Tis a fearful/terrible thing to love what death can touch.
-Yehuda Halevi
It is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch.
-Donna Tartt
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Forwarded from The Open journal
being the person who remembers everything creates an exhaustion that’s hard to explain to people who’ve never carried that role. the exhaustion is cause not just because of having a good memory or general organisation in life but it tends to leek into your functioning as the failsafe system for multiple people’s lives while personal needs get perpetually deferred because someone has to make sure the important things actually happen. birthdays get remembered, appointments get scheduled, plans get followed through on, details get tracked, promises get kept—all of this runs through one person’s mental infrastructure while everyone else gets to be spontaneous and forgetful and generally unburdened by the anxiety that things might fall apart if someone isn’t paying attention.
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Forwarded from The Open journal
what makes chronic responsibility so depleting is that it operates subtly until something goes wrong. when everything runs smoothly, the work of making it run smoothly disappears into the background and looks like things just naturally working out rather than like the result of constant vigilance and management. nobody notices your mental labor of tracking everyone’s schedules or the emotional work of anticipating needs before they become problems or the strategic planning required to prevent the small disasters that would happen if someone wasn’t thinking three steps ahead. the responsibility only becomes visible through its absence, which means the chronically responsible person is essentially working a second unpaid job that only gets acknowledged when they stop doing it and everything immediately starts falling apart.
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Amharic book titles are getting out of hand. I feel like I'm casting spells.
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For years my heart inquired of me by Hafez
For years my heart inquired of me
Where Jamshid's sacred cup might be,
And what was in its own possession
It asked from strangers, constantly;
Begging the pearl that's slipped its shell
From lost souls wandering by the sea.
Last night I took my troubles to The Magian sage whose keen eyes see
A hundred answers in the wine
Whose cup he, laughing, showed to me.
I questioned him, "When was this cup
That shows the world's reality
Handed to you?" He said, "The day
Heaven's vault of lapis lazuli
Was raised, and marvelous things took place
By Intellect's divine decree,
And Moses' miracles were made
And Sameri's apostasy."
He added then, "That friend they hanged
High on the looming gallows tree—
His sin was that he spoke of things
Which should be pondered secretly,
The page of truth his heart enclosed
Was annotated publicly.
But if the Holy Ghost once more
Should lend his aid to us we'd see
Others perform what Jesus did
Since in his heartsick anguish he
Was unaware that God was there
And called His name out ceaselessly."
I asked him next, "And beauties' curls
That tumble down so sinuously,
What is their meaning? Whence do they come?"
"Hafez," the sage replied to me,
"It's your distracted, lovelorn heart
That asks these questions constantly.
For years my heart inquired of me
Where Jamshid's sacred cup might be,
And what was in its own possession
It asked from strangers, constantly;
Begging the pearl that's slipped its shell
From lost souls wandering by the sea.
Last night I took my troubles to The Magian sage whose keen eyes see
A hundred answers in the wine
Whose cup he, laughing, showed to me.
I questioned him, "When was this cup
That shows the world's reality
Handed to you?" He said, "The day
Heaven's vault of lapis lazuli
Was raised, and marvelous things took place
By Intellect's divine decree,
And Moses' miracles were made
And Sameri's apostasy."
He added then, "That friend they hanged
High on the looming gallows tree—
His sin was that he spoke of things
Which should be pondered secretly,
The page of truth his heart enclosed
Was annotated publicly.
But if the Holy Ghost once more
Should lend his aid to us we'd see
Others perform what Jesus did
Since in his heartsick anguish he
Was unaware that God was there
And called His name out ceaselessly."
I asked him next, "And beauties' curls
That tumble down so sinuously,
What is their meaning? Whence do they come?"
"Hafez," the sage replied to me,
"It's your distracted, lovelorn heart
That asks these questions constantly.
We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does anyone's life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness.
Movie- Shall We Dance
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Book Buff💪
We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does anyone's life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things...…
Your perfect messy bun, your moments of tenderness, how you look up at the sky and know, just know, and that conspiratorial smile up at God, the high notes you hit and the groovy move you pull in the kitchen, the little things you forgive the world for...so much goes unwitnessed.
We want the worst of us known too. To see if we could be loved nonetheless. Misguided attempts to replicate the love of God.
We want the worst of us known too. To see if we could be loved nonetheless. Misguided attempts to replicate the love of God.
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