But how could you live your whole life
without a story to tell?
Ruminations
Thoughts in passing
Old man, did you find what you were looking for?
The Old man sighed, 'No, it has eluded me.'
'How regrettable! You spent your whole life searching for it.'
The Old man replied softly, 'Young man, the end has always been clear to me.
It was the journey I sought.'
Intestinal Fortitude--
Do they see?
Tired hands held tight
Holding shamefully the bowels of burden,
One false step
A great exodus of Suffering.
Do they see
The chains that bind
Unseen but for the raw and the chaffed
One feeble step
Reveals the ridges and the grooves
Which then begin to spill.
Frantically, maddeningly,
Hand over hand working against
the bloody deluge
Until exhaustion reveals a grotesque and
most desperate picture.
A silent bell
That rings in anguish,
With only tired hands held tight
As my salvation.
For what it's worth: it's never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be.
There's no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing.
We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you.
I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view.
I hope you live a life you're proud of.
If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.
For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness
and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius!
Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves!
Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge!
Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer!
At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and possess,
and you with it!
The anguish of the earth absolves our eyes
Till beauty shines in all that we can see.
War is our scourge; yet war has made us wise,
And, fighting for our freedom, we are free.
Horror of wounds and anger at the foe,
And loss of things desired; all these must pass.
We are the happy legion, for we know
Time's but a golden wind that shakes the grass.
There was an hour when we were loth to part
From life we longed to share no less than others.
Now, having claimed this heritage of heart,
What need we more, my comrades and my brothers?