"The most wasted of all days is one without laughter."
e.e. cummings

"We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit." - e.e. cummings

"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting." — e.e. cummings

Deliverance is not for me in renunciation.
I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.

Thou ever pourest for me the fresh draught of thy wine of various
colours and fragrance, filling this earthen vessel to the brim.

My world will light its hundred different lamps with thy flame
and place them before the altar of thy temple.

No, I will never shut the doors of my senses.
The delights of sight and hearing and touch will bear thy delight.

Yes, all my illusions will burn into illumination of joy,
and all my desires ripen into fruits of love.

Senses - Rabindranath Tagore

If thou speakest not I will fill my heart with thy silence and endure it.
I will keep still and wait like the night with starry vigil
and its head bent low with patience.

The morning will surely come, the darkness will vanish,
and thy voice pour down in golden streams breaking through the sky.

Then thy words will take wing in songs from every one of my birds' nests,
and thy melodies will break forth in flowers in all my forest groves.

Patience - Rabindranath Tagore

Say of him what you please, but I know my child's failings.
I do not love him because he is good, but because he is my
little child.
How should you know how dear he can be when you try to weigh
his merits against his faults?
When I must punish him he becomes all the more a part of my
being.
When I cause his tears to come my heart weeps with him.
I alone have a right to blame and punish, for he only may
chastise who loves.

The Judge - Rabindranath Tagore

Man in the mirror

Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.
The Catcher in the Rye
Mr. Antolini in Chapter 24

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.
The Catcher in the Rye
Holden Caulfield in Chapter 22

And now you're mine. Rest with your dream in my dream. Love and pain and work should all sleep, now. The night turns on its invisible wheels, and you are pure beside me as a sleeping amber. No one else, Love, will sleep in my dreams. You will go, we will go together, over the waters of time. No one else will travel through the shadows with me, only you, evergreen, ever sun, ever moon. Your hands have already opened their delicate fists and let their soft drifting signs drop away; your eyes closed like two gray wings, and I move after, following the folding water you carry, that carries me away. The night, the world, the wind spin out their destiny. Without you, I am your dream, only that, and that is all. Sonnet LXXXI - Pablo Neruda

When each day is the same as the next, it's because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives everyday that the sun rises.

'The Alchemist' by Paulo Coelho

‘Marie, let’s suppose that two firemen go into a forest to put out a small fire. Afterwards, when they emerge and go over to a stream, the face of one is all smeared with black, while the other man’s face is completely clean. My question is this: which of the two will wash his face?

‘That’s a silly question. The one with the dirty face of course.’

‘No, the one with the dirty face will look at the other man and assume that he looks like him. And, vice versa, the man with the clean face will see his colleague covered in grime and say to himself: I must be dirty too. I’d better have a wash.’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘I’m saying that, during the time I spent in the hospital, I came to realize that I was always looking for myself in the women I loved. I looked at their lovely, clean faces and saw myself reflected in them. They, on the other hand, looked at me and saw the dirt on my face and, however intelligent or self-confident they were, they ended up seeing themselves reflected in me thinking that they were worse than they were. Please, don’t let that happen to you.’

'The Zahir' by Paulo Coelho

"...life can seem either very long or very short, according to how you live it."
'The Devil and Miss Prym' by Paulo Coelho

My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.- John Lennon

Dengar...

Ornella Vanoni feat. Jovanotti- Io Più te

Giusy Ferreri - Stai Fermo Li

Listen..

Tracy Chapman - Fast Car

The Scream by Edvard Munch

Pick the day. Enjoy it - to the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come... The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present - and I don't want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future. - Audrey Hepburn

"When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations,
it's not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end." - Bella Swan 'Twilight'

2-Cow Model for Government Definitions

SOCIALISM: You have two cows. You keep one and give the other to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The Government takes both and shares the milk with you and your neighbour.

FACISM: You have two cows. You give the milk to the government and they sell it back to you.

NAZI-ISM: Government shoots you and takes both cows.

CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You milk them and pour the lot down the drain to keep the price up.

SADISM: You have two cows. You shoot them both and drown yourself in the milk.

APARTHEID: You have two cows. You give the black cow's milk to the white cow to drink and don't milk the white cow.

WELFARE STATE: You have two cows. You milk them and give them the milk to drink.

ANARCHISM: You have two cows. The cows shoot you and milk each other.

BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. You fill in 17 forms in triplicate and you don't have time to milk them.

UNITED NATIONS: You have two cows. Russia vetoes the farmer from milking them. Britain and France veto the cows from milking the farmers. USA abstains.

IDEALISM: You have two cows. You marry and your wife milks them.

REALISM: You have two cows. You get married and you still milk them.

COMMONSENSE: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself.
~Anais Nin~

Veronika Decides To Die
Paulo Coelho

'You say they create their own reality,' said Veronika, 'but what is reality?'

