I opened a book

Credit: Jenny Yu 

I opened a book and
in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I've left my chair, my
house, my road,
My town and my world behind me.

I'm wearing the cloak,
I've slipped on the ring,
I've swallowed the
magic potion.
I've fought with a dragon,
dined with a king
And dived in a bottomless ocean.

I opened a book and
made some friends.
I shared their tears
and laughter
And followed their road
with its bumps and bends
To the happily ever after.

I finished my book
and out I came.
The cloak can no
longer hide me.
My chair and my house
are just the same,
But I have a book inside me.

~ Julia Donaldson

I opened a book

Credit: Jenny Yu 

I opened a book and
in I strode.
Now nobody can find me.
I've left my chair, my
house, my road,
My town and my world behind me.

I'm wearing the cloak,
I've slipped on the ring,
I've swallowed the
magic potion.
I've fought with a dragon,
dined with a king
And dived in a bottomless ocean.

I opened a book and
made some friends.
I shared their tears
and laughter
And followed their road
with its bumps and bends
To the happily ever after.

I finished my book
and out I came.
The cloak can no
longer hide me.
My chair and my house
are just the same,
But I have a book inside me.

~ Julia Donaldson

Quote on trust

Trust in someone means that we no longer have to protect ourselves. We believe we will not be hurt or harmed by the other, at least not deliberately. We trust his or her good intentions, though we know we might be hurt by the way circumstances play out between us. We might say that hurt happens; it's a given of life. Harm is inflicted; it's a choice some people make.

~ David Richo

Quote on trust

Trust in someone means that we no longer have to protect ourselves. We believe we will not be hurt or harmed by the other, at least not deliberately. We trust his or her good intentions, though we know we might be hurt by the way circumstances play out between us. We might say that hurt happens; it's a given of life. Harm is inflicted; it's a choice some people make.

~ David Richo

You Can't Have It All

Source: Facebook/Favim 

But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,
though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam
that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys
until you realize foam's twin is blood.
You can have the skin at the center between a man's legs,
so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind,
glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness,
never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who'll tell you
all roads narrow at the border.
You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,
and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave
where your father wept openly. You can't bring back the dead,
but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands
as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful
for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful
for Mozart, his many notes racing one another towards joy, for towels
sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts,
for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream,
the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand.
You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed,
at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping
of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.
You can't count on grace to pick you out of a crowd
but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump,
how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards,
until you learn about love, about sweet surrender,
and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind
as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you,
you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond
of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas
your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.
There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother's,
it will always whisper, you can't have it all,
but there is this.

~ Barbara Ras

You Can't Have It All

Source: Facebook/Favim 

But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,
you can have it August and abundantly so. You can have love,
though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam
that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys
until you realize foam's twin is blood.
You can have the skin at the center between a man's legs,
so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind,
glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness,
never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who'll tell you
all roads narrow at the border.
You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,
and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave
where your father wept openly. You can't bring back the dead,
but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands
as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful
for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful
for Mozart, his many notes racing one another towards joy, for towels
sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts,
for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream,
the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand.
You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed,
at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping
of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.
You can't count on grace to pick you out of a crowd
but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump,
how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards,
until you learn about love, about sweet surrender,
and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind
as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you,
you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond
of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas
your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.
There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother's,
it will always whisper, you can't have it all,
but there is this.

~ Barbara Ras

Quote on Monday

Source: Unknown/Favim 

In my life-long study of human beings, I have found that no matter how hard they try, they have found no way yet to prevent the arrival of Monday morning. And they do try, of course, but Monday always comes, and all the drones have to scuttle back to their dreary workday lives of meaningless toil and suffering.

~ Jeff Lindsay

Quote on Monday

Source: Unknown/Favim 

In my life-long study of human beings, I have found that no matter how hard they try, they have found no way yet to prevent the arrival of Monday morning. And they do try, of course, but Monday always comes, and all the drones have to scuttle back to their dreary workday lives of meaningless toil and suffering.

