Softly Inspiring Quotes

After all," Anne had said to Marilla once, "I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.

I will love you always. When this red hair is white, I will still love you. When the smooth softness of youth is replaced by the delicate softness of age, I will still want to touch your skin. When your face is full of the lines of every smile you have ever smiled, of every surprise I have seen flash through your eyes, when every tear you have ever cried has left its mark upon your face,I will treasure you all the more, because I was there to see it all. I will share your life with you, Meredith, and I will love you until the last breath leaves your body or mine.

I am a happy camper so I guess I’m doing something right. Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.

Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place

and i said to my body. softly. ‘i want to be your friend.’ it took a long breath. and replied ‘i have been waiting my whole life for this.

He looked at her. She was pretty still, with thick hair and soft eyes, and she moved so gracefully that it almost seemed as though she were gliding. He'd seen beautiful women before, though, women who caught his eye, but to his mind, they usually lacked the traits he found most desirable. Traits like intelligence, confidence, strength of spirit, passion, traits that inspired others to greatness, traits he aspired to himself.

A choir is made up of many voices, including yours and mine. If one by one all go silent then all that will be left are the soloists. Don’t let a loud few determine the nature of the sound. It makes for poor harmony and diminishes the song.

The point of simple living, for me has got to be: A soft place to land A wide margin of error Room to breathe Lots of places to find baseline happiness in each and every day

Tread softly, Brathe peacefully, Laugh hysterically.

We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who's right and who's wrong. We do that with the people who are closest to us and we do it with political systems, with all kinds of things that we don't like about our associates or our society. It is a very common, ancient, well-perfected device for trying to feel better. Blame others....Blaming is a way to protect your heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in yourself. Rather than own that pain, we scramble to find some comfortable ground.

The blade sings to me. Faintly, so soft against my ears, its voice calms my worries and tells me that one touch will take it all away. It tells me that I just need to slide a long horizontal cut, and make a clean slice. It tells me the words that I have been begging to hear: this will make it ok.

It’s the hard things that break; soft things don’t break. It was an epiphany I had today and I just wonder why it took me so very, very long to see it! You can waste so many years of your life trying to become something hard in order not to break; but it’s the soft things that can’t break! The hard things are the ones that shatter into a million pieces!

Politeness is the first thing people lose once they get the power.

Water is fluid, soft & yielding but water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield ... what is soft is strong.

Your suffering needs to be respected. Don't try to ignore the hurt, because it is real. Just let the hurt soften you instead of hardening you. Let the hurt open you instead of closing you. Let the hurt send you looking for those who will accept you instead of hiding from those who reject you.

Men love a submissive woman, Damon said simply. Even when they say the don't. There's just something about a beautiful, soft woman looking to them to protect and take care of them that inspires a man to greatness.

A man is born gentle and weak; at his death he is hard and stiff. All things, including the grass and trees, are soft and pliable in life; dry and brittle in death. Stiffness is thus a companion of death; flexibility a companion of life. An army that cannot yield will be defeated. A tree that cannot bend will crack in the wind. The hard and stiff will be broken; the soft and supple will prevail.

I am so fond of tea that I could write a whole dissertation on its virtues. It comforts and enlivens without the risks attendant on spirituous liquors. Gentle herb! Let the florid grape yield to thee. Thy soft influence is a more safe inspirer of social joy.

When tough times come, it is particularly important to offset them with much gentle softness. Be a pillow.

The personal, as everyone’s so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here – it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide from under it with a wink and a grin. If you want justice, you will have to claw it from them. Make it personal. Do as much damage as you can. Get your message across. That way, you stand a better chance of being taken seriously next time. Of being considered dangerous. And make no mistake about this: being taken seriously, being considered dangerous marks the difference - the only difference in their eyes - between players and little people. Players they will make deals with. Little people they liquidate. And time and again they cream your liquidation, your displacement, your torture and brutal execution with the ultimate insult that it’s just business, it’s politics, it’s the way of the world, it’s a tough life and that it’s nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal.

If it's not exactly like you thought it would be, you think it's a failure. What about the spectrum of colors in between.

Silk is a fine, delicate, soft, illuminating, beautiful substance. But you can never rip it! If a man takes this tender silk and attempts to tear it, and cannot tear it, is he in his right mind to say "This silk is fake! I thought it was soft, I thought it was delicate, but look, I cannot even tear it" ? Surely, this man is not in his right mind! The silk is not fake! This silk is 100% real. It's the man who is stupid!

Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me" Last night the rain spoke to me slowly, saying, what joy to come falling out of the brisk cloud, to be happy again in a new way on the earth! That’s what it said as it dropped, smelling of iron, and vanished like a dream of the ocean into the branches and the grass below. Then it was over. The sky cleared. I was standing under a tree. The tree was a tree with happy leaves, and I was myself, and there were stars in the sky that were also themselves at the moment, at which moment my right hand was holding my left hand which was holding the tree which was filled with stars and the soft rain— imagine! imagine! the wild and wondrous journeys still to be ours.

My soul is wrapped in harsh repose, Midnight descends in raven-colored clothes, But soft... behold! A sunlight beam Butting a swath of glimmering gleam. My heart expands, 'tis grown a bulge in it, Inspired by your beauty... Effulgent.

Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A beauty bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air - explode softly - and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth - boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap, either - not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination.

I'm holding up, Lord willing and the creek don't rise.

When I left Queen's my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don't know what lies around the bend, but I am going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination of its own, that bend, Marilla. I wonder how the road beyond it goes - what there is of green glory and soft, checkered light and shadows - what new landscapes - what new beauties - what curves and hills and valleys farther on.

He was a clot looking for a place to happen, a splinter of bone hunting a soft organ to puncture, a lonely lunatic cell looking for a mate - they would set up housekeeping and raise themselves a cozy little malignant tumor.

So the next time you see a person with a compose face and a soft voice, remember that inside her mind she might be solving an equation, composing a sonnet, designing a hat. She might, that is, be deploying the powers of quiet.

LXXIX When I die, I want your hands on my eyes. I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands to pass their freshness over me once more. I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny. I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep. I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you to sniff the sea's aroma that we loved together, to continue to walk on the sand we walk on. I want what I love to continue to live, and you whom I love and sang above everything else. to continue to flourish, full-flowered. So that you can reach everything my love directs you to. So that my shadow can travel along in your hair, so that everything can learn the reason for my song.

Be a light unto the world, and hurt it not. Seek to build not destroy. Bring My people home. How? By your shining example. Seek only Godliness. Speak only in truthfulness. Act only in love. Live the Law of Love now and forever more. Give everything require nothing. Avoid the mundane. Do not accept the unacceptable. Teach all who seek to learn of Me. Make every moment of your life an outpouring of love. Use every moment to think the highest thought, say the highest word, do the highest deed. In this, glorify your Holy Self, and thus too, glorify Me. Bring peace to the Earth by bringing peace to all those whose lives you touch. Be peace. Feel and express in every moment your Divine Connection with the All, and with every person, place, and thing. Embrace every circumstance, own every fault, share every joy, contemplate every mystery, walk in every man’s shoes, forgive every offense (including your own), heal every heart, honor every person’s truth, adore every person’s God, protect every person’s rights, preserve every person’s dignity, promote every person’s interests, provide every person’s needs, presume every person’s holiness, present every person’s greatest gifts, produce every person’s blessing, pronounce every person’s future secure in the assured love of God. Be a living, breathing example of the Highest Truth that resides within you. Speak humbly of yourself, lest someone mistake your Highest Truth for boast. Speak softly, lest someone think you are merely calling for attention. Speak gently, that all might know of Love. Speak openly, lest someone think you have something to hide. Speak candidly, so you cannot be mistaken. Speak often, so that your word may truly go forth. Speak respectfully, that no one be dishonored. Speak lovingly, that every syllable may heal. Speak of Me with every utterance. Make of your life a gift. Remember always, you are the gift! Be a gift to everyone who enters your life, and to everyone whose life you enter. Be careful not to enter another’s life if you cannot be a gift. (You can always be a gift, because you always are the gift—yet sometimes you don’t let yourself know that.) When someone enters your life unexpectedly, look for the gift that person has come to receive from you…I HAVE SENT YOU NOTHING BUT ANGELS.

Watching my parents I've learnt a lesson many do not recognize. True love is not signaled by romantic, candle light dinners, red roses glistening with dew, or even Valentine's day celebrations. While these things may accompany our feelings, love is truly more than all those! Love is being with your spouse even when its not pleasing. Sometimes, love is walking down the hall, with your spouse hanging onto your shoulders and walking at a turtle's pace down the hall, just because surgery made life a burden. Love is patient, love is kind, love is Jesus! May we always remember love is not always tied in bows!

The young Centurion, who had been completely still throughout, said very softly, as though to himself, "Greater love hath no man--" and Justin thought it sounded as though he were quoting someone else.

I dislike interaction. The less I say the better I feel. I was naturally a loner. I didn’t want conversation, or to goanywhere. I didn’t understand other people who wanted to share their emotions. Parties sickened me. I was drawn to all the wrong things: I was lazy , I didn’t have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non - being, and I accepted it. I didn’t make for an interesting person. I didn’t want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone. Relationships never worked with me. I alwayslost interest. I simply disliked people, crowds, anywhere, except at my readings.

I don't understand this irony - valuable things like cars, gold, diamond are made up of hard materials but most valuable things like money, contracts and books are made up of soft paper.

...one had to expect very little—almost nothing—from life, Aaron knew, one had to be grateful, not always trying to seize the days like some maniac of living, but to give oneself up, be seized by the days, the months and years, be taken up in the froth of sun and moon, some pale and smoothie-ed river-cloud of life, a long, drawn-out, gray sort of enlightenment, so that when it was time to die, one did not scream swear words and knock things down, did not make a scene, but went easily with understanding and tact, and quietly, in a lightly pummeled way, having been consoled–having allowed to be consoled–by the soft, generous, worthlessness of it all, having allowed to be massaged by the daily beating of life, instead of just beaten.

Formerly I believed books were made like this: a poet came, lightly opened his lips, and the inspired fool burst into song – if you please! But it seems, before they can launch a song, poets must tramp for days with callused feet, and the sluggish fish of the imagination flounders softly in the slush of the heart. And while, with twittering rhymes, they boil a broth of loves and nightingales, the tongueless street merely writhes for lack of something to shout or say

I want the key", he said. "The key to the universe. To life. To the future and the past. To love and hate. Truth. God. It's there. Inside of us. In the genome. The answer to every question. If I can find it. That's what I want," he finished, softly. "I want the key.

And I pull her in, press my forehead to hers. “Those who do not understand you,” I say softly, “will always doubt you.

What a strange thing it is to wake up to a milk-white overcast June morning! The sun is hidden by a thick cotton blanket of clouds, and the air is vapor-filled and hazy with a concentration of blooming scent. The world is somnolent and cool, in a temporary reprieve from the normal heat and radiance. But the sensation of illusion is strong. Because the sun can break through the clouds at any moment . . . What a soft thoughtful time. In this illusory gloom, like a night-blooming flower, let your imagination bloom in a riot of color.

War is not just the shower of bullets and bombs from both sides, it is also the shower of blood and bones on both sides.

I once believed soft, warm, beautiful things could never flourish in an environment of hard concrete and cold, dark bricks.

I never even heard her voice." And after a while: "It is a strange grief." Softly: "To die of nostalgia for something you never lived.

Red Rover, Red Rover, send Ardor right over," Eliza said. They laughed. The asteroid was a little bigger now, brighter, and still they went on laughing. Laughing in the face of what they couldn't predict or change or control. Would it be fire and brimstone? Would it be Armageddon? Or would it be a second chance? Eliza held tight to her friends, laughing, and a pair of hands land soft as feathers on her shoulders, like the hands of a ghost, laughing and laughing as Ardor swept along its fated course, laughing and through that laughter, praying. Praying for forgiveness. Praying for grace. Praying for mercy. 0

My voice was a bare rasp of fear. "In the weaving room, the women say it's never been this bad before..." "They always say that when things get difficult," she answered softly. Then she sat up suddenly as though coming fully awake. Reaching down, she took my chin in her hand and tipped my face to look up at hers. "Remember, Gwen, no matter who says what, the important thing is to understand what needs to be done, and then do it. No matter how hard it is, or how much pain you feel. It's as simple as that, really. Once you know what you have to do, you just do it.

I praise loudly. I blame softly.

