Tag: quote

Self-censorship is a form of self-expression. The things we erase matter just as much as the things we write; the act of deleting matters just as much as its opposite. To choose not to speak at all is a way of expressing oneself. Whether or not this is healthy is another matter. Is it a creative act? Righteous protest? Passive aggression? An expression of one’s self, a self that—it just so happens—may not be so terribly brave after all?
— fictionalhistories

tigersihaveknown-deactivated201 asked: I have a calmness inside of me now knowing that people out there, kind amazing wonderful people, read that entry and even gave it the time of day. For it was highly personable and one of the closest things relating to my own life, actually, maybe the only one that is all real? I just want to thank you for just reading, for appreciating my feelings and not finding them immature or something to be set aside. Thank you. XXangela

I visited the zoo several months ago after a few decades since the last visit and it was an overwhelmingly depressing experience. It was a theme park of depression, in fact, and the artificiality of the lives in those enclosures just weighed me down for weeks. It was different from my experiences on farms where the animals seemed more animated, more willing to live, than the ones at the zoo. They rushed for food, galloped across fields, and made all kinds of sounds. The animals at the zoo just meandered along from one corner to another (although one especially angry gorilla hurled mud with great fury), and they didn’t seem very interested in anything. It had me thinking about the differences between those environments and that’s when I realized that those farm animals, the ones seemingly so full of vigor? They were used to that life, and they knew what to expect in their domesticated paradise. The food and the galloping, it was all they knew. But those zoo animals, they weren’t used to the life. They had known freedom, unhindered and savage, at the mercy of their own instinct and will to survive. The cages that held them were boundaries that were as foreign to them as the the wilds of the world would be foreign to the farm animals. Given a choice one can only conclude that the zoo animals, the ones whose instinct and blood memory still linked them to the wild places, would choose to return to those environments, and the farm animals, whose lives revolved around the familiarity and comfort of domestication, would remain there.

And all of this, these thoughts and ponderings, they faded away. They were filed in the archive and forgotten so that I could carry on, doing what I do for my daily bread, and living what I am satisfied to call an existence but not quite certain I would call a life. I’d all but forgotten that I could think of such things until I was reminded that we are all of us capable of every thought, but only through inspiration and the relation of human experience can we be certain that it is okay to do so.

tigersihaveknown-deactivated201 asked: I have a calmness inside of me now knowing that people out there, kind amazing wonderful people, read that entry and even gave it the time of day. For it was highly personable and one of the closest things relating to my own life, actually, maybe the only one that is all real? I just want to thank you for just reading, for appreciating my feelings and not finding them immature or something to be set aside. Thank you. XXangela

I visited the zoo several months ago after a few decades since the last visit and it was an overwhelmingly depressing experience. It was a theme park of depression, in fact, and the artificiality of the lives in those enclosures just weighed me down for weeks. It was different from my experiences on farms where the animals seemed more animated, more willing to live, than the ones at the zoo. They rushed for food, galloped across fields, and made all kinds of sounds. The animals at the zoo just meandered along from one corner to another (although one especially angry gorilla hurled mud with great fury), and they didn’t seem very interested in anything. It had me thinking about the differences between those environments and that’s when I realized that those farm animals, the ones seemingly so full of vigor? They were used to that life, and they knew what to expect in their domesticated paradise. The food and the galloping, it was all they knew. But those zoo animals, they weren’t used to the life. They had known freedom, unhindered and savage, at the mercy of their own instinct and will to survive. The cages that held them were boundaries that were as foreign to them as the the wilds of the world would be foreign to the farm animals. Given a choice one can only conclude that the zoo animals, the ones whose instinct and blood memory still linked them to the wild places, would choose to return to those environments, and the farm animals, whose lives revolved around the familiarity and comfort of domestication, would remain there.

And all of this, these thoughts and ponderings, they faded away. They were filed in the archive and forgotten so that I could carry on, doing what I do for my daily bread, and living what I am satisfied to call an existence but not quite certain I would call a life. I’d all but forgotten that I could think of such things until I was reminded that we are all of us capable of every thought, but only through inspiration and the relation of human experience can we be certain that it is okay to do so.

Sometimes, and I mean this now, a man just needs a woman on top of him. Nothing dirty about it, no malicious intentions, none of that power struggle stuff about who’s in control and who’s giving in. Not even the oft desired beast with two backs.