~ Jeff Lindsay

Live Blindly

 Source: Unknown/Favim 

Live blindly and upon the hour. The Lord,
Who was the Future, died full long ago.
Knowledge which is the Past is folly. Go,
Poor, child, and be not to thyself abhorred.
Around thine earth sun-winged winds do blow
And planets roll; a meteor draws his sword;
The rainbow breaks his seven-coloured chord
And the long strips of river-silver flow:
Awake! Give thyself to the lovely hours.
Drinking their lips, catch thou the dream in flight
About their fragile hairs' aerial gold.
Thou art divine, thou livest,—as of old
Apollo springing naked to the light,
And all his island shivered into flowers.

~ Trumbull Stickney

Live Blindly

 Source: Unknown/Favim 

Live blindly and upon the hour. The Lord,
Who was the Future, died full long ago.
Knowledge which is the Past is folly. Go,
Poor, child, and be not to thyself abhorred.
Around thine earth sun-winged winds do blow
And planets roll; a meteor draws his sword;
The rainbow breaks his seven-coloured chord
And the long strips of river-silver flow:
Awake! Give thyself to the lovely hours.
Drinking their lips, catch thou the dream in flight
About their fragile hairs' aerial gold.
Thou art divine, thou livest,—as of old
Apollo springing naked to the light,
And all his island shivered into flowers.

~ Trumbull Stickney

Quote on what a king does

Source: Pxleyes

A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field. A king does not dine while his men go hungry, nor sleep when they stand at watch upon the wall. A king does not command his men's loyalty through fear nor purchase it with gold; he earns their love by the sweat of his own back and the pains he endures for their sake. That which comprises the harshest burden, a king lifts first and sets down last. A king does not require service of those he leads but provides it to them. He serves them, not they him....A king does not expend his substance to enslave men, but by his conduct and example makes them free.

~  Steven Pressfield

Quote on what a king does

Source: Pxleyes

A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field. A king does not dine while his men go hungry, nor sleep when they stand at watch upon the wall. A king does not command his men's loyalty through fear nor purchase it with gold; he earns their love by the sweat of his own back and the pains he endures for their sake. That which comprises the harshest burden, a king lifts first and sets down last. A king does not require service of those he leads but provides it to them. He serves them, not they him....A king does not expend his substance to enslave men, but by his conduct and example makes them free.

~  Steven Pressfield

Amnesiac

Source: Unknown/Favim

The night fog's come down.
The known edge of the world unselved,
the white-out against the window

and the radio histing the full
atmospheric scale between stations
comprehensively out of tune.

Someone's talking out there
but the night fog's come down:
a car comes and goes out of nowhere,

lighting the invisible and its afterglow.
Off, there's a town: its solids,
its muted soundings below

the sudden broadsides and dark
enormity of the nightlife,
the near miss of the eyes,

below the rough selvage of road
or cloud where you are seeing the wood
through the trees the fog has made

ragged, open-ended. Somewhere
in your house there is a forest.
Someone is talking there.

~ Jane Griffiths

Amnesiac

Source: Unknown/Favim

The night fog's come down.
The known edge of the world unselved,
the white-out against the window

and the radio histing the full
atmospheric scale between stations
comprehensively out of tune.

Someone's talking out there
but the night fog's come down:
a car comes and goes out of nowhere,

lighting the invisible and its afterglow.
Off, there's a town: its solids,
its muted soundings below

the sudden broadsides and dark
enormity of the nightlife,
the near miss of the eyes,

below the rough selvage of road
or cloud where you are seeing the wood
through the trees the fog has made

ragged, open-ended. Somewhere
in your house there is a forest.
Someone is talking there.

~ Jane Griffiths

Quote on celebration

Credit: Joel Brown of Axis Dance Company 

Celebration when your plan is working? Anyone can do that. But when you realize that the story of your life could be told a thousand different ways, that you could tell it over and over as a tragedy, but you choose to call it an epic, that's when you start to learn what celebration is. When what you see in front of you is so far outside of what you dreamed, but you have the belief, the boldness, the courage to call it beautiful instead of calling it wrong, that's celebration.

~ Shauna Niequist

Quote on celebration

Credit: Joel Brown of Axis Dance Company 

Celebration when your plan is working? Anyone can do that. But when you realize that the story of your life could be told a thousand different ways, that you could tell it over and over as a tragedy, but you choose to call it an epic, that's when you start to learn what celebration is. When what you see in front of you is so far outside of what you dreamed, but you have the belief, the boldness, the courage to call it beautiful instead of calling it wrong, that's celebration.

