Walk tall, kick ass, learn to speak arabic, love music, and never forget you come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers, and warriors.

Impropriety is the soul of wit.

-

Have common sense and stick to the point.

-

It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.

-

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.

-

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

-

We learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others.

-

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.

There was a star riding through clouds one night, and I said to the star, ‘Consume me.’

Parece que hay un incendio, cada vez que nos juntamos.
Parece que hay un incendio, cuando tú estás a mi lado,
parece que estoy ardiendo, cuando tú estás a mi lado,
parece que estoy ardiendo.

Vamos a tener que vernos, aunque estén todos en contra.
Vamos a tener que vernos, ellos te tienen de sobra
y yo te echo de menos,
ellos te tienen de sobra y yo te echo de menos.

Esto es para contarte, que aquí te espero,
para decirte al oído lo que te quiero,
para poder decirte lo que te quiero,
así que ya lo sabes, aquí te espero.

Antes de dejar, gitana, de quererte y adorarte,
antes de dejar, gitana, se habrán secado los mares
y la luz de la mañana,
se habrán secado los mares y la luz de la mañana.

Porque te llevo dentro, como a mi vida,
eres dueña y señora del alma mía.

Que nuble el azul del cielo, pídeme que apague el sol,
que nuble el azul del cielo, pero no me pidas, no,
que olvide lo que te quiero,
pero no me pidas, no, que me olvide de lo que te quiero.

Mira que eres bonita, qué guapa eres,
eres la más bonita de las mujeres,
eres la más bonita de las mujeres.
Mira que eres bonita, qué guapa eres.

You must be ready to accept the possibility that there is a limitless range of awareness for which we now have no words; that awareness can expand beyond range of your ego, your self, your familiar identity, beyond everything you have learned, beyond your notions of space and time, beyond the differences which usually separate people from each other and from the world around them

I walk onto the blazing sunshine. the whole day is mine - temporarily, anyhow.

Say that you'll never run too far away / Even with all the answers out there / Where it's brighter but no one will care / Half as much as I care about you / I'm learning to hunt for you

Ni el amor, ni los encuentros verdaderos, ni siquiera los profundos desencuentros, son obra de las casualidades, sino que nos están misteriosamente reservados.

No es la necesidad, sino la casualidad, la que está llena de encantos. Si el amor debe ser inolvidable, las casualidades deben volar hacia él desde el primer momento.

Amor Fati – “Love Your Fate”, which is in fact your life.

A person of good intelligence and of sensitivity cannot exist in this society very long without having some anger about the inequality ― and it’s not just a bleeding-heart, knee-jerk, liberal kind of a thing ― it is just a normal human reaction to a nonsensical set of values where we have cinnamon flavored dental floss and there are people sleeping in the street.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.

If you look very intensely and slowly, things will happen that you never dreamed of before.

It is not what you say that matters but the manner in which you say it; there lies the secret of the ages.

En Panne

Atiborrado de filosofía,
por culpa del afán que me devora,
yo, que ya me sabía
dos gramos del vivir, nada sé ahora.

De tanto preguntar
el camino a los sabios que pasaban,
me quedé sin llegar,
mientras tantos imbéciles llegaban...

No pienses en las cosas que fueron y pasaron;
Pensar en lo que fue es nostalgia inútil.
No pienses tampoco en lo que vendrá;
Pensar en el futuro es de una vana impaciencia.
Es preferible que de día te sientes como un saco en una silla;
Y que de noche te tiendas como una piedra en el lecho.
Cuando venga el alimento abre la boca;
Cierra los ojos cuando viene el sueño.

I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.

I’ve been told
that people in the army
do more by 7:00 am
than I do
in an entire day


but if I wake
at 6:59 am
and turn to you
to trace the outline of your lips
with mine
I will have done enough
and killed no one
in the process.

The empty blue sky of space says ‘All this comes back to me, then goes again, and comes back again, then goes again, and I don’t care, it still belongs to me

Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.

Always be who you are, and say what you feel,
because people who mind don't matter,
and people who matter don't mind.

Estaba sentado en un taburete del 8-Count, sin pensar en nada en particular, como por ejemplo qué hacía yo allí bebiendo whisky con agua. Quizá fuese porque Marie se pasaba todo el tiempo protestando porque yo quería ir a clase de vuelo. Aunque ella siempre estaba protestando por algo. No me malinterpreten, ella era un alma más o menos buena, pero el mundo está lleno de almas más o menos buenas y mira dónde estamos: siempre sentados en el último segundo de cada minuto. Bueno, ya se sabe. De todas formas, era tarde y yo estaba sentado junto a aquel tipo mayor que llevaba un jersey de cuello vuelto naranja y pantalones cortos. De vez en cuando me miraba y sonreía, pero yo no le hacía caso. Realmente no tenía ganas de escuchar ninguna conversación típica de barra. Quiero decir que, cuando se está sentado sobre el último segundo de cada minuto, lo mejor es evitar las chorradas. El tiempo es oro, ¿no?

I’m going out of my mind, oh, oh
With a pain that stops and starts
Like a corkscrew to my heart
Ever since we’ve been apart

Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts.

