“
I'd run my whole life long to reach you; paddle my way across Atlantic and Pacific; traverse Jungle and Desert to find you; climb cliffs and drop from the sky to rescue you. Anything to be close to you. Any way to say I love you.
”
”
Heather Kris Thomas (A Place for You and Me)
“
For love, we will climb mountains, cross seas, traverse desert sands, and endure untold hardships.
Without love, mountains become unclimbable, seas uncrossable, deserts unbearable, and hardships our lot in life.
”
”
Gary Chapman (The Five Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts)
“
For me,
you are fresh water
that falls from trees
when it has stopped raining. For me,
you are cinnamon that lingers
on the tongue and gives
bitter words
sweetening.
For me, you are the scent of
violins and vision
of valleys
smiling.
And still,
for me, your loveliness never ends.
It traverses
the world
and finds its
way back to me.
Only
me.
”
”
Kamand Kojouri
“
By navigating between excess and deficiency in our desires, we can find the means to discover the ideals of our fulfillment. Patience is a steady guide
and reassures us that we can traverse our emotional landscapes without getting lost in them, offering a comforting presence in the often-turbulent journey of love and emotions. (“Crépuscule du désir “)
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
The body is imaginary, and we bow to the tyranny of a phantom. Love is a privilege perception, the most total and lucid not only of the unreality of the world but of our own unreality: not only do we traverse a realm of shadows; but ourselves are shadows.
”
”
Adolfo Bioy Casares
“
She was perfectly sane in streets unknown. She loved conversing with people tagged as strangers. She was social, amiable & all that is her. Yet, with known people she felt unknown, she choked words and fought inside. And indeed she tripped insane while traversing those streets known. She stared at others and consumed their happiness through senses cold. And so she waits for Winter's warmth to touch her in streets of distant shore, in her own world of simple happiness.
”
”
Debatrayee Banerjee
“
Let borders become sunlight so we traverse this Earth as one nation and drive the darkness out.
”
”
Kamand Kojouri
“
For love, we will climb mountains, cross seas, traverse desert sands, and endure untold hardships. Without love, mountains become unclimbable, seas uncrossable, deserts unbearable, and hardships our lot in life.
”
”
Gary Chapman (The Five Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts)
“
If someone you love and care for is determined to traverse the path of despair, natural law obliges that they ‘will’ regardless of any and all efforts to redirect their lowly path.
”
”
T.F. Hodge (From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence)
“
Nothing belongs to itself anymore.
These trees are yours because you once looked at them.
These streets are yours because you once traversed them.
These coffee shops and bookshops, these cafés and bars, their sole owner is you.
They gave themselves so willingly, surrendering to your perfume.
You sang with the birds and they stopped to listen to you.
You smiled at the sheepish stars and they fell into your hair.
The sun and moon, the sea and mountain, they have all left from heartbreak.
Nothing belongs to itself anymore.
You once spoke to Him, and then God became yours.
He sits with us in darkness now
to plot how to make you ours.” K.K.
”
”
Kamand Kojouri
“
With riddles as black as coals, and answers as invisible as our past,
I can only depend upon the crest of the rolling wave I now traversed;
a romance worshiped only by the dreamer in us all,
a psithurism of trust making its way through the years of our ascension
to one day climb above the kaleidoscopic canopy of this mortal coil.
”
”
Dave Matthes (In This House, We Lived, and We Died)
“
Psychologists have concluded that the need to feel loved is a primary human emotional need. For love, we will climb mountains, cross seas, traverse desert sands, and endure untold hardships. Without love, mountains become unclimbable, seas uncrossable, deserts unbearable, and hardship our lot in life.
”
”
Gary Chapman (The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts)
“
In the country whereto I go
I shall not see the face of my friend
Nor her hair the color of sunburnt grasses;
Together we shall not find
The land on whose hills bends the new moon
In air traversed of birds.
What have I thought of love?
I have said, "It is beauty and sorrow."
I have thought that it would bring me lost delights, and splendor
As a wind out of old time . . .
But there is only the evening here,
And the sound of willows
Now and again dipping their long oval leaves in the water.
-- from "Betrothed
”
”
Louise Bogan (The Blue Estuaries)
“
An explorer is an explorer from love, and it is nature, not art, that makes him so.
”
”
Ernest Giles (Australia Twice Traversed)
“
Spesso il confine tra felicità e infelicità è labile: a volte la felicità arriva per strane vie traverse.
”
”
Nicolas Barreau (The Ingredients of Love)
“
The interval of space separating her from him was one which he must as inevitably traverse as he must descend, by an irresistible gravitation, the steep slope of life itself.
”
”
Marcel Proust (Swann’s Way (In Search of Lost Time, #1))
“
I do leave my bed to see tomorrow, And traverse the landscape that my desires paint, But every night when I return to my bed, My existence seems to be a mere exercise in repetition…
”
”
Piyush Rohankar (Narcissistic Romanticism)
“
...and though it was three in the morning, and he had to traverse some of the nastiest quarters in Paris, trouble passed him by. Everyone knows that God watches over drunkards and lovers.
”
”
Alexandre Dumas (The Three Musketeers)
“
Sometimes love doesn't look like what we think it should look like. Sometimes it's paradoxical. Sometimes we have to step outside our comfort zone. Sometimes we have to be more honest than we thought we'd ever have to be or more supportive than we are taught is appropriate. When we traverse those boundaries, that's when we really understand what this whole love thing is all about. We become more than just human. We become part of the giant, beautiful ever-changing reality of life. By loving without limits, we become wise, strong, and beautiful. We become more of what we already are.
”
”
Vironika Tugaleva
“
Let me sing the beauty of my Maggie. Legs:--the knees attached to the thighs, knees shiny, thighs like milk. Arms:--the levers of my content, the serpents of my joy. Back:--the sight of that in a strange street of dreams in the middle of Heaven would make me fall sitting from glad recognition. Ribs?--she had some melted and round like a well formed apple, from her thigh bones to waist I saw the earth roll. In her neck I hid myself like a lost snow goose of Australia, seeking the perfume of her breast. . . . She didn't let me, she was a good girl. The poor big alley cat, though almost a year younger, had black ideas about her legs that he hid from himself, also in his prayers didn't mention . . . the dog. Across the big world darkness I've come, in boat, in bus, in airplane, in train standing my shadow immense traversing the fields and the redness of engine boilers behind me making me omnipotent upon the earth of the night, like God--but I have never made love with a little finger that has won me since. I gnawed her face with my eyes; she loved that; and that was bastardly I didn't know she loved me--I didn't understand.
”
”
Jack Kerouac (Maggie Cassidy)
“
But man is a frivolous and incongruous creature, and perhaps, like a chess player, loves the process of the game, not the end of it. And who knows (there is no saying with certainty), perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained, which must always be expressed as a formula, as positive as twice two makes four, and such positiveness is not life, gentlemen, but is the beginning of death. Anyway, man has always been afraid of this mathematical certainty, and I am afraid of it now. Granted that man does nothing but seek that mathematical certainty, he traverses oceans, sacrifices his life in the quest, but to succeed, really to find it, dreads, I assure you. He feels that when he has found it there will be nothing for him to look for. When workmen have finished their work they do at least receive their pay, they go to the tavern, then they are taken to the police-station–and there is occupation for a week. But where can man go? Anyway, one can observe a certain awkwardness about him when he has attained such objects. He loves the process of attaining, but does not quite like to have attained, and that, of course, is very absurd. In fact, man is a comical creature; there seems to be a kind of jest in it all. But yet mathematical certainty is after all, something insufferable. Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead)
“
I genuinely believe that relationships with family and close friends are one of the greatest sources of happiness in life. It sounds simple, but like any important investment, these relationships need consistent attention and care. But there are two forces that will be constantly working against this happening. First, you’ll be routinely tempted to invest your resources elsewhere—in things that will provide you with a more immediate payoff. And second, your family and friends rarely shout the loudest to demand your attention. They love you and they want to support your career, too. That can add up to neglecting the people you care about most in the world. The theory of good money, bad money explains that the clock of building a fulfilling relationship is ticking from the start. If you don’t nurture and develop those relationships, they won’t be there to support you if you find yourself traversing some of the more challenging stretches of life, or as one of the most important sources of happiness in your life.
”
”
Clayton M. Christensen (How Will You Measure Your Life?)
“
We all need hope. As souls, we journey in physical bodies, traversing a life that is dually lived. We experience safety through attachment to the physical world, but we also are comforted and cared for by a trust in the non-physical, spiritual part of our reality. Two different roads, available for us and from which we choose, moment by moment.
”
”
Susan Barbara Apollon (Touched by the Extraordinary, Book Two (Healing Stories of Love, Loss & Hope))
“
I traverse the seasons in search of the heart’s desires
And carry with me the flame
Of undying love
”
”
Hanna Abi Akl (Diary in Poems)
“
J'ai quelque fois rêvé que de temps en temps des heures se détachaient de la vie des anges et venaient ici-bas traverser la destinée des hommes.
”
”
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
“
I start to drag myself along the corridor towards my flat. I traverse the whole distance on my bottom so that I don’t have to stand up and risk revealing anything to Cooper.
”
”
Kirsty Greenwood (The Love of My Afterlife)
“
In the streets of the town goes my love. Small matter where
she moves in divided time. She is no longer my love, anyone may speak with her. She remembers no longer: who exactly loved her?
She seeks her equal in glances, pledging. The space she traverses
is my faithfulness. She traces a hope and lightly dismisses it.
She is dominant without taking part.
I live in her depth, a joyous shipwreck. Without her knowing,
my solitude is her treasure. In the great meridian where her soaring
is inscribed, my freedom delves deep in her.
In the streets of the town goes my love. Small matter where
she moves in divided time. She is no longer my love, anyone may
speak with her. She remembers no longer: who exactly loved her,
and lights her from afar, lest she should fall?
from ”Fidelity
”
”
René Char (Fureur et Mystère)
“
Moments later, I was climbing nervously into the back of the car. The driver wore the archetypal expression of an antagonist. No words were exchanged beyond the brief lines uttered to this nameless stranger, whose inclinations remained unclear. The car sped along empty roads and traversed dingy alleyways. Music blared from its speakers. I did not remember exhaling throughout the entire journey.
