REAL CHANGE, DAY ONE

Love Among the Ruins by Edward Burns-Jones

(I posted this on the day after you died. Our love was in ruins. The next day I gave instructions on your cremation and not long after that, someone brought you home in a box. Ashes. The first year I was as much a ruin as our love, as you. The second might have been harder emotionally. The third is just sad. But I have to go back to my way of work. I can't sit here and cry anymore. I am cold, too damn cold. If I choose to stay with you, I'll freeze to death, turn to ice, go blue.  Oh, how I miss your kisses. Your breath was just a whisper against the back of my neck, but it always stirred such a storm.)

“So for now,
I will miss you like I’ll never see you again,
And the next time I see you,
I will kiss you like I’ll never kiss you again,
And when I fall asleep beside you 
I will fall asleep as if I’ll never wake up again,
because I don’t know if I will.
I don’t know if I will.

- I Will Love You Like The World Is Ending” 
― Charlotte Eriksson

Learning to Say Goodbye

“We the mortals touch the metals,
the wind, the ocean shores, the stones,
knowing they will go on, inert or burning,
and I was discovering, naming all the these things:
it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.” 
― Pablo Neruda 

I. AM. WRITING.

Disappearing.....

“Am I in the picture? Am I getting in or out of it? I could be a ghost, an animal or a dead body, not just this girl standing on the corner…?” ― Francesca Woodman

Writing is like this....

“Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.”

― Flannery O'Connor

Cinderella by Edward Burns-Jones

I wonder if those are Rossetti's blue dishes?

Bluebeard by Edna St. Vincent Millay

THIS door you might not open, and you did;      

    So enter now, and see for what slight thing     

You are betrayed…. Here is no treasure hid,       

    No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring            

The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain   

    For greed like yours, no writhings of distress,

But only what you see…. Look yet again—            

    An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless.

Yet this alone out of my life I kept

    Unto myself, lest any know me quite;   

And you did so profane me when you crept        

    Unto the threshold of this room to-night          

That I must never more behold your face.           

    This now is yours. I seek another place.           

Nothing last forever but....

 I love that word. Forever. I love that forever doesn’t exist, but we have a word for it anyway, and use it all the time. It’s beautiful and doomed. 

Viv Albertine

Heroine Notes

Heroine and so me, so that really means only one thing. I must be writing about myself. lol Or the girl that I once was, or the girl that still lives inside me. Don't worry, most of you won't like her. lol

Facing reality quotes

"Life in itself is neither good nor evil; it is the scene of good or evil as you make it.’ And, if you have lived a day, you have seen all: one day is equal and like to all other days. There is no other light, no other shade; this very sun, this moon, these very stars, this very order and disposition of things, is the same your ancestors enjoyed, and that shall also entertain your posterity."
                                                    - Michel de Montaigne

Ballerina rose, hybrid musk. My garden. Today.

Angela Carter Quotes

“She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening. She has the mysterious solitude of ambiguous states; she hovers in a no-man’s land between life and death, sleeping and waking.” 
― Angela Carter, The Lady of the House of Love

The Child Playing Croquet in Greenville MS

Playing croquet, (rear) which was my favorite game to play and I was pretty good at it, too. Even the adults hated to see me coming! Of course, I'm wearing tennis shoes (Keds) and socks. Some things never change. I don't know who the girl is in front unless that is Teresa Peacock from across the street. I am sure my mother made my clothes and oh, my God, there is a clothes line to the far left! Laundry! Ironing! 

Burning here....

“To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.” 
― Federico García Lorca

Love and Life and Death

“Blot out the moon, 
Pull down the stars. 
Love in the dark, for we're for the dark
So soon, so soon.” 
― Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea

The Same Deep Water As You by The Cure

Robert Smith and Mary Poole

May is always a special month for me. I usually spend it reading and writing poetry while I garden. This year is no exception, but I wanted to add love songs. I've had an extraordinary life of love. As a widow, it's taken some time to adjust to the fact that I no longer have the daily affection I experienced as "wife." After all, I totally believe that love is about two things, words and bodies. Physical affection was important to me, an intrinsic part of the long marriage I shared with John.

One of my favorite love songs is The Same Deep Water As You by The Cure. It's always been at the top of my favorite songs. It's a gorgeous love song and it's about sex, the kind that a couple experience when they share the "same deep water,"  when they are essentially the "deep water" to each other.  Robert Smith met Mary Poole when he was 14 years old. They have been together ever since. That makes his relationship with Mary longer than my relationship with John which was around 43 years. They have been married like forever, and we all know how much they love each other, through all the good and bad times, through life's craziness. When Robert goes to sleep, Mary is the last thing on his mind. Smiling. Here are the lyrics to The Same Deep Water As You.

Kiss me goodbye
Pushing out before I sleep
Can't you see I try 
Swimming the same deep water as you is hard
The shallow drowned lose less than we
You breathe the strangest twist upon your lips
And we shall be together
And we shall be together

Kiss me goodbye 
Bow your head and join with me
And face pushed deep reflections meet
The strangest twist upon your lips

And disappear the ripples clear
And laughing break against your feet
And laughing break the mirror sweet
So we shall be together
So we shall be together

Kiss me goodbye pushing out before I sleep
It's lower now and slower now
The strangest twist upon your lips
But I don't see and I don't feel

But tightly hold up silently
My hands before my fading eyes
And in my eyes your smile
The very last thing before I go
The very last thing before I go
The very last thing before I go

I will kiss you, I will kiss you
I will kiss you forever on nights like this
I will kiss you, I will kiss you
And we shall be together

by The Cure

Van Gogh on Art

“Do you know that it is very, very necessary for honest people to remain in art? Hardly anyone knows that the secret of beautiful work lies to a great extent in truth and sincere sentiment.”

— Vincent Van Gogh