Morning

I've got to tell you
how I love you always
I think of it on grey
mornings with death

in my mouth the tea
is never hot enough
then and the cigarette
dry the maroon robe

chills me I need you
and look out the window
at the noiseless snow

At night on the dock
the buses glow like
clouds and I am lonely
thinking of flutes

I miss you always
when I go to the beach
the sand is wet with
tears that seem mine

although I never weep
and hold you in my
heart with a very real
humor you'd be proud of

the parking lot is
crowded and I stand
rattling my keys the car
is empty as a bicycle

what are you doing now
where did you eat your
lunch and were there
lots of anchovies it

is difficult to think
of you without me in
the sentence you depress
me when you are alone

Last night the stars
were numerous and today
snow is their calling
card I'll not be cordial

there is nothing that
distracts me music is
only a crossword puzzle
do you know how it is

when you are the only
passenger if there is a
place further from me
I beg you do not go

"What do any of us really know about love?” Mel said. “It seems to me we’re just beginners at love. We say we love each other and we do, I don’t doubt it. I love Terri and Terri loves me, and you guys love each other too. You know the kind of love I’m talking about now. Physical love, that impulse that drives you to someone special, as well as love of the other person’s being, his or her essence, as it were. Carnal love and, well, call it sentimental love, the day-to-day caring about the other person. But sometimes I have a hard time accounting for the fact that I must have loved my first wife too. But I did, I know I did… There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love? What happened to it, is what I’d like to know. I wish someone would tell me.

-Una vez, cuando estaba en el instituto, una psicóloga me dijo que fuera a su despacho. Se lo decía a todas las chicas, una cada vez. “¿Qué clase de sueños tienes?”, me preguntó la mujer. “¿Qué piensas hacer dentro de diez años? ¿Y de veinte?” Yo tenía dieciséis o diecisiete años. No era más que una niña. No sabía qué contestar. Me quedé allí sentada como un pasmarote. La psicóloga tendría más o menos la edad que yo tengo ahora. Me parecía vieja. Es vieja, dije para mí. Sabía que ya había pasado la mitad de su vida. Y tuve la impresión de saber algo que ella no sabía. Algo que ella nunca llegaría a descubrir. Un secreto. Algo que nadie debía saber ni decir. Así que me quedé callada. Sólo moví la cabeza. Debió de catalogarme como idiota. Pero no dije nada. ¿Comprende lo que quiero decir? Creí saber cosas que ella ni siquiera adivinaba. Ahora, si alguien volviera a hacerme la misma pregunta, acerca de mis sueños y lo demás, se lo diría.

-¿Qué le diría?

Suspira y se echa hacia atrás. Deja que le retenga la mano.

-Le diría: “Los sueños son eso de lo que uno se despierta.” Eso es lo que diría.

You'll never know the hurt I suffered nor the pain I rise above,
And I'll never know the same about you, your holiness or your kind of love,
And it makes me feel so sorry.

Now, I'd like two eggs, over hard. I know, don't tell me; it's hard on the arteries, but old habits die hard — just about as hard as I want those eggs. Bacon, super-crispy. Almost burned. Cremated. That's great.

After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were.
After the second, you see things as they are not.
Finally, you see things as they really are,
which is the most horrible thing in the world.

And will I tell you that these three lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness.

And they did live.

I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth. And if that’s sinful, then let me be damned for it!

There are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ people. Some are a little better or a little worse but all are activated more by misunderstanding than malice. A blindness to what is going on in each other’s hearts.

We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with you trapped, locked in it.

Life Story

After you’ve been to bed together for the first time,
without the advantage or disadvantage of any prior acquaintance,
the other party very often says to you,
Tell me about yourself, I want to know all about you,
what’s your story? And you think maybe they really and truly do

sincerely want to know your life story, and so you light up
a cigarette and begin to tell it to them, the two of you
lying together in completely relaxed positions
like a pair of rag dolls a bored child dropped on a bed.

You tell them your story, or as much of your story
as time or a fair degree of prudence allows, and they say,
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, until the oh
is just an audible breath, and then of course

there’s some interruption. Slow room service comes up
with a bowl of melting ice cubes, or one of you rises to pee
and gaze at himself with the mild astonishment in the bathroom mirror.
And then, the first thing you know, before you’ve had time
to pick up where you left off with your enthralling life story,
they’re telling you their life story, exactly as they’d intended to all along,

and you’re saying, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, the vowel at last becoming
no more than an audible sigh,
as the elevator, halfway down the corridor and a turn to the left,
draws one last, long, deep breath of exhaustion
and stops breathing forever. Then?

Well, one of you falls asleep
and the other one does likewise with a lighted cigarette in his mouth,
and that’s how people burn to death in hotel rooms.

It was the best of times, if only someone had told me. Mistakes were made, hearts were broken, harsh lessons learned.

Personism: A Manifesto
by Frank O'Hara


Everything is in the poems, but at the risk of sounding like the poor wealthy man's Allen Ginsberg I will write to you because I just heard that one of my fellow poets thinks that a poem of mine that can't be got at one reading is because I was confused too. Now, come on. I don't believe in god, so I don't have to make elaborately sounded structures. I hate Vachel Lindsay, always have; I don't even like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve. If someone's chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don't turn around and shout, "Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep."

That's for the writing poems part. As for their reception, suppose you're in love and somebody's mistreating (mal aimé) you, you don't say, "Hey, you can't hurt me this way, I care!" you just let all the different bodies fall where they may, and they always do may after a few months. But that's not why you fell in love in the first place, just to hang onto life, so you have to take your chances and try to avoid being logical. Pain always produces logic, which is very bad for you.

