my romantic tryst with cancer

The sun is in the sky in LA, and have just read excerpts from Alan Watts' meditations on being present. Sitting here in a ubiquitous Starbucks, very much present and at peace (or what passes for it), I want to share one of those excerpts.  "To put it still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet."

As I sit here, trying to mediate instead of just letting go, I can hear a million hearts across the world break even while they heal. Winter arrived a long time ago, but it takes a brush with ice for the skin to know it's here. This bus trundles on, and all of us, strangers to each other, watch the world pass us by, all unaware that we share more than we don't...

I never saw so sweet a face As that I stood before. My heart has left its dwelling-place And can return no more. - John Clare

So much of who we are, is about what we've experienced, and who we've experienced it with. In every partnership, in every relationship, we must acknowledge that there are always more than the two of us in the room. Standing around us, are the ghosts of those that have come before-- the ghosts of those who have hurt us, who have loved us, those who we have made plans with and those who disappointed us, those who are no more, and those who still survive. Those who have touched us in ways we only know later on in life in a moment of apparent happiness, surprise or grief. We need to recognise those ghosts in the room. We need to hear their voices lest we forget ourselves, but also put them at the distance that they belong so that we might know ourselves. And then patiently remind ourselves, that sometimes, that most times, it isn't about the person you are sitting across from, the person you are loving or wondering if you love, or holding or lying with, or talking to or

Take care of your Thoughts because they become Words. Take care of your Words because they will become Actions. Take care of your Actions because they will become Habits. Take care of your Habits because they will form your Character. Take care of your Character because it will form your Destiny, and your Destiny will be your Life. There is no religion higher than truth. - The Dalai Lama

So different, this man And this woman: A stream flowing In a field. by William Carlos Williams

"An honorable human relationship – that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word "love" – is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other. It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation. It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity. It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us." - Adrienne Rich (1929- 2012) Excerpted from a short essay in  Brain Pickings source: The Reconstructionists project

one must be one to ever be two and if you were a day I'd find a way to live through you - by Ben Kopel, who says about it: "It's a love song because they're all love songs, and I mean every inch of it."

Enjoy the love you have, and make the most of it. "From opportunity, comes opportunity."- Ada

And now you're mine. Rest with your dream in my dream. Love and pain and work should all sleep, now. The night turns on its invisible wheels, and you are pure beside me as a sleeping amber. No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams. You will go, we will go together, over the waters of time. No one else will travel through the shadows with me, only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon. Your hands have already opened their delicate fists and let their soft drifting signs drop away; your eyes closed like two gray wings, and I move after, following the folding water you carry, that carries me away. The night, the world, the wind spin out their destiny. Without you, I am your dream, only that, and that is all. - Pablo Neruda