“…and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads.”
What makes an extraordinary love letter? After Monday’s omnibus of famous correspondence, I revisited a lovely decade-old book titled The 50 Greatest Love Letters of All Time, which features missives from icons like Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Frida Kahlo, Franz Kafka, and Mozart, covering everything from tender love to lust to bitter breakups.
Among them is this 1927 letter from Virginia Woolf to English poet Vita Sackville-West, with whom Woolf had fallen madly in love.
Look here Vita — throw over your man, and we’ll go to Hampton Court and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads — They won’t stir by day, only by dark on the river. Think of that. Throw over your man, I say, and come.”
The gender-bending character in Woolf’s Orlando, in fact, was based on Sackville-West, and the entire novel is thought to have been written about the affair — so much so that Sackville-West’s son Nigel Nicolson has described it as “the longest and most charming love-letter in literature.”
The greatest love letters, of course, aren’t those written for public greatness — they’re the ones penned for one particular trembling heart, honeycombed with private memories and private miracles, written in the language of the possible.
“Everyone writes a letter in the virtual image of his own soul. In every other form of speech it is possible to see the writer’s character, but in none so clearly as in the letter.”
My great-grandfather was an astronomer who used to excitedly awaken his kids in the middle of the night and rush them, barely conscious and begrudging, to his telescope on the roof to observe the occasional cosmic marvel. He raised two sons and two daughters — including my grandmother, after whom I was named — through wartime Bulgaria, and tickled them into that lifelong itch of curiosity and wonder. In his final years, great-grandfather Georgi was living by himself in a small apartment without so much as a landline, hundreds of miles away from my grandmother, who by then was raising a family of her own while working as one of the few female civic engineers in the country. When he fell gravely ill in May of 1984, he wrote my grandmother a letter to tell her about the fatal medical prognosis and mailed it across the country. But he made a mistake — on the envelope, addressed to the correct building, he wrote “apartment 2″ instead of “apartment 5,” so the letter never made it to my grandmother. She got news of her father’s death in early June, from one of her brothers. Six weeks later, she found the letter in the building’s shared mailbox, the ghostly neverland of misdeliveries that residents rarely checked.
A week after that, I was born.
I never met my great-grandfather, whom I imagine I would’ve admired and loved enormously, but my grandmother’s heartbreaking story of postal misfortune, which she only recently shared with me and which pains her to this day, left me newly shaken with the power of so seemingly simple a thing as a letter — a medium that’s always held enormous allure for me, a humble page that blossoms into a grand stage onto which great romances are played out,great wisdom dispensed, and great genius manifested. But what exactly is it about a letter that reaches such depths, and what ineffable, immutable piece of humanity are we losing as the golden age of writing letters sets into the digital horizon?
That’s precisely what Simon Garfield, who has previously explored how our modern obsession with maps was born, seeks to illuminate in To the Letter: A Celebration of the Lost Art of Letter Writing (public library) — a quest to understand what we have lost by replacing letter-writing with email-typing and relinquishing “the post, the envelope, a pen, a slower cerebral whirring, the use of the whole of our hands and not just the tips of our fingers,” considering “the value we place on literacy, good thinking and thinking ahead.”
Frida Kahlo's love letters to Diego Rivera. Click image for details and translation.
Garfield writes:
Letters have the power to grant us a larger life. They reveal motivation and deepen understanding. They are evidential. They change lives, and they rewire history. The world once used to run upon their transmission — the lubricant of human interaction and the freefall of ideas, the silent conduit of the worthy and the incidental, the time we were coming for dinner, the account of our marvelous day, the weightiest joys and sorrows of love. It must have seemed impossible that their worth would ever be taken for granted or swept aside. A world without letters would surely be a world without oxygen.
