(Source: icanread)
"Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph."
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph."
— Jack Gilbert, “Failing and Flying” (via youngfolksociety)
(Source: honeychurch, via hmkay)
(Source: live-the-big-adventure, via hmkay)
Have you ever written something,
Like a poem or a song
Or just a string of words,
Without knowing what they mean?
I think this happens to me too much.
I need to think more.
Why did I break that first sentence into lines?
I need sleep.
New on my wishlist:
A thermos.
Stephen Fry’s fantastic essay on language, animated in kinetic typography.
Also see these 5 essential books on language.
After taking a linguistics class, I have to keep reminding myself of this when I see or hear some things.
Language is alive. It evolves. The changes it goes through doesn’t destroy what it used to be as much as it defines the people who use it. It’s like music. It is music.
(via epopeyadechuy)
Okay. From now on
I will look at my work and give thanks. Thanks to my parents who have worked hard to raise me, feed me, provide for me, and educate me while hiding away their own sufferings that they bore for the sake of my growth.
I will look at my work and see love. Love for my own future family for whom I will one day have to provide. Love for a wife and children that will mean more than the world to me. Love worth dying for.
Because the love and sacrifice don’t start the day I meet the woman who I will choose to spend the rest of my life with or the day my first child is born. The love and sacrifice started when my parents poured their own love into me after their own years of struggle and preparation.
The Wolf
In the dark, out of sight,
A wolf howled at the moonlight,
But a boy heard the siren instead.
Her voice swam inside his head
All through the night.
The boy’s father told
His young son he was too old
To believe such dangerous dreams,
That the night doesn’t have the things
It seems to hold.
But the siren sings.
From then on, every day
The boy slept by the windowpane.
Fighting the siren’s song,
He told himself he was wrong,
As his father would say.
Yet the siren sings.
In the dark of the night,
At the end of his hopeless plight,
The boy gave in to his ears
And, ignoring his father’s fears,
Walked to her cry.
For the siren sings.
