the River of forgetfulness

“What is love ?

Great minds have been grappling with this question through the ages, and in the modern era, they have come up with many different answers.

According to the Western philosopher Pat Benatar, love is a battlefield.

Her paisan Frank Sinatra would add the corollary that love is a tender trap.

The stoner kids who spent the summer of 1978 looking cool on the hoods of their Trans Ams in the Pierce Elementary School parking lot used to scare us little kids by blasting the Sweet hit “Love Is Like Oxygen” - you get too much, you get too high, not enough and you’re gonna die.

Love hurts. Love stinks.

Love bites, love bleeds, love is the drug. The troubadours of our times all agree: They want to know what love is, and they want you to show them.

But the answer is simple:

Love is a mix tape.””

-Rob Sheffield

“There is something about words.

In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner.

Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts.

Inside you they work their magic.”

~Diane Setterfield

Love is a medicine I must confide,

sweet dosage of cinnamon & cyanide.

-Dylan of the Raven  

"Embalmed in neon & shooting stars,

drunk on misfits & earthbound scars."

-Dylan of the Raven

you whom I long for,  

how endless your not-returning,

you as shadow till the day of days.

~Alejandra Pizarnik

At times, I wish to disappear

like an ancient myth,

wandering in books,

unaware of its touch.

At times, like the withering foliage…

Untouched, crumpled, and gone…

At times like the winds, which no one can see…

At times like the heartbeats,

existing in bosoms yet can only

be felt with pressed hands… and someday,

if I do manage to become an air of

senselessness,I would tap and tap like

rain on the coffin of my own mortality.

~Channing M.

“My love,

                ah,

how much love you have in your eyes for me,

here we stand at this bridge…

interplaiting our fingers in one moment,

in the next,

                I jump.”

~M.Channing

May we eat the knowledge

of suffering,

may we eat the bitter

waste of the false food we have fed

others.

May we eat it in pain, and in time.

~Sharon Olds

It is the time for the Holly King

(the king of darkness) to do battle

with the Oak King

(king of lightness) once again.

In December the days begin to lengthen and

the Oak King conquers the Holly King and

 reigns during the light times.

Including a bonfire as an offering of light

and fire and an appeal to the sun to warm

the earth once again.

"We are being guided to heal,

reflect and nurture ourselves,

with the purpose of being able to step

into our best possible selves when we

reenter the world."

Take a moment...

Stand still as the "Winter Solstice" happens.