Adele

I'm Glad You Came

The sun goes down

The stars comes out

And all that counts

Is here and now

My universe

Will never be the same

I'm glad you came

... Glad You Came, The Wanted

Surrounded With Beauty

“It is true that I miss intelligent companionship, but there are so few with whom I can share the things that mean so much to me that I have learned to contain myself. It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty...”

 

... Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer

Like It's Heaven On Earth

You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,

Love like you'll never be hurt,

Sing like there's nobody listening,

And live like it's heaven on earth.

... William W. Purkey

I Was Not Magnificent

Christmas night, it clutched the light, the hallow bright

Above my brother, I entangled spines

We smoked the screen to make it what it was to be

Now to know it in my memory:

... and at once I knew I was not magnificent

High above the highway aisle

(Jagged vacance, thick with ice)

I could see for miles, miles, miles

.... Holocene, Bon Iver

Going Nowhere, Going Nowhere

All around me are familiar faces

Worn out places, worn out faces

Bright and early for the daily races

Going nowhere, going nowhere...

Went to school and I was very nervous

No one knew me, no one knew me

Hello teacher tell me, what's my lesson?

Look right through me, look right through me

And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad

The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had

I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take

When people run in circles its a very, very

Mad world, mad world, enlarging your world

Mad world

... Mad World, Gary Jules

Measured Out My Life With Coffee Spoons

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherised upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question...

Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"

Let us go and make our visit...

... Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all -

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor -

And this, and so much more? ...

...Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

... The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, TS Eliot

Virtue And Sin

There is only one virtue and one sin for a soul on the path:

Virtue when he is conscious of God and sin when he is not.

... Shaykh As-Sayyed Muhammad Abu Hashim Madani

Fidelity of Purpose

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail. I try to increase the power God has given me to see the best in everything and every one, and make that Best a part of my life.

... Helen Keller

With Whatever You Have

A 10 year old boy went to an ice-cream shop and asked how much a cone costs. The waiter said "Rs. 18." Then the boy started counting how much he had. And he asked how much does a small cone costs. The irritated waiter said "Rs. 15." Then the boy ordered for a small cone. He ate, paid the bill and left.

When the waiter came to pick up the plate he was surprised: the boy had left Rs.3 as tips for him.

"Always Try To Make Everyone Happy With Whatever You Have"

... author Unknown

Sometimes I Have To Go To Places Alone

Dear Mom and Dad,

The thing this war has taught me is that its important to get things set before its too late. First, you've been the very best parent a son could ever ask for. 

When I was a kid and I used to get scared of the dark, it was the thought that you were there that got me through it. I think about that a lot, because I guess I'm scared now. 

I don't know if I can make it, and if I don't, please understand that sometimes I have to go to places alone. But whatever happens, always know that I will be your loving son.

Jimmy.

Immerse In The World

Forget about finding your passion. Instead, focus on finding big problems... We don't find happiness by looking within. We go outside and immerse in the world. We are called to a higher purpose by the inescapable circumstances that are laid out on our path. It's our daily struggles that define us and bring out the best in us, and this lays down the foundation to continuously find fulfillment in what we do even when times get tough.

Happiness comes from the intersection of what you love, what you're good at, and what the world needs. We've been told time and again to keep finding the first. Our schools helped developed the second. It's time we put more thought on the third.

What big problems are you trying to solve?

... To Find Happiness, Forget About Passion

You Are Real

In June of 1945, Arline Feynman - high-school sweetheart and wife of the hugely influential physicist, Richard Feynman - passed away after succumbing to tuberculosis. She was 25-years-old. 16 months later, in October of 1946, Richard wrote his late wife the following love letter and sealed it in an envelope. It remained unopened until after his death in 1988.

October 17, 1946

D’Arline,

I adore you, sweetheart.

I know how much you like to hear that - but I don't only write it because you like it - I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you.

It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you - almost two years but I know you'll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; and I thought there was no sense to writing.

But now I know my darling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you.

I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead - but I still want to comfort and take care of you - and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you - I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do. We started to learn to make clothes together - or learn Chinese - or getting a movie projector. Can't I do something now? No. I am alone without you and you were the "idea-woman" and general instigator of all our wild adventures.

When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. You needn’t have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true - you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else - but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive.

