Post poems, quotes, artful images, or songs that I want everyone to know about, or have had some significant meaning to me

pg 270-271

Most parents want their kids to lead a better life, growing up with more advantages and opportunities than they had. I was born into a family that seemed to have everything. But I hope if I’ve made anything clear in this book, it’s that perception and reality aren’t always the same. I am who I am because of and in spite of all of those impressions. We are not defined by the family into which we’re born, but the one we choose and create. We are not born, we become.

My whole life I wanted to be normal. Everybody knows there’s no such thing as normal. There is no black-and-white definition of normal. Normal is subjective. There’s only a messy, inconsistent, silly, hopeful version of how we feel most at home in our own lives. But when I think about what I have now, what I strived to reach my whole life, it’s not the biggest or best or easiest or prettiest or most anything. It’s not the Manor or the poorhouse. It’s not superstardom or unemployment. It’s family and love and safety. It’s bravery and hope. It’s work and laughter and imperfection. It’s my normal.

They (fairy tales) make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.
-G.K. Chesterton, from Orthodoxy

It was you, it was you, who said that dreams come true
And it was you, it was you, who said that mine would, too
And it was you who said that all I had to do was to believe
But when your ivory towers tumbled down, they tumbled down on me.
-Fred Eaglesmith from “It Was You”

It’s the family you choose that counts.
-Andrew Vachss

pg. 21
The forest seems familiar to me right away, but it takes me a moment to realize why. I stand there, absorbed by the towering trees that surround me on all sides, trees bigger and stranger than they have any right to be. There’s next to no undergrowth, just these behemoths, their trunks so wide that five of me couldn’t touch hands around them. Light pours down from the dense canopy above in golden shafts and that’s when I know where I am. The cathedral effect reminds me of what I call the place that Sophie goes traveling to at night.
I’m back in the dreamlands again. The cathedral world.
It’s not the city of Mabon that Sophie founded here, but a magic place all the same. It would have to be, wouldn’t it, with trees like this. They must be close cousins of what Jack Daw used to call the forever trees, the giant growth that made up the first forest when the world was born.

pg. 31
I’m an onion girl, like in that song Holly Cole sings. And what I’m more afraid of is that if you peel back enough layers, there won’t be anything left of me at all. Everyone’ll know who I really am. The Broken Girl. The Hollow Girl.
Maybe the stories can fill me up.
So.
Once upon a time…
I try to move my right hand again. It’s like it doesn’t exist.
I can’t imagine a life in which I can’t paint and draw.
Once upon a time…
I’m in the fairy tale where the girl gets hit by a car and then lies in the ICU ward of the hospital, waiting to die. Or at the very least, life as she knew it is over and everything is forever changed.
I’m not sure I want to know how the story ends.
Once upon a time…

pg. 73
There’s magic in this world, too, I remind myself. I’ve seen faerie girls who call themselves gemmin, living in an abandoned car in the Tombs. I’ve been to an underground kingdom of goblinlike creatures called skookin that exists beneath the city. I’ve met crow girls who can shift from one shape to another.
And even my friends aren’t immune. Sophie has faerie blood. Geordie once dated a woman that he lost to the past, while the Kelledys—Cerin and Meran-came here out of the past. Sue had her dog talk to her one Christmas eve. Christy and the professor have had more magical encounters than I’ve got fingers and toes. And Wendy…Wendy grew a Magical Tree of Tales from an acorn one winter and fed it on stories. Come spring she had to move it from the pot in her house to Fitzhenry Park where it’s this huge spreading oak now. But she still feeds it stories.

pg. 79
It hurts because it reminds me of all the other kids who’ve had that kind of experience and worse. Who are still having it today, right now, right at this moment. Children are the brightest treasures we bring forth into the world, but too large a percentage of the population continues to treat them as inconveniences and nuisances, when they’re not treating them as possessions or toys.
And people wonder why I prefer drifting off to the dreamlands to being in this world.
I sigh. This is depressing me. I should just go to sleep and cross over into the cathedral world. But I’m beginning to recognize that Joe’s right. My crossing over as much as I am isn’t to give myself some breathing space. It’s escape, pure and simple. Now that I can do it, I could just pack up and go there forever. Let the world carry on without me.

pg. 223
Jilly was forever talking about how she’d like to be magic. To live inside a story, instead of always standing on the outside of it. To know what magical beings did when they were just hanging out-and did they even hang out? What would it be like to be a part of that world?

