Excerpts from Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert...

"Saint Anthony once wrote about having gone into the desert on silent retreat and being assaulted by all manner of visions⎯devils and angels, both. He said, in his solitude, he sometimes encountered devils who looked like angels, and other times he found angels who looked like devils. When asked how he could tell the difference, the saint said that you can only tell which is which by the way you feel after the creature has left your company. if you are appalled, he said, then it was a devil who had visited you. If you feel lightened, it was an angel."

"The Yogic sages say that all the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy. We create words to define our experience and those words bring attendant emotions that jerk us around like dogs on a leash. We get seduced by our own mantras and we become monuments to them. To stop talking for a while, then, is to attempt to strip away the power of words, to stop choking ourselves with words, to liberate ourselves from our suffocating mantras."

"But I was always coming here. I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen."

The train...

The train passed on the hour, marking time throughout the night like the chime of a grandfather clock. Sleepy eyes opened to whistle sounds, slowly focusing. Lights from streetlamps seeped through the window's corners just enough to cast a thin beam of light across his face. He could always sleep through anything. As he lay there, unmoving, she took in his face. The subtle creases of his eyes, the slight curl at the corners of his lips. It was only a few seconds before her heavy lashes mingled with sleep, but in those moments she knew she would never take him for granted—the rise and fall of his chest, the curve of his back—his presence.

Independence is overrated...

He never minded living alone, but the pain in his shoulder was a constant reminder of absent hands.

A line by line...

by Joshua and Melia

A dark street is never as dark as it seems. Light leaks out from curtain seams of lit windows—from short-circuit streetlamps. Darkness is nothing more than the absence of light, and mostly, streets are made of light-things. Or are underneath suns, moons, or stars. So true darkness must be found elsewhere. The crevices under your bed, natural caves with ceilings that drip, the caves of one's chest.

Small reminder...

TiVos reruns of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition for those days when she needs to be reminded that good still exists in the world.

Seriously, don't vote...

Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart

Beautiful song. Beautiful video. Beautiful, just.

Finally, Rachael's 2-disc album, Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart, hits stores October 7th! I am glad she realized that over 4 years is too long to keep her fans waiting, and has decided to make up for it with 2 (count them, TWO) discs featuring 15 new songs. Very yes, Rachael.

Next Tuesday you can guarantee I will be curled up in my reading chair with the liner notes in my hands and the stereo turned up. I can't think of a better way to spend a Tuesday, actually.