I know you will assure me that I am foolish and that you want me to have full happiness and don't want to be in my way. I'll bet you are surprised that I don't even have a girlfriend (except you, sweetheart) after two years. But you can't help it, darling, nor can I - I don't understand it, for I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don't want to remain alone - but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real.

My darling wife, I do adore you.

I love my wife. My wife is dead.

Rich.

PS Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don't know your new address.

... Letters Of Note

Lived On Only In My Heart

One of my favorite movies:
of Ernest Hemingway and by Sir Richard Attenborough

Ernest Hemingway: "There's still a part of me that wants to take you in my arms, just like it used to be. But I've changed"

Ernest Hemingway: "The kid grew up, Agnes. Thanks to you"

Agnes von Kurowsky: "I love you. I love you as long as I live"

Agnes von Kurowsky: "I never saw Ernie again after Wahloon Lake. I often wonder, what might have happened if he had taken me in his arms, but I guessed his pride meant he wasn't able to forgive me. Some say he lived with the pain of it all his life. The hurt boy became the angry man, a brilliant, tough adventurer who was the most famous writer of his generation. And the kid he had been: eager, idealistic, and tender - lived on only in my heart"

... In Love And War

Blow O Wind!

“Blow O wind to where my loved one is. 

Touch him and come touch me soon. 

I'll feel his gentle touch through you and meet his beauty in the moon. 

These things are much for the one who loves. 

One can live by them alone: that he and I breathe the same air and that the Earth we tread is one.”

... Ramayana

From Me To You

“I imagine a line, a white line,
painted on the sand and on the ocean, from me to you”

... Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer

More Real To Me Than Anything

“Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star.

It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago.

Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. 

Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything”

... South of the Border, West of the Sun, Haruki Murakami

My Life Is Like An Autumn Leaf

My life is like an autumn leaf

I lie around unclaimed.

The breeze blows me around,

To be trampled under the feet of men.

Natures cruel feast has bestowed me with pain,

Pain of being a part,

Just a part of someone.

Pain of departing,

Departing from that one.

Pick me up like a rose,

And hold me to your heart.

Keep me there till he does not come.

And when he comes do a good deed,

Dig the earth below,

And bury me deep

For I don't want to lie around,

Unclaimed, unloved

... Amit Abraham

Just Barely For A Few Moments

“Like you're riding a train at night across some vast plain, and you catch a glimpse of a tiny light in a window of a farmhouse. In an instant it's sucked back into the darkness behind and vanishes. But if you close your eyes, that point of light stays with you, just barely for a few moments”

... Sputnik Sweetheart, Haruki Murakami

As Recently As Last Week

“There’s nothing like that feeling of waiting for a guy. It’s the loneliest feeling in the world. Holding that cell phone in your hand as you take out the trash, use the bathroom, change the litter box. Fearful that the one second you aren’t looking will be when they call. Pathetic. And something I have done as recently as last week”

... My Boyfriend Wrote a Book About Me, Hilary Winston,

The Spot Where Love Goes

Above all, this movie is wonderfully artistic, poetic, strong but yet extremely subtle, with a terrifying commentary on societal pressures and the exercise of (perhaps, absolute) power. Despite personal opinions on one of the most polarizing figures in U.S. history, this movie to me is about the joys of, and yet bittersweet, love, without Hollywood's saccharine romantic fluff. It does not shout but gently takes you by the hand, and lets you journey together to the end of what we could possibly regard as "true love" in humanly proportions. The final dinner scene between Edgar and Clyde is tremendously tender and poignant, and one cannot help but be crushed to witness as Clyde is failing in his physical health, Edgar is already completely wrecked emotionally. This movie honorably debunks common misconceptions and restores the chastity of love, and reminds us that love requires absolute loyalty, commitment, patience, faith, sacrifices, struggles and restrained passions - virtues which are strange in today's context. Their splendid tripartite relationship is agonizingly allegorized upon Edgar's death: Clyde covering his modesty while Helen shreds his personal files - both lovers exemplifying their ultimate love for Edgar till the end. The ensemble of Leonardo DiCaprio supported by Armie Hammer and Naomi Watts is excellent. This is another of Clint Eastwood's superb masterpiece, that will surely become a classic, but unfortunately recognized only many years down the road. 

