for good, warm, old times...

Odi et Amo

Odi et amo. quare id faciam fortasse requiris?
nescio sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

I hate & love. And if you should ask how I can do both,
I couldn't say; but I feel it, and it shivers me.

by Catullus

boring Diamonds*

The essential teaching of the Baal Shem Tov:

Be simple, be earnest, and spread that simplicity throughout everything you do.
Simplicity is a receptacle for G-d's simple Oneness.

*not really much connection to this post. everyone breathe

Measuring life.. in death

You that live in my ancestral Thebes, behold this Oedipus,
him who knew the famous riddles and was a man most masterful;
not a citizen who did not look with envy on his lot-
see him now and see the breakers of misfortune swallow him!
Look upon that last day always. Count no mortal happy till
he has passed the final limit of his life secure from pain.
~Oedipus by Sophocles

And that, as they say, is that.

of Sweet Days

..soft rain... light scarves... warm bookstores...books.. and mugs..and couches...and little kids running... wet.. hair..smiling...happy..content
winter.. music...nostalgia...firelight...
sweet..love
life...

or

sweet...life
love...

maths.

Mr. Jeavons said I liked maths because it was safe. He said I liked maths because it meant solving problems, and these problems were difficult and interesting but there was always a straightforward answer in the end. And what he meant was that maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward answers in the end. because in life there are no straightforward answers in the end. and that's not a bad thing. or a good thing. it's just a thing. it's life. and in life, there are no straightforward answers in the end.

because in life, there are no straightforward answers in the end.

Chanukah was here.

moment of Glory

No limitation, a new inspiration, a world that is free...
Just as free as my mind

an Ode to her Apple

which is now in the garbage. Regardless,

it grows on a tree.

now it sits on her desk.

no maintenance needed.

then one day, she just bites into it,

and the inside is juicy

and sweet

and nutritious:)

Imagine

Make yourself small and you will be great.
Know you are nothing and you will be infinite. At the very least, don't make such a big deal of yourself and you will be all that much closer to the truth.

thursday Night's Eyes

The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the hearts but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
by Francis William Bourdillon

past makes me happy. not all general past, but thursday past
now i've got a teary cold. sok. im still singin and tappin and i kick ass at anna banana
.... '!!!!'

Outer Space

the black open space one, with stars and planets kinda hangin around the place. Drifting alone, in darkness, never-ending darkness, with shiny starry brightenesses that fail to brighten anything... that's what this space is, for me.

song's got no relation, but its sentiment still rings so true, and i like it:')

In reality, the source of all these differences is, that the savage lives within himself, while social man lives constantly outside himself, and only knows how to live in the opinion of others, so that he seems to receive the consciousness of his own existence merely from the judgment of others concerning him.
~Rousseau

Civilised Man

It is reason that engenders self-respect, and reflection that confirms it: it is reason which turns man's mind back upon itself, and divides him from everything that could disturb or afflict him. It is philosophy that isolates him, and bids him say, at sight of the misfortunes of others: "Perish if you will, I am secure."

Nothing but such general evils as threaten the whole community can disturb the tranquil sleep of the philosopher, or tear him from his bed. A murder may with impunity be committed under his window; he had only to put his hands to his ears and argue a little with himself, to prevent nature, which is shocked within him, from identifying itself with the unfortunate sufferer. Uncivilised man has not this admirable talent; and for want of reason and wisdom, is always foolishly ready to obey the first promptings of humanity...

Noble Savage

by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his Discourse on Inequality

The boy of a savage man being the only instrument he understands, he uses it for various purposes, of which ours, for want of practice, are incapable: for our industry deprives us of that force and agility, which necessity obliges him to acquire. If he had had an axe, would he have been able with his naked arm to break so large a branch from a tree? If he had had a sling, would he have been able to throw a stone with so great velocity? If he had had a ladder, would he have been so nimble in climbing a tree? If he had had a horse, would he have been himself so swift of foot? Give civilised man time to gather all his machines about him, and he will no doubt easily beat the savage; but if you would see a still more unequal contest, set them together naked and unarmed, and you will soon see the advantage of having all our forces constantly at our disposal, of being always prepared for every event, and of carrying one's self, as it were, perpetually whole and entire about one...

by Sappho

Like the sweet-apple that's gleaming red on the topmost bough,
right at the very end, that the apple-pickers forgot,
or rather didn't forget, but were just unable to reach.

Like the hyacinth* on the hills that the passing shepherds
trample under their feet, and the purple bloom on the ground...

contrasting unreachable desire... with the taken for granted mundanes...which trample under our feet. somehow, the unreachable always seems better...more beautiful...than that which is in our reach.

*flower

ah, Moonlight

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sound of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness, and the night,
Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Sit, Jessica: look, how the floor of heaven:
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st,
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubinms.

~Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice"

to dream... the Impossible Dream

"To be willing to march into hell, for a heavenly cause..."


maybe sanity really is overrated. i'd say 'meet me on the other side' but i'm too much of a coward.

on my closed eyes!

This is the trickiest of all promises,
For were I to be wrong, no one would ever know,
but were I to be right, and not wrong, here lies my proof of thought...

twistin wg ords

...to have them get all messed up in my brain.

Sometimes it helps to hear things from other people, gets them thoughts untwisted and makes them a bit more c l e a r .

'There is nothing alive more agonized than man
of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.'
~The Iliad

how come?

cuz I forgot. and it's boring sometimes. and limiting. and dum.

