have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language

“Look how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.”
- Anne Frank

Excerpts from the lyrics of Bless This Mess – David Bazan
Complete Lyrics

God bless the man who stumbles
God bless the man who falls
God bless the man who yields to temptation

God bless the woman who suffers
God bless the woman who weeps
God bless the children trying her patience

...

God bless the house divided
God bless the weeds in the wheat
God bless the lamp lit under a bushel

...

God bless the man at the crossroads
God bless the woman who still can´t sleep
God bless the history that doesn´t repeat.

My Thoughts
When I heard this song on my drive home in the rain, I felt very centered by the words. Bazan is requesting blessings for those who may need it the most, and it’s song somewhat ironically from the point of view of man who wants to quit drinking but needs another drink before he can face the facts.

I felt as though some of these lyrics were speaking directly to me. For the last few weeks, I haven’t made it to my church for a service and I’ve felt distant from my spirituality during some of my struggles, and I needed a blessing and it came from the radio, of all places.

“She set aside time every day for the webcam at Kotka. She didn’t know the meaning of this feed but took it as an act of floating poetry. It was best in the dead times. It emptied her mind and made her feel the deep silence of other places, the mystery of seeing over the world to a place stripped of everything but a road that approaches and recedes, both realities occurring at once, and the number changed in the digital display with an odd and hollow urgency, the seconds advancing toward the minute, the minutes climbing hourward, and she sat and watched, waiting for a car to take fleeting shape on the roadway.”

—Don DeLillo, The Body Artist, 2001, pp. 38-39

Thank you for this today, 43T random quote picker – your automated system helped inspired me even more by reminding me that:

“There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.”
- Martha Graham

Stop. Just stop it. Today is the day. The moment is this one. Ignore the noise and people around you. Ignore the phone. Ignore black coffee. Ignore the clock.

The time to start being the person you always wanted to be is right now.

- Sex & The City, HBO TV series

I know… not exactly high brow poetry, but I’m at a point in my life where I need to be reminded this moment and then the next is one where I make decisions that affect the rest of my life. I’ve been pretending that I don’t care, that the quick fix of fast food is more gratifying, but it’s obviously not. Now, I just need to keep that present at all times.

I’m searching again, diving deep in some moments, feeling hopelessly (and sometimes oddly) hopefully lost – Dark the Star by Susan Stewart speaks to me in a way that I can barely describe. Here’s a brief excerpt, which a meaningful and yet cryptic end to the poem:

There’s no technique in the grass.
There’s no technique in the rose.

This weekend, I’ve been tossed amoungst the waves of sorrow and angst. Each hour has been a challenges and I keep making simple mistakes…
my heart is nowhere to be found
my partner loves me deeply but can’t even reach me at some moments
sorrow is swallowing all my passion

Once, a friend found a Roethke poem that captures my nature quite well:
Oh, when she was sad, she cast herself down into such a pure depth,
Even a father could not find her:
Scraping her cheek against straw,
Stirring the clearest water.

The full poem, Elegy for Jane, is here – http://gawow.com/roethke/poems/98.html

This is a beautiful goal to have in one’s heart. I resolved to make this part of my daily quest the moment I read it. I have a friend that’s always telling me the questions are more important than the answers. That and …. PASSION!!!

I just happened upon my post from a month ago, and it seems so far away. I’m still struggling with so much, and yet I am making huge steps of accomplishment with my life-long question of health. Today, the scale read something new to me. Spoke of refinding healthy patterns for eating, exercising and destressing. I am in a good place.

ever since i finished the fall semester, i’ve had great difficulty motivating myself. This includes both those things that I “should” do like clean the apartment, shop for presents, wrap the presents and send out holiday cards. I’m also feeling less motivated regarding enjoyable projects and goals, like seeing friends and creating crafty projects.

Yesterday, my boyfriend (very lovingly) expressed concern about my lack of resilience. I’m beginning to wonder if I might be in a low. It has been at least a year since my last deep low… not long enough to be any sort of depression but a short, intense period of sadness and inertia.

So my first concern is how to be more resilent – like a tree that withstand the storms and winters, by bending instead of breaking. But… I don’t know how to change my current form.