J. Edgar Hoover: Funny how even the dearest face will fade away in time, but most clearly I remember your eyes with a sort of teasing smile in them, and the feeling of that soft spot just northeast of the corner of your mouth.

Clyde Tolson: I see right through you, you're scared, heartless, horrible little man!

Helen Gandy: All the admiration in the world can't fill the spot where love goes.

Relationship With God

To start, a story.

A few years ago a female student wanted to visit with me about some difficulties she was having, mainly with her family life. As is my practice, we walked around campus as we talked.

After talking for some time about her family situation we turned to other areas of her life. When she reached spiritual matters we had the following exchange:

"I need to spend more time working on my relationship with God."

I responded, "Why would you want to do that?"

Startled she says, "What do you mean?"

"Well, why would you want to spend any time at all on working on your relationship with God?"

"Isn't that what I'm supposed to do?"

"Let me answer by asking you a question. Can you think of anyone, right now, to whom you need to apologize? Anyone you've wronged?"

She thinks and answers, "Yes."

"Well, why don't you give them a call today and ask for their forgiveness. That might be a better use of your time than working on your relationship with God."

Obviously, I was being a bit provocative with the student. And I did go on to clarify. But I was trying to push back on a strain of Christianity I see in both my students and the larger Christian culture. Specifically, when the student said "I need to work on my relationship with God" I knew exactly what she meant. It meant praying more, getting up early to study the bible, to start going back to church. Things along those lines. The goal of these activities is to get "closer" to God. To "waste time with Jesus." Of course, please hear me on this point, nothing is wrong with those activities. Personal acts of piety and devotion are vital to a vibrant spiritual life and continued spiritual formation. But all too often "working on my relationship with God" has almost nothing to do with trying to become a more decent human being.

The trouble with contemporary Christianity is that a massive bait and switch is going on. "Christianity" has essentially become a mechanism for allowing millions of people to replace being a decent human being with something else, an endorsed "spiritual" substitute. For example, rather than being a decent human being the following is a list of some commonly acceptable substitutes:

Going to church

Worship

Praying

Spiritual disciplines (e.g., fasting)

Bible study

Voting Republican

Going on spiritual retreats

Reading religious books

Arguing with evolutionists

Sending your child to a Christian school or providing education at home

Using religious language

Avoiding R-rated movies

Not reading Harry Potter.

The point is that one can fill a life full of spiritual activities without ever, actually, trying to become a more decent human being. Much of this activity can actually distract one from becoming a more decent human being. In fact, some of these activities make you worse, interpersonally speaking. Many churches are jerk factories.

Take, for example, how Christians tip and behave in restaurants. If you have ever worked in the restaurant industry you know the reputation of the Sunday morning lunch crowd. Millions of Christians go to lunch after church on Sundays and their behavior is abysmal. The single most damaging phenomenon to the witness of Christianity in America today is the collective behavior of the Sunday morning lunch crowd. Never has a more well-dressed, entitled, dismissive, haughty or cheap collection of Christians been seen on the face of the earth.

I exaggerate of course. But I hope you see my point. Rather than pouring our efforts into two hours of worship, bible study and Christian fellowship on Sunday why don't we just take a moment and a few extra bucks to act like a decent human being when we go to lunch afterwards? Just think about it. What if the entire restaurant industry actually began to look forward to working Sunday lunch? If they said amongst themselves, "I love the church crowd. They are kind, patient and very generous. It's my favorite part of the week waiting on Christians." How might such a change affect the way the world sees us? Think about it. Just being a decent human being for one hour each Sunday and the world sees us in a whole new way.

But it's not going to happen. Because behavior at lunch isn't considered to be "working on your relationship with God." Behavior at lunch isn't spiritual. Going to church, well, that is working on your relationship with God. But, as we all know, any jerk can sit in a pew. But you can't be a jerk if you take the time to treat your waitress as if she were your friend, daughter or mother.

My point in all this is that contemporary Christianity has lost its way. Christians don't wake up every morning thinking about how to become a more decent human being. Instead, they wake up trying to "work on their relationship with God" which very often has nothing to do with treating people better. How could such a confusion have occurred? How did we end up going so wrong? I'm sure there are lots of answers, but at the end of the day we need to face up to our collective failure. I'm not saying we need to do anything dramatic. A baby step would do to start. Waking up trying to be a little more kind, more generous, more interruptible, more forgiving, more humble, more civil, more tolerant. Do these things and prayer and worship will come alongside to support us.

