Aloneness - Audrey Hepburn

"I have to be alone very often. I’d be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That’s how I refuel."

~ Audrey Hepburn

no help for that / Charles Bukowski

there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled

a space

and even during the
best moments
and
the greatest
times

we will know it

we will know it
more than
ever

there is a place in the heart that
will never be filled

and

we will wait
and
wait

in that
space.

~ You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense, 1986

"What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?"

Astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was asked by a reader of TIME magazine, "What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?"

This was his answer





"To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour."
William Blake

"We long to return. And we can. Because the cosmos is also within us. We're made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself."
~ Carl Sagan

We do not know our own souls

You ever have one of those moments when there's a quote in your head, and you don't know where to find it. But you can't sleep until you find it? Well, this is one of those moments, but thankfully I still have the book where I first found it. From Virginia Woolf, "The Moment" and Other Essays:

"We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds' feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable. But in health the genial pretence must be kept up, and the effort renewed -- to communicate, to civilise, to share, to cultivate the desert, to educate the native, to work together by day and by night to sport. In illness thus make-believe ceases."

I do not know why I was suddenly so obsessed with finding this quote. I know that it has been a while since I have written anything on this blog. However, something major came to a close recently, and while there is great sadness, there is also a sense of relief, like a chapter has been closed somehow.

So the question remains: What now?

It is now time for reflection. I need silence and solitude.

Awakening

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip, or you talk with Richard, and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death.”

~ Anais Nin