Tread softly, Breathe peacefully, Laugh hysterically.” ― Nelson Mandela

Of course, I quite agree that the Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it begins in the dismay I have been describing, and it is no use at all trying to go on to that comfort without first going through that dismay. In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is one thing you cannot get looking for it. If you look for the truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth-only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and (the) in the end, despair.

The thing about learning how to fight is that— some of us are not born with that desire. They say some are born fighters; but they don't usually point out that others just aren't. Some of us are forced by life to take up arms and fight. Many of us are. The art lies in knowing when to wield those arms and when to put them down. I don't think it's a matter of pretending to be ideally unharmed by life and untouched by darkness; because that is hypocrisy. Rather, I think it is a matter of being true to your truth and learning when to fight and learning when to be soft. Hopefully, our soft moments in life will largely outweigh, outrank, and outrun our fighting.

From his soft fur, golden and brown, Goes out so sweet a scent, one night I might have been embalmed in it By giving him one little pet. He is my household's guardian soul; He judges, he presides, inspires All matters in his royal realm; Might he be fairy? or a god? When my eyes, to this cat I love Drawn as by a magnet's force, Turn tamely back upon that appeal, And when I look within myself, I notice with astonishment The fire of his opal eyes, Clear beacons glowing, living jewels, Taking my measure, steadily.

I was always reaching for love, but it turns out love doesn't involve reaching. I was always dreaming of the big love, the ultimate love, the love that would sweep me off my feet or 'break open the hard shell of my lesser self' (Daisaku Ikeda). The love that would bring on my surrender. The love that would inspire me to give everything. As I lay there, it occurred to me that while I had been dreaming of this big love, this ultimate love, I had, without realizing it, been giving and receiving love for most of my life. As with the trees that were right in front of me, I had been unable to value what sustained me, fed me, and gave me pleasure. And as with the trees, I was so busy waiting for and imagining and reaching and dreaming and preparing for this huge big love that I had totally missed the beauty and perfection of the soft-boiled eggs and Bolivian quinoa.

But then I realized, they weren't calling out for their own mothers. Not those weak women, those victims. Drug addicts, shopaholics, cookie bakers. They didn't mean the women who let them down, who failed to help them into womanhood, women who let their boyfriends run a train on them. Bingers, purgers, women smiling into mirrors, women in girdles, women on barstools. Not those women with their complaints and their magazines, controlling women, women who asked, what's in in for me? Not the women watching TV while they made dinner, women who dyed their hair blond behind closed doors trying to look twenty-three. They didn't mean the mothers washing dishes wishing they'd never married, the ones in the ER, saying they fell down the stairs, not the ones in prison saying lonliness is the human condition, get used to it. The wanted the real mother, the blood mother, the great womb, mother of fierce compassion, a woman large enough to hold all the pain, to carry it away. What we needed was someone who bled, someone deep and rich as a field, a wide-hipped mother, awesome, immense, women like huge soft couches, mothers coursing with blood, mothers big enough, wide enough for us to hid in, to sink down to the bottom of, mothers who would breathe for us when we could not breathe anymore, who would fight for us, who would kill for us, die for us.

Cause-and-effect assumes history marches forward, but history is not an army. It is a crab scuttling sideways, a drip of soft water wearing away stone, an earthquake breaking centuries of tension. Sometimes one person inspires a movement, or her words do decades later, sometimes a few passionate people change the world; sometimes they start a mass movement and millions do; sometimes those millions are stirred by the same outrage or the same ideal, and change comes upon us like a change of weather. All that these transformations have in common is that they begin in the imagination, in hope.

Today I began to criticise myself and look at myself with a judgmental eye... but then instead of going all out in that direction, I stopped and I began to understand me. And then I began to be patient with me. And then I began to feel a softness in the middle of my chest. So then I concluded that I can understand and be patient with me, just like how I am always understanding and being patient with everyone else. Why? Because I deserve that, and more.

I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn’t have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness; a kind of non-being, and I accepted it. I didn’t make for an interesting person. I didn’t want to be interesting, it was too hard. What I really wanted was only a soft, hazy space to live in, and to be left alone. On the other hand, when I got drunk I screamed, went crazy, got all out of hand. One kind of behavior didn’t fit the other. I didn’t care

Doost", Ahmed voiced. "Doost",he repeated softly,shutting his eyes. The word felt like a caress. "what does it mean?" 'It means "The Friend","The One I Love","the One I Long For".

Warm familiar scents drift softly from the oven, And imprint forever upon our hearts That this is home and that we are loved.

He laughs softly and gazes into my eyes, and it feels like everything stops. The wind stops rustling the grass. We both stop breathing. The only thing that keeps on are the twinkling stars.

That night she dreamed of the deer. Strangely, the animal was holding her. She cuddled close into the soft fur and touched and kissed it gently. In the morning her pillow was wet with tears.

His straight and perfect figure, muscled as the best of the ancient Roman gladiators must have been muscled, and yet with the soft and sinuous curves of a Greek god, told at a glance the wondrous combination of enormous strength with suppleness and speed.

See now, for a good blade, one that will not betray the man in battle, rods of hard and soft iron must be heated and braided together. Then is the blade folded over and hammered flat again, and maybe yet again, many times for the finest blades... So the hard and soft iron are mingled without blending, before the blade is hammered up to its finished form and tempered, and ground to an edge that shall draw blood from the wind. So comes the pattern, like oil and water that mingle but do not mix. Yet it is the strength of the blade, for without the hard iron the blade would bend in battle, and without the soft iron it would break.

We need softness in the world. When you go to sleep at night, do you lay your head on a brick?

They were all slender, frail creatures with wondering eyes and soft fluttery voices. But they were all made out of thin invisible steel.

Be yourself! Don’t try to fabricate your personality in the guise of impressing others.

Even the softest and sweetest heart was made by design for extreme battle.

Like a flower, be soft, loving, kind, and beautiful, but never lose the courage to bloom.

The whole world's a canvas for our sketches Horizons as far as the mind stretches A work of art with soft edges Waiting to come alive Now's the time

The clouds had gathered, within the last half-hour. The light was dull; the distance was dim. The lovely face of Nature met us, soft and still and colourless – met us without a smile.

No matter what we do, each instant contains infinite choices. What we choose to think, to say or to hear creates what we feel in the present moment, it conditions the quality of our communication and in the end the quality of our everyday life. Beliefs and attitudes are made of thoughts. Negative thoughts can be changed and by doing so we create for ourselves more pleasant inner states and have a different impact on the people around us

It’s breaking my heart the way this world is so mean to people with pure intentions and soft hearts. With time I’ve seen much cruelty towards good people that instead of being cherished, they are actually being used. Instead of being appreciated and valued, they are being taken for granted and considered as an option or a backup plan. Because whenever those ones are needed they gonna be there and their doors are always wide open. So there is no need to wonder why this world is only getting filthier and uglier. Since we have always been ruining everything beautiful left around . even those rare, kind and loving souls in our life...

We can not, therefore, reserve as sacred anything that is not truth and yet we cannot turn from things of truth have inspired us in our everyday lives. We must merely embrace both hard and soft truths that must not be avoided. This does not mean we can reserve for ourselves the right to be self-righteous nor call others self-righteous simply because they disagree with us.

A fact was the hard outer cover of meaning, and meaning was the soft living stuff inside a fact. Fact and meaning were the driving cogs of living. If the gear of fact drove the gear of meaning, then they revolved in opposite directions, but put the gear of fantasy between the two and they both revolved in the same direction. Fantasy was and is important; it leads to heaven knows where, but follow it and see. Sometimes it pays off.

After a while, San Lang said softly, “Something like saving the world, it really doesn’t matter how you do it. But, although brave, it’s foolish.” “Yeah,” Xie Lian agreed. Hua Cheng continued, “Although foolish, it’s brave.

There are two things that may happen to a person: the first is that you become so soft that no one and nothing can break you, and the second is that you become so hard that nothing and no one can break you. Either way you go, the path will be very painful. But herein is the great sadness of it all: that anyone must try to become something that cannot be broken (whether the soft or the hard). Why must we be born into a world where we must spend our lives struggling to become unbreakable?

We slept on mattresses stuffed with the soft seed-heads of dandelions.

Do not let them humble you, he said softly.

I have spread my dreams beneath your feet. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Like a flower, the magical softness of your voice touched my heart.

Enslavement is still enslavement, no matter how soft the chains.

Be a butterfly and always look for kindness, softness and beauties.

Sweep the broom Over sand and stone. Softly, gently, Brush away the dust. Listen to the leaves As they sing in the tree. Peace fills the soul When living well.

Find happiness where you can," she said softly. "It's not just the great big whammo things. Look for the beauty of life in the small things, and you'll be the happiest person alive.

Kissing her was something he'd never grow tired of. It was like drinking warm sunshine or licking the sugary sweetness of honey from a spoon. Smooth, silky-soft, and delicate and ultra feminine. She inspired possessiveness such that he all but screamed that she was his. And the hell of it was she didn't even know it.

Here at our ministry we refuse to present a picture of “gentle Jesus, meek and mild,” a portrait that tugs at your sentiments or pulls at your heartstrings. That’s because we deal with so many people who suffer, and when you’re hurting hard, you’re neither helped nor inspired by a syrupy picture of the Lord, like those sugary, sentimental images many of us grew up with. You know what I mean? Jesus with His hair parted down the middle, surrounded by cherubic children and bluebirds. Come on. Admit it: When your heart is being wrung out like a sponge, when you feel like Morton’s salt is being poured into your wounded soul, you don’t want a thin, pale, emotional Jesus who relates only to lambs and birds and babies. You want a warrior Jesus. You want a battlefield Jesus. You want his rigorous and robust gospel to command your sensibilities to stand at attention. To be honest, many of the sentimental hymns and gospel songs of our heritage don’t do much to hone that image. One of the favorite words of hymn writers in days gone by was sweet. It’s a term that down’t have the edge on it that it once did. When you’re in a dark place, when lions surround you, when you need strong help to rescue you from impossibility, you don’t want “sweet.” You don’t want faded pastels and honeyed softness. You want mighty. You want the strong arm an unshakable grip of God who will not let you go — no matter what.

Unfortunately, life is unfair and not all babies are brought into the world with the same amount of anticipation and affection, as others. No matter what anyone says; we are really not all given an equal start at life. And so what must children be made up of, to come into a world like this one? Children must be made up of silk. They must be brought up with a serenity in their skin but a bulletproof strength in their souls. This is the new breed of children. Ones that are soft to the touch but are truly unbreakable. And unbreakable in a beautiful way; not in a lost way.

The deepest shade of twilight did not send him from his favourite plane-tree. He loved the soothing hour, when the last tints of light die away; when the stars, one by one, tremble through aether, and are reflected on the dark mirror of the waters; that hour, which, of all others, inspires the mind with pensive tenderness, and often elevates it to sublime contemplation. When the moon shed her soft rays among the foliage, he still lingered, and his pastoral supper of cream and fruits was often spread beneath it. Then, on the stillness of night, came the song of the nightingale, breathing sweetness, and awakening melancholy.

The world can be hard, full of trickery, Full of deceit, Full of injustice, Full of pain. But there is an emptiness waiting, my friend--a great glowing emptiness, Soft and fragrant with the essence of peace, The essence of serenity. You are almost there, my friend. The magnificent emptiness is the eternal harbor for your soul. Take my hand, friend. Take my hand and take a step, just one more step, And you are there.

Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head, so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name, like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables like a charm, like a spell. Falling in love is glamorous hell; the crouched, parched heart like a tiger ready to kill; a flame's fierce licks under the skin. Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in. I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine, in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze, staring back from anyone's face, from the shape of a cloud, from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me as I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are on the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream. "You

Do you not pray, Miss Smallwood?' She avoided his gaze. 'No.' 'God is speaking to you every day,' he said softly. 'You might return the favor.' She raised her chin. 'I don't hear Him.' 'Do you listen?' She looked at him, clearly offended, then turned away again. 'I used to pray, until I found God was not listening, at least not to my prayers.' [He] heard the inner voice of caution but barreled ahead. 'He was listening. But He doesn't always answer the way we would like Him to.

Some women are truly beautiful. The light of love shines through their souls. And the world gets drenched in their inimitable light of love. But do not try to dominate them. Let them keep their softness and tenderness.

Amid all the harsh words of a cruel world, let my voice speak out in tenderness. There is an inner light which must be nourished and cannot be replaced with a blind eye. Soft spirits are so much more than the simple result of hopeless romanticism. Each one is the soul of beauty and love combined.

you are a bouquet crafted by artisans you are a garden inspired by Eden not one leaf is set by way of accident not one petal curves by way of chance

You are the softness of the morning dew!

