"Where you are is where you are not"

I feel I am continually making the same deal with the devil. I keep making the same decision.

It should be noted that I originally typed "the sane decision." I guess the Freudian keyboard slip answers that.

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope of the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith, and the love, and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

"East Coker" excerpt, TS Eliot


Insatiable April, trees in place,
in their scraped-out place,
their standing.
Standing way.
Their red branch areas,
green shoot areas (shock),
river, that one.
I surprised a goose and she hissed.
I walk and walk with cold hands.
Back at the house it is filled with longing,
nothing to carry longing away.
I look back over my life.
I try to find analogies.
There are none.
I have longed for people before, I have loved people before.
Not like this.
It was not this.

Give me a world, you have taken the world I was.

"Tag" excerpt, Anne Carson

That first time, autumn air, realization in the setting afternoon sun, walking home after shaking hands with the devil, hands chill in your pocket and your warm warm heart and the understanding of everything you've given up and gained, hands in your pocket, raw from the autumn wind.

And again now, and again now.

I need to learn to ask for it all. To sign away every part of my heart, and not just the longing in my lungs for the mother tongue either/or the angel hair ache in my stomach.