[Image: page/installment #11 (2019-03-12) in Chapter 1 — “Claws that Catch” — of Obverse & Reverse, part 2 of the long-running Skin Deep webcomic from Kory Bing. See the note at the foot of this post for more information… or, even better, just read the comic from start to finish.]

From whiskey river:

Have an uncomfortable mind; be strange. Be disturbed: by what is happening on the planet, and to it; by the cruelty and stupidity humanity is capable of; by the unbearable beauty of certain music, and the mysteries and failures of love, and the brief, confusing, exhilarating hour of your own life.

(Kim Addonizio [source])

…and:

I Have Just Said

I have just said
something
ridiculous to you
and in response,

your glorious laughter.
These are the days
the sun
is swimming back

to the coast
and the light on the water
gleams
as never, it seems, before.

I can’t remember
every spring,
I can’t remember
everything—

so many years!
Are the morning kisses
the sweetest
or the evenings

or the inbetweens?
All I know
is that “thank you” should appear
somewhere.

So just in case
I can’t find
the perfect place—
“Thank you, thank you.”

(Mary Oliver [source])

…and:

As I see it, to refuse the possibility of finding another person interesting, complex and as complicated as oneself is a form of violence. At bottom, this is a refusal of nuance, and I wish to posit that nuance is sacred. To call it sacred is to value it so highly that we find it fitting to somehow set it apart as something to which we’re forever committed. Nuance refuses to envision others degradingly, denying them the content of their own experience, and talks us down tenderly from the false ledges we’ve put ourselves on. When we take it on as a sacred obligation, nuance also delivers us out of the deadly habit of cutting people out of our own imaginations. This opens us up to the possibility of at least occasionally finding one another beautiful, the possibility of communion.

(David Dark [source])

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