"On mornings when I hope you forget my name,
I walk through the high wet weeds
that don’t have names either.
I do not remember the word dew.
I do not remember what I told you
with your ear in my teeth."

- Dean Young

“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

one day you fall for this boy. and he touches you with his fingers. and he burns holes in your skin with his mouth. and it hurts when you look at him. and it hurts when you don’t. and it feels like someone’s cut you open with a jagged piece of glass.
- unknown

"I asked for very little from life, and even this little was denied me. A nearby field, a ray of sunlight, a little bit of calm along with a bit of bread, not to feel oppressed by the knowledge that I exist, not to demand anything from others, and not to have others demand anything from me - this was denied me, like the spare change we might deny a beggar not because we are mean-hearted but because we don’t feel like unbuttoning our coat." Fernando Pessoa

the gorgeous kristen on the cover of glamour uk

a man and his dog.
<3

live by the sun
love by the moon

"No joy have I found in the two worlds
Apart from you, Beloved.
Many wonders I have seen:
I have not seen a wonder like you."
- Rumi

still want a bike like this

I held a small boy in my arms who was crying for a Mother who had just passed away, and he looked at me with hundreds of different sorrows in his eyes and I tried to name them all but I couldn’t. I was too young, and he, a child of three at most, understood more about the world, about humanity, than I did. I held this small boy named Ray who flooded my chest with tears, a boy who pressed his cheek against my shirt and quietly asked me “Where, where, where” and ‘Why, why, why” and all I could say was “Hold on, hold on, hold on.” He molded himself to the contour of my neck and I realized how some tears burn against your skin and how others only left you feeling cold and lost. Some you drowned in, and others turned you to ash.

When that slow-motion, silent explosion of love takes place in me, unfolding its melting fringes and overwhelming me with the sense of something much vaster, much more enduring and powerful than the accumulation of matter or energy in any imaginable cosmos, then my mind cannot but pinch itself to see if it is really awake. I have to make a rapid inventory of the universe, just as a man in a dream tries to condone the absurdity of his position by making sure he is dreaming. I have to have all space and all time participate in my emotion, in my mortal love, so that the edge of its mortality is taken off, thus helping me to fight the utter degradation, ridicule, and horror of having developed an infinity of sensation and thought within a finite existence.

Vladimir Nabokov

"I always feel like I’m struggling to become someone else. Like I’m trying to find a new place, grab hold of a new life, a new personality. I guess it’s part of growing up, yet it’s also an attempt to reinvent myself. By becoming a different me, I could free myself of everything. I seriously believed I could escape myself- as long as I made the effort. But I always hit a dead end. No matter where I go, I still end up me. What’s missing never changes. The scenery may change, but I’m still the same old incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that I can never satisfy. I guess that lack itself is as close as I’ll come to define myself. For your sake, I’d like to become a new person. It may not be easy, but if I give it my best shot, perhaps I can manage to change. The truth is, though, if put in the same situation again, I might very well do the same thing all over. I might very well hurt you all over again. I can’t promise anything. That’s what I meant when I said I had no right. I just don’t have the confidence to win over that force in me." - Haruki Murakami

In April 2011, Maya Angelou was interviewed by Oprah and she asked her what she thought of growing older.
And, there on television, she said it was 'exciting..'
Regarding body changes, she said there were many, occurring every day.....like her breasts. They seem to be in a race to see which will reach her waist, first.

The audience laughed so hard they cried. She is such a simple and honest woman, with so much wisdom in her words!

Maya Angelou said this:
'I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.'

'I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.'

'I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life.'

'I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life.'

'I've learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance..'

'I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw some things back...'

'I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.'

'I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one.'

'I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back...'

'I've learned that I still have a lot to learn...'

'I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.'

Detroit Social Club " Northern Man" from Xavi Amoros on Vimeo.

"I look at these things with intense delight
and as I observe them there is no observer
but only sheer beauty like love...
For a moment I am absent with all my problems,
anxieties and miseries - there is only that marvelous thing."

