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"A friend asked yesterday if this blog is addressed to anyone in particular? I said yes– it’s a love letter to someone I haven’t met yet."
CarrollBlog 9.1
I must learn to love the fool in me, the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes to many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and break promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my fool.
Theodore I. Rubin
CarrollBlog 8.31
Not so not so
My soul does not believe me
My heart has some personal doubts
My mind doesn’t listen
My health is slipping
My youth has passed away
My family snapshots do not live
My country is now different
Even hell has misled because it’s cold
I covered myself completely so I couldn't be seen
But a tear ran out
And undressed in public
Jan Twardowski
CarrollBlog 8.29
Overheard Written Down
by Jan Twardowski
The door shuddered – who is it?
– Death
entered a slight teeny-weeny with a scythe like a matchstick
Surprise. Eyes agog
and it screeched
– I came for the canary
CarrollBlog 8.26
“Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being “in love”, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.”
Louis de Bernières
CarrollBlog 8.25
Light Is More Important Than The Lantern
Light is more important than the lantern,
The poem more important than the notebook,
And the kiss more important than the lips.
My letters to you
Are greater and more important than both of us.
They are the only documents
Where people will discover
Your beauty
And my madness.
Nizar Qabbani
CarrollBlog 8.24
"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
CarrollBlog 8.23
Oddjob, a Bull Terrier
by Derek Walcott
You prepare for one sorrow,
but another comes.
It is not like the weather,
you cannot brace yourself,
the unreadiness is all.
Your companion, the woman,
the friend next to you,
the child at your side,
and the dog,
we tremble for them,
we look seaward and muse
it will rain.
We shall get ready for rain;
you do not connect
the sunlight altering
the darkening oleanders
in the sea-garden,
the gold going out of the palms.
You do not connect this,
the fleck of the drizzle
on your flesh,
with the dog's whimper,
the thunder doesn't frighten,
the readiness is all;
what follows at your feet
is trying to tell you
the silence is all:
it is deeper than the readiness,
it is sea-deep,
earth-deep,
love-deep.
The silence is stronger than thunder,
we are stricken dumb and deep
as the animals who never utter love
as we do, except
it becomes unutterable
and must be said,
in a whimper,
in tears,
in the drizzle that comes to our eyes
not uttering the loved thing's name,
the silence of the dead,
the silence of the deepest buried love is
the one silence,
and whether we bear it for beast,
for child, for woman, or friend,
it is the one love, it is the same,
and it is blest
deepest by loss
it is blest, it is blest.