pg. 237
There’s nothing worse than the things we leave undone. No matter how long ago it was we deserted those obligations, they find ways to return, again and again, nagging at us like intermittent toothaches, fermenting a bitter and depressing brew in the shadows of our minds that’s one part guilt, one part shame. They sour pleasures and sow a discontent inside us that seems so far removed from its true source, we end up finding other things to blame, creating new problems to sneak upon the old. And so we end up with this midden in our heads, hot coals smoldering deep inside the refuse, invisible, but no less dangerous for that. At any moment they could burst into flame, the subsequent conflagration utterly consuming the safe little world we’ve been pretending to live in for all this time.
And all our kindnesses would come undone…

pg. 446
Don’t matter where I went, if’n I was alone or in a crowd. I always knew I was carrying around some kinda black mark on my soul. I done so many shitty things in my life it couldn’t be no other way.
I don’t feel forgiven—that’d be asking too much of anybody. But I do feel forgotten. Like the world’s going on and nobody’s thinking ‘bout me, for good or bad. I’m just off their radar and I like it.

pg. 270-271

Find your place. Be happy with what you have. Treat everyone well. Live a good life. It isn’t about material things; it’s about love. And you can never anticipate love.

I learned those things from Dewey, of course, but as always, those answers seem too easy. All answers; except that I loved Dewey with all my heart and he loved me in the same way, seemed too easy. But let me try.

When I was three years old, Dad owned a John Deere tractor. The tractor had a cultivator on the front, which is a long row of shovel-like blades, six on each side. The blades are raised a few inches off the dirt; you drive the handle forward to put them in the ground, where they chop into the soil, tossing fresh dirt against the corn rows. I was playing in the mud by the front wheel of the tractor one day when Mom’s brother came out after lunch, threw the clutch, and started driving. Dad saw what happened and started running, but Mom’s brother couldn’t hear him The wheel knocked me down and shoved me into the blades. I was pushed along by the blades, passed from one to the other, until Mom’s brother turned the wheel and the inside blade tossed me through the middle chute and left me lying facedown behind the tractor. Dad scooped me up in one motion and ran me back to the porch. He looked me over in amazement, then held me in his arms for the rest of the day, rocking back and forth in our old rocking chair, crying on my shoulder and telling me, “You’re all right, you’re all right, everything is all right.”

Eventually I looked at him and said, “I cut my finger.” I showed him the blood. I was bruised, but otherwise, that tiny cut was the only mark.

That’s life. We all go through the tractor blades every now and then. We all get bruised, and we all get ut. Sometimes the blades cut deep. The lucky ones come through with a few scratches, a little blood, but even that isn’t the most important thing. The most important thing is having someone there to scoop you up, to hold you tight, and to tell you everything is all right.

For years, I thought I had done that for Dewey. I thought that was my story to tell. And I had done that. When Dewey was hurt, cold, and crying, I was there. I held him. I made sure everything was all right.

But that’s only a sliver of the truth. The real truth is that for all those years, on the hard days, the good days, and all the unremembered days that make up the pages of the real book of our lives, Dewey was holding me.

He’s still holding me now. So thank you, Dewey. Thank you. Wherever you are.

It was basically a story of those stuck in a place in their lives trying to decide what to do next. I liked it and some of the story really struck a vibe with me.

-pg. 196-197
“You’re afraid to leave, aren’t you?” she said. “It happened and you’re afraid it’s going to happen again if you do…anything.”

“I’m staying still. There’s nothing wrong with that,” he finally said.

Josey felt strange, like there was a shifting in the universe somewhere. She suddenly felt like there wasn’t more going out of her than there was coming in anymore. She followed the light shining on him through the snow-laden trees, across the sky and to the moon. She stared at it as if seeing it for the first time. The wonder, the mystery, the cool white brightness of it.
It took her breath away.

-pg. 218
Della Lee set aside the collage and put her arms out wide in the closet. “Nothing is real in here. Your life is outside. It’s waiting for you.”

-pg. 229
“It was the best first kiss in the history of first kisses. It was as sweet as sugar. And it was warm, as warm as pie. The whole world opened up and I fell inside. I didn’t know where I was, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care because the only person who mattered was there with me.”

-pg. 257
She found herself nuzzling him, hiding her face in his neck. She would always be desperate about him. Even now, breathing the scent of his skin, she could feel it. But she wasn’t as disoriented as she used to be. She didn’t feel that panic. She felt a strange sort of grounding, like she knew she wasn’t going to lose her way anymore.

The Dewey Decimal System of Love by Josephine Carr

-pg. 106-107
One of those moments packs a million moments into one, as if your entire childhood, all the bad moves and good moves of your life, every blessed part of you, suddenly coalesces into a sphere of incredible promise and beauty. It’s a moment where everything and anything becomes possible, when you know that you can achieve whatever you want. Bliss bubbled in my blood even while I shook my head at my own blindness: it was all in the wanting.

