A throw of dice will never do...

Be patient.

2010-10-25T01:25:00.003-02:00

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

(Rainer Maria Rilke)

Curiosity

2010-05-19T23:19:00.002-03:00

Curiosity

may have killed the cat; more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.
Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
do not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.
Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die--
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.
Only the curious have, if they live, a tale
worth telling at all.
Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,
are changeable, marry too many wives,
desert their children, chill all dinner tables
with tales of their nine lives.
Well, they are lucky. Let them be
nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay
the cat price, which is to die
and die again and again,
each time with no less pain.
A cat minority of one
is all that can be counted on
to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell
on each return from hell
is this: that dying is what the living do,
that dying is what the loving do,
and that dead dogs are those who do not know
that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

By Alastair Reid

It never rains when you want it to.

2010-04-10T22:20:00.003-03:00

You humble me, Lord.

(Norah Jones)

When somebody shows you who they are

2010-04-01T12:34:00.011-03:00

... believe them.

(Maya Angelou)

Human actions

2010-04-01T11:41:00.002-03:00

... have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion and desire.

(Aristotle)

Stopping by woods on a snowy evening

2010-03-10T21:02:00.000-03:00

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there's some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

(ROBERT FROST)

In his attempt to minimize

2010-03-04T21:28:00.000-03:00

Make a mess

2010-02-24T09:59:00.000-03:00

This is how everybody gets found

2010-02-23T17:43:00.001-03:00

Ask for what you want.

2009-12-24T19:27:00.002-02:00

...and be prepared to get it.

(Maya Angelou)

Lines are there for a reason

2009-11-02T00:50:00.001-02:00

Maybe it's the thrill of trading the familiar for the unfamiliar, a sort of personal dare. But I see a line, I want to cross it.

I wonder why it is we can never help ourselves. We all know that lines are there for a reason.

When someone needs to set boundries, they draw lines to try to separate themselves from the rest of the world because, let's face it, other people can get in the way sometimes.

It can't be denied that lines give us what we want, whatever that may be. However, we soon discover this: that lines don't keep other people out; they fence you in. You can waste your life drawing lines and praying nobody crosses them, or you can live life defying them.

Here's what I know: If you choose to cross a line, you pretty much do so at your own risk. It's true that some lines are way too dangerous to cross, but if you're willing to throw caution to the wind and take a chance, the view from the other side is spectacular.

(Adaptation from Grey's Anatomy)

Make it happen

2009-11-01T11:40:00.003-02:00

"It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them.

THEY WENT OUT AND HAPPENED TO THINGS. "

If you want more love

2009-10-31T16:47:00.002-02:00

...why don't you say so?

(JOHN MAYER)

I had apparently taken the wind out of his sails

2009-08-04T07:23:00.002-03:00

“Oh”, he said.
He was trying to smile, but it was a brave smile, a sickroom smile, and I was sorry I had caused it.
I had apparently taken the wind out of his sails.
His discouragement wasn't a good sign. Men should stand up to me more than that. They have to fight back to satisfy me. They have to face me down.

(From FEAST OF LOVE)

I used to get away with so much...

2009-07-18T13:53:00.001-03:00

Delicious ambiguity

2009-07-16T23:30:00.005-03:00

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next."

(Gilda Radner)

Desire

2009-07-09T23:27:00.002-03:00

Too often, the thing you want most is the one thing you can't have. Desire leaves us heartbroken. It wears us out. Desire can wreck your life. But as tough as wanting something can be... the people who suffer the most are the ones who don't know what it is they want.

(From GREY'S ANATOMY)

Achievements

2009-07-09T22:48:00.002-03:00

In this month's issue of GQ magazine there's a list of "101 things you should have done by the time you're thirty". In general I'm suspicious of these "amusing" lists. I've written enough of them to know that they're usually a lazy way to fill space between ads. However, I'm going to be thirty next month, so I had to have a look. Having read the list I discovered to my surprise that I've fulfilled fewer than half the requirements. The time had come to take stock of the past thirty years.

I don't want to brag but I have to tell you that I've been pretty lucky: no bones broken, no major illnesses, both parents still alive. I live somewhere I like. I've had my heart broken enough times to know it hurts but not too many times to need therapy. I guess I've broken one or two hearts myself so there's a nice balance. Most of my childhood woes have now been processed into jokes. I've had a decent enough education not to feel a fool for despising opera or not to think I'm stupid for being bored by Akira Kurosawa's movies. I have some good friends, some I've known more than half my life. I like them enough to admit that some of them are smarter than me, or funnier, or kinder, or better looking. So far so good.

