true love

“Love is absolute loyalty. People fade, looks fade, but loyalty never fades. You can depend so much on certain people, you can set your watch by them. And that’s love, even if it doesn’t seem very exciting.” ~ Sylvester Stallone

The perfect quote to explain why best friends far surpass lovers.

2012

Neil Gaiman’s New Year Wishes that are highly applicable to all of us.

A decade ago I wrote:

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art – write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

And almost half a decade ago, I said:

I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you’ll dream dangerously and outragerously, that you’ll make something that didn’t exist before you made it, that you will be loved and you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.

And for this year, my wish for each of us is small and very simple. And it’s this:

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.

So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.

On Philanthropy

“What’s important is how we use our time on this earth, not how conspicuously we give our money away. What’s important is the energy and courage we are willing to expend reversing entropy, battling cynicism, suffering and challenging mediocre minds, staring down those who would trample our dreams, taking a stand for magic, and advancing the potential of the human race.”

~ Dan Pallotta

Love

Triangular theory of love developed by psychologist Robert Sternberg:

For women who are difficult to love

you are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial 
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who 
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn’t you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel 
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.

- Warsan Shire

Everything and nothing changed

“We are still a hateful, war-waging culture that denigrates women, celebrates killing, despoils the planet, plunders the resources of less powerful people, keeps a permanent underclass in virtual economic slavery and wages imperialist wars abroad.”

Scary isn’t it, when you bother to sit down and ponder upon the fact?

When I look back

To quote Abby Perkins: Will I regret these encounters, if I will find as I grow up that these boys have, at some point, slipped into my heart and dug out something that I will miss later. The days filled with worries, anxiety and overall discomfort, I would be inclined to think that I already have my regrets. Then I saw how care had glimpses of impact. And I need to learn that that would have to be enough.

Al Capone

“You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot further with a smile and a gun.”

Life sometimes throw so much at you that being armed (physically or otherwise) becomes a necessity. And if you have to go down, what better way than with weapons hot?

Charles Bukowski

“Love is a form of prejudice. You love what you need, you love what makes you feel good, you love what is convenient. How can you say you love one person when there are ten thousand people in the world that you would love more if you ever met them? But you’ll never meet them.

All right, so we do the best we can.

Granted. But we must still realize that love is just the result of a chance encounter. Most people make too much of it. On these grounds a good fuck is not to be entirely scorned. But that’s the result of chance meeting too.”

words to live by

Don’t make decisions when you are angry.
Don’t make promises when you are happy.
Don’t do stupid things because you’re sad and lonely.
Do stupid things because you’re happy and reckless.