~ Shauna Niequist

Leeks

Source: OregonLive.com

We planted the seeds in the spring
And up they came innocuous as crabgrass.
The tomatoes soon lorded over them,
And even the jalapenos, sad lumps
Hanging from their limbs like mittens
From children playing in the snow.

They stayed that way all summer,
And before the frosts of November
We pulled them up, declaring failure,
And used them as scallions in salads.
Winter white covered the clay soil,
Like layers of dust in an unused room.

Till spring bullied us into wakefulness:
Thunder and lightning and the gray rain
That heartens depressives with reasons
For misery, then out of the sodden ground,
Tiny blades twisting in the wound
Of the old season. It was shocking:

Nothing worse than discarded hopes
Butting in when you have given up,
Thrusting faith into comfortable loss,
Demanding your heart again because
This time they've made a proper start,
This time they will rise in triumph.

~ Richard Spilman

Leeks

Source: OregonLive.com

We planted the seeds in the spring
And up they came innocuous as crabgrass.
The tomatoes soon lorded over them,
And even the jalapenos, sad lumps
Hanging from their limbs like mittens
From children playing in the snow.

They stayed that way all summer,
And before the frosts of November
We pulled them up, declaring failure,
And used them as scallions in salads.
Winter white covered the clay soil,
Like layers of dust in an unused room.

Till spring bullied us into wakefulness:
Thunder and lightning and the gray rain
That heartens depressives with reasons
For misery, then out of the sodden ground,
Tiny blades twisting in the wound
Of the old season. It was shocking:

Nothing worse than discarded hopes
Butting in when you have given up,
Thrusting faith into comfortable loss,
Demanding your heart again because
This time they've made a proper start,
This time they will rise in triumph.

~ Richard Spilman

Quote on dreams

Credit: Free by Eman333 (Geoffrey Jones)

...life was made up of a succession of dreams, some few to be realized, most to be set aside as time went on, one or two to persist for a lifetime. It was knowing when to abandon a dream, perhaps, that mattered and distinguished the successful people in life from the sad, embittered persons who never moved on from the first of life's great disappointments. Or from the airy dreamers who never really lived life at all.

~ Mary Balogh

Quote on dreams

Credit: Free by Eman333 (Geoffrey Jones)

...life was made up of a succession of dreams, some few to be realized, most to be set aside as time went on, one or two to persist for a lifetime. It was knowing when to abandon a dream, perhaps, that mattered and distinguished the successful people in life from the sad, embittered persons who never moved on from the first of life's great disappointments. Or from the airy dreamers who never really lived life at all.

~ Mary Balogh

Now You Must Go Wherever You Wish

Source: Unknown/Favim

In moments like this, when he shows what appears to be a purely
accidental grace, it seems
almost believable: death has changed him.

See how,
               as if having muscled finally a way clear of the dark,
a dark stripped of the very stars without which the night sky's
distance—and with it, the crossing of distance, meaning hope, risk,
ambition—wouldn't even be knowable,
                                                         he steps into the light, then out of it?

~ Carl Phillips

Now You Must Go Wherever You Wish

Source: Unknown/Favim

In moments like this, when he shows what appears to be a purely
accidental grace, it seems
almost believable: death has changed him.

See how,
               as if having muscled finally a way clear of the dark,
a dark stripped of the very stars without which the night sky's
distance—and with it, the crossing of distance, meaning hope, risk,
ambition—wouldn't even be knowable,
                                                         he steps into the light, then out of it?

~ Carl Phillips

Quote on what she learned

Source: Unknown/Favim

It did no good to cry, she had learned that early on. She had also learned that every time she tried to make someone aware of something in her life, the situation just got worse. Consequently it was up to her to solve her problems by herself, using whatever methods she deemed necessary.

~ Stieg Larsson

Quote on what she learned

Source: Unknown/Favim

It did no good to cry, she had learned that early on. She had also learned that every time she tried to make someone aware of something in her life, the situation just got worse. Consequently it was up to her to solve her problems by herself, using whatever methods she deemed necessary.

