To Love Another As Myself Is The Highest Love Possible Because It Signifies An Erasure Of Division, No

Two days ago, I had gone up to the terrace to behold the sunset and breathe in some fresh air. I had always preferred the setting sun to the rising one, for soft dusk ensues after one while the other is succeeded by harsh daylight. Ah, for a world in which it is permanently twilight! The view from the place was one that might be seen from any building over two storeys high in the neighbourhood. It was rather the stark contrast of the sky at the opposite ends that piqued me. The east at sundown was a pale azure, almost unnatural in its monotonousness, disturbed only by a hazy sapphire mountain, whose original crude bareness was softened by the distance, imparting to it a hue reminiscent of the shade the sea is often associated with, but seldom found in. In the west meanwhile, the sun was letting afloat his final banners, on which seemed written all the wisdom of the mortal world, in a language nearer to me that the ones I had ever heard spoken or seen written, yet at the same time utterly incomprehensible. What is to be the use of poring over Greek and Latin if they don’t impart to me a knowledge of these transfixing scriptures? Here was a cloud whose ethereal inhabitants had borne the harsh rays of the sun all day and were now looking down with relief at his long awaited departure. What are you doing little one, so precariously perched at the edge? What are your irresponsible siblings thinking of? Have they gone to make arrangements for your moonlit revels? Ah, there comes your mother. She looks quite shocked. The chances of you wildly wandering in the gentle realms of cloudland soon again are not so high, are they? Look at your haze! One would think there was a storm approaching! How lonely your dwelling looks, a storm scud in the middle of pastel drifts! Another cloud, situated at a higher altitude than the previous one, part of it softly illuminated by the rays of the now setting sun was drifting by, as if determined to make the most of the sunlight by moving unhurriedly as possible. All this, coupled with the music of unconcernedly fluttering leaves, punctuated now and then by the sweet trill of some bird, with a mild breeze blowing in my face, made for a very pleasant evening spent in the company of two curious squirrels, and in the way most agreeable to me.

the song of achilles, madeline miller // 1 samuel 18:1, kjv translation of the bible // wuthering heights, emily brontë // memory, @aristosmusical // sonnet xvii, pablo neruda // [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in], e.e. cummings // “the origin of love”, hedwig and the angry inch // star trek iii: the search for spock, dir. leonard nimoy

sorry i never replied. everyday is blending together and im losing sense of time

I have come to a conclusion, after mulling it over for a while, that happiness has been been cast off and melancholy embraced perhaps not because of the evil and dark being more beckoning, nor is it because of the naivety associated with joy, though perhaps this might be one, for effervescence is so often confused with gladness that it is no surprise that it is seen to be foolish, but because it has become now that stillness and silence are symbolic of melancholy, while happiness is characterised by permanent high-spirits. Contemplation and reflection are few things that bring inner tranquility, for many it is the source of peace. Thus for some any absence of continuous childlike behaviour becomes sadness and for the others any presence of natural laughter and to not always be lost in a maze of cluttered thoughts becomes immaturity. I’m somehow both of these people.

*goes to the top of a cliff and and whispers to a bird which obviously doesn’t care, “It’s my birthday today” and is met with a blank stare and an indignant ruffle and is left with the words echoing emptily across the hillside*

“Is it better to be the reed in the spokes of a battle wheel which splinters the chariot of hope, or to be the reed of hope tugging away at the clench of the unrelenting mast of the sunken ship, lost to the world and leave the world to lose? Perhaps it finer to be the reed from which floats the soft and treacherous  note of love, with the feathered footfall of the madman or the angel, and leave it to the mania of insanity to find out which.”

I wonder what the impulse to beauty is, - thinking of Darwin - without all the jargon around it. Why should a pale pink cloud strike the eye as profound and beautiful? There is a pigeon drinking water a few feet from where I sit and the squirrels are chasing each other over half raised walls. Today, the evening tells me of something that has been in ruins for a period long enough for it to have ceased to matter. Somewhere a bird whispers, the ruins are to rise again, not in image of what was, but as a shrine what is now. The future seems less real than the past. why?

smokeinsilence / sightofsea / young love by bts / nizar qabbani / abeba birhane / the waves by virginia woolf / franz kafka letters to milena / ratsandlilies.art / the butterflys burden by mahmoud darwish / underneath the stars by mariah carey

think it's a deep consolation to know that spiders dream, that monkeys tease predators, that dolphins have accents, that lions can be scared silly by a lone mongoose, that otters hold hands, and ants bury their dead. that there isn't their life and our life. nor your life and my life. that it's just one teetering and endless thread and all of us, all of us, are entangled w it as deep as entanglement goes. v neat i think.