”
”
Agnes Chew (The Desire for Elsewhere)
“
A scorpion sat on the shores of a river one day, needing to get to the other side, but the river was too wide, and there were not enough stones to jump across. He begged the various water birds—mallards and geese and herons—if he could catch a ride, but they pragmatically turned him down, knowing too well his cunning and his sting. He caught sight of the lovely swan making her way down the river and charmingly pleaded to her attributes. “Please, beautiful Swan, take me across the river. I couldn’t imagine harming something as beautiful as you, and it is not in my interest to do so. I simply want to get to the other side of the river.” The swan hesitated, but the scorpion was so charming and convincing. He was close enough to sting her right now, and yet he did not do it. What could go wrong? The trip across the river would take only a few minutes. She agreed to help him. As they traversed the river, the scorpion expressed his gratitude and continued to offer his compliments about her loveliness and kindness compared to all of the other negligent river birds. As they arrived at the other riverbank, he prepared to jump off. And right before he jumped off of her back, he lifted his tail and stung her. Crying and injured, the swan couldn’t understand why he’d done this, after all the promises, all the flattery, the logical explanations. “Why did you sting me?” she asked. He looked at her from the river bank and said, “I’m a scorpion. It’s who I am.” ♦♦♦
”
”
Ramani Durvasula (Should I Stay or Should I Go?: Surviving a Relationship with a Narcissist)
“
The moon fled eastward like a frightened dove, while the stars changed their places in the heavens, like a disbanding army.
'Where are we?' asked Gil Gil.
'In France,' responded the Angel of Death. 'We have now traversed a large portion of the two bellicose nations which waged so sanguinary a war with each other at the beginning of the present century. We have seen the theater of the War of Succession. Conquered and conquerors both lie sleeping at this instant. My apprentice, Sleep, rules over the heroes who did not perish then, in battle, or afterward of sickness or of
old age. I do not understand why it is that below on earth all men are not friends? The identity of your misfortunes and your weaknesses, the need you have of each other, the shortness of your life, the spectacle of the grandeur of other worlds, and the comparison between them and your littleness, all this should combine to unite you in brotherhood, like the passengers of a vessel threatened with shipwreck. There, there is neither love, nor hate, nor ambition, no one is debtor or creditor, no one is great or little, no one is handsome or ugly, no one is happy or unfortunate. The same danger surrounds all and my presence makes all equal. Well, then, what is the earth, seen from this height, but a ship which is foundering, a city delivered up to an epidemic or a conflagration?'
'What are those ignes fatui which I can see shining in certain places on the terrestrial globe, ever since the moon veiled her light?' asked the young man.
'They are cemeteries. We are now above Paris. Side by side with every city, every town, every village of the living there is always a city, a town, or a village of the dead, as the shadow is always beside the body. Geography, then, is of two kinds, although mortals only speak of the kind which is agreeable to them. A map of all the cemeteries which there are on the earth would be sufficient indication of the political geography of your world. You would miscalculate, however, in regard to the population; the dead cities are much more densely populated than the living; in the latter there are hardly three generations at one time, while, in the former, hundreds of generations are often crowded together. As for the lights you see shining, they are phosphorescent gleams from dead bodies, or rather they are the expiring gleams of thousands of vanished lives; they are the twilight glow of love, ambition, anger, genius, mercy; they are, in short, the last glow of a dying light, of the individuality which is disappearing, of the being yielding back his elements to mother earth. They are - and now it is that I have found the true word - the foam made by the river when it mingles its waters with those of the ocean.' The Angel of Death paused. ("The Friend of Death")
”
”
Pedro Antonio de Alarcón (Ghostly By Gaslight)
“
I’ve traveled this road for many decades and I still don’t know how to go. I am a wanderer, traversing mountains of time. There is no fault, only fault lines that tremor and quake, barring me, no warning. Aftershocks. -Broken Places
”
”
Rachel Thompson
“
But what is it that happens precisely when we encounter someone we love? Do we encounter somebody, or is it animals that come to inhabit you, ideas that invade you, movements that move you, sounds that traverse you? And can these things be parted?
”
”
Gilles Deleuze
“
In reality, those traversing the spiritual awakening journey are particularly susceptible to the emergence of the shadow self, as the ego (the light side of the shadow) loves to drape itself in robes of light and bliss, appearing special, untouchable, and enlightened.
”
”
Aletheia Luna (Mindful Shadow Work: Exercises For Befriending Your Dark Side, Healing Trauma, and Finding Joy)
“
When we are humbled before Allah, we taste something of His greatness. When we focus on our shortcomings, our sins, and mistakes it is easy to lose hope, but when we focus our attention on Allah’s forgiveness, mercy, and love we are able to traverse whatever challenge or obstacle is in our way.
”
”
A. Helwa (Secrets of Divine Love Journal: Insightful Reflections that Inspire Hope and Revive Faith)
“
In Poems of Love and Light: The Light of The Sun…Our Breath as One, the tenor seems to have changed slightly, as the progression of Love and lovers is, in many cases (if not all) quixotic, dependent upon mutual understanding, the conditions of the moment, the awareness of the future, as well as the mundane life, in which we all must exist, embracing real life, as is the natural state, which sentient individuals traverse – illusion may help those in the ‘moment’, but does nothing for the long-term, except misdirect it.
Poetry has always been a way to leave something for those who come after, a legacy of inspiration, methodology, spirit, love, emotion, historical sense and utility, depending upon the subject matter, intentions of the bard, and the situations, which frame the creation of that sense of experience, with which the Poet receives his Muse.
Poems of Love and Light: In The Light of the Sun, Our Breath as One
”
”
Frank L. DeSilva
“
THE STAGE:
The stage is empty, and you watch as the figure of Medusa steps into the gas-light. Her body is dressed in a crimson traversed by the golden branches of willow trees, colour and light held into shape by sharp black borders. Lifting languidly her hands, she reaches towards you. Her emerald vipers, in the cohesive movements of unseen mechanisms, weave loops about her head. Music is beginning, and from the shadows off-stage the narrator speaks. “Medusa had a beautiful name and a lovely voice, though no one cared to listen; seeking only the gaze of those famous eyes.”
Perseus walks onto the stage, cloaked as though he were the blazing sun. Now what you have to understand is his voice – it is like nothing you could tie down. It feels peaceful to hear it, to see him flow into the song with his fine, clear looks and his finer, clearer voice. Is the head quite forgotten? Not quite but the horror exists alongside the beauty and they flow like twin rivers, and neither is able to wash the other from you.
”
”
Tamara Rendell (Mystical Tides)
“
If men create intelligent machines, or fantasize about them, it is either because they secretly despair of their own intelligence or because they are in danger of succumbing to the weight of a monstrous and useless intelligence which they seek to exorcize by transferring it to machines, where they can play with it and make fun of it. By entrusting this burdensome intelligence to machines we are released from any responsibility to knowledge, much as entrusting power to politicians allows us to disdain any aspiration of our own to power.
If men dream of machines that are unique, that are endowed with genius, it is because they despair of their own uniqueness, or because they prefer to do without it - to enjoy it by proxy, so to speak, thanks to machines. What such machines offer is the spectacle of thought, and in manipulating them people devote themselves more to the spectacle of thought than to thought itself.
It is not for nothing that they are described as 'virtual', for they put thought on hold indefinitely, tying its emergence to the achievement of a complete knowledge. The act of thinking itself is thus put off for ever. Indeed, the question of thought can no more be raised than the question of the freedom of future generations, who will pass through life as we travel through the air, strapped into their seats. These Men of Artificial Intelligence will traverse their own mental space bound hand and foot to their computers. Immobile in front of his computer, Virtual Man makes love via the screen and gives lessons by means of the teleconference. He is a physical - and no doubt also a mental cripple. That is the price he pays for being operational. Just as eyeglasses and contact lenses will arguably one day evolve into implanted prostheses for a species that has lost its sight, it is similarly to be feared that artificial intelligence and the hardware that supports it will become a mental prosthesis for a species without the capacity for thought.
Artificial intelligence is devoid of intelligence because it is devoid of artifice.
”
”
Jean Baudrillard (The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena)
“
baptismal promises counter such a configuration: love and its obligations traverse the boundaries of “private residences” and “nuclear families” because they initiate us into a household that is bigger than what is under the roof of our house. The promises in baptism indicate a very different theology of the family, which recognizes that “families work well when we do not expect them to give us all we need.
”
”
James K.A. Smith (Desiring the Kingdom (Cultural Liturgies): Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation)
“
Answering Emily
This traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How Frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!
~Emily Dickinson
Is it really so hard to love this man
Which to your siren's calls been lured?
Cannot his kiss traverse the oceans depths
Piggy-backed upon his word?
Neither frigate, freighter nor chariot,
Hitched to Hermes’s heels,
Can convey the breadth of purest love
That this heart truly feels.
”
”
Beryl Dov
“
She was a young thing, a child really, full of hope and light, who’s only friends were the shadows on the walls. Others would have found the darkness that she traversed lacking in shadows, but she exuded an unearthly radiance, lighting the world with every step and bringing life to the shadows that lived only in the twilight between worlds. It was here that her friends came out to play and fed her soul with their love of her joy and the light she bore. For without light, there could be no shadows.
He, a man living in the light, found nothing in the darkness, though his eyes scoured it constantly for a kindred spirit. Always, he searched the void for someone to cling to, some kind of anchor for his soul. For he walked in the light only with help of a mask to hide behind. Under it hid an ethereal animal, primal in its needs and desires, which could not stand the light of day. If only there was one who could give him light without destroying the darkness that filled him so that he could finally be free.
”
”
Lexie Syrah (Torn: A Dark BDSM Romance Novel (Shattered Lives, #1))
“
It was astonishing how loudly one laughed at tales of gruesome things, of war’s brutality-I with the rest of them. I think at the bottom of it was a sense of the ironical contrast between the normal ways of civilian life and this hark-back to the caveman code. It made all our old philosophy of life monstrously ridiculous. It played the “hat trick” with the gentility of modern manners. Men who had been brought up to Christian virtues, who had prattled their little prayers at mothers’ knees, who had grown up to a love of poetry, painting, music, the gentle arts, over-sensitized to the subtleties of half-tones, delicate scales of emotion, fastidious in their choice of words, in their sense of beauty, found themselves compelled to live and act like ape-men; and it was abominably funny. They laughed at the most frightful episodes, which revealed this contrast between civilized ethics and the old beast law. The more revolting it was the more, sometimes, they shouted with laughter, especially in reminiscence, when the tale was told in the gilded salon of a French chateau, or at a mess-table.
It was, I think, the laughter of mortals at the trick which had been played on them by an ironical fate. They had been taught to believe that the whole object of life was to reach out to beauty and love, and that mankind, in its progress to perfection, had killed the beast instinct, cruelty, blood-lust, the primitive, savage law of survival by tooth and claw and club and ax. All poetry, all art, all religion had preached this gospel and this promise.
