You are

 Allow yourself to be, please. 

Like how jellyfish move along with the currents

Expect nothing and you'll feel everything

And fall in love with the hot tears that stroke your cheeks 

Forgive yourself for being

Like how tall grass rustles in August breeze

Make sounds and take up space around you 

And you'll fall in love with what surrounds you

Become the crashing waves and the beaten shore. 

You are the birdsong of the morning

And the golden glow of that dawn. 

Allow yourself to be, please. 

Free from expectation. 

The Sun does not question

The Earth's rotation

But it is

And you are

So be. 

Quotes worth noting from 'The Art of Fiction' by David Lodge

'Around the turn of the century, however, the intrusive authorial voice fell into disfavour, partly because it detracts from realistic illusion and reduces the emotional intensity of the experience being represented, by calling attention to the act of narrating. It also claims a kind of authority, a God-like omniscience, which our sceptical and relativistic age is reluctant to grant anyone. Modern fiction has tended to supress or eliminate the authorial voice, by presenting the action through consciousness of the characters, or by handing over to them the narrative task itself.'

' "To Margaret - I hope this does not set the reader against her- the station of ..." creates the effect Erving Goffman calls "breaking frame" - when some rule or convention that governs a particular type of experience is transgressed. These phrases bring into open what realistic illusion normally requires us to supress or bracket off - our knowledge that we are reading a novel about invented characters and actions. This is a device much favoured by post-modern writers, who now disown a naive faith in traditional realism by exposing the nuts and bolts of their fictional constructs.'

Blade

 I am far from God's Child

The weight of his book doesn't weigh heavy in my hands 

And the weight of those words, not heavy in my mind.

But you may not make any cuts on your body for the dead

or tattoo yourselves, he said, 

For I am the Lord.

It was common for the surrounding nations of Israel to cut themselves and to make a scar as an act of ritual mourning over the loss of a loved one.

Well I am far from God's Child

But the blade weighs heavy in my hands.

I have sinned a thousand sins and mourned a million losses.

A Walk Through the Art Gallery

And they leave you broken in pieces. 

What was once whole is now torn in two, legs ripped apart

And the rough canvas of your skin is stained. 

You can get up and walk away after, at least, but tainted you remain. 

Not by the hands of an artist; of course painters do not leave you sore,

But the gazers and their blazing glares.

You are soft clay that burns in the heat of their stares

And you come out anew. 

Brittle and fragile and coarse. 

The eyes have a good look too. 

Inspecting as if they sculpted you themselves, up and down, slowly. 

Have they registered every inch yet? Have they stripped you yet?

Can they see through the colour, past the heart and soul, to the other side of your flimsy frame yet?

I am a foreign object too, like you.

So I'd rather stay at home; when a walk through the Art Gallery 

Reminds me that I am not my own.

Drunk I

I came and I wept

For my limits I reached them 

You pushed them through the edge.

What kind of woman would you rather I be?

Docile and waiting to breed?

I'd rather be that my heart is racing

Wrapped up and I know I'm not afraid.

Drunk I, Mannequin Pussy

Vathek 1/2

"The sky immediately brightened; and by the light of the planets, which seemed almost to blaze, Vathek beheld the earth open; and, at the extremity of a vast black chasm, a portal of ebony, before which stood the Indian, holding in his hand a golden key, which he sounded against the lock." Vathek, William Beckford (p.19)

I bought Vathek after a lesson on Gothic unseen where we analysed this extract from the novel. I think the thing that instantly drew me in was Beckford's ability to seamlessly weave sublime fantastical and fairy-tale elements into a genre that should supposedly be filled with terror and fear. A few minutes  with this book ends in amazement and excitement rather than being appalled or repulsed. Perhaps for some empathetic and sensitive readers, the infanticide may induce terror, but for me; I was just as allured as the protagonist. Beckford elaborates the other worldliness of the east to such an extent that Vathek's transgressions are nothing but a needle in a hay stack compared to the wonders of the orient. 

If you've watched the last episode of Love Death and Robots (S3) then you'll be familiar with the chaos and carnage that desire can cause. Jibaro did a great job of placing you inside of the story and indulging your senses so that you can become one with it. The intensity could also be overwhelming. Both Jibaro and Vathek amplify the desirability of the other. It seems always just out of reach and requires mass sacrifice and energy to chase or conquer. One difference between the two stories that I've noticed so far is that Beckford maintains a distance between the reader and the story. The narrator teaches us of the Caliph's character objectively. This is a great thing in its own right. Vathek maintains a nostalgic pace that replicates a folk or fairy-tale. It's like Beckford is reading me a bed time story of a tale that happened once upon a time. His use of language is beautiful and sublime; with many references to the magnificence of nature here on earth and universally. 

"The idea, which such an elevation inspired of his own grandeur, completely bewildered him: he cast his eyes upward, he saw the stars as high above him as they appeared when he stood on the surface of the earth. He consoled himself. however, for this intruding and unwelcoming perception of his littleness, with the thought of being great in the eyes of others; and flattered himself that the light of his mind would extend beyond the reach of his sight, and extort from the stars the decrees of his destiny." (p.5)

I'm yet to read the last half of Vathek, so I'm excited to see if any opinions of mine change. 

Daisy

Do I give all of myself away? Do I pluck my own petals in question and leave myself bare? Left with the stem and its sickly green. The wind came and stripped me, or was it my own breath? Just the act of being makes me feel less. Bring me back my leaves and cover me once more. So the shrubbery cuddles me and the ice inside thaws.