'It's what the majority deems it to be. It's not necessarily the best or the most logical, but it's the one that has become adapted to the desires of society as a whole. You see this thing i've got round my neck?'

'You mean your tie?'

'Exactly. Your answer is the logical, coherent answer an absolutely normal person would give: it's a tie! A madman, however, would say that what I have round my neck is a ridiculous, useless bit of coloured cloth tied in a very complicated way, and which makes it harder to get air into your lungs and difficult to turn your neck. I have to be careful when I'm anywhere near a fan, or I could be strangled by this bit of cloth.

If a mad person were to ask me what this tie is for, I would have to say, absolutely nothing. It's not even purely decorative, since nowadays it's become a symbol of slavery, power, aloofness. The only really useful function a tie serves is the sense of relief when you get home and take it off; you feel as if you've freed yourself from something, though quite what you don't know.

'But does that sense of relief justify the existence of ties? No. Nevertheless, if I were to ask a madman and a normal person what this is, the sane person would say: a tie. It doesn't matter who's correct, what matters is who's right.'

Certain people, in their eagerness to construct a world which no external threat can penetrate, build exaggeratedly high defenses against the outside world, against new people, new places, different experiences, and leave their inner world stripped bare. It is there that Bitterness begins its irrevocable work.

The will was the main target of Bitterness (or Vitriol, as Dr. Igor preferred to call it). The people attacked by this malaise began to lose all desire, and within a few years, they became unable to leave their world, where they had spent enormous reserves of energy constructing high walls in order to make reality what they wanted it to be.

In order to avoid external attack, they had also deliberately limited internal growth, they continued going to work, watching television, having children, complaining about the traffic, but these things happened automatically, unaccompanied by any particular emotion, because, after all, everything was under control.

The great problem with poisoning by Bitterness was that the passions -- hatred, love, despair, enthusiasm, curiosity -- also ceased to manifest themselves. After a while, the embittered person felt no desire at all. They lacked the will either to live or to die, that was the problem.

That is why embittered people find heroes and madmen a perennial source of fascination, for they have no fear of life or death. Both heroes and madmen are indifferent to danger and will forge ahead regardless of what other people say. The madman committed suicide, the hero offered himself up to martyrdom in the name of a cause, but both would die, and the embittered would spend many nights and days remarking on the absurdity and the glory of both. It was the only moment when the embittered person had the energy to clamber up his defensive walls and peer over at the world outside, but then his hands and feet would grow tired and he would return to daily life.

"If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger."
— Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights)

Labels are for filing. Labels are for clothing. Labels are not for people.

~Martina Navratilova~

Leyla's Poem

Every night I empty my heart, but by morning it's full again
Slow droplets of you sleep in through the night's soft caress
At dawn I overflow with thoughts of us
An aching pleasure that gives me no respite
Love cannot be contained
The neat packaging of desire splits asunder
Spilling crimson through my days
Long, languishing days that are now bruised tender with
yearning
Spent searching for a fingerprint, a scent, a breath you left behind.

I'm just trying to keep my feet on the

ground

Trying to stop the world spinning round
I can't speak

Cause I might say

What I know I can't betray
So tell me, tell me the way from here.
I heard you speak, I heard you cry

But nothing came, no reason why
Did you say

That you cared

Was it just a breath we shared?
Please tell me, tell me, tell me the way

from here.
Don't tell me, tell me, don’t say what I

want to hear.

~Tell me - Raiomond Mirza/Shamim Sarif~

listen..

Yiruma - River Flows in You

The intellectual is always showing off,
the lover is always getting lost.
The intellectual runs away.
afraid of drowning;
the whole business of love
is to drown in the sea.
Intellectuals plan their repose;
lovers are ashamed to rest.
The lover is always alone.
even surrounded by people;
like water and oil, he remains apart.
The man who goes to the trouble
of giving advice to a lover
get nothing. He's mocked by passion.
Love is like musk. It attracts attention.
Love is a tree, and the lovers are its shade.

~Jalaluddin Rumi~

Let go of your worries
and be completely clear-hearted,
like the face of a mirror
that contains no images.
If you want a clear mirror,
behold yourself
and see the shameless truth,
which the mirror reflects.
If metal can be polished
to a mirror-like finish,
what polishing might the mirror
of the heart require?
Between the mirror and the heart
is this single difference:
the heart conceals secrets,
while the mirror does not.

-Jalaluddin Rumi-

Saddest Poem by Pablo Neruda

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's.
As she once belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.

she was standin by a broken tree

her hands are all twisted

she was pointin at me

i was damned by light coming

over, as she spoke with a voice

that disrupted the sky

she said walk on over here

to this bit of shade

i will wrap you in my arms

and you'll know you've been saved

let me sign

let me sign

~Rob Pattinson~

"Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius"
~Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart~

Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.