right now you're sleeping next to me in bed and i just want to let you know that i love you. i tell you everyday, but today we had a great day and now, at this moment, feeling every breath you take, i am overwhelmed by how lucky i am to know you. you are mine. and i am yours. infinitely, or for as long as you will have me...
there are a great many things i want to tell you, but i will wait, not because i am afraid but because i want to experience things with you at the right time. i want to prolong these intoxicating feelings, this falling in love with you, tripping over what i feel for you, for as long as possible. there is no rush. we have all the time in the world.
i love you so much that the words themselves sound so incredibly lame. but now i'm tired. so i will end this and wrap my arms around your back and kiss your neck and i can't wait to feel this all over again tomorrow.
there are a great many things i want to tell you, but i will wait, not because i am afraid but because i want to experience things with you at the right time. i want to prolong these intoxicating feelings, this falling in love with you, tripping over what i feel for you, for as long as possible. there is no rush. we have all the time in the world.
i love you so much that the words themselves sound so incredibly lame. but now i'm tired. so i will end this and wrap my arms around your back and kiss your neck and i can't wait to feel this all over again tomorrow.
my head thrown back, i let my gaze dwell on the ceiling, i underwent the profoundest experience of ecstasy i have ever encountered. i had attained that supreme degree of sensibility where the divine intimations of art merge with the impassioned sensuality of emotion. i long for those rare moments when i shiver with the rush of altered consciousness. in an ephemeral blast of time's breath, it's like the universe reveals itself and there is a mutual recognition of all things. but as quick as it manifests it slams shut it's window, only leaving the essence like some intoxicating perfume that remains after someone has left the room.
i felt a pulsating in my heart. life was draining out of me, while i walked away fearing a fall.
YOU SHOULD DATE AN ILLITERATE GIRL -- CHARLES WARNKE
“Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in a film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.
Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale or the evenings too long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.
Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.
Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.
Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent of a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, goddamnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.
Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.
Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.
Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so goddamned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life of which I spoke at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being told. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. Or, perhaps, stay and save my life. ”
got you. you're mine now. for the rest of the day, week, month, year, life. have you guessed who i am? sometimes i think you have. Sometimes when you're standing in a crowd i feel those sultry, dark eyes of yours stop on me. are you too afraid to come up to me and let me know how you feel? i want to moan and writhe with you and i want to go up to you and kiss your mouth and pull you to me and say "i love you i love you i love you" while stripping. i want you so bad it stings. i want to kill the ugly girls that you're always with. do you really like those boring, naive, coy, calculating girls or is it just for sex? the seeds of love have taken hold, and if we won't burn together, i'll burn alone.
Know your voice.
Recognize you when you
first come ‘round the corner.
Sense your scent when I come
into a room you’ve just left.
Know the lift of your heel,
the glide of your foot.
Become familiar with the way
you purse your lips
then let them part,
just the slightest bit,
when I lean in to your space
and kiss you.
I want to know the joy
of how you whisper
“more”.
Immature people falling in love destroy each other’s freedom, create a bondage, make a prison. Mature persons in love help each other to be free; they help each other to destroy all sorts of bondages. And when love flows with freedom there is beauty. When love flows with dependence there is ugliness.
A mature person does not fall in love, he or she rises in love. Only immature people fall; they stumble and fall down in love. Somehow they were managing and standing. Now they cannot manage and they cannot stand. They were always ready to fall on the ground and to creep. They don’t have the backbone, the spine; they don’t have the integrity to stand alone.
A mature person has the integrity to stand alone. And when a mature person gives love, he or she gives without any strings attached to it. When two mature persons are in love, one of the great paradoxes of life happens, one of the most beautiful phenomena: they are together and yet tremendously alone. They are together so much that they are almost one. Two mature persons in love help each other to become more free. There is no politics involved, no diplomacy, no effort to dominate. Only freedom and love.
A mature person does not fall in love, he or she rises in love. Only immature people fall; they stumble and fall down in love. Somehow they were managing and standing. Now they cannot manage and they cannot stand. They were always ready to fall on the ground and to creep. They don’t have the backbone, the spine; they don’t have the integrity to stand alone.
A mature person has the integrity to stand alone. And when a mature person gives love, he or she gives without any strings attached to it. When two mature persons are in love, one of the great paradoxes of life happens, one of the most beautiful phenomena: they are together and yet tremendously alone. They are together so much that they are almost one. Two mature persons in love help each other to become more free. There is no politics involved, no diplomacy, no effort to dominate. Only freedom and love.
-Osho
As long as I can’t watch an episode of a popular sitcom without having to sit through multiple sexist comments or “jokes”, I am a feminist.