I truly want people to spend time working on their relationship with God. I just want them to do it by taking the time to care about the person standing right in front of them.

... taken from Experimental Theology

With Or Without You

See the stone set in your eyes

See the thorn twist in your side

I wait for you

Sleight of hand and twist of fate

On a bed of nails she makes me wait

And I wait, without you

With or without you

With or without you

Through the storm we reach the shore

You give it all but I want more

And I'm waiting for you

With or without you

With or without you

I can't live

With or without you

... With Or Without You, U2

I Go There With You

You say you'll give me

Eyes in a moon of blindness

A river in a time of dryness

A harbor in the tempest

You say you want

Your love to work out right

To last with me through the night

All the promises we make

From the cradle to the grave

When all I want is you

All I want is you

... All I Want Is You

I want to run

I want to hide

I want to tear down the walls

That hold me inside

I want to reach out

And touch the flame

Where the streets have no name

I want to feel, sunlight on my face

See that dust cloud disappear without a trace

I want to take shelter from the poison rain

Where the streets have no name

Where the streets have no name

Where the streets have no name

Still building
Then burning down love
Burning down love

And when I go there
I go there with you
It's all I can do

... Where The Streets Have No Name

Just In Time

Just in time you found me just in time

Before you came my time was running low

I was lost them losing dice were tossed

My bridges all were crossed nowhere to go

Now you're here now I know just where I'm going

No more doubt or fear I've found my way

Your love came just in time you found me just in time

And changed my lonely nights that lucky day

Just in time

... Nina Simone

Where The Sidewalk Ends

There is a place where the sidewalk ends

And before the street begins,

And there the grass grows soft and white,

And there the sun burns crimson bright,

And there the moon-bird rests from his flight

To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black

And the dark street winds and bends.

Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow

We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And watch where the chalk-white arrows go

To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,

For the children, they mark, and the children, they know

The place where the sidewalk ends.

... Where the Sidewalk Ends, Shel Silverstein

To Find You

What if you had a second chance with the one that got away?

I don't have any permanent place here. You know, in eternity, or whatever. And the more I think that, I can't go through life saying that this is no big deal. I mean, this is it! This is actually happening. What do you think is interesting, what do you think is funny, what do you think is important? You know, every day is our last.

Jesse: You want to know why I wrote that stupid book?

Celine: Why?

Jesse: So that you might come to a reading in Paris and I could walk up to you and ask, "Where the f*** were you?"

Celine: No - you thought I'd be here today?

Jesse: I'm serious. I think I wrote it, in a way, to try to find you.

Celine: Okay, that's - I know that's not true, but that's sweet of you to say.

Jesse: I think it is true. What do you think were the chances of us ever meeting again?

Celine: After that December, I'd say almost zero. But we're not real anyway, right? We're just characters in that old lady's dream. She's on her deathbed, fantasizing about her youth. So of course we had to meet again.

Jesse: Oh, God, why weren't you there, in Vienna?

Celine: I told you why.

Jesse: Well, I know why, I just - I wish you would have been. Our lives might have been so much different.
Celine: You think so?
Jesse: I actually do.
Celine: Maybe not. Maybe, we would have hated each other eventually.
Jesse: Oh what, like we hate each other now?
Celine: You know, maybe we're - we're only good at brief encounters, walking around in European cities in warm climate.

Jesse: Oh, God, why didn't we exchange phone numbers and stuff? Why didn't we do that?

Celine: Because we were young and stupid.

Jesse: Do you think we still are?

Celine: I guess when you're young, you just believe there'll be many people with whom you'll connect with. Later in life, you realize it only happens a few times.

... Before Sunset

don't care what they say

I know what you meant for me that day

I just wanted another try

I just wanted another night

Even if it doesn't seem quite right

You meant for me much more

Than anyone I've met before

One single night with you little Jesse

Is worth a thousand with anybody

I have no bitterness, my sweet

I'll never forget this one night thing

Even tomorrow, another arms

My heart will stay yours until I die

Let me sing you a waltz

Out of nowhere, out of my blues

Let me sing you a waltz

About this lovely one night stand

... A Waltz For A Night, Julie Delpy

A Way To Be Loved A Little More

When love can come as a complete surprise. 