I'm not saying that I don't have practically the most lofty ideas of anyone writing today, but what difference does that make? They're just ideas. The only good thing about it is that when I get lofty enough I've stopped thinking and that's when refreshment arrives.

But how then can you really care if anybody gets it, or gets what it means, or if it improves them. Improves them for what? For death? Why hurry them along? Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears). I don't give a damn whether they eat or not. Forced feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete). Nobody should experience anything they don't need to, if they don't need poetry bully for them. I like the movies too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies. As for measure and other technical apparatus, that's just common sense: if you're going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you. There's nothing metaphysical about it. Unless, of course, you flatter yourself into thinking that what you're experiencing is "yearning."

Abstraction in poetry, which Allen [Ginsberg] recently commented on in It Is, is intriguing. I think it appears mostly in the minute particulars where decision is necessary. Abstraction (in poetry, not painting) involves personal removal by the poet. For instance, the decision involved in the choice between "the nostalgia of the infinite" and "the nostalgia for the infinite" defines an attitude towards degree of abstraction. The nostalgia of the infinite representing the greater degree of abstraction, removal, and negative capability (as in Keats and Mallarmé).

Personism, a movement which I recently founded and which nobody knows about, interests me a great deal, being so totally opposed to this kind of abstract removal that it is verging on a true abstraction for the first time, really, in the history of poetry. Personism is to Wallace Stevens what la poési pure was to Béranger. Personism has nothing to do with philosophy, it's all art. It does not have to do with personality or intimacy, far from it! But to give you a vague idea, one of its minimal aspects is to address itself to one person (other than the poet himself), thus evoking overtones of love without destroying love's life-giving vulgarity, and sustaining the poet's feelings towards the poem while preventing love from distracting him into feeling about the person. That's part of Personism. It was founded by me after lunch with LeRoi Jones on August 27, 1959, a day in which I was in love with someone (not Roi, by the way, a blond). I went back to work and wrote a poem for this person. While I was writing it I was realizing that if I wanted to I could use the telephone instead of writing the poem, and so Personism was born. It's a very exciting movement which will undoubtedly have lots of adherents. It puts the poem squarely between the poet and the person, Lucky Pierre style, and the poem is correspondingly gratified. The poem is at last between two persons instead of two pages. In all modesty, I confess that it may be the death of literature as we know it. While I have certain regrets, I am still glad I got there before Alain Robbe-Grillet did. Poetry being quicker and surer than prose, it is only just that poetry finish literature off. For a time people thought that Artaud was going to accomplish this, but actually, for all their magnificence, his polemical writings are not more outside literature than Bear Mountain is outside New York State. His relation is no more astounding than Dubuffet's to painting.

What can we expect from Personism? (This is getting good, isn't it?) Everything, but we won't get it. It is too new, too vital a movement to promise anything. But it, like Africa, is on the way. The recent propagandists for technique on the one hand, and for content on the other, had better watch out.September 3, 1959

How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into.

“A sensitive person receives 50 impressions where somebody else may only get seven. Sensitive people are so vulnerable; the more sensitive you are, the more certain you are to be brutalised, develop scabs. Never evolve. Never allow yourself to feel anything, because you always feel too much.”

"I would have been born in the late 40’s, a kid without a TV, surviving on mail-ordering photographs and autographs and sacred knick-knacks, corresponding with strangers, pen-pals,in a time before the porno digital revolution, when the implication was more obscure, more beautiful, and people talked, in a time when philosophy and strange habits were admired, in a time when things were inky and still poisonous, in a time before the remote control, in a time when the questions were more obscene than the answers, in an age of opinion when people really took sides, in an age of thinkers and good service, in a time when real con men and bank robbers were hard to catch, in a time before sky high security, in a time before marshal law, in a time when one could walk right off the map, in a time when entertainment was artistic, not mathematic, in a time when value was valuable, not obese with emptiness. I probably would have gone to New York in the mid-60’s, left home where my mother was holed up oil painting, my father hot-roding cars, and darted for the city alone. I would have liked to see it all begin, tired of the hippies, plunging into the first of the drug party art galleries, the Warhol dreamscape, watching Edie Sedgwick climbing walls to heaven and slipping over the side with big deer eyes in headlights, still dancing. And the Velvets playing all those weird places doing what nobody wanted but what everyone needed. And watching the darker art punks mingling with the aristos and the street people and the rich artists fucking the poor artists and then everyone changing places, fluxuating and trying each other out and everything out, leaving behind the stiff values that plagued youth yesterday. A time when no one knew what the drugs would do, before worry was born the way it is today, flourishing like a nomadic plague. See Andy and Bridget Berlin sitting in a window of a diner eating hamburgers and drinking chocolate milkshakes in upper Manhattan, admiring transvestites with bad skin walking by like cowboys, because last week they were real cowboys. And to be in the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel with Stanley when he was young, witnessing the chaos there when Edie set fire to 105, and/or just the general chaos there, the abrupt art and the abrupt deaths, the calm before the storm, the storm, the blackouts, the hysteria and all the imagination it took to do all that art, those films, those books, those songs, in a time before people knew what to do with them, before the salesman was perfected, when art was an addiction and artists, mysterious, and rarely careerists, and you could still identify with, and fall in love with- the true spirit of loose canons."

I think it’s interesting the two drugs that are legal - alcohol and cigarettes, two drugs that do absolutely nothing for you at all - are legal, and the drugs that might open your mind up to realise how you’re being fucked every day of your life? Those drugs are against the law. Coincidence? See, I’m glad mushrooms are against the law, cos I took ‘em one time, you know what happened to me? I laid in a field of green grass for four hours, going, ‘My God, I love everything.’ Yeah, now if that isn’t a hazard to our countries…How are we gonna justify arms dealing if we know we’re all one?

Y se muy bien que no estarás. No estarás en la calle, en el murmullo que brota de la noche de los postes de alumbrado, ni en el gesto de elegir el menú, ni en la sonrisa que alivia los completos en los subtes ni en los libros prestados, ni en el hasta mañana. No estarás en mis sueños, en el destino original de mis palabras, ni en una cifra telefónica estarás, o en el color de un par de guantes o una blusa.
Me enojaré amor mío sin que sea por ti, y compraré bombones pero no para ti, me pararé en la esquina a la que no vendrás y diré las cosas que sé decir y comeré las cosas que se comen y soñaré los sueños que se sueñan. Y se muy bien que no estarás ni aquí dentro de la cárcel donde te retengo, ni allí afuera en ese río de calles y de puentes. No estarás para nada, no serás mi recuerdo y cuando piense en ti pensaré un pensamiento que oscuramente trata de acordarse de ti.

So books are real to me, too; they link me not just with other minds but with the vision of other minds, what those minds understand and see. I see their worlds as well as I see my own.

Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error of judgment.

But the actual touch of her lingered, inside his heart. That remained. In all the years of his life ahead, the long years without her, with never seeing her or hearing from her or knowing anything about her, if she was alive or happy or dead or what, that touch stayed locked within him, sealed in himself, and never went away. That one touch of her hand.

When I consider the brief span of my

life, swallowed up in the eternity before

and behind it, the small space that I fill,

or even see, engulfed in the infinite

immensity of spaces which I know not,

and which know not me, I am afraid,

and wonder to see myself here rather

than there; for there is no reason why I

should be here rather than there, now,

rather than then.

If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn’t we really be talking about parallel realities? And if there are parallel realities, are some more true (more real) than others? What about the world of a schizophrenic? Maybe it’s as real as our world. Maybe we cannot say that we are in touch with reality and he is not, but should instead say, His reality is so different from ours that he can’t explain his to us, and we can’t explain ours to him. The problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are experienced too differently, there occurs a breakdown in communication … and there is the real illness.

Si la realidad difiere de persona en persona, podemos hablar de realidad singular, o realmente deberíamos estar hablando de realidades paralelas? Y si hay realidades paralelas, ¿son algunas más auténticas (más reales) que otras? ¿Qué pasa con el mundo de un esquizofrénico? Quizás es tan real como el nuestro. Tal vez no podemos decir que nosotros estamos en contacto con la realidad y él no, si no que deberíamos decir, Su realidad es tan diferente a la nuestra que no puede explicárnosla, y nosotros no podemos explicarle la nuestra a él. El problema, entonces, es que si mundos subjetivos son experimentados de formas demasiado diferentes, ocurre un colapso en comunicación... y esa es la verdadera enfermedad.

It no longer makes me cry and die and tear myself to see her go because everything goes away from me like that now — girls, visions, anything, just in the same way and forever and I accept lostness forever.

I loved you so much once. I did. More than anything in the whole wide world. Imagine that. What a laugh that is now. Can you believe it? We were so intimate once upon a time I can't believe it now. The memory of being that intimate with somebody. We were so intimate I could puke. I can't imagine ever being that intimate with somebody else. I haven't been.

He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hope for the human condition is a fool.

There exists an obvious fact that seems utterly moral: namely, that a man is always a prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.

Tú amas a alguien, y luego se van. Vienen a casa un día, comienzan a hacer las maletas, y uno dice: «¿qué sucede?». Y ellos contestan: «tengo una oferta mejor de otra persona». Y se van, saliendo para siempre de tu vida, y después de eso uno está muerto, y va arrastrando por ahí ese gran trozo de amor sin tener nadie a quien dárselo. Y si uno encuentra a alguien a quien dárselo, vuelve a suceder lo mismo. O uno llama por teléfono un día y dice: «soy Jason». Y te contestan: «¿quién?» Y sabes que ya se acabó todo. No saben quién eres. De modo que supongo que jamás lo supieron; jamás los tuviste.

El amor no es solo desear a otra persona del modo que uno desea poseer un objeto que ve en una tienda. Eso es simple deseo. Uno quiere tenerla consigo, llevársela a casa, y colocarla en algún lugar del apartamento, como si fuera una lámpara. El amor es... como un padre salvando a sus hijos de una casa en llamas, sacándolos, y entonces muriendo él. Cuando uno ama, deja de vivir para sí mismo; vive para otra persona.

You see, this happened a few months ago, but it’s still going on right now, and it ought to make us feel ashamed when we talk like we know what we’re talking about when we talk about love.

If I could have it back,
All the time that we wasted,
I’d only waste it again.

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

So tell me something bad you done,
Tell me 'bout your ghosts
Tell me 'bout the game you won
And then the one you lost

Sólo tengo dudas en los bolsillos,

sólo tengo tiempo para perder.

Voy de paseo al barrio,

a pasarlo bien.

Buscaré un amigo que no pida nada,

el gato más guapo del callejón

con el corazón tan suave

como yo.

¿Dónde están todos los chicos?

