“People are frightened of themselves. It’s like Freud saying that the best thing is to have no sensation at all, as if we’re supposed to live painlessly and unconsciously in the world. I have a much different view. The ancients are right: the dear old human experience is a singular, difficult, shadowed, brilliant experience that does not resolve into being comfortable in the world. The valley of the shadow is part of that, and you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege.”
(via sunilification)
is a poem waiting to happen in raspberry weather
with a knife in its boot, whispering “excelsior”
as it watches you redress in your winter clothes —
scares you into eating allergic peanut butter
and bathroom tile, sleeping in 300-count threaded
swords like Egypt hotnights, deadening your hair
(Source: thetargetbird)
