I can’t remember exactly when I first stumbled upon Beau Taplin’s writing. I suppose it was when I found myself in a used bookstore a few weeks ago with a copy of Hunting Season in my hands. Then I remembered, later, a friend from Australia had told me some time ago when we were in Nicaragua that he was one of her favorites. Beau’s work largely exists online, on posts that get reblogged thousands of times and on his website – the only place you can buy copies of his books. Here are a select few of some of the most beautiful and illuminating passages from his work.
1.
“Listen to me, your body is not a temple. Temples can be destroyed and desecrated. Your body is a forest—thick canopies of maple trees and sweet scented wildflowers sprouting in the under wood. You will grow back, over and over, no matter how badly you are devastated.”
2.
“Often, when we have a crush, when we lust for a person, we see only a small percentage of who they really are. The rest we make up for ourselves. Rather than listen, or learn, we smother them in who we imagine them to be, what we desire for ourselves, we create little fantasies of people and let them grow in our hearts. And this is where the relationship fails. In time, the fiction we scribble onto a person falls away, the lies we tell ourselves unravel and soon the person standing in front of you is almost unrecognizable, you are now complete strangers in your own love. And what a terrible shame it is. My advice: pay attention to the small details of people, you will learn that the universe is far more spectacular an author than we could ever hope to be.”
3.
“
Human beings
are made of water–-
we were not designed
to hold ourselves together
rather run freely
like oceans
like rivers
”
4.
“One day, whether you are 14, 28 or 65, you will stumble upon someone who will start a fire in you that cannot die. However, the saddest, most awful truth you will ever come to find – is they are not always with whom we spend our lives.”
5.
“Home is not where you are from, it is where you belong. Some of us travel the whole world to find it. Others, find it in a person.”
6.
“It’s 4am and I can’t remember how your voice sounds anymore.”
7.
“It’s strange how your childhood sort of feels like forever. Then suddenly you’re sixteen and the world becomes an hourglass and you’re watching the sand pile up at the wrong end. And you’re thinking of how when you were just a kid, your heartbeat was like a kick drum at a rock show, and now it’s just a time bomb ticking out. And it’s sad. And you want to forget about dying. But mostly you just want to forget about saying goodbye.”
8.
“There was never going to be an “us” because you wanted to be missed more than you wanted to be loved.”
9.
“It is a frightening thought, that in one fraction of a moment you can fall in the kind of love that takes a lifetime to get over.”
10.
“The one thing I know for sure is that feelings are rarely mutual, so when they are, drop everything, forget belongings and expectations, forget the games, the two days between texts, the hard to gets because this is it, this is what the entire world is after and you’ve stumbled upon it by chance, by accident – so take a deep breath, take a step forward, now run, collide like planets in the system of a dying sun, embrace each other with both arms and let all the rules, the opinions and common sense crash down around you. Because this is love kid, and it’s all yours. Believe me, you’re in for one hell of a ride, after all – this is the one thing I know for sure.”
11.
“The single greatest thing about love, in my experience, is the way it is doomed to pain and loss from its onset. Whether it is the spouse that outlives their lover, or loses them to another, there is no escaping that most solemn of inevitabilities. That two people can commit themselves to all this sadness and heartache in the name of such brief happiness, the warm touch of familiar skin, the unrivalled pleasantness in waking up beside the same person you spent the entire night with in your dreams, is all the proof I need that insanity exists, and it is fucking beautiful.”
12.
“It’s you. It’s been you for as long as I can remember. Everyone else has just been another failed attempt at perfecting the art of pretending you’re not. I miss you.”
13.
“I want somebody
with a sharp intellect
and a heart from hell.
somebody with
eyes like starfire
and a mouth with a kiss
like a bottomless well.
but mostly
I just want someone
who will love me.
when I do not
know how to love myself.”
14.
“Do not call me perfect,
a lie is never a compliment.
Call me an erratic
damaged and
insecure mess.
Then tell me that you
love me for it.”
15.
“The hours between 12am and 6am
have a funny habit of making you feel
like you’re either on top of the world,
or under it.”
16.
“My heart beats in almosts. It’s constantly in pursuit of those whom it desires but the moment it comes too close, it stops, turns, and bolts in the other direction. I hold onto what makes me miserable and I let the good things go. I’m self destructive.” I said. “It’s the way I’ve always been.” “And why do you think that is?” “Because it’s simpler to destroy something you love,” I said. “Than it is to watch it leave.”
17.
“I just want to be the person you miss at 3am.”
18.
“She was unstoppable. Not because she did not have failures or doubts, but because she continued on despite them.”