Garfield attributes a good deal of the humanity of the letter — something he so poetically terms its “physical candor and the life-as-she-is-suffered quality” — to the tangibility of how it travels from sender to recipient. Though we know a great more today about how information travels on the internet, Garfield argues for an “intrinsic integrity” that letters hold over other modes of communication and explains:
Some of this has to do with the application of hand to paper, or the rolling of the paper through the typewriter, the effort to get things right first time, the perceptive gathering of purpose. But I think it also has something to do with the mode of transmission, the knowledge of what happens to the letter when sealed. We know where to post it, roughly when it will be collected, the fact that it will be dumped from a bag, sorted, delivered to a van, train or similar, and then the same thing the other end in reverse. We have no idea about where email goes when we hit send. We couldn’t track the journey even if we cared to; in the end, it’s just another vanishing. No one in a stinky brown work coat wearily answers the phone at the dead email office. If it doesn’t arrive we just send it again. But it almost always arrives, with no essence of human journey at all. The ethereal carrier is anonymous and odorless, and carries neither postmark nor scuff nor crease. The woman goes into a box and emerges unblemished. The toil has gone, and with it some of the rewards.
Fiona Apple's handwritten letter about her dying dog. Click image for details and full text.
Although much of his argument is premised on these romanticized rewards that stem from the letter’s traditional form — arguments not entirely convincing beyond the automatic sentimentality of nostalgia — Garfield makes his strongest point perhaps inadvertently, in an aside, discussing the letters of 14th-century scholar Petrarch, which used to run over a thousand words. Those letters, Garfield notes, were “not only readable but still worth reading” — and therein lies the bittersweet mesmerism of the letter as a cultural genre: With the ease and rapidity of email, how much of our textual exchanges actually end up being truly worth reading? Rereading?
But the best, most eloquent articulation of just what makes the letter worthy comes from one of Garfield’s ancient-world epistolary champions. Demetrius, who lived sometime between the fourth century B.C. and the fourth century A.D., captured the essence of the perfect letter:
The letter should be a little more formal than the dialogue, since the latter imitates improvised conversation, while the former is written and sent as a kind of gift. . . . The letter should be strong in characterization. Everyone writes a letter in the virtual image of his own soul. In every other form of speech it is possible to see the writer’s character, but in none so clearly as in the letter.
One of countless letters of audacious requests Mark Twain received. Click image for more.
Garfield’s core argument, while anchored a tad too stubbornly and narrowly to the preservation of letters as a medium, speaks powerfully to a broader urgency — the increasingly endangered species of meticulous, thoughtful self-revelation and deep mutual understanding through the written word in the age of reactionary responses and knee-jerk replies. He captures this beautifully:
Great miserabilist that he was, Philip Larkin was spot-on with his famous line from ‘An Arundel Tomb’ … what will survive of us is love. Letters fulfill and safeguard this prophecy. Without letters we risk losing sight of our history, or at least its nuance. The decline and abandonment of letters — the price of progress — will be an immeasurable defeat.
Charles Eames's proposal letter to Ray Eames. Click image for details and full text.
To the Letter goes on to explore the history of letters and the humanity of letter-writing across the millennia, from ancient Greece to the Enlightenment to the invention and advent of the internet, covering the entire spectrum of genres from sales letters to love letters and exploring the intricacies of what makes a perfect letter. Complement it with this fantastic 1876 guide to the art of letter-writing, then revisit some of modern history’s most rereadable letters.
“Only one mountain can know the core of another mountain.”
Mexican painter and reconstructionistFrida Kahlo is among the most remarkable figures of contemporary culture. At a young age, she contracted polio, which left her right leg underdeveloped — an imperfection she’d later come to disguise with her famous colorful skirts. A decade later, as one of only thirty-five female students at Mexico’s prestigious Preparatoria school, she was in a serious traffic accident, which resulted in multiple body fractures and internal lesions inflicted by an iron rod that had pierced her stomach and uterus. It took her three months in full-body cast to recover and though she eventually willed her way to walking again, she spent the rest of her life battling frequent relapses of extreme pain and enduring frequent hospital visits, including more than thirty operations. As a way of occupying herself while bedridden, Kahlo made her first strides in painting — then went on to become one of the most influential painters in modern art.
Two years after the accident, in 1927, she met the painter Diego River, whose work she’d come to admire and who became her mentor. In 1929, despite the vocal protestations of Kahlo’s mother, Frida and Diego were wedded and one of art history’s most notoriously tumultuous marriages commenced. Both had multiple affairs, the most notable of which for bisexual Kahlo were with French singer, dancer, and actress Josephine Baker and Russian Marxist theorist Leon Trotsky. And yet her bond with Diego was one of transcendental passion and immense love.
