got a cloud sleeping on my tongue
he goes then it goes
and kiss the violets as they're waking up

leave me with your borneo
leave me the way i was before

you're already in there
i'll be wearing your tattoo
i'm already in circles and circles and circles again
the girl's in circles and circles got to stop spinning
circles and circles and circles again
thought i was over the bridge now

- Tori Amos, "Cloud on My Tongue"

"I crawled up in a flower when this one was being written ... it was safe there."
- Tori

Equilibrated Duality:

This is what, in life as well as in all reality, can ensure greater joy through greater harmony. But how, at present, are we to find equilibrated duality? The duality of man and nature is by no means equilibrated. Equally dis-equilibrated is the duality of appearance and force, of outer and inner in nature. And in life the dualities of material and spiritual, of the male and the female, are generally dis-equilibrated.

The solution is to be found only in ourselves. For equilibrium between the opposites to become possible, our consciousness should have matured to the point where the natural, the material has lost its oppressive power, and the spiritual has come to clarity. Only in this purified duality is unity possible.

- Piet Mondrian, “Natural Reality and Abstract Reality” (1919)

Utter the Word of Majesty and Terror!
True without lie, and certain without error,
And of the essence of The Truth. I know
The things above are as the things below,
The things below are as the things above,
To wield the One Thing's Thaumaturgy -- Love.
As all from one sprang, by one contemplation,
So all from one were born, by permutation.
Sun sired, Moon bore, this unique Universe;
Air was its chariot, and Earth its nurse.
Here is the root of every talisman
Of the whole world, since the whole world began.
Here is the fount and source of every soul.
Let it be spilt on earth! its strength is whole.
Now gently, subtly, with thine Art conspire
To fine the gross, dividing earth and fire.
Lo! it ascendeth and descendeth, even
And swift, an endless band of earth and heaven;
Thus it receiveth might of duplex Love,
The powers below conjoined with those above,
So shall the glory of the world be thine
And darkness flee before thy Sovran shrine.
This is the strong strength of all strength; surpass
The subtle and subdue it; pierce the crass
And salve it; so bring all things to their fated
Perfection: for by this was all created.
O marvel of miracle! O magic mode!
All things adapted to one circling code!
Since three parts of all wisdom I may claim,
Hermes thrice great, and greatest, is my name.
What I have written of the one sole Sun,
His work, is here divined, and dared, and done.

- Aleister Crowley

"This having learned, thou hast attained
the sum
Of wisdom; hope no higher, though
all the stars
Thou knewest by name, and all
the ethereal powers,
All secrets of the deep, all Nature's works,
Or works of God in Heaven, air, earth,
or sea,
And all the riches of this world enjoyedst,
And all the rule, one empire; only add
Deeds to thy knowledge answerable; add faith,
Add virtue, patience, temperance; add love,
By name to come called charity, the soul
Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loth
To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess
A Paradise within thee, happier far."

- from "Paradise Lost"
[John Milton]

From childhood's hour
I have not been
As others were;
I have not seen
As others saw;
I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source
I have not taken
My sorrow;
I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved,
I loved alone.
Then - in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life - was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent,
or the fountain,
From the red cliff
of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint
of gold,
From the lightning
in the sky
As it passed me
flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

- Edgar Allan Poe

"The Sick Rose"

O Rose thou art sick
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm :

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy :
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.


- William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789-1794)

she was a January girl
she never let on how insane it was
in that tiny kinda scary house
by the woods
by the woods
by the woods

black dove, black dove
you don't need a space ship
they don't know you've already lived
on the other side of the galaxy
the other side
the other side of the galaxy

she had a January world
so many storms not right somehow
how a lion becomes a mouse
by the woods
by the woods
by the woods

~Tori Amos ("Black Dove")

"Datura"

is there room in my heart
for you to follow your heart
and not need more blood
from the tip of your star
(get out of my garden)

~ Tori Amos (1999)


Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

~ Edgar Allan Poe (1849)


"Landslide"

I took my love and I took it down
I climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills
'Till the landslide brought me down

Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life?

~ Stevie Nicks (1975)


Those old days - I wonder,
did I dream them,
or were they real?
In the night I listen
to the autumn rain

~ Ryokan (1805)


Grasping at things can only yield one of two results:
Either the thing you are grasping at disappears, or you yourself disappear. It is only a matter of which occurs first.

~ Goenka

There is a point where in the mystery of existence, contradictions meet:
where movement is not all movement and stillness is not all stillness;
where the idea and the form, the within and the without, are united;
where infinite becomes finite, yet not.

~ Tagore


"Horse With No Name"

I've been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert, you can remember your name
cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain.

~ America (1972)


Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.

~ Storm Jameson


In my hallucination I saw my beloved’s flower garden
In my vertigo, in my dizziness, in my drunken haze,
Whirling and dancing like a spinning wheel,
I saw myself as the source of existence,
I was there in the beginning and I was the spirit of love.

~ Rumi

"The Lilly"

The modest Rose puts forth a thorn :
The humble Sheep, a threatening horn :
While the Lilly white, shall in Love delight,
Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright.

- William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789-1794)