words of my hero

"It’s good to remind myself when I’m having a crisis of purpose and feeling useless that at least I can make something beautiful." -Andrew Bird

i am in that position. and i as well can make something beautiful. ah, what hope lies in art.

the best things

"There are things you do because they feel right & they may make no sense & they may make no money & it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other & to eat each other's cooking & say it was good." -Brian Andreas

yes

"In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it."  -- William Saroyan

things i find beautiful

I.

ONE hour to madness and joy! O furious! O confine me not!
(What is this that frees me so in storms?
What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)
O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man!
O savage and tender achings! (I bequeath them to you my children,
I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.)

O to be yielded to you whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me
in defiance of the world!
O to return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine!
O to draw you to me, to plant on you for the first time the lips of
a determin'd man.

O the puzzle, the thrice-tied knot, the deep and dark pool, all
untied and illumin'd!
O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!
To be absolv'd from previous ties and conventions, I from mine and
you from yours!
To find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of Nature!
To have the gag remov'd from one's mouth!
To have the feeling to-day or any day I am sufficient as I am.

O something unprov'd! something in a trance!
To escape utterly from others' anchors and holds!
To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!
To court destruction with taunts, with invitations!
To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!
To rise thither with my inebriate soul!
To be lost if it must be so!
To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom!
With one brief hour of madness and joy.

-Walt Whitman

II.

III.

When all the tension, sorrow, and fear inside finally breaks and the tears come at last, like rain, all furious and gentle in the same moment.

IV.

Looking back on times of laughter with people that made it mean something eternal.

V.

Fall leaves backlit by the sun while crisp air sears my lungs.

VI.

You. At least, I'm trying.

Vesta

Convoco el fuego y la llama naranja como expresion sagrada del amor, la amistad y el espiritu.

"You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That'€™s the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world." - Octave Mirbeau

Purple Pineapples

once upon a time, there was a person.

the person like to paint themselves with purple pineapples.

every morning, the person dipped his brush in purple paint

pineapples danced on purple shores

and the person smiled

because it made him happy.

-Janna Wagner

Optimistic

There is a sort of wandering optimism making its way through me today. How do I make it a fixture instead of a feeling, one that I know could prove to be fleeting so easily?

There's something about being "liked" that gives one more confidence and more optimism.

There's something about being loved that makes everything OK, even when the aforementioned are nonexistent.

From The Prophet by Khalil Gibran:

Only another breath will I breathe in this still air, only another loving look cast backward,
Then I shall stand among you, a seafarer among seafarers.
And you, vast sea, sleepless mother,
Who alone are peace and freedom to the river and the stream,
Only another winding will this stream make, only another murmur in this glade,
And then shall I come to you, a boundless drop to a boundless ocean.

The man's writing nearly defines beauty. It uplifts my soul. I'm only 10 pages into The Prophet and I am in love with it already. Read!
















I will reach to the sky. I will reach through the confusion. I will reach my dreams.

[Dan]gerous

And if our ideas are dangerous, it is because we are those who love to live dangerously. And if our dreams are mad, it is because we are mad. But our madness is supreme wisdom. But our ideas are the heart of life; but our thoughts are the beacons of humanity. -Renzo Novatore