; he was a painter. And so he walked away from banking. I think we have a right to change course. But society is the one that keeps demanding that we fit in and not disturb things. They would like you to fit in right away so that things work now.

~ Anaïs Nin

Quote on experimenting with life

Photo credit: taylorschlades from morguefile.com 

One word I would banish from the dictionary is 'escape.' Just banish that and you'll be fine. Because that word has been misused regarding anybody who wanted to move away from a certain spot and wanted to grow. He was an escapist. You know if you forget that word you will have a much easier time. Also you're in the prime, the beginning of your life; you should experiment with everything, try everything.... We are taught all these dichotomies, and I only learned later that they could work in harmony. We have created false dichotomies; we create false ambivalences, and very painful one's sometimes -the feeling that we have to choose. But I think at one point we finally realize, sometimes subconsciously, whether or not we are really fitted for what we try and if it's what we want to do.

You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too. No, I think there was too rigid a pattern. You came out of an education and are supposed to know your vocation. Your vocation is fixed, and maybe ten years later you find you are not a teacher anymore or you're not a painter anymore. It may happen. It has happened. I mean Gauguin decided at a certain point he wasn't a banker anymore; he was a painter. And so he walked away from banking. I think we have a right to change course. But society is the one that keeps demanding that we fit in and not disturb things. They would like you to fit in right away so that things work now.

~ Anaïs Nin

Quote on choice

Photo credit: jppi from morguefile.com

I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.
~ Anaïs Nin

Quote on choice

Photo credit: jppi from morguefile.com

I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.
~ Anaïs Nin

Symptoms

Photo credit: westminister from morguefile.com

Although you have given me a stomach upset,

Weak knees, a lurching heart, a fuzzy brain,

A high-pitched laugh, a monumental phone bill,

A feeling of unworthiness, sharp pain

When you are somewhere else, a guilty conscience,

A longing, and a dread of what’s in store,

A pulse rate for the Guinness Book of Records -

Life now is better than it was before.

Although you have given me a raging temper,

Insomnia, a rising sense of panic,

A hopeless challenge, bouts of introspection,

Raw, bitten nails, a voice that’s strangely manic,

A selfish streak, a fear of isolation,

A silly smile, lips that are chapped and sore,

A running joke, a risk, an inspiration –

Life now is better than it was before.

Although you have given me a premonition,

Chattering teeth, a goal, a lot to lose,

A granted wish, mixed motives, superstitions,

Hang-ups and headaches, fear of awful news,

A bubble in my throat, a dare to swallow,

A crack of light under a closing door,

The crude, fantastic prospect of forever –

Life now is better that it was before.

~ Sophie Hannah

____________________________________________

You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book (Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or you talk with Richard, and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death.
~ Anaïs Nin

Symptoms

Photo credit: westminister from morguefile.com

Although you have given me a stomach upset,

Weak knees, a lurching heart, a fuzzy brain,

A high-pitched laugh, a monumental phone bill,

A feeling of unworthiness, sharp pain

When you are somewhere else, a guilty conscience,

A longing, and a dread of what’s in store,

A pulse rate for the Guinness Book of Records -

Life now is better than it was before.

Although you have given me a raging temper,

Insomnia, a rising sense of panic,

A hopeless challenge, bouts of introspection,

Raw, bitten nails, a voice that’s strangely manic,

A selfish streak, a fear of isolation,

A silly smile, lips that are chapped and sore,

A running joke, a risk, an inspiration –

Life now is better than it was before.

Although you have given me a premonition,

Chattering teeth, a goal, a lot to lose,

A granted wish, mixed motives, superstitions,

Hang-ups and headaches, fear of awful news,

A bubble in my throat, a dare to swallow,

A crack of light under a closing door,

The crude, fantastic prospect of forever –

Life now is better that it was before.