Mambo Italiano

eh-ah-oh

a March

'And once my vows
and prayers had invoked the nations of the dead,
I took the victims, over the trench I cut their throats
and the dark blood flowed in - and up out of Erebus they came,
flocking toward me now, the ghosts of the dead and gone...
Brides and unwed youths and old men who had suffered much
and girls with their tender hearts freshly scarred by sorrow
and great armies of battle dead, stabbed by bronze spears,
men of war still wrapped in bloody armor - thousands
swarming around the trench from every side-
unearthly cries - blanching terror gripped me!'

seeing the rain.

and amidst all the hatred and slaying in war, the core was recognized:

'...No finer, greater gift in the world than that...
when man and woman possess their home, two minds,
two hearts that work as one. Despair to their enemies,
a joy to all their friends. Their own best claim to glory.'

back to School

But when experience showed that to let all things be uncovered was far better than to cover them up, and the ludicrous effect to the outward eye vanished before the better principle which reason asserted, then the man was perceived to be a fool who directs the shafts of his ridicule at any other sight but that of folly and vice, or seriously inclines to weigh the beautiful by any other standard but that of the good.

a Bright sunniness

is going to take over my blog, if it so stubbornly won't my nine lives. yaheeeeeeooay :')
I'm dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep, let the morning time drop all its petals on me.

claustrophobicworld

Two weeks ago I think I experienced what all time claustrophobics might on an ordinary subway commute. It's uncool. And I think it was the first poke into the taut vinyl of black clouds surrounding... suffocating, what was once my bright sunny world ...plunging me deep into its foggy fiery abyss of orange and grayish soot... smokey dirty air polluting my lungs...choking me, as if never to let breath... come easy again

.

of G-d

I've finally been blessed with some sort of clarity pertaining to the characterizing of the ancient Greek and Roman gods in my brain, vs. the ordinary definition of a G-d I might have been brought up believing in.

One is awesome, infinite, flawless, omniscient, all powerful and perfect. A creator. The Creator.

The others are but ordinary flawed beings, albeit immortal.

for those who will be asking...

There is too much love and joy for the taking, I fear I can misrepresent the pain of life no longer. It's all intertwined somehow. The love, the pain. Remember that, it's all intertwined.
silly in morn, but still no less true, i say
good bye

Conventional Blusters

good word. "And what were you doing on that website?" the husband might bluster, undoubtedly to little avail.

It was John Kenneth Galbraith, the hyperliterate economic sage, who coined the phrase "conventional wisdom." He did not consider it a compliment.

hazy shade of Winter

'this is the springtime of my life'
and im 'feelin groovy' (tx .ll.e.k)

The Odyssey is looked at as the grandaddy of sci fi adventure, while really, it is the story of a mortal, journeying to reconnect with the mundane. We mortals like to miss the point, most times. Us, I mean, not Odysseus.

And as my Prof. said, 'some people put their foot in their mouth, some like to bring up their other foot too, and walk around. you, you've been running a marathon.'



this song's about as blah as the weather in south africa. (who me? no, i know nothing of the weather in south africa.)

ha, I'm a rock!

i'm three rocks:')

of phantoms

I shan't use any words at all, lest they ruin the perfection of this beautiful day. sleep tight, my angels.. of music

mem o ry detached

Memory is a wonderful thing if you don't have to deal with the past.

an Odyssey

So now Helen, once
she had drugged the wine and ordered winecups filled,
resuming the conversation, entertained the group:
"My royal king Menelaus- welcome guests here,
sons of the great as well! Zeus can present us
times of joy and times of grief in turn:
all lies within his power.
So come, let's sit back in the palace now,
dine and warm our hearts with the old stories.
I will tell something perfect for the occasion.
Surely I can't describe or even list them all,
the exploits crowding fearless Odysseus' record,
but what a feat that hero dared and carried off
in the land of Troy where you Achaeans suffered!
Scarring his own body with mortifying strokes,
throwing filthy rags on his back like any slave,
he slipped into the enemy's city, roamed its streets-
all disguised, a totally different man, a beggar,
hardly the figure he cut among Achaea's ships.
That's how Odysseus infiltrated Troy,
and no one knew him at all...
I alone, I spotted him for the man he was,
kept questioning him- the crafty one kept dodging.
But after I'd bathed him, rubbed him down with oil,
given him clothes to wear and sworn a binding oath
not to reveal him as Odysseus to the Trojans, not
till he was back at his swift ships and shelters,
then at last he revealed to me, step by step,
the whole Achaean strategy. And once he'd cut
a troop of Trojans down with his long bronze sword,
back he went to his comrades, filled with information.
The rest of the Trojan women shrilled their grief. Not I:
my heart leapt up-
my heart had changed by now-
I yearned
to sail back home again! I grieved too late for the madness
Aphrodite sent me, luring me there, far from my dear land,
forsaking my own child, my bridal bed, my husband too,
a man who lacked for neither brains nor beauty."

~The Odyssey, by Homer, Book IV

Leviathan

~by Hobbes
And therefore it may and doth often happen in Commonwealths that a subject may be put to death by the command of the sovereign power, and yet neither do the other wrong; as when Jephthah caused his daughter to be sacrificed: in which, and the like cases, he that so dieth had liberty to do the action, for which he is nevertheless, withouth injury, put to death. And the same holdeth also in a sovereign prince that putteth to death an innocent subject. For though the action be aginst the law of nature, as being contrary to equity (as with the killing of Uria by David); yet it was not an injury to Uriah, but to God. Not to Uriah, because the right to do what he pleased was given him by Uriah himself; and yet to God, because David was God's subject and prohibited all iniquity by the law of nature. Which distinction, David himself, when he repented the fact, evidently confirmed, saying, "To thee only have I sinned."...

I'm stardust

from when the stars exploded billions of years ago... I have to remember.. that we're all stardust.
..I'm just a dumb American, momentarily decorating your blank canvas....sweet cakes and milkshakes..
this movie moves planets...or at least my heart.

There's nothing sweet about parting's sorrow.

hmm, song: Elton John's Bad Side of the Moon. but yea..

...this wondahful feeling.

Poets

I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately...
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life!
To put to rest all that was not life...
and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

This movie touches something about friendship, about teaching, about cheer, about living? prapps about living. and cheer. and a love. and poetry.

a silly funny

It's so unbelievable, this time I feel as if I've suddenly been flung into... I'm standing here, looking around me, wide eyed, drunk with wonder, in awe.. in love

#*%?

So how does it work? We're rewiring our brains every time we hold back habit, every time we consciously hold back and vary our train of thought, until a new pattern is beaten out; a path that satisfies us.

