good night

art flourishes from inside, it doesn't come from anywhere outside yourself. 

today I am a flower.

as Jung stated, trust that which gives you meaning and accept it as your guide.

you

You are

a minute

of quiet 

in a loud

shouting

world.

Gabriel Gadfly

poetic murmuration of starlings

A bird ballet from Neels CASTILLON on Vimeo.

Life is going to present to you a series of transformations. 

And the point of education should be to transform you. 

To teach you how to be transformed so you can ride the waves as they come.

 But today, the point of education is not education. It’s accreditation. 

The more accreditation you have, the more money you make. 

That’s the instrumental logic of neoliberalism. 

And this instrumental logic comes wrapped in an envelope of fear. 

And my Ivy League, my MIT students are the same. 

All I feel coming off of my students is fear. 

That if you slip up in school, if you get one bad grade, if you make one fucking mistake, 

the great train of wealth will leave you behind. 

And that’s the logic of accreditation. 

If you’re at Yale, you’re in the smartest 1% in the world. […]

 And the brightest students in the world are learning in fear. 

I feel it rolling off of you in waves. But you can’t learn when you’re afraid. 

You cannot be transformed when you are afraid.

Junot Díaz, speaking at Yale

'And the night smells like snow.

Walking home for a moment

you almost believe you could start again.

And an intense love rushes to your heart, and hope.

 It’s unendurable, unendurable.'

Brancusi in New York 1913-2013

http://www.paulkasmingallery.com

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, 

and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. 

Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things 

cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.

I don't want perfection, I want honesty. First to self, than to others.

-For the woman who stands alone-

(Liu Wen in Dark Mystery photographed by Ben Hassett for Vogue Germany, 

September 2012)

Sometimes it takes more courage not to let yourself see. 

Sometimes knowledge is damaging - not enlightenment but enleadenment. 

If one recognizes the difference and prepares oneself - it is extraordinarily brave. 

Because when it comes to certain human miseries, 

the only witnesses should be the pavement and maybe the trees.

Marisha Pessl

Not all toxic people are cruel and uncaring. 

Some of them love us dearly. Many of them have good intentions.

 Most are toxic to our being simply because their needs and way of existing in the world force us to compromise ourselves and our happiness. 

They aren’t inherently bad people, but they aren’t the right people for us. 

And as hard as it is, we have to let them go. 

Life is hard enough without being around people who bring you down, and as much as you care, you can’t destroy yourself for the sake of someone else.

 You have to make your well-being a priority. 

Whether that means breaking up with someone you care about, 

loving a family member from a distance, letting go of a friend, 

or removing yourself from a situation that feels painful 

— you have every right to leave and create a safer space for yourself.

Daniell Koepke

I encourage you to ride this strange wind that is blowing through you;

 to ride it to wherever it will carry you.

Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

lanscape via tumblr

seek the world out

'It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.

I want to repeat one word for you: 

Leave.

Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn’t it? 

So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. 

And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. 

Don’t worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. 

It is you who will have changed.'

photo by Blve di Piante

compassion hurts

Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, 

you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. 

Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. 

You must either learn to carry the universe or be crushed by it. 

You must grow strong enough to love the world, 

yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.

 Andrew Boyd 

photo- roberto kusterle

“Too much” is a social construct created to keep people experiencing themselves 

as small so that those around them who are stuck in fear can feel safe. 

And it is bullshit.

Nicole Taylor Linehan

Do not give yourself away. Never give yourself away. 
Observe the bloodshed but preserve your warmth. 
I want you to occasionally let go; 
but never surrender.

 Albert Camus

Normal is an illusion. 

What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.

 Morticia Addams

via theeldertree tumblr

Your muscles have a certain memory about them.
That’s why we can tie our own shoes or play piano without looking. 
But when you spend a long enough time with someone 
your bodies memorize each other you know?
The warmth of your back, the pace of your heartbeat, your tickly eyelashes.
And the way your fingers would curl in sequence when I used to play with your palm.
Another person is like moving to a new country where you don’t know the language.
It’s a scary thing.

 Josh Beattie

You are a fool to seek the kind of art you don’t like. You are a fool to read classics because you are told to and not because you like them. 

You are a fool to aspire to good taste if you haven’t naturally got it.

 Ezra Pound

by qi wei

I want to know

“I want you to tell me about every person you’ve ever been in love with. 

Tell me why you loved them, then tell me why they loved you. 

Tell me about a day in your life you didn’t think you’d live through. 

Tell me what the word “home” means to you and tell me 

in a way that I’ll know your mother’s name 

just by the way you describe your bed room when you were 8. 

See, I wanna know the first time you felt the weight of hate 

and if that day still trembles beneath your bones. 

Do you prefer to play in puddles of rain or bounce in the bellies of snow? 

And if you were to build a snowman, would you rip two branches from a tree to build your snowman arms? 

Or would you leave the snowman armless for the sake of being harmless to the tree?

 And if you would, would you notice how that tree weeps for you because your snowman has no arms to hug you every time you kiss him on the cheek? 

Do you kiss your friends on the cheek? 

Do you sleep beside them when they’re sad, even if it makes your lover mad? 

Do you think that anger is a sincere emotion 

or just the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain? 

See, I wanna know what you think of your first name. 

And if you often lie awake at night and imagine your mother’s joy 

when she spoke it for the very first time. 

I want you tell me all the ways you’ve been unkind. 

Tell me all the ways you’ve been cruel. 

See, I wanna know more than what you do for a living.

 I wanna know how much of your life you spend just giving. 