They were all slender, frail creatures with wondering Wes and soft fluttery voices. But they were all made out of thin invisible steel.

Love surrounds, softens and tires violence and force.

The moon always calmed her - something about the way its soft glow broke through, like there was still hope, even surrounded by the darkness.

Let happiness bloom. In the caring love, In the softness of your tender voice, In the nonjudgmental love, In the beauty and pureness of a smile.

Kindness is soft and beautiful like a fresh flower.

Have an enthusiastic mind and a soft, but sweet, heart.

Bloom with hope! Breathe in with hope in your soul. Thrive on with endurance in your heart. Move on with a productive mind. Listen carefully to the soft message of whispering hope.

I am grateful for Divine friends, healing energy, interconnectedness, firm hugs, soft kisses, moments of contentment, and growing wisdom.

She would also be creating her own bridal bouquet. She wanted to feel the fragility and softness of each petal. And to make the single flowers stronger than they’d been separately. Just as she was stronger now, together with people who loved and accepted her.

He sighed. 'Your life is your own,Miss Kingston. We have only one. Don't allow anyone else to dictate to you what you should do with yours.' She blinked and frowned as if she didn't understand what he meant. 'It's yours,' he advised softly. 'Don't waste it on petty conventions or conformity. Swim against the tide if you want to.

Thought of the night*** True fact about humans with true and soft heart...that those who cry while watching someone totaly different in pain...or feel others pain...are the one...who cry least on their on pain...and be strong at their time of facing problems..stay strong...have true heart...gudnyt swtdrmz...:) thoughtofthenight.blogspot.in

I see life as a roadside inn where I have to stay until the coach from the abyss pulls up. I don’t know where it will take me, because I don’t know anything. I could see this inn as a prison, for I’m compelled to wait in it; I could see it as a social centre, for it’s here that I meet others. But I’m neither impatient nor common. I leave who will to stay shut up in their rooms, sprawled out on beds where they sleeplessly wait, and I leave who will to chat in the parlours, from where their songs and voices conveniently drift out here to me. I’m sitting at the door, feasting my eyes and ears on the colours and sounds of the landscape, and I softly sing – for myself alone – wispy songs I compose while waiting. Night will fall on us all and the coach will pull up. I enjoy the breeze I’m given and the soul I was given to enjoy it with, and I no longer question or seek. If what I write in the book of travellers can, when read by others at some future date, also entertain them on their journey, then fine. If they don’t read it, or are not entertained, that’s fine too

The time is changing and not only the policy makers of India, but the whole world is realizing the importance of Ayurveda. Who could have thought some years back that people with up-bringing in cosmopolitan culture would prefer bottle gourd juice or gooseberry juice over carbonated soft-drinks in the near future.

For the vile human pigs in life; the sloppy, disheveled, uncaring dregs, the ungrateful, and especially for the vicious, negative emotional peasants — there will only continue to be the hard and painful lessons you so desperately need. The invisible hand will hold you in your wretched place until your last breath — unless you evolve. If you are cruel and ignorant the invisible fist will pound you into oblivion until you submit, humble yourself and soften your hard heart.

Stumbling closer, I held up the manuscript, the pages flapping frantically in the wind. “I take it this is a murder mystery? You killed the ex-fiancée and thanked her in the dedication? Mighty dignified of you, I must say.” “Nah. It’s a horror novel. But yeah, the bimbo dies in the end. Bob Hall says it’s going to be a bestseller, so I figured I owed her some thanks for the inspiration.” He edged a few feet closer, his smile spread from ear to ear. The glimmer in his eyes flickered toward the ocean, breaking our connection. He hung his head, licked his lips, then returned his eyes to mine, restoring the connection with an intense smolder. “Are you gonna get over here, or what?” Letting out a soft chuckle, the tears began to blind me. “Make me.

The hours spent forming a written work can make one obsessive, distracted, compulsive, and neurotic even, especially when it comes to those rare, precious occasions of streaming pure inspiration. To have a muse moment interrupted - to watch her scuttle back into hiding with unshared insight remaining on the tip of her tongue - is a wicked irritation. When a writer's eyes glaze over, when she stares off at nothing or appears to be memorizing the lines on a blank page, when she falls asleep at the desk... tiptoe softly. For a writer's greatest desire is to receive inspiration; her greatest nightmare, to have tossed to the wind what could have been captured in words.

To all those who I do not know, and who live in the worlds where superstition and barbarism are still dominant, and into whose hands I hope this little book may fall, I offer the modest encouragement of an older wisdom. It is in fact this, and not any arrogant preaching that come to us out of the whirlwind: "Die stimme der vernunft ist leise". Yes, The voice of reason is very soft, but it is very persistent. In this, and in the lives and minds of combatants known and unknown, we repose our chief hope.

To be selfless, you would give charity anonymously, walj softly on the earth, and look out for others-even total strangers-before you look out for yourself. For the Arab mind, the self is an obstacle, an impediment, in humanity's quest foe real progress.

Soft moonlight touches my lips and cheeks, I feel your soul dance in my heart. Breeze of the Southern sea blows my hair, I feel your love touch my flowers of desire, In my garden roses dance with the kindness of air. I feel my soul wanting her bliss to share.

Yesterday it was sun outside. The sky was blue and people were lying under blooming cherry trees in the park. It was Friday, so records were released, that people have been working on for years. Friends around me find success and level up, do fancy photo shoots and get featured on big, white, movie screens. There were parties and lovers, hand in hand, laughing perfectly loud, but I walked numbly through the park, round and round, 40 times for 4 hours just wanting to make it through the day. There's a weight that inhabits my chest some times. Like a lock in my throat, making it hard to breathe. A little less air got through and the sky was so blue I couldn’t look at it because it made me sad, swelling tears in my eyes and they dripped quietly on the floor as I got on with my day. I tried to keep my focus, ticked off the to-do list, did my chores. Packed orders, wrote emails, paid bills and rewrote stories, but the panic kept growing, exploding in my chest. Tears falling on the desk tick tick tick me not making a sound and some days I just don't know what to do. Where to go or who to see and I try to be gentle, soft and kind, but anxiety eats you up and I just want to be fine. This is not beautiful. This is not useful. You can not do anything with it and it tries to control you, throw you off your balance and lovely ways but you can not let it. I cleaned up. Took myself for a walk. Tried to keep my eyes on the sky. Stayed away from the alcohol, stayed away from the destructive tools we learn to use. the smoking and the starving, the running, the madness, thinking it will help but it only feeds the fire and I don't want to hurt myself anymore. I made it through and today I woke up, lighter and proud because I'm still here. There are flowers growing outside my window. The coffee is warm, the air is pure. In a few hours I'll be on a train on my way to sing for people who invited me to come, to sing, for them. My own songs, that I created. Me—little me. From nowhere at all. And I have people around that I like and can laugh with, and it's spring again. It will always be spring again. And there will always be a new day.

Love was consideration and kindness. Love was soft and wholesome. Love was what was standing in front of me.

Water is soft, but can maneuver any obstacle; be shrewd, and be gentle, and you too will be able to do likewise.

Mentorship is an eye that's not judgemental, soft hearted that boosts the mentee's confidence and encourages him/her to believe in herself/himself.

To prepare for the mountains develop mind, body, will and spirit as strong as a sword, soft as a pillow and fluid as water.

The tenth gift is Wisdom. Guiding your way, wisdom will lead you through knowledge to understanding. May you hear its soft voice.

Authentic love is soft, smooth, easy, it's laughter to the soul, it's communication, it's respect, it's an unconditional love without envy or malice.

It is better to be soft and kind than strong and rude.

I respect softness and kindness not the power.

Is your generation so soft that they talk of going to pieces if life doesn't always present itself in terms of beautiful, easy decisions?

He looked calmly down on her bulk and between her large soft bubs, sloping within her nightdress like a shegoat's udder.

Be soft enough not to break; be kind enough to not get angry.

Power of softness and kindness are the greatest.

Strong is on the inside, a root that keeps you standing whatever might hit you. But hard is only on the outside, this shield you put up to keep all the pain on the inside from showing. The soft inside is still there even when you don't let yourself see it. And the shell keeps you safe, but it also keeps the good things from penetrating; love and trust and joy.

Whenever you feel overwhelmed, distracted and out of sorts. Turn your attention to your breath, inhale, exhale, and listen to the sound and movement of your everyday breath flowing softly in and out through your nose. You will reclaim your calm and refocus on what matters.

She is a storm; she is a river untamed; untouched she will engulf you; she will shatter you hold her softly; caress her gently she is fragile like a rose petal she is tender like the touch me not leaf she is the warm glow of the morning sun she is the magic of a full moon night

For much longer, he could have stayed with Kamaswami, made money, wasted money, filled his stomach, and let his soul die of thirst; for much longer he could have lived in this soft, well upholstered hell, if this had not happened: the moment of complete hopelessness and despair, that most extreme moment, when he hang over the rushing waters and was ready to destroy himself. That he had felt this despair, this deep disgust, and that he had not succumbed to it, that the bird, the joyful source and voice in him was still alive after all, this was why he felt joy, this was why he laughed, this was why his face was smiling brightly under his hair which had turned gray.

Give others a chance to talk.... A lovely little girl was holding two apples with both hands.Her mum came in and softly asked her little daughter with a smile: my sweetie, could you give your mum one of your two apples? The girl looked up at her mum for some seconds, then she suddenly took a quick bite on one apple, and then quickly on the other. The mum felt the smile on her face freeze. She tried hard not to reveal her disappointment. Then the little girl handed one of her bitten apples to her mum, and said: mummy, here you are.This is the sweeter one. No matter who you are, how experienced you are, and how knowledgeable you think you are, always delay judgement. Give others the privilege to explain themselves. What you see may not be the reality. Never conclude for others.

Because...” he used to cradle his daughter in his arms every morning and often they would exchange soft nuances “...if you can dream it, if you can see it in your visions at night, if you can feel it in your soul, it’s yours! And it never really belonged to anyone else, in the first place! It was always yours!” Viera returned her scroll to the drawer and closed it, she kissed the compass around her neck and climbed into her bed under the warm quilts, the candle flame crackled and the memories of her father’s arms around her embraced her there in bed and his deep, hoarse voice resounded in her ears; “... and if you chance upon a treasure that is yours and it happens to be in the possession of someone else, it’s not very wrong to take what is yours, to take what you dreamed, what you saw in your visions at night, what you felt visit you in your spirit! Sure, it’s not lawful, but aye aye my little one, listen to me when I tell you that the best things in life are not under the laws of any sort! For which law created love? Which law created courage? The best things, the real things, are the things that are not measured by any man’s laws! Fear is the only thing that any law has ever created! And what kind of pirates would we all be if we were afraid of any of our fears, even a little!

We need – more urgently than architectural utopias, ingenious traffic disposal systems, or ecological programmes – to comprehend the nature of citizenship, to make serious imaginative assessment of that special relationship between the self and the city; its unique plasticity, its privacy and freedom.

They saw her husband, this giant of a man in God’s Kingdom, this man, that for over fifteen years was their example of what a great man and husband looked like, walking up to his weeping wife, gently embracing her, soothing her, lifting and holding her soul up high while she released her own pains and worries from the last two days, feeling him, leaning into him, and submitting her pain and fears to her husband out of her love and trust. His strength was shown in his softness. He was made strong in his wife’s pain. He was her man of God

You are the sun and the moon and the stars You are the force that pulls the tides You are the unrestrained howl under a wide-open moon You are the essence of what it is to dance into ecstasy You are the heat and the sex and the sweat and the burn and soft and the grace and the grit and the ocean of tears You are all of everything … Somewhere there is a love who will never dream of calling you too much Who speaks like you in poetry and candle-wax and stardust Who runs outside on stormy nights to howl at the moon Who collects bones and sings incantation and talks to the ancestors And that lover when you find him or her will see you and know you – just as you are and just as you should be And they will say yes Yes you I will go there with you I have been waiting for this

Writing can take you to places you’ve never been, introduce you to people you’ve never met, take you back to when you first saw those shadows in your room, when you first heard the sounds mumbling ever so softly from your closet, and it can show you what uttered them. It can scare the hell out of you, and that’s when you know it’s good.

