Belles-Lettres

Worries

2011-07-24T01:44:00.001-07:00

Vines

2011-07-22T19:44:00.000-07:00

Love

2011-04-27T18:09:00.000-07:00

My race has forgotten the beauty of meaning much by saying little.

Now tongues work all by themselves with no help from the mind.

I could make a point strong enough to stop a womb--or a knife.

Each story has a monster in it who made them tough instead of brave so they open their legs rather than their hearts where that folded child is tucked.

Most demons get hungry at supper time like us.

After Dark

2011-04-27T17:44:00.000-07:00

Eyes mark the shape of the city.

The district plays by its own rules at a time like this.

She seems to be biting off and chewing the book one line at a time.

Even at a time like this, the street is bright enough and filled with people coming and going--people with places to go and people with no place to go; people with a purpose and people with no purpose; people trying to hold time back and people trying to urge it forward.

As you wish

You don't have to answer. I was just asking myself.

If you really want to know something, you have to be willing to pay the price.

He couldn't suppress that curiosity, no matter how big the price was he had to pay.

We take what we can get.

Everybody's got their own battlefields.

Love ho - love hotel

Ni Zemme Le? - What happened?

Time is unclear.

Defer judgment and accept the situation as it is.

I'd better study hard because I'm too ugly for anything else.

I don't stand a chance if you compare me to her.

Between the last train leaves and the first train arrives, the place changes: its not the same as in daytime.

A hint of fatigue shows on her face now that she is allowing herself to relax.

In Alphaville, you're not allowed to have deep feelings. So there's nothing like love. No contradictions, no irony.

Irony means taking an objective and inverted view of oneself or of something belonging to oneself and discovering oddness in that.

Sex that does not need love or irony.

I was tough but everything has its limits.

I don't know how to do things half way.

But maybe sometimes you don't really have it together.

It's not a question of what I think. It's part of being 19 years old. I used to be nineteen myself once. I know what its like.

Time moves in its own special way in the middle of the night.

I can't stand by and let a son-of-a-bitch pull shit like that.

The ordinary-looking ones are the most dangerous. They carry around a shitload of stress.

Its possible for people to draw closer to each other even while they keep a reasonable distance between them.

Three AM. This is the darkest part of the night--the hardest part.

Giving birth to that kind of shared state.

But if I were to say "I cant answer that" in this context, it'd be a de facto yes. That's willful negligence.

I'd just picked up on stuff around the margins of what she said, and put it together just now in my imagination.

But it doesn't matter how I feel: the world we live in are too different. And there's nothing I can do about it. No matter how hard I try.

Certain things it's better not to know.

Live one day at a time.

We are a sheer point of view, we cannot influence things in any way.

The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you. And once that happens, you've had it: things will never be the same. All you can do is go on living alone there in darkness.

I don't really know what's going on of course, but it seems to me your sister must have some big problem she's trying to deal with, some she can't solve on her own. So all she wants to do is go to bed and sleep, to get away from the flesh-and-blood world for a while. I think I know what she feels. Or should I say, I know exactly how she feels.

Nothingness means there's absolutely nothing, so maybe there's no need to understand it or imagine it.

I was such an easy mark.

I was scared not to have somebody putting his arms around me, so I could never say no. That's all.

In this world, there are things you can only do alone and things you can only do with somebody else.

All I can do is try me best and see it through to the end.

People's memories are maybe fuel they burn to stay alive.

You'll never get away...you might forget what you did but we will never forget.

Eat, Pray, Love

2011-04-15T07:11:00.000-07:00

It's my efforts to find balance.

teachers...in many curious forms

Say it like you eat it.

I wish Giovanni would kiss me. Oh but there are so many reasons why this would be a terrible idea. To begin with, Giovanni is ten years younger than I am, and--like most Italian guys in their 20's--he still lives with her mother.

In daylight hours, I refused that thought but at night it would consume me.

The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.

You don't need to know the final answer right now.

How do you negotiate once you have offered everything?

I am the planet's most affectionate life form.

Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation--based love story.

You have now reached infatuation's final destination--the complete and merciless devaluation of self.

Is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty?

...with even civility between us...

Labbiamo rotto (we broke it)

I get to thinking a little too much, and then my thinking turns to brooding, and that's when they catch up with me.

Loneliness is going to make me sleep with him tonight again, I just know it.

I became a student of my own depressed experience, trying to unthread its causes.

Did I have a chemical imbalance? or did I just need to get laid?

The art of making something out of nothing.

So be lonely. Learn your way around loneliness. Sit with it for once in your life. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.

If I love you, you can have everything.

ridiculously, hurtfully and stupidly beautiful...

They look so good I want to applaud.

...devishly attractive, cruelly handsome or surprisingly muscular...

I wanted to lean my head on his lap and let him pour his eloquent romantic--into my ears forever.

Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time.

Sadness is a place.

Attraversiamo - "Let's cross over"

It's time for us to end our story forever. We were already separated that was official but there was still a window of hope left open that perhaps someday we could give things another try. WE loved each other. That was never a question.

We could spend our lives together in misery but happy to not be apart.

I not only can find happiness with him, but MUST. No matter how much I love him and I do love him (in stupid excess), I have to say goodbye to this person now.

If you want to look for another partner in your life of course you have nothing but my blessings.

Just hang in there and everybody will be okay.

I cant seem to get my mind to hold still.

Prayer is the act of talking to God. Meditation is the act of listening.

When I ask my mind to rest in stillness, it is astonishing how quickly it will turn (1) bored (2) angry (3) depressed (4) anxious (5) all of the above

The problem is the emotional attachment that goes along with the thinking.

Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are slave to your emotions.

Why have I been chasing my happiness if it was all here with me all the time?

You got zapped!

Soulmate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. They tear down your walls and smack you awake.

You have control issues.

Let go, sit still and allow contentment to come to you.

There are only 2 questions that human beings have ever fought over all throughout history: How much do you love me? and Who's in charge? 2 questions of love and control

Fighting so hard against myself

I sign off with love.

We are not what other one needs.

Beauty attracts beauty.

I'm choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am.

I'm making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises.

Insurance against late regret.

It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.

I can get by--Me la Cavo

Why ask?

He was powerful and I died of love in his shadow.

I find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.

You're a pathetic mess, unrecognizable even to your own eyes.

He drew us each into our own silence.

Straightforward and bottomless YES.

The ego's job is to keep itself in power.

The resting place of the mind is the heart.

How many more sleeps before you come back to me?

Maybe this is just some stupid romance idea, but I need you to understand darling, for you, I am even willing to suffer. Whatever pain happens to us in the future, I accept it already, just for the pleasure of being with you now.

To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life.

I was perfectly happy with my boring life before you came along.

Contentment should not be your ambition.

Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism.

This is a good sign: having a broken heart: It means we have tried for something.

The hardest part of your life is behind you, Henelsie.

Man is a demon, man is a god. Both true.

How old do you feel?

He's got a smile that could stop crime, and he's got a long complicated life story for somebody so young.

As above, so below.

I am so glad I had made the decision to stay alone.

We gave them a reason to be lonely.

I'd been a girl who loved boys from afar.

Every now and then that song comes on the radio and I smile as I remember the days when I loved him.

South of the Border, West of the Sun

2011-04-06T04:54:00.000-07:00

You take either all of me or nothing.

There are certain things you cant undo.

Anyhow, I didn't give up is that I thought if you were to come back to me, I would be able to take you back.

Maybe you will hurt me again. Or maybe next time, I'll hurt you. No one can promise anything.

Neither of us can make any promises. But I still do love you.

Death is not the opposite but a part of life.

He lived in his own special hell.

“At this hour?” she said, surprised. “Why do you have to go all the way to Hakone at this hour?”

“There’s something I need to think over,” I said.

“So you won’t be back tonight?”

“Probably not.”

“Darling, I’ve been thinking over what happened, and I’m really sorry. You were right. I got rid of all the stock. So why don’t you come home?”

“Yukiko, I’m not angry at you. Not at all. Forget about that I just want some time to think. Give me one night, OK?”

She said nothing for a while. Then: “All right.” She sounded exhausted. “Go to Hakone. But be careful driving. It’s raining.”

“I will.”

“There’s so much I don’t understand,” my wife said. “Tell me one thing: am I in your way?”

“Not at all,” I replied. “It has nothing to do with you. If anything, the problem’s with me. So don’t worry about it, OK? I just want some time to think.”

“Hajime,” she began, “this is very important, so listen carefully. As I told you before, there is no middle ground with me. You take either all of me or nothing. That’s the way it works. If you don’t mind continuing the way we are now, I don’t see why we can’t do that. I don’t know how long we’d be able to, but I’ll do everything in my power to see that it happens. When I’m able to come and see you, I will. But when I can’t , I can’t. I can’t just come whenever I feel like it. You may not be satisfied with that arrangement, but if you don’t want me to go away again, you have to take all of me. Everything. All the baggage I carry, everything that clings to me. And I will take all of you. Do you understand that? Do you understand what that means?”

“I’m not blaming you,” she continued. “If you love someone else, there’s not much anyone can do about it. You love who you love. I’m not enough for you. I know that. We’ve got on well together and you’ve taken good care of me. I’ve been very happy living with you. I think you still love me, but we can’t escape the fact that I’m not enough for you. I knew this was going to happen. So I’m not blaming you for falling in love with another woman. I’m not angry, either. I should be, but I’m not. I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt, but I was wrong.” [Yukiko]

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“There’s no need to apologize,” she said. “If you want to leave me, that’s OK. I won’t say a thing. Do you want to leave me?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Can I explain what’s happened?”

“You mean about you and that woman?”

“Yes,” I said.

She shook her head emphatically. “I don’t want to hear anything about her. Don’t make me suffer any more that I already have. I don’t care what kind of relationship the two of you have or what plans you’ve made. I don’t want to hear about it. What I do want to know is whether or not you want to leave me. I don’t need the house, or money – or anything. If you want the children, take them. I’m serious. If you want to leave me, just say the word. That’s all I want to know. I don’t want to hear anything else. Just yes or no.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You mean you don’t know if you want to leave me or not?”

“No. I don’t know if I’m even capable of giving you an answer.”

“When will you know?”

I shook my head.

“Well, then, take your time and think about it.” She sighed. I don’t mind waiting. Take as long as you like.”

Norwegian Wood

2011-04-06T04:43:00.000-07:00

Life doesn't require ideals. It requires standards of action.

They are important things I cant go on avoiding any longer.

Maybe it felt that way because I had thought about it so often--too often, to the point where it had distorted my sense of time.

Don't let yourself get impatient.

I have a lot more patience for others than I have for myself, and I'm much better bringing out the best in others than in myself.

If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark.

If you do not, please lie to me later and tell me that you did.

The love is so good we can barely cope.

Things will go where they're supposed to go if you just let them take their natural course.

Despite your best efforts, people are going to hurt when it's time for them to be hurt.

Open up a little more and let yourself go with life's natural flow.

Stop eating yourself alive.

Too many memories of him were crammed inside me, and as soon as one of them found the slightest opening, the rest would force their way out in an endless stream, and unstoppable flood.

Death brought life to an end.

I dont have any way for you to get in.

There's no way I dont want to do it with you. I'm going crazy, I want to do it so bad. But it just wouldnt be right.

The best thing is to keep away.

Best Tanka Poems

2011-01-22T01:07:00.000-08:00

2-BORGIA

behind the happy mask
are my tears, my lonliness
i wish i could remove it,
the mask and sadness inside
but i'm afraid to stop the show

Brigole, 2-Borgia

Raindrops accompanied me
As you walked away from me.
Just a few minutes
the dark alley was empty
just like the way you left me.

Castor, 2-Borgia

Sun shining brightly
As the leaves dance with the wind
I stand, smiling like a sunflower
Rain or shine, I remain joyful
At the beautiful green field

Mantilla, 2-Borgia

Addicted to her
I never thought I will be.
The weakness in your eyes
Those tears rundown my face
The moment you walked away

Ong, 2-Borgia

I wander in a crowded place
Searching for someone
Further I walk,
I have found my long lost friend...
There, standing at a mirror.

Dumlao, 2-Borgia

I heard the thunder
It frightened my soul within
Made me feel afraid
But the cold wind hugged me tight
And I felt it comforted me tonight

Carorocan, 2-Borgia

Sitting on a bench
feeling alone in this world
no friend to listen
Chirp! A bird sat on the porch
A new friend was there with me

Guadalupe, 2-Borgia

seeing you alone,
blankly staring up ahead.
not a single smile you've shown
and not a single word said,
just silence and nothing more.

Naranjo, 2-Borgia

Like a pendulum
I break free and swing away
It keeps coming back
Three autumns already passed
Back and forth, I'm still swinging

Baltazar, 2-Borgia

A small pretty bird
Afraid to fly by itself
For it's wings cannot
It can only wish for a flight
So high , so light without fright

Angeles, 2-Borgia

Like the sun rising
her smile is never fading
dusk starts to break in
now as she lay down to sleep
sorrow hugs her entire world

Wong

2-CANISIUS

butterflies flutter
all day , up and down
resting on top of flowers
flapping its wings
bidding goodbye to the flower

Espiritu, 2-Canisius

As the candle light flickers
I was lost in delirium
As its fire gently dies down
I was consumed by despair
Trapped in my own senseless mind

Angeles, 2-Canisius

Falling peacefully
snow lie on the tree's shoulders
coldness of winter
leaves to prepare for a new
it will leave with spring wind

Shin, 2-Canisius

Moonlight meets the sea
And waves greet the peacefull shore
Lull the sands to sleep
I have yet to see such peace
Have you seen serenity?

Yoshida, 2-Canisius

Sadly I open
The door with hesitation
Anticipating
The hard cold wind as
I say my goodbye

Agor

2-FAVRE

A girl that's gleaming
in the mirror I see her
staring back at me
as I open my eyes wide
I see myself before me.

Tabuga, 2-Favre

Tick-Tock!! Oh Time!
I spend you like a Dime
You're a valuable that cannot be mine
Without you, my mind will blow away
But with you, I stay

Deduyo, 2-Favre

Sun shines so brightly
Rippled water silenced, still
warmth, serenity
Silence is here within me
But still, I feel emptiness.

Ceniza, 2-Favre

I saw shooting star
In the middle of the night
Wishing a good life
I was lonely with my shadow
Following me wherever I go

Ruiz, 2-Favre

I lay on the grass
staring at the stars shining
thinking to myself,
how small I am in this world
compared to the galaxy I see.

Grageda

2-DE BRITO

Walking slowly away
Loneliness is my company
Feels the emptiness
As coldness greets me back home
And the image of you gone.

Bonleon, 2-De Brito

a Sakura tree
In the middle of a pond
something took my eyes
I saw the sadness' diguise
of a trees's dead wilted leaf

Avillon, 2-De Brito

Walking by the sea
as the wind touches my skin
cool breeze passed by
the Sadness made me shiver
as the warmth of drops overflowed

Comia, 2-De Brito

A diamond dewdrop
Twinkles with morning sunlight
Then gently drips down
The rose's green stem
To care for thirsty roots

Carpio, 2-De Brito

Walking through the shoreline
Washed by the ripples
Of past failures as it flashes through
Memories of her run by
As birds soar up high

Llanes, 2-De Brito

There, a swaying tree
Where leaves fall from its branches
There I sit lonely
Waiting for someone to come
That will give me company

Pacheco, 2-De Brito

I feel the rhythm
of leaves flappin' each other
as the wind pass by
it disturbed the loneliness
awakening my pain

Holland, 2-De Brito

Walking by the street
I see a rock still and calm
How i wish i could be
To be as stiff and still as
The cold hard rock on the street

Yap, 2-De Brito

There I was Sitting
watching birds in the sky
waiting for darkness
to cover my loneliness
after I'll go home and cry

Delos Santos, 2-De Brito

2-REGIS

The night grasps me,
By the sadness that I feel,
Faking smile,
I hid the feeling in me,
As tears appeared, it was freed.

Manabit, 2-Regis

The feeling creeping
Has always been there waiting
The cold setting in
Making it so much harder
To resist the lethargy

Manulid, 2-Regis

I saw a couple
looking and smiling at me
in the green meadows
but sadness came into mind
they were just in a portrait

Calugcug, 2-Regis

I sit here waiting,
Waiting for it to appear.
Locked in a dark room,
There is only one window,
Where I saw the sun Rising.

Porticos, 2-Regis

the pure red roses
in both our gardens
i praise mine
more than my neighbor's
though they look the same

Roque, 2-Regis

Sceams I hear from town,
In the darkness of the night,
Nightmares hover dreams,
Where fear and loneliness reign,
Children waking up from fear.

Icalina, 2-Regis

Silently I stand,
Trying hard to stop my tears,
Now i reminisce,
The bitter-sweet memories,
To strengthen my heart and soul.

Gutierrez, 2-Regis

Curling up so small
Blocking out the roaring sound
Eyes shut, hands on ears
Clamped up tightly like a shell
From the thunderstorm outside

Yem, 2-Regis

At that one moment
I saw a seed from the sky
Cradled in its shell
Fear had rendered me frozen
As a gray mushroom took lives

Paglas, 2-Regis

I Choose You

2011-01-16T04:38:00.000-08:00

because I believe we would be stronger together than a part.

because I wanted more than what nature had in store for me.

because you bring happiness to the empty places in my heart.

when I realized the kind of love I was missing.

because I needed you to become whole.

to receive the love you have to give.

because I wanted to be the one to show a love without limits.

because you needed a strong heart to guide you.

because I wanted to be the one you'll remember when you look back on your life.

because I want to share my blessings.

to help me make the best person I could become.

because I want to be the one to kiss your pain away and make it all better.

because I want to be there when you experience life's challenges.

because you needed someone as I did.

because you touched my heart.

so that neither of us would be alone.

because I knew that without you in my life I would not be as happy as I am now.

because you fill my days with more meaningful purpose.

because you help me experience all that life has to offer.

because you teach me how to play again.

because I was lead to you.

because you were and always will be the choice of my heart.

Best Haiku Poems

2011-01-04T00:16:00.000-08:00

BEST HAIKU POEMS

2-BORGIA

an enclosed sea shell
underneath the deep blue sea
bears a precious pearl

-Brigole, 2-Borgia

Tears flooded
rivers and valleys
and after, a rainbow

-Castor, 2-Borgia

Moon’s brightness in the midnight
Sparkling on the ocean
Reflects its own light

-Ong, 2-Borgia

Withered leaves
Sense off aroma
To release relief

-Ong, 2-Borgia

The morning sunset
Behind are the black shadows
of a flying vulture

Lizardo, 2-Borgia

Carrying the day
behind my back
leaves a trail of leaves

Riego de Dios, 2-Borgia

A seed grew
A flower blooms
And wilts after a day.

