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I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one…Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil…There is no other story.

John Steinbeck, East of Eden (1952)

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The Chains of Choice

A man who felt homeless in his home,

Who was a stranger in his own land,

Cried, I am surrounded yet alone,

People in sight, but none at hand.

Everywhere I look, they tell me how.

How to satisfy my innermost desire.

‘Why wait for tomorrow; the time is now.

Eat this apple, it will quench your fire.’

To belong in this world, I must adapt.

But to adapt, I must leave my Eden.

Can my soul remain intact,

If I deny everything I believe in?

This society grapples with the one and the many.

Is many more and is more merrier?

More voices, more ideas, all and any.

Absence of choice is freedom’s only barrier.

Choice is the golden apple of society.

My desires are satisfied when I choose

Between the fruits of infinite variety.

Don’t hurry, take your time to peruse.

So I searched and found myself lost in the aisles.

I wandered and I meandered for years,

Searching high and low, among stacks and piles,

Only to find I realized my worst fears.

You see, in a society of choice,

Preference becomes truth and truth, preference –

The truth belongs to the makers of noise.

Value shifts from temperance to indulgence.

Increasingly, the world revolves around me.

I am the voice of God that guides my decisions.

And, inevitably, the world becomes more lonely.

The world of infinite choice becomes a prison.

The desire for which my soul longs

Is not for more choice, more uncertainty.

My soul pines with a piercing cry to belong,

A basic instinct only satisfied by eternity.  

So I am surrounded yet alone,

People in sight, but none at hand.

Surrounded by the decisions of my own,

A stranger in my constructed land.

Lost in the aisles of infinite possibility,

We all seek for the voice of our mother.

Shaken in a world of instability,

We all reach for the hand of a brother.

True freedom is returning home to open arms.

The father says, “My son is home; tonight we dine!”

True freedom is the absence of fear of harm,

Not the choice to feast with the swine.

Freedom is companionship in the garden,

It is an expression of your true being,

broken bits and bitter realities pardoned,

The whole self laid bare, no fleeing.

Freedom and belonging are intricately tied,

It is not a quality found in the solitude of choice.

Freedom is found with community alongside.

Freedom is discovered when we speak with one voice.

- J

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“I miss you/It’s nothing”

You’ve crawled into my arms

And my head (I need you to leave)

And my heart (I need you to leave).

 I am such a strong woman

My mama telling me:

“You come from a long line of strong women”

But he made me weak in the knees

Made the nights feel like I was exposed

Made the snap of my fingers lose its strength

My throat, ashy with cigarettes, my hands shake

 Now I know how addicts feel.

My horizons were narrowed, but I could see the sky so intimately

The night was cold and vapid, but the stars were up there

Every stifling choke getting me closer to death and heaven

 So honey don’t tell me I hurt you when my throat is raw

Don’t tell me it’s my fault when I gave and gave and gave

Sorry on repeat, “take me back I’m yours”

Don’t give me that its-whatever-shrug-me-off-or-letsjustbefriends

I see those empty bottles on the table,

Your eyes swallowing me up again

 (I feel the silent hush of yesterday creep on me

Lying on the bed, your hands tangled in my hair

Voice sweet like candy, arms draped around me

Needing me to “stay”, kisses begging me to “stay”)

 And I am moved again, and I move in again,

My knees so weak, my legs can’t hold us up both

So he backs up

He tells me it’s nothing, we’re nothing

And he’s right

I feel nothing.

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Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

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When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth. Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself. He threshes you to make you naked. He sifts you to free you from your husks. He grinds you to whiteness. He kneads you until you are pliant; And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast. All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart. But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love. When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God." And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving; To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy; To return home at eventide with gratitude; And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

Khalil Gibran

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Rome was built on ruins too.

J (via thesoundofthesilenced)

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Goodbye Waves

- J 

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...and it kills just as quick.

J

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Beware: hope catches you like quicksand...

J

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Unfortunately, she was everything I expected.

J

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It had been the longest time since she had had a rib-scraping laugh. She had forgotten how deep and down it could be. So different from the miscellaneous giggles and smiles she had learned to be content with these past few years.

