![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormOld lj memories, because I'm rereading in the process of finding my old cast of characters lists.
1) Thank-you lists. For awhile I made lists of at least five wonderful things during the day for which I was grateful. This taught me the habit of mindfulness-of-good-things, which took the place of the habit of mindfulness-of-possible-bad-things that I had previously. What a great thing.
2) Two hours of angst. When I was having a lot of trouble, right after the breakup with Kynnin, I was feeling really angsty, and I was also REALLY FUCKING IRRITATED with feeling bad all the time. I limited myself to two hours of angst every day. I could be as angsty as I liked up to that total amount of time. It let me feel safe releasing those feelings and then going on with the rest of my life without feeling I was either suppressing them or letting them destroy everything.
3) Poems. I really need to go back and tag all the poems I've ganked from greatpoets over the years.
4) Falling out of love with Kynnin. Man, how many years did *that* take, me saying I wouldn't do it, all the way?
5) Reading the book of Steinbeck's letters. I will do this again. It was the best thing ever.
6) Recording my depressive episodes, with time, triggers, etc and realising they never lasted longer than two hours. I can deal with two hours. This taught me I could always live through them, and so taught me that they just weren't that worrying.
I never used to be able to read back-- it was too fresh and painful and made me squirm. Now I'm happy, and that's all my past, and I've made my peace with it, and am working on making a peaceful and joyful present, and a future that writes itself.
When love beckons to you, follow him,
though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you
yield to him,
though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you
so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth
so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height
and caresses your tenderest branches
that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots
and shake them in their clinging to the earth...
But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace
and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness
and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
into the seasonless world where you shall laugh,
but not all of your laughter,
and weep,
but not all of your tears."
Kahlil Gibran
Body of a Woman
Body of a woman,white hills, white thighs,
you look like a world, lying in surrender.
My rough peasant's body digs into you
and makes the son leap from the depth of the earth.
I was alone like a tunnel. The birds fled from me,
and night swamped me with its crushing invasion.
To survive myself I forged you like a weapon,
like an arrow in my bow, a stone in my sling.
But the hour of vengeance falls, and I love you.
Body of skin, of moss, of eager and firm milk.
Oh the goblets of the breast! Oh the eyes of absence!
Oh the roses of the pubis! Of your voice, slow
and sad!
Body of my woman, i will persist in your grace.
My thirst, my boundless desire, my shifting road!
Dark river-beds where the eternal thirst flows
and weariness follows, and the infinite ache.
Pablo Neruda
Skin
Back then it seemed that wherever a girl took off her
clothes the police would find her-
in the back of cars or beside the dark night ponds.
opening like a green leaf across
some boy’s knees, the skin so white and taut beneath the
moor, it was almost too terrible.
too beautiful to look at, a tinderbox, though she did not
know. But the men who came
beating the night rushes with their flashlights and
thighs-they knew. About Helen.
about how a body could cause the fall of Troy and the
death of a perfectly good king.
So they read the boy his rights and shoved him spread-
legged against the car
while the girl hopped barefoot on the asphalt, cloaked in
a wool rescue blanket.
Or sometimes girls fled so their fathers wouldn’t hit
them, their white legs flashing as they ran.
And the boys were handcuffed just until their wrists had
welts and let off half a black from home.
God for how many years did I believe there were truly
laws against such things.
laws of adulthood: no yelling out of cars in traffic tunnels,
no walking without shoes.
no singing any foolish songs in public places. Or else they
could lock you in jail
or, as good as condemning you to death, tell both your
lower- and upper-case Catholic fathers.
And out of all these crimes, unveiling the body was of
course the worst, as though something
about the skin’s phosphorescence, its surface as velvet as
a deer’s new horn,
could drive not only men but civilization mad, could lead
us to unspeakable cruelties.
These were elders who from experience understood these
things much better than we.
And it’s true: remembering I had that kind of skin does
drive me half crazy with loss.
Skin like the spathe of a broad white lily on the first
morning it unfurls.
Lucia Perillo
Absence
On the scales of desire, your absence weighs more
than someone else’s presence, so I say no thanks
to the woman who throws her girdle at my feet,
as I drop a postcard in the mailbox and watch it
throb like a blue heart in the dark. Your eyes
are so green – one of your parents must be
part traffic light. We’re both self-centered,
but the world revolves around us at the same speed.
Last night I tossed and turned inside a thundercloud.
This morning my sheets were covered in pollen.
I remember the long division of Saturday’s
pomegranate, a thousand nebulae in your hair,
as soldiers marched by, dragging big army bags
filled with water balloons, and we passed a lit match,
back and forth, between our lips, under an oak tree
I had absolutely nothing to do with.
