“Nothing else really counts at all”
“That’s the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they’re suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That’s why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells—he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster. So when you realise you’ve gone a few weeks and haven’t felt that awful struggle of your childish self — struggling to lift itself out of its inadequacy and incompetence — you’ll know you’ve gone some weeks without meeting new challenge, and without growing, and that you’ve gone some weeks towards losing touch with yourself. The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart, didn’t love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.”
Ted Hughes in Letters of Ted Hughes
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Somewhere between the thought and word
There’s a lot we leave behind
Somewhere between the meat and bone
There’s a lot we take for granted
“She took a knife for me.”
I was passing by and saw him. He was sitting where he had sat all day, doing his thing. He was too drunk to recognize me again. The last time he was like this, his heart was twisting again because of her – she was always a complication. I asked him how he was doing.
“She broke her back.” He said with despairing eyes.
“What? How?” I wasn’t expecting that.
“She fell 15 feet. Broke her back! She’s in the hospital now. I have to go to Austin and take care of her.” He started weeping. “Fuck! I was headed north! I was on my my way. Now I’ll have to push her around in a wheel chair. Probably for two months, or longer? While she’s screaming at me! Fuck! I was about leave! Going north, man!”
He was crying and cursing. I saw love in his eyes, and pain. He apologized for being a crying drunk and I told him to not be ridiculous.
“She took a knife for me.” He said.
“She what?” I didn’t think I heard him correctly.
“She took a knife for me. You don’t forget that. I took one for her too.” He lifted up his shirt and showed me a big, gnarled scar on his abdomen – where
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“El, you have a spark that lights my fires.”
What Makes The Heart?
Absence makes the heart grow fonder
Silence makes the heart go wander
Distance makes the heart grow harder
Laughter makes the heart grow stronger
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Everyone’s walking with a devil inside
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How much more can a heart break?
What’s next after a powder state?
Ground down to the silicate?
Too crushed to calculate
Overheard on Barr Trail 5
“I have a whole calendar of events for everybody. Like the incline. Or Pancake Rock.”
Overheard on Barr Trail 4
“I think you could be an Art Director and blah blah blah.”