my romantic tryst with cancer

on my fridge door A selection of Maya Angelou's quotes, collated by The Guardian . "Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option." "If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain." "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." "I do not trust people who don't love themselves and yet tell me, 'I love you.' There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt." "We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty." "You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them." "My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style." "Try to be a rainbo

I just got back from a screening of the film adaptation of The Normal Heart I'm staggered, by how we (as in people) can let so much come in the way of something as simple and honest as love. The purity of grief, the honesty of tears, the willingness to love. We are our worst enemies, just as we are our best friends. I'm sitting with these feelings. Aware of age, of time, of stories that are being told, and of my own. This will have to hold them for tonight....

There is a dance at water’s edge, a movement between the lake, its sand and the horizon where lake becomes cloud. Between those lines our world’s a thin wash of muted tones, beige and gray with a hint of white, almost abstract, until the dancer steps out into the pool. She makes the whole thing real. - Keith Taylor in  after James McNeill Whistler, 1865