I am not light nor the absence of it. I am the broad spectrum. Everything that makes you think, want to touch, or taste. Don't box me into that life that you so desperately need to be black and white because that's not me; I won't fit. I am bold, brilliant, and beautiful, I will sparkle and shimmer every hue. Ever changing. Undefinable. So do not give me limits or make me try to fit. There is no containing subtle softness careening into the harsh and dominant, every faucet creating a reaction which will cause you to feel and know you are alive." - Kendal Waller

The voice of the intellect is soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing. Ultimately, after endless rebuffs, it succeeds. This is one of the few points in which one may be optimistic about the future of mankind.

You take a step; rocks and dust fall off the cliff. You stumble and you move forward. The voices in your head call you a coward. You are beginning to second-guess yourself because you want to throw in the towel. You close your eyes; a tear falls and travels to your chin. As your eyes are closed the Great Divine’s voice is louder; yet, calmer, soothing; and you feel peace instantly. Your mind feels light, and your body feels balanced. The Great Divine whispers gently and softly in your ear: “Fallen Warrior, I know you have given everything you’ve got, and you feel like you have nothing left to give. Fallen Warrior, I know it’s been a while since you smiled. Fallen Warrior, I see that you are hurting, and I feel your pain. Fallen Warrior, this is not the end. This is the start of your new beginning. Fallen Warrior, do not doubt My or your abilities; you have more going for you than you have going against you. Fallen Warrior, keep moving, you have what it takes; perseverance is your middle name. Fallen Warrior, you are not the victim! You are the victor! You step back because you know why you are here. You know why you are alive. Sometimes you have to be your own Shero.

You are wrong, Jane,” Angélique said softly. “Love is about trust. Just as one must trust one’s partner in La Maison des Plaisirs Sombres, one must trust one’s heart. Love is a willingness to please someone you cherish and hold most dear.

Here's what we're gonna do. You're going to give me that doubt. You're just going to hand it to me, and I'm going to hold it for you. I'm going to keep it for as long as you need me to. For the rest of our lives. I will be your safe place. The place you get to be soft. Right here, just like this. When you leave my arms, you leave whole. Because you already are. You're not broken sweetie, you're human. You're incredibly strong. You're a wonder. You'll return to your team as the warrior you've always been. And you'll know that at any time, you can come to me, and you'll know my arms are strong enough." Sigh

To the delicate, You will fall for the rough ones. the cold ones. the ones filled with apathy. you will spend your time counting their affection in change. you will stuff your pockets with silence. you will settle for second hand love. Delicate, you will be fashioned in the art of forgiveness. you will love like it’s a religion. you will memorize birthdays, phone numbers, and the moments you’ve heard goodbye. and when life becomes unyielding, and the burden too heavy, you will fault yourself. blame the material you are made of. say that you rip too easy, expect too much, give too often. you are a well that keeps on leaking. but even if you overflow, even if the thunder finds your home, you must remain soft. and if they have broken your heart, allow it to make you softer. kinder. do not imitate the cruel. do not allow yourself to take the shape of those who hurt you.

The dusk had arrived on the wings of a night moth, silent and soft. The sky above me darkened to a deep, beautiful purple. Stars glowed high above, and below them, as if inspired by their light, tiny fireflies awoke and crawled from their shelter in the leaves.

I always wondered how a wildflower can be so soft when it is stepped on and covered by weeds. It is because the earth has covered it in boundless, endless love. I am a wildflower; there is no such thing as being tamed; we take what is given and somehow find our way.

My mom’s smile is genuine, A lilac beaming In the presence of her Sun. Indentions in the sand prove Time’s linear progression, Her hair yet unblighted, Carrying midnight’s consistency. Clear tracks fading as the Movement slips further In the past. Cheekbones High, soft, In summer’s hue, Hopeful. Each step’s unknown impact, A future looking back. My father’s strength: One whose Life is in his arms. Squinting past the camera, He rests upon a rock Like caramel corn half eaten, Just to the left Of man-made concrete convention Daylight’s eraser Removing color to his right. Dustin sits In my father’s lap, Open mouth of a drooling Big mouth bass; Muscle tone Of a well exercised Jelly fish, He looks at me Half aware; His wheelchair Perched at the edge Of parking lot gravel grafted Like a scar on nature’s beach, Opening to the ironic splendor Of a bitter tasting lake. I took the picture. Age 11. Capturing the pinnacle arc Of a son To my lilac Who Outlived him and weeps, Still. Their sky has staple holes – Maybe that’s how the Light Leaked out.

Gate C22 At gate C22 in the Portland airport a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed a woman arriving from Orange County. They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking, the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other like he’d just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island, like she’d been released at last from ICU, snapped out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing. Neither of them was young. His beard was gray. She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish kisses like the ocean in the early morning, the way it gathers and swells, sucking each rock under, swallowing it again and again. We were all watching– passengers waiting for the delayed flight to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots, the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling sunglasses. We couldn’t look away. We could taste the kisses crushed in our mouths. But the best part was his face. When he drew back and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost as though he were a mother still open from giving birth, as your mother must have looked at you, no matter what happened after–if she beat you or left you or you’re lonely now–you once lay there, the vernix not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth. The whole wing of the airport hushed, all of us trying to slip into that woman’s middle-aged body, her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses, little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.

Worn out with this torture of thought, I rose to my knees. Night was come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night; too serene for the companionship of fear. We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us: and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence. I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr. Rochester. Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty Milky Way. Remembering what it was--what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light--I felt the might and strength of God. Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured. I turned my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the Saviour of spirits. Mr. Rochester was safe: he was God's, and by God would he be guarded.

Oh, and David Copperfield too.” “That’s for me. I must have ten copies by now.” I smiled. “It’s my most favorite of all Dickens. It’s so inspiring, thinking that David Copperfield was based on Dickens’s own life, that someone could overcome that kind of suffering and poverty to finally achieve happiness.” I had said too much. He was giving me the look. I hated the look. It was the “You’ve had it tough, huh, kid?” look. It made me feel pathetic. Hearne spoke softly. “I know what you mean. I had kind of a Copperfield childhood myself.” I stared at him, shocked that the sophisticated man in front of me could have ever known poverty or suffering. Had he really recast himself? My surprise registered with him.

Yes, you are imperfect but your quirks and cracks are the things that make you so astoundingly, breathtakingly you. Yes, you make mistakes but my god, there is something spectacular in the way you don't let it take you down; you get back up every time you fall, and you come back wiser for it. And if being a strong yet soft human with a hopeful heart isn't something worth being unapologetic about, then I don't know what is.

There are stories only you have to tell, because there is no one who looks at the world in the way you do. There is no one else who listens to the whispers tucked in a soft breeze or understands the wilting petals whimpering. There is no one who feels the earth in the way you do. You are the one.

In 1924, Nikola Tesla was asked why he never married? His answer was this: "I had always thought of woman as possessing those delicate qualities of mind and soul that made her in her respects far superior to man. I had put her on a lofty pedestal, figuratively speaking, and ranked her in certain important attributes considerably higher than man. I worshipped at the feet of the creature I had raised to this height, and, like every true worshiper, I felt myself unworthy of the object of my worship. But all this was in the past. Now the soft voiced gentle woman of my reverent worship has all but vanished. In her place has come the woman who thinks that her chief success in life lies on making herself as much as possible like man - in dress, voice, and actions, in sports and achievements of every kind. The world has experience many tragedies, but to my mind the greatest tragedy of all is the present economic condition wherein women strive against men, and in many cases actually succeed in usurping their places in the professions and in industry. This growing tendency of women to overshadow the masculine is a sign of a deteriorating civilization. Practically all the great achievements of man until now have been inspired by his love and devotion to woman. Man has aspired to great things because some woman believed in him, because he wished to command her admiration and respect. For these reasons he has fought for her and risked his life and his all for her time and time again. Perhaps the male in society is useless. I am frank to admit that I don't know. If women are beginning to feel this way about it - and there is striking evidence at hand that they do - then we are entering upon the cruelest period of the world's history. Our civilization will sink to a state like that which is found among the bees, ants, and other insects - a state wherein the male is ruthlessly killed off. In this matriarchal empire which will be established, the female rules. As the female predominates, the males are at her mercy. The male is considered important only as a factor in the general scheme of the continuity of life. The tendency of women to push aside man, supplanting the old spirit of cooperation with him in all the affairs of life, is very disappointing to me." Galveston Daily News, Galveston, Texas, page 23. August 10, 1924.

I once wrote of a good love being the kind that lights you on fire and makes you run ablaze in the winds! Then I grew up and when I did, I learned that a good kind of love is the kind that gives you a knowledge of safety. We live in a world where there are so many reasons that we might not be safe; love has become the place where you know you can be safe and you can face this world together with your partner, without fear. I don't want to feel like I'm a part of that world when I'm in someone's arms; I want to feel like we have our own world because in our world there is moonlight, there is a soft voice, there is laughter, there is understanding and patience... so now I think a good love is like a really good fragrance! You know you need it on your skin and it feels like the electricity of your desires and your passions; yet at the same time it feels like home. Like things forgotten, unforgotten, things that happened and that are yet to happen... it's like time stops. That's what I learned when I grew up.

Style is not how you write. It is how you do not write like anyone else. * * * How do you know if you're a writer? Write something everyday for two weeks, then stop, if you can. If you can't, you're a writer. And no one, no matter how hard they may try, will ever be able to stop you from following your writing dreams. * * * You can find your writer's voice by simply listening to that little Muse inside that says in a low, soft whisper, "Listen to this... * * * Enter the writing process with a childlike sense of wonder and discovery. Let it surprise you. * * * Poems for children help them celebrate the joy and wonder of their world. Humorous poems tickle the funny bone of their imaginations. * * * There are many fine poets writing for children today. The greatest reward for each of us is in knowing that our efforts might stir the minds and hearts of young readers with a vision and wonder of the world and themselves that may be new to them or reveal something already familiar in new and enlightening ways. * * * The path to inspiration starts Beyond the trails we’ve known; Each writer’s block is not a rock, But just a stepping stone. * * * When you write for children, don't write for children. Write from the child in you. * * * Poems look at the world from the inside out. * * * The act of writing brings with it a sense of discovery, of discovering on the page something you didn't know you knew until you wrote it. * * * The answer to the artist Comes quicker than a blink Though initial inspiration Is not what you might think. The Muse is full of magic, Though her vision’s sometimes dim; The artist does not choose the work, It is the work that chooses him. * * * Poem-Making 101. Poetry shows. Prose tells. Choose precise, concrete words. Remove prose from your poems. Use images that evoke the senses. Avoid the abstract, the verbose, the overstated. Trust the poem to take you where it wants to go. Follow it closely, recording its path with imagery. * * * What's a Poem? A whisper, a shout, thoughts turned inside out. A laugh, a sigh, an echo passing by. A rhythm, a rhyme, a moment caught in time. A moon, a star, a glimpse of who you are. * * * A poem is a little path That leads you through the trees. It takes you to the cliffs and shores, To anywhere you please. Follow it and trust your way With mind and heart as one, And when the journey’s over, You’ll find you’ve just begun. * * * A poem is a spider web Spun with words of wonder, Woven lace held in place By whispers made of thunder. * * * A poem is a busy bee Buzzing in your head. His hive is full of hidden thoughts Waiting to be said. His honey comes from your ideas That he makes into rhyme. He flies around looking for What goes on in your mind. When it is time to let him out To make some poetry, He gathers up your secret thoughts And then he sets them free.

I will say little more. Cugel, you have small acquaintance with the trade, but I take it as a good sign that you have come to me for training, since my nethods are not soft. You will learn or you will drown, or suffer a blow of the flukes, or worse, incur my displeasure. But you have started well and I will teach you well. Never think me harsh, or over-bearing; you will be in self-defeating error! I am stern, yes, even severe, but in the end, when I acknowledge you a worminger, you will thank me." "Good news indeed," muttered Cugel

These trees are happy. Yes, I said it. Why wouldn’t they be, in this rich, soft, rain-washed soil.

Rising onto my toes, I brush my lips against his cheek. "I claim you as mine River," I tell him softly. "You and Tye and Coal and Shade. Whatever comes, we will face it together.

Speak softly and carry a big stick!

