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.