Diego. Truth is, so great, that I wouldn’t like to speak, or sleep, or listen, or love. To feel myself trapped, with no fear of blood, outside time and magic, within your own fear, and your great anguish, and within the very beating of your heart. All this madness, if I asked it of you, I know, in your silence, there would be only confusion. I ask you for violence, in the nonsense, and you, you give me grace, your light and your warmth. I’d like to paint you, but there are no colors, because there are so many, in my confusion, the tangible form of my great love.
F.
Diego:
Nothing compares to your hands, nothing like the green-gold of your eyes. My body is filled with you for days and days. you are the mirror of the night. the violent flash of lightning. the dampness of the earth. The hollow of your armpits is my shelter. my fingers touch your blood. All my joy is to feel life spring from your flower-fountain that mine keeps to fill all the paths of my nerves which are yours.
Auxochrome — Chromophore. Diego.
She who wears the color. He who sees the color. Since the year 1922.
Until always and forever. Now in 1944. After all the hours lived through. The vectors continue in their original direction. Nothing stops them. With no more knowledge than live emotion. With no other wish than to go on until they meet. Slowly. With great unease, but with the certainty that all is guided by the “golden section.” There is cellular arrangement. There is movement. There is light. All centers are the same. Folly doesn’t exist. We are the same as we were and as we will be. Not counting on idiotic destiny.
My Diego:
Mirror of the night
Your eyes green swords inside my flesh. waves between our hands.
All of you in a space full of sounds — in the shade and in the light. You were called AUXOCHROME the one who captures color. I CHROMOPHORE — the one who gives color.
You are all the combinations of numbers. life. My wish is to understand lines form shades movement. You fulfill and I receive. Your word travels the entirety of space and reaches my cells which are my stars then goes to yours which are my light.
Auxochrome — Chromophore
It was the thirst of many years restrained in our body. Chained words which we could not say except on the lips of dreams. Everything was surrounded by the green miracle of the landscape of your body. Upon your form, the lashes of the flowers responded to my touch, the murmur of streams. There was all manner of fruits in the juice of your lips, the blood of the pomegranate, the horizon of the mammee and the purified pineapple. I pressed you against my breast and the prodigy of your form penetrated all my blood through the tips of my fingers. Smell of oak essence, memories of walnut, green breath of ash tree. Horizon and landscapes = I traced them with a kiss. Oblivion of words will form the exact language for understanding the glances of our closed eyes. = You are here, intangible and you are all the universe which I shape into the space of my room. Your absence springs trembling in the ticking of the clock, in the pulse of light; you breathe through the mirror. From you to my hands, I caress your entire body, and I am with you for a minute and I am with myself for a moment. And my blood is the miracle which runs in the vessels of the air from my heart to yours.
The green miracle of the landscape of my body becomes in your the whole of nature. I fly through it to caress the rounded hills with my fingertips, my hands sink into the shadowy valleys in an urge to possess and I’m enveloped in the embrace of gentle branches, green and cool. I penetrate the sex of the whole earth, her heat chars me and my entire body is rubbed by the freshness of the tender leaves. Their dew is the sweat of an ever-new lover.
It’s not love, or tenderness, or affection, it’s life itself, my life, that I found what I saw it in your hands, in your month and in your breasts. I have the taste of almonds from your lips in my mouth. Our worlds have never gone outside. Only one mountain can know the core of another mountain.
Your presence floats for a moment or two as if wrapping my whole being in an anxious wait for the morning. I notice that I’m with you. At that instant still full of sensations, my hands are sunk in oranges, and my body feels surrounded by your arms.
For my Diego
the silent life giver of worlds, what is most important is the nonillusion. morning breaks, the friendly reds, the big blues, hands full of leaves, noisy birds, fingers in the hair, pigeons’ nests a rare understanding of human struggle simplicity of the senseless song the folly of the wind in my heart = don’t let them rhyme girl = sweet xocolatl [chocolate] of ancient Mexico, storm in the blood that comes in through the mouth — convulsion, omen, laughter and sheer teeth needles of pearl, for some gift on a seventh of July, I ask for it, I get it, I sing, sang, I’ll sing from now on our magic — love.
