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

think

...we accept the love we think we deserve.

Perks of Being a Wallflower [excerpt]
Stephen Chobsky

Funeral Blues [excerpt]

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

Funeral Blues [excerpt]
W.H. Auden

Wander, lust.

I wasn’t feeling so good at all that day and figured, what the hell, let’s just see what happens if I do it. And so, there I went and did it.

“What are you doing exactly?” she said.
“I wanted to see what you’d do.”
“What?”
“Well, I wanted to do it, too, don’t get me wrong.”
“Excuse me?”
“I wanted to do it,” I explained, “and also I was curious to see what you’d do. After I did it, obviously.”
“Oh.”
“Exactly.”

My hand, by the way, was still on her thigh. I couldn’t believe it. Countless times I’d been on the subway like this, moving through tunnels like this, seated next to a woman like her: so wretchedly beautiful I assumed, frankly, that she could grind all of my life’s problems (and there were many) into a fine, invisible powder. And every time, sitting there, I had the same simple thought: If only you knew me, really knew me, the kind of person I am. Then you’d let me touch your thigh. And everything would be at least decent.

She said, “I can’t believe you actually did that.”
“Neither can I.”
“But you really did. You still are.”
“Are you upset?”
“I should be.”
“But you’re not?”
“I’m upset with myself, for not being upset enough,” she said. “I mean, I really should be.”
“But my hand on your thigh, this you’re okay with?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“You don’t look all that upset. I’d remove it otherwise.”
She said, “You don’t even know what I look like when I’m upset.”

That killed me.


borrowed from Black Book
Wander, lust. [excerpt]
David Amsden

simple...and...impossible

He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy.

Everything is Illuminated
Jonathan Safran Foer

when a thought takes shape in words.

sent to me by d. via MySpace

The pressure disappeared with the first word he put on paper. He thought--while his hand moved rapidly--what a power there was in words; later, for those who heard them, but first for the one who found them; a healing power, a solution, like the breaking of a barrier. He thought, perhaps the basic secret the scientists have never discovered, the first fount of life, is that which happens when a thought takes shape in words.

The Fountain Head
Ayn Rand

...a capacity for living

There was something about Jewel Lut that sank into men's flesh the way heat did. It wasn't just that she was pretty, had a beautiful body, moved in a loose, languid way that made you picture her naked no matter what she was wearing. No, there was more to it. Jewel, never the brightest girl in town and not even the most charming, had something in her eyes that none of the women Elgin ever met had; it was a capacity for living, for taking moments – no matter how small or inconsequential - and squeezing every last thing you could out of them. Jewel gobbled up life, dove into it like it was a cool pond cut in the shade of the mountain on the hottest day of the year.

Running out of Dog
Dennis Lehane

I'll meet you there.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

-Rumi

Virginia Tech

borrowed from MzMullerz

Money

Money don’t make the man, but how you made the money does.

Mannish Boy
Chuck D. and The Electric MudKats

The Moths

There’s a kind of white moth, I don’t know
what kind, that glimmers
by mid-May
in the forest, just
as the pink mocassin flowers
are rising.

If you notice anything,
it leads you to notice
more
and more.

And anyway
I was so full of energy.
I was always running around, looking
at this and that.

If I stopped
the pain
was unbearable.

If I stopped and thought, maybe
the world
can’t be saved,
the pain
was unbearable.

Finally, I noticed enough.
All around me in the forest
the white moths floated.

How long do they live, fluttering
in and out of the shadows?

You aren’t much, I said
one day to my reflection
in a green pond, and grinned.

The wings of the moths catch the sunlight
and burn
so brightly.

At night, sometimes,
they slip between the pink lobes
of the moccasin flowers and lie there until dawn,
motionless
in those dark halls of honey.

The Moths
Mary Oliver

the terror of indecision

The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision.

Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon

chaos, control. chaos, control

Kandinsky, Composition VIII

a desire limited to one woman

Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundera

the trick in life

From Goldie...

Clearly the trick in life is to die young as late as possible.

William Sloane Coffin

scenes of her without me

It’s not her company I need, but to know that she won’t need mine, or that she won’t not need it. I imagine scenes of her without me, and I become so jealous. She will marry and have children and touch what I could never approach – all things that should make me happy. I cannot tell her this dream, of course, but I want to so desperately. She is the only thing that matters.

Everything Is Illuminated
Jonathan Safran Foer

A rose is a rose...

A rose is a rose
and the poem equals it
if it be well made….


The Pink Locust [excerpt]
William Carlos Williams

it's indifference

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.

Elie Weisel

The Crime of Indifference

The crime of indifference to evil is as reprehensible as evil itself. [...] if we have the opportunity to protest the deeds of the entire world, and we do not, we, too, are guilty of the crimes.

From Bondage to Liberation: A Jewish Response to Genocide
Sarah Burrows

in vain.

US Forces launched their assault to retake Fallujah on Nov. 7, 2004.This passage has been borrowed from the journal of Marine CPL. Ian Stewart.

Journal Entry Nov. 6, 2004

The battalion commander came to talk to us. He told us it will be a tough fight. Some of these buildings are rigged to blow. Suicide bombers will be out and IEDs (improvised explosive devices) will be on the street.

I am not so much scared as I am VERY AFRAID of the unknown. […] If I don’t get to write again, I would say I died too early. I haven’t done enough in my life. I haven’t gotten to experience enough. Though I hope I haven’t gone in vain.

Stewart, 21, was ambushed and killed in Fallujah on Dec. 12.