… But most of all I miss the truth, the truth in which we are no longer listeners or storytellers, but we give and forgive.

– Saša Stanišić – How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone

Ph : Zie Otto

Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?“ That the river is everywhere at the same time, … everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.

– Hermann Hesse – Siddhartha

I thought how lovely and how strange a river is. A river is a river, always there, and yet the water flowing through it is never the same water and is never still. It’s always changing and is always on the move. And over time the river itself changes too. It widens and deepens as it rubs and scours, gnaws and kneads, eats and bores its way through the land …

Are people like that? I wondered. Am I like that? Always me, like the river itself, always flowing but always different, like the water flowing in the river, sometimes walking steadily along andante, sometimes surging over rapids furioso, sometimes meandering wit hardly any visible movement tranquilo, lento, ppp pianissimo, sometimes gurgling giacoso with pleasure, sometimes sparkling brillante in the sun, sometimes lacrimoso, sometimes appassionato, sometimes misterioso, sometimes pesante, sometimes legato, sometimes staccato, sometimes sospirando, sometimes vivace, and always, I hope, amoroso.

Do I change like a river, widening and deepening, eddying back on myself sometimes, bursting my banks sometimes when there’s too much water, too much life in me, and sometimes dried up from lack of rain? Will the I that is me grow and widen and deepen? Or will I stagnate and become an arid riverbed? Will I allow people to dam me up and confine me to wall so that I flow only where they want? Will I allow them to turn me into a canal to use for they own purposes? Or will I make sure I flow freely, coursing my way through the land and ploughing a valley of my own?

– Aidan Chambers – This is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn

Last night… I dreamt of a stranger… of my man. Only with him could I be alone… open up to him… wholly open, wholly for him. Welcome him wholly into me… surround him with the labyrinth… of shared happiness. I know… it’s you.

– from : Wings of desire