Now that ideal had broken like a china vase dashed to hard ground. The contrast between That and This was devastating. It was, in an enormous world-shaking way, like a highly dignified man in a silk hat, morning coat, creased trousers, spats, and patent boots suddenly slipping on a piece of orange-peel and sitting, all of a heap, with silk hat flying, in a filthy gutter. The war-time humor of the soul roared with mirth at the sight of all that dignity and elegance despoiled.
So we laughed merrily, I remember, when a military chaplain (Eton, Christ Church, and Christian service) described how an English sergeant stood round the traverse of a German trench, in a night raid, and as the Germans came his way, thinking to escape, he cleft one skull after another with a steel-studded bludgeon a weapon which he had made with loving craftsmanship on the model of Blunderbore’s club in the pictures of a fairy-tale.
So we laughed at the adventures of a young barrister (a brilliant fellow in the Oxford “Union”) whose pleasure it was to creep out o’ nights into No Man’s Land and lie doggo in a shell-hole close to the enemy’s barbed wire, until presently, after an hour’s waiting or two, a German soldier would crawl out to fetch in a corpse. The English barrister lay with his rifle ready. Where there had been one corpse there were two. Each night he made a notch on his rifle three notches one night to check the number of his victims. Then he came back to breakfast in his dugout with a hearty appetite.
”
”
Phillip Gibbs
“
Life has come to a silent pause,
The fear of Virus, the slowdown,
Disconnecting me from moments,
Heart has taken over the mind,
Light now shines upon my eyes,
Dreams blocked, the roads traversed,
The break has broken the barrier,
Me pondering, was I living my life?
The days are same and so is night,
The Sun, the Moon, and the stars,
still rise in the east and set in the west,
Trees, plants, flowers there as before,
The sky, clouds rivers and oceans,
Earth's precious treasures, no different,
Change is in my perspective n priorities,
Is it that I am learning to live my life.
Monotonous tedium chores,
Unpleasant hunger for wealth,
Most of us are living dead,
Body just awaits the soul to leave,
To be buried or cremated,
Waste of life and for what price,
All material things cherished,
Useless in our last flight.
Time to fall in love with my life,
Stop living for others, their expectations,
I am again the owner of my choices,
Not bothered to please others,
Nor what they think about me,
My dreams are alive and back,
My treasurers are now my deeds,
I have finally learnt to live!!!
”
”
Mukesh Kwatra
“
Life is transient and death is unfathomable, but questions nonetheless abound. What is the driving purpose behind the prosodic life of an ordinary person such as me? What emotional rhythms, pitches, pauses, stresses, and intonations drive the meter of person’s life? When the church bells toll my parting day, what tone will it strike in the hearts of other people, if any? Is there a person whoever traversed this crusty rock that we call planet Earth who did not wish for other people to remember them after their death? I confess sharing the vain longing of all men, however humble, to be remembered, not for the crimes that I committed but for fully expressing the poetic gift of life. When I ask what other people will think when I die, I must also ask why I lived, what did I live for, and what joy did I bring other people, if any. What acts, thoughts, and deeds make people beloved? What resounding chime resonates with all loving people? What magical filament binds us? What serves as the ethereal umbilical cord that causes all conscience stricken humans to crave the same universal sense of being?
”
”
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
“
In the castle of lurid Smiles,
In the realm of void Ecstasy,
In the clutches of mad Nostalgia -
There flowed a river of serene Tranquility,
Charmed by the halo of yet unknown.
And there she trespassed -
To hear the resonance of her soul,
To touch the rainbow of her sun,
To feel the nerve of her being.
She seemed to love her nest,
A tender bud caressing the depth of sweet Solitude.
Yet she longed to traverse through that river,
Crossing the limps of jolting Madness.
For sometimes she heard the beckoning of a Rainbow,
Burning the sky of a distant land,
Charmed by the halo of yet known.
”
”
Debatrayee Banerjee (A Whispering Leaf. . .)
“
The idea of death took up permanent residence within me in the way that love sometimes does. Not that I loved death, I abhorred it. But after a preliminary stage in which, no doubt, I thought about it from time to time as one does about a woman with whom one is not yet in love, its image adhered now to the most profound layer of my mind, so completely that I could not give my attention to anything without that thing first traversing the idea of death, and even if no object occupied my attention and I remained in a state of complete repose, the idea of death still kept me company as faithfully as the idea of my self.
”
”
Marcel Proust (Time Regained)
“
Sonnet XL"
Green was the silence, wet was the light
the month of June trembled like a butterfly
and in the south dominion, from the sea and the stones,
Matilde, you traversed the midday.
You were loaded with ferrous flowers,
seaweeds that the south wind torments and forgets,
still white, shrivelled by the devouring salt,
your hands raised the stalks of sand.
I love your pure gifts, your skin of untouched rock,
your nails offered in the sun of your fingers,
your mouth spilt through all the joy,
but, for my house neighboring the abyss,
give me the tormented system of the silence,
the pavillion of the sea forgotten in the sand.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets)
“
Chapter One: The Dawn and the Dread
Heartbeat, heartbeat comes from Valhallan way,
To meet down in judgment, to ply its trade.
Two →swords← to join in worthy cross,
Actions to be rendered, one to be lost.
She did come now from ’yond northern slope,
A day of reckoning did she again once hope.
A devout meeting was her qwesterly bane,
To stay her hand was to go insane.
St. Kari of the Blade to meet her past,
A wicked enemy, peerless of match.
Rode Kari she her charger on down,
Past the Dead Land where Gaul sat crowned.
A killing job, yea, she desired to lastly kill,
To set things right so her heart might lie still.
Upon the mist and roaring plain,
She entered in, a soul uncontained.
A fierce wind in deed, and forever freed,
Enemies she annihilhates (’tis hur’ creed).
Her own advanced guard of a sort,
Multitudes to follow in her report.
Know this Valkyrie from on cold,
An ancient maiden soft and bold.
A warrior spirit from Ages past,
A fragmented mind like broken glass.
Solid in stature this eternal framed being,
Yet crippled within from internaled bleedings.
A sword saint so refined in the poetic art,
A noble character yet with a banshee’s heart.
Rhythmed horse now to the beats,
Kari emboldened amid the sleet.
Beyond the mountain she does come,
Unto southern fields wherein rules hot sun.
Far from that murderous Deadlands ground,
The land up swells; the dead still abound.
Traverses she those bygones of leprous civilizations
Those cities crumbled by the exhalted of oblivions.
Stark traces etched now bare in the land,
That are no more again, save dust in the hand.
A cool stream now in desert sans
(Does more good when one is damned).
Stopped she her mount to admire the flow,
A lovely stream with skeletons packed below.
Blue air whisps; dragon flied motion.
Flintsteel striking!!! Sparked of commotion.
Cold water chortles rushtish with tint,
Told of past carnage, it whetted her glint.
Fallen warriors, they are no more,
Swirls and eddies mark their discord.
Gurgled shouts slung and gathered,
Faces glazed while steel lathered.
Refreshing though it was to her mouth,
She smelled an air; she flared about.
Came up that ridge of loud, sanded hill,
Below a man and his half-score of kills.
Kari’s eyes waxed in smug contempt,
Possibilities ran deep with no repent . . .
On Kari, Valkyrie, Cold Steel Eternity Vol. II
”
”
Douglas M. Laurent
“
In order for mankind to be kinder, more love filled and more human with each other, we all have to be more intentional about being better, more transcendent in our humanness.
Any human evil enough to enslave, colonize, unjustly criminalize, imperialize, slaughter or emotionally and physically brutalize other people, is not human.
You can't be both inhuman and human at the same time. The two can't occupy the same human. The human animal has thus far, proven itself to be one of the worst species to have ever traversed this planet. No other species has ever shown such barbarity and anti-sentience to other sentient beings, like the human specie has. In order for our specie to further evolve. In order for our specie to work repair the damage we've done to this beautiful place we call and to the sentient family, our humanity and inhumanness, can longer walk hand in hand.
”
”
Mekael Shane
“
One has but to consider the phenomenon of fashion, which has never been satisfactorily explained. Fashion is the despair of sociology and aesthetics: a prodigious contagion of forms in which chain reactions struggle for supremacy over the logic of distinctions. The pleasure of fashion is undeniably cultural in origin, but does it not stem even more clearly from a flaring, unmediated consensus generated by the interplay of signs? Moreover, fashions fade away like epidemics once they have ravaged the imagination, once the virus has run its course. The price to be paid in terms of waste is always exorbitant, yet everyone consents. The marvellous in our societies resides in this ultra-rapid circulation of signs at a surface level (as opposed to the ultra-slow circulation of meanings). We love being contaminated by this process, and not having to think about it. This is a viral onslaught as noxious as the plague, yet no moral sociology, no philosophical reason, will ever extirpate it. Fashion is an irreducible phenomenon because it partakes of a crazy, viral, mediationless form of communication which operates so fast for the sole reason that it never passes via the mediation of meaning.
Anything that bypasses mediation is a source of pleasure. In seduction there is a movement from the one to the other which does not pass via the same. (In cloning, it is the opposite: the movement is from the same to the same without passage via the other; and cloning holds great fascination for us.) In metamorphosis, the shift is from one form to another without passing via meaning. In poetry, from one sign to another without passing via the reference. The collapsing of distances, of intervening spaces, always produces a kind of intoxication. What does speed itself mean to us if not the fact of going from one place to another without traversing time, from one moment to another without passing via duration and movement? Speed is marvellous: time alone is wearisome.
”
”
Jean Baudrillard
“
the hidden unity is better than the visible
57 Good and evil are the same.
56 the harmony of the world is the harmony of oppositions.
59 unite whole and part, agreement and disagreement, discord and accord. From one comes all and all one. 60 They would not know the name of justice were it not for these things.
by strife all things arise and are used.
there is only one supreme wisdom. it wills and wills not to be called zeus.
immortals are mortal, mortals, immortal, living in their death and dying in their life.
The way upward and downward are one and the same.
The beginning and end are one.
The limits of the soul you shall not find out though you should traverse every way.
Those who speak with intelligence must speak what is common to all, for all human laws are united by one divine law.
Man understands the deity as much and little as the child understands the man.
Self control is the highest wisdom, and wisdom is to know truth and consciously to act in accord with nature.
it is better to conceal ignorance than expose it.
A stupid man loves to be puzzled by every discourse.
A man's character is his demon.
”
”
Heraclitus (Fragments)
“
POEM – MY AMAZING
TRAVELS
[My composition in my book Travel Memoirs with Pictures]
My very first trip I still cannot believe
Was planned and executed with such great ease.
My father, an Inspector of Schools, was such a strict man,
He gave in to my wishes when I told him of the plan.
I got my first long vacation while working as a banker
One of my co-workers wanted a travelling partner.
She visited my father and discussed the matter
Arrangements were made without any flutter.
