Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.

Curiosity:

There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.

  

  

I cried everyday for months after the attack.  I've heard people say they've cried until they ran out of tears, but that's not what really happens.  I can still conjure tears every once in a while, but now I can cry without them.  Maybe you could say that my tears have evolved.  Maybe you could say I cry every moment of everyday.  Sadness doesn't feel like sadness anymore, but more like comfort,  and it will hit me, at random times - when I'm folding my laundry, when I'm driving home, when I'm out with friends.  It gives me goosebumps and butterflies and I can't quite catch my breath.  It feels almost like serenity, like anticipation.  It feels almost like love.

Whoever would love life
and see good days
must keep their tongue from evil
and their lips from deceitful speech.
They must turn from evil and do good;
they must seek peace and pursue it.

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. ⁹ Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. ¹⁰ Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. ¹¹ If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge;⁶ and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; ⁷and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. ⁸ For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁹ But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.

i once had a thousand desires, but in my one desire to know you, all else melted away.

rumi

It was.

Nature is what we know, yet have no art to say. So impotent our wisdom is to her simplicity.

butdoesitfloat

Impressionism

Wild and reckless, your eyes stare, untamed
I see the perfection in even your imperfections
They are just as they should be
They speak of Truth, in a language all their own
For in your beauty and your completeness, I saw you
Though you did not see me, I saw you
I know you, though you do not know yourself, nor the world around you
I know you, I know you more than I know myself
I know you by your True Name
I speak it, and you glow with a reality all your own
You stare, and I stare back into your eyes that cannot see
As I breathe upon your surface that is depth
You make me sure of a reality that never existed before you
And a future that you will never know.

"Some people meet the way the sky meets the earth— inevitably, and there is no stopping or holding back their love. It exists in a finished world, beyond the reach of common sense." —

Louise Erdrich

cool

Bucket list:

Climb a mountain

Build a house

raft white waters

go camping
surf

sew more
see macchu picchu
Save the top of the Eiffel Tower, London Eye, and Empire State Building until you're in love

celebrate the lantern festival in thailand, and holi in India
hike the grand canyon
learn conversational spanish and french

go to airport, book random ticket anywhere, go
scuba dive the great barrier reef 
slide on a glacier
cartwheel through the snow
play the guitar

paint more
canoe the fjords 
take a train through the highlands
float in the dead sea
walk from Nazareth to Jerusalem
visit Petra
see the Bohdi tree
touch the Ganges
go hunting
go on a safari
visit every continent
get married
have red headed kids
adopt
teach them all the things I wish I'd learned earlier

fill a room to the brim with balloons
bungee jump

kayak with whales
ski the Rockies
own a motor cycle, preferably Triumph
buy a pair a loubitons
See the Louvre, the Tate, a Starry Night
have a snow ball fight
roadtrip across America
grow a garden
raise chickens
touch the gargoyles on Notre Dame
make a difference in patients' lives
get published
teach and lead in my field
see the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's Basilica, the David
run a B&B when old
Love
never settle

This officially cements my obsession. Genius. 

The songs are there. They exist all by themselves just waiting for someone to write them down. I just put them down on paper. If I didn't do it, somebody else would.

Book of Isaiah, Chapter 21, verses 5-9:

Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink: arise ye princes, and prepare the shield.

For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.

And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of asses, and a chariot of camels; and he hearkened diligently with much heed.

...And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground."

Samadhi (Sanskrit: समाधि) in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and yogic schools is a higher level of concentrated meditation, or dhyāna. In the yoga tradition, it is the eighth and final limb identified in the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali.

It has been described as a non-dualistic state of consciousness in which the consciousness of the experiencing subject becomes one with the experienced object,^[1] and in which the mind becomes still, one-pointed or concentrated^[2] while the person remains conscious. In Buddhism, it can also refer to an abiding in which mind becomes very still but does not merge with the object of attention, and is thus able to observe and gain insight into the changing flow of experience.^[3]

In Hinduism, samādhi can also refer to videha mukti or the complete absorption of the individual consciousness in the self at the time of death - usually referred to as mahasamādhi.

Finally figured out how to post from my instagram!

The world realized too late what we had done.  Even though we saw the inevitability of the something that was coming. We thought it would be a nuclear holocaust, or perhaps an astrological one.  We thought maybe pollution would do us in, or overpopulation; but no, it was the grass.  Species that we introduced where they didn't belong, slowly crept up, took over, suffocated everything other green thing within their reach, and then slowly began to die themselves.  Like with so many things, we didn't realize until it was too late, there was nothing we could do, nothing to be done.  The animals continued to breath for a while, but then it got harder.  Eventually, we all choked on our own ambition.  I'm sorry.