Ginger

There's something wholesome about these two hundred posts. It feels ok. Unlike most everything else right now, it feels ok...

...the day the music died. we were singin...

Woman

Whitney Houston. She's really got me somehow... not for too long, I don't reckon, but that voice, that passion, that control and poise, and weird, weird, strange, intriguing depth of something... the silence in the song grabs hold of the brain. Alright, enough, I'm finished:) Listen to song. for dudds who remain unimpressed, youtube.


In Marsian news, men are really like that. Up themselves, gorgeous, charming, brilliant, buffed, streaming with talent... emotionless, gaming the game, stealing hearts, wrapping us up... I ne'er have been sensitive enough... to realize just how cliche I am.

Starry starry niight

So people were forbidden to run up the stairs leading up round the Holy Temple, the Beit Hamikdash (quite unlike the big building with blue side lighting at Borough Hall. ), and to ensure people like me wouldn't fall into temptation, the steps were actually built in a most uneven manner, so it were just about impossible to orchestrate a proper rythmic saunter up.

Also there were fifteen steps officially, and the Levites stood to play their instruments on them, and all those pictures are just messed up in my head now.

I also re-learned about how the Nobel Peace Prize came about to its becoming it. (hehe, cuz i can) It's cool. works. i like. nice. gut. sweet. gud niiiiiiiiiight:') (pronouncing all the i's. thank you dears.)

oh G-d

I want to learn and know

and see and understand

and realize and live

and belong. Okay?

:* :* :*

yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it's sukkkkoT!!!!!!!!!

being farrer

It isn't silly that when someone we love is going away- we'll call them on the telephone to say goodbye before they go, even if we haven't seen them in a few days or won't see them for a week were they gonna be in town...
Because somehow, even when you're only talking on the telephone, you can feel when someone is right there or if they're farrer away. Not in their voice, cuz you're close in heart and the voice isn't changing. But just in the air. The air feels different when some people are farrer.

Here's Adiemus because it's in my head and I'm trying to go to sleep. Also, I feel like I have sunglasses on top of my head, but it's three-fifteen in the ay ehm and I do not have sunglasses on top of my head. Also, look up lyrics to Adiemus and sing along.

purple times

:') and sweet shoulder shrug

Little Kite

this blog is energyless, lifeless, boring like hell and i need to learn more
so strange how people and things and songs and loves and pain and a cold can twine up all mushed together to make up life

Little kite tell me, for I cannot fly, can you see distant oceans and mountains so high? But most of all, tell me, for I cannot see, is there a G-d in heaven, does he know of me?

...Can't you see little boy? There's nothing up there...
maybe one day I'll see with my mind...

Little kite tell me, why I've been so blind, using my eyes, oh, in place of my mind? For though I can't see you I do understand... you're tugging and pulling the string in my hand... ur tugging and pulling the string in my hand

If you need a job to give you a life, you either need a new job or a new life.

may your year be...

lovely... with all its connotations
Gmar Chasima Tova

i have been so tired

the Iliad, Achiles, Chrysies, Appolo, Athene, aegis, seige, war, wrath, women, defeat, death

the Tempest, sonnet, chess, cheap dates, Shakespeare, Petrarch, Laura, Laurel, laurel-tree, a'laura, the breeze, love, dark beauties, young man, marry, Mirando, Ariel, Prospero, Caliban, love, love, love, "Farewell, thou art too dear for my possessing."

Mesopatamia, Egypt, Sumer, Akkadia, Hammurabi, Gilgamesh, Ur, Abraham, saddupu, Khufu, Ramses, benai Yisrael, Mari, suzerian-vassal, ten commandments, Ahur, Assyria, Ezra, Cyrus cylinder, Ninevah, Yonah, Lefkowitz, culture, Africa, Alexandreian, women librarian, Septuagint, peri-hupsos, sublime, mezuzah, transcending, Seer haYashar, Milhamot Hashem...

Herodotus, Arch of Titus, lydion, frigeon, dorian, myxlodian, corinthean, Egypt Greece Rome, rigid-flowing-real, Lystrata, feminism, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, 4 causes, Rambam, efficient, formal, material, teleological, logic, syllogisms, Lefkowitz, pythagorean, GRA, virtue, mean, Rabbi Akiva, sphere of action, greek music, Anderson

Plato, Plato, Plato, Republic, justice, virtues, education, plato plato plato plato, gold silver bronze, republic, justice, debate, virtues, plato plato Plato. Machiavelli:')

it's been a bit of a long day.

to Me...

The title of this whole poem is actually 'to You.'
I like my title better, just cuz.

Stranger, if you, passing, meet me, and desire to speak with me,
why should you not speak to me?
And why should I not speak to you?
~Whitman

For all those wondering, there ain't no moon in FL, but there're many, many stars...

Also, the moon here in NY looks so perfect tonight, that you almost have to believe there's a little person up there, cradled in its soft curve of soft light, holding a fishing rod...lying dreamily.
ah, the moon is one love I doubt I shall ever get over...

an oddly horrible day

I've never had such a horrible day, one when I've felt such a want for dancing. Not the ordinary silly kind, but the old jolly tottering of the black and white day. With a full prettied gown with a whole bunch of layers, and dark curls piled high in a tall lovely bonnet. When a nod and a curtsy were a manner of speech and dancing, oh dancing.. being asked to a dance by a handsome young man, all made up in his marvelous suiting, being lost in the swirl of dresses and curls.. the dancing.. the dancing.. the murmurs, the silent love.. in the dancing.
Somehow this want had led me to accent my speech and totter my walk into one of a swaying sort; it's made me hold my head in somewhat of a tilt and it's made me curtsy unnecessarily. It's made me jolly, in an odd sort of way.

"Oh if you'd want to be so refined, you'd have to be dead. There's no one as dignified as a mummy."
~Pride and Prejudice (a most delightful viewing when seen in the original Nineteen-Forty theatrical exhibition)

a message for dreams

Amid all the blessings for health and clarity and joy and wonderful things, I got a text message that hoped for all my dreams to come true.