Can the greatest romance of your life last only one night?

If there's any kind of magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone, sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed, but who cares, really? The answer must be in the attempt. Isn't everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?

... Before Sunrise

Close In Heart

Love is missing someone whenever you're apart, 

but somehow feeling warm inside because you're close in heart.

... Kay Knudsen

She Walks In Beauty

She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impaired the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

Or softly lightens o'er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express

How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!

... Lord Byron

But My Soul

For twas not into my ear you whispered

But into my heart

Twas not my lips you kissed

But my soul

... Judy Garland

In A Hopeless Place

Yellow diamonds in the light,

And we're standing side by side.

As your shadow crosses mine,

What it takes to come alive.

It's the way I'm feeling I just can't deny,

But I've gotta let it go.

We found love in a hopeless place...

... We Found Love, Rihanna ft Calvin Haris,

... Fade Into Darkness, Avicii

I Drive To You Soon

Dear Emilia, soon you are here

The Color of your green eyes bright and clear.

Your voice, are balsam on my soul

love your moves while dancing

drowning me in hips and rhythm;

a fine balance between values ever heard!

You are more to me than:

The wide ocean blue

The clear skies.

Emilia love, I drive to you soon,

My Globe trotter once more you travel;

Seeking frost and snow under the Polish moon,

Looking forward to the wide warm beaches of Naples,

Enjoy the travelling and sights.

Collect stars, moon, sun and rainbows.

Share it and bring smiles, like your own.

... Confessions Of Love To A Globetrotter, Ole Carsten

A Dreamer Of Dreams

You have come to me from a distant land,

Dreamer of dreams, to fill my hearts desire,

Sweet music flowing from your nimble hand

That plays within... to light my passion's fire.

A symphony of word and thought you bring.

Excitement builds upon crescendo's sound,

Brought forth in tones to make my light heart sing

For all the beauty that, with you, I've found.

A life is changed in just an instant's time,

All darkness fled before that brilliant sun

That shines from spoken words of softest rhyme

And speaks of treasures, only just begun.

This mystic meeting gives my heart a glow

That few have seen and only you will know.

... A Dreamer Of Dreams, Gloria Jean Berry

Come To Me In My Dreams

Come to me in my dreams, and then

By day I shall be well again!

For so the night will more than pay

The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,

A messenger from radiant climes,

And smile on thy new world, and be

As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,

Come now, and let me dream it truth,

And part my hair, and kiss my brow,

And say, My love why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then

By day I shall be well again!

For so the night will more than pay

The hopeless longing of the day.

... Longing, Matthew Arnold

My Heart Is A Place Of Prayer

From the beginning of my life

I have been looking for your face

but today I have seen it

Today I have seen

the charm, the beauty,

the unfathomable grace

of the face

that I was looking for

Today I have found you

and those who laughed

and scorned me yesterday

are sorry that they were not looking

as I did

I am bewildered by the magnificence

of your beauty

and wish to see you

with a hundred eyes

My heart has burned with passion

and has searched forever

for this wondrous beauty

that I now behold

I am ashamed

to call this love human

and afraid of God

to call it divine

Your fragrant breath

like the morning breeze

has come to the stillness of the garden

You have breathed new life into me

I have become your sunshine

and also your shadow

My soul is screaming in ecstasy

Every fiber of my being

is in love with you

Your effulgence

has lit a fire in my heart

and you have made radiant for me

the earth and sky

My arrow of love

has arrived at the target

I am in the house of mercy

and my heart

is a place of prayer

... Looking For Your Face, Rumi

Love Is So Short, Forgetting Is So Long

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is shattered

and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms

I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.

How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.

And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.

The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.

My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.

My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.

We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.

My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.

Her voice. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms

my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer

and these the last verses that I write for her.

... Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines, Pablo Neruda

Recited by Andy Garcia

In All Our Glory And Our Imperfections

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life”

... John Lennon

This Is To Have Succeeded

“To laugh often and much;

To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;

To earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends.

To appreciate beauty;

To find the best in others;

To leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;

To know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.