Tech, 2-Borgia

On a calm sea
Splash!
A whimsical dolphin plays around.

Ibanez, 2-Borgia

A firefly in a cave
Though alone,
Shines against the dark.

Pinili, 2-Borgia

rain or shine
there it stands still -
a rock

Naranjo, 2-Borgia

2-CANISIUS

tiny butterfly
sitting on the cherry blossoms
taking a short rest

Han, 2-Canisius

canopy of trees
remembering
their old leaves

Han, 2-Canisius

the sun
eats the darkness
of my sorrow

Sanchez, 2-Canisius

A mountain blocking the sun
in the middle of light and darkness
a man stands

Sanchez, 2-Canisius

The warm wind
melts the coldness of my soul
the frozen happiness

Yamagata, 2-Canisius

A book buried in dust
Filled with time
Of a thousand lives

Angeles, 2-Canisius

A cute butterfly,
I gaze as it passes by,
Bidding its goodbye.

Baricuatro, 2-Canisius

A sharp dart thrown,
Whooosh!
Missed the target.

Baricuatro, 2-Canisius

In a field full of roses,
lies a huge number of thorns,
twice as many as it.

Macavinta, 2-Canisius

Look up clouds in the sky
looks down a field of flowers
as they breathe ..

Shin, 2-Canisius

The flaming ball of fire
Sets the black sky
For another day

Lapid, 2-Canisius

A colorful streak
Appearing after the rain
Comes the promises

Lapid, 2-Canisius

The crashing of waves
WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSHED! Destroyed the sand castle at the shore

Gancio, 2-Canisius

A little frog
Jumping on the lily pod
Alone

Park, 2-Canisius

red orange green and blue
poof! fluttering wings above
as colors came to life

Evangelista, N., 2-Canisius

Four Fingers Painted
Green, Blue, Orange and Violet
Welcomes the Butterfly

Abueva, 2-Canisius

Shining Silver
Up in the dark blue sky
So hard to reach

Abueva, 2-Canisius

Sweetened aroma
Of candy-colored goodness
Treats for the sweet tooth

Yoshida, 2-Canisius

a jar full of water
being emptied
by a small hole

Baliwan, 2-Canisius

A clam down the sea
Unseen, ignored...
With its pearl

Castillo, A, 2-Canisius

2-FAVRE

A vast blue basin
That captures a moon inside
Casting a shadow.

Ilustrisimo, 2-Favre

The sun in the sky
Shining to allow
A shadow to appear.

Tabuga, 2-Favre

Flying butterfly
passing by, rests on
a leaf, still ignored.

Dela Cuesta, 2-Favre

Meadow reeds do bend
With the slightest stream of air
To and fro it goes

Binoya, 2-Favre

The crimson sky smeared
The greenery
Of its light

Binoya, 2-Favre

an old and big tree
standing straight, tall and sturdy
on ground ceaselessly

Dino, 2-Favre

a big brown eagle
flying against the hot sun
a big, black shadow

Dino, 2-Favre

Brown leaves falling
Gently landing on the ground
And being carried by the wind

Gaviola, 2-Favre

A tall tree stands alone
Beneath it
Small plants sprouting

Deduyo, 2-Favre

A big white dome
overshadows
the mountain peak

Tapucar, 2-Favre

the glaring light strikes
against the dark colored sky
a twilight.

Ceniza, 2-Favre

waves approaching me
releasing a mighty crash
a broken seashell

Gomez, 2-Favre

The night
Follows my body
Is it the night or me?

Encabo, 2-Favre

Huge rock by the stream
Went with the flow of the current
A giant turtle!

Yu, 2-Favre

Am I just frightened
of the silence or
the dark clouds above?

Hodreal, 2-Favre

Deliveries of pollens
By bees and butterflies
Working day and night

Cascaño, 2-Favre

Eating the grass leaves
In the garden after weeks
A butterfly came

Cascaño, 2-Favre

A duck peacefully
Swimming along the river
With it's webby feet.

Vinson, 2-Favre

2-DE BRITO

A small seed
Grows into a tree
And bears fruit.

Bonleon, 2-De Brito

High above the trees
An old eagle soars proudly
Soaring for a kill

Palgan, 2-De Brito

The pond is now still
Until a drop of water
Falls into its surface

Calledo, 2-De Brito

A tree
blocks my path
stops me from leaving

Gupeteo, 2-De Brito

Underneath the sea
Below the rising current
Colorful corals

Paña, 2-De Brito

Feel the soothing wind.
The flowers and leaves moving.
Together swaying.

Luga, 2-De Brito

Rainbow in the sky;
Comes after the rain is gone
Shiny beam of light!

Carrillo, 2-De Brito

Looking at the sky
Seeing thousands of stars,
The moon glows

Lutz, 2-De Brito

In a wide garden,
Abundant with sunflowers
A red rose stands out

Lutz, 2-De Brito

On an autumn season
Leaves falling to the ground
Tossed and turned by the win

Delos Santos, 2-De Brito

A wide pond
Lilies floating on it
Where frogs sit

Asano, 2-De Brito

Hiding under the blankets
Peeping through the darkess
The moon so lonely

Domingo, 2-De Brito

Seeing the moonlight
reflect on rippled water
a swan passing by

Domingo, 2-De Brito

2-REGIS

A long winding river
journeys with a boat
seeking a shore to dwell

Reyes, 2-Regis

I see a bamboo
with the wind it bends slowly
outside my window

Guino-o, 2-Regis

In a garden
I see a beautiful tree
within the frame

Guino-o, 2-Regis

The whiteness of snow
Covered by
The blackness of night

Manulid, 2-Regis

A night Stalker
Follows quietly behind
I look, a Shadow.

Porticos, 2-Regis

Watching the sun set into the sky,
Turning away,
The wind led my way,

Icalina, 2-Regis

I am a flower
Waiting for the clouds,
To pour cold rain.

Obillos, 2-Regis

An eagle flies by,
Flees out of the thick trees,
and into the night

Gutierrez, 2-Regis

Waves crashing down on-
Young meek seaturtle
Helplessly struggling in the sea

Gutierrez, 2-Regis

A flower alone
in the rain without companion
waiting for the sun

Sifuentes, 2-Regis

Bamboo
Along with the Breeze
Dances with it.

Atienza, 2-Regis

Calm and peace abovev
But below the fishes swim
A deep forest spring

Yem, 2-Regis

A silent night
A heavy musky smell
The forest sleeps

Yem, 2-Regis

Mask

2010-12-31T21:52:00.000-08:00

behind the happy mask
are my tears, my lonliness
i wish i could remove it,
the mask and sadness inside
but i'm afraid to stop the show

by Kristianne Gayle Brigole

Heart, We Will Forget Him

2010-12-25T04:08:00.001-08:00

Heart, we will forget him,
You and I, tonight!
You must forget the warmth he gave,
I will forget the light.

When you have done pray tell me,
Then I, my thoughts, will dim.
Haste! ‘lest while you’re lagging
I may remember him!

When We Two Parted

2010-12-25T04:00:00.001-08:00

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever the years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder, thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sunk, chill on my brow,
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame;
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o'er me...
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well..
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met
In silence I grieve
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.

To My Dear and Loving Husband

2010-12-25T03:55:00.000-08:00

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were lov'd by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy love more then whole Mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that Rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee, give recompence.
Thy love is such I can no way repay,
The heavens reward thee manifold I pray.
Then while we live, in love let's so persever,
That when we live no more, we may live ever.

The Reader

2010-12-25T01:28:00.000-08:00

I have to leave too, and I'll walk with you.

It was more of she had withdrawn into her own body, and left it to itself and its own quiet rhythms, unbothered by any input from her mind, oblivious from the outside world.

But I had nothing else to occupy or distract me.

But they would lecture me with loving concern, which was worse than being scolded.

I had done things I had not decided to do.

Silencing my bad conscience...

Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily.

Is sadness what comes over us when beautiful memories shatter in hindsight because the remembered happiness fed not just on actual circumstances but on promise that was not kept?

When I see a woman of thirty six, I find her young. But when I see a boy of fifteen, I see a child.

From the outside it is impossible to tell if you are disowning someone or simply exercising discretion, being considerate, avoiding embarrassments and sources of irritation.

Juxtaposition of callousness and extreme sensitivity...

I recognized her but I felt nothing, nothing at all.

I saw myself functioning but inwardly, I felt no involvement.

There are matters one simply cannot get drawn into, that one must distance oneself from if the price is not life and limb.

Is it possible that when you say you knew, the most you can actually do is assume, and that when you say "believe" you are actually just making things up?

She had not allowed herself to be corrupted by self-pity or the self-confidence she had obviously drawn from the fact that she had survived.

Or as if it had been a conflict between two equally compelling duties that required action?

And if I was not guilty because one cannot be guilty of betraying a criminal, then I was guilty of having loved a criminal.

My father was undemonstrative, and could neither share his feelings with us children nor deal with the feelings we had for him.

If one knows what is good for another person who in turn is blind to it, then one must try to open his eyes. One has to leave him the last word, but one must talk to him and not to someone else behind his back.

He sounded as if he was being a little ironic but maybe it was just th tone of voice and the choice of words.

It would be too much to say I was happy about this. But I felt it was right.

Knowing what was going on didn't mean taking part.

There's no need to talk, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.

Self-inflicted pressure to work and succeed.

My longing for Hannah became so strong that it hurt.

Whatever I had done or not done, whatever she had done or not to me--it was the path my life had taken

Let these be your desires

2010-12-21T05:54:00.000-08:00

ove has no other desire but to fulfill itself
But if your love and must needs have desires,
Let these be your desires:

To melt and be like a running brook
That sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart
And give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer
For the beloved in your heart
And a song of praise upon your lips.

XVII (I do not love you...)

2010-12-21T05:44:00.000-08:00

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.

I love you

2010-12-21T04:42:00.001-08:00

Long Walk to Forever

2010-11-30T04:10:00.000-08:00

They had grown up next door to each other, on the fringe of a city, near fields and woods and orchards, within sight of a lovely bell tower that belonged to a school for the blind.

Now they were twenty, had not seen each other for nearly a year. There had always ben playful, comfortable warmth between them, but never any talk of love.

His name was Newt. Her name was Catharine. In the early afternoon, Newt knocked on Catharine's front door.

Catharine came to the door. She was carrying a fat, glossy magazine she had been reading. The magazine was devoted entirely to brides. "Newt!" she said. She was surprised to see him.

"Could you come for a walk?" he said. He was a shy person, even with Catharine. He covered his shyness by speaking absently as though what really concerned him were far away--as though he were a secret agent pausing briefly on a mission between beautiful, distant, and sinister points.

This manner of speaking had always been Newt's style, even in matters that concerned him desperately.

"A walk?" said Catharine.

"One foot in front of the other," said Newt, "through leaves, over bridges---"

"I had no idea you were in town," she said.

"Just this minute got in," he said.

"Still in the Army, I see," she said.

"Seven months more to go," he said. He was a private first class in the Artillery. His uniform was rumpled. His shoes were dusty. He needed a shave. He held out his hand for the magazine. "Let's see the pretty book," he said.

She gave it to him. "I'm getting married, Newt," she said.

"I know," he said. "Let's go for a walk."

"I'm awfully busy, Newt," she said. "The wedding is only a week away."

"If we go for a walk," he said, "it will make you rosy. It will make you a rosy bride." He turned the pages of the magazine. "A rosy bride like her--like her--like her," he said, showing her rosy brides.

Catharine turned rosy, thinking about rosy brides.

"That will be my present to Henry Stewart Chasens," said Newt. "By taking you for a walk, I'll be giving him a rosy bride."

"You know his name?" she said.

"Mother wrote," he said. "From Pittsburgh?"

"Yes," she said. "You'd like him."

"Maybe," he said.

"Can--can you come to the wedding, Newt?" she said.

"That I doubt," he said.

"Your furlough isn't for long enough?" she said.

"Furlough?" said Newt. He was studying a two page ad for flat silver. "I'm not on furlough," he said.

"Oh?" she said.

"I'm what they call A.W.O.L.," said Newt.

"Oh, Newt! You're not!" she said.

"Sure I am," he said, still looking at the magazine.

"Why, Newt?" she said.

"I had to find out what your silver pattern is," he said. He read names of silver patterns from the magazine. Albemarle? Heather?" he said. "Legend? Rambler Rose?" He looked up, smiled. "I plan to give you and your husband a spoon," he said.

"Newt, Newt--tell me really," she said.

"I want to go for a walk," he said.

She wrung her hands in sisterly anguish. "Oh, Newt--you're fooling me about being A.W.O.L.," she said.

Newt imitated a police siren softly, and raised his eyebrows.

"Where--where from?"

"Fort Bragg," he said.

"North Carolina?" she said.

"That's right," he said. "Near Fayetteville--where Scarlet O'Hara went to school."

"How did you get here, Newt?" she said.

He raised his thumb, jerked it in a hitchhike gesture. "Two days," he said.

"Does your mother know?" she said.

"I didn't come to see my mother," he told her.

"Who did you come to see?" she said.

"You," he said.

"Why me?" she said.

"Because I love you," he said. "Now can we take a walk?" he said. "One foot in front of the other--through leaves, over bridges--"

They were taking the walk now, were in a woods with a brown-leaf floor.
Catharine was angry and rattled, close to tears. "Newt," she said, "this is absolutely crazy."

"How so?" said Newt.

"What a crazy time to tell me you love me," she said. "You never talked that way before." She stopped walking.

"Let's keep walking," he said.

"No," she said. "So far, no farther. I shouldn't have come out with you at all," she said.

"You did," he said.

"To get you out of the house," she said. "If somebody walked in and heard you talking to me that way, a week before the wedding--"

"What would they think?" he said.

"They'd think you were crazy," she said.

"Why?" he said

Catharine took a deep breath, made a speech. "Let me say that I'm deeply honored by this crazy thing you've done," she said. "I can't believe you're really A.W.O.L., but maybe you are. I can't believe you really love me, but maybe you do. But--"

"I do," said Newt.

"Well, I'm deeply honored," said Catharine, "and I'm very fond of you as a friend, Newt, extremely fond--but it's just too late." She took a step away from him. "You've never even kissed me," she said, and she protected herself with her hands. "I don't mean you should do it now. I just mean that this is all so unexpected. I haven't got the remotest idea of how to respond."

"Just walk some more," he said. "Have a nice time."

They started walking again.

"How did you expect me to react?" she said.

"How would I know what to expect?" he said. "I've never done anything like this before."

Did you think I would throw myself into your arms?" she said.

"Maybe," he said.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you," she said.

"I'm not disappointed," he said. "I wasn't counting on it. This is very nice, just walking."

Catharine stopped again. "You know what happens next?" she said.

"Nope," he said.

"We shake hands," she said. "We shake hands and part friends," she said. "That's what happens next."

Newt nodded. "All right," he said. "Remember me from time to time. Remember how much I loved you."

Involuntarily, Catharine burst into tears. She turned her back to Newt, looked into the infinate colonnade of the woods.

"What does that mean?" said Newt.

"Rage!" said Catharine. She clenched her hands. "You have no right--"

"I had to find out," he said.

"If I'd loved you," she said, "I would have let you know before now."

"You would?" he said.

"Yes," she said. She faced him, looked up at him, her face quite red. "You would have known," she said.

"How?" he said.

"You would have seen it," she said. "Women aren't very clever at hiding it."

Newt looked closely at Catharine's face now. To her consternation, she realized that what she had said was true, that a woman couldn't hide love.

Newt was seeing love now.And he did what he had to do. He kissed her.

"You're hell to get along with!" she said when Newt let her go.

"I am?" said Newt.

"You shouldn't have done that," she said.

"You didn't like it?" he said.

"What did you expect," she said--"wild, abandoned passion?"

"I keep telling you," he said," I never know what's going to happen next."

"We say good-by," she said.

He frowned slightly. "All right," he said.

She made another speech. "I'm not sorry we kissed," she said. "That was sweet. We should have kissed, we've been so close. I'll always remember you , Newt, and good luck."

"You too," he said.

"Thirty days," he said.

"What?" she said.

"Thirty days in the stockade," he said--"that's what one kiss will cost me."

"I--I'm sorry," she said, "but I didn't ask you to go A.W.O.L."

"I know," he said.

"You certainly don't deserve any hero's reward for doing something as foolish as that," she said.

"Must be nice to be a hero," said Newt. "Is Henry Stewart Chasens a hero?"

"He might be, if he got the chance," said Catharine. She noted uneasily that they had begun to walk again. The farewell had been forgotten.

"You really love him?" he said.

"Certainly I love him!" she said hotly. "I wouldn't marry him if I didn't love him!"

"What's good about him?" said Newt.

"Honestly!" she cried, stopping again. "Do you have any idea how offensive you're being? Many, many, many things are good about Henry! Yes," she said, "and many, many, many things are probably bad, too. But that isn't any of your business. I love Henry, and I don't have to argue his merits with you!"

"Sorry," said Newt.

"Honestly!" said Catharine.

Newt kissed her again. He kissed her again because she wanted him to.

They were now in a large orchard.

"How did we get so far from home, Newt?" said Catharine.

"One foot in front of the other--through leaves, over bridges," said Newt.

"They add up--the steps," she said.

Bells rang in the tower of the school for the blind nearby.

"School for the blind," said Newt.

"School for the blind," said Catharine. She shook her head in drowsy wonder. "I've got to go back now," she said.

"Say good-by," said Newt.

"Every time I do," said Catharine, "I seem to get kissed."

Newt sat down on the close-cropped grass under an apple tree. "Sit down," he said.

"No," she said.

"I won't touch you," he said.

"I don't believe you," she said.

She sat down under another tree, twenty feet away from him. She closed her eyes.

"Dream of Henry Stewart Chasens," he said.

"What?" she said.

"Dream of your wonderful husband-to-be," he said.

"All right, I will," she said. She closed her eyes tighter, caught glimpses of her husband-to-be.

Newt yawned.

The bees were humming in the trees, and Catharine almost fell asleep. When she opened her eyes she saw that Newt really was asleep.He began to snore softly.

