Love is a command, not just a feeling. Somehow, in the romantic world of music and theater we have made love to be what it is not. We have so mixed it with beauty and charm and sensuality and contact that we have robbed it of its higher call of cherishing and nurturing.
I, Issac, Take Thee, Rebekah: Moving from Romance to Lasting Love by Ravi Zacharias
J’ador.
Best. Birthday. Ever.
I’m trying hard to clear my head
to think without language
to remember that whole life without adjective.
Don’t forget—
The shadow moves more than you move
but intends less.
From John Casteen IV’s For the Mountain Laurel
Image via twoblueday.files.wordpress.com
Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the not yet, and the not at all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists. It is real. It is possible. It is yours.
(Ayn Rand)
“I am happiest when I am alone.” Jackie O.
Failing and Flying
by Jack Gilbert
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
(via nikkigrits)
In which being there together is enough.
Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour by Wallace Stevens (photo via The Foamy Green on Flickr)
My Valentine’s Day gift finally arrived: Springsteen in concert! The drive up to Penn State was beautiful, a sign of things to come. He sang that song I love and made us jump out of our seats plenty of times. Beats candy hearts.
Confidential to Jason: I count my blessings that you’re mine for always.
Beats candy hearts.