You know what I love? The spaces between I love you. The tap of your fork against the plate and how my cup of wine clicks against our table. The scratchy voice coming from the radio in the other room. The quiet sound of your hand reaching across the table and whispering over mine. How your voice sounds like your mouth on the back of my neck. The soft murmur of our easy conversation. Between these quiet Tuesday night routines, following every comma and right after every pause for breath, is I, love, and you. In the middle of every I love you is a sink full of dishes, whisper of socked feet tangled in white sheets, and gentle kisses against curved cheeks. We lyric ourselves into the laundry that needs to be finished, into the ends of every smile that follows me repeating your name. We write ourselves into the grocery bags we need to carry, the cracks running up our rented walls, the sides of the bed we choose to drag up the sails of heavy eyed dreams. Like the spaces between our fingers, in the spaces between I, love, and you, we wait. The in-betweens have always been my favorite.

There is no more time to waste. Hours and days evaporate like creeks in the desert. That’s why it’s okay to be cruel to yourself as long as you realize you’re doing it to become better. We all need thicker skin to improve in life. Being soft when you look in the mirror isn’t going to inspire the wholesale changes we need to shift our present and open up our future.

Give me a pure heart Father A heart that pleases You Make it soft in Your hand Make it respond to Your call Show me all the rocks to be removed So You may flow through me Give me a pure heart Father A heart that pleases You Make it hear Your voice Make it follow You A harvest of good fruits, You promised If we abide in You That’s what my heart wants To be a heart that pleases You

I can hear you shake,” he whispers. “What are you doing?” “My hand’s under my blouse, my bra. Very softly, I am brushing my finger over my nipple. It’s—so hard. So tight it almost hurts. I am barely touching it and I’m getting hot all over.” He groans, and I get inspired. I tell him, “Touch your nipples, too. Like I did for you at the picnic table in the park.” “Jesus Christ, Carrie. I’m sweating, hot. That feels good, but my cock is harder, please—” “Touch it, something, Brian.” “I am—there’s—pre-cum. I’m slippery. Carrie, God, Carrie, are you wet? Tell me.

The young, thought Sharma, have this ability to suffer much in the time of grief, unlike the old who have seen enough sorrow and know it shall not stay forever. The young hardly know grief is like a thunderstorm. It comes whispering softly at first, a distant hum, a halo of vehemence in the sky, and then there is a sudden, violent, and copious outpouring; that drenches everything that comes in its way. It darkens the sky and turns every inch of green terrain dusky grey. But they don’t realize its ferocity will become less with the lapse of time, and the sun will shine bright and warm, and wash the land golden, and no one would be able to tell there had been a storm. They scarcely understand this essential unfolding of grief isn’t meant to last forever, and eventually, it shall come to pass.

The past twenty years was all about "being fierce". I think we're tired of that now. I think women everywhere are asking why we have to grow claws to share this planet. Why do we have to grow fangs to stay here? We're tired of the fierceness, the viciousness. We want to get back in touch with our tenderness, we want comfort, we want to embrace and to be embraced. And I'm here for it, I'm here for this, I am so ready.

Am I still writing? Unthinkable not to. In the very darkest night the words were like shiny pebbles. They caught the light of the moon and stars and reflected it back. One word among them that shone especially brightly. Simplicity. I would approach it, stepping softly, regard it from all sides, finally pick it up, enchanted by it, recognize that its enchantment lay in its shine, its pure meaning. Simplicity. To simply be there. Simply keep going. The longer I kept going, the easier it was to see how beautiful, simply beautiful, it is to be here. I would like to write about how this word shines. I'd like to write about the simplest things.

My Floating Sea" "Pastel colors reflect in my opening eyes and draw my gaze to a horizon where the waters both begin and end. This early in the day I can easily stare without blinking. The pale sea appears calm, but it is stormy just as often. I awe at the grandeur, how it expands beyond my sight to immeasurable depths. In every direction that I twist my neck, a beauteous blue is there to console me. Flowing, floating ribbons of mist form on these pale waters. In harmony they pirouette, creating a stretch of attractive, soft swirls. Swoosh! The wind, its strength in eddies and twisters, smears the art of dancing clouds, and the white disperses like startled fairies fleeing into the forest. Suddenly all is brilliant blue. The waters calm and clear. It warms me. Pleases me. Forces my eyes to close at such vast radiance. My day is spent surrounded by this ethereal sea, but soon enough the light in its belly subsides. Rich colors draw my gaze to the opposite horizon where the waters both begin and end. I watch the colors bleed and deepen. They fade into black. Yawning, I cast my eyes at tiny gleams of life that drift within the darkened waters. I extend my reach as if I could will my arm to stretch the expanse between me and eons. How I would love to brush a finger over a ray of living light, but I know I cannot. Distance deceives me. These little breathing lights floating in blackness would truly reduce me to the tiniest size, like a mountain stands majestic over a single wild flower. I am overwhelmed by it all and stare up, in love with the floating sea above my head.

Water, Walking, Walking on water. Walking, Walking on for years and years and years. Taking it into my head, Living by the right lines, Reading what the very man said. Water, I'm walking, Walking on water, Walking, Walking on. Lying on eleven years, Taking it into my head, Mary, Mary drop me softly. Been reading what your very man said; Lying on eleven years Taking it into my head. Leave my clothes on the beach; I'm walking down into the sea. Prove it to me.

Kestrel, seeking to change the subject, asked about something that Arin had said. It had been like a needle in a dark part of her mind, stitching invisible patterns. “Did the Herrani enjoy trading with Valorians before the war?” “Oh, yes. Your people always had gold for Herrani goods. Valoria was our biggest buyer of exports.” “But did we have a reputation for something else? Besides being rich and savage, with no manners.” Enai took a sip of tea, peering at Kestrel over the cup’s rim. Kestrel grew uncomfortable, and hoped Enai wouldn’t ask what inspired these questions. But the woman only said, “You were known for your beauty. Of course, that was before the war.” “Yes,” said Kestrel softly. “Of course.

You are thunder and lightning Love and rage Intensity and sensitivity Made of mountains, oceans Fire and fierce things Dreams and curiosity You are paradoxes and contradictions Some days soft, some days Strong as fuck Always beautiful.

I recommend the French beret, for it gives the impression of just the right soft toughness, a veritable wave of sophisticated brain matter. It is the kind of hat that inspires a person to grow into it, to become the person they never knew they could be. The space between the top of the head and the beginnings of hat is among the most intimate of areas: earlobe behinds, elbow insides, and anuses. One must pay heed to such spaces for they hold a potential not fully known (but generally agreed to be vast).

This was fresh, rich, heavenly, succulent, soft, creamy, kiss-my-ass, cows-gotta-die-for-this, delightfully salty, moo-ass, good old white folks cheese, cheese to die for, cheese to make you happy, cheese to beat the cheese boss, cheese for the big cheese, cheese to end the world, cheese so good it inspired a line every first Saturday of the month: mothers, daughters, fathers, grandparents, disabled in wheelchairs, kids, relatives from out of town, white folks from nearby Brooklyn Heights, and even South American workers from the garbage-processing plant on Concord Avenue, all patiently standing in a line that stretched from the interior of Hot Sausage’s boiler room to Building 17’s outer doorway, up the ramp to the sidewalk, curling around the side of the building and to the plaza near the flagpole.

Cause-and-effect assumes history marches forward, but history is not an army. It is a crab scuttling sideways, a drip of soft water wearing away stone, an earthquake breaking centuries of tension. Sometimes one person inspires a movement, or her words do decades later; sometimes a few passionate people change the world; sometimes they start a mass movement and millions do; sometimes those millions are stirred by the same outrage or the same ideal, and change comes upon us like a change of weather. All that these transformations have in common is that they begin in the imagination, in hope. To hope is to gamble. It’s to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk.

I have another scan this week," I say lightly, hoping to reassure my loved ones that it is safe to rejoin my orbit. There is always another scan, because this is my reality. But the people I know are often busy contending with mildly painful ambition and the possibility of reward. I try to begrudge them nothing, except I'm not alongside them anymore. In the meantime, I have been hunkering down with old medical supplies and swelling resentment. I tried— haven't I tried? — to avoid fights and remember birthdays. I showed up for dance recitals and listened to weight-loss dreams and kept the granularity of my medical treatments in soft focus. A person like that would be easier to love, I reasoned. I try a small experiment and stop calling my regular rotation of friends and family, hoping that they will call me back on their own. _This is not a test. This is not a test._ The phone goes quiet, except for a handful of calls. I feel heavy with strange new grief. Is it bitter or unkind to want everyone to remember what I can't forget? Who wants to be confronted with the reality that we are all a breath away from a problem that could alter our lives completely? A friend with a very sick child said it best: I'm everyone's inspiration and and no one's friend. I am asked all the time to say that, given what I've gained in perspective, I would never go back. Who would want to know the truth? Before was better.

May the light that reflects on water be this wild prayer. May water lift us with its unexpected strength. May we find comfort in the "repeated refrains of nature," the softly sheltering snow, the changing seasons, the return of blackbirds to the marsh. May we find strength in light that pours in under snow and laughter that breaks through tears. May we go out into the light-filled snow, among meadows in bloom, with gratitude for life that is deep and alive. May Earth's fire burn in our hearts, and may we know ourselves part of this flame--one thing, never alone, never weary of life. So may it be. "Never Alone or Weary

She dances, She dances around the burning flames with passion, Under the same dull stars, Under the same hell with crimson embers crashing, Under the same silver chains that wires, All her beauty and who she is inside, She's left with the loneliness of human existence, She's left questioning how she's survived, She's left with this awakening of brutal resilience, Her true beauty that she denies, As much she's like to deny it, As much as it continues to shine, That she doesn't even have to admit, Because we all know it's true, Her glory and success, After all she's been through, Her triumph and madness, AND YET, SHE STANDS. Broken legs- but she's still standing, Still dancing in this void, You must wonder how she's still dancing, You must wonder how she's not destroyed, She doesn't even begin to drown within the flames, But little do you realize, Within these chains, She weeps and she cries, But she still goes on, And just you thought you could stop her? You thought you'd be the one? Well, let me tell you, because you thought wrong. Nothing will ever silence her, Because I KNOW, I know that she is admiringly strong, Her undeniable beauty, The triumph of her song, She's shining bright like a ruby, Reflecting in the golden sand, She's shining brighter like no other, She's far more than human or man, AND YET, SHE STANDS. She continues to dance with free-spirit, Even though she's locked in these chains, Though she never desired to change it, Even throughout the agonizing pain, Throughout all the distress, Anxiety, depression, tears and sorrow, She still dances so beautify in her dress, She looks forward to tomorrow, Not because of a fresh start but a new page, A new day full of opportunities, Despite being trapped in her cage, She still smiles after being beaten so brutally, A smile that could brighten anyone's day, She's so much more than anyone could ask for, She's so much more than I could ever say, She's a girl absolutely everyone should adore, She never gets in the way, Even after her hearts been broken, Even after the way she has been treated, After all these severe emotions, After all all the blood she's bled, AND YET, SHE STANDS. Even if sometimes she wonders why she's still here, She wonders why she's not dead, But there's this one thing that had been here throughout every tear, Throughout the blazing fire leaving her cheeks cherry red, Everyday this thing has given her a place to exist, This thing, person, these people, Like warm sunlight it had so softly kissed, The apples of her cheeks, Even when she's feeling feeble, Always there at her worst and at her best Because of you and all the other people, She has this thing deep inside her chest, That she will cherish forever, Even once you're gone, Because today she smiles like no other, Even when the sun sets at dawn, Because today is the day, She just wants you to remember, In dark and stormy weather, It gets better. And after what she's been through she knows, Throughout the highs and the lows, Because of you and all others, After crossing the seas, She has come to understand, You have formed this key, This key to free her from this land, This endless gorge that swallowed her, Her and other men, She had never knew, nor had she planned, That because of you, She's free. AND YET, THIS VERY DAY, SHE DANCES. EVEN IN THE RAIN.

Do I have a code name? II'm pretty sure I get a code name. I'd like to choose it." His fingers fall from my elbow. A pity. "Yes," he says. "As a matter of fact, you do have a code name." "I knew it!" My twirl is the glee-filled kind. "What is it? Sidewinder or Lightning or maybe Pegasus?" "We were calling you Butterfly." Huh. "That's nice, I guess." A little soft, but okay. "Then, the tabloids gave you the moniker. The Lost Butterfly, so we had to change it." I perk up. "I suggested it," he baits. "What did you suggest?" I look up at Akio with stars in my eyes. The possibilities are endless---Sunshine, Moonflower, Cherry Blossom. My thoughts are a runaway train. Maybe he likes me. Maybe he's not as mean as he seems. Maybe I've terribly misjudged him and this is just a rocky start to a friendship that turns to love that will last the ages. Our affair will inspire folksy campfire ballads. It's the first time I see Akio smile. It's part evil, part satisfied, as if he's just won a bet with himself. "Radish.

