And in that room…

 The poems below are excerpted from Poems From the Sanskrit translated by John Brough, ©1968.

My copy is yellowed and the pages are brittle.  I'm sure the pages are on the verge of falling out, and when that happens I'll have to put a rubber band around it.  It's long out of print, so I can't just buy a new one.

It's formatted very strangely, so it's not always clear who the poet is being translated.  They've all been gone for several centuries, so I suppose it's not crucial.  I did my best to credit them, just the same.

26
No, but look here now, this is just absurd,
The way our famous poets talk of girls
As weak and winsome.  Weak?  Is this a word
To use of those who, with a shake of curls
And with the triumph of a modest glance,
Can lead the very gods a merry dance?
     ~Bhartyhari

54
Those whom the gods would keep
In safety, they protect,
Not as a shepherd guards his sheep,
But by the gift of a wise intellect.

Nor do the gods appear
In warrior's armour clad
To strike down with sword or spear.
Those whom they would destroy, they
                                              first make mad.
     ~Bhartyhari

79
Although I conquer all the earth,
Yet for me there is only one city.
In that city there is for me only one house;
And in that house, one room only;
And in that room, a bed.
And one woman sleeps there,
The shining joy and jewel of all my kingdom.
     ~Śūdraka

87
Dearest, if you will love me true,
What use are joys of heaven to me?
But if you will not love me true,
What use are joys of heaven to me?
     ~Śūdraka

114
My best respect to Poverty,
The master who has set me free:
For I can look at all the world,
and no-one looks at me.
     ~Harşa

;Otherwise,

(clicking Imbiggens)
 

Neither

The sky is never
the same shade twice
and neither is your heart.
 
The moon has never apologized
for hiding some nights
and neither should you.
 
The stars have never stopped shining
because someone wanted them to
and neither should you.
 
The earth has never stopped
moving, growing, evolving for anyone
and neither should you.  

~ Nikita Gill

64 Color Box of Crayons

 'Excerpted from A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, ©2012: 

Her friends couldn't see why she woke up every morning and voluntarily decided to share the day with him.  He couldn't either.  He build her a bookshelf and she filled it with books by people who wrote page after page about their feelings.  Ove understood things he could see and touch.  Wood and concrete.  Glass and steel.  Tools.  Things one could figure out.  He understood right angles and clear instruction manuals.  Assembly models and drawings.  Things one could draw on paper.
 
He was a man of black and white.
 
And she was color.  All the color he had.

Everything

 

(clicking Imbiggens)

And that reminded me of this:

Full lyrics HERE.

Below

 

(click to imbiggen)

I love that the artist chose a different angle for this, and the view from under the table tells the story so well you almost don't need dialogue.

9 Chickweed Lane by Brooke McEldowney is on the web HERE.

You Don't Have To

 

Hawaii

This is John Lydon's love letter to his wife, who he is slowly losing to Alzheimer's Disease. 

Full lyrics HERE.

Shareing a Coat

 

(clicking imbiggens)

9 Chickweed Lane by Brooke McEldowney is on the web HERE.

Soho

We watched our friends grow up together
And we saw them as they fell
Some of them fell into Heaven
Some of them fell into Hell

Full lyrics HERE.

There's a chill to every evening when you're all alone…

Full lyrics HERE.

To Love Somebody

"To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be.

"The people they’re too exhausted to be any longer. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into. We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out, to become speedily found when they are lost.

"But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be. It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honour what emerges along the way. Sometimes it will be an even more luminescent flame. Sometimes it will be a flicker that temporarily floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness."  ~ Heidi Priebe

And that reminded me of this:

 Full lyrics HERE.

