The Yellow Wallpaper

"The paint and paper look as if a boys' school had used it. It is stripped off--the paper--in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life.

One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.

It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide--plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.

The color is repelllent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight."

-Charlotte Perkins Gilman

see it

In the dead of night, nightwatcher's drums resound
I awake and find myself lonely in the vast world
After many an inebriating farewell cup, I come to my senses
The slanting moon on the wax is shaped like a crescent
The ground is overgrown with tufts of moss
On the horizon, cliffs rise up to the sky
I can no longer endure the flight of spring time
Shall my love be requited?

-Hồ Xuân Hương

concurrence

"Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.”

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.”

“I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

"Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves."

"It's not what you look at that matters; it's what you see."

-Henry David Thoreau

The Aliens

you may not believe it
but there are people
who go through life with
very little
friction of distress.
they dress well, sleep well.
they are contented with
their family
life.
they are undisturbed
and often feel
very good.
and when they die
it is an easy death, usually in their
sleep.

you may not believe
it
but such people do
exist.

but i am not one of
them.
oh no, I am not one of them,
I am not even near
to being
one of
them.
but they
are there

and I am
here.

-Charles Bukowski

A DOLL'S HOUSE

"If I'm ever to reach any understanding of myself and the things around me, I must learn to stand alone. That's why I can't stay here with you any longer."

"That I don't believe any more. I believe that first and foremost I am an individual, just as much as you are--or at least I'm going to try to be. I know most people agree with you, Torvald, and that's also what it says in books. But I'm not content any more with what most people say, or with what it says in books. I have to think things out for myself, and get things clear."

"I have another duty equally sacred...my duty to myself."

-Henrik Ibsen

untitled

On the sudden I am awake,
I am in a room
with you-Nothing I could ever contain!-
under my arm, on my chest.

You are burning with seamless entirety.

For a long second I look at your quiet face the smoothness of the lines
that draw out your open eyes.

A moment is all I can hold of you

In that moment all of you fires to the surface
every particle shows off its side, its bend.

In a moment
In the stillness,
In the warmth of your features, everything I have ever been-
the demons,
all the faces I have worn,
all my ghosts and disguises,
all my armours and my gowns,
come out for you and yours for me.

-Pascale Giroux

carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

-E.E. Cummings