Whence comes solace? Not from seeing,
What is doing, suffering, being;
Not from noting Life’s conditions,
Not from heeding Time’s monitions;
But in cleaving to the Dream
And in gazing at the Gleam
Whereby gray things golden seem.
Thomas Hardy, born 2 June 1840, Sun in Gemini, Moon in Cancer, Ascendant in Leo, English poet († 1928)
Other personalities born today:
Maura Del Serra, born 2 June 1948, Sun in Gemini, Moon in Aries, Italian poet.
Becoming who we are: guardian angel. Nothing belongs to us, everything is entrusted to us, the unessential indispensable.
Count Alessandro di Cagliostro (Giuseppe Balsamo), born on 2 June 1743, Sun in Gemini, Moon in Libra, Ascendant in Virgo, Italian adventurer and alchemist († 1795).
I don’t belong to any epoch or place: beyond time and space, my spiritual being lives its eternal existence.
Catherine Labouré, born 2 June 1806, French nun, Sun in Gemini, Moon in Sagittarius († 1876)
Whenever I go to the chapel, I put myself in the presence of our good Lord, and I say to Him, ‘Lord, here I am. Tell me what You would have me do.’ If He gives me some task, I am content and I thank Him. If He gives me nothing, I still thank Him since I do not deserve to receive anything more than that. And then, I tell God everything that is in my heart. I tell Him about my pains and my joys, and then I listen. If you listen, God will also speak to you, for with the good Lord, you have to both speak and listen. God always speaks to you when you approach Him plainly and simply.
Carol Shields, born 2 June 1935, Canadian writer († 2003)
Open a book this minute and start reading. Don’t move until you’ve reached page fifty. Until you’ve buried your thoughts in print. Cover yourself with words. Wash yourself away. Dissolve.
This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.
Lydia Lunch, born 2 June 1959, Sun in Gemini and Moon in Aries, American singer, poet, writer.
I must find Ecstasy in this Insanity
Freedom from their Slavery
The Truth in their Lies
Life in their Death
Beauty in their Homicidal Genocide
Peace in the War Whore’s evil orgy of Death and Negation
Love amongst the Ruins
Pleasure in my own Pain.
I decided to lock myself in. A forced segregation. Sabbatical. A retreat into myself. My selves. Play hide and go seek in the looking-glass. The mirror angled at the foot of my bed. Twisted reflections bouncing off into infinity. Obsessed with my image, the myriad of distorted figurines who danced in front of me in rapid succession, every feature exaggerated, every slight imperfection a new delicacy.
And is death not the ultimate orgasm, a return to that otherworldly ether, whose very origins were indeed a Big Bang, the ultimate explosion, the supreme chaos, whose resonance is the vibration we constantly seek to reproduce in everything we do.