We travelled to New York, Toronto, London, and Germany,
In each of those places, there was somebody,
To guide and protect us and to take us wonderful places,
It was a dream come true at our young ages.
We even visited Holland, which was across the Border.
To drive across from Germany was quite in order.
Memories of great times continue to linger,
I thank God for an understanding father.
That trip in 1968 was the beginning of much more,
I visited many countries afterward I am still in awe.
Barbados, Tobago, St. Maarten, and Buffalo,
Cirencester in the United Kingdom, Miami, and Orlando.
I was accompanied by my husband on many trips.
Sisters, nieces, children, grandchildren, and friends, travelled with me a bit.
Puerto Rico, Los Angeles, New York, and Hialeah,
Curacao, Caracas, Margarita, Virginia, and Anguilla.
We sailed aboard the Creole Queen
On the Mississippi in New Orleans
We traversed the Rockies in Colorado
And walked the streets in Cozumel, Mexico.
We were thrilled to visit the Vatican in Rome,
The Trevi Fountain and the Colosseum.
To explore the countryside in Florence,
And to sail on a Gondola in Venice.
My fridge is decorated with magnets
Souvenirs of all my visits
London, Madrid, Bahamas, Coco Cay, Barcelona.
And the Leaning Tower of Pisa
How can I forget the Spanish Steps in Rome?
Stratford upon Avon, where Shakespeare was born.
CN Tower in Toronto so very high
I thought the elevator would take me to the sky.
Then there was El Poble and Toledo
Noted for Spanish Gold
We travelled on the Euro star.
The scenery was beautiful to behold!
I must not omit Cartagena in Columbia,
Anaheim, Las Vegas, and Catalina,
Key West, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, and Pembroke Pines,
Places I love to lime.
Of course, I would like to make special mention,
Of two exciting cruises with Royal Caribbean.
Majesty of the Seas and Liberty of the Seas
Two ships which grace the Seas.
Last but not least and best of all
We visited Paris in the fall.
Cologne, Dusseldorf, and Berlin
Amazing places, which made my head, spin.
Copyright@BrendaMohammed
”
”
Brenda C. Mohammed (Travel Memoirs with Pictures)
“
The Dark Knight His gift is that he pushes a woman’s emotional and sexual edges. The Dark Knight lives at his own edge. The Dark Knight is named the dark knight because he’s ready and willing to face danger, and even death, to be fully alive. You don’t have to risk your life to traverse this edge. You need only to be willing to pull back the curtain of fear and look at where you’re hiding or what you're hiding from. A man who lives at his edge is exciting to a woman because he demonstrates courage and bold resolve. He knows how to push a woman’s sexual and emotional edge and open her to hidden aspects of herself – because he doesn’t avoid his own. The Lover His gift is the gift of sexual integrity. The Lover owns his sexuality. He takes responsibility for what arises in him sexually and how he acts on that – never pretending that his sexual excitement controls him. By being in sexual possession he can give a woman something most men cannot: sexual freedom. The Lover is a powerful amalgamation of all the types, but most especially The Sage and The Dark Knight. His integrity builds trust, like The Sage. His fearlessness inspires passion, like The Dark Knight. His willingness to take responsibility sets a woman free. Your opportunity in embodying this archetype is parlaying ownership and responsibility into a very deep sexual connection with a woman.
”
”
Karen Brody (Open Her: Activate 7 Masculine Powers to Arouse Your Woman's Love & Desire)
“
Every man and every woman is a star: we all come from the same source, made from the same stuff, and it is that stuff that also makes the rest of the universe. When we are created, we contain within ourselves a spark of the divine, a star within our bodies of flesh that is eternal and a direct reflection of every other star contained within every other person and being upon the earth and in the heavens. Together we are constellations, and we come together in groups to create patterns in the sky. We move about in the heavens and in our orbits, and some of us collide while some of us find a mutually beneficial orbit; still others unite in the most beautiful constellations that their union will be seen and remembered throughout the ages. But we are all star-children, siblings under the canopy of heaven, and we all seek reunion with that from which we came bursting into life. The stars within us speak to their source and origin, and we yearn to return to it. The journey is long, but we find every now and then in another person a star that is closest to that which we yearn for, and we see in them the source of light, and they see it in us. We join with them, in yearning and desire and passion, and through them we are completed. This is love: the joining of two stars contained in the bodies of two human beings, expressed in their bridging of the gap between them and the gap between them and the divine. Yet do not curse the gap, Lover; do not bemoan the space that you must traverse to achieve reunion and love, for it is only by virtue of this gap that you might feel yearning and desire and love at all.
”
”
Kim Huggens (Complete Guide to Tarot Illuminati)
“
Many a time when I sat in the balcony, or hanging garden, on which my window opened, I have watched her rising in the air on her radiant wings, and in a few moments groups of infants below, catching sight of her, would soar upward with joyous sounds of greeting; clustering and sporting around her, so that she seemed a very centre of innocent delight. When I have walked with her amidst the rocks and valleys without the city, the elk-deer would scent or see her from afar, come bounding up, eager for the caress of her hand, or follow her footsteps, till dismissed by some musical whisper that the creature had learned to comprehend. It is the fashion among the virgin Gy-ei to wear on their foreheads a circlet, or coronet, with gems resembling opals, arranged in four points or rays like stars. These are lustreless in ordinary use, but if touched by the vril wand they take a clear lambent flame, which illuminates, yet not burns. This serves as an ornament in their festivities, and as a lamp, if, in their wanderings beyond their artificial lights, they have to traverse the dark. There are times, when I have seen Zee’s thoughtful majesty of face lighted up by this crowning halo, that I could scarcely believe her to be a creature of mortal birth, and bent my head before her as the vision of a being among the celestial orders. But never once did my heart feel for this lofty type of the noblest womanhood a sentiment of human love. Is it that, among the race I belong to, man’s pride so far influences his passions that woman loses to him her special charm of woman if he feels her to be in all things eminently superior to himself? But by what strange infatuation could this peerless daughter of a race which, in the supremacy of its powers and the felicity of its conditions, ranked all other races in the category of barbarians, have deigned to honour me with her preference?
”
”
Edward Bulwer-Lytton (The Coming Race)
“
Summer spirit, now she closes book’s end,
Days of youth spent, carefree with friends.
Kari plays now to that what she does not wish,
Lost summers days and angelic youth a’ missed.
Seasons do change and children grow up,
Passing through lives, life never stops.
Endless years, bleak they the mind,
Adventures of youth, throttle in time.
Desires entwine, one grows old,
Love loses her grasp, love slips from her hold.
Bygone dreams, sleep they soundly by,
Hopes for another child, not her soul-self I.
Grasped for never, dreams never learn to fly
(Within one’s dungeon, the darkest place to die).
And Winter’s chill, lays she to rest,
Dreams unobtained, fallen in the quest.
Kari knew she was but a dream, solo in its flight,
Ne’er taking wing again to caress innocence’s light.
And to live and live as she once is and now,
Stands she forever, stranded on time’s fallowed ground.
The love she lost she can never now have,
Graspless eternity plucked burning from her hands.
Love forsaken, the summer, silent and high,
Tears shed for what was once and not now, I.
Dreamless hopes far long spent,
Lie shallow within, deep strength relents.
A hollow traverse of endless life,
Lives she the knowing of eternalness light.
Aye, silent dreams slip they the day’s long night,
To tell of loves once beholden now lost in her sight.
In love’s abandonment, Kari, spills she away,
To dream upon those clouds again on some somber, summer day.
Thus, before evening rusts corrode the golden days,
Before innocence is raped and youth spirited away,
Before night blossoms forth, and day forgets day,
Summer’s love requests of us that we all do stay–
To hear a tale one has long since heard before,
To tell our souls twice over now and forevermore–
Graves are full of those who never lived but could,
Heaven and Hell are packed with those who knew they should,
And eternity, relentless eternity, brims with those that would.
”
”
Douglas M. Laurent
“
Standing, balanced precariously on the narrow top of a drainpipe, you had to give a good leap up to grab hold of the narrow ledge, and then swing your whole body up and over.
It took some guts, and a cool head for heights.
Get it wrong and the fall was a long one, onto concrete.
In an attempt to make it harder, the school security officers had put barbed wire all around the lip of the roof to ensure such climbs were “impossible.” (This was probably installed after Ran Fiennes’s escapades onto the dome all those years earlier.) But in actual fact the barbed wire served to help me as a climber. It gave me something else to hold on to.
Once on the roof, then came the crux of the climb.
Locating the base of the lightning conductor was the easy bit, the tough bit was then committing to it.
It held my weight; and it was a great sense of achievement clambering into the lead-lined small bell tower, silhouetted under the moonlight, and carving the initials BG alongside the RF of Ran Fiennes.
Small moments like that gave me an identity.
I wasn’t just yet another schoolboy, I was fully alive, fully me, using my skills to the max.
And in those moments I realized I simply loved adventure.
I guess I was discovering that what I was good at was a little off-the-wall, but at the same time recognizing a feeling in the pit of my stomach that said: Way to go, Bear, way to go.
My accomplice never made it past the barbed wire, but waited patiently for me at the bottom. He said it had been a thoroughly sickening experience to watch, which in my mind made it even more fun.
On the return journey, we safely crossed one college house garden and had silently traversed half of the next one.
We were squatting behind a bush in the middle of this housemaster’s lawn, waiting to do the final leg across. The tutor’s light was on, with him burning the midnight oil marking papers probably, when he decided it was time to let his dog out for a pee. The dog smelled us instantly, went bananas, and the tutor started running toward the commotion.
Decision time.
“Run,” I whispered, and we broke cover together and legged it toward the far side of the garden.
Unfortunately, the tutor in question also happened to be the school cross-country instructor, so he was no slouch.
He gave chase at once, sprinting after us across the fifty-meter dash. A ten-foot wall was the final obstacle and both of us, powered by adrenaline, leapt up it in one bound. The tutor was a runner but not a climber, and we narrowly avoided his grip and sprinted off into the night.
Up a final drainpipe, back into my open bedroom window, and it was mission accomplished.
I couldn’t stop smiling all through the next day.