There is this narrative, which we follow in our world, that tells us we ought to always be strong. Fortified, immovable, brave. So we tell ourselves that's what we are. Then we believe it. The grave problem with this narrative lies in the fact that in the minutes we stop to breathe and be quiet, in the minutes we stop telling ourselves that, we look into the mirror, or we look at our photographs, and it hits us: we are soft! We are soft, we are bruised, we got hurt far too much than what we deserved! And guess what? It wasn't okay! It really was never okay. And then panic settles in as we realise that all of that time we were abandoning the real us, inside of us, like a small child left in the corner of an alleyway, in favour of embracing the big and brave version of ourselves that we told ourselves to love! So we stopped actually loving the us of the us. The real us. The real you. There is no sadder thing! Please... you are soft and scared... embrace your teddy self, embrace your infant soul, protect what is left of you.

It's a lost and lonely kind of feeling, To wake up wearing a disguise. I lie in bed staring at the ceiling, I don't know who I am There's little that I can Fully recognize.... But I'm taking small steps, 'Cause I don't know where I'm going. I'm taking small steps And I don't know what to say. Small steps, Trying to pull myself together, And maybe I'll discover A clue along the way.... Just to make it through the day and not to get hurt, Seems about the best that I can hope. Like coffee stains splattered on your sweatshirt There isn't any pattern. Everything's uncertain. It's difficult to cope.... But I'm taking small steps, 'Cause I don't know where I'm going. I'm taking small steps, And I've forgotten how to play. Small steps, Trying to pull myself together, And maybe I'll discover, A clue along the way.... And if someday my small steps bring me near you, Please don't rush to tell me all you feel. You don't have to speak for me to hear you. If I softly sigh, Look me in the eye And let me know I'm real.... Then we'll take small steps, 'Cause we won't know where we're going. We'll take small steps, And we'll have too much to say. Small steps, Hand in hand we'll walk together, And maybe we'll discover A clue along the way.... Small steps, 'Cause I don't know where I'm goin'. Small steps, I just take it day to day. Small steps, Somehow get myself together, Then maybe I'll discover Who I am on the way....

This may have looked like a cookbook, but what it really is is an annotated list of things worth living for: a manifesto of moments worth living for. Dinner parties, and Saturday afternoons in the kitchen, and lazy breakfasts, and picnics on the heath; evenings alone with a bowl of soup, a or a heavy pot of clams for one. The bright clean song of lime and salt, and the smoky hum of caramel-edged onions. Soft goat's cheese and crisp pastry. A six-hour ragù simmering on the stove, a glass of wine in your hand. Moments, hours, mornings, afternoons, days. And days worth living for add up to weeks, and weeks worth living for add up to months, and so on and so on, until you've unexpectedly built yourself a life worth having: a life worth living.

She is fragile as the morning dew melting in the warmth of a child's smile; stirring at the lonely, lovely waft of a butterfly's wings; tender as the curve of a wildflower petal. She is fierce as a summer storm now raging against the fiery sky; now raining tears to soothe the sun-scorched earth. She is soft as a midnight breeze swaying to the sound of waves breaking on distant shores; whispering comfort to a world steeped in the dark night of inhumanity. She is brilliant as the rising Phoenix lifting the suffering from the ashes; her own suffering woven into wings of fire in the long watches of the night. She is serene and turbulent as the silvered water hiding currents unknown beneath the gentle gaze of a human who has walked a thousand miles and still has more to go.

The worst part is that I want to turn this into a parable. I want to echo a rallying cry of inspiration that sings, Women, we are not alone; Women, these men do not defeat us; Women, these men do not define us; Women, I feel what you feel; Women, we, together, are strong, and for all the loud voices that said no or that didn’t have the freedom to but who still said 'please stop' or 'not right now' or 'I don’t know' or 'I don’t like that' which are all the same goddamn thing, to all the women who said no, you are not to blame for his hard, hungry hands, whether they came at you like raging fists or whether they gripped your face softly, at first, smiling at it and inviting you into the night, only later for you to meet the fingernails and full-weighted back of his hand to keep you there and press you down; to all the women who said no, you are not to blame; to all the women who feel ashamed, you are still the goddess and his hungry hands could not defile you more than mortals could defile a god; to all the women who feel sorry, you did not sin; to all the women who feel angry, I share your rage; to all the women who are too tired to feel rage, to all the women who feel empty, who feel blank, who feel Nothing, who feel small, I feel that most of all, too.

The worst part is that I want to turn this into a parable. I want to echo a rallying cry of inspiration that sings, Women, we are not alone; Women, these men do not defeat us; Women, these men do not define us; Women, I feel what you feel; Women, we, together, are strong, and for all the loud voices that said no or that didn’t have the freedom to but who still said 'please stop' or 'not right now' or 'I don’t know' or 'I don’t like that' which are all the same goddamn thing, to all the women who said no, you are not to blame for his hard, hungry hands, whether they came at you like raging fists or whether they gripped your face softly, at first, smiling at it and inviting you into the night, only later for you to meet the fingernails and full-weighted back of his hand to keep you there and press you down; to all the women who said no, you are not to blame; to all the women who feel ashamed, you are still the goddess and his hungry hands could not defile you more than mortals could defile a god; to all the women who feel sorry, you did not sin; to all the women who feel angry, I share your rage; to all the women who are too tired to feel rage, to all the women who feel empty, who feel blank, who feel Nothing, who feel small, I feel that most of all, too.

Shukhov had been told that this old man'd been in camps and prisons more years than you could count and had never come under any amnesty. When one ten-year stretch was over they slapped on another. Shukhov took a good look at him close up. In the camp you could pick him out among all the men with their bent backs because he was straight as a ramrod. When he sat at the table it looked like he was sitting on something to raise himself up higher. There hadn't been anything to shave off his head for a long time-he'd lost all his hair because of the good life. His eyes didn't shift around the mess hall all the time to see what was going on, and he was staring over Shukhov's head and looking at something nobody else could see. He ate his thin gruel with a worn old wooden spoon, and he took his time. He didn't bend down low over the bowl like all the others did, but brought the spoon up to his mouth. He didn't have a single tooth either top or bottom-he chewed the bread with his hard gums like they were teeth. His face was all worn-out but not like a goner's-it was dark and looked like it had been hewed out of stone. And you could tell from his big rough hands with the dirt worked in them he hadn't spent many of his long years doing any of the soft jobs. You could see his mind was set on one thing-never to give in. He didn't put his eight ounces of bread in all the filth on the table like everybody else but laid it on a clean little piece of rag that'd been washed over and over again.

In the beginning was the Word'. I have taken as my text this evening the almighty Word itself. Now get this: 'There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.' Amen, brothers and sisters, Amen. And the riddle of the Word, 'In the beginning was the Word....' Now what do you suppose old John meant by that? That cat was a preacher, and, well, you know how it is with preachers; he had something big on his mind. Oh my, it was big; it was the Truth, and it was heavy, and old John hurried to set it down. And in his hurry he said too much. 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' It was the Truth, all right, but it was more than the Truth. The Truth was overgrown with fat, and the fat was God. The fat was John's God, and God stood between John and the Truth. Old John, see, he got up one morning and caught sight of the Truth. It must have been like a bolt of lightning, and the sight of it made him blind. And for a moment the vision burned on the back of his eyes, and he knew what it was. In that instant he saw something he had never seen before and would never see again. That was the instant of revelation, inspiration, Truth. And old John, he must have fallen down on his knees. Man, he must have been shaking and laughing and crying and yelling and praying - all at the same time - and he must have been drunk and delirious with the Truth. You see, he had lived all his life waiting for that one moment, and it came, and it took him by surprise, and it was gone. And he said, 'In the beginning was the Word....' And man, right then and there he should have stopped. There was nothing more to say, but he went on. He had said all there was to say, everything, but he went on. 'In the beginning was the Word....' Brothers and sisters, that was the Truth, the whole of it, the essential and eternal Truth, the bone and blood and muscle of the Truth. But he went on, old John, because he was a preacher. The perfect vision faded from his mind, and he went on. The instant passed, and then he had nothing but a memory. He was desperate and confused, and in his confusion he stumbled and went on. 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' He went on to talk about Jews and Jerusalem, Levites and Pharisees, Moses and Philip and Andrew and Peter. Don't you see? Old John had to go on. That cat had a whole lot at stake. He couldn't let the Truth alone. He couldn't see that he had come to the end of the Truth, and he went on. He tried to make it bigger and better than it was, but instead he only demeaned and encumbered it. He made it soft and big with fat. He was a preacher, and he made a complex sentence of the Truth, two sentences, three, a paragraph. He made a sermon and theology of the Truth. He imposed his idea of God upon the everlasting Truth. 'In the beginning was the Word....' And that is all there was, and it was enough.

Take what you have of what remains, take the colors of what is still left, for this is the flame that will set your soul ablaze before that moment comes when the leaf trembles shuddering in its last joy, the robin cries knowing it is the last song. Sing, Sing, O Sojourner, no season is meant to stay. The deeps are filled with a bitter sweet nostalgia... the cinnamon, nutmeg, cider roast smell, the earth sparkling, feasting on the colors, the grounds merry making as the leaves softly play, for this is the life's sacred performance art, as the earth is playing the grand finale before it slips in the winter's white silence....

Hey Blake, how’s it hanging?” She questioned, looking through me at Blake, obviously ignoring my presence. She looked smug at the double meaning in her sentence. Blake furrowed his eyebrows. Brianna only talked to him on rare occasions when she bumped into us at my house. He must have been confused as to why she approached us in public, considering how she and I weren’t friends even in the slightest sense. Ignoring the fact that she was talking to Blake and not me, I spoke. “Longer than anything you’ve ever sucked.” Blake’s eyes widened for a second before he bit his lip to keep from laughing. Brianna turned toward me with cold eyes, her smile gone. “Not like you would know, Virgin Violet.” Her cohorts laughed and smiled like that was the funniest thing they had heard in their entire lives. “You know I really do admire you, Bri Bri.” I smiled sweetly, leaning forward as I placed my hand on her shoulder. “The fact that you’ve had so many fuck buddies this summer and still have not managed to contract some kind of STI or gotten pregnant really does inspire me.” I smirked wickedly. “At least from my knowledge you haven’t.” The look that came to her face made me want to buckle over with laughter. She looked flustered, angry, and embarrassed all at the same time. Maybe I hit a soft spot.

ESTABLISHING A DAILY MEDITATION First select a suitable space for your regular meditation. It can be wherever you can sit easily with minimal disturbance: a corner of your bedroom or any other quiet spot in your home. Place a meditation cushion or chair there for your use. Arrange what is around so that you are reminded of your meditative purpose, so that it feels like a sacred and peaceful space. You may wish to make a simple altar with a flower or sacred image, or place your favorite spiritual books there for a few moments of inspiring reading. Let yourself enjoy creating this space for yourself. Then select a regular time for practice that suits your schedule and temperament. If you are a morning person, experiment with a sitting before breakfast. If evening fits your temperament or schedule better, try that first. Begin with sitting ten or twenty minutes at a time. Later you can sit longer or more frequently. Daily meditation can become like bathing or toothbrushing. It can bring a regular cleansing and calming to your heart and mind. Find a posture on the chair or cushion in which you can easily sit erect without being rigid. Let your body be firmly planted on the earth, your hands resting easily, your heart soft, your eyes closed gently. At first feel your body and consciously soften any obvious tension. Let go of any habitual thoughts or plans. Bring your attention to feel the sensations of your breathing. Take a few deep breaths to sense where you can feel the breath most easily, as coolness or tingling in the nostrils or throat, as movement of the chest, or rise and fall of the belly. Then let your breath be natural. Feel the sensations of your natural breathing very carefully, relaxing into each breath as you feel it, noticing how the soft sensations of breathing come and go with the changing breath. After a few breaths your mind will probably wander. When you notice this, no matter how long or short a time you have been away, simply come back to the next breath. Before you return, you can mindfully acknowledge where you have gone with a soft word in the back of your mind, such as “thinking,” “wandering,” “hearing,” “itching.” After softly and silently naming to yourself where your attention has been, gently and directly return to feel the next breath. Later on in your meditation you will be able to work with the places your mind wanders to, but for initial training, one word of acknowledgment and a simple return to the breath is best. As you sit, let the breath change rhythms naturally, allowing it to be short, long, fast, slow, rough, or easy. Calm yourself by relaxing into the breath. When your breath becomes soft, let your attention become gentle and careful, as soft as the breath itself. Like training a puppy, gently bring yourself back a thousand times. Over weeks and months of this practice you will gradually learn to calm and center yourself using the breath. There will be many cycles in this process, stormy days alternating with clear days. Just stay with it. As you do, listening deeply, you will find the breath helping to connect and quiet your whole body and mind. Working with the breath is an excellent foundation for the other meditations presented in this book. After developing some calm and skills, and connecting with your breath, you can then extend your range of meditation to include healing and awareness of all the levels of your body and mind. You will discover how awareness of your breath can serve as a steady basis for all you do.

