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And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

Kahlil Gibran

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Two souls affixed

Carrying the universe

with all their hopes and dreams

Bound to one another

by their shared secret string

Flying hand in hand

breathlessly content

tightly intertwined

not caring where the time went.

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You and I are essentially infinite choice-makers. In every moment of our existence, we are in that field of all possibilities where we have access to an infinity of choices.

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What is the opposite of two? A lonely me, a lonely you. ~Richard Wilbur

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Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed.

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If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
Marcus Aurelius:

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Lost in the forest...

Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,a cracked bell, or a torn heart.

Something from far off it seemed deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,a shout muffled by huge autumns,by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves.

Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance climbed up through my conscious mind

as if suddenly the roots I had left behind cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood---and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.

Pablo Neruda

Introspection

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A friend sent me a thought that loosely summarized said, that in order to get out of our own heads and quit focusing on our problems and the negatives in our lives, we need to surround ourselves with other people. Remind ourselves of the fact that life goes on, that there's light on the other side etc. And while I agree with that, I was thinking that there's the flip side to that thought. That if you stay so busy so as to avoid yourself, it's just as bad as focusing on the negative. I don't fear spending time with myself nor do I relish it. I suppose there is a balance to be found. Anyway, Rilke came to mind as he was a great admirer of one's need for solitude. And since he's one of my favorite writers...here's a quote for your weekend.
"I am learning to see. I don't know why it is, but everything penetrates more deeply into me and does not stop at the place where until now it always used to finish. I have an inner self of which I was ignorant. Everything goes thither now, what happens there I do not know."

Thanks to My Big Sis for the Great Quote!

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Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.
Dr. Seuss

It's Brutus!

Go Bucks!!!

I have been remiss in my attention given to my blog

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This painting deserves a better canvas than a computer. The detail is beautiful.

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Love, What Is Love

LOVE - what is love? A great and aching heart;
Wrung hands; and silence; and a long despair.
Life - what is life? Upon a moorland bare
To see love coming and see love depart.

Robert Louis Stevenson

You gotta love Mark Twain

It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.

And What Did You Learn Today?

A Clear Midnight

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,

Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the

lesson done,

Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the

themes thou

lovest best.

Night, sleep, and the stars.

~Walt Whitman~

I Am Not Yours

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"I Am Not Yours"

I am not yours, not lost in you,
Not lost, although I long to be
Lost as a candle lit at noon,
Lost as a snowflake in the sea.

You love me, and I find you still
A spirit beautiful and bright,
Yet I am I, who long to be
Lost as a light is lost in light.

Oh plunge me deep in love -- put out
My senses, leave me deaf and blind,
Swept by the tempest of your love,
A taper in a rushing wind.

Sarah Teasdale

Thanks to an Old Friend for the Forward

Love After Love

The time will come when,

with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door,

in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

And say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was yourself.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

~Derek Wolcott~

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It is a terrible thing
To be so open:
it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.

Sylvia Plath

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"For those who intend to discover and to understand, not to indulge in conjectures and soothsaying, and rather than contrive imitation and fabulous worlds plan to look deep into the nature of the real world and to dissect it -- for them everything must be sought in things themselves."
Sir Francis Bacon