'My story isn’t sweet and harmonious like invented stories. It tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves'.
Herman Hesse
'I want to be with those who know the secret things, or else alone'.
“The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.” ― Ernest Hemingway
'Faith is the power to stand up to the madness and chaos of the physical world while holding the position that nothing external has any authority over what heaven has in mind for you.' Caroline Myss
'If you don't like the word "heaven" in Myss' statement, substitute a term that works for you, like "your higher self" or "your destiny" or "your soul's code." Modify anything else in it that's not right for your needs, as well. When you're finished tinkering, I hope you'll have created a definition of faith that motivates you with as much primal power as you feel when you're in love.'
'It's a great privilege to live in a free country. You're fortunate if you have the opportunity to pursue your dreams without having to ward off government interference or corporate brainwashing or religious fanaticism.
But that's only partly useful if you have not yet won the most important struggle for liberation, which is the freedom from your own unconscious obsessions and conditioned responses. Becoming an independent agent who's not an unwitting slave to his or her shadow is one of the most heroic feats a human being can accomplish'.
Insight is not a light bulb that goes off inside our heads," says author Malcolm Gladwell. "It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out." On the one hand, you will soon glimpse quite a few new understandings of how the world works and what you could do to make it serve you better. On the other hand, you've got to be extra alert for these new understandings and committed to capturing them the moment they pop up. Articulate them immediately. If you're alone, talk to yourself about them. Maybe even write them down. Don't just assume you will be able to remember them perfectly later when it's more convenient'.
The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster,
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster. Elizabeth Bishop
1. i read somewhere: "Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety. Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.
This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays." Ralph Waldo Emerson
“You have grown so much to be a part of my life that it is empty without you.”
Eleanor Roosevelt (October 11, 1884–November 7, 1962) endures not only as the longest-serving American First Lady (1933-1945), but also as one of history’s most politically impactful, a fierce champion of working women and underprivileged youth.
But her personal life has been the subject of lasting controversy.
In the summer of 1928, Roosevelt met journalist Lorena Hickok, whom she would come to refer to as Hick. The thirty-year relationship that ensued has remained the subject of much speculation, from the evening of FDR’s inauguration, when the First Lady was seen wearing a sapphire ring Hickok had given her, to the opening up of her private correspondence archives in 1998. Though many of the most explicit letters had been burned, the 300 published in Empty Without You: The Intimate Letters Of Eleanor Roosevelt And Lorena Hickok (public library) — at once less unequivocal than history’s most revealing woman-to-woman love letters and more suggestive than those ofgreat female platonic friendships — strongly indicate the relationship between Roosevelt and Hickok had been one of great romantic intensity.
On March 5, 1933, the first evening of FDR’s inauguration, Roosevelt wrote Hick:
Hick my dearest–
I cannot go to bed tonight without a word to you. I felt a little as though a part of me was leaving tonight. You have grown so much to be a part of my life that it is empty without you.
Then, the following day:
Hick, darling
Ah, how good it was to hear your voice. It was so inadequate to try and tell you what it meant. Funny was that I couldn’t say je t’aime and je t’adore as I longed to do, but always remember that I am saying it, that I go to sleep thinking of you.
And the night after:
Hick darling
All day I’ve thought of you & another birthday I will be with you, & yet tonite you sounded so far away & formal. Oh! I want to put my arms around you, I ache to hold you close. Your ring is a great comfort. I look at it & think “she does love me, or I wouldn’t be wearing it!”
And in yet another letter:
I wish I could lie down beside you tonight & take you in my arms.
Hick herself responded with equal intensity. In a letter from December 1933, she wrote:
I’ve been trying to bring back your face — to remember justhow you look. Funny how even the dearest face will fade away in time. Most clearly I remember your eyes, with a kind of teasing smile in them, and the feeling of that soft spot just north-east of the corner of your mouth against my lips.
Granted, human dynamics are complex and ambiguous enough even for those directly involved, making it hard to assume anything with absolute certainty from the sidelines of an epistolary relationship long after the correspondents’ deaths. But wherever on the spectrum of the platonic and romantic the letters inEmpty Without You may fall, they offer a beautiful record of a tender, steadfast, deeply loving relationship between two women who meant the world to one another, even if the world never quite condoned or understood their profound connection.