Catharine let him sleep for an hour, and while he slept she adored him with all her heart.
The shadows of the apple trees grew to the east. The bells in the tower of the school for the blind rang again.

"*chick-a-dee-dee-dee*," went a chickadee.

Somewhere far away an automobile started nagged and failed, nagged and failed, fell still.
Catharine came out from under her tree, knelt by Newt.

"Newt?" she said.

"H'm?" he said. He opened his eyes.

"Late," she said.

"Hello, Catharine," he said.

"Hello, Newt," she said.

"I love you," he said.

"I know," she said.

"Too late," he said.

"Too late," she said.

He stood, stretched groaningly. "A very nice walk," he said.

"I thought so," she said.

"Part company here?" he said.

"Where will you go?" she said.

"Hitch into town, turn myself in," he said.

"Good luck," she said.

"You too," he said. "Marry me, Catharine?"

"No," she said.

He smiled, stared at her hard for a moment, then walked away quickly.

Catharine watched him grow smaller in the long perspective of shadows and trees, knew that if he stopped and turned now, if he called to her, she would run to him. She would have no choice.
Newt did stop. He did turn. He did call. "Catharine," he called.

She ran to him, put her arms aroud him, could not speak.

His Prose # 1

2010-10-30T02:47:00.000-07:00

What makes my perfect guy are his imperfections. First, it makes him real than a dream. Second, that’s him. Third, I love him. Lastly, he loves me. He’s neither yours nor anybody’s for he’s my first and one and only. He's officially perfect for me. :)

His Poem # 1

2010-10-30T02:14:00.000-07:00

I bet that's not a decision you alone can make

So since your safety is at stake

Promise me not a bone of your body will break

Because that's something I cannot take.

His Poem # 2

2010-10-30T02:01:00.000-07:00

I love you

like there's no tomorrow.

I love you

till yesterday's are gone.

I love you

for as long as today will stay.

Phenomenal Woman

2010-05-27T20:03:00.000-07:00

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

The Devil and Miss Prym

2010-05-16T06:36:00.001-07:00

There is still something very important missing--a companion with whom to share all this beauty.

Profoundest changes take place within a very reduced time frame.

Challenge will not wait.

You shouldn't believe in promises. The world is full of them.

About the lies he had been obliged to believe because he could not accept reality.

Men take the oddest satisfaction in feeling superior without knowing that most of the time they are being utterly predictable.

She was all too familiar with the silence of this remote place which signified not peace and tranquility but a total absence of new things to say.

It was a wretched place in which everything was predictable, organized and reliable.

Everyday was another day spent waiting. Every night was a night when she might meet someone who would recognize her true worth.

She realized that there were 2 things that prevent us from achieving our dreams: believing them to be impossible or seeing those dreams made possible by some sudden turn of the wheel of fortune when you least expected it. For at that moment, all our fears suddenly surface: fear of life full of new challenges, the fear of losing everything that is familiar.

People want to change everything and at the same time want it all to remain the same.

Good and evil have the same face. It all depends when they cross the path of each individual human being.

Rich men never waste a penny, only poor people do that.

They only think they have everything under their control, when in fact, they control nothing.

Dangerous men and women never make threats.

There are two kinds of idiots--those who don't take action because they have received a threat, and those who think they are taking action because they have issued a threat.

The best way to weaken ones enemy was to get them to believe that you were on his side.

Of all the days in our life, which is the one that never comes? Tomorrow.

I can almost touch your fear.

Even God has a hell: his love for mankind.

I was always a man of action.

Cowards--they never lose or win.

The answer is simple: chance.

It isn't the desire to abide by the law that makes everyone behave as society requires but they fear of punishment. Each one of us carries gallows inside.

Your not trying to find the answer to a question, your simply trying to confirm something you desperately want to believe: that everyone is evil.

Life is a reign of terror in the shadow of the guillotine.

Mankind is only virtuous because terror exists.

They were losing nothing by waiting.

An authority derived from terror leaving fear and suffering for later.

Man needs what is worst in him in order to achieve what is best in him.

Forgive God.

We have committed the sin of pride in believing ourselves to be better than we are and that is why we are suffering.

Death often frees us from a lot of senseless suffering.

Silence doesn't always mean consent--usually all it meant was that people were incapable of coming up with an immediate response.

They seek suffering in the most joyous of places because they think they are unworthy of happiness.

It was all a matter of control or choice.

Life can seem either very long or very short, according to how you lived it.

To follow our dreams and master the fear that prevents us from living.

Twilight

2010-05-05T04:32:00.000-07:00

I ate breakfast without tasting the food.

It's too easy to be myself with you.

I can't stay with you. And I'm afraid that I'd like to stay with you, much more than I should.

So involved was I in my escapist daydreams, I lost all track of the seconds racing by.

To be perfectly honest, she'll be unavailable every night, as for as anyone besides myself is concerned.--Edward to Mike

He means well.

When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it's not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end.

It was nice to be alone, not to have to smile and look pleased; a relief to stare dejectedly out the window at the sheeting rain and let just a few tears escape.

I didn't struggle to forget.

Forbidden to remember, terrified to forget.

My temper was hardwired to my tear ducts.

"It's twilight, " Edward muttered..."The easiest to me. But also the saddest, in a way...the end of another day, the return of the night."

I was at a loss to know how.

My mind had too much free time.

You are exactly my brand of heroine.

My personal hell to ruin me.

Thank you, but no thanks.

Breaking Dawn

2010-05-05T04:27:00.000-07:00

Each pain had a simple answer, a clear action to end that pain.

She's everything you want and everything you can't have.

Because you always want the very most what you can never have.

Pain so bad you'd take death a smile just to get away from it.

Reality was knowing there was something so much important than all this torture and not being able to remember what it was.

One infinite moment of pain.

Childhood is not birth to a certain age and at a certain age. The child is grown and puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. --St. Edna Vincent Millay

Bachelor parties are designed for those who are sad to see the passing of their single days. I couldn't be more eager to have mine behind me.

I'm sure about you. The rest I could live through.

Waste not, want not.You are officially perfect.

Always have, always will.

And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays. --William Shakespeare

Fly on the Wall Vol 1-2

2010-05-03T01:54:00.000-07:00

To pull ones punches is to do a disservice to oneself, as well as to ones opponent. It defies the value for excellence and the rule of fair play. To pull ones punch is to say that the other is unworthy of your best shot. It means you forfeit taking your best shot.

It has always fascinated me why others can't rein in their impulse to aggress against others for the most inane reasons--like, maybe they don't like your hair, the way you walk, or the fact that others like you. They don't realize that their feeling is their problem. Or if they do realize that, they don't want to be responsible for their problem, so they set out to make it yours.

Girls handicap themselves more often than boys. We are set early on the road of regulating the display of our ability and denying the best we can be in order to make relationships work.

She'll find that there will be roads that she will need to travel alone where others are ill-equipped to follow.

She is of generation that needed their parents in youth and graduated to adulthood compelled to need their children.

Regarding smoking--it takes courage to pick one's own poison rather than letting the world dis it out on you.

How could one person be more than another.

We are at our greatest human potential in childhood until the real world touches us.

So caught up we become in making the days speed past that sometimes we are jolted by the question of where the time has gone. And then we realize that we don't have the excuse of youth anymore to make crazy choices and take zany chances of life.

Until you allow time to touch you, you haven't lived.

But first, get to know the enemy. It might very well be yourself.

Morality plays that take center stage in our time are mostly about evil versus evil and that life, more often than not, is about learning to choose the lesser.

To blunt the blow when it comes

Life is a place we've never been.

The ignorant ones is not to be found only in the classrooms.

There's nothing like anonymity to bring out the wild side in many.

Sh*t happens.

Victory won through acts of aggression are empty.

That's what upstarts are for. They think they can achieve where others have failed.

One learns loud and clear that which he wants to hear but is likely to close those ears when the words run counter to his position.

We take offense when people say the truth because we'd rather take the lies.

They don't learn because they see learning as an external event that happens only on their seatmates' paper.

Logically, we could expect that given the amount of available knowledge out there and the relative ease with which the younger could access it, we should have in our midst a generation of walking encyclopedias.

Weapons were invented to compensate for male inarticulateness.

When did love mean having to be who we are not?

Only to discover that what we left behind is that which what we seek to find.

Fate of our own making is not a matter of opinion, argument or wishful thinking.

I was fascinated how a mind so sharp in most way could fail to grasp the obvious.

They took up the space in my heart that I didn't know could hold so much.

We are more likely to be abused by someone you know than by a stranger.

The abused becomes the abuser.

We remember very well the promise that was you.

What we love is what would most likely kill you.

People practicing the heresy called love.

Like knows like.

Within each of us resides a sort of alternate selves.

Actions speak and words just get in the way.

When something goes wrong with someone else, I really truly hope it isn't something that my silence on a previous occasion provided the precedence for someone else to get hurt in the same way and--God forbid--for the hurtful practice to be institutionalized where it would do no harm anymore.

To loosen its stranglehold / so much is possible

Kettle calling the pot dirty brown

People who react in anger generally react out of character.

Rape is not so much about the innocence of he accused until proven guilty, it is also about the integrity of the victim until proven a liar.

Have enough to make do when there'll be a need to.

The point of everyday is for us to prove ourselves worthy of breath.

Far be it for me

The measure of a people's character emerges when thing suddenly don't work as they should.

Never mind if the teacher disagreed with what grade my answer was good for.

We become what we do.

Intentions sometimes do not translate to action.

Never underestimate the power of the situation to affect behavior.

Who says we need bullets when looks could kill?

Overcome emotion with reason

You cannot make everything right to everyone.

We...must understand death. It often is ll that the world would let us have.

Justice is just a word that she has heard.

How much truth is sacrificed for convenience, pride and propaganda.

Apology will only be an issue with one of guilty conscience.

Same old, same old.

He who fights and runs away fights to run another day.

Better the devil that you don't know that the devil you do.

Time enough for things to get a little bit more complicated, as happens when one is just a text message away.

Those books look like they needs brains to work out.

Stop whining and kick ass.

Touch is a power thing.

Love in The Time of Cholera

2010-04-12T05:16:00.001-07:00

Let time pass and we will see what it brings.

Life was imposed on her from outside.

She had the obsessions of a slave.

Students were no more than borrowed friends whose affection ended with each class.

The lost of virginity is a bloody sacrifice.

Life--It is not so much.

An ineluctable event that he was resolved to wait for without patience or violence.

Life obliges people over and over again to give birth to themselves.

I'm not rich but a poor man with money.

He escaped in the torments of memory which kept him in the state of grace.

...a knowledge of it superior to anyone's...

...that bore too close a resemblance of love.

Neither could have said if their mutual dependence was based on love or convenience, but they had never asked the question with their hands on their hearts because both had always preferred not to know the answer.

Wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good.

...her anger being found out in a mistake maddened her.

Resentments stirred up other resentments, reopened old scars turned them into fresh wounds and both were dismayed at the desolating proof...that they had done little more than nurture their rancor.

He had turned to the childhood his children had taken away from him.

The only worst thing than bad health is a bad name.

One could be happy not only without love, but despite it.

No one with more sense than a poet.

The only regret I would have in dying is if it is not for love.

Nobody teaches life anything.

It is possible to be a woman's friend and not go to bed with her.

Ethical management of forgetfulness

...that maybe the reason he does so many so that he will not have to think.

Love, if it existed, is something separate: another life.

One does not love one's children because they are ones children but because of the friendship formed while raising them.

The problem in married life is learning to overcome boredom.

Unfaithful but not disloyal

One can be in love with several people at the same time and feel the same sorrow with each and not betray any of them.

Feeling his presence where he no longer was.

The desire to forget is the strongest inducement for remembering.

The most important thing of a good marriage is not happiness but stability.

Confessions of a Young Teacher

2010-04-02T04:39:00.000-07:00

A morning in the second week of June 2007, I went in my first class chin up, shoulders straight, breast out as I walked up to the platform and greeted each of my students with a set of bad-tempered eyebrows, a smoldering look and disappointed lips. I moved my spectacles a bit to manage my nervousness and saw clearly how each stared back and looked at me from hairpin to sandals all of them swearing to hate me from that second on to the last day of the school year. It’s a success! No one in class knew I had a 20/20 vision, I was hired a week ago and I was a century younger than they thought.

The moment I thought I managed, I started to juggle for words stammering, stopping in the middle of my discussion and hanging like Pentium 1 for the innumerable things I wanted to express with no words to contain them. I fastened my grammar on my script and made sure all the words I needed were prepared for my disposal, still, words betrayed me. I sweated on adjusting my eyeglasses and dressing up like my great, great grandmother just to let them all know that I am mature enough for this profession. Along the corridor, I swallowed every eyes of disapproval from my colleagues who always knew they were better than me. What’s even worse is I am a probationary teacher who just graduated Magna Cum Laude from a prestigious school and I gave them all the right to expect this much from me as they did to the principal.

With all these emotional baggage, I grew more tired each day dragging myself to class fighting every chance of failure and failing every time I try. My self esteem was almost always totally wrecked at the end of the day that even my four years of college didn’t seem enough to lift me, it let me down. It all became unbearable one day when I was substituting a sick teacher that suddenly my senses blacked out and I wish I hadn’t been conscious enough to hear my students shouting, “Miss collapsed! Stretcher! Stretcher!” A couple of hands clutched me and rushed me to the clinic. The nurse checked my blood pressure. “70/40,” I heard. I can’t believe that even in the readings in the sphygmomanometer, I failed.

While I was supposed to be resting, I brainstormed on so many things that happened when I re-entered the academe. It’s very difficult to swing in between being young and being a teacher. The time when I am supposed to be allowed to commit mistakes and have fun, people expect me to be perfect and boring. I cannot even be in clubs, parties and hang-outs without being watchful for there are too many eyes checking on me if I am still morally upright for my profession. How can they expect me to be more when I admittedly have less of which can only be learned through experience? And so I chose to close my eyes and rest my case.

Over the next few days, I stopped trying to be a teacher. I removed my eyeglasses; I dressed up along with the latest fashion still not forgetting the sleeves, the collar, the long skirt and the required earrings. I stopped observing my co-teachers along the corridor; I got rid of my script; I studied harder than when I was a student and I forgot about my coordinator. The change was liberating.

Although some of my colleagues are still having qualms if I could still make it a month more, a lot of my students were happy that I broke my eyeglasses and I used my “contacts”. They were grateful that I know how to smile and laugh on their linguistic somersaults despite the pact we had on subject-verb and pronoun-antecedent. They forgave me when I stammer as they helped me out and during my “happiniss, igg, pish days”, they dwelled not on my words but understood why I sometimes commit mistakes. And as they stopped dwelling on what’s wrong with me, they started learning what’s right.

My teaching moments come in times when they forget I am their teacher. These are the times when I never miss on letting them realize, how stubborn I can be. Whenever they talk I simply call their attention and ask them an ultra-difficult question. After a minute, everyone is quiet as they listen to my winning question, “How can you talk to him/her, and not talk to me now? You know I am a very jealous teacher and I’ve always wanted your attention but if you want me to share it with you, here’s the best time. You talk and we listen simply because we respect you.” The class would giggle but they knew I was dead serious.

My students had their share of teaching moments too and often do these come to me when I am least prepared. “Check the verb in the sentence, I love you,” a boy cut me with an, “I love you too, Miss. So, are we official?” Everyone was silent waiting for my response. Smiling, I said, “Yes, we’re official…officially divorced!” We all laughed and continued the lesson using the two useful verbs—love and divorced. Although these instances always appeared to be distractions, they served well as icebreakers in class. After all, I don’t have to be too hard, too mature and too all-knowing to gain their respect. I just have to be myself.

After three months, my students led on spreading the rumors about me and they as well exerted effort to stand true to what they had exposed in campus. I felt reassured but afraid of the result because I’m not sure if my efforts were enough though I know I am into it for the right reasons. As the principal handed me my summative evaluation, my efforts said: You’re still an English teacher and no longer on probation.

Sonnet 8

2010-03-26T23:56:00.000-07:00

I live, I die,. I burn myself and drown.
I am extremely hot in suffering cold:
my life is soft and hardness uncontrolled.
When I am happy, then I ache and frown.
Suddenly I am laughing while I cry
and in my pleasure I endure deep grief:
my joy remains and slips out like a thief.
Suddenly I am blooming and turn dry.
So Love inconstantly leads me in vain
and when I think my sorrow has no end
unthinkingly I find I have no pain.
But when it seems that joy is in my reign
and an ecstatic hour is mine to spend,
He comes and I, in ancient grief, descend.

To...

2010-03-24T05:30:00.001-07:00

I recollect that wondrous meeting,
That instant I encountered you,
When like an apparition fleeting,
Like beauty's spirit, past you flew.

Long since, when hopeless grief distressed me,
When noise and turmoil vexed, it seemed
Your voice still tenderly caressed me,
Your dear face sought me as I dreamed.

Years passed; their stormy gusts confounded
And swept away old dreams apace.
I had forgotten how you sounded,
Forgot the heaven of your face.

In exiled gloom and isolation
My quiet days meandered on,
The thrill of awe and inspiration,
And life, and tears, and love, were gone.

My soul awoke from inanition,
And I encountered you anew,
And like a fleeting apparition,
Like beauty's spirit, past you flew.

My pulses bound in exaltation,
And in my heart once more unfold
The sense of aw and inspiration,
The life, the tears, the love of old.

Simile

2010-03-24T04:55:00.001-07:00

What did we say to each other
that now we are as the deer
who walk in single file
with heads high
with ears forward
with eyes watchful
with hooves always placed on firm ground
in whose limbs there is latent flight.

The Bluest Eye

2010-03-12T20:11:00.000-08:00

It was a productive pain.

If happiness is anticipation with certainty, we were happy.

The desirability that escaped me.

What experience would you like on Christmas? over What gift would you like on Christmas?

Pain was not only endurable, it was sweet.

It would involve, I supposed, "my man," who before leaving, would love me.

"How do you do that? I mean, how would you get someone to love you?"

Dealing with it each according to his way.

The muted sound of flesh on unsurprised flesh.

To have something as wonderful as that to happen would take a long, long time.

She would see only what there was to see: the eyes of other people.

Don't worry about my bandy legs. That's the 1st thing they push aside.

She was cut out for better things and could make the right man happy.

Eyes that questioned nothing and asked everything.

He was a simple Presence, an all embracing tenderness with strength and promise of rest.

Having a baby is more than a bowel movement.

