One semi-decent pic out of a hundred isn't too bad.

Originally uploaded by B!.

Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Originally uploaded by B!.

Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music -- the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.

Originally uploaded by B!.

Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers but dress in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their appetite.

George Eliot

Originally uploaded by B!.

"Hold on to the center and make up your mind to rejoice in this paradise called life."
Lao-tzu

Remembrance
And you wait, keep waiting for that one thing
which would infinitely enrich your life:
the powerful, uniquely uncommon,
the awakening of dormant stones,
depths that would reveal you to yourself.
In the dusk you notice the book shelves
with their volumes in gold and in brown;
and you think of far lands you journeyed,
of pictures and of shimmering gowns
worn by women you conquered and lost.
And it comes to you all of a sudden:
That was it! And you arise, for you are
aware of a year in your distant past
with its fears and events and prayers.

Cheeky!

"I'll be here all week folks!"

MKR portraying Sakajawea

Originally uploaded by B!.

Quietly he steps around me like a ghost

Hoping I don't hear his gently padded steps

His legs ache from the weight of it all

The weight of the truth that he is not willing to tell

That he's not willing to live

Originally uploaded by B!.

A Charm invests a face

A Charm invests a face
Imperfectly beheld-
The Lady dare not lift her Veil
For fear it be dispelled-

But peers beyond her mesh-
And wishes-and denies-
Lest Interview-annul a want
That Image-satisfies-

Originally uploaded by B!.

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.

Missing Neruda

Originally uploaded by B!.

It’s good to feel you are close to me in the night, love,
invisible in your sleep, intently nocturnal,
while I untangle my worries
as if they were twisted nets.
Withdrawn, your heart sails through dream,
but your body, relinquished so, breathes
seeking me without seeing me perfecting my dream
like a plant that seeds itself in the dark.
Rising, you will be that other, alive in the dawn,
but from the frontiers lost in the night,
from the presence and the absence where we meet ourselves,
something remains, drawing us into the light of life
as if the sign of the shadows had sealed
its secret creatures with flame.

p.neruda

Originally uploaded by B!.

I love people. I love my family, my children . . . but inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up.

Pearl S. Buck

Originally uploaded by B!.

The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.

If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.

Mitsugi Saotome