Cat

“For Grace, After a Party"

You do not always know what I am feeling.
Last night in the warm spring air while I was
blazing my tirade against someone who doesn’t
interest
me, it was love for you that set me
afire,

and isn’t it odd? for in rooms full of
strangers my most tender feelings
writhe and
bear the fruit of screaming. Put out your hand,
isn’t there
an ashtray, suddenly, there? beside
the bed? And someone you love enters the room
and says wouldn’t
you like the eggs a little

different today?
And when they arrive they are
just plain scrambled eggs and the warm weather
is holding.”
― Frank O'Hara, The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara

“I am obscure to myself. I let myself happen. I unfold only in the now. I am rudely alive.”
― Clarice Lispector, Água Viva

“It isn’t that to have an honorable relationship with you, I have to understand everything, or tell you everything at once, or that I can know, beforehand, everything I need to tell you.

It means that most of the time I am eager, longing for the possibility of telling you. That these possibilities may seem frightening, but not destructive, to me. That I feel strong enough to hear your tentative and groping words. That we both know we are trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us.

The possibility of life between us.”
― Adrienne Rich, Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying

“Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”
― Antonio Gramsci