'may you be blessed with health and happiness. may all your dreams come true. happy rosh hashana.'

Erev RH

'There are things that are important for us, so we speak about them. There are things very important to us -- and so words flow out from us, bursting with emotion, meaning and depth.

And then there are things that shake us to the core. The core of our being does not wait for the mind's permission or for the right words -- there are no words that can contain it. It breaks out in a cry, in a scream and in silence.

This is the sound of the shofar..'

ah gut gebentched yuhr to you. gut gebentched where the gut is right out there for you to touch.. and be thankful for.. happiness.. and peace.. inside your brain.. and inside your heart. and happiness beyond the happiness and peace.. inside your heart. Shana Tova.

Touch, me

I want to capture it,
me
I want to capture what it is that I am
and bottle me up,
and without speech and without words,
I want to capture this moment of me.
when I can thank, with breath stopping tears
when I can float into the colorless gaping hole of awareness.
I can see who I am
I can cry; I can be the happiest I've ever been
I saw me tonight.

Can you draw a crooked line?

still on the trains...

for those who were keepin up:
Maybe because people like the way whiskey is spelled with an E and vowels are our friends...

and for all those that wanted to know, they are "established since" some point in time.

Maybe because whiskey is the nectar of the Gods right after wine and milk and maybe honey...
-------
I learned today that technology will not make me happy. I should get used to being depressed.
And that judgment derived from ignorance is meaningless. didja hear that? meaninggggless. ah. o.

I couldn't not post this. Also, I'll delete and replace with one I like even better tomorrow. :') anzhwa Maria Callas...

and G-d bless yes (as in not the opposite of no, but yes as in the plural of ye.)who share useful youtube links.

aspiring to Love

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth- that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.

o, Rock me mama

cuz i needa be rocked. serzzz

I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible nightmare. Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffered from fearful dreams or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly I drew back the hadn which was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, coulde be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him.

In my life.

H H O L EEEEEE SSSSS
H H O O L E S
HHHHH O O L EEEE SSSS
H H O O L E S
H H O O LLLLLL EEEEEE SSSSSS

in my life.

hu yevarech et hechatan ve'et hakalla.
mi adir al hakol? who are you? where are you?

Proper Novels

and no, I am not blogging the whole book... I'm done. this is from page 4.

I do not like proper novels. In proper novels people say things like, "I am veined with iron, with silver and with streaks of common mud. I cannot contract into the firm fist which those clench who do not depend on stimulus." What does this mean? I do not know. Nor does Father. Nor does Siobhan or Mr. Jeavons. I have asked them.

maths.

Mr. Jeavons said I liked maths because it was safe. He said I liked maths because it meant solving problems, and these problems were difficult and interesting but there was always a straightforward answer in the end. And what he meant was that maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward answers in the end. because in life there are no straightforward answers in the end. and that's not a bad thing. or a good thing. it's just a thing. it's life. and in life, there are no straightforward answers in the end.

bye bye love, Summer '07

So the song is sad, but the spot in time it takes me back to brings a loving, happy feeling to my heart.

It's so strange that I'm gonna close my eyes now, after one of the most memorable days of summer...filled with such carefree joy...my last day in Summer.
It's over now; holiday's past. School year is up and it'll be filled with ahhhhh,
New people, new place, new loves, new learning, new joys!
New friends, new struggles, new notebooks:)
I'm so happy, so lucky, so blessed. really really, only clarity and joy filled growth for all you this year. hope for it:) gutte nacht! :')

mhmm, Money is Everything

and I say downpressor man, where you gonna run to?

So, here's what I think.


mm. oh, gosh, when you're older, you'll understand.

I split it up good. Goodbye

Oh, Suzanne takes you down
to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know
that she's half
crazy
But that's why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come
all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you've always been her lover
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel
blind
And you know that she will
trust you
For you've
touched
her perfect
body
with your mind.

Death in Teheran

Does this not bring to mind the story of Death in Teheran? A rich and mighty Persian once walked in his garden with one of his servants. The servant cried that he had just encountered Death, who had threatened him. He begged his master to give him his fastest horse so that he could make haste and flee to Teheran, which he could reach that same evening. The master consented and the servant galloped off on the horse. On returning to his house the master himself met Death, and questioned him, "Why did you terrify and threaten my servant?" "I did not threaten him; I only showed surprise in still finding him here when I planned to meet him tonight in Teheran," said Death.

God, New Things, and Stars

People believe in God because the world is very complicated and they think it is very unlikely that anything as complicated as a flying squirrel or the human eye or a brain could happen by chance.

And Siobhan says people go on holidays to see new things and relax, but it wouldn't make me relaxed and you can see new things by looking at earth under a microscope or drawing the shape of the solid made when 3 circular rods of equal thickness intersect at right angles.

And there aren't any lines in space, so you could join bits of Orion to bits Lepus or Taurus or Gemini and say that were a constellation called The Bunch of Grapes or The Bicycle (except that they didn't have bicycles in Roman and Greek times, which was when they called Orion Orion.)
And anyway, Orion is not a hunter or a coffeemaker or a dinosaur. It is just Betelgeuse and Bellatrix and Alnilam and Rigel and 17 other stars I don't know the names of. And they are nuclear explosions billions of miles away.
And that is the truth.

Life.

But in life you have to take lots of decisions and if you don't take decisions you would never do anything because you would spend all your time choosing between things you could do. So it is good to have a reason why you hate some things and you like others. It is like being in a restaurant like when Father takes me out to a Berni Inn sometimes and you look at the menu and you have to choose what you are going to have. But you don't know if you are going to like something because you haven't tasted it yet, so you have favorite food and you choose these, and you have foods you don't like and you don't choose these, and then it is simple.

So for him and his logic, yes, this is a smart way to a simpler life. But why do so many choose this simplicity , when they are blessed with the ability to handle the complexities of choice? 'night.

People should be banned from society.

Think about it. nuh uh, Not a paradox!

