…but I tore it apart and I guess thats just something I have to live with now.
Katherine Larson, from Radial Symmetry; “Gardens in Tunisia”
[Text ID: “There are days that walk through me / and I cannot hold them.”]
Max Ritvo, from Four Reincarnations: Poems; “Living it up”
[Text ID: “I wish you would let me know / how difficult it is to love me. / Then I would know you love me / beneath all that difficulty.”]
Blythe Baird, from If My Body Could Speak; “Theories about the universe”
[Text ID: “When I want something / with my whole being, and the universe withholds it / from me, I hope the universe thinks to herself, / Silly girl. She thinks this is what she wants, / but she does not understand how it will hurt.”]
Rainer Maria Rilke in a letter to Lou Andreas-Salomé, published in Rilke and Andreas-Salomé: A Love Story in Letters
“THE WORLD IS increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn’t very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more? How do you sell an anti-ageing moisturiser? You make someone worry about ageing. How do you get people to vote for a political party? You make them worry about immigration. How do you get them to buy insurance? By making them worry about everything. How do you get them to have plastic surgery? By highlighting their physical flaws. How do you get them to watch a TV show? By making them worry about missing out. How do you get them to buy a new smartphone? By making them feel like they are being left behind. To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business.”
— Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive
