"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn..." -Jack Kerouac

"If I thought that I was replying to someone who would ever return to the world, this flame would cease to flicker. But since no one ever returns from these depths alive, if what I've heard is true, I will answer you without fear of infamy."

and then there's those days when the tune of a song plays with your being. your heart. like strings. and it's nothing you can explain later. it's like a glimpse of golden hair wisping in the wind through a car window. or a small laugh on the other block. or how her hair always sticks to the wet on her lip. or how i can only write while i drive; shifting and penciling my thoughts all at once.

and this all fell down
the sweet slippery strain of love
it squeezes its way into my head
like the smell of the river, cool and mineral
or the feeling of wild asparagus flitting through my fingertips
the reflection of yesterday
golden light on one side of her face
and night falls
a crisp night when saturn nestles into the moon and sings
and it's clear like you've never seen it before

"and if the many sayings of the wise teach of submission I will not submit but with a spirit all unreconciled flash an unquenched defiance to the stars."

Adelaide Crapsey, 1913.

More Yeats, since it's on my mind...

A Coat (1912)
'I made my song a coat

Covered with embroideries

Out of old mythologies

From heel to throat;

But he fools caught it,

Wore it in the world’s eyes

As though they’d wrought it.

Song, let them take it,

For there’s more enterprise

In walking naked.'

one more for the day...

'I am contented, for I know that Quiet
Wanders laughing and eating her wild heart,
Among pigeons and bees'

from In the Seven Woods, William Butler Yeats

The Slave Ship, J.M.W. Turner, exhibited in 1840.

lydia and i were talking about this painting today. Turner painted The Slave Ship to assist in the abolitionist campaign. He was inspired by lines from James Thomson's poem, The Seasons:

"Increasing still the Terrors of these Storms,
His Jaws horrific arm'd with threefold Fate,
Here dwells the direful Shark. Lur'd by the Scent
Of steaming Crrouds, of rank Disease, and Death,
Behold! he rushing cuts the briny Flood,
Swift as the Gale can bear the Ship along;
And, from the Partners of the cruel Trade,
Which spoils unhappy Guinea of her Sons,
Demands his share of Prey, demands themselves.
The stormy Fate descend: one Death involves
Tyrants and Slaves; when strait, their mangled Limbs
Crashing at once, he dyes the purple Seas
With Gore, and riots in the Venegeful Meal."
'Summer', ll.1013-25

'here, with whitened hair, desires failing, strength ebbing out of him, with the sun gone down, and with only the serenity and calm warning of the evening star left to him, he drank to Life, to all it had been, to what it was, to what it would be.'

number 1

when i was in highschool i always dreaded the 'mole' discussion in chemistry. i thought everyone in the room was looking at the mole on my face. i decided today to begin blogging my insecurities. my fears. my wanderlust. my fickle insanity. my inconcsistency. my obsession with rushing in. and id like to deal with the fact that i've never had to face a consequence that made me wish i were someone else.

i need help sticking it out. or maybe this will help me think out my decision to let it all go. i will fill you in, and myself.

please read. or dont.