But When Kafka Said Even In My Strong Times I Wasn't Very Strong It Broke Something In Me.

from my normal girl board on pinterest :)

A clean mind. An anonymous fear submitted to Deep Dark Fears - thanks!

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“I want you to do this with me for one month. One month. Write 10 observations a week and by the end of four weeks, you will have an answer. Because when someone writes about the rustic gutter and the water pouring through it onto the muddy grass, the real pours into the room. And it’s thrilling. We’re all enlivened by it. We don’t have to find more than the rustic gutter and the muddy grass and the pouring cold water.”

— Marie Howe, Boston University’s 2016 Theopoetics Conference  (via mothersofmyheart)

“I want to tell her that I want so badly to be a part of this world, to stand in it, but every hand I touch withholds warmth. The world gathers everywhere beyond me.”

— Victoria Chang, from “Dear Father”, Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief (via voirlvmer)

Stutz (2022)

Richard Hugo, Essay on Poetic Theory: The Triggering Town

“If you’re reading this, if there’s air in your lungs on this November day, then there is still hope for you. Your story is still going. And maybe some things are true for all of us. Perhaps we all relate to pain. Perhaps we all relate to fear and loss and questions. And perhaps we all deserve to be honest, all deserve whatever help we need. Our stories are all so many things: Heavy and light. Beautiful and difficult. Hopeful and uncertain. But our stories aren’t finished yet. There is still time, for things to heal and change and grow. There is still time to be surprised. We are still going, you and I. We are stories still going.”

— Jamie Tworkowski

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you think. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, difficult as it is...

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”

~ Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Ta-Nehisi Coates, from Between the World and Me

Text ID: The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right to declare your own curiosities and follow them through all manner of books. I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people's interests. The library was open, unending, free.

I have to remember how much it hurt. I can't make that same mistake again.