An Excerpt from a Dream

Twinkling emerald eyes quickly flickered between a few arguably cruel observations, each review more flawed than the last. Stopping at a blonde curl she again decided the locks were simply too fine and definitely too thin and her skin needed a spa day or two. In truth, she possessed timeless, classic good looks with the wisdom and wit of a girl twice her age. The beauty, all of fourteen years, had the heart of a lioness and the spirit of an angelic steward of all things good and true. So to say her self-image was in need of a reality check was in fact quite the dramatic understatement. Thankfully a mysterious traveler-turned-house guest, a mercurial talking cat, and two new friends were all in store to help do just that.

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The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre —
To be redeemed from fire by fire. 

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire. 

~TS Eliot, Four Quartlets

Dear DS,

I remember your bright blue eyes warmly smiled at me from across the room the first time we met. You were so friendly and genuine and full of energy.  I don’t normally open up to people straight away but for some reason with you it was easy, being friends for us came easy, didn’t it? Every time we hung out was more fun than the last, and I always wished we could hang out more often.  You had so much to offer the world, it was too soon for you to leave us. I wish you had found a way out of the sadness so you could have stayed here. I know the way you left was something you’d brag about to your old buddies if  you could—it was so very Jim Morrison of  you.  I hope you rest up well and come back in your next life with a fierce determination to not let anyone or anything stop you from living the life you want and giving the gift of your spirit to those fortune enough to receive it. I do count myself as so blessed to have spent those precious moments with you, sharing a little bit of ourselves. Next time don’t give up, okay? I love you. Always will.

Lesli

Everybody Knows (cover) - Elizabeth & the Catapult

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded

Everybody knows with their fingers crossed

Everybody knows the war is over

Everybody knows the good guys lost

Everybody knows the fight was fixed

The poor stay poor and the rich get rich

That's how it goes

Everybody knows

Everybody knows the boat is leaking

Everybody knows the captain lied

Everybody has this broken feeling

Like their daddy or their dog just died

Everybody's talking to their pockets

Everybody wants a box of chocolates

And a long stem rose

Everybody knows

Cause everybody knows

Everybody knows

That's how it goes

Everybody knows

Cause everybody knows

Everybody knows

That's how it goes

Everybody knows

Everybody knows that it's now or never

Everybody knows that it's me or you

Everybody knows that you live forever

When you've done a line or two

Everybody knows that the deal is rotten

Old Black Joe's still pickin cotton

For your ribbons and your bows

Everybody knows

Cause everybody knows that you're in trouble

Everybody knows what you've been through

From the bleeding frost of Calgree

To the beach in Malibu

Everybody knows you're coming apart

Take one last look at the sacred heart

Before it blows

Everybody knows

Cause everybody knows

Everybody knows

That's how it goes

Everybody knows

Cause everybody knows

Everybody knows

That's how it goes

Everybody knows

Everybody knows

Everybody knows

That's how it goes

Everybody knows

<3

During my student days I read Henry David Thoreau's essay On Civil Disobedience for the first time. Here, in this courageous New Englander's refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery's territory into Mexico, I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance.
Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest. The teachings of Thoreau came alive in our civil rights movement; indeed, they are more alive than ever before. Whether expressed in a sit-in at lunch counters, a freedom ride into Mississippi, a peaceful protest in Albany, Georgia, a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. these are outgrowths of Thoreau's insistence that evil must be resisted and that no moral man can patiently adjust to injustice.

-The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr

<3

“Give up defining yourself - to yourself or to others. You won't die. You will come to life. And don't be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it's their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don't be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.”

~Eckhart Tolle

It is right it should be so:
Man was made for joy and woe;
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.
Under every grief and pine
Runs a joy with silken twine.
The babe is more than swaddling bands,
Throughout all these human lands;
Tools were made and born were hands,
Every farmer understands.
Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity;

~William Blake, excerpt from "Auguries of Innocence"

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

-C.S. Lewis

non semper erit aestas

When the going gets tough, this chick apparently cries. For the life of me I can’t figure out why when something entirely shitty happens I miss the chance to expand and instead expend tears upon (sometimes) cleverly worded (mostly elementary) insults. For example, the tow company removes my car from a parking space (devoid of any red stripe or visible No Parking sign) and proceeds to charge $400 for the 45 minute luxurious stay in their creepy and excessively isolated parking lot and how do I react? Well, by sobbing while very loudly labeling the two young men working that Sunday 3am shift as the legalized mafia, of course. In my defense I did at one point apologize to the gentlemen for my rudeness, however structured the apology’s scope to include only those insults that may have been incorrectly perceived as racism due to the two employee’s coincidental Russian (?) accents. By the way, this apology preceded a quick educational lesson on what karma is. Good grief, even I want to punch myself in the face.

I knew when I moved from Texas to California to live without friends or family that I’d be forced to face certain harsh realities of life. That was kind of the entire point of the move, actually: to learn what I knew not before and to grow from it. But I was expecting life lessons on running a household and money, not lessons about myself. I was not expecting to learn that deep down, I’m apparently a spoiled 14 year old girl who throws full out tantrums when denied her way. That’s a reality I don’t exactly know how to handle. Washing my mouth out with soap seems silly when the desired end result is lasting change. I expect all I can do is pray I react graciously the next time I’m faced with any entirely shitty situation and perhaps in the meantime send the tow company in downtown San Diego a basket of muffins. All Russians like muffins, right?

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

-Marianne Williamson

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

~Albert Einstein

"That I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my
enemy–all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea, the very fiend himself–that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved–what
then?”

~Carl Jung

"New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but

rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his

problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is

his whole world for the moment."

~Max Planck

"You do not belong to you. You belong to the universe. The significance of you will forever remain obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your significance if you apply yourself to converting all your experience to highest advantage of others. You and all men are here for the sake of other men."
~R. Buckminster Fuller

It is vain to do with more what can be done with less.
-William of Occam

Eyes the Same by Morning Teleportation

And are our eyes the same
You know the air transforms ya
We're skipping through the haze
We make love in the morning

Through thick airplane windows
I never thought I'd see the day
When seeing your face was as vital as all the suns rays
And all of the dreams that you told me about in the dark
Well I had some crazy ones too but I think they are gone now

Stand still is talking to your cosmic mystery
The mark of your milk from a limb that your senses can't see

And are our eyes the same
You know the air transforms ya
We're skipping through the haze
We make love in the morning

Well whims time lapse is fast and slow
Raw sound pushes air you know
Holy is your art
If it brings you closer to the ones you know

And are our eyes the same
You know the air transforms ya
We're skipping through the haze
We make love in the morning
And are our eyes the same
You know the air transforms ya
We're skipping through the haze
We make love in the morning

Through thick airplane windows
I never thought I'd see the day
When seeing your face was as vital as all the suns rays
And all of the dreams that you told me about in the dark
Well I had some crazy ones too but I think they are gone now

Stand still is talking to your cosmic mystery
The mark of your milk from a limb that your senses can't see

And are our eyes the same
You know the air transforms ya
We're skipping through the haze
We make love in the morning

Well whims time lapse is fast and slow
Raw sound pushes air you know
Holy is your art
If it brings you closer to the ones you know

And are our eyes the same
You know the air transforms ya
We're skipping through the haze
We make love in the morning

Kris Lucas: Why can't I do the things I want to do? There's so much I know I'm capable of that I never actually do. Why is that?
Arlen Faber: The trick is to realize that you're always doing what you want to do... always. Nobody's making you do anything. Once you get that, you see that you're free and that life is really just a series of choices. Nothing happens to you. You choose.

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.

~Helen Keller