Her process of becoming were like most of ours: she developed a hatred for things that mystified or obstructed her, acquired virtues that were easy to maintain, assigned herself a role in the scheme of things and harked back to simpler times for gratification.

Pulling every nerve and muscle into service

Celibacy was a haven, silence is a shield.

She never left me because she was never ever there.

And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good but well behaved.

Love is never any better than the lover.

Beauty was not simply something to behold, it was something one could do.

Quiet as it's kept.

So it was.

Shanghai Baby

2010-02-14T05:56:00.001-08:00

Future is a trap set right in the middle of your brain.

It's hard to deny life's little ironies.

You have no immunity against life.

Love was a miracle the flesh could not copy.

Being bored is when you haven't anything to do, so what would you be doing?

Intelligence is a gift and madness is an instinct.

A genius can get into a worse mess than an idiot.

The deeper the love, the sharper the flesh aches.

Romantic dreams leave no trace.

Erring in ones choice of boyfriend is a woman's great humiliation.

One draws near in order to separate in the end.

How blessed a woman like me should feel: young, good looking, smart and a professional.

Shadows float about recording thousands of shapes and hopeless situations.

When bad things happen to you, everything goes haywire.

You need not worry. When you wake up, tomorrow is the day after the one before.

He was the fire of my life and the impetus behind my work, he was inexpressible sweetness and pain perfectly beautiful rose resurrected by alchemy in a Persian garden.

When the film is over the film goers leave en masse.

Loving you and being faithful to you are two different things.

Fear of loneliness is what teaches us to love.

All men are strange as hell--Robin Morgan.

Girls who are street smart are put down and those who are gentler are treated like empty headed flower vessels.

Being a bit smart doesn't hurt.

A learned man should also understand romance.

Love enters by way of the ear and only then can reach the heart.

What will be, will be.

Real life is never the way we want it to be.

Everything originates in nothingness and nothingness accentuates everything.

My nerves taut as bowstring.

Love will tear us apart.--Ian Curtis

Heaven is no more than this: being at ease and completely free of worry.

There are no men to notice your hairstyle and clothes, no one to focus about whether you're full breasted or your own eyes are sufficiently elegant.

If there's a reason to live, loving you is it.

We'd lost the chance of a chance.

It's a way of giving yourself something to cling to a reason to be happy.

I am alive but dead too.

Freedom of choice is a freedom based on certain conditions.

A man with the eyes of a child, intelligent of a genius and the love of a lunatic...

I wanted to find someone to blame for everything so I'd have an object to hate and to rage against.

When your lover leaves, you can cry out all the tears in your body but he wont come back. He's gone forever, taking with him your broken memories, reduced to ashes and leaving behind a soul, alone.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

2010-02-08T06:08:00.000-08:00

The profound moral perversity of a world that rests essentially on non-existence of return.

We live everything as it comes without warning.

What happens but once might as well not happen at all.

The only relationship that can make both partners happy is in which sentimentality has no place and neither partner makes any claim on the life and freedom of the other.

Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation but in the desire for shared sleep.

Those years were more attractive in retrospect.

He was enjoying the sweet lightness of being.

Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination.

Only necessity is heavy and only what is heavy has value.

Life cannot be an experiment thus there's no room for hypothesis.

Co-incidence means that two events unexpectedly happen at the same time, they meet.

Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.

It could just as well be other ways.

Only chance can speak to us.

Necessity knows no magic formula--they are all left to chance.

If love is to be unforgettable, fortuities will come down to it.

Vertigo is the voice of emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.

She made no response. She could not tell him that she had been waiting.

What we have not chosen we cannot consider either our merit or our failure.

Respect the woman in her.

Noise has one advantage. It drowns our words.

Beauty by mistake

Love means renouncing ones strength.

What must be, must be.

The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us.

Flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee.

Loves are like empires: when the idea are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away.

Blissful indifference / beautiful lie

Obsession of the unimaginable

Poetic memory records everything that charms and touches us.

Pleasure without happiness is not pleasure.

Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.

When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.

We can never establish certainty what part of our relations with others is the result of our emotions--love, antipathy, charity or malice--and what part is pre-determined by the constant powerplay among individuals.

Idyll's monotony bred happiness, not boredom.

Her weakness was aggressive.

The sadness meant: we are at the last station. The happiness meant: we are together.

The House on the Mango Street

2010-02-08T06:04:00.000-08:00

She doesn't want to write a book that a reader wont understand and would feel ashamed for not understanding.

Making each sentence serve her and not the other way around.

When she lived at home, the things she looked at scolded her and made her feel sad and depressed. They said, "Wash me." They said, "Wash me." They said, "Lazy." They said, "You ought."

You can never have too much of sky.

A home in a heart, a house made of heart.

"...who left and keeps leaving."

I am the one nobody comes for.

I have began my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate.

How to Survive...

2010-01-09T07:30:00.000-08:00

You’re still in that life
--but not really.
And your out of that life
--but not quite.

Come to stay
or
Stay away

To give you up
God!
What a bell of freedom
That rings within me
No more waiting for
Letters
Phone calls
Post cards
That never come.

I am afraid that I will run out of poems
Before I run out of pain.

I rained, rain.

The sun will rise
In a few minutes

It’s been doing it
--regularly--
for as long as I
can remember.

Maybe I should
pin my hopes
on important,
but often
unnoticed,
certainties
like that,

not on such relatively
trivial matters as
whether you will never
love me or not.

Hurt for a while.

I hope I heal soon.
I want to enjoy
Autumn.

You are beautiful just because you are.

You require time to heal. Give yourself the luxury. You deserve it.

I shall miss loving you.

I shall miss the
Comfort
Of your embrace.

I shall miss the
Loneliness
Of waiting for your calls
That never came.

I shall miss the Joy
Of our comings,
and Pain
of your goings.

And,
After a time
I shall miss

Missing
Loving
You.

With each new person I meet
I wonder, is this the day
Fate has chosen, or is fate
What I have chosen to get me
Through the day.

The memory of loving
The most
Destructive.

While your internal world is chaotic,
Keep to a schedule in the outer.
This will give a sense of order
--also something to hold on to.

Falling asleep
Exhausted tomorrow
Early evening
Too tired
Even for
Nightmares.

I am missing you
Far better than
I ever loved you

Sundays are the worst.

Holidays are the second worst.

Saturday nights aren’t much fun either.

It’s hard to look back upon any gain in life that does not have a loss attached to it.

Limbo : Is it on? Is it off? Is it a gain? Is it a loss?

Not knowing may be the worst torture of all.

When in limbo, and your better instincts tell you there’s little hope, it’s better to end the situation than to let it drag on and on.

Be with that pain. NOW. Set time aside for mourning.

To give up this final hope may be the most difficult of all.

Your anger will go away as your hurt heals.

from Lesley

2010-01-09T07:04:00.000-08:00

"I still believe in paradise, but now at least I know it is not some place that you can look for because it is not where you go... It's how you feel for a moment in your life when you are a part of something. And if you find that moment, it lasts forever."

On Monsieur's Departure

2010-01-09T04:43:00.000-08:00

I grieve and not dare show my discontent,
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.
I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,
Since from myself another self I turned.

My care is like my shadow in the sun
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be suppressed.

Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of snow;
Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
Let me float or sink, be high or low.
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die and so forget what love ere meant.

Love Does Not Know Secrets

2009-12-27T03:44:00.000-08:00

Love knows no secrets,
when it is hidden it will be discovered
Love has no choice;
when it seizes a man,
he will confess everything,
everything that was not done.

Love has no pity,
even an old man may be put to shame,
love does not return
to a Thing it desires.
When it pursues,
he turns mad.

Love humbles a man
his body becomes emaciated;
when a friend of ours is humiliated
it is not fair to laugh at him.
A man does not have the stamina
to put love aside.

Love never agrees
to share (a man's attention) with anything;
If you irritate love,
you melt away at once.
Love is a disease,
a malignant incurable disease.

-Swahili Love Poetry
translated by Ali Ahmed Jahadhmy

500 Days of Summer

2009-12-01T21:22:00.000-08:00

Narrator: This is a story of boy meets girl. But you should know up front, this is not a love story.

Rachel Hansen: Just because she's likes the same bizzaro crap you do doesn't mean she's your soul mate.

Rachel Hansen: Tom, I know you think she was the one, but I don't. Next time you look back, I think you should look again.

Summer: You weren't wrong, Tom. You were just wrong about me.

Summer: I woke up one morning and I just knew.
Tom: Knew what?
Summer: What I was never sure of with you.

Tom: My name's Tom.
Girl at Interview: [shaking hands] Nice to meet you. I'm Autumn.

Narrator: Most days of the year are unremarkable. They begin, and they end, with no lasting memories made in between. Most days have no impact on the course of a life. May 23rd was a Wednesday.

Paul: Robin is better than the girl of my dreams. She's real.

Tom: You don't want to be named as someone's boyfriend, and now your someone's wife?

McKenzie: Hey, don't you have like 20 cards to write by Friday?
Tom: Nope, all done.
McKenzie: Really? Well, could you help me with mine? Because I'm running out of ways to say "Congratulations". So far, I've got: "Congrats", "Good job" and "Well done".
Tom: Hmmm. How about..."Every day you make me proud. But today you get a card."
McKenzie: Shit, that's good!
Tom: I know.

This is not a love story. This is a story about love.

Witty Remarks

2009-11-29T00:40:00.000-08:00

Never believe in anything until it has been officially denied.
Otto von Bismarck

There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them.
Niels Bohr

The nice thing about egoists is that they don't talk about other people.
Lucille S. Harper

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
Robert A. Heinlein

I never made a mistake in my life; at least, never one that I couldn't explain away afterwards.
Immanuel Kant

I became a feminist as an alternative to becoming a masochist.
Sally Kempton

Some folks are wise and some are otherwise.
Tobias George Smolett

It is easier to stay out than get out.
Mark Twain

I think; therefore, I'm single.
Lizz Winstead

"For there is nothing either good or bad, thinking makes it so."
- William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Hamlet, II.ii

"It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument."
- William Gibbs McAdoo (1863-1941)

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone else he can blame it on. Robert Bloch

People

2009-11-28T22:25:00.000-08:00

No people are uninteresting.
Their fate is like the chronicle of planets.

Nothing in them is not particular,
and planet is dissimilar from planet.

And if a man lived in obscurity
making his friends in that obscurity
obscurity is not uninteresting.

To each his world is private,
and in the world one excellent minute.

And in that world one tragic minute.
These are private.

In any man who dies there dies with him
his first snow and kiss and fight.
It goes with him.

They are left books and bridges
and painted canvas and machinery.

Whose fate is to survive.
But what has gone is also not nothing:

by the rule of the game something has gone.
Not people die but worlds die in them.

Whom we knew as faulty, the earth's creatures
Of whom, essentially, what did we know?

Brother of brother? Friend of friends?
Lover of lover?

We who knew our fathers
in everything, in nothing.

They perish. They cannot be brought back.
The secret worlds are not regenerated.

And every time again and again
I make my lament against destruction.

excerpt from Prisons of Silence

2009-11-28T22:20:00.000-08:00

The strongest prisons are built
with walls of silence.

She Proves the Inconsistency of the Desires and Criticism of Men Who Accuse Women of What They Themselves Cause

2009-11-28T22:09:00.001-08:00

Foolish men who accuse
women unreasonably,
you blame yet never see
you cause what you abuse.

You crawl before her, sad
begging for a quick cure;
why ask her to be pure
when you have made her bad?

In one heroic breath
your reason fails, like a wild
bogeyman made up by a child
who then is scared to death.

With idiotic pride
you hope to find her prize:
a regal whore like Thais
and Lucretia for a bride.

Has anyone ever seen
a stranger moral fervor:
you who dirty the mirror
regret it is not clean?

You treat favor and disdain
with the same shallow mock-
ing voice: love you and you squawk,
demur and you complain.

No answer at her door
will be a proper par:
say no--she has no heart,
say yes--and she's a whore.

Two levels to your game
in which you are the fool:
one you blame as cruel,
one who yields, you shame.

How can one not be bad
the way your love pretends
to be? Say no and she offends.
Consent and you are mad.

With all the fury and pain
your whims cause her, it's good
for her who has withstood
you. Now go and complain!

You let her grief take flight
and free her with new wings.
Then after sordid things
you say she's not upright.

Who is at fault in all
this errant passion? She
who falls for his pleas, or he
who pleads for her to fall?

Whose guilt us greater ub
this raw erotic play?
The girl who sins for pay or
man who pays for sin?

So why be shocked or taunt
her for the steps you take?
Care for her as you make
her, or shaper her as you want,

but do not come with pleas
and later throw thwm in
her face, screaming of sin
when you were at her knees.

You fight us from birth
with weapons of arrogance.
Between promise and pleading stance,
you are devil, flesh, and earth.

Colours

2009-11-28T22:03:00.000-08:00

When your face
appeared over my crumpled life
at first I understood
only the poverty of what I have.
Then its particular light
on woods, on rivers, on the sea,
became my beginning in the coloured world
in which I had not yet had my beginning.
I am so frightened, I am so frightened,
of the unexpected sunrise finishing,
of revelations
and tears and the excitement finishing,
I don't fight it, my love is this fear,
I nourish it who can nourish nothing,
love's slipshod watchman.
Fear hems me in.
I am conscious that these minutes are short
and that the colours in my eyes will vanish
when your face sets.

Autumn is...

2009-11-28T04:21:00.000-08:00

effortlessly beautiful than summer, winter and spring. It's the time to loosen up from the demands of beauty on which nature is called for. When leaves fall from trees, they sway gracefully until they rest. When branches are left bare, they breathe freely. When flowers lose their color, they exhale in relief. It need not struggle for too much beauty like spring, nor give off too much of itself (temperature) as summer and winter. Simply by abiding to time, it gives off itself silently, sincerely and beautifully.

My Books

2009-11-24T20:57:00.000-08:00

The Winnder Stands Alone - Paulo Coelho
The Devil and Miss Prym
The Witch of Portobello
The Zahir
The Fifth Mountain
Veronika Decides to Die
By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Eleven Minutes
The Valkyries
Brida
The Alchemist
Like the Flowing River
Fly on the Wall Volume I and II - Gail Tan Ilagan
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Love in Time of Cholera
Memories of Melancholy Whores
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
The Tao of Pooh - Benjamin Hoff
The Tell-Tale Heart -Edgar Allan Poe
Mythology - Edith Hamilton
The Lives of Artist - Vasari
The Major Works - Shelley
The Canterbury Tales - Chaucer
Antigone, Oedipus, Electra - Sophocles
An Enquiry of Human Understanding - Hume
Sherlock Holmes - The Complete Novels and Stories Volume 1 and 2 - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Voice of the Master - Kahlil Gibran
A Self Portrait
Between Night and Morn
The Broken Wings
Spirits Rebellion
The Prophet
Mirrors of the Soul
Tears and Laughter
Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
Flight of the Nighthawks - RAymund Feist
The Little Prince - Antoine de Exupery
The Chronicles of Narnia (Complete) - CS Lewis
The Conscious Reader - Shrodes, Finestone, Shugrue
Crime and Punishment - Dostoyevsky
Twilight - Stephenie Meyer

Time does not bring relief

2009-11-14T04:27:00.000-08:00

Time does not bring relief, you all have lied.
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from the every mountain-side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide!

There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, --so with his memory they brim!
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him!

Pain

2009-11-01T17:54:00.000-08:00

"Pain has an Element of Blank;

It cannot recollect

When it begun, or if there was

A time when it was not."

"It has no future but itself;

Its infinite realms contain

Its past, enlightened to perceive

New periods of pain."

Insights from The Time Traveler's Wife

2009-10-29T07:18:00.000-07:00

We are blessed that we only go through this life once. It's more painful if we have to go through it twice especially when time wouldn't offer us the ability to change anything. Familiarity breeds contempt.

The saddest part of our lives should just pass.

We are all time travelers that's why there's a point when we recognize instances which seem to be very familiar. It's just that God made us to forget for a very good reason.

First time might either be the worst or the best! Still, having that experience is incomparably the best.

It's different to encounter something for the first time and experience it the second time around. Personally, I prefer the FORMER. The first time is more concrete and real unlike the second one where you merely feel it's part of your past.

The painful part of waiting is the expectation.

No one is capable of expecting the unexpected coz the moment you do, you blew it off.

Who says traveling through time is impossible? We all CAN! Well, we do it forwards. Ask Claire, it's a lot better that way.

One thing I hate about being a time-traveler is the going back and moving forward along the time line. You miss being with your loved ones coz all the time you were with TIME which isn't a very good company.

Most people wants to travel time not because they want to really move along with it. It's because they want to STOP it--to stop on those times when they are extremely happy and on those times when they needed an explanation. Well I guess, it's a good thing we can't STOP it because we wouldn't also want to stop on those moments when it really hurts the most.

It is not always an advantage to know everything. In fact, the more you know the more you are responsible. The sad thing is you are made responsible yet you may not be capable to handle it.

Empty

2009-09-19T06:10:00.000-07:00

It's frightening when emptiness occupies you. It makes you want to fill it in and occupy it. Yes, I tried it--being busy--but it just made me emptier than I once were. I don't want to move. I don't want to finish anything for the lack of purpose. Have I given everything away that I forgot to leave something to relish for myself? It's damn disturbing! To be empty and get emptier each day. What now?

Past

2009-09-05T23:04:00.000-07:00

Past makes me look back of the pain I had in each yesterday. He reminds me of the mistakes I need to correct and the mistakes from which I never learned. There is a part of him that I neglect to see but that is exactly what he is for--a mark of insight. Often than not, it is I who refuse to watch back the happiness in each tomorrow of my each yesterday. With which, he taught me that my life continues whether I leave or stop at him.

Witch of Portobello

2009-05-12T11:12:00.000-07:00

No one sacrifices the most important thing she possesses: Love. No one places her dreams in the hands of those who might destroy them.

I applauded when reason lost the battle and all I could do was surrender and accept that I was in love.

If there is any possible consolation in the tragedy of losing someone we love very much, it's necessary hope that perhaps it was for the best.

No one can manipulate anyone else. In any relationship, both parties know what they're doing, even if one of them complains later on that they were used.

Having little to lose or to hope for in life took greater risks than other people and ended up being transformed into the forces she thought she mastered.

And the best way to know who we are is often to find out how others see us.

This doesn't mean that we should do what others expect us to do, but it helps us to understand ourselves better.