”
”
Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
“
It is natural for a man to desire what he reckons better than that which he has already, and be satisfied with nothing which lacks that special quality which he misses. Thus, if it is for her beauty that he loves his wife, he will cast longing eyes after a fairer woman. If he is clad in a rich garment, he will covet a costlier one; and no matter how rich he may be he will envy a man richer than himself. Do we not see people every day, endowed with vast estates, who keep on joining field to field, dreaming of wider boundaries for their lands? Those who dwell in palaces are ever adding house to house, continually building up and tearing down, remodeling and changing. Men in high places are driven by insatiable ambition to clutch at still greater prizes. And nowhere is there any final satisfaction, because nothing there can be defined as absolutely the best or highest. But it is natural that nothing should content a man's desires but the very best, as he reckons it. Is it not, then, mad folly always to be craving for things which can never quiet our longings, much less satisfy them? No matter how many such things one has, he is always lusting after what he has not; never at peace, he sighs for new possessions. Discontented, he spends himself in fruitless toil, and finds only weariness in the evanescent and unreal pleasures of the world. In his greediness, he counts all that he has clutched as nothing in comparison with what is beyond his grasp, and loses all pleasure in his actual possessions by longing after what he has not, yet covets. No man can ever hope to own all things. Even the little one does possess is got only with toil and is held in fear; since each is certain to lose what he hath when God's day, appointed though unrevealed. shall come.
But the perverted will struggles towards the ultimate good by devious ways, yearning after satisfaction, yet led astray by vanity and deceived by wickedness. Ah, if you wish to attain to the consummation of all desire, so that nothing unfulfilled will be left, why weary yourself with fruitless efforts, running hither and thither, only to die long before the goal is reached? It is so that these impious ones wander in a circle, longing after something to gratify their yearnings, yet madly rejecting that which alone can bring them to their desired end, not by exhaustion but by attainment. They wear themselves out in vain travail, without reaching their blessed consummation, because they delight in creatures, not in the Creator. They want to traverse creation, trying all things one by one, rather than think of coming to him who is Lord of all. And if their utmost longing were realized, so that they should have all the world for their own, yet without possessing him who is the Author of all being, then the same law of their desires would make them contemn what they had and restlessly seek him whom they still lacked, that is, God himself.
”
”
Bernard of Clairvaux
“
On the contrary the depth and profound feeling of the spirit presupposes that the soul has worked its way through its feelings and powers and the whole of its inner life, i.e. that it has overcome much, suffered grief, endured anguish and pain of soul, and yet in this disunion has preserved its integrity and withdrawn out of it into itself. In the myth of Hercules the Greeks have presented us with a hero who after many labours was placed amongst the gods and enjoyed blissful peace there. But what Hercules achieved was only something outside him, the bliss given him as a reward was only peaceful repose. The ancient prophecy that he would put an end to the reign of Zeus, he did not fulfill, supreme hero of the Greeks though he was. The end of that rule only began when man conquered not dragons outside him or Lernaean hydras, but the dragons and hydras of his own heart, the inner obstinacy and inflexibility of his own self. Only in this way does natural serenity become that higher serenity of the spirit which completely traverses the negative moment of disunion and by this labour has won infinite satisfaction. The, feeling of cheerfulness and happiness must be transfigured and purified into bliss. For good fortune and happiness still involve an accidental and natural correspondence between the individual and his external circumstances; but in bliss the good fortune still attendant on a man’s existence as he is in nature falls away and the whole thing is transferred into the inner life of the spirit. Bliss is an acquired satisfaction and justified only on that account; it is a serenity in victory, the soul’s feeling when it has expunged from itself everything sensuous and finite and therefore has cast aside the care that always lies in wait for us. The soul is blissful when, after experiencing conflict and agony, it has triumphed over its sufferings.
(α) If we now ask what can be strictly ideal in this subject-matter, the answer is: the reconciliation of the individual heart with God who in his appearance as man has traversed this way of sorrows. The substance of spiritual depth of feeling is religion alone, the peace of the individual who has a sense of himself but who finds true satisfaction only when, self-collected, his mundane heart is broken so that he is raised above his mere natural existence and its finitude, and in this elevation has won a universal depth of feeling, a spiritual depth and oneness in and with God. The soul wills itself, but it wills itself in something other than what it is in its individuality and therefore it gives itself up in face of God in order to find and enjoy itself in him. This is characteristic of love, spiritual depth in its truth, that religious love without desire which gives to the human spirit reconciliation, peace, and bliss. It is not the pleasure and joy of actual love as we know it in ordinary life, but a love without passion, indeed without physical inclination but with only an inclination of soul. Looked at physically, this is a love which is death, a death to the world, so that there hovers there as something past the actual relationship of one person to another; as a real mundane bond and connection this relationship has not come essentially to its perfection; for, on the contrary, it bears in itself the deficiency of time and the finite, and therefore it leads on to that elevation into a beyond which remains a consciousness and enjoyment of love devoid of longing and desire.
”
”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
“
And who knows (there is no saying with certainty), perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving
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lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained, which must always be expressed as a formula, as positive as twice two makes four, and such positiveness is not life, gentlemen, but is the beginning of death. Anyway, man has always been afraid of this mathematical certainty, and I am afraid of it now. Granted that man does nothing but seek that math- ematical certainty, he traverses oceans, sacri ces his life in the quest, but to succeed, really to nd it, dreads, I assure you. He feels that when he has found it there will be noth- ing for him to look for. When workmen have nished their work they do at least receive their pay, they go to the tavern, then they are taken to the police-station—and there is oc- cupation for a week. But where can man go? Anyway, one can observe a certain awkwardness about him when he has attained such objects. He loves the process of attaining, but does not quite like to have attained, and that, of course, is very absurd. In fact, man is a comical creature; there seems to be a kind of jest in it all. But yet mathematical certainty is a er all, something insu erable. Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo bar- ring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes ve is sometimes a very charming thing too.
And why are you so rmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the normal and the positive—in other words, only what is conducive to welfare—is for the advantage of man?
Notes from the Underground
Is not reason in error as regards advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of su ering? Perhaps su ering is just as great a bene t to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraor- dinarily, passionately, in love with su ering, and that is a fact. ere is no need to appeal to universal history to prove that; only ask yourself, if you are a man and have lived at all. As far as my personal opinion is concerned, to care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it’s good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things. I hold no brief for su ering nor for well-being either. I am standing for ... my caprice, and for its being guaran- teed to me when necessary. Su ering would be out of place in vaudevilles, for instance; I know that. In the ‘Palace of Crystal’ it is unthinkable; su ering means doubt, negation, and what would be the good of a ‘palace of crystal’ if there could be any doubt about it? And yet I think man will never renounce real su ering, that is, destruction and chaos. Why, su ering is the sole origin of consciousness. ough I did lay it down at the beginning that consciousness is the great- est misfortune for man, yet I know man prizes it and would not give it up for any satisfaction. Consciousness, for in- stance, is in nitely superior to twice two makes four. Once you have mathematical certainty there is nothing le to do or to understand. ere will be nothing le but to bottle up your ve senses and plunge into contemplation. While if you stick to consciousness, even though the same result is attained, you can at least og yourself at times, and that will, at any rate, liven you up. Reactionary as it is, corporal
punishment is better than nothing.
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky
“
I DON'T KNOW
What is it, to live
Is it to dream, or is it about way back when?
Is it to hassle, or is it about peace?
Is it to hope, or is it about being atheist?
What is it, to lose
Is it to win, or is it about the big bad world outside?
Is it to repeat, or is it about traversing the road less taken?
Is it to sympathy, or is it about trying to make it all worthwhile?
What is it, to die
Is it to cry, or is it about the starry sky?
Is it to love, or is it about the armageddon?
Is it to rest, or is it about when you are done with all the forty winks?
Maybe say yes, or maybe say no
Ugh, how I wish I could know!
Maybe it's a lie, or maybe con
It seems I can't tell anymore!
”
”
Dishebh Bhayana
“
Our universe of love!
Let us wander like these carefree clouds,
All across the sky,
Let us create love’s heart beats and its sounds,
And then let the two hearts freely fly,
Like these clouds in the sky,
Where love abounds,
And we float like these clouds by and by,
To create a feeling that knows no bounds,
Where there is only one destiny,
The eternity of you and me,
And as time every creation confounds in its final act of tyranny,
And nothing exists now between you and me,
Neither the space, nor time or light,
For now there shall only be,
You and me, no space, no time and no light,
An endless you floating through the infinite me,
In this state of nothingness and eternal silence,
Then as your heart beats for me Irma, and mine for thee,
We shall rescue the universe from this sentence,
And create a universe for you and me,
By lending it our heart beats,
Then as the romantic sound waves travel through the darkness,
And the darkness finally retreats,
Then the universe gets created in its loveliness,
And in it Irma, lie our heart beats,
In every atom, every corner, every ray of light,
And as my passion your passions meets,
We become our own and the universe’s infinite delight,
Where now we are what universe is,
And the universe is our creation,
For whatever there is,
It is only our heart beats, our feelings and our single sensation,
That lies in this universe of everything,
But for you and me, it is our abode of love,
And whenever you whisper and I hear something,
It is the whisper of endless love, your and just our love,
Where the stars are formed every moment,
And the universe expands at its happy pace,
It develops few feelings benevolent,
And creates for you and me, our secret space,
That lies beyond the limits of time,
Where even light sees nothing,
For lovers love to reside in infinite moments of time,
Where even a small thing has the potential to be the God of everything,
Just like our love that for now is the creator of the universe,
Where our love thrives and travels everywhere,
You within me while I flow within you, and together we traverse,
To finally lie in our secret somewhere, that for everyone else is nowhere, only for you and me always there somewhere!
”
”
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
“
Our universe of gold
Until then let the gold in me spread all across the sea,
For in the sea of infinity, there is the pine tree, the moonlight, but you are my only royalty,
For whom in actuality I created the gold sea,
The mist , the river and all await to be kissed by your beauty, to feel that eternal reality!
Welcome to my universe Irma, where everything is for you,
The pine tree, the mist, the river and even their maker,
Who has missed you and always sought you,
Right from childhood when the universe was young and I was still a silly dreamer,
Maybe you still want to ponder on accepting me as your lover,
Because I live in rooms, I am homeless, but I never live in empty spaces,
I fill them with my love, my passion like a true seeker,
But in doing so , I sometimes feel emptiness within me and only your love can fill these void spaces,
So rescue me and I shall rescue you right back,
I will let you be the little girl still inside you,
Who can fearlessly traverse the lengths of my universe white and black,
Where everything is for you because it exists because of you!
”
”
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
“
Walk ahead, chin up and keep walking forward. Never look back on the path you traversed to despise or bemoan. Look back only to learn from your mistakes.
