“that’s how we knew/ and so love grew a flower/ a flower that is you..”
— Sade, BabyFather
Speak for yourself, always. It is lack of confidence. You can say things as well as Dostoevsky, Elie Faure or anybody you quote. Dare to speak for yourself. Let the other people lie in your blood, but faceless, nameless, diluted, masticated by you, reproduced etc. You listen to too many voices. Listen only to yourself. The best parts are yours, not your putting forward of other men.
“
—
Anais Nin to Henry Miller, November 8 1933 (via findinglife)
The days aren’t discarded or collected, they are bees
that burned with sweetness or maddened
the sting: the struggle continues,
the journeys go and come between honey and pain.
No, the net of years doesn’t unweave: there is no net.
They don’t fall drop by drop from a river: there is no river.
Sleep doesn’t divide life into halves,
or action, or silence, or honor:
life is like a stone, a single motion,
a lonesome bonfire reflected on the leaves,
an arrow, only one, slow or swift, a metal
that climbs or descends burning in your bones.
Neruda’s words somewhat capture the feeling tone for today, another rainy Tuesday that sighs with the world’s sorrows yet hopes for the best in all of humanity. Love is the common tenet across all belief systems. It holds me close in prayerful meditation.
“I am at one with a sea of sensations, glitter, silk, skin, eyes, mouths, desire.”
— Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin Vol. 1
A single two lane road is the only way to reach the tiny seaside town of Lucap from the city of Alaminos, Pangasinan by land. "Asin" means salt. The literal translation of Pangasinan is from the salt, a tribute to mother ocean from where all life springs forth. The road ends at the pantalan, the dock where larger than life statues greet new arrivals to this place of magical surrealism and incredible beauty. Prinsesa Urduja, famed warrior queen who ruled the coast with her consort, the Chinese pirate Limahong. They stand facing each other from either ends of a rotunda. And seemingly within an arms reach the Hundred Islands, like green clouds set a drift on the blue expanse of ocean along the Lingayen gulf.
The waters of my childhood haunt me. I carry this ocean with me everywhere I go. I catch glimpses of Her at sunset in the Queens Bath, Kauai; on the shores of Baker Beach below the Golden Gate in San Francisco; when penguins float alongside our boat in the Tasman Sea, New Zealand; where the waterfalls meet the ocean in Milford Sound, New Zealand; where the old Chinese junk ships still sail in Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong; at night walking alone in Hermosa Beach, Los Angeles; and in many other oceans that have called to me in communion. I even see Her in Paris, walking the quays with the River Seine glimmering at dusk.
I see Her in all women by water, when we get that look in our eyes as we stare far off into the horizon, when our breath slows down and deepens to match the undulation of waves, when we reach into ourselves and into stillness, remembering who we are and returning home.