Life, however, had other plans--when fate is very generous with us, there is always a well into which all our dreams can tumble.

And I needed to choose between losing the one thing that really filled my thoughts--my love for that woman --and losing my freedom and all the choices that the future promised me. To be honest, the decision was easy. (He chose the former)

Love arrives, moves in and starts directing everything.

God reveals itself through simple things.

Sometimes love carries us into the abyss, taking with us--to make matters worse--the people we love.

Its possible to love more than one person in a lifetime.

When mouths close, it's because there's something more important to be said.

I've noticed that loneliness gets stronger when we try to face it down but gets weaker when we simply ignore it.

The world revolves around mutual interests.

If you wanted to get rid of someone, you should do everything you can to provoke them into rudeness, so that you would then have a perfectly good reason to dismiss them.

It's good idea to frighten the person in possession of a secret before she's revealed the secret to us, it's best to pretend to grant her request.

God hid the most important things from the wise because the cannot understand what is simple.

If we slow down, everything lasts much longer.

I'm being forced to do the most difficult thing in the world--slow down.

What is a teacher? It isn't someone who teachers something, but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows.

It may seem the same but it's always different.

In order to forget the rules, you must know them and respect them.

Sentences only exist because the blank spaces exist.

I knew absolutely nothing about her apart from her name, but like the vampire of the myth, she seemed to be sucking up all my energy.

The important thing is to allow fate to intervene in our lives and to decide what is best for everyone.

Because the others are me and I am the others.

Joy is like sex--it begins and ends.

And desires are never satisfied, because once they are they cease to be desires.

With each step we take, we arrive.

You are what you believe yourself to be.

We all know everything, it's merely a question of believing.

Beside what does learning mean: accumulating knowledge or transforming your life?

Changes only happen when we go totally against everything we're used to knowing.

Knowing that you are capable of love is enough. If it isn't him, it will be someone else.

Love fills everything. It cannot be desired because it is an end in itself. It cannot betray because it has nothing to do with possession. It cannot be held prisoner because it is a river and will overflow its banks. Anyone who tries to imprison love will cut off the spring that feeds it, and the trapped water will grow stagnant and rank.

In that journey where suffering seemed to be the only rule, I struggled for things for which there was no point struggling. Like love, for example. People either feel it or they don't and there isn't a force in the world that can make them feel it. We can pretend that we love each other. We can get used to each other. We can live a whole lifetime of friendship and complicity. We can bring up children, have sex every night, reach orgasm and still feel that there's terrible emptiness about it all, that something important is missing. In the name of all I've learned about relationships between men and women, I've been trying to fight against things that weren't really worth the struggle.

The teacher never tells the disciple what he or she should do. They are merely travelling companions, sharing the same uncomfortable feeling of "estrangement" when confronted by ever-changing perceptions, broadening horizons, closing doors, rivers that sometimes seem to block their path and which in fact should never be crossed but followed.

There is only one difference between tracher and disciple: the former is slightly less afraid than the latter. Then when they sit down at a table or in front of a fire to talk, the more experienced person might say "Go there and you'll arrive where I did," because every path and every destination are unique to the individual.

Replacing slaves with wage slaves

We all have the duty to love and to allow love to manifest itself in the way it thinks best. We cannot and must be frightened when the powers of darkness want to make themselves naked.

What is sin? It is a sin to prevent love from showing itself.

So it was in life. In order for subtantial pieces of wood to catch fire, the kindling must burn first. In order for us to liberate the energy of our strength, our weakness must first have a chance to reveal itself. In order for us to understand the powers we carry within us and the secrets that have already been revealed, it was first necessary to allow the surface--expectations, fears, appeareances--to be burned away.

We are not the slaves of our own feelings but their masters.

Love simply is--love is.

Memories of My Melancholy Whores

2009-05-12T11:10:00.000-07:00

Inspiration gives no warnings.

What isn't natural is (my) age.

No old man forgets where he has hidden his treasure.

Let no one be deceived, no, thinking that what he awaits will last longer than what he has seen.

I discovered improbable pleasure of contemplating the body of a sleeping woman without the urgencies of desire or the obstacles of modesty.

A body as provocative with clothes as without

Age isn't how old you are but how old you feel.

In the end, it is impossible not to become what others believe you are.

Warrior of Light

2009-03-07T20:41:00.000-08:00

All world's roads lead to the heart of the warrior; he plunges hesitatingly into the river of passions always flowing through his life.

A Warrior of Light does not rely on strength alone, he makes use of his opponent's energy too.

He opens his heart to the Universe and asks God to give him the inspiration he needs to turn every blow from his enemy into a lesson in self-defense.

A Warrior of Light never resorts to trickery but he knows to distract his opponent.

A Warrior of light knows what he wants. And has no need to waste time on explanation.

More than once he has wasted his fighting for a lie. And he has suffered for people who did not deserve his love.

Convince your enemy that he will gain very little by attacking you. This will diminish his enthusiasm.

Do not be ashamed to make a temporary withdrawal from the field if you see that your enemy is stronger than you; it is not winning or losing a single battle that matters but how the war ends.

In war, the key to victory is, the ability to surprise one's opponent.

They hide their inner strength behind aggression and hide their fear of loneliness behind an air of independence.

He is never taken by appearances and makes a point of remaining silent when people try to impress him. He uses these occasions to correct his own faults, for other people make an excellent mirror.

A warrior takes every opportunity to teach himself.

Perseverance us not the same as insistence (to persevere in one's desire).

He often finds himself faced by the same problems and situations. "I've been through all this before," he says to his heart.

"Yes, you have been through all this before," replies his heart, "But you have never been beyond it."

Then the warrior realizes that these repeated experiences have but one aim: to teach him what he does not want to learn.

A warrior does not spend his days trying to play the roles other have chosen for him.

That is why they are Warriors of Light because they make mistakes, because they ask themselves questions, because they are looking for a reason they are sure to find it.

But certain people insist. They provoke and offend and do everything they can to irritate him. At that point, his heart says, "Do not respond to these insults, they will not increase your abilities. You will tire yourself needlessly."

But now, I lived only because I am a Warrior and because I wish I die to be in the company of Him for whom I have fought so hard.

In order to have faith in his own path, he does not need to prove that someone else's path is wrong.

Anything of importance will remain. Anything useless will disappear.

The warrior uses that touch of madness. For--in both love and war--it is impossible to foresee everything.

He tries to establish what he can truly rely on and he always checks that he carries 3 things with him: faith, hope and love.

He has never lost hope of being better than he is.

A Warrior of Light uses solitude but is not being used by it.

A Warrior of Light sometimes behaves like water, flowing around the obstacles he encounters.

Occasionally,resistance might mean destruction and so he adapts to the circumstances. He accepts without complaint, that the stones in his path hinder his way to the mountains.

The Warrior of Light never allows himself to get discouraged.

A Warrior of Light who trusts too much in his intelligence will end up underestimating the power of his opponent. He believes that nothing can stir in him the encounter he desires.

An open oven bakes us no bread.

The devil is in the details.

He is transparent in his actions and secretive in his plans.

Everyone is afraid of everyone else.

Whenever he finds himself before someone who fills him with fear, the warrior reminds himself that the other person has the same insecurities as he has.

He uses fear as an engine not as a break.

The warrior learns from his opponent and acts in a similar manner.

Behind the mask of ice that people wear, there beats a heart of fire.

For every defeat, he has two victories in his favor.

The Warrior stops before he destroys himself.

When you defend your ideas in public you have then to make an effort to live accordingly.

There is no point in forcing things.

You do not drown simply by plunging into water, you only drown if you stay beneath the surface. And the warrior uses all his strength to escape from his predicament.

A Warrior of Light listens to what his opponent has to say. He only fights if absolutely necessary.

A Warrior of Light never accepts what is unacceptable.

He never allows himself to be deceived by his own abilities and therefore avoids being taken by surprise. He gives each thing the value it deserves.

He is implacable with treachery, but he does not seek revenge; he merely drives away the enemies of his life, never fighting with them any longer than is necessary.

A warrior doesn't keep company with those who wish to harm him. Nor is he seen in the company of those who "console" him.

If this separation is part of his path, then he accepts it without complaint.

He is the slave of his dream and free to act.

The friends of the Warrior of Light ask him where he draws his energy from, He says, "from the hidden enemy." (someone we can no longer hurt)

It might be a boy who beat him in a childhood fight, the girlfriend who left him when he was 11, or the teacher who said he was stupid. The Warrior reminds himself that these enemies have still not seen his courage.

He does not consider revenge because the hidden enemy is no longer part of his story. He thinks only of improving his skills so that his deeds will be known throughout the world and reach the ears of those who have hurt him in the past.

Yesterday's pain is the Warrior's strength.

When the warrior speaks of his brother's opinion, he imagines that his brother is there present, listening to what he is saying.

The experienced fighter puts up with insults; he knows the strength of his fist and the skill of his blows. Confronted by an unprepared opponent, he looks deep into his eyes and conquers him without ever having to resort to physical fight.

The Warrior of Light is aware of his own immense strength; he never fights with anyone who does not deserve the honor of combat.

There is a bridge that links what I do with what I would like to do.

There are moments when one should act and moments when one should accept.

The great wisdom of the warrior lies in choosing his insanity wisely.

Envy cannot harm you if you don't let it.

By talking about a dream, he runs the risk of spending all the energy he needs to put the dream into action.

He accepts defeat as defeat and does not try to make a victor out of it.

He is savoring the best gift victory can bring: confidence.

God uses death to show us the importance of light. God uses silence to teach us to use words responsibly.

He no longer judges the world on the basis of right and wrong but on the basis of "the most appropriate attitude for that particular moment."

He uses common sense to judge not the intention of an action but its consequences.

God judges a tree by its fruits and not by its roots.

Carry in your memory for the rest of your life the good things that came out of those difficulties.

He does not try to feel things that he no longer feels.

When you're sad, your soul is still alive.

The opponent is wise.
Whenever he can, he makes use of the easiest and most effective of his weapons: GOSSIP. It doesn't take much effort to use it because others do the work for him. A few misdirected words can destroy months of dedication, years spent in search of harmony.

The Warrior of Light is then the victim of this trick. He doesn't know where the blow is coming from and cannot prove that the gossip is false. Gossip does not allow him the right to defend himself: it condemns without trial. When this happens, he puts up with the consequences and the undeserved punishment, for, as he well knows, words are powerful. But he suffers in silence and never uses the same weapon to hit back his opponent. The Warrior of Light is not a coward.

A warrior knows that the ends do not justify the means because there are no ends, there are only means.

He has learned to live with his contradictions.

He has often seen someone mistreating another person who lacks the courage to respond, then out of cowardice and resentment, that person vents his anger on someone weaker than himself, who takes it out on someone else, in a veritable torrent of misery. No one knows the consequences of his own cruelty.

He only accepts an opponent who is worthy of him. In moments of rage, he punches a rock and bruises his hand.

The hand will heal eventually, but the child who got beaten because his father lost a battle will bear the marks for the rest of his life. ("waterfall effect")

It might happen that someone who was fighting alongside the Warrior of Light suddenly becomes his opponent instead.

The warrior's 1st reaction is hatred but he knows that a blind combatant is lost in the midst of the battle.

And so he tries to see the good things that his former ally did during the time in which they lived side by side; he tries to understand what led to that sudden change of attitude, what wounds he had accumulated in his soul. He tries to discover what made one of them abandon their dialogue.

No one is entirely good or evil.

Best of Metaphors

2008-11-12T07:26:00.000-08:00

2-Bellarmine

A mug is like a head with one ear. –Rohaina

A toenail is empty canvas - Jill

Soup is a sea of comfort. –Jill

Snowballs are falling cotton balls.—John Ray

A bomb is a round volcano.—Rianne

A pocket is a portable secret chamber—Bianca

Chick is a yellow puff ball.—Bianca

Scissors are alligators. –Manolo

Ricefield is a wide field of gold—Ralph

Fence are a line of soldiers ready to keep invaders out.—Bea

TV is a talking box with photos—Francis

Salt is a chalk dust—Akbar

A pillow is a waterless cloud.—Jomar

Pants are two legs without feet—Nigel

Ear is a recording device—Brian

Television is like a picture frame—Frency

The window with a curtain is like a square headed girl with bangs and pigtail—Frency

Coffee is a hot spring of mud—Angelica

Water is a transparent glass—Angelica

Mountain is a tower to the heavens—Emmylou

Stone is an evil’s heart—Hedrick

Pillow is a trapped cloud—Manuel

Teaspoon is a body with no arms and legs—Fuentes

2-Jogues

A tree is a strong shield –May

Paper is an empty space—May

Tree is like a green cloud with a pole—Kenneth

Crayon is a rainbow in a box—Mayen

Keyboard is a tray of letters and numbers—Mayen

Chalk looks like a long white worm—Agnes

Teacher is a book with a heart—Agnes

Storm as the wrath of an enemy—Mark

Bird is a flying paper plane—Raiza

Computer is the high tech brain—Edwin

Rain looks like soft diamonds from the sky and sounds like falling coins—Joselle and Rafael

A seed is a small foot—Rogelio

Christmas lights are flickering fireflies—Eponine

Stars is a pack of shimmering glitters—Michelle

Dried leaf looks like a brown crumpled paper—JP

CD is a plastic donut—JP

Moon is a cheesy slice of a cheesy pizza—Joselle

Thunder sounds the playing of drums—John Paul

Table is like a roof with four poles—Ian

Blackboard is vandalized wall—Carlo

Chalk is a brittle cylinder—Ashrina

Letter is a sheet of communication—Shannon

2-Campion

Mouth looks like a clam with a red pearl.—Wilmer

Pillow is a shoulder to lean on—Bea

Wires are the nerves of information—Nika

Water is a mirror—Judy

Fences are stationary guards—Clydin

A moon is a floating white ball—Clydin

Pockets are banks for safekeeping—Carlo

Teaspoon is a shovel for energy—Carlo

Window is a picture frame—Diego

Mouth has a couple of noise (2 lips)—Joracs

Fish is a submarine—Carrie

Cheeks are bulky little pillows—Alyssa

Fingers are delicious pretzels—Lady

Rice field is a field of gold—Dayan

Fences are guards that are always in duty—Dayan

Hanky is a blanket of comfort—Stephanie

A fish is a dough with scales—Abby

Lips are red pillows—Abby

Teeth are cutting scissors—Ernest

Windows are the eyes of the building—Earvin

2-Kostka

Skirt is like a walking lampshade—Angelica

Necklace is a chain of candies—Angelica

Saucer is a mini-UFO—Albert

A window is wall that has life—Vinz

Fish is a swimming health food—Madie

Hanky is a portable comforter—Paulo

Cheeks are kissable pillows—Jeremy

Dustpan is my grandfather’s vacuum cleaner—Andrei

Stone is a hard head—Leo

Scissors are twin headed destroyers—Leo

A tummy looks like a digesting balloon—Gabby

A chick is a noisy walking cotton ball—Gabby

Fork is the trident of Poseidon—Anthony

A saucer is a white pizza—Ayart

Coffee is a hot mud in a cup—Daphne

Bag is the home of things—Daphne

A bag is a small cabinet—Johanna

Water is a shimmering mirror—Johanna

Water is a wet glitter—Nites

A mountain is a dirty brown hat.—Mei

Mouth looks like a red leaf—Chareeze

A bed is a big marshmallow—Kathleen

Fishes are crayons under the water—Ricah

Bomb is a ball of danger—Ricah

A teaspoon is a little shovel—Tiffany

A finger is a poking device—Tiffany

Eyes are moving video cams—Kent

Mouth is a moving loudspeaker—Kent

Fences are birthday candles standing side by side—Mica

Mud is a spilled coffee—Mica

The door looks like a Black Hershey Chocolate bar—Jules

Love Without Love by Luis Llorens Torres

2008-11-04T23:32:00.000-08:00

I love you, because in my thousand and one nights of dreams,
I never once dreamed of you.
I looked down paths that traveled from afar,
but it was never you I expected.
Suddenly I've felt you flying through my soul
in quick, lofty flight,
and how beautiful you seem way up there, far
from my always idiot heart!
Love me that way, flying over everything.
And, like the bird on its branch, land in my arms
only to rest,
then fly off again.
Be not like the romantic ones who,
in love, set me on fire,
When you climb up my mansion,
enter so lightly, that as you enter
the dog of my heart will not bark.

Translated by Julio Marzan

The Eloquent Sound of Silence by Iyer

2008-06-10T04:14:00.000-07:00

"All profound things and emotions of things are preceded and attended by Silence."

"We have to earn silence, then, to work for it: to make it not an absence but a presence; not emptiness but repletion."

"In silence, we often say, we can hear ourselves think; but what is truer to say is that in silence we can hear ourselves not think, and so sink below ourselves into a place far deeper than mere thought allows."

"Silence is responsiveness."

"A moment of silence is the highest honor we can pay someone; it is the point at which the mind stops and something else takes over (words run out when feelings rush in)."

"Silence, like all the best things, is best appreciated in its absence."

"Words, words, words" commit us to positions we do not really hold, the imperatives of a chatter; babble with strangers; with intimates we can be silent.

"In love, we are speechless, in awe, we say, words fail us."

Brida by Paulo Coelho

2008-05-26T07:02:00.000-07:00

Each person can take one of two attitudes: to build or to plant.

Every moment in life is an act of faith.

That process of finding ourselves is called Love.

"There are many cards," she said, "but they're all part of the same deck. In order to understand their message, we need them all, all are equally important. So it with souls." --Wicca

Brida: "Is it possible to meet more than one soul mate in each life?"
Wicca: "Yes" (with a certain bitterness) "and when that happens the heart is divided, and the result is pain and suffering. Yes we can meet 3 or 4 soulmates because we are many and we are scattered."

Fairy tales had been her first experience if the magical universe that she now so eager to enter and more than once she had wondered why people ended up distancing themselves from that world, knowing the immense joy that childhood had brought to their lives.

The essence of creation is one and one alone. And that essence is called Love. Love is the force that brings us back together, in order to condense the experience dispersed in many lives and many parts of the world.

Because of our selfishness, we will be condemned to the worst torture humankind ever invented for itself: Loneliness.

Humanity learned more easily from vice than from virtue.

We study what we can see, but what we see is not always what exists. --Lorens

It gave her every chance to achieve something, and just when she was close to her objective, the ground opened up and swallowed her.