”
”
Udayakumar D.S. (Fearless and Free: How One Man Changed my Life ǀ Self-help story on life, love and making a fresh start)
“
The lovers
They had loved, they had cried, and they had smiled, together;
Now they looked at the horizon of life and wished to gather,
The moments inextricably tied to their lives,
Upon which their present thrives,
But they think of the future, and the moments of love in it,
For they do not wish to live in the future, but a future with love in it,
A feeling that rises from the bottom of their hearts,
And then whether they are in the present or the future, it never departs,
With these inalienable feelings of love they wish to be,
For a day is lifeless when in each others eyes, their own reflections they cannot see,
The boy loves the woman in her, while the girl loves the man in him,
And this feeling lights up their pathways of life in moments where the light of hope is dim,
So, he touches her face and kisses her wherever he could,
And the girl feels everything a woman in her should,
Then they endlessly look at the horizon of life and watch it turn beautiful,
Because now he feels her and she feels him in ways fulfilling and full,
And as the evening spreads across their amorous universe,
Their feelings of love across it freely traverse,
She tells him her story of her heart beats, and the boy too repeats,
That how for her his heart everyday beats,
Loving her, feeling her, being with her, until he feels his universe exists only because of her,
And then once again he embraces her and then tenderly kisses her,
And they both disappear from the worldly sight,
Because they have evolved into everything now, the brightness of the day, and the beautiful secrets of the night,
So whenever you see two lovers looking at the horizon of their lives,
Be certain, that it is in them too, in their hopes, in their desires, that their love thrives,
Maybe they have disappeared, and there is no trace of theirs left for the eyes that only see,
Because the most beautiful virtues are the ones you can only feel and not see, with the eyes that feel before they see,
So, they have disappeared because they felt what no lover has ever felt,
And it was then I saw that even the horizon of the universe in their obeisance knelt,
And now they live in each other,
In the eyes of the other and forever together!
And I hear the universe say, “this is true love of true lovers!”
Who now love each other in the night's secrets, and their twinkling covers!
As I leave the scene Irma, the night covers me too,
And I escape into the world that it creates exclusively for me and for you!
”
”
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
“
Dear Voyagers,
Your cameras have shown us the vastness of the universe,
Our eyes too can gaze upon the heavens and revel in nature,
But behind our eyes,
There’s something called a mind that processes it all.
What we call the mind
Spins countless tales and stories,
With such variety that one could say,
For every human that has ever lived, there exists a different image, emotion, analysis, and worldview, and this can be beautiful and at the same time terrifying.
I imagine mapping the universe completely,
Discovering life in other systems and galaxies,
Might be much sooner than charting the map that could explain human existence.
So many questions remain for me,
Like if,
In the coming decades, poverty is eradicated,
Freedom is universal,
Mars is colonized, and people live there,
Cities rise above Venus,
Plant-based diets replace meat,
Equality reaches every person and no one is questioned for their beliefs, orientations, or thoughts,
Diseases are cured,
Physical labor becomes meaningless, and robots end the hardship of human toil,
Earth’s climate change is halted,
Firearm possession is made free, and today’s concerns are all resolved—will everyone then live in peace?
My mind, my eyes, they know the answer:
“No.”
Probably then,
Conspiracy theorists
Would say it all happened in a studio,
Some would claim that veganism’s goal is to destroy chakras,
Others would start revolts against order and law, criticizing even that beautiful state.
This dissatisfaction doesn’t belong to any specific class or group,
It’s what we all are.
Environment and culture matter, but I think even if a brain chip were made
To transfer every piece of knowledge on Earth,
All fields of science, memories,
Experiences, languages, and the stories of every civilization, every human, and everything ever experienced to our minds,
We’d still harbor doubt.
Our efforts to prove ourselves to each other
Will be in vain.
Perhaps the right path
Is to continue and enjoy the unknown,
Or maybe to accept and find joy in never truly experiencing joy.
I play Hans Zimmer’s “Stay,”
Yet my mind continues to drift,
Time passes,
Those around me age as I move forward towards an unknown destination.
Perhaps someone, something,
4.5 billion light years away,
Is staring at a point in the sky,
They don’t know I’m here in an existential crisis,
That Earth is in a fight for survival,
How I envy them,
Staring into that dark spot in the sky,
They too are fortunate for not existing in this moment,
Or for their light not having reached me.
If Earth’s light reaches them,
They would surely grieve for these restless, lost souls,
For human history is tied to sorrow, pain, separation, and nothingness.
Perhaps the Big Crunch,
Absolute nothingness,
Is the only cure for this pain—
The pain of being and existing.
Dear Voyagers,
When your signal to Earth is lost,
It will feel like the death of a loved one,
Even though I know you’re alive somewhere, traversing an unknown path,
Something I doubt will happen after human death,
And even if it does,
It wouldn’t lessen the grief of those left behind who have yet to join that unknown journey.
I fear oblivion,
I fear the oblivions that disappear from history and memories, as if they never were,
Like the meal of a Native American grandmother a thousand years ago,
Or the kiss of two lovers and the story of their union and parting, never recorded anywhere.
”
”
Arash Ghadir
“
Imagine that you have a big juicy golden yellow mango. You’re just about to bite into it when a thought of its origin crosses your mind. Some wonderful farmer, many years ago planted a seed. Like rearing a tiny baby, the farmer tended to his mango saplings with love and care. He used the right kind of soil, a large quantity of water, the best of fertilizers and perfect sunlight. His joy knew no bounds as he watched the seed transform first into a tender green sapling and then into a tree. He protected it like his own baby. A few years later, the tree started flowering and bore small raw mangoes. With the passage of time, the mangoes turned ripe and golden. Then, with gentle wrinkled hands the farmer plucked the mangoes, laid them softly over the basket and carried them to town. From the village to the town, from the farmer to the shopkeeper, traversing through unknown destinations over thousands of miles the mango finally reached your super-store. The love and the labour of so many individuals along with total support from the eco-system have all come together to give birth to this lovely mango. You spotted it the next day, paid for it and now it rests in your hands. As you sink your teeth and bite the mango, you realize that you are lucky to taste the loveliest and juiciest of mangoes. Just like the mango, everything in life is a culmination of the efforts, love and contribution of many people. Can you ever put a price on the many elements which have gone into the divine creation of the mango? You have taken it so much for granted that you don’t realize how expensive it will be to produce even a single mango. And you got it so cheap. How much will you cherish when you bite a mango and know that its worth is hundreds of thousand rupees. And this is the same with everything that we buy or use. Next time when you get dressed, wear your watch, grab your mobile phone or travel by car, realize that their essential value is worth a million dollars. Not only will you be able to enjoy all those to the fullest, but also you will stop complaining about the high cost.
”
”
Suresh Padmanabhan (I Love Money)
“
THE SHIP SUNK IN LOVE
Should Love's heart rejoice unless I burn?
For my heart is Love's dwelling.
If You will burn Your house, burn it, Love!
Who will say, 'It's not allowed'?
Burn this house thoroughly!
The lover's house improves with fire.
From now on I will make burning my aim,
From now on I will make burning my aim,
for I am like the candle: burning only makes me brighter.
Abandon sleep tonight; traverse fro one night
the region of the sleepless.
Look upon these lovers who have become distraught
and like moths have died in union with the One Beloved.
Look upon this ship of God's creatures
and see how it is sunk in Love.
”
”
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
“
Je me suis installé dans le jardin. Comme le ciel n'est pas tout à fait noir, je vois des oiseaux traverser l'étendue grise-dessus des arbres, en un long vol, puissant et formidable, et il me semble les sentir glisser à la surface de mes yeux.
”
”
Philippe Djian (Love Song)
“
In the heat of our passionate sensuality, my thobe was lifted above my thighs. With a single yank, my briefs slid off my hips, exposing my throbbing erection. A stimulating mouth engulfed its pulsating length, while Andy’s tongue continued to explore every crevice of my yearning mouth. Chilling thrills rushed over my skin as a pair of mature hands caressed my indulgent body. The probing hands cupped my buttocks, lifting my groin towards the warmth of a yearning mouth. Enjoying the sweet sensations traversing my being, I closed my eyes, savoring every moment of this loving sexuality. I tilted my pelvis, granting my Master oral access to my throbbing hardness. His pulsating organ ground against my inner thighs, sending shivers of electric currents through my spine. Kneeling between my legs, the Arab savored every inch of my perkiness as I wiggled my toes, involuntarily on his dangling scrotum, in reciprocation.
”
”
Young (Unbridled (A Harem Boy's Saga, #2))
“
It struck her then that she had what he lacked and vice versa. He had traversed the world and engaged in its delights and foibles but had no affection. She had seen hide nor hair of anything outside of her own small sphere. But she had been lavished with love from the day she was born.
”
”
Christi Caldwell ('Twas the Night Before Scandal)
“
I fear me that the Christian church is far more likely to lose her integrity in these soft and silken days than in those rougher times. We must be awake now, for we traverse the enchanted ground, and are most likely to fall asleep to our own undoing, unless our faith in Jesus be a reality, and our love to Jesus a vehement flame. Many in these days of easy profession are likely to prove tares, and not wheat; hypocrites with fair masks on their faces, but not the true born children of the living God.
”
”
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (Morning and Evening)
“
I would rather traverse the valleys of a thousand hells than live a day without desire.
”
”
Melissa McPhail (Kingdom Blades (A Pattern of Shadow and Light, #4))
“
How we traverse the space between us when conflict arises has a profound effect on the health and longevity of our relationships.
”
”
Sharon Salzberg (Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection)
“
Life's a journey to be traversed circumspectly! Live, pray, love, serve, work and travel; all with a will; for the clock of your life may next be still
”
”
Henrietta Newton Martin, Senior Legal Counsel & Author - The Greatest of All Romances- Your Potter’s
“
1. Aikido is the Great Path that traverses the universe and its domains. It encompasses and harmonizes all things. 2. Aikido functions in accordance with the truth received from heaven and earth. It should be the basis of all activity. 3. Aikido is the principle of unifying heaven, earth, and humankind. 4. Aikido allows each individual to follow a path suitable for him or her, enabling every human being to achieve harmony with the universe. 5. Aikido is the Way of supreme, unbounded, perfect, and inexhaustible Love that binds and sustains the universe.
”
”
Morihei Ueshiba (The Art of Peace (Shambhala Classics))
“
Awakening to Self does not require perfecting our humanity or renouncing our physical incarnation. Our human experience expresses the Self, it does not obstruct it. Self-realization is not about rejecting the physical world, but rather falling into the perfection of how finite reality presents itself in the moment. The personal and universal are not separate—form and formlessness intermingle like the unseen mycelia beneath our feet. As we arrive at the deepest realization on the nondual path, we find that no distance has been traversed and no achievement has been attained. However, paradoxically, had we not embarked on that journey and made the necessary efforts, we would not have arrived at this understanding.
”
”
Laura Patryas (Awaken To Love: Reclaiming Wholeness through Embodied Nonduality with Jungian Wisdom, Psychosynthesis & Internal Family Systems)
“
insofar as objet a is the object of fantasy, sexual attraction is regulated by fantasies and true love is a form of traversing the fantasy …
”
”
Slavoj Žižek (Sex and the Failed Absolute)
“
I Am a Tinder Guy Holding a Fish and I Will Provide for You
Photo No. 1
Behold my mackerel.
