“Maybe A Damned Good Night’s Sleep Will Bring Me Back To A Gentle Sanity. But At The Moment, I Look

The fact that Dante created the most popular image of the afterlife with absolutely no theological basis for it will still be the funniest thing to me

I think the insufferable poet and the snarky respondent from Pompeii should kiss actually

Mary Oliver, Wild Geese

“Does God hang out in Greyhound bus stations? I’d like to find him. I’d like to make him cry.”

— Sara Sutterlin, from I Wanted to Be the Knife [Extended Edition]

A witch puts a spell on a girl, a sleeping spell that promises the girl shall wake through true love’s kiss. Men come and kiss her. She slumbers. Women come and press their lips to hers, but still she sleeps. Many years past, and the girl remains still. One bright morning,  a lost little boy finds her resting spot and clears the dust and grime from her face. He offers her a kiss on her forehead, and her eyes flutter open. She never feels romantic love for a man nor a woman, and she cares for the boy until the day she dies.

A young woman is imprisoned in a castle by a monstrously formed prince. The servants of the castle hope for them to fall in love, and when the spell is broken they assume their prayers have been answered. They are all surprised, but nonetheless pleased, when it is revealed to them that the young woman and prince are the truest of friends, and nothing more.

They say the kingdom is ruled by an evil queen, a woman who is incapable of loving. She is unmarried, she has no consorts, and she wishes for no partner. She is the wretched queen, the heartless queen. She must hate her daughter, for her daughter is beautiful, and women are incapable of liking another woman who’s prettier than themselves. It must be for this reason that the princess was sent away, not for how she was attacked by a man in the woods. They say the kingdom is ruled by an evil queen because she cannot love. The queen loves her daughter, and that is enough for them both.

There lives a prince who is forced to choose a bride at the ball. He meets many beautiful women, but find none which he loves. He spies one in a gorgeous gown and wonder in her eyes, and he dances with her all night long. The kingdom is sure he has found his bride. When the clock strikes midnight he tells her how he will never love a woman, or a man, in the way he is expected to. The beautiful woman smiles and tells him she expects nothing from him. The next morning the prince and the beautiful woman are missing, having run off together to see the world. They leave their shoes behind in their haste.

Many kinds of love exist. It doesn’t all have to be romantic.

“You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”

— Buddha

quiz: are you hamlet, or are you horatio?