~ Stieg Larsson

All Dharmas Are Marked with Emptiness

Source: pond5

I'm talking now about the destitute and the wild-eyed, I'm
talking about the lady who made the head of the Virgin Mary
out of cut up pieces of magazines and broken glass and a
can of carpenter's glue—and then there's the girl I know
who works in the supermarket, who printed an entire anthology
of poems on a single eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheet of
Xerox paper and folded a hundred copies down to wallet size
and passed them out to anyone who dared look her in the eye.
You know what I mean: there are all those lonely, desperate,
weird minds—yours among them for all I know—and the
Dharma is everywhere, books and words and people thinking,
beat-up notebooks from the dollar store, scribbling the world
into them—a man has a mystery, a woman has an adventure,
the kids are banging rhymes together like tin cans full of
old nails. Where's it all going, this clatter, this wonder,
this rant against anguish? I tell myself to stay calm. I tell
myself to step back and take a breath. I twist and shift in my
tall black chair. I can hear the city coming in through the kitchen's
window-screens. Night birds, crickets in the unseasonable heat,
some might say dead souls keening in their rivers of fire or
choirs of angels out in the eucalyptus trees, but beyond it all you
hear nothing but the deep nothing—or maybe that's the far-off roar
of a motorcycle: If the night is just right, if the moment is perfect,
you know as well as I do that you don't need to tell the difference.

~ Frank X. Gaspar

All Dharmas Are Marked with Emptiness

Source: pond5

I'm talking now about the destitute and the wild-eyed, I'm
talking about the lady who made the head of the Virgin Mary
out of cut up pieces of magazines and broken glass and a
can of carpenter's glue—and then there's the girl I know
who works in the supermarket, who printed an entire anthology
of poems on a single eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheet of
Xerox paper and folded a hundred copies down to wallet size
and passed them out to anyone who dared look her in the eye.
You know what I mean: there are all those lonely, desperate,
weird minds—yours among them for all I know—and the
Dharma is everywhere, books and words and people thinking,
beat-up notebooks from the dollar store, scribbling the world
into them—a man has a mystery, a woman has an adventure,
the kids are banging rhymes together like tin cans full of
old nails. Where's it all going, this clatter, this wonder,
this rant against anguish? I tell myself to stay calm. I tell
myself to step back and take a breath. I twist and shift in my
tall black chair. I can hear the city coming in through the kitchen's
window-screens. Night birds, crickets in the unseasonable heat,
some might say dead souls keening in their rivers of fire or
choirs of angels out in the eucalyptus trees, but beyond it all you
hear nothing but the deep nothing—or maybe that's the far-off roar
of a motorcycle: If the night is just right, if the moment is perfect,
you know as well as I do that you don't need to tell the difference.

~ Frank X. Gaspar

Telling the truth

Source: Photobucket/Favim

“A Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, once said: ‘Dijiste media verdad. Dirán que mientes dos veces si dices la otra mitad.’”
“Translated means…”
“You told a half-truth. They’ll say you lie twice when you tell the other half.”

~ Olga Núñez Miret

Telling the truth

Source: Photobucket/Favim

“A Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, once said: ‘Dijiste media verdad. Dirán que mientes dos veces si dices la otra mitad.’”
“Translated means…”
“You told a half-truth. They’ll say you lie twice when you tell the other half.”

~ Olga Núñez Miret

In Summer

Source: The New Indian Express

Oh, summer has clothed the earth
In a cloak from the loom of the sun!
And a mantle, too, of the skies' soft blue,
And a belt where the rivers run.

And now for the kiss of the wind,
And the touch of the air's soft hands,
With the rest from strife and the heat of life,
With the freedom of lakes and lands.

I envy the farmer's boy
Who sings as he follows the plow;
While the shining green of the young blades lean
To the breezes that cool his brow.

He sings to the dewy morn,
No thought of another's ear;
But the song he sings is a chant for kings
And the whole wide world to hear.

He sings of the joys of life,
Of the pleasures of work and rest,
From an o'erfull heart, without aim or art;
'T is a song of the merriest.

O ye who toil in the town,
And ye who moil in the mart,
Hear the artless song, and your faith made strong
Shall renew your joy of heart.

Oh, poor were the worth of the world
If never a song were heard,—
If the sting of grief had no relief,
And never a heart were stirred.

So, long as the streams run down,
And as long as the robins trill,
Let us taunt old Care with a merry air,
And sing in the face of ill.

~  Paul Laurence Dunbar

In Summer

Source: The New Indian Express

Oh, summer has clothed the earth
In a cloak from the loom of the sun!
And a mantle, too, of the skies' soft blue,
And a belt where the rivers run.