It’s just the need for that warmth, that beat, like thup thup thup (or thump thump thump if you hold on for dear life and listen in), and it feels like all the problems, first world or otherwise, matter for less, so much less. They write about things like fingers blazing trails of fire along skin (sometimes dewy skin, but not necessary), and it gets old, sure, but it’s sort of true I suppose. Clavicles, nails, locks, taut stringy muscly parts, soft cushiony pushy parts, sometimes in awkward places (watch those knees and elbows), sometimes fitting into us like the whole rainbow of legos (building blocks, we fit together so nicely in spite of the war of the sexes), palid to peach to pink to all manner of mocha (caramelo y chocolate, ay mamí chula), sometimes spotty or fluffy or smooth or rough, because that’s what it is, that’s what we need: the real deal.

And you know what, know the real deal in all this? Not just any woman, no ma’am. Maybe sometimes, in weaker moments, or when we’ve been torn apart and given in, but most of the time it’s got to got to be her. Not The One (ridiculous notion), but the one, a woman we know and whom we care for, who knows us and cares for us, and when it’s that woman, her? Oh man, oh brother, oh wow.

And so, yes, so much desire, mere desire, but to relegate desire to a secondary or even (jeez, God forbid) tertiary position in the bullet list of life is unimaginable. There’s logic up in here, I assure you, but what can I say except that I am man, I am needy, and if we should be blessed by the blanket then we can die having lived a complete life.

But such post-mortem thoughts can wait. For now I simply ask that you lie on me, silently, and enjoy the first rays of:

The Sun Rising
by John Donne

Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late schoolboys and sour ‘prentices,
Go tell court huntsmen that the King will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams, so reverend and strong
Why shoulds’t thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long;
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,
Whether both th’Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left’st them, or lie here with me?
Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, ‘All here in one bed lay.’

She’s all states, and all princes, I;
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honour’s mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world’s contracted thus;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.
Shine here, to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere.

Sometimes, and I mean this now, a man just needs a woman on top of him. Nothing dirty about it, no malicious intentions, none of that power struggle stuff about who’s in control and who’s giving in. Not even the oft desired beast with two backs.

It’s just the need for that warmth, that beat, like thup thup thup (or thump thump thump if you hold on for dear life and listen in), and it feels like all the problems, first world or otherwise, matter for less, so much less. They write about things like fingers blazing trails of fire along skin (sometimes dewy skin, but not necessary), and it gets old, sure, but it’s sort of true I suppose. Clavicles, nails, locks, taut stringy muscly parts, soft cushiony pushy parts, sometimes in awkward places (watch those knees and elbows), sometimes fitting into us like the whole rainbow of legos (building blocks, we fit together so nicely in spite of the war of the sexes), palid to peach to pink to all manner of mocha (caramelo y chocolate, ay mamí chula), sometimes spotty or fluffy or smooth or rough, because that’s what it is, that’s what we need: the real deal.

And you know what, know the real deal in all this? Not just any woman, no ma’am. Maybe sometimes, in weaker moments, or when we’ve been torn apart and given in, but most of the time it’s got to got to be her. Not The One (ridiculous notion), but the one, a woman we know and whom we care for, who knows us and cares for us, and when it’s that woman, her? Oh man, oh brother, oh wow.

And so, yes, so much desire, mere desire, but to relegate desire to a secondary or even (jeez, God forbid) tertiary position in the bullet list of life is unimaginable. There’s logic up in here, I assure you, but what can I say except that I am man, I am needy, and if we should be blessed by the blanket then we can die having lived a complete life.

But such post-mortem thoughts can wait. For now I simply ask that you lie on me, silently, and enjoy the first rays of:

The Sun Rising
by John Donne

Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows and through curtains call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late schoolboys and sour ‘prentices,
Go tell court huntsmen that the King will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

Thy beams, so reverend and strong
Why shoulds’t thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long;
If her eyes have not blinded thine,
Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,
Whether both th’Indias of spice and mine
Be where thou left’st them, or lie here with me?
Ask for those kings whom thou saw’st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, ‘All here in one bed lay.’

She’s all states, and all princes, I;
Nothing else is.
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honour’s mimic, all wealth alchemy.
Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
In that the world’s contracted thus;
Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
To warm the world, that’s done in warming us.
Shine here, to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere.