I am not, anymore, a Christian, but I am lifted and opened by any space with prayer inside it. I didn’t know why I was going, today, to stand in the long cool darkness of St. John of the Divine, but my body knew, as bodies do, what it wanted. I entered the oddly small door of the huge space, and walked without hesitating to the altar I hadn’t consciously remembered, a national memorial for those who died of AIDS, marked by banners and placards. My heart melted, all at once, and I understood why I was there. Because the black current the masseuse had touched wanted, needed, to keep flowing. I’d needed to know I could go on, but I’d also been needing to collapse. Which is what I did, some timeless tear span of minutes sitting on the naked gray stone. A woman gave me the kind of paper napkins you get with an ice cream cone. It seemed to me the most genuine of gifts, made to a stranger: the recognition of how grief moves in the body, leaving us unable to breathe, helpless, except for each other. . Mark Doty
I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.
-
Marilyn Monroe
You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching, Love like you'll never be hurt, Sing like there's nobody listening, And live like it's heaven on earth.
-
William W. Purkey
You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.
-
Dr. Seuss
A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.
-
Elbert Hubbard
Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
-
Unknown
More Quotes By Mark Doty
Love, I think, is a gateway to the world, not an escape from it.
And then we ease him out of that worn-out body with a kiss, and he's gone like a whisper, the easiest breath.
What did you think, that joy / was some slight thing?
The physical reinvention of the world is endless, relentless, fascinating, exhaustive; nothing that seems solid is. If you could stand at just a little distance in time, how fluid and shape-shifting physical reality would be, everything hurrying into some other form, even concrete, even stone.
...words can help us to see what is graceful or human where lovelines and humanity seem to fail...