Also, why the sudden change in way of mating? I mean, what with the disappearance of camels with jewelry at wells and stuff? Dunno, but I'm just not about to find you a wife until I've got ten camels loaded, and a thirsty, long, to be shortened by G-d, route through the desert. Oh, and water. I'll lie when I tell her I'm thirsty. k, tx.

music diaries

I make these tapes every month, from years ago up till now, and they're all dated and labeled... and they're the songs I was listening to during that time. And I go back and dig 'em out, and it's as good as a diary.
Cameron Crowe...writer & director

and it's true and it's true and it's true. i love it. shabbat 8/25 shalom:) yahoo, im little, still:')

SONG: TINY DANCER by Elton John...hold me closer tiny daaancer

a Big Plan

Despair is the ultimate form of self-worship --the perception that you have the capacity to truly mess up, to take the world's destiny out of its Creator's hands and sabotage His plans.

[Know that the world is in a constant state of elevation, rocketing upwards towards its ultimate wholeness at every moment. Every quivering of every leaf, every subtle breeze, every slightest motion of any particle of our universe is another move in that same direction. Even those events that seem to thrust downward are in truth only a part of the ascent --like the poise of an athlete before he leaps, the contraction of a spring before its energy is released. ]

There is not a thing you could do halt that dynamic even for a moment. True, you must take responsibility for your deeds and work hard, very hard, to clean up your own mess. But when all the dust settles, you are exactly in the space where you were meant to be: One step closer.

gray day nay bay

rainy drIpS

And its raining and im cold and tired and wet and iss be being alright!

abNormal

I think it was Lessing who once said, "There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose."

An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior. Even we psychiatrists expect the reactions of a man to an abnormal situation, such as being committed to an asylum, to be abnormal in proportion to the degree of his normality.

~Victor E. Frankl

Family.

But just as democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others, the family is the worst form of child rearing and male-female bonding except for the others.
~dennis prager

Milk and Apples

"Comrades!" he cried. "You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privelege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in takign these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples. Do you know what would happen if we pigs failed in our duty? Jones would come back! Yes, Jones would come back! Surely, comrades," cried Squealer almost pleadingly, skipping from side to side and whisking his tail, "surely there is no one among you who wants to see Jones come back?"

jah jah jah.

los ng i.

It's kinda funny how most people spend their lives in an attempt to find themselves, when all G-d wants is for us to find time to lose our selves...

a song here now for Lev who has a hurty head,
even though it's her own fault she never went to bed.

Scorpions with the Berlin Philharmonic. bloody ahhhhhhhhhh, gorgeous

...but there's nothing like the sight of an amputated spirit. There's no prosthetic for that.

~Scent of a Woman

19

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.

I must read this book. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night. agh, life.
oww, life. Read it.

http://www.mostlyfiction.com/excerpts/curiousincident.htm

Blessings full...

of direction and clarity, and joy and music, and happiness and resolve; of tears and embrace, and of friendship and of truth. Of singing birds and setting suns, of shiny stars and of smiley faced moons:D Of life.

my lil sis just came in to ask me "why you smiling so hard?" To u, with so much love, blessings of health and sweet joy. I love u:*

ah ah ah, for C- H B-D T M. :')

im justa dreama

i wonder if I'll always be the way i am today- not in the same place in mind and heart, but in the way- of happy fascination, growth and joyful love and smile- i wonder if I'll always be this way or just this while.

good Night.

You could feel the war getting ready in the sky that night. The way the clouds moved aside and came back, and the way the stars looked, a million of them swimming between the clouds, like the enemy discs, and the feeling that the sky might fall upon the city and turn it to chalk dust, and the moon go up in red fire; that was how the night felt.

"My grandfather ran off the V-2 rocket film a dozen times and then hoped that someday our cities would open up more and let the green and the land and the wilderness in more, to remind people that we're allottted a little space on earth and that we survive in that wilderness that can take back what it has given, as easily as blowing its breath on us or sending the sea to tell us we are not so big. When we forget how close the wilderness is in the night, my grandpa said, someday it will come in and get us, for we will have forgotten how terrible and real it can be. You see?" Granger tunred to Montag.
"Grandfather's been dead for all these years, but if you lifted my skull, by G-d, in the convolutions of my brain you'd find the big ridges of his thumbprint. He touched me. As I said earlier, he was a sculptor. 'I hate a Roman named Status Quo!' he said to me. 'Stuff your eyes with wonder,' he said, 'live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that,' he said, 'shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.' "

He knows, Jerry. He was being ironical.

I know, Jerry, I was being ironical.

no words for this movie.

Jibber Jabber

"Oh G-d, the way they jabber about people and their children and themselves and the way they talk about their husbands and the way they talk about war, dammit, I stand here and I can't believe it!"

The beetle jabbed his ear.

:) twice in one pg.

walls

Nobody listens anymore. I can't talk to the walls, because they're yelling at me. I can't talk to my wife because she listens to the walls.

So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, wiithout completing the cycle back to reality.

buses to Boston

on a cold snowy beauty winter night, stuffed into a tight seat, on a borrowed black vid ipod. ahhhh, life.

defininging

He was the epitome of Chesed, kindness. And he did not define (and thus bind) himself as such. Or how would Abraham have been able to wake up early one morning to kill his son?

Any definition limits us. Even kind. Ahem.


lalalalalalaloooo. falseto always makes smiley:')

gardenState

I'm not saying I don't cry, but in between, I laugh.
...and good luck digging your infinite abyss.

If I But Move a Step

I seek the world
But cannot find its face,
Now I think I see,
But the image changes
If I but move a step.
It changes with every sunbeam,
And every mist of cloud.
Sometimes a mist is born in me,
A sullen mood invades my heart,
The world grows dark,
And anger stalks the streets.
A rising sun within my heart
Can change the scene
And light my day.
The image changes
If I but move a step.

~Ben Zion Bokser

tx, my dear.

I'm a spontaneity

...

It's funny how I listen to my posted music and then say ahh, perfect. let me post that. If it was up to me (which is it, so I'm still debating this) I'd just repost a song every time I felt like it. buhbye chaps

Fly... for me.

