Keep Calm and Cuddle Up

"A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous."
Ingrid Bergman

In times of manic confusion, a good block of chocolate is a good cure. It cuts through the blur of sight and sound; it shifts the world and holds you still. I never thought something so simple could fix so many complicated things. It doesn't. It fixes something so simple, but something that controls everything else. I never thought that everything could be so settled.

Sylvia and Joni

“God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of “parties” with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter – they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship – but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.”

Sylvia Plath

How were such words even conceived? How is it that the tools that everyone has were arranged in a way that conveyed such depth, such despair? And how is it that these words conveyed a truth that cut right to the core of me? I don't know and can't even begin to know, but as soon as I read these words it was as if someone had grabbed out my vocal chords and pulled me along with them. "It takes one to know one" is such a childish phrase but it is entirely relevant. It takes one to know one. It takes pain to know pain, it takes loneliness to know loneliness.