True Beauty

“You are the only person who is in charge of how you feel about yourself. Nobody else can possibly do that. You get to decide if you believe you are beautiful or not, and nobody can take it away from you. If someone suggests that you aren’t beautiful, you can consider how sad it is that they have such a limited view of beauty. You can consider how unfortunate it is that they have such an exaggerated sense of self-importance that they think you should care about what they think. You can also choose to realize that it has nothing at all to do with your beauty and everything to do with their limitations.”

— Ragen Chastain 

Comfort Zone

“Sometimes being uncomfortable is the only way to save yourself from settling. 
— Andrea Ager

Terrifying Amazing

“If it’s both terrifying and amazing then you should definitely pursue it. "
— Erada 

Love Emily

“Emerging from an Abyss, and re-entering it—that is Life, is it not, Dear?”

- Emily Dickinson, from a letter to Susan Gilbert Dickinson, late 1885

Origins

“Who can guess the luna’s sadness who lives so briefly? Who can guess the impatience of stone longing to be ground down, to be part again of something livelier? Who can imagine in what heaviness the rivers remember the original clarity?”

- Mary Oliver, opening to “The Moth, The Mountains, The Rivers," from A ThousandMornings: Poems

Sea Everyone Anyone No one

“To live in an old shack by the sea 
(And breathe the sweet salt air) 
To live with the dawn and the dusk 
The new moon and the full moon 
The tides the wind and the rain… 
To surf and comb the beach 
And gather sea shells and drift-wood 
And know the thrill of loneliness 
And lose all sense of time 
And be free

To hike over the island to the village 
And visit the marketplace 
And enjoy the music and the food and the people 
And do a little trading 
And see the great ships come and go 
And, man, have me a ball

And in the evening 
(When the sky is on fire) 
Heaven and earth become my great open cathedral 
Where all men are brothers 
Where all things are bound by law 
And crowned with love 
Poor, alone and happy 
I walk by the surf and make a fire on the beach 
And as darkness covers the face of the deep 
Lie down in the wild grass 
And dream the dream that the dreamers dream

I am the wind, the sea, the evening star 
I am everyone, anyone, no one.”

- Eden Ahbez 

Inception

"If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream." - Rene Magritte 

Love Letter

Goodnight and great love to you. We see the same stars

— George Mallory to his wife Ruth in a letter during the 1921 Everest Reconnaissance Expedition

Rivers down their faces

"It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces, and they stagger on."

▼

  The Book Thief- Markus Zusak 

More Faith

by meg fee

and others may live their lives “better–but not with my peculiar flavor and music.” this is my lot and i’ll be damned if i don’t figure it out. and frankly i’d like to see how it all plays out. which is to say, i’m invested in the story. i’m invested in the story of my own life. which, i think, is not a bad place to be at twenty-seven.

i used to think the not knowing was the worst bit. the great gaping unknown–an endlessly terrifying thing. but i’m starting to realize it’s actually quite thrilling. it’s actually, absolutely, the best bit. there is so much to look forward to, so much still to do. i have yet to live that night on which i’ll meet the man i marry. yet to get my first piece published. yet to give birth or buy a house or figure out non-oblique answers to all those damn questions. there are so many firsts still ahead of me. and what a blessing–what a particularly exciting thing about standing on this side of that invisible line.

what i’m just now coming to realize is that the difference between the terror and the thrill–that razor-edge that separates the two, is faith.

i remember sending up a particularly vociferous prayer towards the start of the year, which wasn’t so much a prayer as a demand, what do you want from me? what do you want from me? six words i said again and again. six words i angrily flung upward. and the answer came back immediate and clear: more faith.

more faith.

which at the time i thought meant more patience, and patience has never been my virtue.

but now, these many months later, i don’t think it is patience. it’s not about more patience or less patience. it’s about a seed of self-belief. and how that seed is actually a divine thing. it’s about embracing the bits that don’t make any sense. trusting that the story is in fact made by the departures and aberrations. it’s about wonder and curiosity. about moving forward and upward even if the movement is a sort of graceless thrashing about. it’s about clawing and clamoring and dirt beneath the fingernails. it’s about saying i don’t know. and i don’t know. and i don’t know, again. because one day i will. and if one believes that in the end it’ll all work out–even and most especially in the face of overwhelming doubt–than those moments of discomfort and unease and fear are made sweet and holy and wholly lovely by their impermanence.

more faith.

hell.

English Degree

I hope when people ask what you’re going to do with your English and/or creative writing degree you’ll say: Continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire; or maybe just: Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters. And then smile very serenely until they say oh.

Yours,
Sugar (Cheryl Strayed)

Ancient Heart

“The future has an ancient heart.”  - Carlo Levi

Clearing

Clearing by Martha Postlewaite

Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently.
until the song
that is your life
falls into your own cupped hands and you
recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know how to give yourself
to this world
so worth of rescue.

Infinitives

"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget."

 — ― Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living 

Hands

"I find strength in hands. Like words, they have the power to build someone up or completely tear them apart. Just think of all the things you do with your hands every day; all the enjoyable or mundane tasks you need your hands for. There are so many great feelings associated with hands. Imagine these sensations -  kneading dough, a pen firmly grasped writing furiously, your hands running through someone’s hair, fingertips dancing across piano keys, reaching out and intertwining hands with a loved one.  Thinking about all the actions hands can perform is inspiring.

Hands tell a story. They have the ability to reveal such intimate parts of a person, if others took the time to notice. Whether your hands are callused, perfectly manicured , scared, adorned with jewels, or covered in dirt, they are speaking to the world. "

-Modern Hepburn