Lost in Tokyo

Let our scars fall in love

“We’re all seeking that special person who is right for us.

But if you’ve been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there’s no right person, just different flavors of wrong… because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness.

And it isn’t until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problems- the ones that make you truly who you are- that we’re ready to find a lifelong mate.

Only then do you finally know what you’re looking for.

You’re looking for the wrong person.

But not just any wrong person: the right wrong person- someone you lovingly gaze upon and think, this is the problem I want to have.

I will find that special person who is wrong for me in just the right way. Let our scars fall in love.”

 

-Galway Kinnel

you learn.

-Veronica Shoffstall

After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,

And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security,

And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises

And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open,

With the grace of a woman,
Not the grief of a child

And you learn to build all your roads on today,
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans
and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

After awhile you learn that even sunshine
Burns if you get too much

So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers

And you learn that you really can endure…
That you really are strong
And you really do have worth,
and you learn and learn…
With every good bye you learn.

version 2

I asked you:

‘what do you want to drink?’

You answered,

‘anything that you have’.

So I gave you ambivalence mixed with doubts,

On the rocks.

amen

“As an atheist, I see nothing “wrong” in believing in a god. I don’t think there is a god, but belief in him does no harm. If it helps you in any way, then that’s fine with me. It’s when belief starts infringing on other people’s rights when it worries me. I would never deny your right to believe in a god. I would just rather you didn’t kill people who believe in a different god, say. Or stone someone to death because your rulebook says their sexuality is immoral. It’s strange that anyone who believes that an all-powerful all-knowing, omniscient power responsible for everything that happens, would also want to judge and punish people for what they are.” – Ricky Gervais

I love yous

I texted a friend this morning and I said ‘I love you’,

I texted another friend another ‘I love you’,

and another friend an ‘I love you’,

and another,

and another,

and another,

‘I love you’

‘I love you’

‘I love you’.

I got used to  sending you ‘I love yous’ every morning

that now that I can’t,

I just have to send it to everybody else.

scribbling on neurons

‘Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self’

– Cyril Connolly

Cree Indian Prophecy

Only after the last tree has been cut down,

Only after the last river has been poisoned,

Only after the last fish has been caught,

Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.

why it often rain in the movies

– Lawrence Raab

Because so much consequential thinking

happens in the rain. A steady mist

to recall departures, a bitter downpour

for betrayal. As if the first thing

a man wants to do when he learns his wife

is sleeping with his best friend, and has been

for years, the very first thing

is not to make a drink, and drink it,

and make another, but to walk outside

into bad weather. It’s true

that the way we look doesn’t always

reveal our feelings. Which is a problem

for the movies. And why somebody has to smash

a mirror, for example, to show he’s angry

and full of self-hate, whereas actual people

rarely do this. And rarely sit on benches

in the pouring rain to weep. Is he wondering

why he didn’t see it long ago? Is he wondering

if in fact he did, and lied to himself?

And perhaps she also saw the many ways

he’d allowed himself to be deceived. In this city

it will rain all night. So the three of them

return to their houses, and the wife

and her lover go upstairs to bed

while the husband takes a small black pistol

from a drawer, turns it over in his hands,

then puts it back. Thus demonstrating

his inability to respond to passion

with passion. But we don’t want him

to shoot his wife, or his friend, or himself.

And we’ve begun to suspect

that none of this is going to work out,

that we’ll leave the theater feeling

vaguely cheated, just as the movie,

turning away from the husband’s sorrow,

leaves him to be a man who must continue,

day after day, to walk outside into the rain,

outside and back again, since now there can be

nowhere in this world for him to rest.

islands, love

When you love someone, you do not love them all the time in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet, this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of time and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible in life, as in love, is in growth, in fluidity, in freedom. The only real security is not owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was, nor forward to what it might be, But living in the present and accepting it as it is now. For relationships, too, must be like islands. One must accept them for what they are, here and now, within their limits, islands surrounded and interrupted by the sea, continuously visited and abandoned by the tides. -Anne Morrow Lindbergh