Orlando, who had just dipped her pen in the ink, and was about to indite some reflection upon the eternity of all things, was much annoyed to be impeded by a blot, which spread and meandered round her pen. . . . She dipped it again. The blot increased. She tried to go on with what she was saying but no words came. Next she began to decorate the blot with wings and whiskers, till it became a round-headed monster, something between a bat and a wombat. But as for writing poetry with Basket and Bartholemew in the room, it was impossible. No sooner had she said 'impossible' than, to her astonishment and alarm, the pen began to curve and caracole with the smoothest possible fluency. Her page was written in the neatest sloping Italian hand with the most insipid verses she had ever read in her life: I am myself but a vile link Amid life's weary chain, But I have spoken hallowed words, Oh, do not say in vain! . . . . . She was so changed, the soft carnation cloud Once mantling o'er her cheek like that which eve Hangs o'er the sky, glowing with roseate hue, Had faded into paleness, broken by Bright burning blushes, torches of the tomb, but here, by an abrupt movement she spilt the ink over the page and blotted it from human sight she hoped for ever. She was all of a quiver, all of a stew. Nothing more repulsive could be imagined than to feel the ink flowing thus in cascades of involuntary inspiration.

We feel Divine Love entering us firstly through gentle, soft, humbling, kind and loving feelings, independent of any other person. This can be experienced as gently overwhelming as it increases, dependent on the depth of our desire for It. As we heal further, and more of our negative, repressed emotions and causal soul wounds are removed, the entering of Divine Love into our souls becomes stronger and stronger, bringing deep tears, powerful sensations and expansions in the heart and soul in immense gratitude, humility and feelings of great love and even more yearning for God. There may also be whole body tingling and sensations, crown chakra and heart explosions, feelings of being fully bathed in love and light, great feelings of humility, awe and wonder at the indescribable nature of God’s Love, and at how much He loves you. Receiving Divine Love can feel like being immersed in a bath of love all over, in every part of you, every cell. Deep peace, joy and waves of ecstasy, rapture and bliss arise and flow all over, and great humility washes over the soul. Immense love for God as the most wondrous, awe inspiring Soul that He Is is felt. A deepening into the essence of your pure soul occurs, along with the deep desire to give more of your soul to God. You feel deeply nurtured and embraced in God’s Arms. There is nothing better than resting and dropping into This. You feel the purity of His Love that is the most pleasurable feeling your soul will ever experience. Heat, pressure, inner and outer movements, pulsing, physical shifts and alignments can occur as you open and embody more Divine Love and the feeling of Blessedness this brings. This Blessedness also arises in felt feelings of forgiveness and mercy. Divine Love is Perfect in its trust and tenderness. We become more and more like a child; innocent, joyful, playful and beautiful as we were created to Be. This play is a pure and glorious sensation, wishing to share itself freely and touching all others. Receiving Divine Love can also become so powerful that we are brought to our knees in immense gratitude, rapture, pain and bliss, sometimes all at once. Receiving Divine Love in its fullness is overwhelming, and can even be physically painful in the heart as it inflows to such a degree that the heart actually stretches to accommodate It all. It is both rapturous and ecstatic, as the body may rock, sway and stretch as it receives more and more Divine Love.8 There is no better feeling in all universes than to receive this Greatest Love of all loves, the most pleasurable feelings a soul can experience as it has actually been designed this way, yet our physical bodies cannot take too much of it at one time! When I receive Divine Love in a rapturous way, it is blissful to the soul yet sometimes painful to the physical. Sometimes I have to stop praying as the body becomes too tired.

IN SCHOOL. "I used to go to a bright school Where Youth and Frolic taught in turn; But idle scholar that I was, I liked to play, I would not learn; So the Great Teacher did ordain That I should try the School of Pain. "One of the infant class I am With little, easy lessons, set In a great book; the higher class Have harder ones than I, and yet I find mine hard, and can't restrain My tears while studying thus with Pain. "There are two Teachers in the school, One has a gentle voice and low, And smiles upon her scholars, as She softly passes to and fro. Her name is Love; 'tis very plain She shuns the sharper teacher, Pain. "Or so I sometimes think; and then, At other times, they meet and kiss, And look so strangely like, that I Am puzzled to tell how it is, Or whence the change which makes it vain To guess if it be--Love or Pain. "They tell me if I study well, And learn my lessons, I shall be Moved upward to that higher class Where dear Love teaches constantly; And I work hard, in hopes to gain Reward, and get away from Pain. "Yet Pain is sometimes kind, and helps Me on when I am very dull; I thank him often in my heart; But Love is far more beautiful; Under her tender, gentle reign I must learn faster than of Pain. "So I will do my very best, Nor chide the clock, nor call it slow; That when the Teacher calls me up To see if I am fit to go, I may to Love's high class attain, And bid a sweet good-by to Pain.

But why write such rotten scripts? If what you say is so, everybody’s where they want to be, even beggars with sores on their shins and starving children and guys being tortured in jails?” She nodded, watching me. I said, “I can’t accept that.” She waited a bit and then almost smiled. “Unacceptable?” She asked softly. And that rang a bell. “Unacceptable … ‘to accept the unacceptable.’ You said that, in the seminar. But I can’t remember why you said it.” “Yes you can,” she said, and waited. I drew a total blank this time, and I guess she knew it, because she gave me a nudge: “You say you don’t belong here. Is ‘here’—unacceptable?” “Yes,” I said without hesitation. “Then,” she asked, “why did you write this script?” “You mean—the me out there?” She nodded. I thought about that, and then mumbled, “I put it down to—curiosity? That’s all. I mean, throwing yourself into imperfect places, into pain and disappointment and well, the unacceptable—it just doesn’t make sense.” “It doesn’t?” “It sure doesn’t … unless …” I felt my eyes get big. “Unless those, uh, entities want to do what you said—to learn to accept the unacceptable. Even if they have to create it. That doesn’t make sense.” “It doesn’t? Suppose they can’t go on unless they learn that.” “Go on? Go on where?” She shrugs. “Everything living has to go on. Seed to shrub, shrub to tree, egg to bird.” “You mean—evolve. They have to learn to accept the unacceptable in order to evolve into—whatever’s next for them.” Surprisingly, she laughed. She said, “You keep on saying ‘they.

And where do I hold back, Waxillium? Do I prevent all wounds, or do I prevent only those caused by people? Do I stop a man from falling asleep so that he will not tip a candle and burn down his house? Do I stop all harm that could ever befall a person?" "Maybe." "And once nobody is ever hurt," Harmony said, "will people be satisfied? Will they not pray to me and ask for more? Will some people still curse and spit at the sound of my name because they are poor, while another is rich? Should I mitigate this, make everyone the same, Waxillium?" "I won't get caught in this trap," Wax said. "You're the God, not me. You can find a line where You prevent the worst. You can find a line where You're stopping the worst that is reasonable, while still letting us live our lives." [...] "Perhaps," Harmony said softly, "I have already done just as you suggest. You do not see it, because the worst never reaches you.

Flower Beds by Maisie Aletha Smikle Flower beds in a row Like tic toc toe Spread the mulch Pluck the weeds and mow Water the flower beds And flowers will bud Colorful blooms All season long Welcome the sunshine From heaven’s furnace Anchored far up in the sky Gentle rays beam from up above A round ball of fire way up in the sky Always suspended in the anchored sky Shines its radiant beams from way up high Warming the sprouting flower beds Sunlight Moonlight Starlight Warm gentle and bright Make the flower beds bright Glowing softly in the night Thanks for the moon Thanks for the stars Thanks for the sun Thanks for the soft radiant beams of light That make the flower beds beautiful and bright In colorful shades of red Yellow orange black pink Purple green and white In the blooming flower bed Sat a rabbit called Skip Watching the horizon as the circle of fire slowly dip Diving slowly into the ocean deep

Two Kittens by Maisie Aletha Smikle Born to a cat called Mitten Were two tiny little kittens Nested in a basket They purred for the warmth of a blanket Coated in short velvet hair of midnight black From whiskers to tail they were beauty black Soft cuddly and adorable They searched uncontrollably Twisting and twirling Their little tails floundering Tiny purrs pleading They comb their little basket for a blanket To feed her little kittens And warm their tiny bodies Mitten must feed her tummy With something very yummy Mitten searched for food She stayed close to her brood With their small eyes still closed Mitten’s little kittens mainly dozed Mitten peered and listen Her bright ocean blue eyes glisten She spots a mouse Coming from a house The mouse had just feasted Groggy from its feast It moved slowly Mitten pounced boldly She knocked her target out Picked it up in her mouth And feasted with delight Then licked her whiskers clean till they glisten bright Mitten returned to her kittens And found them soundly fast asleep She covered her little kittens And soon fell fast asleep

She dances, She dances around the burning flames with passion, Under the same dull stars, Under the same hell with crimson embers crashing, Under the same silver chains that wires, All her beauty and who she is inside, She's left with the loneliness of human existence, She's left questioning how she's survived, She's left with this awakening of brutal resilience, Her true beauty that she denies, As much she's like to deny it, As much as it continues to shine, That she doesn't even have to admit, Because we all know it's true, Her glory and success, After all she's been through, Her triumph and madness, AND YET, SHE STANDS. Broken legs- but she's still standing, Still dancing in this void, You must wonder how she's still dancing, You must wonder how she's not destroyed, She doesn't even begin to drown within the flames, But little do you realize, Within these chains, She weeps and she cries, But she still goes on, And just you thought you could stop her? You thought you'd be the one? Well, let me tell you, because you thought wrong. Nothing will ever silence her, Because I KNOW, I know that she is admiringly strong, Her undeniable beauty, The triumph of her song, She's shining bright like a ruby, Reflecting in the golden sand, She's shining brighter like no other, She's far more than human or man, AND YET, SHE STANDS. She continues to dance with free-spirit, Even though she's locked in these chains, Though she never desired to change it, Even throughout the agonizing pain, Throughout all the distress, Anxiety, depression, tears and sorrow, She still dances so beautify in her dress, She looks forward to tomorrow, Not because of a fresh start but a new page, A new day full of opportunities, Despite being trapped in her cage, She still smiles after being beaten so brutally, A smile that could brighten anyone's day, She's so much more than anyone could ask for, She's so much more than I could ever say, She's a girl absolutely everyone should adore, She never gets in the way, Even after her hearts been broken, Even after the way she has been treated, After all these severe emotions, After all all the blood she's bled, AND YET, SHE STANDS. Even if sometimes she wonders why she's still here, She wonders why she's not dead, But there's this one thing that had been here throughout every tear, Throughout the blazing fire leaving her cheeks cherry red, Everyday this thing has given her a place to exist, This thing, person, these people, Like warm sunlight it had so softly kissed, The apples of her cheeks, Even when she's feeling feeble, Always there at her worst and at her best Because of you and all the other people, She has this thing deep inside her chest, That she will cherish forever, Even once you're gone, Because today she smiles like no other, Even when the sun sets at dawn, Because today is the day, She just wants you to remember, In dark and stormy weather, It gets better. And after what she's been through she knows, Throughout the highs and the lows, Because of you and all others, After crossing the seas, She has come to understand, You have formed this key, This key to free her from this land, This endless gorge that swallowed her, Her and other men, She had never knew, nor had she planned, That because of you, She's free. AND YET, THIS VERY DAY, SHE STILL DANCES, EVEN IN THE RAIN.

It is quiet in the clearing, though gradually Lillian's ears attune to the soft rustling of insects and birds moving through the undergrowth, the faraway tapping of a woodpecker high in a tree. Down on the ground, a bronze-colored beetle tries to scale the side of her shoe. It slips on the smooth leather and tumbles back into the dry leaves, waggling its legs in the air. She shifts slightly on the tree trunk then watches as Jack pulls a strand of grass from a clump growing nearby and sucks on one end, looking about at the canopy overhead. "Wonderful light," he murmurs. "I wish I hadn't left my sketchbook at the house." She knows she must say something. But the moment stretches and she can't find the words so instead she looks about, trying to see the clearing as he might, trying to view the world through an artist's eyes. What details would he pull from this scene, what elements would he commit to memory to reproduce on paper? A cathedral, he'd said; and she supposes there is something rather celestial and awe-inspiring about the tall, arched trees and the light streaming in golden shafts through the soft green branches, filtered as though through stained glass.

