Just fabulous.
 

The Conjugation of the Paramecium
by Muriel Rukeyser

This has nothing
to do with
propagating

The species
is continued
as so many are
(among the smaller creatures)
by fission

(and this species
is very small
next in order to
the amoeba, the beginning one)

The paramecium
achieves, then,
immortality
by dividing

But when
the paramecium
desires renewal
strength another joy
this is what
the paramecium does:

The paramecium
lies down beside
another paramecium

Slowly inexplicably
the exchange
takes place
in which
some bits
of the nucleus of each
are exchanged

for some bits
of the nucleus
of the other

This is called
the conjugation of the paramecium.

"Its great being a blonde. With low expectations , its very easy to surprise people. " - Pamela Anderson

Impossible has two letters too many.

Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall. Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all life really means. ~Robert Louis Stevenson

"although winter may be everywhere
with such a silence and such a darkness
noone can quite begin to guess"

I'd make a million trips to his lips if I were a bee because he's sweeter than sugar candy to me.

(said by my friend Jenna)

“Who are you to judge the life I live?
I know I'm not perfect
-and I don't live to be-
but before you start pointing fingers...
make sure you hands are clean!”
― Bob Marley

On this Anniversary of Historic Importance
 

Elie Wiesel on the Freeing of the Nazi Death Camps

That day I encountered the first American soldiers
in the Buchenwald concentration camp.
I remember them well.
Bewildered, disbelieving, they walked around the place,
hell on earth,
where our destiny had been played out.
They looked at us,
just liberated,
and did not know what to do or say.
Survivors snatched from the dark throes of death,
we were empty of all hope—
too weak, too emaciated to hug them or even speak to them.
Like lost children, the American soldiers wept and wept with rage and sadness.
And we received their tears as if they were heartrending offerings
from a wounded and generous humanity.

Wow! Powerful and heart-wrenching...
 

Sonnet XCV
 

Whoever desired each other as we do? Let us look
For the ancient ashes of hearts that burned,
And let our kisses touch there, one by one,
Till the flower, disembodied, rises again.

Let us love that Desire that consumed its own fruit
And went down, aspect and power, into the earth:
We are its continuing light,
Its indestructible, fragile seed.

-- Neruda

Truth stood on one side and Ease on the other; it has often been so.
~Theodore Parker

This is moving and powerful, heartwrenching. I love this. Even though it leaves a lump in my throat and an ache in my heart.

I need a new quote
 

My profile quote no longer fits. It spoke to me for many years.

My shell has cracked and my icy heart has melted...must find new one that speaks to me of rebirth.

".. Take me...whose shell must be cracked, whose heart is ice, who needs your heat" ~Dorothy Allison

"Don't try to understand everything because sometimes its not meant to be understood but to be accepted."

If you like Neruda...
 

....you may also like Mario Benedetti, though I find not a lot of his stuff is translated. Here's one I read often as a reminder of many things.

FROM THE AFFECTIONS
How to let you know that there is always time?
That one has to look for it and give it to oneself...
That nobody lays down rules, apart from life...
That life without certain rules loses shape...
That shape is not lost when we open up...
That opening ourselves up is not to love indiscriminately...
That it is not forbidden to love...
That we can also hate...
That hate and love are two affections...
That the aggression just because, hurts a lot ...
That the wounds close...
That doors should not be closed...
That the biggest door is affection...
That affections define us...
That defining oneself is not rowing against the tide...
That not the stronger the stroke, the more you draw...
That to look for a balance doesn't mean to be warm...
That refusing words is to open distances...
That meeting is very beautiful...
That sex is part of the beauty of life ...
That life comes from sex...
That the children's asking why, has its reason why...
That wanting to know about someone, is not just curiosity...
That knowing everything about everybody is unhealthy curiosity...
That being thankful never hurts...
That self-determination is not doing things alone...
That nobody wants to be alone...
That so as not to be alone we only have to give...
That in order to give, we have to receive before...
That to be given, we also have to know how to ask...
That giving oneself as a present definitively is not to love oneself…
That to be loved we must show what we are...
That so that someone can be, they have to be helped...
That help is to encourage and support...
That adulation is not support...
That fawning is as pernicious as to turn the face...
That things face to face are honest...
That nobody is honest because they do not steal...
That when there is no pleasure in things you're not living...
That to feel life one must not forget that there is death...
That one can be a living death...
That we feel with the body and the mind...
That we listen with our ears...
That it is hard to be sensitive and not be hurt...
That being hurt is not to bleed to death...
That so as not to be hurt we build walls ...
That it would be better to build bridges...
That across them we go to the other side and no one returns...
That returning does not mean stepping back...
That stepping back may also be to go forward...
That despite going forward and forward, we do not wake up closer to the sun...
How to let you know that that nobody lays down rules, apart from life?