And now for the kiss of the wind,
And the touch of the air's soft hands,
With the rest from strife and the heat of life,
With the freedom of lakes and lands.

I envy the farmer's boy
Who sings as he follows the plow;
While the shining green of the young blades lean
To the breezes that cool his brow.

He sings to the dewy morn,
No thought of another's ear;
But the song he sings is a chant for kings
And the whole wide world to hear.

He sings of the joys of life,
Of the pleasures of work and rest,
From an o'erfull heart, without aim or art;
'T is a song of the merriest.

O ye who toil in the town,
And ye who moil in the mart,
Hear the artless song, and your faith made strong
Shall renew your joy of heart.

Oh, poor were the worth of the world
If never a song were heard,—
If the sting of grief had no relief,
And never a heart were stirred.

So, long as the streams run down,
And as long as the robins trill,
Let us taunt old Care with a merry air,
And sing in the face of ill.

~  Paul Laurence Dunbar

Quote on the end of the world

Source: Pastoralia

We are a species of animal which is bringing about the end of the world we were born into. Not out of evil or malice, or not mainly, but because of a lopsided mixture of extraordinary cleverness, extraordinary greed, extraordinary proliferation of our own kind, and a biologically built-in short-sightedness. Every day I read of a new extinction, of the bleaching of the coral and the disappearance of the codfish the thin child caught in the North Sea with a hook and line, when there were always more where those came from. I read of human projects that destroy the world they are in, ingeniously, ambitiously engineered oil wells in deep water, a road across the migration paths of the beasts in the Serengeti park, farming of asparagus in Peru, helium balloons to transport the crops more cheaply, emitting less carbon while the farms themselves are dangerously depleting the water that the vegetables, and the humans and other creatures, depend on.

~ A. S. Byatt

Quote on the end of the world

Source: Pastoralia

We are a species of animal which is bringing about the end of the world we were born into. Not out of evil or malice, or not mainly, but because of a lopsided mixture of extraordinary cleverness, extraordinary greed, extraordinary proliferation of our own kind, and a biologically built-in short-sightedness. Every day I read of a new extinction, of the bleaching of the coral and the disappearance of the codfish the thin child caught in the North Sea with a hook and line, when there were always more where those came from. I read of human projects that destroy the world they are in, ingeniously, ambitiously engineered oil wells in deep water, a road across the migration paths of the beasts in the Serengeti park, farming of asparagus in Peru, helium balloons to transport the crops more cheaply, emitting less carbon while the farms themselves are dangerously depleting the water that the vegetables, and the humans and other creatures, depend on.

~ A. S. Byatt

Insomnia

Source: Unknown/Favim

But it's really fear you want to talk about
and cannot find the words
so you jeer at yourself

you call yourself a coward
you wake at 2 a.m. thinking failure,
fool, unable to sleep, unable to sleep

buzzing away on your mattress with two pillows
and a quilt, they call them comforters,
which implies that comfort can be bought

and paid for, to help with the fear, the failure
your two walnut chests of drawers snicker, the bookshelves mourn
the art on the walls pities you, the man himself beside you

asleep smelling like mushrooms and moss is a comfort
but never enough, never, the ceiling fixture lightless
velvet drapes hiding the window

traffic noise like a vicious animal
on the loose somewhere out there—
you brag to friends you won't mind death only dying

what a liar you are—
all the other fears, of rejection, of physical pain,
of losing your mind, of losing your eyes,

they are all part of this!
Pawprints of this! Hair snarls in your comb
this glowing clock the single light in the room

~ Alicia Ostriker

Insomnia

Source: Unknown/Favim

But it's really fear you want to talk about
and cannot find the words
so you jeer at yourself

you call yourself a coward
you wake at 2 a.m. thinking failure,
fool, unable to sleep, unable to sleep

buzzing away on your mattress with two pillows
and a quilt, they call them comforters,
which implies that comfort can be bought

and paid for, to help with the fear, the failure
your two walnut chests of drawers snicker, the bookshelves mourn
the art on the walls pities you, the man himself beside you

asleep smelling like mushrooms and moss is a comfort
but never enough, never, the ceiling fixture lightless
velvet drapes hiding the window

traffic noise like a vicious animal
on the loose somewhere out there—
you brag to friends you won't mind death only dying

what a liar you are—
all the other fears, of rejection, of physical pain,
of losing your mind, of losing your eyes,

they are all part of this!
Pawprints of this! Hair snarls in your comb
this glowing clock the single light in the room

~ Alicia Ostriker

Quote on beet

Credit: Pierre Obendrauf / Postmedia News Service

The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.

Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets.

The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip...

The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.

The beet was Rasputin's favorite vegetable. You could see it in his eyes.

~ Tom Robbins

Quote on beet

Credit: Pierre Obendrauf / Postmedia News Service

The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.

Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets.

The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip...

The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.

The beet was Rasputin's favorite vegetable. You could see it in his eyes.

~ Tom Robbins

Yeast

IMG_3531_u.JPG by creativosinlimites

Each morning from the dim secrecy
of the school kitchen, that single scent
sweetens the day—rectangles already baking,
legions of bread on long silver trays.
Like history, it won’t stop happening.
Bread spreading its succulent flesh
whatever we learn or unlearn
in the room with faded snapping maps.

Once the map flipped up so hard
Greenland caught me on the jaw
and I had to go to the health room.

Lying on the small cot,
closing my eyes under the ice bag,
I could smell the bread better from there.

Sometimes it seemed so obvious.
I should have been a slab of butter,
the knife that cuts, the door
to the oven.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Yeast

IMG_3531_u.JPG by creativosinlimites

Each morning from the dim secrecy
of the school kitchen, that single scent
sweetens the day—rectangles already baking,
legions of bread on long silver trays.
Like history, it won’t stop happening.
Bread spreading its succulent flesh
whatever we learn or unlearn
in the room with faded snapping maps.

Once the map flipped up so hard
Greenland caught me on the jaw
and I had to go to the health room.

Lying on the small cot,
closing my eyes under the ice bag,
I could smell the bread better from there.

Sometimes it seemed so obvious.
I should have been a slab of butter,
the knife that cuts, the door
to the oven.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Quote on manipulation

Source: Unknown/Favim

If you are an approval addict, your behaviour is as easy to control as that of any other junkie. All a manipulator need do is a simple two-step process: Give you what you crave, and then threaten to take it away. Every drug dealer in the world plays this game.

~  Harriet B. Braiker

Quote on manipulation

Source: Unknown/Favim

If you are an approval addict, your behaviour is as easy to control as that of any other junkie. All a manipulator need do is a simple two-step process: Give you what you crave, and then threaten to take it away. Every drug dealer in the world plays this game.

~  Harriet B. Braiker

…for the Uninvited Ghost

Source: suzywire.tumblr,com/Favim

There are sufficient years to put behind
The hot-cheeked misdemeanors of the past;
The blunders form naïve youth that, at last,
Are rendered harmless by a wiser mind.
So are there miles enough in number, too,
To keep removed from things one grieves the most;
Though if I tarry sometimes with your ghost,
It’s fair exchange for my bequest to you
For, as you mark the highways, something of me
Sings in the broken line; if it could speak
In words, this voice, might it not also break
(Remember, after all, you didn’t love me)—
And tell you what, perhaps, you have been fearing?
“I am not gone; I’ve only stopped appearing.

~ Adrienne Jones

…for the Uninvited Ghost

Source: suzywire.tumblr,com/Favim

There are sufficient years to put behind
The hot-cheeked misdemeanors of the past;
The blunders form naïve youth that, at last,
Are rendered harmless by a wiser mind.
So are there miles enough in number, too,
To keep removed from things one grieves the most;
Though if I tarry sometimes with your ghost,
It’s fair exchange for my bequest to you
For, as you mark the highways, something of me
Sings in the broken line; if it could speak
In words, this voice, might it not also break
(Remember, after all, you didn’t love me)—
And tell you what, perhaps, you have been fearing?
“I am not gone; I’ve only stopped appearing.

~ Adrienne Jones

Quote on what is in a heart

Melting heart sketch by Jennybicky

So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one in the end—not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we must. Perhaps we could not bear to be so naked, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart. When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall. You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman’s second glance, a child’s apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words I have something to tell you, a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother’s papery ancient hand in the thicket of your hair, the memory of your father’s voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children.

~ Brian Doyle

Quote on what is in a heart

Melting heart sketch by Jennybicky

So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one in the end—not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we must. Perhaps we could not bear to be so naked, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart. When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall. You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman’s second glance, a child’s apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words I have something to tell you, a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother’s papery ancient hand in the thicket of your hair, the memory of your father’s voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children.