Jeffrey McDaniel
1) Thank-you lists. For awhile I made lists of at least five wonderful things during the day for which I was grateful. This taught me the habit of mindfulness-of-good-things, which took the place of the habit of mindfulness-of-possible-bad-things that I had previously. What a great thing.
2) Two hours of angst. When I was having a lot of trouble, right after the breakup with Kynnin, I was feeling really angsty, and I was also REALLY FUCKING IRRITATED with feeling bad all the time. I limited myself to two hours of angst every day. I could be as angsty as I liked up to that total amount of time. It let me feel safe releasing those feelings and then going on with the rest of my life without feeling I was either suppressing them or letting them destroy everything.
3) Poems. I really need to go back and tag all the poems I've ganked from greatpoets over the years.
4) Falling out of love with Kynnin. Man, how many years did *that* take, me saying I wouldn't do it, all the way?
5) Reading the book of Steinbeck's letters. I will do this again. It was the best thing ever.
6) Recording my depressive episodes, with time, triggers, etc and realising they never lasted longer than two hours. I can deal with two hours. This taught me I could always live through them, and so taught me that they just weren't that worrying.
I never used to be able to read back-- it was too fresh and painful and made me squirm. Now I'm happy, and that's all my past, and I've made my peace with it, and am working on making a peaceful and joyful present, and a future that writes itself.
When love beckons to you, follow him,
though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you
yield to him,
though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you
so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth
so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height
and caresses your tenderest branches
that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots
and shake them in their clinging to the earth...
But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace
and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness
and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
into the seasonless world where you shall laugh,
but not all of your laughter,
and weep,
but not all of your tears."
Kahlil Gibran
Body of a Woman
Body of a woman,white hills, white thighs,
you look like a world, lying in surrender.
My rough peasant's body digs into you
and makes the son leap from the depth of the earth.
I was alone like a tunnel. The birds fled from me,
and night swamped me with its crushing invasion.
To survive myself I forged you like a weapon,
like an arrow in my bow, a stone in my sling.
But the hour of vengeance falls, and I love you.
Body of skin, of moss, of eager and firm milk.
Oh the goblets of the breast! Oh the eyes of absence!
Oh the roses of the pubis! Of your voice, slow
and sad!
Body of my woman, i will persist in your grace.
My thirst, my boundless desire, my shifting road!
Dark river-beds where the eternal thirst flows
and weariness follows, and the infinite ache.
Pablo Neruda
Skin
Back then it seemed that wherever a girl took off her
clothes the police would find her-
in the back of cars or beside the dark night ponds.
opening like a green leaf across
some boy’s knees, the skin so white and taut beneath the
moor, it was almost too terrible.
too beautiful to look at, a tinderbox, though she did not
know. But the men who came
beating the night rushes with their flashlights and
thighs-they knew. About Helen.
about how a body could cause the fall of Troy and the
death of a perfectly good king.
So they read the boy his rights and shoved him spread-
legged against the car
while the girl hopped barefoot on the asphalt, cloaked in
a wool rescue blanket.
Or sometimes girls fled so their fathers wouldn’t hit
them, their white legs flashing as they ran.
And the boys were handcuffed just until their wrists had
welts and let off half a black from home.
God for how many years did I believe there were truly
laws against such things.
laws of adulthood: no yelling out of cars in traffic tunnels,
no walking without shoes.
no singing any foolish songs in public places. Or else they
could lock you in jail
or, as good as condemning you to death, tell both your
lower- and upper-case Catholic fathers.
And out of all these crimes, unveiling the body was of
course the worst, as though something
about the skin’s phosphorescence, its surface as velvet as
a deer’s new horn,
could drive not only men but civilization mad, could lead
us to unspeakable cruelties.
These were elders who from experience understood these
things much better than we.
And it’s true: remembering I had that kind of skin does
drive me half crazy with loss.
Skin like the spathe of a broad white lily on the first
morning it unfurls.
Lucia Perillo
Absence
On the scales of desire, your absence weighs more
than someone else’s presence, so I say no thanks
to the woman who throws her girdle at my feet,
as I drop a postcard in the mailbox and watch it
throb like a blue heart in the dark. Your eyes
are so green – one of your parents must be
part traffic light. We’re both self-centered,
but the world revolves around us at the same speed.
Last night I tossed and turned inside a thundercloud.
This morning my sheets were covered in pollen.
I remember the long division of Saturday’s
pomegranate, a thousand nebulae in your hair,
as soldiers marched by, dragging big army bags
filled with water balloons, and we passed a lit match,
back and forth, between our lips, under an oak tree
I had absolutely nothing to do with.
Jeffrey McDaniel