Once as a child he had sat upon a yellow dune by the sea in the middle of the blue and hot summer day, trying to fill a sieve with sand, because some cruel cousin has said, "Fill this sieve and you'll get a dime!" And the faster he poured, the faster it sifted through with a hot whispering. His hands were tired, the sand was boiling, the sieve was empty. Seated there in midst of July, without a sound, he felt the tears move down his cheeks.

Sometimes, it's better to let the tears just come. And if the water falling down my cheeks can represent a life, then they are a crying sea of violin bows, sprouted grains, tai kwon do black belts, jet black hair, the sweetest voices and brightest smiles. I'll miss you Toby. Now, you can fly for all of us...

King of the Eyesores

"Ououoooououououooouooh"
Enjoy this happy melody that will want to make you put a flower in your hair and link hands. :-p

Listen closely:

The exodus is here...

It's nice to know there are people who appreciate your appreciations, even when you spend a few hours wondering whether those people are actually real.

Le'an Le'an Le'an

The greatest song is playing here and I don't know where I can post it from.
ani noseah lo yodea
le'an le'an le'an
at hayit bishvili hakol
aval zeh haya mizman

but alas. Here's Dust in the wind.

tues day

The sun looked like a moon. I looked at it without squinting. Then, I thought I looked at it, without squinting. Then I looked at it, but the train came and blocked it before I could see if I would squint.

Two women were cycling on different sides of me. They were both talking and there was noise and people but they heard each other because they were listening.

A Jewish lady said hi to me today.

Does eating hurt, ow

i think i might've lost me mind:)

"2 + 2 = 5"

Are you such a dreamer
To put the world to rights
I'll stay home forever
Where two and two always makes a five
I'll lay down the tracks
Sandbag and hide
January has April showers
And two and two always makes a five
It's the devil's way now
There is no way out
You can scream and you can shout
It is too late now
Because you're not there
Payin' attention
Payin' attention
Payin' attention
Payin' attention
yeah I feel it, I needed attention
Payin' attention
Payin' attention
Payin' attention
Yeah I need it, I needed attention
I needed attention
I needed attention
I needed attention
Yeah I love it, the attention
Payin' attention
Payin' attention
Payin' attention
Soon oh
I try to sing along
But the music's all wrong
Cos I'm not
Cos I'm not
I'll swallow up flies?
Back and hide
But I'm not
Oh hail to the thief
Oh hail to the thief
But I'm not
But I'm not
But I'm not
But I'm not
Don't question my authority or put me in the box
Cos I'm not
Cos I'm not
Oh go up to the king, and the sky is falling in
But it's not
But it's not
Maybe not
Maybe not

Uf gozal.

The book I am meant to be quoting is floating along the sandy beach, wet pages being turned by musical waves singing...
Uf gozal
chatoch et haShamayim
tus le'an she'bah lechah. shebashebalecha...:)

Some things just have to wait in line to be quoted. For now, know that there are 800 million axons in your body.

i am tired and sandy and have so much to say but it'll all have to wait till tomorrow. g'night lucky sleeperheads

(pretty, but also scratchy and itchy like my brain)

"When you go through life, whatever be your goal
keep your eye upon the donut, and not upon the hole."

and Peace.

gut shabbos.

to Adam of Gopnik

Last bit of response to Mr. Ravioli...

New Yorkers cannot rewind time. The also cannot keep up with their world and live in technological darkness a the same time. But this is no reason to sacrifice their core humanity and negate themselves by deprivation of emotional interaction and closure of thought.

Preceding all ideas for compromise and change in this area must come an awareness. An awareness of the human need, an awareness of the society and lifestyle that deprives that; an awareness that settling for an incomplete life is settling for no life at all. With this awareness ever present, practical changes can occur. Attempting technological doses in smaller measures, and making time for what is important are a start. Shutting off the cellphone, replacing an email with an actual meeting, and coming to a definite decision at the end of that meeting are all beginnings to a middle path of sanity. But above all, New Yorkers must want that sanity. They must realize that settling for "Mr. Raviolilike" moments, creates a big bubble of nothingess, which they are trying to call life.

a Virtuous Cycle

Just so that it's not always vicious.

Song~ The Swan by Jascha Silberstein
News is good on in the update on graftings and bones and hips and hands, Thank G-d!

and health and wealth and happinesses sweet.

Ladaladeeda

Play it louder. louder. LOUDER!

”However baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make.”
Herman Melville (1819-1891)

...talk to the sea

"Talk to the sea; it's great therapy. And everything tastes like tears afterwards- your fingers, your clothes- so you don't feel so alone, if you know what I mean."

And that is why, I love my friends like I do.

"At least they coulda lied! A lie is a gesture, it's a courtesy, it's a little respect!"

In the olden days of Spring '07...

"What has it become, this metal piece of technology? Is it a luxury, added to our lives to make living easier and more convenient? Or has it suddenly latched onto us, a parasite, a little robot that we must answer to at each moment?

This is not the end. The thought that technology might be at its peak and will not continue to advance is nonsense. Our only hope is to try and take control, not of technology, but of ourselves. Examine that slim slab of silver, black or pink, and be truthful about its place in your life. Is it a help, or is it slowly taking you over?"

What is the matter with me, that every time I'm asked to write anything, I feel the need to go on a full blown rampage...Je suis sérieusement suis dérangé

Kids are not short adults.

blue sky love

I missed the fishing contest. I had to get 10 ppl and register in advance so an hour earlier wouldn't have really saved me much. Navy knit dresses are nice too. smile NOW :')

shluff gut

There's a calm surrender to the rush of day
When the heat of the rolling world can be turned away
An enchanted moment, and it sees me through
It's enough for this restless warrior just to be with you

And can you feel the love tonight
It is where we are
It's enough for this wide-eyed wanderer
That we got this far
And can you feel the love tonight
How it's laid to rest
It's enough to make kings and vagabonds
Believe the very best

There's a time for everyone if they only learn
That the twisting kaleidoscope moves us all in turn
There's a rhyme and reason to the wild outdoors
When the heart of this star-crossed voyager beats in time with yours

Learning to learn

learning to love and learning to sing and learning to share and learning to smile and learning to laugh and learning to speak and learning to hear and learning to see and learning to know and learning to breathe and learning to sigh and learning to live.