FRINGE FILM FESTIVAL was born three years ago, after three friends sat down over a glass of wine and reacted creatively to the cut of the LLGFF (london lesbian gay film festival) to one week instead of two... o. yes. we have the most stupid government in the UK with horrible, money grabbing men ruling it... don't get me started...
so, it begun and it was focused on films, short and features, events and parties and around cool places in the east end of london. i was invited to participate and contribute to the festival with my pop up bar: the first year (2011), stav B' liquor bar was operating at bob and anne cooke's pie n' mash shop on broadway market and we had music and cocktails downstairs and the short films shown upstairs in the dilapidated victorian living room, which we had customised to be cosy and safe. so much fun and so busy. the second year (2012), i was at lower clapton's colourful juice bar, lumiere, where the bar was upstairs among the sweet smells, the dangling glitter hearts and permanent fountain and serving spicy punch and other delights via books on erotica, female ejaculation workshops, body performances, music and a very lively and active dark room! this year (2013), i was invited to participate as an artist, where i became a priest for one night only, in a chapel, doing service and reciting a sermon (my own), giving communion and offering confession time! and as an atheist, denouncing god in my teens, who finished a private school for girls, with its own church and as part of the choir, i was obliged to sing inside it to a nauseating level, as it was always so busy and hot, it was quite a big thing... religion vs faith; principle vs art ethic; desire vs love; pushing the boundaries away from the comfort zone vs remaining stubborn in one's beliefs... of course i said yes! and it was no light matter... i still write and a lot, but i perform selectively... i wanted to be respectful, but also flexible and not too flippant, losing myself in some jargon, or pointless reaction to an industry i'm not familiar with, full of complexities, mystery and corruption... so, i delved into it... preparing psychologically to appear in front of strangers in a chapel and spilling my heart; choosing my two songs as hymns and finally writing my sermon after days of reflection and thinking, retaining it close, true and protected. the confession part was easy enough; folk come to me for advice and a point of view in life anyway, which, sometimes, i'm hopeless in giving it to myself... and i kept it honest, as authentic as possible, coming from the heart... being me... and complete with my clergy shirt and my rosary and a borrowed cassock, which i have always wanted to possess (wardrobe extension) and elements of religion... yes, i did some research on the matter and became a tourist for a whole morning in the rain, visiting clergy suppliers and abbey shops... and the service was wonderful and funny and warm, complete with prayers and hymns and two speeches from hilary clinton and patti smith and a full house, with boys and girls, who were totally up for it, singing, laughing, cheering, clapping and soaking it all in as well as the communion who were lining up to get in the shape of... love hearts! as it should be! that day the house of god, was the house of love; our love! and everyone said that i looked the part, it suited me to the ground and i felt as ease and very serious and calm and strangely elated covered in heavy black cloth and decorated in chains and beads... which most likely has got to do with my personal state at present; trying to keep it together, before i go completely mad, or was i in character? this is my sermon; my sermon of love...
SERMON
by stav B
Friday 12 April 2013
FRINGEFILM FEST*3
Good evening.
I’m stav B. Your priest for one night only.
It took me some
time to think and more time to decipher on paper, this sermon, which, despite
the subversion of it all, is a serious matter, standing in front of strangers
and delivering some kind of message with honesty and clarity, asking for your
forgiveness and hopefully transcending positive energy to take with you in
cognition.
I am not
religious, in the sense, that I don’t follow a particular manuscript, which
will lead my life in some kind of salvation, but I have faith:
Faith in the
undeniable power of nature
Faith in the
ability of humans, despite their stupidity and ignorance and fear
Faith in the
people who I love and love me
Faith in
myself, as I believe that everything starts and finishes from oneself…
Faith is not
about having all the answers, it is a feeling, a hunch, that something bigger,
connecting us all, exists: LOVE, which in itself is an act of faith…
All fine and
dandy in theory and we can enter in some futile discourse for eternity, what
use is it, if it’s not recognised, practised and finally embraced? If it’s not
felt?
Despite the
love within us, we all know, how hard and somewhat impossible it is to find the
other, identify them and love them and be loved back…
It is a
bewildering business indeed, we all need this so much, but when it actually
knocks on our heavy door, forever locked and occupied by work and hobbies, do
we open it?