Learning something means coming into contact with a world which you know nothing. In order to learn, you must be humble.

The whole of man's life on the face of the earth can be summed up by that search for his soul mate. He may pretend to be running after wisdom, money or power, but none matters. Whatever he achieves will be incomplete if he fails to find his soul mate.

That was the glory of man--to nurture and maintain knowledge.

Wisdom means both to know and transform.

People are willing to die for an idea.

But he will never love anyone as he has loved you because you are part of him forever.

And yet no one life is the same as other life. It might be that we will never meet again and I need to know that I've loved you all my life. I loved you even before I met you. You're part of me.

He had never told her certain things, about the women he received as part of the booty of battle, the women he met while he was traveling the world, the women who were expecting him to return one day. He hadn't told her this because he was certain that she knew everything anyway and forgave him because he was her great love and a great love is above the things of this world.

Love was a strange form of war.

RINGS OF REVELATION

Virgin - The Virgin has the power of both man and woman. She is condemned to solitude, but solitude reveals its secrets. That is the price paid by the Virgin--to need no one, to wear herself out in her love for others and through solitude, to discover the wisdom of the world.

Saint - The Saint has the courage of those for whom giving is the only way of receiving.

Don't bother trying to explain your emotions. Live everything as intensely as you can and keep whatever you felt as a gift from God. If you think you wont be able to stand a world in which living is more important than understanding...

It isn't explanations that carry us forward, it's our desire to go on.

Whenever you want to find out about something, plunge straight in.

She wasn't afraid of difficult ties; what frightened her was being forced to choose one particular path. Choosing a path meant having to miss out on others.

She wanted to follow all possible paths and so ended up following none.

You had to take risk, follow some paths and abandon others.

There are people who followed certain paths only to prove that they weren't the right ones but that wasn't as bad as choosing a path and then spending the rest of your life wondering if you'd made the right choice. No one could make a choice without being afraid.

In the end, they would laugh in their initial fears.

Perhaps the time when it goes wrong are teaching you something.

Nothing in the world is ever completely wrong my dear. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

"the most recent time I was here..."

Sometimes certain of God's blessings arrive by shattering all the windows.

He was a Teacher and all he was doing was giving each person the necessary means to acquire knowledge.

Judging oneself to be inferior to other people was one of the worst acts of pride he knew, because it was the most destructive way of being different.

What I've realized is that I could love him still more. Even if I learn nothing new on this path at least I will have learned one important thing: we have to take risks.

Make a choice without feeling afraid.

I know that the path is simple and therefore more difficult than I thought.

"...and you're sad because I'm still incapable of learning through the simple things. What you don't understand is that people suffer, they search and search for love, not knowing that they are fulfilling the divine mission of finding their soul mate.You forget because you're a wise man and don't think about what it's like for ordinary people--that I carry millenia of disappointment within me and I can no longer learn certain things through simple things in life.

God placed his pharmacy in the woods and fields so that everyone could enjoy good health.

What is outside is harder to change than what is inside.

Anyone who comes into contact with sex knows that they're dreaming with something which only happens in all its intensity when they lose control. When we're in bed with someone, we're giving permission to that person not only to commune with our body, but with our whole being. The pure forces of life are in communication with each other, independently of us, and then we cannot hide who we are.

Emotions are wild horses.

When you are in love, you are capable of learning everything and of knowing things you had never dared even to think, because love was the key to understanding of all the mysteries.

Solitary people lose track of time, the hours are long and the day interminable.

..felt at peace, immersed in one of those moments in life where in the only possible alternative is to lose all control.

That was the wisdom of soul mates: they always recognize each other.

True love allowed each person to follow their own path, knowing that they would never lose touch with their soul mate.

Make sure that when you touch the other person, all your 5 senses are working because sex has a life of its own. The moment you begin, you're no longer in control, it takes control of you. And whatever you bring to it--your fears, your desires, your sensibility--will remain. That's why people become impotent. When you have sex take with you to bed only love and your senses, all 5 of them. Only then will you experience communion with God.

Why are we here? The only possible answer to the question is I DON'T KNOW.

We don't look for an answer, we accept, and then life becomes much more intense, much more brilliant because we understand that each minute, each step that we take, has a meaning that goes far beyond us as individual. We realize that somewhere in time and space this question DOES have an answer. We realize that there IS a reason for us being here, and for us, that is enough.

(In Love) He learned things he thought he would never learn: hope, fear and acceptance.

Feelings form part of the world, I don't know, but it's a world where there's no time, no space and no frontiers.

Finding one important thing in your life doesn't mean you have to give up all the other important things.

Love was above everything else and there was no hatred in love, only occasional mistake.

Being human means having doubts and yet still continuing your path.

Love between people is much more difficult to understand than love for Supreme being.

I'm afraid of death but even afraid of wasting my life.

When 2 men are in love with the same woman, it's better that they hate each other than they become friends because if that happened, she would end up losing them both.

Each day, he was better than on the previous day.

Simple things always seem so complicated.

Life is about making mistakes.

Accept what life offers you and try to drink from every cup. All wines should be tasted, some should only be sipped, but others drink the whole bottle. How will you know which is which? By the taste you can only know a good wine if you have first tasted the bad one.

That is what the forest taught me. That you will never be mine, and that is why I will never lose you. You were my hope during my days of loneliness, my anxiety during moments of doubt, my certainty during moments of faith.

Love is liberty.

I will always remember you and you will remember me, just as we will remember our memories together and all the things we'll always have because we cannot possess them.

The Kite Runner by Hosseini

2008-05-24T01:39:00.000-07:00

The only sin that mattered was theft. When you tell a lie you steal a man's right to the truth.

Some things mattered more than the truth.

True redemption--when guilt leads to good.

Time can be a greedy thing--sometimes it steals all the details for itself.

It always hurts more to have and lose than not to have in the first place.

There is a way to be good again.

...but it's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out.

...in actuality more of a quiet surrender, not so much an acceptance as an act of relinquishment by one too weary to decide and far too tired to believe.

For you a thousand times over.

They only let you be this happy if they're preparing to take something from you.

Tashakor! (Thank You)

Praying Our Goodbyes by Joyce Rupp

2008-04-23T20:58:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while we get in touch with this truth (goodbyes) in us. It is not sadness exactly, not a hurt or a pain as such but some tremendously deep voice that cries out in bittersweet agony.

Inner ache is present when we recognize the fleetingness of all that we know and all that we cling to upon this good earth.

In blue days that seem to have no cause, it raises its voice when everything in our lives is going smoothly.

True self-love means not trying to escape from ourselves, but listening to the voices within us.

That aloneness is an integral part of being human, and an essential element in love.

Goodbyes are part of every single day. Sometimes we choose them, and sometimes they choose us.

What is goodbye? It is an empty place in us. Goodbyes are any of those times when we find ourselves without a someone or something that has given our life meaning and value when our life seems unfulfilled.

Goodbyes create a certain space in us where we allow ourselves room to look at life in perspective and to gradually discover answers to some of those questions about life.

The pain is overwhelming, often too deep for tears. The sorrow of it can pervade one's whole self and hurt in every part of one's being.

No two people say goodbye in exactly the same way and no two people suffer their farewells in the same way, but suffer they do.

When we grieve, we leave behind someone or something very precious to us.

It is hard to go on believing and trying to live during times of great loss.

One Liners: This too, will pass / In the end, it will be okay / God will provide / No pain-no gain / Be good to yourself / Even a perfect egg must break for a new life to begin / Life is what we make it.

The one who has a why to live can bear with almost any how. --Nietzsche

When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept that suffering as his task; the single unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of the suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.

Goodbye can hold many goodbyes.

There so much within us that needs to come to life. Moments of suffering, times of goodbye, can cause us to peer inside our own tombs of unfinishedness or incompleteness and we can discover vast storehouses of resiliency, vitality, fidelity, love and endurance.

When our suffering refines us in such a way that it leads to an inner change or transformation that positively affects our life or that of others, it becomes creative suffering.

I think that what we suffer in this life (the goodbyes) can never be compared to the glory (the hello) as yet unrevealed which is waiting for us.

Home is the place we are always going to but never arrive.

To descend into the depths of ourselves we must be willing to risk losing the security and safety.

Knowing that all is on loan enables us not to fight so much when we are asked to let go.

Naming our goodbye and the hurt may add to our pain initially because we see how real it is.

We take the hurt of the loss which we have identified and we give it to our full attention. We sit with it, look at it, face it even though it grieves us to do so.

Act out once grief by:
-sharing a meal with a friend as a love-bond with someone who nourishes us in our emptiness. (Good thing God provides me with these kind of people in times of grief)
-emptying and cleaning closets or boxes while we are ridding ourselves of some inner clutter. (Maybe, I could consider this a good reason why I am very, very OC at times.)
-looking at photo albums when we need to remember the love and joy that past journeys have offered us. (I keep photos, love photographs)
-writing a letter in a lonely time as a reminder of connections of love that we still have. ( I blog)

Touch can penetrate barriers of despair, anguish, hardness or bitterness. A kiss on the cheek, a quiet embracce, arms linked (I often do this) or hands held are powerful movements in our ritualization of goodbyes.

Many times I have looked at an image or have taken on some movement of farewell and have been blessed with an insight or a sense of meaning that was not there before. I reoriented my life.

Moving on usually comes slowly.

The reality of moving on is this: we can never do so until we let go of whatever binds us to the past.

If we have a memory that eats away at our integrity or an anger that gnaws at our peace, we will not move on in freedom. It will always be there to stir up negative feelings in us.

Letting go never seems to get easy, and growth will not happen unless you can really surrender.

To let go does not mean that we give up or that we do not care. Rather, it means that we choose to use our energies in another way, giving them another direction.

We continue to care deeply but we also realize that we cannot change what is.

To let go does not mean that we ignore old ragged and torn feelings and memories, or that we fail to recall the loved ones whom we miss so much. When these memories knock at the door of consciousness, we open the door to see who is there and we acknowledge them. But we do not invite them in to spend the entire day with us.

Put behind us whatever has power over us to negatively influence our feelings. It is never complete until it is acted upon.

We would rather cling to the present pain, the deadness, or the lack of life, than face what is foreign and unknown, no matter how good it is for us.

We cherish the good memories and set aside the bad ones.

It can be extremely painful to finally accept a friend as he is, to his their flaws and weaknesses and to love him in his incompleteness. It can be a harsh experience for a someone to let go of "the friend they hoped for" and to accept "the friend that they have".

Old injuries of the heart: We all have them. They claim a lot of our energy at times. It maybe a person who never liked us, or the one who destroyed us with jealousy or untruths or the one who wiped us out of silence.

Let go of inner securities as well.

If we want to let go, we must first recognize what it is that needs letting go; then we need to accept the wisdom and the necessity of not clinging to it. It is not easy to do this.

Surrender walks hand in hand with letting go--to give up our power over something that keeps us down or holds us back.

Surrender raises hard questions.

Part of what keeps surrender from happening in us is our desire to be in control of everyone and everything. We simply know that life doesn't always happen in our way and in our time no matter how hard we try to work it out in our own control system.

To surrender is to have willingness to be in another's hands, especially in God's hands, to be open to surprises and gifts we never dreamed possible.

To surrender is to live with a mind and heart that is open to the future and to trust that all shall be well.

This is what kinship is all about: the gift of one to the other. It may be the kinship of a good friend, a friend whose heart is our second home, or it may be the kinship which we have with others because of a mutual experience which newly bonds us together in time of need.

Love endures and goes on, in spite of all the feelings of grief inside us.

Be aware of your feelings. Accept what cannot be changed, be willing to let go. Be good to yourself by gifting yourself each day with little gestures of kindness. Open yourself to people.

The pattern is unending: hello-goodbye-hello.

All For Nothing by Andi

2008-04-03T03:43:00.000-07:00

i ran after someone, trampled on my pride and when i finally caught up with him, he told me he wasn't worth it.

but i don't regret that i ran after him. i just pity him to think of himself that way. some would say it's only his lame excuse when in fact it is me that he finds unworthy of fixing things with. very well. but to say that you are unworthy and use it as a lame excuse only makes it even more pathetic.

i've forgiven but will never forget. i am free of hate and looking forward to indifference. something i will run after next.

Bumps

2008-03-31T06:10:00.000-07:00

To realize
that your most prized individual may not value you at all...
that you only lose those which are important...
that you were given nothing even if you were not asking for anythin in return...
that selflessness may lose your sense of self...
that value may betray its owner...
that expectations are risks...
that just being good is not enough...
that explanations sometimes arise only to defend but not to clarify...
that explanations can ruin contentment...
that the insensitivity of the other awakes the sensitivity of another...
that we keep what we aren't sure about...
that you're good but not better enough for him...
that you can love the most unlovable of individuals...
that ordinary stones can turn to jewels in one's heart...
that keeping his flaws and magnifying his best brings out the worst in him...
that omens are sometimes self-generated...
that maybe's do offer possibilities...
that nothing is good but you have a good friend...
that "please and sorry" are not always sincere words...
that you "can" but don't mean to be...
that lame excuses doesn't always have a lame effect...
that love and friendship in the same cage may cause one to breathe less...
that fences doesn't only provide security but also temptation...
that doing things unintentionally doesn't justify pure intentions...
that luck can be pushed and can be influenced by fear...
that you may forget what the other person is feeling...
that you can't dance tango together as long as you want...
that it's hard to pull off people stuck into the quicksands of their past...
that "i think" can mean "i doubt"...
that you can hold on, let go, hold on again, let go, hold, hold, hold, go! ...
that friends are cruel--they give bumps than offer rides...
that bleeding can be bloodless...
that lessons you've learned in a hard way might make you hard as a person...
that tears are solid...
that letting go may lead you more to holding on...
that limits can be left undetermined if you weren't pushed beyond...
that people can be helpless even if help is available...
that pain can be generated by good memories...
that the degree of hurt lies on the extent of your expectations...
that hoping is not always a positive word...
that the truth you withold can be a lie to somebody...
that it may also be the other way around...
that facing ones fears doesn't guarantee courage...
that disclosing one's sentiments can be a closure...
that mean words can aid...
that indifference is a lame excuse not to hurt...
that being speechless may mean you have an insurmountable things to tell...
that you're insane if you're in love...
that much care and concern can stab you in front...
that future is very present to those who are hopeful...
that you can never limit love to one person...
that you'll miss only what you don't have anymore...
that the fear of taking risk will let you settle for less...
that all people are incomplete...
that the right time is always unannounced...
that things seem not to work, but they do in some other way...
that u've been awake for a year (unable to rest) and he's still sleeping, enjoying his dreams...
that one can exhaust all the means and make things happen...
that smiles can cause tears...
that the extremes of your emotions (ecstasy and desolation) feel good together...
that you can possibly work for the best yet the worst happened...
that he never saw you even if you see each other often...
that everything can turn to nothing...
hurts. :((

Fly

2008-03-31T04:21:00.000-07:00

You once perched on my branches

You disturbed my twigs,

arranged your nest,

laid your eggs.

I felt important

havin nursed you

and your nurslings

But the moment you

flew, I realized you've got wings

capable of flying

of leaving

me.

Meet the Misters!

2008-03-31T04:03:00.000-07:00

Asking… asking… asking…

This is my way of facing Mr. Dilemma. He’s rough yah know! Like, he just gave me a hard tap at my back right now. Tellin me, he missed me a lot and he’s around. I never wish to be in touch with him but he never forgets to REMIND. Huhuhu… By the way, meet his friend, Mr. Confusion. Hahaha… They’re best budz I’d say. Well, well, well… I just happen to be in their company right now! They’re pretty much talkative and they don’t include me in their conversation sometimes. That sucks! As always, they speak to each other in a language we call, QUESTIONS. So bein in their company, I think I needed to use their language too so that I can better understand.

While talking to them, I ran out of energy. They chat a lot and they don’t choose places. Hmp! They infinitely bother asking myriads of questions. Duh?! That’s their language. Huhuhu… This time I felt they are bein assertive already. HEY! Stop! You’re hurtin me. And they slap me with “WE KNOW YOU KNOW!” *Sigh*

Hhhmmm… Could dots make them stop? Like they speak in QUESTIONS so if I threw them answers will it be enough? Replacing hook marks with dots seem to satisfy a bit. <- like that one. But if I ended there? Will you be satisfied? I believe questions serve the best answers sometimes. It satisfies horizons of possibilities as one resurrects answers to nag ones uncertainties. Well, I’ve got a lot of pending inquiries right now. Inquiries that might either provide me answers or more questions. Either of the two benefits anyway. OK! I guess I have to give them both a hand shake. And, continue

Asking… asking… asking…

This time...

2008-03-30T02:10:00.000-07:00

...I'm letting you go.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

2008-03-23T08:11:00.000-07:00

"If good things are coming, they will be a pleasant surprise. If bad things are, and you know in advance, you will suffer greatly before they even occur."

"He had to choose between something he had become accustomed to and something he wanted to have."

"Everyday was the same, and when each day is the same as the next, it's because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives everyday as the sun rises."

"It's called the principle of favorability. When you play cards the first time, you are almost sure to win. Beginner's luck."

"...there is a force that wants you to realize your Personal Legend; it whets your appetite with a taste of success."

"Don't forget that everything you deal with is only one thing and nothing else. And don't forget the language of omens. And above all, don't forget to follow your Personal Legends to its conclusion."

"It could be the other way around."

"I learn more from my sheep than from my books."

"[When you're in love], you desire to live in one place forever."

"They trust me, and they've forgotten how to rely on their own instincts."

"It's the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary."

"Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own."

"At certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world greates lie."

"People learn early in their lives, what is their reason for being."

"Treasure is uncovered by the force of flowing water, it is buried by the same currents."

"Everything in life has its price."

"Sometimes its better to leave things as they are."

"You cannot trust a man if you don't know his house."

"The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon."

"If God leads the sheep so well, he will also lead a man."

"You shouldn't offer something you didn't even have yet."

"When you really want something, the universe always conspires in your favor."

"And I'm going to hold on to what little I have, because I'm too insignificant to conquer the world."

"I'm like everyone else--I see the world in terms of what I would like to see happen, not what actually does."

"There were certain things one shouldn't ask about, so as not to flee from one's own Personal Legend."

"This wasn't a strange place, it was a new one."

"There must be a language that doen't depend on words."

"He was learning a lot of new things. Some of them were things that he had already experienced, and were'nt really new, but that he had never perceived before. And he hadn't perceived them because he had become accustomed to them."