(and the song meant to be posted was Elton John~I guess that's why they call it the Blues.)
Good Shabbos!

It's funny how when music follows your life, expression comes so much easier. It's as if I can trace the pattern of my joy, insight, fear, sadness, pain, relief, recognition, resignation, love... bursting smiles, laughter, silence, tears... I can track me with music, which allows me to embrace all of those things.

joni mitchell~ The Circle Game

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star
Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like, when you're older, must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
Were captive on the carousel of time
We cant return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels thru the town
And they tell him,
Take your time, it wont be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
Were captive on the carousel of time
We cant return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
Therell be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through
And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
Were captive on the carousel of time
We cant return, we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

Isaac Asimov

"I'm on fire to explain, and happiest when it's something reasonably intricate which I can make clear step by step. It's the easiest way I can clarify things in my own mind."

writing & passion for truth

...and if my metaphors in the lines above have gotten too rich and too mixed it is probably because my passions have heated up in this hunt for the truth. Samuel Johnson says not to worry since truth will take care of itself and poor writing will sink from view.

Donald M. Hassler

confidence in the Now

Trusting in the One Above doesn’t mean waiting for miracles.

It means having confidence in what you are doing right now --because you know He has put you on the right path and will fill whatever you do with divine energy and blessing from on high.

You know the feeling of knowing that you'll be able to move on and eventually let go regardless of the pain in the present? Knowing that what's eating at you day and night now, will one day dissipate? I feel that just that belief- knowing that things will be OK- is more painful than all the pain that is right now.

Half of the time we're gone

and we don't know where...

Meet Prof.

on opinions that turn to facts, Jews have no mechanical or electrical skills at all- it's the fault of our race. Rhinoplasti were invented by the rhinos in Africa.

on BioPsych, When we wake, our brains are being fed by our livers. mmmmm.

on life, The world to come is waiting for you.

on love, When you fall in love, your heart will go boom or something.

and most importantly, Is the moon really made of green cheese?

Maybe I'm a potato :)

Mr. Ravioli

by Adam Gopnik
The New Yorker, Sept. 30, 2002

I tried to get the link, but the article is not fully available on their site. This is such a wonderful and enlightening essay. The author introduces us to his daughter and her imaginary friend Mr. Ravioli who has no time to play or chat... and these are random peices that made me happy.

"Knowing something's made up while thinking that it matters is what all fiction insists on."

"Constant, exhausting, no-time-to-meet-your-friends Charlie Ravioli-style busyness arrived as an affliction in modern life long after the other partss of bourgeois city manners did. Business long predates busyness. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centruies, when bourgeois people were building the institutions of bourgeois life, they seem never to have complained that they were too busy--or, if they did, they left no record of it. Samuel Pepys, who had a Navy to refloat and a burned London to rebuild, often uses the word "busy" but never complains of busyness. For him, the word "busy" is a synonym for "happy," not for "stressed." Not once in his diary does Pepys cancel lunch or struggle to fit someone in for coffee at four-thirty. Pepys works, makes love, and goes to bed, but he does not bump and he does not have to run. Ben Franklin, a half century later, boasts of his industriousness, but he, too, never complains about being busy, and always has time to publish a newspaper orf come up with a maxim or swim the ocean or invent the lighting rod...

"Here two grids of busyness remain dominant: twenty-first-century grid of bump and run, and the late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century postmodern grid of virtual call and echo. Busyness is felt so intently here because we are both crowded and overloaded. We exit the apartment into a still dense nineteenth century grid of street corners and restaurants full of ppeople and come home to the late-twentieth-century grid of faxes adn emails and overwhelming incompleteness...

"The crowding of our space has been reinforced by a crowding of our time, and the only way to protect ourselves is to build structures of perpetual deferral: I'll lsee you next week, let's talk soon. We build rhetorical baffles around our lives to keep the crowding out, only to find that we have let nobody we love in..."

The ending flips around and bothers me a lot. More later.

smilin along

...and it's getting betta awll the time.
Seems like just as soon as you've started to regain footing on this shaky world, G-d has this wonderful way of knocking you right off your feet again. Not in a bad terrorizing way; just in a way.

mornin!

gosh, sometimes I just learn so slowly.

that a sudden rush of positivity does not necessarily imply negativity in the past. so wonderfully comforting:)

Happy happy happy!!!

aaaand then it just hits you! the joy, the purity, the music... sheer depth and brilliance.
maybe one day I'll learn what it is that I've done once to have the privelege of living so unbelievably. or I won't. that's the beauty.

it's crazy, that feeling of just kicking back, remembering that you really do know how to live in a way that is out of reach for so many. Baruch Hashem Elokeinu for the wisdom, the happiness, the love and the people in this journey we call life.

Sadness and desperation has led me to this:
How can I rid myself of this new nightmare called bestmanage.org if spyware, adware, mcafee and indian dell ppl cannot help? Quick, before I smash my screen and cry and cry and cry.

Since when do actual people still use AIM as a means of communication... weirdest most horrible realization that the fact remains that it is indeed so, and god willing I will forget I've ever rediscovered that fact. mmm, complicated way of saying I promise to never sign on again, bli neider:')

Miss Potter

"I feel I love my heart more now, because that is where I can find you." Norman Warne

It's the story of a modern woman, plonked into the middle of Victorian England. It's about a lot of things; it's about life.

Ahhhhh, and family is the best big shoulder to lean on, if not for me being understood and appreciated, then my simply to be able to shower all the love inside of me on them. To be able to express that and have it accepted so readily, is more precious and more comforting than most anything I know.

Other people.

Operation successful... so they say:)baruch hashem, baruch hashem, baruch hashem. yay, baruch hashem!!!