-pg. 186
He needed me. For the first time in my life, I was thinking about someone else.

Not, I need him.

He needs me.

-pg. 230
Why is it in life that if you try to change and go in a different direction, you get hit by the very thing you were trying got change in the first place? It makes no sense whatsoever, yet it happens all the time.

www.break.com/usercontent/2009/2/Awesome-Guitar-Edit-663652.html

Enjoy!

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.”

-Gilda Radner

It is a movie that really to me speaks of the zest for life, how you live it and what you choose to do it. It’s love and absurdity and just fabulousness.

This is one of my favorite quotes from the movie:

Maude: A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really. They’re just backing away from life. Reach out. Take a chance. Get hurt even. But play as well as you can. Go team, go! Give me an L. Give me an I. Give me a V. Give me an E. L-I-V-E. LIVE! Otherwise, you got nothing to talk about in the locker room.

Here are some other gems from the movie:

Harold: What were you fighting for?
Maude: Oh, big issues. Liberty. Rights. Justice. Kings died, kingdoms fell. I don’t regret the kingdoms – what sense in borders and nations and patriotism? But I miss the kings.

The Ice Queen. I love how she shapes various parts of the book. Very enjoyable and plenty to think about.

pg. 3

Be careful what you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes are brutal, unforgiving things. They burn your tongue the moment they’re spoken and you can never take them back. They bruise and bake and come back to haunt you. I’ve made far too many wishes in my lifetime, the first when I was eight years old. Not the sort of wish for ice cream or a party dress or long blonde hair; no. The other sort, the kind that rattles your bones, then sits in the back of your throat, a greedy red toad that chokes you until you say it aloud. The kind that could change your life in an instant, before you have time to wish you could take it back.

pg. 32

What’s the difference between lightning and magic? is a joke common among meterologists.
Magic makes sense. Lightning does not, even to the experts. Lightning is random, unpredictable. It can be as small as a bean or as large as a house. Noisy or silent, ashy or clear. It can be any color-red or white, blue or smoky black-and it seems to have a mind of its own. Lightning floats down chimneys and enters closed windows, slipping right through the molecules that make up glass. Lightning has its own agenda, most experts say; it can easily cause damage despite all safety efforts. Hide, but it may find you. Plan, but your plan may easily become undone.

pg. 63

But the logic of fairy tales was that there was no logic; bad things happened to the innocent, children were set out in the woods by their parents, fear walked hand in hand with experience, a wish spoken aloud could make it so.

pg. 66
What is the difference between love and obsession? Didn’t both makeyou stay up all night, wandering the streets, a victim of your own imagination, your own heartbeat? Didnt’ you fall into both, headfirst into quicksand? Wasn’t every man in love a fool and every woman a slave?
Love was like rain: it turned to ice, or it disappeared. Now you saw it, now you couldn’t find it no matter how hard you might search. Love evaporated; obsession was realer; it hurt, like a pin in your bottom, a stone in your shoe. It didn’t go away in the blink of an eye. A morning phone call filled with regret. A letter that said, Dear you, good-bye from me. Obsession tasted like something familiar. Something you’d known your whole life. It settled and lurked; it stayed with you.

pg. 101
The man I thought I knew could easily be a figment of my imagination, a bear, a snake, a spiny toad. The more I thouht about it, the more I wondered. Was it possible to know anyone, truly? Could knowledge hurt, pierce your heart, break your bones?

pg. 105
People hide their truest natures. I understood that; I even applauded it. What sort of world would it be if people bled all over the sidewalks, if they wept under trees, smacked whomever they despised, kissed strangers, revealed themselves? Keep a cloak, that was fine, the thing to do; present a disguise, the outside you, the one you want people to believe.

pg. 107
The truth was, I didn’t want to interfere. Why should it be up to me to touch anyone’s life, guide someone right rather than left, off the road instead of on? Get involved and you make mistakes. Inevitable. Who knows where your advice, interest, love, might lead? Start and it might be impossible to stop.
Who was he really? That was the question. What did it mean to have a lover who would embrace you only in the dark? Who wanted to conceal not only his deepest self but everything on the surface? Nothing good, that was certain; nothing you could trust. Something unexpected that was sure to bite you and bring you down. How easy it would be undone by some things. By these things. Red pearls. Truth. What you don’t want to know, need to know, have to keep in the palm of your hand. Grab it, the stinging nettle, the wasp, the shard of glass. Do it. Then live with the consequences.