Do we let it
in?
Do we enjoy it?
Do we nurture
it?
Do we keep it?
Close to our hearts with compassion and trust and responsibility?
Do we allow it
to bewitch us and sweep us away, in shores, where we can lose and find
ourselves?
Despite the
fears?
The past
traumas?
The busy
schedules?
The utter
foolishness to ruin something potentially amazing for us and to us, without
giving it a real shot?
Or deliberately
misunderstand it, sabotage it, challenge it, exclude it, control it, unfairly
and eventually destroying it, in the name of:
Career?
Friends?
Idle gossip?
Fear?
Closed heart?
Insecurity?
The superb
discipline of conditioning oneself to the state: I’m ok on my own, I have
worked very hard to reach that stage and I’m not prepared to relinquish it,
yet, ever, at the moment?
Working hard on
oneself is fundamental, whether we are alone or relating, nothing should
interfere with this crucial process, our loved ones should encourage this
wholeheartedly.
A certain lack
of decorum to be kind and compassionate to someone who has appeared in our
lives for a myriad of reasons, but most importantly to love us?
The answers lie
within each and every one of us and if we dare to be brutally honest with
ourselves, then we’ll know what to do and how to proceed.
As above, it is
a bewildering and tricky business at the same time and juggling life and
feelings is truly a wonderful as well as a rocky experience, but smooth sailing
never made a skillful sailor, right?
In short and
what I’m trying to say here, is that if we are sure about what we want and need
and are capable for and very adamant about our choices in life, whatever the
reason, the excuse, the previous experience and we are not prepared to shake
this meticulous crafted composition, just in case our tower crumbles…
Then, we should stay away from the harmful,
potentially messy and heartbreaking business of love and make sure that we keep
our hearts very
looked after and wrapped carefully… unbreakable… irredeemable, inpenetranable,
hearts, which eventually become motionless, airless and dark…
Life continues,
but how?
Or, of course, we can do something
different and interesting and surprise ourselves, totally remove our finely
knitted net and leap into the amazing unknown, the magic, the beauty, the
happiness, the love! Why not? Why can we not get what we want for a change? Why
can we not get what we deserve? And crack a little smile for a while?
Maybe we get scratched, bruised,
upset, confused and so what? It’s all a circle back to itself and love will
truly shine if it’s true! It’s all part of the process, courage is contagious
and faith; what a task!
There is no eternal sunshine of the
spotless mind, but despair and loneliness; soul-destroying… spots and mistakes
and miracles and warmth… yearning for the warmth.
'Somewhere there's a treasure that has
no value to anyone but you, and a secret that's meaningless to everyone except
you, and a frontier that harbours a revelation only you would know how to
exploit. Why not go in search of those things?
Visualise yourself being able to recognise the
raw truth about the people you care about. Imagine that you can see how they
already embody the beauty their souls' codes have promised as well as how they
still fall short of embodying that beauty.
Picture yourself being able to make
them feel appreciated even as you inspire them to risk changes that will
activate more of their souls' codes'.
It’s ok to love.
It’s ok to share.
It’s ok to get hurt.
And it’s ok to be alone. But if one
does wish to remain alone, one should not implicate others into this
experiment; one should remain unbending into their positions… unless, of
course, they do love, that is….
LOVE is the answer
and we all know that for sure and as I leave you now holding each other’s
hands, of the person next to you, whether you know them or not, I wish to
state, declare and share with you that I love, I’m in love and that I
have decided to let it in, before I perish, as I’m my own worst enemy when it
comes to protection. The pain is sweet. The rewards, enormous. And I’m glad
about that.
i post this sermon here, upon request, archive and for those who missed the event...
yes, it is true, i am a performance artist and that has saved my life, as a way to exorcise my demons and reach some kind of cathartic revelation, via my prose and the audience, but that could never be possible without my life's wonderful realities.
What makes an extraordinary love letter? After Monday’s omnibus of famous correspondence, I revisited a lovely decade-old book titled The 50 Greatest Love Letters of All Time, which features missives from icons like Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, Frida Kahlo, Franz Kafka, and Mozart, covering everything from tender love to lust to bitter breakups.