Todas esas noches que tuvimos algo,

luego lo perdimos sin saber por qué.

Muy arriba, muy abajo

Probaré otra vez.

¿Dónde están todos los chicos?

Muertos o algo mejor

Sólo quiero estar un ratito sentada en el porche

mirando como poquito a poco se tuerce la noche.

Voy a tocarte otra vez esta canción

antes que estemos los dos

muertos o algo mejor

Ven y vamos a dar una vuelta en mi coche nuevo,

pasearemos nuestra sonrisa por todo el pueblo,

repartiremos confetti en la estación

antes que estemos los dos

muertos o algo mejor,

muertos o algo mejor

No le des de comer al perro flaquito,

que yo sé que se quiere quedar para siempre contigo.

Y este idiota se piensa que puede llamarme muñeca,

soy capaz de jugar al ping-pong con su cabeza hueca.

Quiero subirme a la noria a decir adiós

antes que estemos los dos

muertos o algo mejor,

muertos o algo mejor,

muertos o algo mejor

"I don’t particularly believe all love is doomed. But I guess, one is usually kinda suffering from some aborted love affair or association, rather than being at the peak of one. I think it’s fairly obvious that a lot more suffering goes on in the name of love than the little happiness you can squeeze out of it. But I wouldn’t like to dwell on it. Perhaps you could lighten up a bit."

Way back, back then I considered you my best friend but the last time i saw you I knew I'd never see you again

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd; the longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.

After that it got pretty late, and we both had to go, but it was great seeing Annie again. I… I realized what a terrific person she was, and… and how much fun it was just knowing her; and I… I, I thought of that old joke, y’know, the, this… this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, uh, my brother’s crazy; he thinks he’s a chicken.” And, uh, the doctor says, “Well, why don’t you turn him in?” The guy says, “I would, but I need the eggs.” Well, I guess that’s pretty much now how I feel about relationships; y’know, they’re totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, and… but, uh, I guess we keep goin’ through it because, uh, most of us… need the eggs.

The presence of death at the end of our road has made our future go up in smoke. Our life has ‘no tomorrow’—it is merely a series of instants.

This is our last goodbye
I hate to feel the love between us die
But it's over
Just hear this and then i'll go
You gave me more to live for
More than you'll ever know

This is our last embrace
Must I dream and always see your face
Why can't we overcome this wall
Well, maybe it's just because i didn't know you at all

Kiss me, please kiss me
But kiss me out of desire, babe, and not consolation
You know it makes me so angry 'cause i know that in time
I'll only make you cry, this is our last goodbye

Did you say 'no, this can't happen to me,'
And did you rush to the phone to call
Was there a voice unkind in the back of your mind
Saying maybe you didn't know him at all
You didn't know him at all, oh, you didn't know

Well, the bells out in the church tower chime
Burning clues into this heart of mine
Thinking so hard on her soft eyes and the memories
Offer signs that it's over... it's over

Drink up, baby, stay up all night
The things you could do, you won't but you might
The potential you'll be that you'll never see
The promises you'll only make
Drink up with me now and forget all about
The pressure of days, do what I say
And I'll make you okay and drive them away
The images stuck in your head
People you've been before that you don't want around anymore
That push and shove and won't bend to your will
I'll keep them still
Drink up, baby, look at the stars
I'll kiss you again between the bars
Where I'm seeing you there with your hands in the air
Waiting to finally be caught
Drink up one more time and I'll make you mine
Keep you apart, deep in my heart
Separate from the rest, where I like you the best
And keep the things you forgot
The people you've been before that you don't want around anymore
That push and shove and won't bend to your will
I'll keep them still

Well, the look of the cake, it ain't
It ain't always the taste
My ex girl, she had such a beautiful face
I wanted love but not for myself
But for the girl so she could
So she could love herself

Oh my next girl
will be nothing like, my ex girl
I made mistakes back then, I'll never do it again
Oh my next girl
she'll be nothing like my ex girl
It was a painful dance
Now I got a second chance

Oh her beautiful face and her wicked ways
And I'm praying for her beautiful face everyday
All that work over, over so much time
if I think too hard, I might lose my mind

Oh my next girl, yeah
Will be nothing like my ex girl
I made mistakes back then
I'll never do it again
Oh my next girl
She'll be nothing like my ex girl
That was a painful dance
I got a second chance yeah

Next girl yeaaah
My next girl ...

Después de ti sólo queda ruido,
una mancha en el colchón y olor a gas.
Después de ti todo sabe raro
como un pequeño arpón en el paladar.

Yo que fui tu pesadilla, ahora mírame
me rompo cuando tengo que admitir,
tengo que admitir
que estoy sorprendida,
qué rápido me olvidas.

Ahora no, no soy nada para ti,
ahora no, no soy nada para ti,
no soy nada, nada.

Ya sé que vas con una chica inglesa,
bonito girasol para tu ojal.
Y sé también que no te fías,
pero tu corazón se deja acariciar.

Bien, pues yo no tengo frío
pero hay alguna vez que tiemblo
cuando tengo que admitir,
tengo que admitir
que estoy sorprendida,
qué rápido me olvidas.

Ahora no, no soy nada para ti,
ahora no, no soy nada para ti,
no soy nada, nada, nada, nada.

Nada para ti,
no soy nada para ti,
no soy nada para ti,
no soy ni una cicatriz,
no soy nada, nada.

