"No one ever told us we had to study our lives,
Make of our lives a study, as if learning natural history or music,
That we should begin with simple exercises first and slowly go on trying the hard ones, Practicing till strength and accuracy become one with the daring to leap into transcendence.
And in fact we can’t live like that: we take on everything at once before we’ve even begun to read or mark time, we’re forced to begin in the midst of the hardest movement,
The one already sounding as we are born."

adrienne rich, transcendental etude (via sentimentaljury). i am so happy to be reunited with the dream of a common language, which i strangely did not remember to take home, though it is usually the book i most need near me. 

i was telling the story tonight of how my college not-boyfriend bought me two tickets to see adrienne rich at the 92nd street y for my 20th birthday. it was the most surprising, thoughtful gift anyone had even gotten me. then he crushed my soul by refusing to go. i took a friend. 15 years later he apologized.  

more recently i asked “do you know what my favorite book is?” and was answered “the promise of a universal language?” which, of course, is the devastating point, exactly.