Alena > Recent Status Updates

It often happens, when you're almost eight, that there's just too much reality.

People who've never been hunted always seem to think there's a reason for it. "They wouldn't do it without a cause would they? You must have done something to provoke them." As if that how oppression works.

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it finds us.

Most of the people I know who have what I want - which is to say, purpose, heart, balance, gratitude, joy - are people with a deep sense of spirituality. ... they follow a brighter light than the glimmer of their own candle.

But though I was still like a stained and slightly buckled jigsaw puzzle with some pieces missing, now there were at least a few border pieces in place.

I know them, thought Ada. I could go to them.
But she was not like them, did not understand their hearts and minds, the compasses inside them that governed what they said and did.

We were not stupid girls, she says. Neither giddy nor superficial. Rather, marvelously idiotic, she explains.

I was so far a living example that it wasn't all that hard to go along with a man who seemed interested in din you or was interesting in and of himself.

Watching him that day of his concert, I'd felt the vibration of his indifference to us, the audience. ... I couldn't think of how to express my longing, for what I didn't even know; when he played I felt a yearning, pure and hard.

Tears
The crystal rags
Viscous tatters
of a worn-through soul
(Tears)

After that terrible Tuesday, Alba had to rearrange her feelings in order to continue living.

Amanda ... seized the newborn from his hands and gently placed her on the warm belly of her mother, where she found some consolation for the sadness of being born.

The first tremor of the earthquake lasted nearly a minute and was the strongest that had ever been recorded in that country of catastrophes.

She was still a beautiful woman, with rich curves and the oval face of a Roman madonna, but already the ugliness of resignation could be glimpsed through her pale, peach-toned skin and her eyes full of shadows.

What's the good if an American who isn't happy? Happiness was all we had.

I might ask to be forgiven - if I could name and face my crime, if there were anything or anybody anywhere with the power to forgive.

With this fearful intimation there opened in me a hatred for Giovanni which was as powerful as my love and was nourished by the same roots.

I used to think it was like a lightbulb, life,
dangling in the chest, asking to be switched on.

But it's not the light that's ever in question,
rather, what's your brilliant, glaring wattage?

What do you dare to gleam out and reflect?

Perhaps he is a fool and a coward but almost everybody is one or the other and most people are both.

...
How do they do it? Demand the
sweet continuance of birth and flight
in a place so utterly reckless? How
masterful and mad is hope.
(Outside Oklahoma, We See Boston)

Sometimes, you have to look around
at the life you've made and sort of nod at it,
like someone moving their head up and down
to a tune they like.
(Oh please, let it be lightening)

... how much we each want to be
the pure exonerated creature, to be turned loose
into our own wide open without a single
harness of sin to stop us.

... and I think
of that feeling when you're really full, or life is full
and you can't think of anything else that would fit in it,
but then even more sky comes and more days
and there is so much to remember and swallow.
(Someplace Like Montana)

He has this feeling, with women, that it's hard to have an experience that feels entirely new, that doesn't feel like something that's already happened, and will probably happen again in some very similar way, so that it never feels like all that much is at stake.

Now I, an under-tenant of the earth, can see
That the branches of a tree
Spread no wider than its roots.
And how shall the soul of a man
Be larger than the life he has lived?

You may think, passer-by, that Fate
Is a pit-fall outside of yourself,
Around which you may walk by the use of foresight
And wisdom.
...
But pass on into life:
In time you shall see Fate approach you
In the shape of your own image in the mirror;

The tongue may be an unruly member --
But silence poisons the soul.
Berate me who will -- I am content.

But that was how my life felt to me just then, like a boat already burning. Treacherous and bright, too far from any shore.

I had been a liar, always, and on stage lies were beautiful, necessary. They told a kind of truth.

I was young then and so hungry for experience that some days I could taste it like blood in the back of my throat. This is what I'll admit: I wanted it. All of it. I did this to myself.