“Mourning has become unfashionable in the United States. The bereaved are supposed to pull themselves together as quickly as possible and to reweave the torn fabric of life. ... we do not allow ... for the weeks and months during which a loss is realized - a beautiful word that suggests the transmutation of the strange into something that is one's own.” StatesTogetherBeautifulLossUnitedGriefUnited StatesWeekStrangeMonthsMourningFabricTornBeautiful WordsTransmutationFabric Of Life Book:A Way of Seeing Source: A Way of Seeing
“It's unsettling, to lose the safety of the familiar, even when what's disrupted is an ordinary routine. When I began this poem, I was grieving for the loss of my old barbershop in Manhattan, and wondering at the strangeness of my new one. I didn't have any idea the poem would break into the underworld, opening a deeper subject: the continuing force of the old griefs routine helps to mediate, and my strange, sheer wonder at my own survival. Where's home now? In the contingent present, in which anything can disappear, and where we're sometimes granted some form of grace.” IdeasSometimesHelpingHomeFormForceLosesMy OwnLossGriefWonderBreakGraceSubjectsStrangeSurvivalOrdinarySafetyDeeperDisappearFamiliarOpeningGrantedGrievingRoutineContinuingSheerManhattanStrangenessUnderworldBarbershop Author:Mark Doty
“These ways to make people buy were strange and new to us, and many bought for the sheer pleasure at first of holding in the hand and talking of something new. And once this was done, it was like opium, we could no longer do without this new bauble, and thus, though we hated the foreigners and though we knew they were ruining us, we bought their goods. Thus I learned the art of the foreigners, the art of creating in the human heart restlessness, disquiet, hunger for new things, and these new desires became their best helpers.” PeopleWayFirstsHumansHeartArtDoneHandsDesireLossPleasureTalkingStrangeCreatingHungerDisasterHatedSomething NewGoodsNew ThingsSheerHuman HeartForeignersRestlessnessOpiumHelpers Author:Han Suyin
“The cars of the migrant people crawled out of the side roads onto the great cross-country highway, and they took the migrant way to the West.... And because they were lonely and perplexed, because they had all come from a place of sadness and worry and defeat, and because they were all going to a mysterious new place, ... a strange thing happened: the twenty families became one family, the children were the children of all. The loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the West was one dream.” PeopleWayChildrenCountryHomeDreamSidesLossWorryHappenedSadnessCarStrangeCrossesLonelyTwentiesWestDefeatThings HappenGoldenMysteriousHighwaysStrange ThingsMigrantsNew PlacesPerplexed Author:John Steinbeck
“The earth will never be the same again Rock, water, tree, iron, share this greif As distant stars participate in the pain. A candle snuffed, a falling star or leaf, A dolphin death, O this particular loss A Heaven-mourned; for if no angel cried If this small one was tossed away as dross, The very galaxies would have lied. How shall we sing our love's song now In this strange land where all are born to die? Each tree and leaf and star show how The universe is part of this one cry, Every life is noted and is cherished, and nothing loved is ever lost or perished.” IfsShowsEarthPainLife IsSongDiesFallUniverseLostHeavenStarsWaterBornLossTreeShareLandRocksCryParticularStrangeAngelIronCandleCriedLeafsOur LoveGalaxyLiedDolphinsDrossBorn To DieGreif Author:Madeleine L'Engle
“If we have not struggled/as hard as we can/at our strongest/how will we sense/the shape of our losses/or know what sustains/us longest or name/what change costs us,/saying how strange/it is that one sector/of the self can step in/for another in trouble,/how loss activates/a latent double, how/we can feed/as upon nectar/upon need?” IfsKnowsNeedsSelfHardNamesLossStepsTroubleStrangeCostShapesStrongestLatentActivateNectar Book:Say Uncle: Poems Source: Say Uncle: Poems
“I think," Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, "that when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all that I didn't do. All that I might have been and couldn't be. All the choices I didn't make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven't been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I loved, the breath I breathed.” ThinkingWorldGivingHas BeensMadeSaidI CanMightDiesChoicesLostVoiceLossHavensStrangeBreathsBreatheMight Have BeenGiving Back Author:Ursula K. Le Guin
“And, as always happens, and happens far too soon, the strange and wonderful becomes a memory and a memory becomes a dream. Tomorrow it's gone.” DreamHappensMemoriesLossGoneWonderfulStrangeTomorrow Book:Wintersmith: (Discworld Novel 35) Source: Wintersmith: (Discworld Novel 35)