Burn that photograph. Give it a grandiose death. Let it become a legend. Add or subtract details as you wish. It had an exciting and romantic life. Just the way you will live yours? Sometimes you will be unable to trace where you yourself have been. Sometimes you will find it impossible to remember weeks, months, even years of your life. You may only simply be able to recall a group of colors, a cassette of noise, and maybe the length of your hair at the time, before the fire. There will be many fires. Many stories. Many details lost, for a purpose. Forgetting details is the preventative method against satisfaction, against lazy fashion, against boredom cashing in on you. Use every match you’ve got.

As time goes on, you’ll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn’t, doesn’t. Time solves most things. And what time can’t solve, you have to solve yourself.

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

El amor es la emoción mas compleja. Los seres humanos son imprevisibles. No hay lógica en sus emociones. Donde no hay lógica no hay pensamiento racional. Y donde no hay pensamiento racional puede haber mucho romance, pero también mucho sufrimiento.

Some people die just a little
Sometimes you die by the drop
Some people die in the middle
I live just fine on the top

“You know what I think? I think that we’re all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and we claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch.”

Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish—a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow—to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested . . . Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.

She lay beside me like a branch from a tender willow tree
I was as still, as still as a river could be
When a rococo zephyr swept over her and me

She watched the water ripple ripple ripple ripple light
Light watched the water ripple ripple ripple ripple she
I did some kind of dance, jaunty as a bee
I tried to look my best, a finch in wild mint vest
A fiercer force had wrenched her from where she used to be
I caught and caressed the length of her, a tender willow branch floating on me

Well maybe this was all, was all meant to be
Maybe this is all, is all that meant to be
A rococo zephyr crept up and stepped over her and me

Well I used to be sort of blind
Now I can sort of see

Working through das pain

Last night I swear I felt your touch
Gentle and warm
The hair stood on my arms
How, how, how?

Show me the way, show me the way, show me the way
To shake a memory

I flipped my forelock, I twitched my withers, I reared and bucked
I could not put my rider aground
All these fine memories are fuckin' me down

I dreamed it was a dream that you were gone
I woke up feeling so ripped by reality
Love is the king of the beasts
And when it gets hungry it must kill to eat
Love is the king of the beasts
A lion walking down city streets

I fell back asleep some time later on
And I dreamed the perfect song
It held all the answers, like hands laid on

I woke halfway and scribbled it down
And in the morning what I wrote I read
It was hard to read at first but here's what it said

Eid ma clack shaw
Zupoven del ba
Mertepy ven seinur
Cofally ragdah

Show me the way, show me the way, show me the way
To shake a memory

Don't extend the solo,
Lay the groove too deep
Try not to sing the words
as if you're mumbling in your sleep

Don't say that you won't do it
'cause it's been done before
Don't start a revolution
Just because you're feeling bored

The girls don't care
That you ache to be free
You see, the girls just want
A sweet melody

Don't quote Five Easy Pieces
TiVo Cool Hand Luke
Don't talk about how
God is dead
And love is just a fluke

Don't listen to Frank Zappa,
Late Coltrane, Faust or Can
Just take that twisted heart of yours
And lay it in her hand

The girls don't care
That you ache to be free
You see, the girls just want
A sweet melody

The girls don't care
That you yearn to be free
Girls just want
A sweet, a sweet melody

Show me the bright side and I'll look 'til my eyes catch fire
And please forgive me if I leave you feeling uninspired
My only pleasure is to make that bubble burst
I can't find comfort in the fact that it could be worse

Don't tell me there's so many things for which I should be glad
And I'm truly sorry if I made your party guests feel bad
Could be I think too much or maybe I'm just cursed
I can't find comfort in the fact that it could be worse

“I don’t think anything’s consistent. I think we do rely on each other so much, too much. You do these things everyday, 24 hours a day, and you become so close that just the thought, nothing even has to happen, it’s just the thought of something happening, just the thought that that person might disappear and go away or do something else…you’re always on guard and, I found something that’s so important, and that’s doing this band but you know, to be honest, it’s him.”

Farewell kaleidoscope girl

I'm off with tomorrow's flight.

Your grace was mine for a while

but who can stand to your height?

Ya ves, continuamos viviendo, cada uno a su manera, incluso ahora, pensé. Por profunda y fatal que sea la pérdida, por importante que sea lo que nos han arrancado de las manos, aunque nos hayamos convertido en alguien completamente distintos y sólo conservemos, de lo que antes éramos, una fina capa de piel, a pesar de todo, podemos continuar viviendo, así, en silencio. Podemos alargar la mano e ir tirando del hilo de los días que nos han destinado, ir dejándolos luego atrás. En forma de trabajo rutinario, el trabajo de todos los días..., haciendo, según cómo, una buena actuación. Al pensarlo, me sentí terriblemente vacío.

I don't mind losing a girl to herself
A quiet love is better than none
And I don't mind losing a friend to a friend
If only to be a reasonable man

And I don't mind waiting if it's for the best
A careful heart is better than none

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride".

Let's talk, let's talk
Let the dirt fall, let heads roll
No kind hand is reaching out for me tonight

I slept facing the wall
I dreamt of buildings in pieces
You slept facing the wall
And you wanted less than I wanted

Passionless, pointless

Where does the passion go? I'm asking
There's no kindness in your hands
No reaching out for me tonight

You slept facing the wall

And you wanted less than I wanted

I slept facing the wall
But when I met you how did you enter?
I don't remember how did we ever?

