he smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. it was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. it faced--or seemed to face--the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. it understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.
he smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. it was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. it faced--or seemed to face--the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. it understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.
once upon a time, there was a candy and dan...things were very hot that year...all the wax was melting on the trees...he would climb balconies, climb everywhere. do anything for her...oh danny boy. thousands of birds. the tiniest birds adorned her hair...everything was golden...one night the bed caught fire...he was handsome, and a very good criminal...we lived on sunlight and chocolate bars...it was the afternoon of extravagant delight...danny, the daredevil... candy went missing... the day's last rays of sunshine cruise like sharks...i wanna try it your way this time! you came into my life really fast, and i liked it. we squelched in the mud of our joy. i was wet thighed with the surrender...then there was a gap in things...and the whole earth tilted...this is the business. this is what we're after. with you inside me...comes the hatch of death...
“there must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure, but i don’t know many of them. whenever i am so sad i’m going to die, or so nervous i can’t sleep, or in love with somebody i won’t be seeing for a week, i slump down just so far and then i say: i’ll go take a hot bath. i mediate in the bath. the water needs to be very hot, so hot you can barely stand putting your foot in it. then you lower yourself, inch by inch, til the water’s up to your neck. i remember the ceiling over every bathtub i’ve ever stretched out in. i remember the texture of the ceilings and the cracks and the colors and the damp spots and the light fixtures. i remember the tubs, too: the antique griffin-legged tubs overlooking water taps and the different sorts of soap holders. i never feel so much myself as when i’m in a hot bath. i lay in the tub on the seventeenth floor of this hotel for women-only, high up over the jazz and push of new york, for near onto an hour, and i felt myself growing pure again. i don’t believe in baptism or the waters of jordan or anything like that, but i guess i feel about a hot bath the way those religious people must feel about holy water. i said to myself...they are all dissolving away and none of them matter anymore. i don’t know them, i have never known them and i am very pure. all that liquor and those sticky kisses i saw and the dirt that settled on my skin on the way back is turning into something pure. the longer i lay there in the clear hot water the purer i felt, and when i stepped out at last and wrapped myself in one of the big, soft white hotel bath towels i felt pure and sweet as a new baby.”
- sylvia plath, the bell jar
they’d lied to me and betrayed me, leaving jagged edges where all my trust had been, and i didn’t like or respect or admire them any more, but still i loved them. i had no choice. i understood that, perfectly, standing in the white wilderness of snow. you can’t kill love. you can’t even kill it with hate. you can kill in-love, and loving, and even loveliness. you can kill them all, or numb them into dense, leaden regret, but you can’t kill love itself. love is the passionate search for a truth other than your own; and once you feel it, honestly and completely, love is forever. every act of love, every moment of the heart reaching out, is a part of the universal good...and it can never die.
lets take this city by storm
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