literature-is-my-utopia

[literature-is-my-utopia]

I love tired victories. Sleepy acceptance speeches. When you reach the top of the mountain- instead of celebrating loudly, fall to your knees and weep softly. I like to feel defeated after every win. I want to cry when I smile and smile when I cry and I hope that when I die that it’s from exhaustion at the finish line.

[literature-is-my-utopia]

I weep because you cannot save people. You can only love them. You can’t transform them, you can only console them.

Anaïs Nin, Nearer the Moon: From "A Journal of Love": The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1937-1939

[literature-is-my-utopia]

Sometimes I'm overwhelmed with the insatiable desire to learn. To know astronomy and geography and language and architecture; to recognize each constellation, planet, and star; to speak and understand all languages, be able to decipher ancient Greek and Latin text; to grow my understanding of how the human body works; study the differences and similarities of each religion; recognize the use for each herb and seed and sapling.

I want to better myself, not for fame or recognition or power. I just want to understand.

- Unknown # things about me

[literature-is-my-utopia]

"You will never be completely at home again because part of your heart will always be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place."

-Miriam Adeney

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When will I be home?

I don't know.

In the mountains, in the rainy night,

The autumn lake is flooded.

Someday we will be back together again.

We will sit in the candlelight by the west window,

And I will tell you how I remembered you Tonight on the stormy mountain.

- Li Shangyin, from When Will I be Home? (tr. by Kenneth Rexroth)

[literature-is-my-utopia]

Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on.

- Afternoon Tea by Sydney Smith

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What is Love? [it is] for the heart to be filled with pain,

to become helpless by entrusting the essence of your soul to someone.

if your feet are on the path of love, then why desire the destination?

here, the destination itself is to become exhausted on that path.

to sacrifice your heart before your life is the condition here, friends.

for is it easy at all, to be hanged like mansoor?

to let someone live in your heart is something a heart alone is capable of.

mountains only know how to crumble to ashes [in the face of love].

even though He is away from my sight, He is near to me.

for it is a defect for my love to be restricted [to sight].

[literature-is-my-utopia]

“In many Muslim cultures, when you want to ask them how they’re doing, you ask: in Arabic, Kayf haal-ik? or, in Persian, Haal-e shomaa chetoreh? How is your haal?in Urdu,Kia heal hy? What is this haal that you inquire about? It is the transient state of one’s heart. In reality, we ask, “How is your heart doing at this very moment, at this breath?” When I ask, “How are you?” that is really what I want to know. I am not asking how many items are on your to-do list, nor asking how many items are in your inbox. I want to know how your heart is doing, at this very moment. Tell me. Tell me your heart is joyous, tell me your heart is aching, tell me your heart is sad, tell me your heart craves a human touch. Examine your own heart, explore your soul, and then tell me something about your heart and your soul. Tell me you remember you are still a human being, not just a human doing. Tell me you’re more than just a machine, checking off items from your to-do list. Have that conversation, that glance, that touch. Be a healing conversation, one filled with grace and presence. Put your hand on my arm, look me in the eye, and connect with me for one second. Tell me something about your heart, and awaken my heart. Help me remember that I too am a full and complete human being, a human being who also craves a human touch.”

— Omid Safi, The Disease of Being Busy

[literature-is-my-utopia]

In Arabic, "Abbas" (عباس) is a word for "Lion".But what it literally means is "One who frowns from the verb "abasa" (عبس) meaning "to frown".It is likely a description of how a lion's face looks like a frown, but I think there's more to it than that.There's a sadness in the lion's face that goes beyond its frown and it's a sadness shared by all who are strong and guard their proverbial prides, be it their families, or their faith based or ethnic communities.

It lies in the problem with always being there for everyone, being strong for everyone else, defending them when they're weak, pulling them up when they're in a dark place, inspiring them when they're down, lending an ear when they need someone to hear, lending a shoulder when they need to bury their face and cry, and being the one who knows what's going on around them in an increasingly terrifying world.

The problem is that, while you are there for everyone else, no one is ever there for you. Because they think you don't need it.If they only knew how wrong they were.

-Shibli Zaman

[literature-is-my-utopia]

I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.

-unknown

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"I know just how you feel: it was here, and it was beautiful, and now it's gone."

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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Mahmoud Darwish, from Journal of an Ordinary Grief (tr. from the Arabic by Ibrahim Muhawi)

[Text ID: A place is not only a geographical area; it's also a state of mind. And trees are not just trees; they are the ribs of childhood.]

[literature-is-my-utopia]

WHO AM I? WITHOUT EXILE

A stranger on the riverbank, like the river ... water

binds me to your name. Nothing brings me back from my faraway

to my palm tree: not peace and not war. Nothing

makes me enter the gospels. Not

a thing ... nothing sparkles from the shore of ebb

and flow between the Euphrates and the Nile. Nothing

makes me descend from the pharaoh’s boats. Nothing

carries me or makes me carry an idea: not longing

and not promise. What will I do? What

will I do without exile, and a long night

that stares at the water?

Water

binds me

to your name ...

Nothing takes me from the butterflies of my dreams

to my reality: not dust and not fire. What

will I do without roses from Samarkand? What

will I do in a theater that burnishes the singers with its lunar

stones? Our weight has become light like our houses

in the faraway winds. We have become two friends of the strange

creatures in the clouds ... and we are now loosened

from the gravity of identity’s land. What will we do … what

will we do without exile, and a long night

that stares at the water?

Water

binds me

to your name ...

There’s nothing left of me but you, and nothing left of you

And nothing carries us: not the road and not the house.

Was this road always like this, from the start,

or did our dreams find a mare on the hill

among the Mongol horses and exchange us for it?

And what will we do?

What

will we do

without

exile?

[literature-is-my-utopia]

I have the deepest affection for intellectual conversations. The ability to just sit and talk. About love, about life, about anything, about everything. To sit under the moon with all the time in the world, the full-speed train that is our lives slowing to a crawl. Bound by no obligations, barred by no human limitations. To speak without regret or fear of consequence. To talk for hours and about what’s really important in life....unknown