This is to have succeeded”

... Ralph Waldo Emerson

Independence Of Solitude

“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude”

... The Complete Prose Works Of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson

Simplicity, Patience, Compassion

“Simplicity, patience, compassion.

These three are your greatest treasures.

Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.

Patient with both friends and enemies,

you accord with the way things are.

Compassionate toward yourself,

you reconcile all beings in the world.”

... Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu

Widening Our Circle Of Compassion

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

... Albert Einstein

I Exist As I Am

“I exist as I am, that is enough,

If no other in the world be aware I sit content,

And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself,

And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years,

I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness, I can wait”

... Leaves Of Grass, Walt Whitman

Be In Your Pleasures Like The Flowers And The Bees

Pleasure is a freedom-song, But it is not freedom.

It is the blossoming of your desires,

But it is not their fruit.

It is a depth calling unto a height, But it is not the deep nor the high. It is the caged taking wing,

But it is not space encompassed.

Ay, in very truth, pleasure is a freedomsong.

And I fain would have you sing it with fullness of heart; yet I would not have you lose your hearts in the singing.

Some of your youth seek pleasure as if it were all, and they are judged and rebuked.

I would not judge nor rebuke them. I would have them seek.

For they shall find pleasure, but not her alone;

Seven are her sisters, and the least of them is more beautiful than pleasure.

Have you not heard of the man who was digging in the earth for roots and found a treasure?

And some of your elders remember pleasures with regret like wrongs committed in drunkenness.

But regret is the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement.

They should remember their pleasures with gratitude, as they would the harvest of a summer.

Yet if it comforts them to regret, let them be comforted.

And there are among you those who are neither young to seek nor old to remember;

And in their fear of seeking and remembering they shun all pleasures, lest they neglect the spirit or offend against it.

But even in their foregoing is their pleasure.

And thus they too find a treasure though they dig for roots with quivering hands.

But tell me, who is he that can offend the spirit?

Shall the nightingale offend the stillness of the night, or the firefly the stars?

And shall your flame or your smoke burden the wind?

Think you the spirit is a still pool which you can trouble with a staff?

Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being.

Who knows but that which seems omitted today, waits for tomorrow?

Even your body knows its heritage and its rightful need and will not be deceived.

And your body is the harp of your soul,

And it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds.

And now you ask in your heart, "How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?"

Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower,

But it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee.

For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life,

And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love,

And to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.

People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees.

... Of Pleasures, Kahlil Gibran

Oasis of Memories

Take me to the place where you go

Where nobody knows

If it's night or day

Please don't put your life in the hands

Of a rock and roll band

Who'll throw it all away

... Oasis

You Give But Little...

You give but little when you give of your possessions. 

It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

... Kahlil Gibran

Lullaby

Lay your sleeping head, my love,

Human on my faithless arm;

Time and fevers burn away

Individual beauty from

Thoughtful children, and the grave

Proves the child ephemeral:

But in my arms till break of day

Let the living creature lie,

Mortal, guilty, but to me

The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:

To lovers as they lie upon

Her tolerant enchanted slope

In their ordinary swoon,

Grave the vision Venus sends

Of supernatural sympathy,

Universal love and hope;

While an abstract insight wakes

Among the glaciers and the rocks

The hermit’s carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity

On the stroke of midnight pass

Like vibrations of a bell

And fashionable madmen raise

Their pedantic boring cry:

Every farthing of the cost,

All the dreaded cards foretell,

Shall be paid, but from this night

Not a whisper, not a thought,

Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:

Let the winds of dawn that blow

Softly round your dreaming head

Such a day of welcome show

Eye and knocking heart may bless,

Find our mortal world enough;

Noons of dryness find you fed

By the involuntary powers,

Nights of insult let you pass

Watched by every human love.

... Lullaby, W.H. Auden

Run

To think I might not see those eyes

Makes it so hard not to cry

And as we say our long goodbyes

I nearly do

Light up, light up

As if you have a choice

Even if you cannot hear my voice

I'll be right beside you, dear

Louder, louder

And we'll run for our lives

I can hardly speak, I understand

Why you can't raise your voice to say

Slower, slower

We don't have time for that

All I want is to find an easier way

To get out of our little heads

Have heart, my dear

We're bound to be afraid

Even if it's just for a few days

Making up for all this mess

... Run, Snow Patrol