Your handwriting. The way you walk. Which china pattern you choose. It’s all giving you away. Everything you do shows your hand. Everything is a self-portrait. Everything is a diary.

Cuando tenía catorce años, todavía rezaba y le pedía a Dios una chica bonita. Jugábamos al fútbol todos los fines de semana y no siempre ganábamos. En realidad, nunca ganábamos. Bebíamos cerveza y le pedíamos a Dios una chica bonita. Teníamos corbatas pero no las usábamos, sabíamos muchas oraciones pero no las rezábamos. Sólo nos acordábamos de Dios para pedirle una chica bonita. A los dieciocho entré a trabajar en una tienda; nada más verle la cara al encargado, perdía la fe. Era el chico de los recados, y aunque era un mal trabajo, mal pagado, Dios sabe que nunca me quejé y que todo lo que quería era una chica bonita. Un día pedí permiso para ir al funeral de mi abuelo y me lo negaron. Un día pedí permiso para ir a vomitar y me lo negaron. Trabajaba cuando estaba enfermo porque decían que había muchos esperando mi puesto. No era divertido, pero yo no pedía nada. No pedía nada más que una chica bonita. Ahora que te has ido, paso el día viendo la televisión. Lo único que he conseguido es una batería de cocina mandada a la dirección equivocada. No acabo de entender por qué es todo tan difícil. Nunca he pedido nada. Nada que no sea una chica bonita.

El conocimiento de la verdad no alivia la tristeza que sentimos al perder a un ser querido. Ni la verdad, ni la sinceridad, ni la fuerza, ni el cariño son capaces de curar esta tristeza. Lo único que puede hacerse es atravesar este dolor esperando aprender algo de él, aunque todo lo que uno haya aprendido no le sirva para nada la próxima vez que la tristeza lo visite de improviso.

Every time you get a drink
And every time you go to asleep
Are those dreams inside you head
Is there sunlight on your bed
And every time you're driving home
Way outside your safety zone
Wherever you will ever be
You're never getting rid of me

You own me
There's nothing you can do
You own me

You coulda made a safer bet
But what you break is what you get
You wake up in the bed you make
I think you made a big mistake

You own me
There's nothing you can do
You own me
You own me
Lucky you

You own me
There's nothing you can do

You clean yourself to meet
The man who isn't me
You're putting on a shirt
A shirt I'll never see
The letter's in your coat
But no one's in your head
Cause you're too smart to remember
You're too smart
Lucky you

“Long ago,” he said, “long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more.”

No te quiero por vos ni por mí ni por los dos juntos, no te quiero porque la sangre me llame a quererte, te quiero porque no sos mía, porque estás del otro lado, ahí donde me invitás a saltar y no puedo dar el salto, porque en lo más profundo de la posesión no estás en mí, no te alcanzo, no paso de tu cuerpo, de tu risa, hay horas en que me atormenta que me ames (cómo te gusta usar el verbo amar, con qué cursilería lo vas dejando caer sobre los platos y las sábanas y los autobuses), me atormenta tu amor que no me sirve de puente porque un puente no se sostiene de un solo lado, jamás Wright ni Le Corbusier van a hacer un puente sostenido de un solo lado, y no me mires con esos ojos de pájaro, para vos la operación de] amor es tan sencilla, te curarás antes que yo y eso que me querés como yo no te quiero. Claro que te curarás, porque vivís en la salud, después de mí será cualquier otro, eso se cambia como los corpiños. Tan triste oyendo al cínico Horacio que quiere un amor pasaporte, amor pasamontañas, amor llave, amor revólver, amor que le dé los mil ojos de Argos, la ubicuidad, el silencio desde donde la música es posible, la raíz desde donde se podría empezar a tejer una lengua. Y es tonto porque todo eso duerme un poco en vos, no habría más que sumergirte en un vaso de agua como una flor japonesa y poco a poco empezarían a brotar los pétalos coloreados, se hincharían las formas combadas, crecería la hermosura.

If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.

Don’t you think I understand? The hopeless dream of being. Not seeming, but being. In every waking moment aware, alert. The tug of war… what you are. with others and who you really are. A feeling of vertigo and a constant hunger to be finally exposed. To be seen through, cut down…even obliterated.

Every tone of voice a lie. Every gesture false. Every smile a grimace. Commit suicide? That’s unthinkable. You don’t do things like that. But you can refuse to move and be silent. Then, at least, you’re not lying.You can shut yourself in, shut out the world. Then you don’t have to play any roles, show any faces, make false gestures. You’d think so… …but reality is diabolical. Your hiding-place isn’t watertight. Life trickles in everywhere. You’re forced to react. Nobody asks if it’s real or not, if you’re honest or a liar. That’s only important at the theater, perhaps not even there. I understand why you’re silent, why you don’t move. Your lifelessness has become a fantastic part. I understand and I admire you.

If you hate the taste of wine
Why do you drink it ‘til you’re blind?
And if you swear that there’s no truth and who cares
How come you say it like you’re right?
Why are you scared to dream of god
When it’s salvation that you want?
You see stars that clear have been dead for years
But the idea just lives on

La lenta máquina del desamor, los engranajes del reflujo, los cuerpos que abandonan las almohadas, las sábanas, los besos, y de pie ante el espejo interrogándose cada uno a sí mismo, ya no mirándose entre ellos, ya no desnudos para el otro, ya no te amo, mi amor.

