Between the Shadow and the Soul

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,

or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,

in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms

but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;

thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,

risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;

so I love you because I know no other way than this: 

where I does not exist, nor you,

so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,

so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep. ” 

Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda

The Lost World of Yangshuo

  Yangshuo County  is a county under the jurisdiction of Guilin City, in the northeast of Guangxi, China. It's seat is located in Yangshuo Town. Surrounded by karst peaks and bordered on one side by the Li River it is easily accessible by bus or by boat from nearby Guilin. In the 1980s, the town became popular with foreign backpackers, and by the late 1990s packaged tourists began arriving in greater numbers. At that time, domestic tourism represented only a small fraction of the tourists but by 2005 domestic tourists outnumbered foreign tourists by a great margin. Today, the town has become a resort destination for both domestic and foreign travelers.

Your inside makes your outside beautiful

''You know when sometimes you meet someone so beautiful — and then you actually talk to them and five minutes later they're as dull as a brick; but then there's other people. And you meet them and you think, "Not bad, they're okay," and when you get to know them ... their face just, sort of, becomes them, like their personality's written all over it, and they just — they turn into something so beautiful. ''

Amy Pond - Doctor Who

You're wrong for me in the right way

  "We’re all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if you’ve been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there’s no right person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness. And it isn’t until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problems—the ones that make you truly who you are—that we’re ready to find a lifelong mate. Only then do you finally know what you’re looking for. You’re looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: the right wrong person—someone you lovingly gaze upon and think, “This is the problem I want to have.”

  I will find that special person who is wrong for me in just the right way.

  Let our scars fall in love."

Galway Kinnell

Don't judge me, just love me

 “In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Chosen One

''I've been alive a bit longer than you, and dead a lot longer than that. I've seen things you couldn't imagine, and done things I'd prefer you didn't. I don't exactly have a reputation for being a thinker; I follow my blood, which doesn't exactly rush in the direction of my brain. So I make a lot of mistakes. A lot of wrong bloody calls. A hundred plus years, and there's only one thing I've ever been sure of. You. Hey, look at me. I'm not asking you for anything. When I say I love you, it's not because I want you, or because I can't have you - it has nothing to do with me. I love what you are, what you do, how you try... I've seen your kindness, and your strength, I've seen the best and the worst of you and I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are. You're a hell of a woman. You're the one, Buffy.''

Spike to Buffy in Touched

With a name that seems Elvish

 Elliðaey is one of the Westman Islands, located south of Iceland. The island is uninhabited, but has a large hunting lodge, constructed in 1953.

I will love you every step of the way

“I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong. I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house. I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it.

I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear dagger proof tunics, and as a dagger proof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home. I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled.

I will love you until every fire is extinguised and until every home is rebuilt from the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. I will love until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try. I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where we once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively.

I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from slim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and now matter how I am discovered after what happens to me as I am discovering this.” 

Lemony Snicket

In good times... and in bad times

 This is the story of Loki (impossible not to know who he is, thanks to Marvel) and his wife, Sigyn.  According to Norse myth, Loki, ussing his sagacity, killed Baldr (Odin's son). When the gods found out the truth, they took Loki's children, Váli and Nari/Narfi, and changed Váli into a wolf who rips apart his brother. His guts were used to tie Loki to three stones: one under his shoulders, another under the kidneys, and the third under his knees. The guts turned to iron and the goddess Skaði placed a snake above Loki. His wife, refusing to leave him, decided to stay sitting next to him for all eternity.
 The myth says that she's holding a bowl all the time to catch the dripping venom from the snake, but when the bowl becomes full, she has to leave him to pour out the venom, and at that time the venom falls on Loki's face. The pain is so terrible that he cannot help shake violently, and causing tremors in the Earth.
 His punishment will last until the twilight of the gods, and Sigyn will stay with him to avoid as much suffering as possible... forever.

[Picture] Loki and Sigyn (1863) by Marten Eskil Winge

Passion: the air we breathe

''Passion…it lies in all of us.

Sleeping. Waiting.

And though unwanted, unbidden…

It will stir..Open its jaws and howl.

It speaks to us, guides us.

Passion rules us all and we obey.

What other choice do we have?

Passion is the source of our finest moments.

The joy of love…the clarity of hatred..

and the ecstacy of grief.

It hurts sometimes more than we can bear.

If we could live without passion,

maybe we’d know some kind of peace.

But we would be hollow.

Empty rooms: shuttered and dank.

Without passion…

we’d be truly dead.''

Joss Whedon --- Buffy The Vampire Slayer