"All things are one." (Mysterious chain that links one to the other)

"We have to live with our mistakes."

"I'm afraid that if my dream is realized, I'll have no reason to go on living."

"You must always know what is it that you want."

"Beauty is the great seducer of men."

"Every blessing ignored becomes a curse."

"I'm going to feel worse than I did before you arrived. Because I know the things I should be able to accomplish, and I don't want to do so."

"And maybe it wasn't that they (the sheeps) were teaching me, but that I was learning from them."

'There's just no way to hold back the river."

"Making a decision was only the beginning of things. When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dramed of when he first made the decision."

"Everything in life is an omen."

"The closer one gets to realizing his Personal Legend, the more that Personal Legend becomes his true reason for being."

"People need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want."

"We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it's our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand."

"Language without words...the universal language."

"And when you can't go back, you have to worry only about the best way of moving forward."

"We make a lot of detours, but we're always heading for the same destination."

"All things are the manifestation of one thing only."

"Because I don't live in either my past or my future. I'm interested only in the present. If you can concentrate only in the present, you'll be a happy man."

"Life is the moment we're living right now."

"The closer he got to the realization of his dream, the more difficult things became."

"The language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was love."

"When two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant."

"Fatima was more important than his treasure."

"If I am really part of your dream, you'll come back one day...the meaning of love without ownership."

"...to see if its silence held the answers to his questions."

"When you are in love, things make even more sense."

"The future belongs to God and it is only He who reveals it under extraordinary circumstances."

"Each day in itself brings with it an eternity."

"Only when He, himself, reveals it. And God only rarely reveals the future. When he does so, it is for only one reason: it's a future that was written so as to be altered."

"Because my eyes are not accustomed to the desert, I can see things that eyes habituated to the desert might not see."

"I can only tell what I saw. If you don't want to before me, you don't have to do anything about it."

"To die tomorrow was no worse than dying on any other day. Every day was there to be lived or to mark one's departure from this world."

"Life attracts life."

"She already has her treasure: it's you."

"One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving."

"Don't think about what you've left behind."

"Men dream about coming home than about leaving."

"If what one finds is made of pure matter, it will never spoil. And one can always come back. If what you had found was only a moment of light, like the explosion of a star, you would find nothing on your return."

"There is only one way to learn. It's through action."

"They were seeking the treasure of their Personal Legend without wanting actually to live out the Personal Legend."

"Listen to your heart. It knows all things, because it came from the Soul of the World, and it will one day return there."

"Because wherever your heart is, that is where you'll find your treasure."

Boy: "My heart is a traitor. It doesn't want me to go on"
Alchemist: "That makes sense. Naturally, it's afraid that, in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you've won."

Boy: "Why should I listen to my heart?"
Alchemist: "Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet. Even if you pretend not to have heard what it tells you, it will always be there inside you, repeating to you what you're thinking about life and about the world."

"Treason is a blow that comes unexpectedly. If you know your heat well, it will never be able to do that to you. Because you'll know its dreams and wishes, and will know how to deal with them."

Boy: "My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer."
Alchemist: "Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and eternity."

"All people that are happy have God within them."

"Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him."

"When you possess great treasures within you, and try to tell others of them, seldom are you believed."

"It means only that the heart does what it can."

"Your eyes show the strength of your soul."

"Anyone who interferes with the Personal Legend of another thing never will discover his own."

"Don't give in to your fears. If you do, you won't be able to talk to your heart."

"There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure."

"Usually the threat of death makes people a lot more aware of their lives."

"When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there's no need at all to understand what's happening because everything happens within you."

"When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too."

"Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World."

"Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are."

"I only invoked what you already knew."

"Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time."

From Rolling Star

2008-03-22T07:34:00.000-07:00

When things seem too good to be true, it’s because of one thing: it’s about to break your heart. -Shizuru Kazuma

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don’t, they never were.
-Kahlil Gibran

Samantha and Ian

2008-03-22T07:28:00.001-07:00

Samantha: I know you have the best intentions, but I feel like I’m really high second priority to you. That hurts. And the worst part is I’m starting to get used to it.

Ian: I don’t understand.

Sam: I know. That’s what kills me. If there had just been one day Ian, one day where nothing else matters but us.

Ian: I adore you.

Sam: I don’t want to be adored. I want to be loved.

Veronika Decides to Die by Coelho

2008-03-17T07:12:00.000-07:00

These are my favorite lines from the book which also led me to implement one of the craziest things I've done in my life:

Veronika: "When I took the pills, I wanted to kill someone I hated. I didn't know that other Veronikas existed inside me, Veronikas I could love."

"There is always a gap between intention and action."

"Nothing in this world happen by chance."

"Each person knows the extent of their suffering or the total absence of meaning in their lives."

"[We are one of those] ...people who have all the same vacant look but pretend to be pondering on extremely important matters."

Veronika: "And it has nothing to do with what you can see happening in my body, it's what's happening in my soul."

"People she knew would talk about the horrors in other people's lives as if they were genuinely trying to help them, but the truth was that they took pleasure in the suffering of others because that made them believe they were happy and that life had been generous with them."

"Anyone who lives in her own world is crazy."

"I want to continue being crazy, living my life the way I dream it and not the way other people want it to be."

"They [people] think they are normal, because they all do the same thing."

"That display of exuberance in which I could not participate was somehow unfair."

"The insane always believe in first impressions."

"Real love changes and grows with time and discover new ways of expressing itself."

"When the days are all the same, they pass more quickly."

"Friendship requires a lot of time spent together."

"Personal growth has its price."

"Did I fight hard enough? Should I have accepted my role as mistress rather than wanting things go as expected them to?"

"People never learn anything by being told; they have to find out for themselves."

"Insanity is the inability to communicate your ideas."

"She had never had enough energy to be herself, a person who like, everyon else in the world, needed other people in order to be happy. But other people were so difficult. They reacted in unpredictable ways, they surrounded themselves with defensive walls, they behaved as she did, pretending they didn't care about anything."

"Hatred. Something almost as physical as walls, pianos or nurses."

"Insanity allows people to feel things that people usually hide."

"Veronika hated the love she had given because it had asked for nothing in return, which was absurd, unreal and againt the laws of nature. That love asking for nothing in return had managed to fill her with guilt, with a desire to fulfill another's expectations even if that meant giving up everything she had dreamed of for herself. It was a love that for years had tried to hide from her the difficulties and the corruption that existed in the world, ignoring the fact that one day, she would have to find out and would then be defenseless against them."

"Present: where all the life's secret lie."

"She had actually felt them [hatred], and they were no longer necessary, they could leave."

"Letting love fill up the empty space left behind by hatred."

"The best way to avoid trouble is to share responsibility."

"The happier people can be, the unhappier they are."

"People only go insane when they try to escape from routine."

"Living a thousand deaths everyday, every night and not one of you feels an ounce of pity for me."

"A schizophrenic is a person who already has a natural tendency to absent himself from this world, creating his own reality."

"[Reality is] It's whatever the majority deems it to be."

"I should have been crazier." But, as it undoubtedly hapens with most people, she had found this out too late."

"No one should let themselves get used to anything."

Veronika: "If one day I could get out of here, I would allow myself to be crazy. Everyone is indeed crazy, but the craziest are the ones who don't know they're crazy; they just keep repeating what others tell them to."

"You have passed through 2 hardest tests on spiritual road: the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what you encounter."

"If people don't like it, they can complain. And if they don't have the courage to complain, that's their problem."

"You have 2 choices: to control your mind or let your mind control you."

"Run the risk of being different but learn to do so without attracting attention."

"It's what you are not what others make of you."

"But human beings are like that. We've replaced nearly all our emotions with fear."

"We are allowed to make a lot of mistakes in our lives except the mistake that destroys us."

"If only everyone could know and live with their inner craziness..."

"The person who's right is just the person who's the strongest."

"[Crazy people] We looked for the easiest way out: a separate reality."

"Many people don't allow themselves to love, precisely because of that, because there are a lot of things at risk, a lot of future and a lot of past. In your case, there is only present."

"Some things are governed by common sense. Other things, however, become fized because more and more people believe that's the way it should be." [like QWERTY keyboard, Clockwise direction of clocks.]

Veronika: Am I cured?
Dr. Igor: No. "You're someone who's different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that, in my view, is a serious illness."

"Diplomacy is the art of waiting, the art of keeping up a facade of normality whatever the circumstances and the art of postponing decisions until problems resolve themselves."

"The great craziness of men and women is precisely that: LOVE."

"The danger of an adventure is worth a thousand days of ease and comfort."

"All of us, one way or another, are insane."

A Lot Like Love

2008-02-24T03:45:00.000-08:00

There's nothing better than a great romance... to ruin a perfectly good friendship.

Life is indeed short and a lot can happen when you're not paying attention. Enjoy every moment you can, and take some risks or you'll be looking back on an awful lot of regret.

If anyone has ever had that "friend" that you've know for years, you know you have feelings for them, appreciate their loyalty, and take their bad with their good (because after all, you're "just friends"), but have spent years keeping an eye out for something better, or just not taken that "next step" because of geography, peer-pressure, or fear of rejection...

99 Secrets Girls Have To Know About Guys

2008-01-03T07:13:00.000-08:00

1. Guys don't actually look after good-looking girls. They prefer neat and presentable girls.
2. Guys hate flirts.
3. A guy can like you for a minute, and then forget you afterwards.
4. When a guy says he doesn't understand you, it simply means you're not thinking the way he is.
5. "Are you doing something?" or "Have you eaten already?" are the first usual questions a guy asks on the phone just to get out from stammering.
6. Guys may be flirting around all day but before they go to sleep, they always think about the girl they truly care about.
7. When a guy really likes you, he'll disregard all your bad characteristics.
8. Guys go crazy over a girl's smile.
9. Guys will do anything just to get the girl's attention.
10. Guys hate it when you talk about your ex-boyfriend.
11. When guys want to meet your parents. Let them.
12. Guys want to tell you many things but they can't. And they sure have one habit to gain courage and spirit to tell you many things and it is drinking!
13. Guys cry!!!
14. Don't provoke the guy to heat up. Believe me. He will.
15. Guys can never dream and hope too much.
16. Guys usually try hard to get the girl who has dumped them, and this makes it harder for them to accept their defeat.
17. When you touch a guy's heart, there's no turning back.
18. Giving a guy a hanging message like "You know what?!..uh...never mind!" would make him jump to a conclusion that is far from what you are thinking.
19. Guys go crazy when girls touch their hands.
20. Guys are good flatterers when courting but they usually stammer when they talk to a girl they really like.
21. When a guy makes a prolonged "umm" or makes any excuses when you are asking him to do you a favor, he's actually saying that he doesn't like you and he can't lay down the card for you.
22. When a girl says "no", a guy hears it as "try again tomorrow."
23. You have to tell a guy what you really want before he gets the message clearly.
24. Guys hate gays!
25. Guys love their moms.
26. A guy would sacrifice his money for lunch just to get you a couple of roses.
27. A guy often thinks about the girl who likes him. But this doesn't mean that the guy likes her.
28 You can never understand him unless you listen to him.
29. If a guy tells you he loves you once in a lifetime. He does.
30. Beware. Guys can make gossips scatter through half of the face of the earth faster than girls can.
31. Like Eve, girls are guys’ weaknesses.
32. Guys are very open about themselves.
33. It's good to test a guy first before you believe him. But don't let him wait that long.
34. No guy is bad when he is courting
35. Guys hate it when their clothes get dirty. Even a small dot.
36. Guys really admire girls that they like even if they're not that much pretty.
37. Your best friend, whom your boyfriend seeks help from about his problems with you may end up being admired by your boyfriend.
38. If a guy tells you about his problems, he just needs someone to listen to him. You don't need to give advice.
39. A usual act that proves that the guy likes you is when he teases you.
40. A guy finds ways to keep you off from linking with someone else.
41. Guys love girls with brains more than girls in miniskirts.
42. Guys try to find the stuffed toy a girl wants but would unluckily get the wrong one.
43. Guys virtually brag about anything.
44. Guys cannot keep secrets that girls tell them.
45. Guys think too much.
46. Guys' fantasies are unlimited.
47. Girls' height doesn't really matter to a guy but her weight does!
48. Guys tend to get serious with their relationship and become too possessive. So watch out girls!!!
49. When a girl makes the boy suffer during courtship, it would be hard for him to let go of that girl.
50. It's not easy for a guy to let go of his girlfriend after they broke up especially when they've been together for 3 years or more.
51. You have to tell a guy what you really want before getting involved with that guy.
52. A guy has to experience rejection, because if he's too-good-never-been-busted, never been in love and hurt, he won't be matured and grow up.
53. When an unlikable circumstance comes, guys blame themselves a lot more than girls do. They could even hurt themselves physically.
54. Guys have strong passion to change but have weak will power.
55. Guys are tigers in their peer groups but become tamed pussycats with their girlfriends.
56. When a guy pretends to be calm, check if he's sweating. You'll probably see that he is nervous.
57. When a guy says he is going crazy about the girl. He really is.
58. When a guy asks you to leave him alone, he's just actually saying "Please come and listen to me"
59. Guys don't really have final decisions.
60. When a guy loves you, bring out the best in him.
61. If a guy starts to talk seriously, listen to him.
62. If a guy has been kept shut or silent, say something.
63. Guys believe that there's no such thing as love at first sight, but court the girls anyway and then realize at the end that he is wrong.
64. Guys like femininity not feebleness.
65. Guys don't like girls who punch harder than they do.
66. A guy may instantly know if the girl likes him but can never be sure unless the girl tells him.
67. A guy would waste his time over video games and basketball, the way a girl would do over her romance novels and make-ups.
68. Guys love girls who can cook or bake.
69. Guys like girls who are like their moms. No kidding!
70. A guy has more problems than you can see with your naked eyes.
71. A guy's friend knows everything about him. Use this to your advantage.
72. Don't be a snob. Guys may easily give up on the first sign of rejection.
73. Don't be biased. Try loving a guy without prejudice and you'll be surprised.
74. Girls who bathe in their eau de perfumes do more repelling than attracting guys.
75. Guys are more talkative than girls especially when the topic is about girls.
76. Guys don't comprehend the statement "Get lost" too well.
77. Guys really think that girls are strange and have unpredictable decisions but still love them more.
78. When a guy gives a crooked or pretentious grin at your jokes, he finds them offending and he just tried to be polite.
79. Guys don't care about how shiny their shoes are unlike girls.
80. Guys tend to generalize about girls but once they get to know them,they'll realize they're wrong.
81. Any guy can handle his problems all by his own. He's just too stubborn to deal with it.
82. Guys find it so objectionable when a girl swears.
83. Guys' weakest point is at the knee.
84. When a problem arises, a guy usually keeps himself cool but is already thinking of a way out.
85. When a guy is conscious of his looks, it shows he is not good at fixing things.
86. When a guy looks at you, either he's amazed of you or he's criticizing you.
87. When you catch him cheating on you and he asks for a second chance, give it to him. But when you catch him again and he asks for another chance, ignore him.
88. If a guy lets you go, he really loves you.
89. If you have a boyfriend, and your boy best friend always glances at you and it obviously shows that he is jealous whenever you're with your boyfriend, all I can say is your boy best friend loves you more than your boyfriend does.
90. Guys learn from experience not from the romance books that girls read and take as their basis of experience.
91. You can tell if a guy is really hurt or in pain when he cries in front of you!
92. If a guy suddenly asks you for a date, ask him first why.
93. When a guy says he can't sleep if he doesn't hear your voice even just for one night, hang up. He also tells that to another girl. He only flatters you and sometimes makes fun of you.
94. You can truly say that a guy has good intentions if you see him praying sometimes.
95. Guys seek for advice not from a guy but from a girl.
96. Girls are allowed to touch boys' things. Not their hair!
97. If a guy says you're beautiful, that guy likes you.
98. Guys hate girls who overreact.
99. Guys love you more than you love them if they are serious in your relationships.

Instructions for Life

2008-01-03T06:45:00.000-08:00

01. Give people more than they expect, and do it cheerfully.
02. Memorize your favorite poem.
03. Don't believe all you hear, spend all you have, or sleep all you want.
04. When you say "I love you" - mean it.
05. When you say "I'm sorry" look the person in the eye.
06. Be engaged at least six months before you get married.
07. Believe in love at first sight.
08. Never laugh at anyone's dreams.
09. Love deeply and passionately. You might get hurt, but it's the only way to live life completely.
10. In disagreements, fight fairly. No name calling.
11. Don't judge people by their relatives.
12. Talk slowly but think quickly.
13. When someone asks you a question you don't want to answer, smile and ask, "Why do you want to know?"
14. Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
15. Call your mom.
16. Say "Bless you" when you hear someone sneeze.
17. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
18. Remember the three R's: Respect for self; Respect for others; Responsibility for all your actions.
19. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
20. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
21. Smile when picking up the phone. The caller will hear it in your voice.
22. Marry a man/woman you love to talk to. As you get older, their conversational skills will be as important as any others.
23. Spend some time alone.
24. Open your arms to change but don't let go of your values.
25. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
26. Read more books and watch less TV.
27. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll get to enjoy it a second time.
28. Trust in God but lock your car.
29. Do all you can to create a tranquil, harmonious home.
30. In disagreements with loved ones, deal with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.
31. Read between the lines.
32. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.
33. Be gentle with the Earth.
34. Pray. There's immeasurable power in it.
35. Never interrupt when you are being flattered.
36. Mind your own business.
37. Don't trust a man/woman who doesn't close his/her eyes when you kiss.
38. Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.
39. If you make a lot of money, put it to use helping others while you are living. That is wealth's greatest satisfaction.
40. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a stroke of luck.
41. Learn the rules, then break some.
42. Remember that the best relationship is one where your love for each other is greater than your need for each other.
43. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
44. Remember that your character is your destiny.
45. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.
Submitted by Krishna Pawan Kumar (45), 'Planet Earth'
http://www.fukkad.com/quotes/live45.shtml

Flight of the Nighthawks by Feist

2008-01-02T02:37:00.000-08:00

"Aching for what you couldn't have is pointless."

"Love is not the simple romance that the tale makes it out to be."

"The scope of things...makes me feel...insignificant at times."

You...

2008-01-02T02:30:00.000-08:00

You haunt me in my thoughts. You ran after my longings. You bent my time to fit yours. You pursued my vows. You ran, you left and you had it all.