As long as women have to face the rational fear of being sexually assaulted every time they walk home past dark while men don’t, I am a feminist.
As long as misogyny exists in any country in this world, I am a feminist.
As long as women are being raped, then stoned to death or forced to marry their rapist, I am a feminist.
As long as companies promote men to manager when there are women who are equally as or better qualified, because they find that men look more authoritative, I am a feminist.
As long as women (her choice of clothes, her friendly nature, her weakness, her choice to drink alcohol) get blamed when men rape them, I am a feminist.
As long women’s opinions on online social networks are dismissed with phrases like “tits or gtfo”, “get back to the kitchen”, “are you pms’ing?”, I am a feminist.
As long as dressing like a women is degrading for men and as long as men are insulted with phrases like “you throw like a woman”, clearly implying that being like a woman is shameful, I am a feminist.
As long as both men are women are expected to work, but taking care of children and the household are still largely considered a woman’s job, I am a feminist.
As long as boys and girls are treated differently, expected to act differently, and surrounded by different toys and colours from the day they are born, I am a feminist.
As long as topless women aren’t allowed in public unless they’re on the cover of a men’s magazine, I am a feminist.
As long as women who have sex frequently are generally told they are “sluts”, “lacking self-respect” and “lacking morals” by both men and women, while men who frequently have sex are “just being men” and it’s “natural for them”, I am a feminist.
As long as there are places where women have to pay more for health insurance than men, I am a feminist.
As long as men experience situations with equal gender representation as female-dominated, and don’t consider a group discussion equal unless there are significantly more men then women participants (as has been proven), I am a feminist.
As long as there are men who think it’s their wife or girlfriend’s duty to have sex with him whenever he wants, I am a feminist.
As long as the word feminism (“the movement aimed at equal rights for women”) has a negative connotation, I am a feminist.
As long as misogynist people exist, I am a feminist."
1. Spit it into her voicemail, a little slurred and sounding like the shot whiskey you downed for courage. Feel as ashamed as you do walking into work in last night’s clothes. Wake up cringing for days, waiting for her to mention it.
2. Sigh it into her mouth, wedged in between teeth and tongues. Don’t even let your lips move when you say it, ever so lightly, into the air. Maybe it was just an exhalation of ecstasy.
3. Buy her flowers. Buy her chocolate. Buy her a teddy bear, because that’s what every romantic comedy has taught you. Take her out to a nice restaurant where neither of you feel comfortable and spend the whole night clearing your throat and tugging at your tie. Feel like your actions are more suited to a proposal than the simple confession of something you’ve always known.
4. Whisper it into her hair in the middle of the night, after you’ve counted the space between her breaths and are certain she’s asleep. Shut your eyes quickly when she shifts toward you in askance. Maybe you were just sleep whispering.
5. Blurt it out in the middle of an impromptu dance party in the kitchen, as clumsy as your two left feet. When time seems to freeze, hastily tack on “in that shirt” or “when you make your award-winning meatballs” or, if you are feeling particularly brave, “when we do this.” Resume dancing and pretend you don’t feel her eyes on you the rest of the night.
6. Write her a letter in which the amount of circumnavigating and angst could rival Mr. Darcy’s. Debate where to leave it all day – on her pillow? In her coat pocket? Throw it away in frustration, conveniently leaving it face up in the trashcan, her name scrawled on the front in your sloppy handwriting. Let her wonder if you meant it.
7. Wait until something terrible has happened and you can’t not tell her anymore. Wait until she almost gets hit by a car crossing Wabash against the light and after you are done cursing at the shit-for-brains cab drivers in this city, realize you are actually just terrified of living without her. Tell her with your hands shaking.
8. Say it deliberately, your tongue a springboard for every syllable. Over coffee, brushing your teeth side-by-side, as you turn off the light to go to sleep – it doesn’t matter where. Do not adorn it with extra words like “I think” or “I might.” Do not sigh heavily as if admitting it were a burden instead of the most joyous thing you’ve ever done. Look her in the eyes and pray, heart thumping wildly, that she will turn to you and say, “I love you too."
"i never noticed the stars before. i always thought of them as great big diamonds that belonged to someone. now they frighten me.
they make me feel that it was all a dream, all my youth."
they make me feel that it was all a dream, all my youth."
"it was a dream," said john quietly. "everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness."
