Vocation

“My dear,
Find what you love and let it kill you.
Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.
Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.
For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.
~ Falsely yours”

― Charles Bukowski

The Making of "Born into Brothels" a Documentary by Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman

On Woe

"There is wisdom that is woe," wrote Melville of Ecclesiastes, "but there is woe that is madness."

Quote by Herman Melville in Moby Dick, quoted in Half-Life: Reflections from Jerusalem on a Broken Neck, by Joshua Prager.

I love this song!

Frozen

Love is a bird, she needs to fly

Let all the hurt inside of you die

You're frozen

When your heart's not open

Grace

“Thus Gotama [Buddha] walked toward the town to gather alms, and the two samanas recognized him solely by the perfection of his repose, by the calmness of his figure, in which there was no trace of seeking, desiring, imitating, or striving, only light and peace.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Examined reflections in all their intricacies

Excerpt from Zinky Boys

Sometimes I think we don't need our eyes -- after all, you close them anyhow when the most important things are going on, and when you're feeling really good. A painter needs his eyes because that's the way he earns his living, but I've learnt to live without them. I sense my world now, and words mean more to me than they do to you sighted people.

Excerpt from page 172, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from a Forgotten War, by Svetlana Alexievich

Powerful story

Strength of a Woman

Svetlana Alexievich - Writers in Motion

Unseen Restraints

I have the whole Table of Elements in my body. I'm still wracked by malaria. Not long ago I had a few teeth pulled, one after the other, and in my pain and shock I began to talk. The dentist, a woman, looked at me almost in disgust: "A mouth full of blood, and he wants to talk ..." At that moment I realized I would never be able to talk honestly about anything again. Everyone thinks of us like that: mouths full of blood, and we want to talk.

-- "Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from a Forgotten War" by Svetlana Alexievich, page 10

Nobel Lecture by Toni Morrison

... 

But try. For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief s wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul. You, old woman, blessed with blindness, can speak the language that tells us what only language can: how to see without pictures. Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.

... 

Nobel Lecture by Toni Morrison - Media Player at Nobelprize.org

Realizations in Hindsight

...

Let me change the mood with a few sweet words that will, I hope, serve as well as that music. As you know, the question we writers are asked most often, the favourite question, is; why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write! I write because I can't do normal work like other people. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at all of you, angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can only partake in real life by changing it. I write because I want others, all of us, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at all of you, so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page, I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all of life's beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story, but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but – just as in a dream – I can't quite get there. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.

... 

Excerpt from "Orhan Pamuk - Nobel Lecture: My Father´s Suitcase". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 14 May 2016.

For the Love of Life

 “Everyone in this room is going to be gone pretty quickly — and we will have either made something or not made something. The artists that inspire me are the ones that I look at and go, ‘Oh my god — you didn’t have to go there. It would’v been safer not to — but, for whatever reason, you did.’ And every time death happens, I’m reminded that it’s stupid to be safe… Usually, whatever that is — wherever you don’t want to go, whatever that risk is, wherever the unsafe place is — that really is the gift that you have to give.”

--Amanda Palmer

For the Love of Reading

Dream Big, No Excuses

Loss and Gain

“Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth.”

                           from the poem “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye

Events in Time & Space

“Time exists in order that it doesn’t happen all at once… space exists so that it doesn’t all happen to you.”

At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches

By Susan Sontag

Life

Let everything happen to you.
Beauty and terror.
Just keep going.
No feeling is final .

~Rainer Maria Rilke