Thank you for the reminder Hack...I hadn't thought of Mario Benedetti in a long time...
 

My favorite love poem-
 

To His Coy Mistress



Had we but World enough, and Time,
This coyness Lady were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long Loves Day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges side.
Should'st Rubies find: I by the Tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood:
And you should if you please refuse
Till the Conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable Love should grow
Vaster then Empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine Eyes, and on thy Forehead Gaze.
Two hundred to adore each Breast.
But thirty thousand to the rest.
An Age at least to every part,
And the last Age should show your Heart.
For Lady you deserve this State;
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I alwaies hear
Times winged Charriot hurrying near:
And yonder all before us lye
Desarts of vast Eternity.
Thy Beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble Vault, shall sound
My ecchoing Song: then Worms shall try
That long preserv'd Virginity:
And your quaint Honour turn to durst;
And into ashes all my Lust.
The Grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hew
Sits on thy skin like morning glew,
And while thy willing Soul transpires
At every pore with instant Fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our Time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapt pow'r.
Let us roll all our Strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one Ball:
And tear our Pleasures with rough strife,
Thorough the Iron gates of Life.
Thus, though we cannot make our Sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.


Andrew Marvell

New quote:

"For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart

It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul"

~Judy Garland~

Coward: A man in whom the instinct of self-preservation acts normally.
~Sultana Zoraya

The brave Love mercy, and delight to save.
~John Gay

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.
~ G. K. Chesterton

"I always told my girls the hardest thing in life you will have to do is be yourself. So get to it grrrrrrrrrrrrrl."
---Linea (a mom who held my closet door open)

A furtive tear streams down my cheek, a clenching of teeth at the inhumanity, and indeed, a lump in my throat. Truly a moving and bitter-sweet and passage.

Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.
~Alfred Adler

Follow your heart, but be quiet for a while first. Ask questions, then feel the answer. Learn to trust your heart.
~ Unknown Author

Penelope talking fast - the only way I can write lately.
 

"I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes." ~James Joyce, Ulysses

But not all who wander are aimless. Especially not those who seek truth beyond tradition; beyond definition; beyond the image.
Mona Lisa Smile

There's a good chance you dont like me, but an even better chance i dont care.

I am a family gy and want nothing more than to....

I LOVE YOU (Te quiero)
Your hands are my caress
my daily reminders
I love you because your hands
work for justice

if I love you it's because you are
my love my accomplice and my everything
and in the street arm in arm
we are many more than two

your eyes are my spell
against a cursed day
I love you for your gaze
that looks and plants the future

your mouth that is yours and mine
your mouth doesn’t lie
I love you because your mouth
knows how to shout rebellion

if I love you it's because you are
my love my accomplice and my everything
and in the street arm in arm
we are many more than two

and for your open face
and your wanderer’s footstep
and your weeping for the world
because you are of the people I love you.

and because love is not a halo
nor morality tale
and because we are a couple
that knows it is not alone

I love you in my paradise
which is to say that in my ideal country
people live happily
without even having permission

if I love you it's because you are
my love my accomplice and my everything
and in the street arm in arm
we are many more than two

-- Mario Benedetti

Whether you think you can or think you can’t – you are right.
~Henry Ford


Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.” ~Joan Miró