I have caught it for you and it is for you to eat. Love me, for I shall fill your dinner table with many fish such as this one in the days to come. During our time together, you will never go hungry or fear famine. You will never want for trout, salmon, or otherwise. I will sustain you with my love and with my fish.
Photo No. 2
As you may have suspected, my talents do not end at fishing. I excel in many areas. Working out, for instance. In this picture I display for you my abdomen. Abdomens are important for fishing excursions and mirror selfies, such as this one. I flex for you. What do you think?
Photo No. 3
To get a better idea of me, here is a closeup selfie of my face with a high-contrast filter. In it, I make an expression like that young boy star Justin Bieber, but, rest assured, I am a man. I crease my forehead and raise my eyebrows, like a man. In my gaze, you can see the soul of a man. My mouth is as straight as the line I will walk for you. Peer into the depths of my heart, a small ocean of the meatiest haddock.
Photo No. 4
Feast your eyes upon my Mitsubishi. In it, we will traverse the continent running your errands.
Tell me about an appointment and I will offer you a ride faster than anyone has ever offered before. This and many other adventures await us. Name an ocean and I will drive to it and fish for you there. The farthest reaches of the shoreline are within our grasp.
Photo No. 5
Worry not about the woman with the face scribbled out in this picture of me in formal wear. She is no one. Cast your eyes upon me as I might cast a fishing line into a bountiful river. Look unto my face, for it is chiseled. This is the face of a man who would never scribble out your face and upload the picture onto a dating app. This is the face of a man with an abdomen rock-hard and fishing rods numerous.
Photo No. 6
Now I am spreading my arms wide in front of a landscape. Behold my mountain, my sky, my clouds, my wingspan. These are the arms with which I will hold you during long, dark nights. I will claim you as I have claimed this landscape, as I have claimed myriad salmon. I will fight for you as I have fought for the right to so many weight machines already in use by someone else at the Y.M.C.A. My arms ache for you, and I have nothing left but to stretch them out and fly home to your heart. For mine are the wings of an albatross that shall descend upon the water’s surface, pluck out the ripest flounder, and place it at your feet as a small offering of my love, if you swipe right.
”
”
Amy Collier
“
L'image était parfaite : lui, dans sa chambre immaculée, les rayons du soleil traversant la pièce. J'ai aimé le son de sa voix ; c'était comme s'il avait écrit le poème. Je me fichais de ne pas tout comprendre. Tout ce qui comptait c'était la sincérité qui se dégageait de sa voix. Jusqu'à ma rencontre avec lui, il m'était extrêmement difficile de passer du temps avec des gens. Mais Dante rendait la vie légère.
”
”
Benjamin Alire Sáenz (Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Aristotle and Dante, #1))
“
The Wayfarer.
Let me be an innocent wayfarer traversing the roads of life without preconceived notions.
Without an ounce of anger toward the men I meet along the way
Without judging them for who they are
Embracing everyone as equals
Lending a helping hand to needy
Cherishing whatever little love bestowed upon me.
Carrying with me only the fragrance of the best moments
Let me walk unhindered by emotions.
My joy shall come from the walk itself rather than from the expectations in my mind.
My joy shall soar from every step taken.
Let me be the humble wanderer in nature’s abode.
Loving all, living every moment
I shall not differentiate pleasure and pain, for they are brothers entwined.
I shall not worry while I’m teary-eyed.
I shall not hurry while I’m fury-eyed.
Patience and silence—the two essentials of eternal wisdom
I shall master them or die trying while I walk the promenade of life!
”
”
Udayakumar D.S. (FT Legacy 1: Who is Frank Twine?)
“
In the realm of spiritual philosophy, where the sacred and the mundane converge, where the mystical dances with the ordinary, there exists an enchanting archetype that beckons us to explore the depths of our souls—the Divine Rabbit. This ethereal creature, a symbol of fertility, rebirth, and spiritual illumination, invites us to embark on a profound journey of self-discovery and transcendence. The Divine Rabbit, with its gentle countenance and nimble grace, embodies the essence of the divine feminine, representing the nurturing and creative aspects of existence. It is a messenger of the cosmic forces, whispering ancient wisdom and guiding us towards the realization of our true nature. With each hop, it traverses the sacred landscapes of our consciousness, leaving in its wake the seeds of transformation and spiritual awakening. This mystical creature, adorned with the symbols of abundance and growth, teaches us the profound truth that spirituality is not confined to lofty realms or esoteric knowledge, but is deeply rooted in the tapestry of our everyday lives. The Divine Rabbit invites us to cultivate a sense of presence and mindfulness, to embrace the magic of the present moment, and to recognize that every breath we take is an opportunity for divine communion. In the Divine Rabbit, we find a profound reflection of our own spiritual journey. Like the rabbit, we too navigate the maze of existence, encountering both obstacles and opportunities along the way. The Divine Rabbit reminds us to approach these challenges with grace, agility, and an unwavering trust in the divine plan. It teaches us that even in the face of adversity, we possess the innate resilience to overcome, to rise above our limitations, and to embrace the boundless potential that resides within us. The Divine Rabbit also serves as a catalyst for profound transformation and rebirth. Just as the rabbit sheds its old fur to make way for new growth, we too are called to release the layers of conditioning, limiting beliefs, and attachments that no longer serve our highest good. The Divine Rabbit encourages us to step into the fullness of our authentic selves, to embrace our innate gifts and talents, and to allow the light of our divine essence to illuminate the world around us. Moreover, the Divine Rabbit invites us to honor the interconnectedness of all beings and the sacredness of every living creature. It teaches us to tread lightly upon the Earth, recognizing that our actions have far-reaching consequences. The Divine Rabbit reminds us of the importance of compassion, kindness, and love towards all beings, for in their eyes, we catch a glimpse of the divine spark that resides within us all. As we embark on our spiritual journey, let us heed the wisdom of the Divine Rabbit. Let us cultivate a sense of wonder and curiosity, allowing ourselves to be guided by the synchronicities and signs that pepper our path. Let us embrace the cycles of life and honor the sacredness of both beginnings and endings. And above all, let us remember that within the heart of the Divine Rabbit resides the eternal flame of our own divine essence, waiting to be kindled and expressed in all its radiant glory. May we follow the path of the Divine Rabbit, awakening to the depths of our being, embracing our divine nature, and embodying the transformative power of love, compassion, and spiritual illumination. In doing so, we dance in harmony with the rhythm of the universe, honoring the sacredness of life, and fulfilling our highest purpose.
”
”
D.L. Lewis
“
But baptismal promises counter such a configuration: love and its obligations traverse the boundaries of “private residences” and “nuclear families” because they initiate us into a household that is bigger than that which is under the roof of our house. The promises in baptism indicate a very different theology of the family, which recognizes that “families work well when we do not expect them to give us all we need.” Instead, the social role of the family that is configured by baptism is to be a family “dependent upon a larger social body. . . . In theological terms, family is called to be part of the social adventure we call the church.”15
”
”
James K.A. Smith (You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit)
“
Natural intelligence does not require we do anything to achieve it. Natural intelligence imbues us with all we need at this exact moment to manifest the highest form of ourselves, and we don't have to figure out how to get it. We arrived on this planet with this source material already present. I am by no means implying that the work you may have done up to this point has been useless. To the contrary, I applaud whatever labor you have undertaken that has gotten you this far. Survival is damn hard. Each of us has traversed a gauntlet of traumas, shames, and fears to be where we are today, wherever that is. Each day we wake to a planet full of social, political, and economic obstructions that siphon our energy and diminish our sense of self. Consequently, tapping into this natural intelligence often feels nearly impossible. Humans unfortunately make being human exceptionally hard for each other, but I assure you, the work we have done or will do is not about acquiring some way of being that we currently lack. The work is to crumble the barriers of injustice and shame leveled against us so that we might access what we have always been, because we will, if unobstructed, inevitably grow into the purpose for which we were created.
”
”
Sonya Renee Taylor (The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love)
“
Lilian?” Kevin needed a moment to register that, indeed, Lilian was standing before him. “What are you doing here? I thought you were taking a bath with the others.” “I was going to,” Lilian admitted, “but then I realized that my mate and I haven’t been able to spend much time alone together because my family kept getting in the way, and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for us to bond.” “Bond?” He studied the girl, and eventually realized that she wasn’t looking at his face. Feeling a sense of unease growing in the pit of his stomach, Kevin looked down. His face grew red. He let out a loud “eep!” and tried to cover himself with his hands. “Ufufufu,” Lilian chuckled. “You’re still too cute when you get embarrassed like that.” Kevin tried to glare at her, but the blush on his face lessened the effect. “It’s got nothing to do with being embarrassed and everything to do with common decency,” he insisted, lying through his teeth. “Most people don’t stand around in the nude while someone else is present, not even if they’re dating that person.” “Most people aren’t mated to a kitsune.” “Ugh…” She had him there. “Kevin” Lilian’s eyes were warm and so incredibly earnest that Kevin was unable to look away, “you are my mate; the person I love more than anyone else in this world.” Delicate hands reached up and cupped his face. “This isn’t some random person wanting to see you naked. This is me, your mate, who wants to become more intimate with you. If it helps, I promise not to touch anything below the belt.” Staring at the girl with an uncomprehending gaze, Kevin’s mind became a warzone, a battle the likes of which no one had ever seen before—mostly because it was all happening in his mind. *** The desolate wasteland spread out for miles, its borders traveling far beyond the distant horizon. Cracks traversed the ground like a myriad system of interconnecting spiderwebs. There was no flora or fauna in this wasteland. It was the perfect place… for war. Two forces stood on opposite ends of each other, armies of nearly equal might. Multi-segmented plates clicked together as figures moved and jostled each other. Horned helms adorned the many heads, their faceplates masking their identities. Hands gripped massive halberds with leaf-shaped blades that gleamed like a thousand suns. The army on the northern border wore white armor, while those in the southern quadrant wore red. A moment of silence swept through the clearing. A tumbleweed rolled across the ground. It was the unspoken signal for the battle to start, and the two forces rushed in toward the center, yelling out their battle cries. “For Lilian!!” “For chastity!!” Thunder struck the earth as these two titanic armies fought. Bodies were thrown into the air with impunity. Halberds clashed, the sound of metal on metal, steel ringing against steel, rang out in a symphony of chaos. Sparks flew and shouts accompanied the maelstrom of combat. It was, indeed, a battle worthy of being placed within the annals of history. A third party soon entered the fray. From one of the many cliffs surrounding the battlefield, an army appeared. Unlike the two forces duking it out down below, this army was bereft of nearly all their clothes. Wearing nothing but simple loincloths and bandoleers similar to Tarzan’s, the group of individuals looked identical. Messy blond hair framed bright blue eyes that glared down at the battlefield. With nary a thought, this force surged down the cliff, their own battle cry echoing across the land. “DEATH TO THE CHERRY!!” And so more chaos was unleashed upon the battlefield. ***
”
”
Brandon Varnell (A Fox's Family (American Kitsune #4))
“
Esprits protecteurs de l’humanité, avons-nous vraiment réfléchi aux puissances que déploie la passion chez l’humain ? Avons-nous examiné pourquoi un homme peut traverser un champ de flammes pour atteindre la femme qu’il aime ? Avons-nous réfléchi à l’effet du sexe sur le corps des amants ? À la symétrie de son pouvoir ? Avons-nous étudié ce que la poésie éveille en leur âme, et la marque des mots doux sur un cœur attendri ? Avons-nous contemplé la physionomie de l’amour, analysé pourquoi certaines relations sont mort-nées, d’autres naissent handicapées et atrophiées, tandis que certaines parviennent à l’âge adulte et durent toute la vie des amants ?