Dwell in their Energy

"When you start to know someone, all their physical characteristics start to disappear. You begin to dwell in their energy, recognize the scent of their skin. You see only the essence of the person, not the shell. That’s why you can’t fall in love with beauty. You can lust after it, be infatuated by it, want to own it. You can love it with your eyes and your body but not your heart. And that’s why, when you really connect with a person’s inner self, any physical imperfections disappear, become irrelevant."  ~Lisa Unger

sunday afternoons

Excerpted from the world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire by Ritika Jyala:

My 13 year old cousin came back from a date with her boyfriend and said, “I can’t wait to grow up and spend sunday afternoons with him.” At first, I wanted to laugh (after all they’re just 13), but I remember being 13 and having the world in my hands. I remember getting excited to talk to someone about my dreams and wishes, and how happy these daydreams and fantasies made me. There’s this innocence you can only have at 13 and the world rises and falls and crashes and burns every year… until you do not think about quiet sunday afternoons.

So I asked her about the date and heard her giggle about bubblegum flavored ice cream, and how much she loves this little life. I think she makes me love it too.

Ritika Jyala is on the web HERE.

Her thirteen-year-old cousin is not so very different than septuagenarian Johnny Cash:

Supernatural

“She was one of those women whose features are not perfect and who in their moments of dimness may not seem even pretty, but who, excited by the blood or the spirit, become almost supernaturally beautiful.”  ~Edmund Wilson, about Edna St. Vincent Millay (source)

Temples

"Better than material gifts offered in stone-made temples, churches and mosques, God loves the gifts of love, peace, and devotion offered in the temple of one’s own heart or through the temples of the hearts of others."  ~Paramahansa Yogananda

First

"He saw her before he saw anything else in the room."   ~Francis Scott Fitzgerald, One Interne (1932)

Brushed My Hair Back

In this excerpt from Wunnerful, Wunnerful! the Autobiography of Lawrence Welk, © 1971, he talks about how hard it was for him to express his emotions verbally:

I had always thought my mother was beautiful, but she looked especially so to me as she held (my newborn daughter) Shirley for the first time. She settled down in her old rocking chair, cuddling Shirley close, murmuring soft German phrases to her, singing some old-country lullabies, as Shirley nestled contentedly in her arms. Suddenly the years melted away and I could remember her doing the same thing when I was a small boy. I realized with a pang that my mother was growing old. I didn't like to think about that. Instead I wanted to tell her how much I loved her. But, as usual, I couldn't quite get the words out. I sat down beside her, and she stopped rocking and reached out and brushed my hair back in the old way, and then she smiled at me, her eyes warm and tender as always.

I smiled, too. I loved her so much. But I couldn't seem to tell her.

That wasn't an uncommon problem for men of that generation.  My own father is the same way.  I don't think I've heard him say the words, "I love you."

But if you pay attention, he expresses it in other ways.

When the weather's bad, he calls to make sure I made it home safely.  When I come over in the morning, he offers me a cup of coffee and a cookie.  He cuts out coupons for me if he thinks they're something I could use.

You just have to know how to read the signs.

Soulmates

 

John Lydon/Johnny Rotten and Nora Forster have been married for forty years now (via):

"Now there’s a saucy girl.  It’s love, you know. I’ve always loved that woman. And she knows it. When we met we didn’t expect to get on. We’d both been told the other was a bad ‘un. But blimey. Sparks flew. It was instant attraction. And that’s never gone. I never expected to feel like that. I never thought I was in any way attractive. Or anyone’s idea of a good date.

"It’s volatile, the marriage. Which one isn’t? Nothing better than a good, full-on row. Get it all out. Say rude and nasty things. And then be sorry. Genuinely sorry, afterwards.

"But you know I can’t think of a better woman on God’s earth than Nora. If we ceased to function as a couple tomorrow there would be no one else. Not ever. I mean it."

 



 

May You Be Blessed

"May you be blessed with all these things: A little more joy, a little less stress, a lot more understanding of your wonderfulness. Abundance in your life, blessings in your days, dreams that come true, and hopes that stay. A rainbow on the horizon, an angel by your side, and everything that could ever bring a smile to your life. "  ~Douglas Pagels, from May You Be Blessed with All These Things (via Jules of Nature)