And if you love yourself enough to also receive sometimes. 

I wanna know if you bleed sometimes through other people’s wounds.”

 Andrea Gibson 

A wise physician said –

The best medicine for humans is LOVE.

Someone asked – what if it doesn’t work? 

He smiled and answered – 'Increase the dosage.'

When you know who you are, you don’t look to the world to tell you. 

Similarly, you don’t fear other people since they cannot take anything from you. 

Your awareness of yourself as you really are is your liberation.

 The Lazy Yogi 

The present changes the past. 

Looking back you do not find what you left behind.

 Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss 

the crazies' manifesto

via - http://www.rebellesociety.com/2013/09/04/the-crazies-manifesto/ 

  There’s a good kind of crazy…’ he insisted softly, reaching out to wrap his warm hand around mine. ‘It’s the kind that makes you think about things that make your head hurt, because not thinking about them is the coward’s way out. The kind that makes you touch people who bruise your soul, just because they need to be touched. This is the kind of crazy that lets you stare out into the darkness and rage at eternity, while it stares back at you, ready to swallow you whole. (Rachel Vincent)

Dear Crazy,

If you’ve ever been swallowed by the same eternity — posing as darkness, posing as undomesticated, unscripted, messy you… or if you’re just the foolish kind that jumps off cliffs with no parachute, even though it hurts, because… 

well, because it’s the right and truthful thing to do…

And if, say you’re somewhat lonely – though not alone, somewhat sad — though not broken, and somewhat tired — though wide awake and restless, please stand up.

Take a deep breath. Clear your throat. Look your Self in the eyes. 

Place your hand over your beaten heart. 

And let’s declare our independence from the norm.

1. I will remember what it was like to be born, and all the beautiful things I used to point at before I could speak them. I’ll reinvent curiosity and memorize delight.

 2. I will forgive, because no one survives. I’ll keep the bruises but get rid of the blue. I’ll kiss my Judas back. (I have my own crosses to carry).

 3. I will believe in ghosts and fairy tales. And elves and science fiction. I won’t declare a world impossible until I’ve tried to build it with my hands and when my pulse shakes like a leaf, I’ll say sure, let’s, why not.

 4. I will fight with the sword of my tongue, not my fists. I’ll also fight with my silence and lips. And turn all my blood into metaphor and blossom my way into fierce cherry trees.

 5. I will love like it’s the end of the world and the house is on fire. And if it’s not, I’ll bring the matches. I’ll love even when I don’t, or when I lose, or when love’s fleeting like sunsets or thick like bone or long or heavy or boring, like this Book of Life I’m never done reading and writing.

 6. I will live every day like it never happened before or like a tune to a song still unwritten. And I’ll record every hour on my face, and in this short-lived human dilemma, I’ll try to be in all my pictures, heartbeats, adventures and wrinkles.

 7. I will dream up my reality. I won’t be reasonable or realistic. I’ll write sideways on lined paper and I’ll always put heart over matter and imagination over knowledge.

 8. I will create a thousand planets from scratch, and then I’ll add them to the Milky Way so I can help expand the universe. I’ll make up a new language out of dust and come up with a hundred different ways to say your name.

 9. I will be honest rather than loyal. Because to get through the dark forests of life you need a lamp, not a shadow, and trust is not a blind soldier but the soul’s one and only chief of staff.

 10. I will be wild and untamed. I will believe in wolves. I’ll be insane, uncivilized, emotional and personal. And I will take the ring to Mordor even if I don’t know where Mordor is. I’ll be the child I left behind. I’ll be the door and key to me.

 11. And when I come to die, the only thing I will regret is leaving all my stories, unfinished, on your chest. But I should hope to live in such a way, that time would breathe me out and back into your lungs, until there’s no more me or you or words or why.

We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves 

to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection

 that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection.

 Love is not something we give or get; 

it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them – 

we can only love others as much as we love ourselves. 

Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots 

from which love grows. 

Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed and rare.

Brené Brown

I realize there’s something incredibly honest about trees in winter,

how they’re experts at letting things go.

Jeffrey McDaniel

lindsey ocker

You don’t need religion to have morals.

 If you can’t determine right from wrong then you lack empathy, not religion.

Umarmung (Étreinte), 1946 by Heinz Hajek-Halke

We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.

Carl Sagan

William Garnett , Snow Geese with reflection of the Sun over Buena Vista Lake , California 1953

I tell you loneliness is the thing to master. 

Courage and fear, love, death are only parts of it and can easily be ruled afterwards. 

If I make myself master my own loneliness there will be peace or safety: 

and perhaps these are the same.

Martha Gellhorn 

12 Obnoxiously Awful Social Norms

12 Obnoxiously Awful Social Norms | Thought Catalog

We were taught a very bad philosophy, a way of looking at the world 

that contradicts who we are. We were taught to think thoughts like competition,

 struggle, sickness, finite resources, limitation, guilt, bad, death, scarcity, and loss. 

We were taught that things like grades, being good enough, money, 

and doing things the right way, are more important than love. 

We were taught that we’re separate from other people,

 that we have to compete to get a head, that we’re not quite good enough the way we are. We were taught to see the world the way that others had come to see it.

 Love is what we were born with. 

Fear is what we learned here. 

The spiritual journey is the relinquishment, or unlearning, 

of fear and the acceptance of love back into our hearts.

 Love is the essential existential fact. It is our ultimate reality and our purpose on earth. 

To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, 

is the meaning of life.

 From ‘A Return to Love’ ~ Marianne Williamson