,

з нами стається лише те,

чого ми хотіли,

або те,

чого ми боялись.

питання лише,

що переважить —

бажання чи страх.

(с) сергій жадан, "адже все залежить від нас..." ***

the only things that happen to us are the ones we had wished for and the ones that we were afraid of. the question is, which will prevail — the fear or desire. (c) serhiy zhadan, "after all, everything depends on us..."

my tears ricochet - taylor swift

“[We] have learned much about the nature of grief over recent years. We have come to see that grief is not something you pass through, as there is no other side. For us, grief became a way of life, an approach to living, where we learned to yield to the uncertainty of the world, whilst maintaining a stance of defiance to its indifference. We surrendered to something over which we had no control, but which we refused to take lying down. Grief became both an act of submission and of resistance — a place of acute vulnerability where, over time, we developed a heightened sense of the brittleness of existence. Eventually, this awareness of life’s fragility led us back to the world, transformed. We discovered that grief was much more than just despair. We found grief contained many things — happiness, empathy, commonality, sorrow, fury, joy, forgiveness, combativeness, gratitude, awe, and even a certain peace. For us, grief became an attitude, a belief system, a doctrine — a conscious inhabiting of our vulnerable selves, protected and enriched by the absence of the one we loved and that we lost. In the end, grief is an entirety. It is doing the dishes, watching Netflix, reading a book, Zooming friends, sitting alone or, indeed, shifting furniture around. Grief is all things reimagined through the ever emerging wounds of the world.”

— Nick Cave, from The Red Hand Files #95

"З якого часу тут русалки стали невільницями в озері? Я — вільна! Я вільна, як вода! "

Леся Українка “Лісова пісня”

Photo: The “Siren’s Song” by Marie Zucker 

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, from a letter to Jane Williams written in February 1823, featured in The Letters of Mary Shelley

Nick Cave, The Sick Bag Song