I'm toying with getting another tattoo, this time a quote, on my right forearm. The most meaningful so far:
"I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." - Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
This quote works personally for me on so many levels, in all its tragedy. At my best (and it's not too good), I can delude myself into a safe world and interact with people in a way for them to fall in love with me. At my worst, I am dependent on other people's favors, first impressions, my own wiles and not strong enough to depend on my authentic self. Morbid I know, but there's also something so beautifully melancholic about comparing myself with Blanche Dubois, dying Southern belle with people piercing down her delusional diaphanous wings. Damn, it's messed up how I'm attracted to her personal tragedy and sees her character flaws as aesthetically compelling. She's mostly seen as a tragic, delusional figure of close-insanity...but there's something hauntingly beautiful about how she lives in her own world with her bejeweled glittering clothes spilling out of her chests.
"Run until you hear the ocean's everlasting cry, deep though it may be and bitter, you must drink it dry." - W.H.Auden
One of my favorite poems, if not the number one favorite, "Lady Weeping at the Crossroads" is a Victorian dreamscape of a journey poem to find the authentic self.These lines of imagery are especially astounding to me....the depth of how much you have to work in order to get rid of self-falsity and to see yourself exactly for who you are. I was also toying with the last line: "find the pen-knife there and plunge it into your false heart" but again, the imagery might just be a little too much on the macabre side.
"I carry the sun in a golden cup, the moon in a silver bag." - W. B. Yeats
An obscure Yeats poem made famous by Carla Bruni's song collection: No Promises, which I admittedly love despite all the haters....this line represents all of Yeat's complex confusing mythological mysteries of a life philosophy. It's a beautiful line in just its imagery....maybe meaning a bodily connection with the spiritual and the natural. I can love it purely for its image, but the rest of the poem is not as bright: it's about the decay of youth (no country for old men-esque), how the dancing days are gone, but this line for me is expansively hopeful...that maybe after youth's ego trip I can someday meld into the peace of nature and feel a wholesomeness youth can never offer.
"I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." - Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
This quote works personally for me on so many levels, in all its tragedy. At my best (and it's not too good), I can delude myself into a safe world and interact with people in a way for them to fall in love with me. At my worst, I am dependent on other people's favors, first impressions, my own wiles and not strong enough to depend on my authentic self. Morbid I know, but there's also something so beautifully melancholic about comparing myself with Blanche Dubois, dying Southern belle with people piercing down her delusional diaphanous wings. Damn, it's messed up how I'm attracted to her personal tragedy and sees her character flaws as aesthetically compelling. She's mostly seen as a tragic, delusional figure of close-insanity...but there's something hauntingly beautiful about how she lives in her own world with her bejeweled glittering clothes spilling out of her chests.
"Run until you hear the ocean's everlasting cry, deep though it may be and bitter, you must drink it dry." - W.H.Auden
One of my favorite poems, if not the number one favorite, "Lady Weeping at the Crossroads" is a Victorian dreamscape of a journey poem to find the authentic self.These lines of imagery are especially astounding to me....the depth of how much you have to work in order to get rid of self-falsity and to see yourself exactly for who you are. I was also toying with the last line: "find the pen-knife there and plunge it into your false heart" but again, the imagery might just be a little too much on the macabre side.
"I carry the sun in a golden cup, the moon in a silver bag." - W. B. Yeats
An obscure Yeats poem made famous by Carla Bruni's song collection: No Promises, which I admittedly love despite all the haters....this line represents all of Yeat's complex confusing mythological mysteries of a life philosophy. It's a beautiful line in just its imagery....maybe meaning a bodily connection with the spiritual and the natural. I can love it purely for its image, but the rest of the poem is not as bright: it's about the decay of youth (no country for old men-esque), how the dancing days are gone, but this line for me is expansively hopeful...that maybe after youth's ego trip I can someday meld into the peace of nature and feel a wholesomeness youth can never offer.
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