The Art of Letting Go

2007-12-15T14:31:00.001-08:00

“We often fool ourselves and say, that it’s love only because when it’s gone we end up being lonely. So how are we to know that it is just weren’t so, that we just have to let each other go.”

It’s over. He’s gone! Why do we have to part while the love is still there? Why do we have to suffer? Why do we have to cry when someone bids goodbye? Why does beginning have an end? Why do we have to meet only to lose in the end?

There are questions left unanswered, words left unsaid, letters left unread, poems left undone, songs left unsung, love left unexpressed, promises left unfulfilled.

In relationship, one of the hardest things to do is saying goodbye and letting go. It is hard as breaking a crystal because you’ll never know when you’ll be able to pick up the pieces again. More often than not, they who go, feel not the pain of parting. It is they who stay behind that suffer, because they are left with memories of a love that was meant to be, a love that was.

“There are many times when we share precious moments. But later we realized that they were stolen moments. So how are we to know, that it’s just wasn’t so that we just have to let each other go.”

At the beginning and at the end of the relationship, we are embarrassed to find ourselves alone. Unfair as it may seem, but that’s the way love goes. That’s the drama, the bitter sweet and the risk of falling in love. After all, nothing is constant but change. Everything will eventually come to its end without us knowing when, without us knowing how, without us knowing why. And, we must forget not because we want to but because we have to.

In letting go, sorrows come not as a single spy but in a battalion. It seems that everywhere we go, everything you do, every song you hear, every turn of your head, every move of your body, every beat of your heart, every blink of your eye and every breath you take always reminds you of him. It’s always like a stab of a knife, a torture in the night. Funny how the whole world becomes depopulated when only one person isn’t around. Just imagine there are 7 billion people on earth and yet it seems you feel lonely and empty without the other.

I don’t know if it’s worth calling an art, but letting go entails special skills sparkle with a considerable space and time. Time heals all wounds but it takes a little push on our part. Acceptance plays a part also. Not all wishes come true. Not all love stories end with, “ and they live happily ever after.”

Sometimes we have to part because of circumstances beyond our control. We have to suffer if it would mean happiness for others. We have to cry to temporarily let go of the pain. Every beginning has its end like every dawn has its dusk. It’s something we can’t control, something we have to live up.

It’s over. He’s gone. But life has to go on. Goodbye doesn’t mean forever. There will always be a place and time when questions will be answered, words will be spoken, letters will be read, poems will be recited in the night, songs will be sung in harmony, love will be expressed in solitude and promises will be fulfilled. Somewhere. Somehow. Someday.

“If loving you is all that means to me. And being happy is all I hope you’ll be. If loving you must mean I really have to set you free. [Then let it be]”

The Secret of Unhappiness

2007-11-26T05:34:00.000-08:00

The secret of the "I Want"
Focusing on evil
Make demands of yourself
I need many things
Live in resentment
The secret of self-pity
The path of envy
Expect high

by Fr. Moga, SJ

From Gab

2007-11-15T07:00:00.001-08:00

“Nobody deserves your tears, but whoever deserves them will not make you cry.”
--Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"If I knew that today would be the last time I’d see you, I would hug you tight and pray the Lord be the keeper of your soul. If I knew that this would be the last time you pass through this door, I’d embrace you, kiss you, and call you back for one more. If I knew that this would be the last time I would hear your voice, I’d take hold of each word to be able to hear it over and over again. If I knew this is the last time I see you, I’d tell you I love you, and would not just assume foolishly you know it already."
--Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"He is ugly and sad...but he is all love" --Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Poem Excerpts from Millay

2007-11-15T07:00:00.000-08:00

Lament

Life must go on,
And the dead be forgotten;
Life must go on,
Though good men die;(...)
Life must go on;
I forget just why.

XLVII by Edna Vincent Millay

2007-11-15T05:54:00.000-08:00

Well, I have lost you and I lost you fairly;
In my own way, and with my full consent,
Say what you will kings in a tumbril rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.
Some night of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that's permitted me:
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
If I have loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.
Should I outlive this anguish--and men do--
I shall have only one good to say of you.

From Flora

2007-11-04T03:26:00.000-08:00

“Sometimes we put to much passion on the biggest dreams and priorities in life that we fail to love the smallest pleasures from simple things. We search so much for the right choices, for the right paths to walk through, for the right time and the for the right reasons. But life isn’t all about searching for the things that can be found. It is about letting the unexpected happen and finding things you never searched for.”
The longer one observes the rhythms of life, the more one notices that certain days are simply more important than others. One day is filled with portent, while the next is practically void of significance. Such is the relative nature of days."

Enemy Within

2007-11-01T07:43:00.000-07:00

Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To taste your own wounds, to smack your lips with grievances, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to taste both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back. The main drawback is that what you are putting down is yourself, the main course at the feast is you, and the loser is you.

Anger is the most impotent of passions. It effects nothing it goes about, and hurts the one who is possessed by it more than the one against whom it is directed. Anger does not improve yourself, but it helps you hurt or step on someone. You cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.

A man makes inferiors his superiors by heat, self control is the rule and solution. Anger is an uncontrollable feeling that betrays yourself, it is also the powerful force that blows out the light of reason. Know this to be the enemy within: ANGER, born in desire.

ANONYMOUS

My Students' Insights

2007-10-29T18:12:00.000-07:00

After my discussion of the poem entitled, "The Old Man, His Son and Their Bike" they've come up with these insights:

Do not make accusations without knowing the real situation. --AC, Tasha
Be confident in your decision, for being influenced leads to your own destruction.--Alex, Firmo
Satisfying others to satisfy yourself won't be very satisfactory. --Joanna, Jasmine
Before you satisfy other's thirst, satisfy yourself first.--Jhanine, Faye
Don't believe in what other's say but believe in your initiative.--Marlon
Don't let others pull your strings like a puppet.--Jimmy, Martie
If you pretend to be someone else sooner or later that's who you become.--Kym

Sadness

2007-10-12T18:24:00.000-07:00

"for all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are these.. "it might have been......"

john greenleaf whittier

"them most gladsome thing in the world is that we seldom fall low, the saddest that , with such capabilities , we seldom rise high..."

james mathew barrie

"the saddest thing in the world, is loving someone who used to love you"

Anonymous

"Don't fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things. The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have. "

Louis E. Boone

'Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.'

Percy Bysshe Shelley

At This Very Minute...

2007-10-12T18:18:00.000-07:00

someone is thinking of you
someone cares about you.
someone misses you
someone wants to hold your hand.
someone wants you to be happy.
someone wants to hug you.
someone will do anything for you.
someone needs to know your love is unconditional.
someone wants to tell you how much they care.
someone wants to stay up watching movies w/ you.
someone wants to hold you in their arms.
someone wants to see you.
someone wants to be your lover.
someone loves you for who you are.
someone loves the way you make them feel.
someone wants to be with you.
someone wants you to know they are there for you.
someone is glad that you're their friend.
someone is wishing you would notice them.
someone wants to get to know you better.
someone loves you.

Keep It Real

2007-10-12T18:08:00.000-07:00

BOY: I saw her today
GIRL: I saw him today

BOY: It seems like its been forever
GIRL: I wonder if he still cares

BOY: She looks better than before
GIRL: I couldn't stop staring at him

BOY: I asked her how things were going
GIRL: I asked about his new girlfriend

BOY: I'd choose her over any girl im with
GIRL: He's probablly really happy right now

BOY: I couldnt look at her without starting to cry
GIRL: He couldnt even look at me

BOY: I told her I miss her
GIRL: He doesnt mean it

BOY: I meant it
GIRL: He didnt mean it

BOY: I love her
GIRL: He loves his new girlfriend

BOY: I held her for the last time
GIRL: He gave me a friendly hug

BOY: Then I went home and cried
GIRL: Then I went home and cried

BOY: I lost her
GIRL: I still love him

The Tao of Pooh

2007-10-12T17:53:00.000-07:00

Who’s Talking? Pooh is.

Pooh: “We might find something that we weren’t looking for, which might be just what were looking for, really,”

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?” “What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”“I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet. Pooh nodded thoughtfully.It’s the same thing,” he said.

“Rabbit’s clever,” said Pooh thoughtfully. “Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit’s clever.” “And he has Brain.” “Yes,” said Piglet, “Rabbit has Brain.” There was a long silence.“I suppose,” said Pooh, “That that’s why he never understands anything.”

…you can’t help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn’t spell it right; but spelling isn’t everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn’t count.

“What do you like doing best in the world, Pooh?” “Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best – “ and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.

Song:
How can you get very far,
If you don’t know Who You Are?
How can you do what you ought,
If you don’t know What You’ve Got?
And if you don’t know Which To Do
Of all the things in front of you,
Then what you’ll have when you are through
Is just a mess without a clue
Of all the best that can come true
If you know What and Which and Who.

Benjamin’s chat

Hopefully your knowledge doesn’t fall under any of these:Rabbit – Knowledge for the sake of Being Clever; Owl – Knowledge for the sake of Appearing Wise; Eeyore – Knowledge for the sake of Complaining About Something.

Sourness and bitterness come from the interfering and unappreciative mind. Life itself, when understood and utilized for what it is, is sweet.

There is Something More, and that Something More is what life is really all about.

Knowledge and Experience do not necessarily speak the same language.

There is more to knowing than just being correct.

The thing that makes someone truly different—unique, in fact—is something that cleverness cannot really understand.

Things are as They Are: We make things into something else and do not use it in its proper way.

“One disease, long life. No disease, short life.” In other words, those who know what’s wrong with them and take care of themselves accordingly will tend to live a lot longer than those who consider themselves perfectly healthy and neglect their weaknesses. So in that sense at least, a Weakness of some sort can do you a big favor, if you acknowledge that it’s there.

Things just happen in the right way, at the right time. At least they do when you let them, when you work with circumstances instead of saying, “This isn’t supposed to be happening this way,” and trying hard to make it happen some other way. If you’re in tune with The Way Things Work, then they work the way they need to, no matter what you may think about it at the time. Later on, you can look back and say, “Oh now I understand. That had to happen so that those could happen, and those had to happen in order for this to happen…” Then you realize that even if you tried to make it all turn out perfectly, you couldn’t have done better, and if you’d really tried, you would have made a mess of the whole thing.

There was a man who disliked seeing his footprints and his shadow. He decided to escape from them and began to run. But as he ran along, more footprints appeared, while his shadow easily kept up with him. Thinking he was going too slowly, he ran faster and faster without stopping, until he finally collapsed from exhaustion and died. (If he had stood still, there would have been no footprints. If he had rested in the shade, his shadow would have disappeared.)

Practically speaking, if time saving devices really saved time, there would be more time available to us now than ever before in history. But strangely enough, we seem to have less time than even a few years ago. It’s really great fun to go somewhere where there are no timesaving devices because, when you do, you find that you have lots of time. Elsewhere, you’re too busy working to pay for machines to save you time so you won’t have to work so hard. The main problem with this great obsession for saving time is very simple: you can’t save time. You can only spend it. But you can spend it wisely or foolishly.

The Christmas presents once opened are Not So Much Fun as they were while we were in the process of examining, lifting, shaking, thinking about and opening them. Each time the goal is reached, it becomes Not So Much Fun, and we’re off to reach the next one. That doesn’t mean that the goals we have don’t count. They do, mostly because they cause us to go through the process, and it’s the process that makes us wise, happy, or whatever. If we do things in the wrong sort of way, it makes us miserable, angry, confused and things like that. The goal has to be right for us, and it has to be beneficial, in order to ensure a beneficial process. But aside from that, it’s really the process that’s important. Enjoyment of the process is the secret that erases the myths of Great Reward and Saving Time. By enjoying the process, we can stretch that awareness out so that it’s no longer only a moment, but covers the whole thing.

“From caring comes courage.” We might add that from it also comes wisdom. It’s rather significant, we think, that those who have no compassion have no wisdom. Knowledge, yes; cleverness, maybe; wisdom, no. A clever mind is not a heart. Knowledge doesn’t really care. Wisdom does.

An Empty sort of mind is valuable for finding things because it can see what’s in front of it. An Overstuffed mind is unable to. While the Clear mind listens to a bird singing, the Stuffed-Full-of-Knowledge-and-Cleverness mind wonders what kind of bird is singing. The more Stuffed Up it is, the less it can hear through its own ears and see through its own eyes. Knowledge and Cleverness tend to concern themselves with the wrong sorts of things, and a mind confused by Knowledge, Cleverness and Abstract Ideas tend to go chasing off after things that don’t matter, or that don’t exist, instead of seeing, appreciating and making use of what is right in front of it.

Many people are afraid of Emptiness, however, because it reminds them of Loneliness. Everything has to be filled in, it seems – appointment books, hillsides, vacant lots – but when all the spaces are filled, the Loneliness really begins. Then the Groups are joined, the Classes a re signed up for, and the Gift-To-Yourself items are bought. When the Loneliness starts creeping in the door, the Television Set is turned on to make it go away. But it doesn’t go away. So some of us do instead, and after discarding the emptiness of the Big Congested Mess, we discover the fullness of Nothing.

A Thought from Homer

2007-10-08T14:59:00.000-07:00

How people wish they'd be treated with sincerity and be offered with clean intentions--free from prejudices and biases which each person possesses.

By Paolo Coelho

2007-09-29T17:40:00.002-07:00

“I think that perhaps we always fall in love the very first time we see the man of our dreams, even though, at the time, reason may be telling otherwise, and we may fight against that instinct, hoping against hope that we won't win, until there comes a point when we allow ourselves to be vanquished by our feelings...”—Paolo Coelho

“Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worse kind of suffering.”--Paolo Coelho

“One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.”—Paolo Coelho

“You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It's just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.”—Paolo Coelho

“But there is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you're fighting for.”—Paolo Coelho

There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.—Paolo Coelho

You will see that, in order to do the important things in life, at times one must allow oneself to do nothing.—Paolo Coelho

A child can always teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires.—Paolo Coelho

By Kahlil Gibran

2007-09-29T17:40:00.001-07:00

And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. –Kahlil Gibran

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper. –Kahlil Gibran

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity. –Kahlil Gibran

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.—Kahlil Gibran

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don't, they never were. —Kahlil Gibran

The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it simply.—Kahlil Gibran

The Dilemma

2007-09-21T06:56:00.000-07:00

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental
To reach out to another is to risk involvement
To expose feelings is to risk rejection
To place dreams before the crowd is to risk ridicule.
To love is to risk not being loved in return
To go forward in the face of overwhelming odds is to risk failure
But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing and is nothing.
He may avoid suffering or sorrow, but he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or love.
Chained by his certitudes he is a slave.
He has forfeited his freedom.
Only a person who takes risks is free.

Anonymous

A Film Punch

2007-09-16T04:10:00.000-07:00

I happen to browse my friend's cellular phone and incidentally found these lines from the films he watched. Too bad, I wasn't able to see all these movies, but indeed they gave me a good punch right after each line read. :D

"Love has given me wings, so I must fly" - A Knight's Tale
"You make me want to be a better man" - Anastasia
"It's the scariest day of the year. Yet only one thing scares me, that we might never have met." - Autumn in New York
"You are what I never knew I always wanted." - Fools Rush In
"Will you love me for the rest of your life? "No, I'll love you for the rest of mine." - Phenomenon
"Don't say we aren't right for each other, the way I see it is, we aren't right for anyone else." - The Cutting Edge
"When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible." - When Harry Met Sally

Hit by Words

2007-08-18T22:04:00.001-07:00

"So then we turn to lying hoping that we can lie to ourselves"

"It's better to cross the line and suffer the consequences than to just stare at the line for the rest of your life.

My Haikus

2007-07-27T07:21:00.000-07:00

a meek fur in cave
its echoes, catching z's all around,
then, a petal moves

orange leaves
fell from a tree
caressing my palms...

a fiery ball
between two bulky hills
targets paleness of cheeks

a color holding on to a petal
the invisible strands blew hard
lost...

green spines
from still dense branches
housing fur inside

small bean
thrown on soil--
a tree...

raise, O, broken saucer
strands of wind slap your rays
all are hiding

heart shaped frames
on trees they hover
humming silence

brown hands
humming along by its body curves--
it sang

sword thrust green frames,
worms bodies are nourished
in dark, back to stillness

white snow sheet
covers the compact soil
deep down, shaking bodies

shivering bones
alone under resting twigs
shadows from heavenly craters

eyelashes worshipped the glare
reflected the color of the leaves
as droplets of ice fall

with the strands of branches
rattle with the twigs
forming graceful steps

as a catterpillar in a cocoon
clothed with anticipation
it's opening, a blast of colors

rays penetrate
sweat drifts the erected popsicles
over the field

ground yields smoke
drops rolled
under leaf, a frog shivers

Cartography

2007-07-21T22:14:00.000-07:00

People are blindfolded cartographers of life.

Suffer

2007-07-21T20:59:00.000-07:00

All my life, I've learned to suffer in silence...

Source: Witch of Portobello by Paolo Coelho

Reflection:
Let me say it, "All my life, I've learned to suffer in silence" . This has been the only way I knew best to keep friendships, relationships and acquaintances. Every time I am at rage, I keep it deep down my recesses of emotional seas... It created typhoons within, huriccanes of mixed emotions. It lambasted the serenity of my undisturbed waters. Although this turbulence shakes my identity, virtues rose from the blue waters of my melancholy. After the adversities I was beset, calmness settles in--the sun is once again visible, animals in hibernation went out their hide-outs, celebrating the beauty of nature's placidity. At the end of the day, I am still seeing my friends' delightful countenance, they still call me by name and I kept my bonds of my personal lines of events.

Defiance

2007-07-21T20:54:00.000-07:00

Keeping one's virginity is a rightful defiance.

To Look For

2007-07-01T03:40:00.000-07:00

"We might find something that we weren't looking for which might be just we were looking for, really..."

Source: Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff

Late

2007-05-19T05:48:00.000-07:00

Before he was there,now, he is nowhere
I pretended, I never intended
To find the trust which ended as rust
I was his only that time can never beat it badly
But that was my thought, he surrendered as i fought
He struggled while I was boggled
By his enthusiasm which I doubted as sarcasm
For him all is true, my mind and heart construe
Just then time watered the fire, I was to play his lyre
As I strummed, i saw no ear and found my fear
All was gone when I decided to be his one
Now, am alone in a monotone
These I saw, and made up as a law
Time lessens intensity, those feelings of less density
Time can test, it chooses what's best
He was less I confirmed my guess
The rest attests, he loved lest