~ Brian Doyle

Sonnet of the Sweet Complaint

Eye Catching by Pika Chakula

Never let me lose the marvel
of your statue-like eyes, or the accent
the solitary rose of your breath
places on my cheek at night.

I am afraid of being, on this shore,
a branchless trunk, and what I most regret
is having no flower, pulp, or clay
for the worm of my despair.

If you are my hidden treasure,
if you are my cross, my dampened pain,
if I am a dog, and you alone are my master,

never let me lose what I have gained,
and adorn the branches of your river
with leaves of my estranged Autumn.

~  Federico García Lorca

Sonnet of the Sweet Complaint

Eye Catching by Pika Chakula

Never let me lose the marvel
of your statue-like eyes, or the accent
the solitary rose of your breath
places on my cheek at night.

I am afraid of being, on this shore,
a branchless trunk, and what I most regret
is having no flower, pulp, or clay
for the worm of my despair.

If you are my hidden treasure,
if you are my cross, my dampened pain,
if I am a dog, and you alone are my master,

never let me lose what I have gained,
and adorn the branches of your river
with leaves of my estranged Autumn.

~  Federico García Lorca

Quote on choice

Source: Unknown/Favim

Isn’t that how it is when you must decide with your heart? You are not just choosing one thing over another. You are choosing what you want. And you are also choosing what somebody else does not want, and all the consequences that follow. You can tell yourself, That’s not my problem, but those words do not wash the trouble away. Maybe it is no longer a problem in your life. But it is always a problem in your heart. And I can tell you, that afternoon, when I knew what I wanted, I cried, just like a child who cannot explain why she is crying.

~ Amy Tan

Quote on choice

Source: Unknown/Favim

Isn’t that how it is when you must decide with your heart? You are not just choosing one thing over another. You are choosing what you want. And you are also choosing what somebody else does not want, and all the consequences that follow. You can tell yourself, That’s not my problem, but those words do not wash the trouble away. Maybe it is no longer a problem in your life. But it is always a problem in your heart. And I can tell you, that afternoon, when I knew what I wanted, I cried, just like a child who cannot explain why she is crying.

~ Amy Tan

The Room

Source: Unknown/Favim

Through that window—all else being extinct
Except itself and me—I saw the struggle
Of darkness against darkness. Within the room
It turned and turned, dived downward. Then I saw
How order might—if chaos wished—become:
And saw the darkness crush upon itself,
Contracting powerfully; it was as if
It killed itself, slowly: and with much pain.
Pain. The scene was pain, and nothing but pain.
What else, when chaos draws all forces inward
To shape a single leaf?…
                    For the leaf came
Alone and shining in the empty room;
After a while the twig shot downward from it;
And from the twig a bough; and then the trunk,
Massive and coarse; and last the one black root.
The black root cracked the walls. Boughs burst
          the window:
The great tree took possession.
                    Tree of trees!
Remember (when time comes) how chaos died
To shape the shining leaf. Then turn, have courage,
Wrap arms and roots together, be convulsed
With grief, and bring back chaos out of shape.
I will be watching then as I watch now.
I will praise darkness now, but then the leaf.

~ Conrad Aiken

The Room

Source: Unknown/Favim

Through that window—all else being extinct
Except itself and me—I saw the struggle
Of darkness against darkness. Within the room
It turned and turned, dived downward. Then I saw
How order might—if chaos wished—become:
And saw the darkness crush upon itself,
Contracting powerfully; it was as if
It killed itself, slowly: and with much pain.
Pain. The scene was pain, and nothing but pain.
What else, when chaos draws all forces inward
To shape a single leaf?…
                    For the leaf came
Alone and shining in the empty room;
After a while the twig shot downward from it;
And from the twig a bough; and then the trunk,
Massive and coarse; and last the one black root.
The black root cracked the walls. Boughs burst
          the window:
The great tree took possession.
                    Tree of trees!
Remember (when time comes) how chaos died
To shape the shining leaf. Then turn, have courage,
Wrap arms and roots together, be convulsed
With grief, and bring back chaos out of shape.
I will be watching then as I watch now.
I will praise darkness now, but then the leaf.

~ Conrad Aiken