I'm quite sure I don't stand alone in feeling quite alien amongst our larger society and even closer circle of people that I know. I've finally been struck with the blessing of knowing that at this point, with all the struggles that I have in my heart and all the ideas and thoughts racing about my mind, they can be fully understood by only one person: myself. That's not to say that there are no people who give advice, share sympathies, support and love. But what of the need for people who will do that and also relate and understand, stimulate and challenge the thoughts and ideas which make up who I am? These people do exist and I'm lucky to have more than one such person in my life. But for those who do not-

I think it is possible to derive real (if not ideal) comfort from simple human touch, even if that human shoulder I'm crying on belongs to a person who does not feel my plight (ew, bad word) at all. I think it takes a strength and acceptance of self and the other person's weakness. I think it is possible.

My latest obssession has been my writing, or better, the lack of my ability to express myself properly in words. I think that my whole thought process has been affected by giving into this inability, by never writing down my thoughts, and thus always inching away from ever having to really formulate them fully at all. I want to rid myself of that. My writing is airy and full of holes. I want to challenge myself to write regardless. If I'm lucky, I might really improve my writing. If I'm luckier, maybe I will eventually move on to be able to fully formulate my ideas and express them.

cracked(pun intended)

After covering the basic street drugs and their specific effects, one bright classmate raises her hand to ask,
"Prof., but what's that drug where you tie a rubberband around your arm and then stick a needle in?"
"What?! It's any drug that you inject!"
"No, that I know. But what's that drug where you tie a rubberband and then you stick a needle in???"

uh, ye, hokey.

Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, Janine Jansen 1-4

Teach your parents well

Teach Your Children
Crosby Stills Nash & Young

You who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so become yourself
Because the past is just a good bye.

Teach your children well,
Their father's hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by.

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

And you, of tender years,
Can't know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.

Teach your parents well,
Their children's hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by.

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

Why my friends don't go to school

Working for a living is good. It's the anxiety over making a living that is not good.Don't let your inner self get involved in your business. That inner self must be preserved for fulfilling your purpose in life. Making lots of money is not your purpose in life.

mmm, who, me?

the Joy!

I can feel the nervousness rushing through the blood just beneath my skin and I see the music the voices and all the life there is out there which both frightens and makes me sit up brighter with black eyes looking up hopeful and wide they are happy head falling to the side and lips parted just a bit looking bright eyed and tearful lying scared looking up forward eyes closing imagine all the life coming towards me the choice the lack of it big dark ivory opportunity warm and inviting it chases me backwards I reach out fingers to stop the noise smashing at my eyes I remain for the joy that I find in the music which is life

unFragile love

Love is so powerful precisely because it exposes the fact that at the core of our humanity, we are fragile and vulnerable, and we need each other. When you come to terms with this fragility, that's when you are free to love. A. Moss

Anna

There's this awesome pic of a little dressed up girl, screaming screaming, with her little hands stretched out, and it's sitting right in front of me, but I'm too lazy to try and post. It's alright. I'm enough of the picture. up, smiling and yelling in frustration. 'Mornin:')

Also, the shock still keeps me up at night, living now armed with the horrific knowledge that i've been breathing all these months completely unaware that Anna dies. She's been dead and to me she's been alive and all this sudden death is disorienting...

Or well.

"Why was it that they could never shout like that about anything that mattered??!"

Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.

my sanity.

"Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad."

happy Shabbat!

Hands.

by Jean Sprackland

She peels cod fillets off the slab,
dips them in batter, drops them
one by one into the storm of hot fat.
I watch her scrubbed hands,
elegant at the work,

and think of the hands of the midwife
stroking wet hair from my face as I sobbed and cursed,
callin me sweetheart and wheeling in more gas,
hauling out at last my slippery fish of a son.
He was all silence and milky blue. She took him away
and brought him back breathing,
wrapped in a white sheet. By then
I loved her like my own mother.

I stand here speechless in the steam and banter,
as she makes hospital corners of my hot paper parcel.

Sweetbreads are not brain,

they're pancreas :')

Monday.

by Primo Levi
a Jewish Italian holocaust survivor

Is anything sadder than a train
That leaves when it's supposed to,
That has only one voice,
Only one route?
There's nothing sadder.

Except perhaps a cart horse,
Shut between two shafts
Ad unable even to look sideways.
Its whole life is walking.

And a man? Isn't a man sad?
If he lives in solitude a long time,
If he believes time has run its course,
A man is a sad thing too.

dear dotted world: I miss you.

If people come from monkeys, are we locking up potential humans in the zoo?

How is it possible to have a civil war?

and why am i even thinking about this stuff when i should be thinking about social loafing, self-help groups, and the federal reserves...?

bodega

for anyone else who was a'wondrin, and CUZ I CAN post whatever i like when i like how i like cuz i like:

bodega: the local name for a small market (originating from Spanish)

...speaking of stories of Rabbi Levitansky A"H, we would like to share an anecdote that he often repeated about his own grandfather: (shmais)

“My grandfather was a traveling salesman in the Jewelry trade. His travels took him to small cities in the mid-west and northern United States. One day in the early 1930's as he was traveling through a rural town, he saw a fire on a farm. He stopped to look and saw the farmers from all the neighboring farms form a fire brigade. All their efforts unfortunately failed. The farmers stood around and mourned the loss. 'Poor John,' they said 'everything is gone.' 'John, we are so sorry.' 'My Zaide hearing this spoke up in his European accent, 'I'm shorry ten dollars vorth, how much you shorry.' His words took the farmers by surprise. Not only that he was sorry, but that he was putting money where his mouth is ($10 in those days was a handsome sum). Each farmer, taking my Zaide's cue spoke up one by one, pledging a dollar or two to help poor John. Eventually enough money was collected to rebuild the farm."

to the groom.

He was called up to give a few words of blessing to the groom, and he spoke of his method to crawl through and survive his marriage. He said:

"I don't try to ruin, I mean run, her life; and I don't try to run my life. Blessings to you."

(and he might've said other stuff, but he was so drunk, and who in their right mind quotes drunk people...?)