letter to ________ {mary oliver}

You have broken my heart.

Just as well. Now

I am learning to rise

above all that, learning

the thin life, waking up

simply to praise

everything in this world that is

strong and beautiful

always---the trees, the rocks,

the fields, the news

from heaven, the laughter

that comes back

all the same. Just as well. Time

to read books, rake the lawn

in peace, sweep the floor, scour

the faces of pans,

anything. And I have been so

diligent it is almost

over, I am growing myself

as strong as rock, as a tree

which, if I put my arms around it, it does not

lean away. It is a

wonderful life. Comfortable.

I read the papers. Maybe

I will go on a cruise, maybe I will

cross the entire ocean, more than once.

Whatever you think, I have scarcely

thought of you. Whatever you imagine.

it never really happened. Only a few

evenings of nonsense. Whatever you believe--

dear one, dear one--

do not believe this letter.

Date a girl who reads {Rosemarie Urquico}

Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

{new favourite quote}

“I want to be a character, I don’t want to be defined, I want to change, everyday…I want to be silly, I want to be wonderful, I want to prance instead of walk, skip instead of run, I want flowers, lots of flowers, I want to write until the words mean nothing to others, but everything to me. I want to be enigmatic and magnificent. I want my aura to be gold; I want to wake up with the sun and with a smile…I want books, lots and lots of books, I want to read all day, completely let go, let my imagination run wild. I want to grasp life with both hands and not let go, I want to be magical and pretty…I want to watch Breakfast At Tiffany’s until I know every line. I want to be compassionate and considerate, and I want to make other people smile. I want to make them proud.”

~Victoria Hart

The Encyclopedia of the Exquisite

A new sunbeam has arrived in my life in the form of Jessica Kerwin Jenkins' book "The Encyclopedia of the Exquisite." This book gives me the same sort of thrill that a collection of leather bound books or midsummer morning sunlight gives me. It's pure happiness wrapped up in a red hardback with gold gilt tooling about the cover.

In alphabetical order it explores the histories of lovely, frankly inconsequential, things that make life twelve times better. Beginning with "aerostation" and ending with "yes," Ms. Jenkins explores the exquisite. As explained in the introduction "the word exquisite comes from the Latin verb exquirere, to search out, or to seek. It means uncommon delicacies, carefully selected, and the kind of beauty that can "excite intense delight or admiration." A definition that is exquisite in and off itself.

The Encyclopedia sits beside my bed and even when I don't have the time to read it, the mere sight makes me happy.

{love by dickinson}

"I had no time to hate, because

the grave would hinder me.

And life was not so ample I

could finish enmity.

Nor had I time to love; but since

some industry must be,

the little toil of love, I thought

was large enough for me."

{photography via kiss the groom}

{xxii by emily dickinson via bartleby}