”
”
Chigozie Obioma (An Orchestra of Minorities)
“
The gun cannot change hatred; it exceeds that since it is itself hatred. Run the respect and love, to traverse and eradicate it.
”
”
Ehsan Sehgal
“
Those are our roots. Our wings are the things that nearly drive us to madness, those things that we do which other people would find illogical and maybe even a bit insane! The distance from the Moon to the Earth, is not too far a distance to traverse on behalf of someone we love! Because there is no greater honor than to love and to be loved! So, we’d probably promise the Moon (that would be us flapping our wings); but then you can be sure we’d do everything in our power to make sure that we do in fact fulfill that exact promise (this would be our roots in action). Yeah, we’ll promise you the Moon— but we’re not going anywhere after we make that promise! We are in fact going to try to steal the Moon for you!
”
”
Heidi Priebe (The Comprehensive ENFP Survival Guide)
“
Watching trips driving under the influence of alcohol, details
Since a randomized control the peaks. From the perspective of travel between the armed forces and the strategy for the enforcement of the initiation of a hasty road block using the techniques that are considered disturbing the police only with unauthorized functions this movement control points on the basis of many DUI action initiated. Every time the checkpoints suspicious driver drunk driving, Kits, laws applications traversing the streets to protect the driver. Then, when the driver suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol, it would be towards getting a DUI lawyer to be soon after fertilization. DUI prices could the lives of sick people are taken in the context concerned, so that the money really is removed before use. To clarify this point, it is important to achieve the experience in DUI legal knowledge based on track to use to get rid of costs.
General address is to escape unnoticed a trip to the environment in which they can find through future target for it to rotate too slowly. In many situations, under the influence of alcohol, driving, fast that the driver Checkpoint see some time, immediate auto or truck and escapes through the information on the screen. Show information about the tours, the driver will have the opportunity not only to avoid the checkpoint.
The decrease is the result of a DUI is a criminal offense, or the great nations. Suspension of driver's license penalty for a crime, loved. Large trigger additional sanctions crime and that if all packets death only a misdemeanor. Unlike the provisions in relation to the position of DUI in the direction of the nation. DUI attorney knows all the DUI laws, the only country. So it is very good in the sense speaks DUI lawyer immediately after his arrest, stay away from most of the impact.
If the driver can be caught in DUI checkpoints on the road licenses are revoked. If the error in transit, these people are in high demand because of a drunk driver, it is more important. Asked the pilot, from the breath alcohol tests and inspections. If the driver refuses, blood test or breathing difficulties, law enforcement agencies, including the authority to proceed under the influence of alcohol to manage directly in the driver's driving.
Control or DUI checkpoints to protect positions of police officers, the general requirements of each tram and to check that the driver may influence the direction of the excitation. This type of set up checkpoints to travel a few hours in the morning or at the weekend overnight when the possibility of impaired drivers generally.
Experience driver search on the phone all alcoholic breath test and operation of a one-car conveyor belt. Again, a simple test is not available, the agenda requires sophisticated. The driver stopped and should work out of the car and then seriously consider. He is seriously considering an indication of the psychological stability and capacity. If the driver is not necessary to work the sober to catch your breath.
”
”
duiion
“
She had traversed these roads several times before and she was afraid to linger.
”
”
Sonali Dabade (Of Knights and Lilies)
“
Have you observed the journey of a water droplet that lands on a large leaf? The way it traverses the streets of the newly discovered city, the intricately designed pathways, sometimes getting lost in the narrow alleys and then finding the main street again. When it reaches the tip of the leaf, it tries to cling on to that threshold for a little extra time, unwilling to part.
”
”
Madhu Menon, Indira Nityanandan, Priya Narayan, Kalpana Ramrakhyani, Tulika Saha, Kusum Chopra, Anu
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Psychologists have concluded that the need to feel loved is a primary human emotional need. For love, we will climb mountains, cross seas, traverse desert sands, and endure untold hardships.
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Gary Chapman (The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts)
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It would be easy to fantasize that this would have been better. But we can never know what lies at the end of the path not taken. Other difficulties, other heartaches, other complexities would certainly have emerged. But at least we would have been a family traversing them together.
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Dani Shapiro (Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love)
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The day comes when the soul belongs to God; when it not only consents to love, but when truly, effectively, it is love. It must then take its turn in traversing the universe to go to God. The soul does not love like a creature loves. The love in it is divine, uncreated, for the love of God for God passes through it. God alone is capable of loving God. We can only consent to forfeit our own sentiments to allow the passage of love through our souls. This is what it is to deny oneself. We are created only for this consent.
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Simone Weil (Awaiting God: A New Translation of Attente de Dieu and Lettre a Un Religieux)
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Swarmed by men everywhere, but none she could proclaim ‘Mine!’
Many cities her foot traversed, but none she could exclaim ‘Home!
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Tina Sequeira (Bhumi: A Collection of Short Stories)
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I genuinely believe that relationships with family and close friends are one of the greatest sources of happiness in life. It sounds simple, but like any important investment, these relationships need consistent attention and care. But there are two forces that will be constantly working against this happening. First, you’ll be routinely tempted to invest your resources else-where—in things that will provide you with a more immediate payoff. And second, your family and friends rarely shout the loudest to demand your attention. They love you and they want to support your career, too. That can add up to neglecting the people you care about most in the world. The theory of good money, bad money explains that the clock of building a fulfilling relationship is ticking from the start. If you don’t nurture and develop those relationships, they won’t be there to support you if you find yourself traversing some of the more challenging stretches of life, or as one of the most important sources of happiness in your life.
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Clayton M. Christensen (How Will You Measure Your Life?: A thought-provoking approach to measuring life's success)
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Once, not so long ago, when I was someone else who looked a lot like me, I typed some words and cast them into the ether.
They delivered me a man, sore and battered from years of sacrifice, from self-imposed duty. He had done the right thing for so long he deserved to do something wrong.
He came to me filled with a hope that was smothered by doubt, with a hungry mouth that had forgotten how to explore, how to take its time. He was clumsily confident, stoic and unapologetic. I melted into his perfect fumbling arms, into blood itself, that I may beat my way into his heart.
He taught me that love can wreck and build simultaneously. He pushed me away again and again. Every time I came back stronger and he came back harder, yet softer. He taught me no matter how hard you fight, not all believe in something you cannot see, don't believe in, he taught me you can resist something into existence.
We gave birth to our own hearts and traversed their unfathomable depth. We emerged scathed and bruised, fully human, finally recognized.
But even we were mortal, even this was fleeting.
Memory is as vast and unreachable as the millions of foreign suns already extinguished, but still on display, in the infinite dome of our dark, shining sky.
There is a place buried within us that aches, but can never be filled by another, that will never be whole, a place of darkness that yearns for a light it will never fully feel the warmth of, a place only music can almost reach. But sometimes, with the right kind of eyes, you see someone, for a moment, who gives some meaning to the aching. They show you all of your broken pieces, kiss your forehead, and you're ready to fight for that which is not seen again...
Christian Lea
I WROTE THIS!!!
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Christian Lea
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Tell me what you’re hiding, what you’re harboring, what you don’t want the world to
know about yourself for fear that it will be cast into light.
Tell me about the times you couldn’t save yourself. Give me your broken parts, your fractured pieces, everything that’s weighed too heavily on the floor of your heart for you to ever reach down and reassemble. Tell me
where you went the first time that you lost yourself. Tell me the ways in which you never came back. Give me a map with coordinates that lead into the deepest, most twisted corner of your soul where all of your unconquered demons still lurk. Let me see them. Let me reach out and touch them with my own trembling fingers, because I still can’t bear to face my own.
Give me your shortcomings. Tell me the story of the first person you never became and all the ways in which you let him die. Tell me which regrets tear on your heartstrings and which unfulfilled dreams still take up residence under your skin. Show me the mountains you never conquered, the roads you never traversed, the battles you surrendered before ever setting foot upon enemy soil. Show me the things you never
measured up to because there’s no war more wounding than the one we never waged and there’s no road more daunting than the one that we never walked down.
Give me your struggles and impurities. Tell me about the worst thing you have ever done. Tell me about the regret that slithered under your skin and beat through your bloodstream like an unwelcome disease after you made the biggest mistake of your life. Tell me how it ripped straight into to your soul and took you over. Talk to me about the times you couldn’t look at yourself in the mirror or fall asleep at night because the
malevolence and madness of your own mind kept you reeling. Give me your vices and misjudgments because I can match each one with my own. Tell me all the ways in which you’re scarred by your own capacity
for darkness.
Let me fall in love with your human parts – the battles you can’t fight, the wounds you can’t heal, all the ways in which you are not enough for yourself. Give me your joys and your pain in equal measure because you
are the most brilliant and terrible mixture of both.
I don’t want your good intentions and your well wishes. I want the whole of you, the depth of you, the breadth of all you are and the light that shines in between your broken parts. Let me fall in love with what you’re
missing, what you’ve lost and what you’re still holding onto, through and despite all of it.
Show me the things you haven’t lost along the way.
And I will show you your own greatest strengths.
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Heidi Priebe (This Is Me Letting You Go)
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Reflecting his dual nature, the Dionysian rites contained within them the message of balance and opposition - dismemberment and rejuvenation, descent and return, imprisonment and liberation, love and loss; mysteries celebrated by his followers which within the moment of ritual trance, unmasked themselves to reveal their names to be life and death.[69] And like Dionysos, his followers learnt to traverse the worlds.
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Vikki Bramshaw (Dionysos: Exciter to Frenzy: A study of the God Dionysos: history, myth and lore)