Krishnamurti - Freedom From The Known

sometimes cryptic is all you can be...

a lightning storm paralyzes my every thought...
a chance comes...
what i never thought would happen did...
emotions...
obsessions...
infatuations...
and passion...
they all arrive...
and on time...
desire really does fuel a fire.

i flee to your every call...
i stand still and the world still moves...
the time reads ten in the evening...
and before we know it...
dawn is here.

i hardly knew ya...

it took my every thought...
every breath to stop hiding...
telling of who you are...
and what you mean to me...
but now all i do is hide my face in what i wish was dirt...
i want to cover what thirty days has done...
but i cannot bring myself to let it all go...
as the night falls...
i am lonely and missing all...
a shield...
but why?

i was lost...
locked in a web...
only you could break...
but you didn't break...
you set it afire...
the walls fell as if they were water...
i drowned...
all the happiness and smiles...
gone up in flames.

i envisioned you in front of my door...
a couple days go by...
what i thought was impossible...
something that i could never imagine...
came true.

how?
right there...
almost the exact way i saw it happen...
it is happening...
and it did happen...

eleven hours ago...
i took control...
you are doing what??
i accept the offer...
what?
i could hardly understand what i was hearing...
you are here?
you made the effort...
you were here...
and i should believe it...
but right now it's just a little hard.

never did i think i would be writing any of this...
that web was stronger than steel...
maybe this means something...
maybe this means nothing...
but it happened and even though i cannot believe it...
it must be believed.

so confused and hurt...
as i sit here and realize that things are exactly as they seem...
damage and pain has been caused...
the ringing in my head...
and the burning in my heart...
longing to go back to the start.

i would be lying if i said it didn't move fast...
never do we know what is right until you come down from the high...
you ask yourself...
are there any regrets?
none on this end...
time really does heal the pain.

the lesser gods play over and over again...
and though it may seem it is done...
it more than likely is...
there is no hiding...
we click.

yesterday is better that it is today
and today will be better than tomorrow they say

[all words by me except for in italics.
please have respect and do not use any of this without my permission,
there are numerous ways to contact me.]

"May you never steal, lie, or cheat; but if you must steal, then steal away my sorrows, and if you must lie, lie with me all the nights of my life, and if you must cheat, then please cheat death because I couldn't live a day without you." - Leap Year

i would've loved a dress like this for my wedding!

petrichor (n): [‘pe-trê-ko(r)]: the scent of rain on dry earth, derived from the greek name for what flows through the veins of gods.

tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. these, our bodies, possessed by light. tell me we'll never get used to it.

"Why does one feel so different at night? Why is it so exciting to be awake when everybody else is asleep? Late-it is very late! And yet every moment you feel more and more wakeful, as though you were slowly, almost with every breath, waking up into a new, wonderful, far more thrilling and exciting world than the daylight one."
- Katherine Mansfield

"No matter how careful you are, there's going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn't experience it all. There's that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should've been paying attention.
Well, get used to that feeling. That's how your whole life will feel some day.
This is all practice." - Chuck Palahnuik




photo by Jen Geise

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.
- Emily Dickinson, Not In Vain

"love is far too fragile: it is a picture window, just begging to be shattered. - terri cheney

Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)

when beauty collides with nature....

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
”
Mad Girl’s Love Song by Sylvia Plath

"Much more surprising things can happen to anyone who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable, determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place."
— Frances Hodgson Burnett

I dreamt four nights ago of clock hands descending from the universe like rain, of the moon as a green eye, of mirrors and insects, of a love that never withdrew. It was not the feeling of completeness that I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty. - - Jonathan Safran Foer

“In dreams you don’t need to make any distinctions between things. Not at all. Boundaries don’t exist. So in dreams there are hardly ever collisions. Even if there are, they don’t hurt. Reality is different. Reality bites. Reality, reality.”

Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami

"I dreamed of being a part of the stories -even terrifying ones, even horror stories- because at least those girls were alive before they died." - Francesca Lia Block



photography by jennilee marigomen

tobias kwan