pg. 154
And then I realized what love did. It changed your whole world. Even when you didn’t want it to.

pg. 162
Feel lucky for what you have when you have it. Isn’t that the point? Happily ever after doesn’t mean happily forever. The ever after, what precisely was that? Your dreams, your life, your death, your everything. Was it the blank space that went on without us? The forever after we were gone?
So now. So here. So him. The heat, the black night, the stars, the moment, the ever after floating inside of us.

pg. 164
I just let go. I gave up, gave in: I stopped fighting being alive.
We were a human example of chaos theory, thrown together by circumstance. We didn’t belong together, I knew that. But for one night we were perfect.
He looked at me when I came into the room. I could tell from his expression that there was always a price to apy. The ruin. The sorrow. The ever after.
I looked at his mouth, the bones of his face, his ashy eyes, his wide hands, and the way his veins roped through his arms. Blue and red. Alive. I looked hard. I wanted to remember that he’d wanted me once. I put this moment into the ever after, the core of everything I’d ever known.
He’d cut all the oranges I’d picked in half. The ones he’d cut in half were black in the center. All that sweet red fruit that tasted like a surprise, that was gone. The oranges were rotting from the inside out. Id’ heard about such occurrences. A tree that had been hit would stand for months and no one would guess it was dying at its center until it fell to the ground. Effects took time; you looked away, you thought you were safe, then they happened. Before you knew it, everything had changed.
The story is always about searching for the truth, no matter what it might bring. Even when nothing was what it appeared to be, when everything was hidden, there was a center not even I could run from: who I truly was, what I felt, what I was deep inside.

pg. 198
“What’s the best way to die?” “Living.”

pg. 211
This is what I know, the one and only thing. The best way to die is while you’re living, even here in New Jersey. Even for someone like me. You’d laugh to know how long it’s taken me to figure that out, when all I had to do was cross over the mountains. When I walk to my car in the parking lot on winter nights, I have often noticed bats, a black cloud in the darkening sky. They bring me comfort. They make me feel you’re not so far away. To think, I used to be afraid. I used to run and hide. Now I stand and look upward. I don’t mind what the weather is; the cold has never bothered me. I hope what I’m seeing is the ever after. I hope it’s you.

with this long quote:

So that’s it, this is the end of my story, well one of my stories. The story of how I settled down, how I met my wife, how I learned that sometimes what seem to be answers are really questions in disguise. The machine’s list taught me the who, the what, the where and the when is never as important as the why. The why isn’t that important either. It really is all a game, sometimes the best thing you can do is press the reset button. For the first time in my life, I am, I dare not add an adjective. Mature, content, happy, I am is good enough for now. Life is alot like death it happens to everyone whether they like it or not. For me though, honestly, who gives a fuck?

Dogs and Goddesses by Jennifer Crusie, Anne Stuart, and Lani Diane Rich

pg. 164-166

The colors were luscious when she opened the cans. The first one was a rich honey yellow; the second, a deep cinnamon, the third, the blue of the night sky. “Blue is for my bedroom.”

She dips the brush into the opened paint can, watching the paint run off, the beauty of it as it looped back into the can made her breathe in a deeper rhythm, like music starting in her head, an insistent beat that tripped across her nerves. She imagined someone’s hands sliding across her skin, the beat in her blood solid and strong. The paint was so there, in that moment, real, and she straightened and slashed the bright brush across the stone gray on the wall, and the amber leapt out at her, making her draw in her breath, and she said, “Yes,” and dipped the brush in and slashed again, and then again, splashing the light to obliterate the dark, gasping with the color as the heat rose, the contrast and the slide making her breathe harder as she stroked away the gray, painting faster, watching the room begin to glow, getting dizzier and dizzier as the beat began to coil tight within her.

(She finishes painting with that color and opens up red, the brilliant red-orange paint)

The color struck her hard, glowing on the brush, and she splashed it over the gray, dripping and splattering. And when it was done, when the color was huge, glowering at her, overpowering, she picked up the yellow brush again and slashed the amber paint into the red, once, yes, twice, yes, again and again until she leaned on the table, let her head fall back, breathed in deep, felt all the tension twisitng deep inside her let go.

She reached for the finish, falling into the color, bringing it all back, the heat and the joy rising so that she lifted her arms above her head, stretching her body as everything spiraled down and hit low, aqnd then she grabbed onto the table as the spasms tooks her, felt them like bright slashes against the stone inside her, her breath coming “oh, oh, oh” as all that heat splattered against her cold logic and she came her brains out for the first time in her life.