~ Sophie Hannah

____________________________________________

You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book (Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or you talk with Richard, and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death.
~ Anaïs Nin

This Life

Photo credit: wcizmowski from morguefile.com 

My friend tells me

a man in my house jumped off the roof

the roof is the eighth floor of this building

the roof door was locked how did he manage?

his girlfriend had said goodbye I'm leaving

he was 22

his mother and father were hurrying

at that very moment

from upstate to help him move out of Brooklyn

they had heard about the girl

the people who usually look up

and call jump jump did not see him

the life savers who creep around the back staircases

and reach the roof's edge just in time

never got their chance he meant it he wanted

only one person to know

did he imagine that she would grieve

all her young life away tell everyone

this boy I kind of lived with last year

he died on account of me

my friend was not interested he said you're always

inventing stuff what I want to know how could he throw

his life away how do these guys do it

just like that and here I am fighting this

ferocious insane vindictive virus day and

night day and night and for what? for only

one thing this life this life

~ Grace Paley

_____________________________________

Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.
~ Anaïs Nin

This Life

Photo credit: wcizmowski from morguefile.com 

My friend tells me

a man in my house jumped off the roof

the roof is the eighth floor of this building

the roof door was locked how did he manage?

his girlfriend had said goodbye I'm leaving

he was 22

his mother and father were hurrying

at that very moment

from upstate to help him move out of Brooklyn

they had heard about the girl

the people who usually look up

and call jump jump did not see him

the life savers who creep around the back staircases

and reach the roof's edge just in time

never got their chance he meant it he wanted

only one person to know

did he imagine that she would grieve

all her young life away tell everyone

this boy I kind of lived with last year

he died on account of me

my friend was not interested he said you're always

inventing stuff what I want to know how could he throw

his life away how do these guys do it

just like that and here I am fighting this

ferocious insane vindictive virus day and

night day and night and for what? for only

one thing this life this life

~ Grace Paley

_____________________________________

Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.
~ Anaïs Nin

Now I Become Myself

Photo credit: pedrojperez from morguefile.com

Now I become myself. It's taken

Time, many years and places;

I have been dissolved and shaken,

Worn other people's faces,

Run madly, as if Time were there,

Terribly old, crying a warning,

'Hurry, you will be dead before-'

(What? Before you reach the morning?

Or the end of the poem is clear?

Or love safe in the walled city?)

Now to stand still, to be here,

Feel my own weight and density!

The black shadow on the paper

Is my hand; the shadow of a word

As thought shapes the shaper

Falls heavy on the page, is heard.

All fuses now, falls into place

From wish to action, word to silence,

My work, my love, my time, my face

Gathered into one intense

Gesture of growing like a plant.

As slowly as the ripening fruit

Fertile, detached, and always spent,

Falls but does not exhaust the root,

So all the poem is, can give,

Grows in me to become the song,

Made so and rooted by love.

Now there is time and Time is young.

O, in this single hour I live

All of myself and do not move.

I, the pursued, who madly ran,

Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

~ May Sarton

____________________________________

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through.  Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it.  This is a kind of death. ~ Anaïs Nin

Now I Become Myself

Photo credit: pedrojperez from morguefile.com

Now I become myself. It's taken

Time, many years and places;

I have been dissolved and shaken,

Worn other people's faces,

Run madly, as if Time were there,

Terribly old, crying a warning,

'Hurry, you will be dead before-'

(What? Before you reach the morning?

Or the end of the poem is clear?

Or love safe in the walled city?)

Now to stand still, to be here,

Feel my own weight and density!

The black shadow on the paper

Is my hand; the shadow of a word

As thought shapes the shaper

Falls heavy on the page, is heard.

All fuses now, falls into place

From wish to action, word to silence,

My work, my love, my time, my face

Gathered into one intense

Gesture of growing like a plant.

As slowly as the ripening fruit

Fertile, detached, and always spent,

Falls but does not exhaust the root,

So all the poem is, can give,

Grows in me to become the song,

Made so and rooted by love.

Now there is time and Time is young.

O, in this single hour I live

All of myself and do not move.

I, the pursued, who madly ran,

Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

~ May Sarton

____________________________________

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through.  Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it.  This is a kind of death. ~ Anaïs Nin

Risk

Photo credit: ctaroz from morguefile.com

And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom.

~ Anaïs Nin

_____________________

Why not go out on a limb?  Isn't that where the fruit is?  ~ Frank Scully

Risk

Photo credit: ctaroz from morguefile.com

And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom.

~ Anaïs Nin

_____________________

Why not go out on a limb?  Isn't that where the fruit is?  ~ Frank Scully

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked. -Anaïs Nin

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked. -Anaïs Nin