Comfort

I SING what was lost and dread what was won,
I walk in a battle fought over again,
My king a lost king, and lost soldiers my men;
Feet to the Rising and Setting may run,
They always beat on the same small stone.


William Butler Yeats
What Was Lost


A question was asked of me, if Loneliness was company I kept constantly. I replied nay. For I was not Lonesome, nor do I desire company (should they belong to fools). What I was was merely Lost. Home I used to be but now cannot find the path that wound its way to that familiar hearth. I hear a voice frame my name and I turn my head to catch what welcome friend but find myself staring at a stranger's face. The Familiar is what we search for, to dull the edges of sharp Truth, to form semblance from compounding Reality. A piece of a puzzle to form what cannot be recognized in close scrutiny but forms an agreeable image should we allow our selves take that Known step back. In the midst of what is not Known, we strain to catch each deliberate facet, hoping to strain recognition-- For the Unfamiliar is a stark image, each detail sprung to life.

The Ferule Employed

Remorse is cureless, -- the disease
Not even God can heal;
For 't is his institution, --
The complement of hell.


Emily Dickinson
Remorse

Rage is a monkey with a bright red Heart. It shakes its cage of bone and strains to catch what erring wind might carry: it does not matter should it be Truth or should random sound, random noise, bring a recognizance only found in its imaginings. For a drowning man clutches best-- should it be Fortune's log or tragic arm... always remember, a drowning man clutches best (for a drowned man clutches less!).

Cradle this warm heart of brightly spun crimson-- O Rage is a monkey with a bright red Heart.

Hollow

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;


T. S. Eliot
The Hollow Men

People die every day, all over the world, for no reason at all (seemingly). And to at least have one (a reason or two) to define your demise puts you in a frame of such ridiculous proportion that the contrast it seems is ennobling. But then, Ignorance, more often than not, grants us the comfort of assuming that Death is simply the end of "it". Living is terribly different. There are too many reasons (or so we are told) to go on, of such shape, size, and variety, that we end up with something we did not bargain for or, as in most cases, with simply nothing at all.

So Deep It Didn't Even Bleed

I see her again, I hear her, and I could bite my hands at the agony of not being able to describe it.


Henri Alban Fourier
The Wanderer

My heart-- It's broken... And I keep cutting myself every time I try picking up the pieces. It must be made of glass: to be so fragile as to break at the drop of a word. The way a word resounds, glancing off its sides, reverberating and shaking it to pieces. Although the music it makes is splendid, enough to raise the hairs on my arm, to curl my toes, what risk it must be-- to play for echoes at the price of tragedy.

Gravity

Flee from me, away from trouble;
take the path of safety, far from this danger.

Rumi


Rather I spit at the eye of whose fell clutch I'm in... than this enduring blankness. Living has taken its toll (what a price to pay!) and the weight of existence grows heaver by the minute. It crushes me to my bed, in spite of the clock's shrill persistent shrieks-- the clarion call of dawn. I cannot, I tell myself, continue like this. Sisyphus with his Eternal boulder, Tantalus and his lake of Desire. I push, I lunge, grab at straws, and find myself still tied to this coil. The gears continue to move, while the wheel continues to threaten to crush. The sheets cling to me, they wrap themselves about my legs, telling me to stay. You know you're in a darker place when blankets begin to take the wisdom of Wise men. And I cannot fight them. They are stronger-- or perhaps, I just cannot bring myself to. For it is only a fool who contests the weight of Wisdom. So then I let myself go, sink into these sheets, full with the scent of sleep, that embrace of oblivion, the still mark of the womb.

The Sentimentalist's Equation

Those who are faithless know the pleasures of love; it is the faithful who know love's tragedies.

Oscar Wilde

The heart is a terrible thing. It is a thing with teeth and all the voracity of a shrew. It knows not satiation-- only the idea (its sole driving purpose). It has no eyes to see what glory it inspires in foolish men, only a nose to point it where there is food; And a mouth with no tongue for savouring... Only teeth.

The heart is a most terrible thing. It turns cannibal once denied.

Travelling Between the Spaces

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it - it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less-
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars - on stars where no human race is
I have it in me so much nearer to home
To scare myself with my own desert places

Robert Frost
Desert Places

I remember last night-- a fleet of buildings going past, mired yet pitching, caught in their stone sea. I remembered how Forget had painted a human face on each one, each line deeper than the last, etched in granite skin. This must be how it is to be forgotten... to be remembered by but a precious dwindling few. In its failing, Memory turns catalyst, a crust of sepia and dirt begins to settle. It is like rust in the temporal plane. I imagine that, here in this dead sea, with its grimy windows and stained walls, dust would cling a little more stubbornly to its corners and its cobwebs made of sterner steel. Lethe, though with sluggish feet, overtakes us in the end and makes for us this coccoon, I wondered.
I bid them fare well, although in its futility may they find some degree of comfort (no matter how borrowed from what prevailing Sentiment, from what maudlin thought).

The Question Posed by Grey

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, sayI missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total darkness sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

Wystan Hugh Auden
The More Loving One


...when I was a child I remembered agonizing on the fact of my existence. I was but ten but looked older (weary even) as the nights found me again and again, awake with the gears of my mind running. Sleep provided me neither refuge or balm. And the days held nothing but exhaustive thought while the night its terror. For what I saw (or thought I "saw") was nothing but the cage afforded by my senses. Nothing was real as far as what is thought of as real- held suspect but decided by its consuming essence. I feared closing my eyes, dreaded slipping through the cracks and into nothingness. Oblivion offered a release, a freedom I dared not take. It was absolute. The utter totalness would be too much for a limited frame of clay. For clay starts to run at the thought of Tears, and turns to cracks under the sun of Wrath. For dust is dust and clay nothing more than dust with ambition.

The Element of Blank

Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.
It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.

Emily Dickinson
Pain Has An Element Of Blank


... And so a blog begins. With reluctance and much pain. The way only a blank paper and a big ego can afford.