An Arundel Tomb

Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd -
The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor's sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.

They would no guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the grass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-littered ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

Philip Larkin

Naturally

“God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of “parties” with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.”
-Sylvia Plath

Following sharing a few days ago, I started wondering, how we human beings may be deemed but the most socially and easily connected people of the century. Yet, this has all become but tools of our isolation. We are not alone, but yet, we are profoundly lonely as all man are. Yes its the loneliness of the soul, the soul in which lives eternally. There lies the paradox of how "To live is to die".

Then what fills ourselves. What consumes our soul wholly and completely, till we suffocate from it. And @that, can we call it love? Love that fills the void. We cant say that love brings us suffering. The yearning for it does. The yearning to fill this void that is loneliness, of the soul.

But only he is able to provide. Only God is worthy, for he is the master of the ship, the captain of my soul.

Sub

I read somewhere recently that suffering comes in two forms: Receiving a lack of it and on the opposite end, receiving an abundance of it. But I disagree. Suffering comes from our want and search. Our search in the love of good and all goodness. The search in where we seek this abstract love and in thus happiness. By trying to avoid this suffering, and searching tirelessly for happiness, this perpetual search turns to farce when we realise our zest for this seeking the happiness in life, has become, the eventual source of our suffering. Because by then, and by then it is too late, that we finally see, WE WILL NEVER BE SATISFIED OR ADMITTEDLY AND TRULY HAPPY.

I am learning to appreciate true happiness in its most pure form - My existence.

Sophia

Some believe that death is the absolute worse thing that can happen to anyone. But who are we to say that it may not be of greater good to us than life, as we do not know what death is like. Yet some behave as they are perfectly certain that death is the absolute worse thing that could happen to anyone. Isn't it then, the most shameful ignorance to claim to know what we do not actually know at all?

Shaken. Rattling, rattling. Dismembered and unassembled.We are all called to be broken to ourselves.

Shivering.

pianissimo

Long before you've left, yet I hear your thoughts amplified in mine. Then I think I might have lost all will to live another day. In all truth, I really do wish to die. As only then will I be liberated.

We ourselves are to be blamed for this. Formulating this preconceived notion that love and happiness are supposed to be a certain way. And we are every bit responsible for believing that all of what we say is truth. It is in fact fallacy because we lose all nature of our very own thought and opinion. Our voice becomes the publics, our words become the publics; We become the public.

Long after he's left, yet I still hear his thoughts amplified in mine. Those thoughts of the publics that I so conveniently mistook for his own. So conveniently claimed, as my own.

I am but, the public.

Release me.

So took awhile to re-examine what I want out of life, and more of what I can make of life. Then I chanced upon the topic of knowledge. Yes, knowledge may be attained in a myriad of ways. But what is given to us now (books and exams) limit our horizon, and that vast prospect of knowledge becomes but shaved on the sides and reduced.

So I believe what most of us want out of life is happiness yes? But many say money can't buy you happiness. But who are you to say money is not important, when what we are doing now (studying etc.) is but for economic means/the single-minded pursuit of financial success? And its saddening, how not only does this compromise learning and expanding our knowledge, but destroys the true pursuit of knowledge. So money is not the root of all evil, but human greed. Then consider, that we are not deprived of happiness, but we restrict ourselves from receiving true happiness.

WE, are what stands between happiness and ourselves.
We are the problem.

I know what I want to do with my life here on end.
I want meaning.

Come what may

His love is sufficient for you.

Fill the void, as he has stopped searching for love in all the wrong places,
and found you.

Sink into Me

4th December; Aladdin with Cherisse @NLB's Drama Centre. It's definitely funnier than Emily of Emerald Hill, but both really good local productions. As of late, I have developed an uncanny interest in some of the reference material in the library. Guess it's finally my turn to understand the joy of reading. Bought a book on Khalil Gibran's works.

"The significance of man is not in what he attains but what he longs to attain" says Gibran. And this coincides with what Lacan says, that it is not the fantasy or desire that is important, but the road to making our fantasies reality that is truly what we want.

And I am forced to believe again that it is not that one really likes another, but relishes the FEELING and THOUGHT of being preoccupied with loving someone else MORE than ourselves, because we always have a reason to love others more.

It was never transactional for me.

Show me now; show me the arms aloft.

;

"I have nothing to offer, but my confusion"

We are what we are because we are said to be a certain way (labels, you see).
People are who they are to us, because we want them to be a certain way (we see what we look for and hear what we listen for yes?)
Things turn out the way they do, because we chose our joys and sorrows before they happen, albeit indirectly.
So yes, we do have control of our lives, in some way, somehow, however limited.
So who are we to complain about the adversities of life. But then again, we are only human.

And then, we believe what we want to believe.
So I guess, sometimes, when things dont turn out the way we would like it to, the only lone explanation would be that..we dont really know what we want.