Through the Looking Glass

Through the Looking Glass
Originally uploaded by Dannybhoy

I found myself drifting today. Floating between dreams. I feel so detached from my university, so close to leaving this stage of my life, that my heart and mind cannot find restt in the spaces between these red brick buildings. Instead I wander, hope and dread both weighing equally heavy on my mind. Focus. The struggle of my life.

So I stop. My thoughts keep going.
I repeat these two steps
for the tenth time today.

!. breathe. (more than a simple intake of air, my heart lets go and breathes in air that warms the soul like communion wine, like a that song your mother sang, like a kiss on the forehead. )

2. go. (a step taken. Not in any direction but rather the kind of step that you take only when you know what your legs are really for.. Its like the feeling of running, the exhilaration of your muscles responding and pumping as they were meant to cool air against your skin and the glorious burning of your muscles. Its being alive. Its being in God. Its just being.)

An Empathetic Note on Valentines Day

Blinded by Love
Originally uploaded by Dannybhoy

For those who haven't always been romantically infatuated with St. valentines maligned day of celebration here is a poem.

THE BROKEN HEART.
by John Donne


He is stark mad, whoever says,
That he hath been in love an hour,
Yet not that love so soon decays,
But that it can ten in less space devour ;
Who will believe me, if I swear
That I have had the plague a year?
Who would not laugh at me, if I should say
I saw a flash of powder burn a day?

Ah, what a trifle is a heart,
If once into love's hands it come !
All other griefs allow a part
To other griefs, and ask themselves but some ;
They come to us, but us love draws ;
He swallows us and never chaws ;
By him, as by chain'd shot, whole ranks do die ;
He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.

If 'twere not so, what did become
Of my heart when I first saw thee?
I brought a heart into the room,
But from the room I carried none with me.
If it had gone to thee, I know
Mine would have taught thine heart to show
More pity unto me ; but Love, alas !
At one first blow did shiver it as glass.

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,
Nor any place be empty quite ;
Therefore I think my breast hath all
Those pieces still, though they be not unite ;
And now, as broken glasses show
A hundred lesser faces, so
My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,
But after one such love, can love no more.


But for all those who are hurting, or have been hurt, I offer this, So that you don't become overwhelmed in your heartbreak...Twice or thrice I loved thee, before I knew thy face or name.....

AIR AND ANGELS.
by John Donne


TWICE or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name ;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be.
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing did I see.
But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too ;
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught ;
Thy every hair for love to work upon
Is much too much ; some fitter must be sought ;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scattering bright, can love inhere ;
Then as an angel face and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure doth wear,
So thy love may be my love's sphere ;
Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air's and angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love, and men's, will ever be.