hmmm ...

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If the slayer thinks he kills and the slayed thinks he dies, both are wrong.
The eternal in man cannot kill. The eternal in man cannot die.

–The Upanishads

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subcognition
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meeting

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... we die to each other daily. 

What we know of other people is only our memory 

of the moments during which we knew them. 

And they have changed since then. 

To pretend that they and we are the same is a 

useful and convenient social convention 

which must sometimes be broken. 

We must also remember that at every meeting 

we are meeting a stranger.

–T. S. Eliot
(The Cocktail Party, excerpt)

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she

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I think the dead are tender. Shall we kiss? --

My lady laughs, delighting in what is.

If she but sighs, a bird puts out its tongue.

She makes space lonely with a lovely song.

She lilts a low soft language, and I hear

Down long sea-chambers of the inner ear.

We sing together; we sing mouth to mouth.

The garden is a river flowing south.

She cries out loud the soul's own secret joy;

She dances, and the ground bears her away.

She knows the speech of light, and makes it plain

A lively thing can come to life again.

I feel her presence in the common day,

In that slow dark that widens every eye.

She moves as water moves, and comes to me,

Stayed by what was, and pulled by what would be.


–Theodore Roethke

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Kierkegaard Proposes, excerpt

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The older Kierkegaard has entered his front door and is creakily attempting to lock himself in when it comes over him all at once, one last great wave of gloomy illumination: what if God’s greatest blessing is to render a person’s existence so intolerable, so completely unendurable that the next time he [or she] happens to grope for the familiar fear of dying, he [or she] discovers it is gone, is nowhere to be found, has in fact been replaced by a simple weightless sense of well-being and peace he (or she) had long forgotten he (or she) was capable of feeling.

–Franz Wright

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Beannacht

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John O'Donohue
David Whyte
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regeneration

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Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem of the human soul, for those whose cast of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.

–Pat Barker
Regeneration

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saturnrising
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homecoming

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Imagine the time the particle you are
returns where it came from!

The family darling comes home. Wine
without being contained in cups,
is handed around.

A red glint appears in a granite outcrop,
and suddenly the whole cliff turns to ruby.


–Rumi

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