It's when I consider the small details of my life that I feel a twinge of disappointment. Lack of travel is an area where I appear to be particularly deficient. I've visited a smattering of European cities, I've been to the West Coast a few times, and once I fell asleep on a train and ended up in Tallahassee. Try as I might to batter my Globetrotter suitcase, the prospect of vaccinations, overnight flights, and hotels without my local TV station has always put me off.

One area where I have failed miserably is car ownership. By the time you are thirty, according to the magazine, you should have racy car. For the last three years I have been happily driving around in my mother's old station wagon that is anything but racy.

But it's not all negative. There have been small triumphs and pleasures, of course: I'm proud of some of my writing; I adopted a dog who was miserable and is happy now; and about five years ago I made a decision to stop wasting my life by trying to be liked. The consequences of that last decision are most interesting... I am not liked. But I like that.

All in all, I've bumbled along for thirty years methodically collecting minor experiences. I don't throw things away, I don't forget things, and I don't make a lot of noise. I like the same things now that I did fifteen years ago like books, art, movies, friends, football and food. And when I look at photographs of myself as a child I find a pleasing continuity.

(UNKNOWN AUTHOR)

The future

2009-07-09T20:20:00.001-03:00

We spend our whole lives worrying about the future. Planning for the future. Trying to predict the future. As if figuring it out would cushion the blow. But the future is always changing. The future is the home of our deepest fears and wildest hopes. But one thing is certain when it finally reveals itself: the future is never the way we imagined it.

(From GREY'S ANATOMY)

There's something to be said about a glass half full.

2009-07-06T22:11:00.007-03:00

I have an aunt who whenever she poured anything for you she would say "Say when". My aunt would say "Say when" and of course, we never did. We don't say "when" because there's something about the possibility of more. More tequila, more love, more anything. More is better.

.
There's something to be said about a glass half full. About knowing when to say "when". I think it's a floating line, a barometer of need and desire. And it's entirely up to the individual, and depends on what's being poured.

Sometimes, all we want is a taste and at other times there's no such thing as enough. The glass is bottomless. All we want is more.

(From GREY'S ANATOMY)

De Nile!

2009-07-06T21:44:00.002-03:00

Sometimes reality has a way of sneaking up and biting us in the ass. When the dam bursts, all you can do is swim. The world of pretend is a cage, not a cocoon. We can only lie to ourselves for so long. Sooner or later we have to put aside our denial and face the world; head on, guns blazing. De Nile. It's not just a river in Egypt, it's a freakin' ocean. -- So how do you keep from drowning in it?

(GREY'S ANATOMY)

The dragons in our lives

2009-07-06T20:04:00.002-03:00

"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love."

(Rainer Maria Rilke)

There is a story about the Greek Gods.

2009-07-03T20:14:00.001-03:00

They were bored so they invented human beings. They were still bored, and for that reason, they invented love. Suddenly, they weren't bored any longer. So, they decided to try love for themselves. And that's why they invented laughter, so they could stand it.

(From FEAST OF LOVE)

If tomorrow never comes

2009-07-02T16:49:00.005-03:00

A couple of hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin shared with the world the secret of his success: Never leave that to tomorrow, he said, which you can do today. This is the man who discovered electricity. You'd think more of us would listen to what he had to say.

I don't know why we put things off, but if I had to guess, I'd have to say it has a lot to do with fear. Fear of failure, fear of rejection. Sometimes the fear is just of making a decision, because what if you're wrong? What if you're making a mistake you can't undo?

Whatever it is we're afraid of, one thing holds true: That by the time the pain of not doing a thing gets worse than the fear of doing it, it can feel like we're carrying around a big tumor.

The early bird catches the worm.

A stitch in time saves nine.

He who hesitates is lost.

We can't pretend we haven't been told. We've all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time! The damn poets urging us to seize the day...

Still sometimes we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes and learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today's possibility under tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore.

Until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin really meant: That knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping, and that even the biggest failure, even the worst, most intractable mistake, beats the hell out of never trying.

(From GREY'S ANATOMY)

You see?

2008-01-29T17:28:00.002-02:00

It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward.

(Lewis Carroll)