Let me come over I can waste your time I'm bored
invite me to the war every night of the summer
and we'll play G.I. blood, G.I. blood
we'll stand by the pool
we'll throw out our gold medals

Darling can you tie my string
killers are callin on me
my angel face is fallin
feathers are fallin on my feet
darling can you tie my string
killers are callin on me

Alguna vez había creído en el amor como enriquecimiento, exaltación de las potencias intercesoras. Un día se dio cuenta de que sus amores eran impuros porque presuponían esa esperanza, mientras que el verdadero amante amaba sin esperar nada fuera del amor, aceptando ciegamente que el día se volviera más azul y la noche más dulce y el tranvía menos incómodo.

Standing at the punch table swallowing punch

Can't pay attention to the sound of anyone

A little more stupid, a little more scared

Every minute more unprepared

I made a mistake in my life today

Everything I love gets lost in drawers

I want to start over, I want to be winning

Way out of sync from the beginning

I wanna hurry home to you

Put on a slow, dumb show for you

And crack you up

So you can put a blue ribbon on my brain

God I'm very, very frightening

I'll overdo it

Looking for somewhere to stand and stay

I leaned on the wall and the wall leaned away

Can I get a minute of not being nervous

And not thinking I'm a dick

My leg is sparkles, my leg is pins

I better get my shit together, better gather my shit in

You could drive a car through my head in five minutes

From one side of it to the other

I wanna hurry home to you

Put on a slow, dumb show for you

And crack you up

So you can put a blue ribbon on my brain

God I'm very, very frightening

I'll overdo it

You know I dreamed about you

for twenty-nine years before I saw you

You know I dreamed about you

I missed you for

for twenty-nine years

It's four in the morning, the end of December
I'm writing you now just to see if you're better
New York is cold, but I like where I'm living
There's music on Clinton Street all through the evening.
I hear that you're building your little house deep in the desert
You're living for nothing now, I hope you're keeping some kind of record.

Yes, and Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
Did you ever go clear?

Ah, the last time we saw you you looked so much older
Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder
You'd been to the station to meet every train
And you came home without Lili Marlene

And you treated my woman to a flake of your life
And when she came back she was nobody's wife.

Well I see you there with the rose in your teeth
One more thin gypsy thief
Well I see Jane's awake --

She sends her regards.

And what can I tell you my brother, my killer
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you
I'm glad you stood in my way.

If you ever come by here, for Jane or for me
Your enemy is sleeping, and his woman is free.

Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes
I thought it was there for good so I never tried.

And Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear --

Sincerely, L. Cohen

You don’t need fashion designers when you are young. Have faith in your own bad taste. Buy the cheapest thing in your local thrift shop - the clothes that are freshly out of style with even the hippest people a few years older than you. Get on the fashion nerves of your peers, not your parents - that is the key to fashion leadership. Ill-fitting is always stylish. But be more creative - wear your clothes inside out, backward, upside down. Throw bleach in a load of colored laundry. Follow the exact opposite of the dry cleaning instructions inside the clothes that cost the most in your thrift shop. Don’t wear jewelry - stick Band-Aids on your wrists or make a necklace out of them. Wear Scotch tape on the side of your face like a bad face-lift attempt. Mismatch your shoes. Best yet, do as Mink Stole used to do: go to the thrift store the day after Halloween, when the children’s trick-or-treat costumes are on sale, buy one, and wear it as your uniform of defiance.

vuelvo a buscarte donde sé que perdí
el único rastro que quería seguir
vuelvo a buscarte, date prisa en bajar
no lleves nada porque nada sirve ya
sin saber qué estrella hay que seguir
nos hundimos en la oscura inmensidad
aunque no haya tiempo para dormir
volveremos, volveremos a soñar
la juventud era una extraña enfermedad
que sólo el tiempo nos pudo curar
¿ves la colina que despunta hacia el sol?
es nuestra casa, la que haremos tú y yo
sin saber qué estrella hay que seguir
nos hundimos en la oscura inmensidad
aunque no haya tiempo para dormir
volveremos, volveremos a soñar

I once was lost but now I'm found
was blind but now I see you
how selfish of you
to believe in the meaning of all the bad dreaming
metal heart you're not hiding
metal heart you're not worth a thing
metal heart you're not hiding
metal heart you're not worth a thing

I want to be a good woman

And I want, for you to be a good man.
This is why I will be leaving
And this is why, I can't see you no more.
I will miss your heart so tender
And I will love this love forever

Once I wanted to be the greatest
Two fists of solid rock
With brains that could explain
Any feeling

Lower me down, pin me in
Secure the growns
For the lead and the dreags of my bed
I’ve been sleeping for the later parade

I think you're crazy, maybe
I think you're crazy, maybe

I will see you in the next life

Red wine and sleeping pills
Help me get back to your arms
Cheap sex and sad films
Help me get where I belong

Ya no estás más a mi lado, corazón

En el alma solo tengo soledad

Y si ya no puedo verte

Porque Dios me hizo quererte

Para hacerme sufrir más

Siempre fuiste la razón de mi existir

Adorarte para mí fue religión

Y en tus besos yo encontraba

El calor que me brindaba

El amor, y la pasión

Es la historia de un amor

Como no hay otro igual

Que me hizo comprender

Todo el bien, todo el mal

Que le dio luz a mi vida

Apagándola después

Ay que vida tan obscura

Sin tu amor no viviré...