Toni Morrison, Sula

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1st time writer

I am pregnant with words

In my belly lies a creation of mine

Will it be vile, unfiltered, and dirty?

Or refined, laudable, and moral

 All night I lay awake dreaming of my child

I have survived childhood, yet still

I do not know enough about life

 From my mouth will I rear lies or the truth?

From my mind will I produce tin or gold?

My heart hardly knows the way.

 Parental advice echoes in my ear

Hemingway says to bleed

Morrison says to live

Thoreau says to wait

 I toss and turn restlessly

I try not to bend

I am worried. Worried. Worried.

 All night my pen

Sits atop a blank page

Waiting for my words to be born

-S

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a ghost

Grace was stoic that evening, just as she had been every evening every day that December. Nothing moved her. Not even the breath of winter that chilled and shook the frosting daffodils. Not even the cockroaches that scurried ‘bout her floor, in search of scraps. She meandered throughout her house that night. She was always careful to be silent, as if making any sort of movement or sound might disturb the great hullabaloo of cascading dust and fidgeting mites. Her house was a tomb: the epitaph written upon the empty bottles of wine, the stale odor of cigarettes, and the general disarray of household. The dilapidated half-house inhaled and exhaled mighty bouts of air into its hollowed hallways on especially windy nights, but it never breathed. The house kept up its machinery. Every night at eight, the critters would pop out of their hiding places to go from one corner to the next. Every night a quarter past ten the floorboards would begin to creak. At around 2 the sounds would cease for but an hour, the witching hour, and then resume. Grace took shallow breaths and only shifted positions once or twice to forgo interrupting everything. I am still. I am still. I nothing but a flower waiting for water. Waiting for a sip of dew to stop me from withering away. A lick to pull me from this drought. Just a touch. A glance. Grace was stoic that evening, just as she had been every evening every day that December when he left her twenty years ago. And she would remain that way every evening every day twenty years more, until he came home.

-S

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where is the safe check-in in beirut?

where is the lebanese flag on facebook?

where are the news headlines, and lights on government buildings and honouring and remembering the lebanese victims? or the syrian victims? or the iraqi victims? or the schoolchildren in pakistan, who get killed while in class?

these lives matter too. they too were daughters and sons, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers. they too had struggles and dreams. they too were killed prematurely. these losses deserve the same outrage and empathy, the same outpour of love and sympathy. 

if you gather and protest, march, or pray remember all victims of terrorism - not just the european ones. be aware of media bias, fight against it. educate yourself and educate others. be informed, that is the only way you can offer support. 

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The world will keep on spinning.

J

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And here, according to Trout, was the reason human beings could not reject ideas because they were bad: Ideas on Earth were badges of friendship or enmity. Their content did not matter. Friends agreed with friends, in order to express friendliness. Enemies disagreed with enemies, in order to express enmity. The ideas Earthlings held didn’t matter for hundreds of thousands of years, since they couldn’t do much about them anyway. Ideas might as well be badges as anything. They even had a saying about the futility of ideas: ��If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” And then Earthlings discovered tools. Suddenly agreeing with friends could be a form of suicide or worse. But agreements went on, not for the sake of common sense or decency or self preservation, but for friendliness. Earthlings went on being friendly, when they should have been thinking instead. And even when they built computers to do some thinking for them, they designed them not so much for wisdom as for friendliness. So they were doomed. Homicidal beggars could ride.

Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions (via drunkenliterature)

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a man alone on a park bench looks lonely or in love. waiting or wasted. expectant or expunged. a bride cries and the tears are cherished. everyone assumes it is happiness. a person jumps off a thirteen story building. deeply depressed. or the weather felt nice enough to fly in. a man dies serving his country. a hero. a man dies serving his country. a villain. a girl cuts her hair short and they gasp and wonder. maybe her neck got tired. a smile at the dinner table and everything’s peachy. a simple ‘I’m fine’ and they leave you alone. she sleeps around, she’s a whore. he sleeps around, what’s his score? you’re young and naive. you’re old and outdated. we all know what’s best for everyone else. we all know nothing.

assumptions and perspective | Derek Deyling (via thedbldee)