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Advice to the young girl in the audience.
At one of Quentin Crisp‘s question and answer sessions in his one-man show, a girl in the audience asked ‘What is the quickest remedy for a broken heart?’ to which he replied: ‘The quickest remedy is that you must learn not to value love because it is requited. It makes no difference whether your love is returned. Your love is of value to you because you give it. It’s as though you gave me a present merely because you thought I’d give you one in return. This won’t do. If you have love to give, you give it and you give it where it is needed, but never, never ask…
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The sky from my road looking north.
– Posted from my iPhone
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WHY DO YOU STAY UP SO LATE? By Don Paterson
I’ll tell you, if you really want to know: remember that day you lost two years ago at the rockpool where you sat and played the jeweler with all those stones you’d stolen from the shore? Most of them went dark and nothing more, but sometimes one would blink the secret color it had locked up somewhere in its stony sleep. This is how you knew the ones to keep. So I collect the dull things of the day in which I see some possibility but which are dead and which have the surprise I don’t know, and I’ve no pool to help me tell– so I look at them…
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Return trip.
It was 2006, I was in Boston, taking the green line downtown and had just entered the underground station. The lines at the cashier windows on both sides of the turnstiles were long. A tall soldier, dressed in camouflage carrying a large duffle bag over his shoulder was staring at the lines too, obviously confused. I had already pre-purchased tokens (this was before they were phased out) and told him to follow me. I thumbed a gold token into the turnstiles for each of us. We went through and I found the stairs to the tracks. A few minutes of waiting I found him again. He still looked nervous and…
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You Are There by Erica Jong
You are there. You have always been there. Even when you thought you were climbing you had already arrived. Even when you were breathing hard, you were at rest. Even then it was clear you were there. Not in our nature to know what is journey and what arrival. Even if we knew we would not admit. Even if we lived we would think we were just germinating. To live is to be uncertain. Certainty comes at the end.