Kee Li Tong was one of my favorite chocolatiers in New York. Years earlier, I had a fleeting addiction to her otherworldly crème brûlée truffle, a dainty yet dangerous homemade bonbon that you have to pop into your mouth whole, or suffer the consequences of squirting eggy custard all over your blouse. Now, I discovered, she was handcrafting macarons in wild and wonderful flavors like blood orange, sesame, and rose. How did she create her recipes? What inspired her expanded repertoire? And how did hers compare to Paris's best? Emboldened as I was by my new French history lessons, I asked Kee in her Soho boutique: why macarons? "Because they're so pretty!" Kee laughed. "They're so dainty. I think it's the colors." And, standing as we were above the glass display case, I had to agree. Her blueberry macarons were as bright as the September sky. The lotus flower was the kind of soft pink that's the perfect shade of blush. Kee's favorite flavor, passion fruit, was a snappy corn husk yellow. These were surrounded by greens (lulo and jasmine green tea) and purples (lavender, which was dotted with purple sugar crystals) and some neutral shades as well (white truffle oil and mint mocha).

Gentle hands, soft lips, and hot little breaths down my stomach. Pleasure, a thick syrup pouring over my limbs. My cock rose, growing heavy with desire. We were so new together, by all accounts, I should be panting madly, trying to take over. But I was slowly heating wax molding to her will. Emma palmed me through my briefs, and I grunted. I wanted them off, no barriers between us. As if she heard the silent demand, she kissed my nipple and slowly eased the briefs down. I lifted my butt to help her. My dick slapped against my belly as it was freed. Emma made a noise of appreciation and then wrapped her clever fingers around me. "Please," I whispered. My body was weak, but my need grew stronger, drowning out everything else. She complied, stroking, her lips on my lower abs, teasing along the V leading to my hips. "Em..." My plea broke off into a groan as her hot mouth enveloped me. There were no more words. I let her have me, do as she willed, and I was thankful for it. And it felt so good I could only lie there and take it, try not to thrust into her mouth like an animal. But she pulled free with a lewd pop and gazed up at me. Panting lightly, I stared back at her, ready to promise her anything, when she kissed my pulsing tip. "Go ahead," she said. "Fuck my mouth." I almost spilled right there. She sucked me deep once more, and a sound tore out of me that was part pained, part "Oh God, please don't ever stop." The woman was dismantling me in the best of ways. Waves of heat licked up over my skin as I pumped gently into her mouth, keeping my moves light because I didn't want to hurt her, and because denying myself was outright torture. Apparently, I was into that. She sucked me like I was dessert----all the while, her hand stroking steady circles on the tight, sensitive skin of my lower abs. It was that touch, the knowledge that she was doing this because she wanted to take care of me, that rushed me straight to the edge. My trembling hand touched the crown of her head. "Em. Baby, I'm gonna..." I gasped as she did something truly inspired with her tongue. "I'm gonna..." She pulled free with one last suck and surged up to kiss me, her hand wrapping around my aching dick and stroking it. Panting into her mouth, my kiss frantic and sloppy, I came with a shudder of pleasure. And all the tension, all the pain, dissolved like a sugar cube dropped into hot tea.

Adira squirmed in Leah’s arms, wanting down. Leah lowered her until her little sneaker-clad feet touched the floor. Adira toddled away, patting the garments that brushed her head and shoulders. Straightening, Leah watched her for a moment, then turned back to Seth. “I guess I’ll get back to work.” Was that disappointment he felt upon hearing her words? He really was enjoying her company. Adira turned around and toddled back. Grasping Leah’s fingers, she reached out, took Seth’s hand, and placed Leah’s in it. Seth instinctively curled his fingers around Leah’s. Satisfied, Adira turned and toddled off once more. “Oh,” Leah said with a surprised chuckle. “Well. Maybe not.” Seth was surprised, too. What was Adira thinking? He glanced at Leah. Should he apologize? “Sorry about that.” “No worries,” she said with another charming smile. Raising their clasped hands, she turned them so his was on top and slid her free hand over it. “Oooh. Look how big your hand is.” How many times had he heard Tracy or one of the other mortal women he frequently encountered think Oooh. Look how big his hands are. You know what they say: big hands, big feet, big package in much the same tone as Leah’s. Seth couldn’t help it. He barked out a laugh. Leah’s eyes widened. “Wait. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.” “It sounded as if you like that my hands are so big.” She flushed. “I do, but I didn’t mean it like you think.” “How do I think you meant it?” he asked with exaggerated innocence. Face red, she laughed. “Stop making me blush. I just meant I like that you’re so big. Not just your hands. But all over.” Again her eyes widened. “I mean, not all over, but—” Laughing, he took pity on her. “It’s all right. I understood what you meant the first time.” Smiling, she squinted up at him. “You like to tease, don’t you?” “Guilty as charged.” Many immortals did. It helped lighten what could otherwise be a dark existence. She caressed his hand again, sending little tingles through it. “My hand actually looks small in yours. That’s so cool.” It did. And the sensations her soft touch inspired unnerved him a bit. His pulse even picked up. Seth eyed her curiously. “You really dislike your size so much?” He thought it a shame. She was a beautiful woman. Shrugging, she released his hand and let hers fall to her sides. “When someone gives you a complex in high school, it tends to stick with you.” Adira reappeared as if by magic. Taking Leah’s hand, she again placed it in Seth’s, then moved away. The two looked at each other and smiled. Leah nodded after Adira. “Maybe she’s hoping I’ll distract you so she can take her time looking over the toys she plans to coax you into buying before you leave.” Seth winked. “Or maybe she just heard you say you like my big hands.

Elizabeth glanced up as Ian handed her a glass of champagne. “Thank you,” she said, smiling up at him and gesturing to Duncan, the duke, and Jake, who were now convulsed with loud hilarity. “They certainly seem to be enjoying themselves,” she remarked. Ian absently glanced the group of laughing men, then back at her. “You’re breathtaking when you smile.” Elizabeth heard the huskiness in his voice and saw the almost slumberous look in his eyes, and she was wondering about its cause when he said softly, “Shall we retire?” That suggestion caused Elizabeth to assume his expression must be due to weariness. She, herself, was more than ready to seek the peace of her own chamber, but since she’d never been to a wedding reception before, she assumed that the protocol must be the same as at any other gala affair-which meant the host and hostess could not withdraw until the last of the guests had either left or retired. Tonight, every one of the guest chambers would be in use, and tomorrow a large wedding breakfast was planned, followed by a hunt. “I’m not sleepy-just a little fatigued from so much smiling,” she told him, pausing to bestow another smile on a guest who caught her eye and waved. Turning her face up to Ian, she offered graciously, “It’s been a long day. If you wish to retire, I’m sure everyone will understand.” “I’m sure they will,” he said dryly, and Elizabeth noted with puzzlement that his eyes were suddenly gleaming. “I’ll stay down here and stand in for you,” she volunteered. The gleam in his eyes brightened yet more. “You don’t think that my retiring alone will look a little odd?” Elizabeth knew it might seem impolite, if not precisely odd, but then inspiration struck, and she said reassuringly, “Leave everything to me. I’ll make your excuses if anyone asks.” His lips twitched. “Just out of curiosity-what excuse will you make for me?” “I’ll say you’re not feeling well. It can’t be anything too dire though, or we’ll be caught out in the fib when you appear looking fit for breakfast and the hunt in the morning.” She hesitated, thinking, and then said decisively, “I’ll say you have the headache.” His eyes widened with laughter. “It’s kind of you to volunteer to dissemble for me, my lady, but that particular untruth would have me on the dueling field for the next month, trying to defend against the aspersions it would cause to be cast upon my…ah…manly character.” “Why? Don’t gentlemen get headaches?” “Not,” he said with a roguish grin, “on their wedding night.” “I can’t see why.” “Can you not?” “No. And,” she added with an irate whisper, “I don’t see why everyone is staying down here this late. I’ve never been to a wedding reception, but it does seem as if they ought to be beginning to seek their beds.” “Elizabeth,” he said, trying not to laugh. “At a wedding reception, the guests cannot leave until the bride and groom retire. If you look over there, you’ll notice my great-aunts are already nodding in their chairs.” “Oh!” she exclaimed, instantly contrite. “I didn’t know. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” “Because,” he said, taking her elbow and beginning to guide her from the ballroom, “I wanted you to enjoy every minute of our ball, even if we had to prop the guests up on the shrubbery.

Springs and summers full of song and revolution. The Popular Front, demonstrations and confrontations, time that takes you away from yourself and your poetry, so that you could see them as if from cosmic space, a way of looking that changes everything into stars, our Earth, you and me, Estonia and Eritrea, blue anemones and the Pacific Ocean. Even the belief that you will write more poems. Something that was breathing into you, as May wind blows into a house bringing smells of mown grass and dogs' barks, - this something has dissipated, become invisible like stars in daylight. For quite a time I haven't permitted myself to hope it would come back. I know I am not free, I am nothing without this breathing, inspiration, wind that comes through the window. Let God be free, whether he exist or no. And then, it comes once again. At dusk in the countryside when I go to an outhouse, a little white moth flies out of the door. That's it, now. And the dusk around me begins little by little to breathe in words and syllables. * In the morning, I was presented to President Mitterrand, in the evening, I was weeding nettles from under the currant bushes. A lot happened inbetween, the ride from Tallinn to Tartu and to our country home through the spring that we had waited for so long, and that came, as always, unexpectedly, changing serious greyish Estonia at once into a primary school child's drawing in pale green, into a play-landscape where mayflies, mayors and cars are all somewhat tiny and ridiculous... In the evening I saw the full moon rising above the alder grove. Two bats circled over the courtyard. The President's hand was soft and warm. As were his eyes, where fatigue was, in a curious way, mingled with force, and depth with banality. He had bottomless night eyes with something mysterious in them like the paths of moles underground or the places where bats hibernate and sleep.

Just like rain, let it all flow incessantly until the sky clears out. Sometimes a part of me asks how is it that the ones who love the most, dearly, tenderly giving their all, find their hollow end meeting with scars that they never deserved. How is it that sometimes Life turns cold for those who sprinkle the most amount of sunshine, the hand that wipes other's pain how is that parched with betrayals and misunderstandings. But I guess it is about life lessons, how a soul grows through it all, as if the soul walks across the pyre of fire to know and eventually become its own mettle. Through it all the heart becomes more open and the mind more understanding, a unique strength of peace walks inside the very fire that rages the soul. Patience flows in through perseverance and the ashes mould in the teardrop of resilience to wear the smile of kindness. I have realised that when the worst happens to us, the soul is confronted with two choices, either to become bitter with repeating the question why or to become better with understanding the way how to walk ahead. Eventually it boils down to two simple emotions, love and hate, astonishingly born out of the same part of our mind and heart. It is a selection of either vengeance or forgiveness, not an easy choice to make especially when we are at our most vulnerable self. Whatever we choose becomes our reality, as if we get soaked in it, and somehow Time runs by. And when years pass by and we look back and see the path, and reflect on our choice we understand the meaning of both the choices, to some they take the shape of peace and to some they take the shape of agony, but looking closely we can see that the agony is the pathway leading to peace, forgiveness is the destination, sooner or later we all reach that space to find it in us to forgive, some in years while some in lifetimes. And perhaps, that is why we all undergo all that happens to us, chained in our Karma. So even when Life seems unfair, give it your all. Love with all your soul and no matter what comes by, don't stop walking along this shore of Time, because no matter how long it takes, you will find your Home. And when Life puts up a question as to why some who broke your soul find pleasure so easy, remind yourself the difference between pleasure and peace and don't forget to acknowledge the fact that perhaps you have paid your Karmic debt in full while theirs might just be beginning. So break if you must, but remind yourself about the gift of Life and Love every passing moment that breathes like a dream in an illusion of Time. Let your Faith walk hand in hand with you as you tread softly towards your destination, because no matter the years or the lifetimes, someday the sky shall be clear for the rainbow of your soul to smile in the Justice of Him, who knows all, sees all, feels all and does all.