"how pleasant then to be insane!"
and my heart hurts
remember that day that i kissed you at the bar and you were so surprised and then we spent the night together but we just slept next to each other and that was all we needed? the first time we made love…do you remember that? how you fit so perfectly inside me and how we came together. the way you pressed your hand against my chest as you pulled out and the way you kissed my lips and my forehead to distract me from the emptiness. the first time you told me you loved me i was boarding a flight and i cried because i thought you were angry and i knew i had loved you from the first moment i touched you. and every time after that when you breathed how much you loved me into my ear and my lips and my hair. how i wanted to feel your heart beat. move with its rhythm. the times when you were vulnerable and you told me the things you were afraid of and i told you not to worry because you were my everything. and then there were all those times in the shower together with the water on us and the weight of your body behind me and the touch of your calloused hands on my shoulder blades and your kisses on the top of my head. and all those nights when i was drunk with happiness and champagne and high on speed and nothing else mattered except that you were there and we only had eyes for each other. each other. and our secrets. so many secrets. and giggles. no one laughed as much as we did. and the letter i wrote you that made us both cry. what about our trip to the emerald city? where you surprised me with that ring and we drank bubbly in the tub and you washed my hair and we ate raspberries and you took photos of me naked and we rolled around on that massive bed and made love and slept and kissed and everything was pure magic. but then we came home and my world came crashing down. but you were there and you caught me and i couldn't tell you what had happened but you knew and we both just wept because everything was turned upside down. you stayed and you were my support, my family, and when i left for months at a time and we were apart you listened to me. you rushed over when the people in my life let me down and you never had a problem fighting for me and sticking up for me and i needed that because i was hurting and i didn't know how to handle it. and that time downtown when i dragged you away and you yelled at me and then i burst into tears and you did too. you took me in your arms and you said you were sorry and i knew it was for more than just the yelling but for all the pain i was in and i knew you felt helpless but you stayed and i will always love you for that. and you told me how your friend told you to knock me up because you shouldn't let this one get away because you loved me so much and you wouldn't shut up about it. oh yes the many times we talked about having all those little babies. your french babies. our life together and i would smile at the thought of you being a dad because you would be great at it. and my golden birthday. the way that i almost burst into tears when i walked through that door because it was so much more than i ever expected and even though i was so exhausted that i made you go home at midnight you were okay with that and we left and it was the most perfect birthday I've ever had. and when we went down to the city of angels and we took it by storm and we had our ups and downs but i came downstairs and dragged you off the couch and told you to hold me because those things were silly and we were made of more than that. and then when we stayed in the loft and admits all that white i broke down and you did too but it was okay because we had each other and even if things were hard i knew i had you and everyday you'd say hi baby to me and make my heart melt.
i am the longing. i am the unscratched surface of my potential. i am the first step waiting to be taken. i am the smirk that won't wipe off my face. i am the unquenched thirst. i am the desire. i am the patience that is wearing thin. i am the end of the rope. i am the love unspoken for. i am the fear, but i am the courage. i am the uncharted waters. i am the waiting, the waiting, the waiting. i am the glass half full. i am the unspoken understanding. i am the butterfly effect. i am the arms raised in victory, i am the hands holding my head in defeat. i am the moment of clarity. i am the double take. i am the words i scribble. i am the lips unkissed, my hands not held. i am the lyrics. i am the melody. i am the honesty, i am the loyalty. i am the wonder, the beautiful wonder. i am the late night talk. i am the sour and i am the sweet. i am the last blink before sleep. i am the first breath of the morning. i am the goosebumps, i am the sweat. i am the most romantic thing i've yet to do. i am the thoughts uncontrollable. i am the raised eyebrow. i am the teardrop tracing the contours of my face. i am the laughter, the uncensored laughter. i am the mistakes i've made, and the lessons i've learned. i am the success. i am the failure. i am the ambition, i am the apathy. i am the opposites inside me. i am the trembling anticipation. i am the love i take. i am the compassion. i am the underestimation i receive. i am the focus i always lose. i am the memories. i am the stolen breath and the skipped heartbeat. i am the worry. i am the calm. i am the smile. i am the freedom, i am the dependence. i am the broken heart. i am the misplaced trust. i am the confidence, but i am the insecurity. i am the faith. i am the logical next step. i am the places i've seen. i am the perfect guy for someone out there. i am the first hello with whoever she will be. i am the first kiss. i am the first fight. i am the shared dreams. i am the beating of my heart. i am the infinite space between today and tomorrow. i am the last straw. i am the confusion. i am the incompatibility. i am the comfortable silence. i am the wink. i am the thought in the back of my mind. i am the first star i wish on. i am the aching. i am the poetry i write. i am the uncertainty of who it is for. i am the relief, the sweet relief. i am the shadows across my face. i am the peace. i am the lack. i am the happiness i am surrounded by. i am the man i'm becoming. i am the boy i used to be
i am the whole, but i am the pieces
i am the pieces
i am the pieces
baby badass
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
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