the place where i got tired of thinking: 2014

a world full of weeping - 2014.12.30

Come away, O human child!

To the waters and the wild

With a faery, hand in hand,

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

~ W. B. Yeats

The Stolen Child

oh when the tides come rolling in - 2014.12.29

He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women,
nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish,
nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife.
He only dreamed of places now and the lions on the beach.
They played like young cats in the dusk
and he loved them as he loved the boy.

~ Ernest Hemingway,
The Old Man and the Sea

what tomorrow brings - 2014.12.28

no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . .
And then one fine morning—
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby

nostalgia is a female dog - 2014.12.27

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

Tears from the depths of some devine despair

Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,

In looking on the happy autumn fields,

And thinking of the days that are no more.

~ Alfred Tennyson

a quiet little corner of the earth - 2014.12.24

I thought of you and how you love this beauty,
And walking up the long beach all alone
I heard the waves breaking in measured thunder
As you and I once heard their monotone.

Around me were the echoing dunes, beyond me
The cold and sparkling silver of the sea --
We two will pass through death and ages lengthen
Before you hear that sound again with me.

~ Sara Teasdale

the sun comes out tomorrow - 2014.12.23

When I'm stuck with a day that's grey and lonely

I just stick up my chin and grin and say

~ Charles Strouse

Tomorrow

seventy four: the times they are a-changing - 2014.07.04

The line it is drawn

The curse it is cast

The slow one now

Will later be fast

As the present now

Will later be past

The order is

Rapidly fadin'.

And the first one now

Will later be last

Bob Dylan

The Times They Are A-Changin'

seventy three: things that go shine in the dark - 2014.07.02

All that is gold does not glitter;
all that is long does not last;
All that is old does not wither;
not all that is over is past.

~ Christopher Tolkien
The Treason of Isengard

seventy two: cubicles of existence - 2014.07.01

We're all islands
shouting lies to each other
across seas of misunderstanding.

~ Rudyard Kipling
The Light That Failed

seventy one: do i really need a quote for this? - 2014.06.30

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

~ Neal Donald Walsch

seventy: what springs eternal - 2014.06.29

live, then, and be happy,
beloved children of my heart,
and never forget, that until the day
god will deign to reveal the future to man,
all human wisdom is contained in these two words,
'wait and hope.'

~ Alexandre Dumas

sixty nine: to have been measured - 2014.06.28

The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live
is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.

~ Pliny the Elder

sixty eight: the gordian lock - 2014.06.27

Having children is like living in a frat house -- nobody sleeps,
everything's broken, and there's a lot of throwing up

~ Ray Romano

sixty seven: the ins and outs - 2014.06.26

You put your left foot in
You take your left foot out
You put your left foot in
And you shake it all about
You do the hokey pokey
And you turn yourself around
That's what it's all about

~ The Hokey Pokey Song

sixty six: an apathy so absolute - 2014.06.25

Nor did he give a damn for the world either,
or the universe
or heaven or hell.
But he liked women.

~ John Fante
The Brotherhood of the Grape

sixty five: the end of an era - 2014.06.24

An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.

~ Arthur Miller

sixty four: the red pill is a placebo - 2014.06.23

Then there is the other secret.
There isn't any symbolysm [sic].
The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man.
The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish.
The shark are all sharks no better and no worse.
All the symbolism that people say is shit.
What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.

~ Ernest Hemingway

sixty three: starry, backlit night - 2014.06.22

I love the silent hour of night,
For blissful dreams may then arise,
Revealing to my charmed sight
What may not bless my waking eyes.

~ Anne Brontë
Best Poems of the Brontë Sisters

sixty two: head and shoulders - 2014.06.21

If I have seen further than others,
it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.

~ Isaac Newton

sixty one: signs of the tines - 2014.06.20

“You’re Neptune, right?” she asked.
“Lord of the sea who washed up on the beach during the storm?
Do you perform miracles?
Because I could use a couple of them tonight.”

~ Olivia Cunning,
Tie Me

sixty: the witching hour - 2014.06.19

The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her,
was a special moment in the middle of the night
when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep,
and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world all to themselves.

~ Roald Dahl
The BFG

fifty nine: the sanctity of salty things - 2014.06.18

There must be something strangely sacred in salt. It is in our tears and in the sea.”

~ Kahlil Gibran

fifty eight: an early start - 2014.06.17

He travels best that knows when to return.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

fifty seven: choking out disbelief - 2014.06.16

I find your lack of faith disturbing

~ Darth Vader
Star Wars - A New Hope

fifty six: there is no i in chevrolet - 2014.06.15

I will age for you, if it pleases you.
I will match you, wrinkle for wrinkle,
grey hair for grey hair,
crease for crease,
wrinkle for wrinkle.
You will be so beautiful when you are old.

~ Catherynne M. Valente
Deathless

fifty five: mung the merciless - 2014.06.14

Pathetic Earthlings . . . who can save you now?

~ Flash Gordon

fifty four: jump inside if you want to be wealthy - 2014.06.13

Caught up in your wishing well
Your hopes inside it
Take your love and promises
And make them last

~ Wet Wet Wet
Goodnight Girl

fifty three: mellon - 2014.06.12

The doors of Durin, Lord of Moria. Speak, friend, and enter.

~ JRR Tolkien
The Fellowship of the Ring

fifty two: when i get all sauce'd up - 2014.06.11

Mr. Ping: The secret ingredient is... nothing!

Po: Huh?

Mr. Ping: You heard me. Nothing! There is no secret ingredient.

Po: Wait, wait... it's just plain old noodle soup? You don't add some kind of special sauce or something?

Mr. Ping: Don't have to. To make something special you just have to believe it's special

~ Kung Fu Panda

fifty one: the shaving razor's cold and it stings - 2014.06.10

Oh I could hide 'neath the wings
Of the blue bird as she sings
The six-o'clock alarm would never ring
But six rings and I rise
Wipe the sleep out of my eyes

~ The Monkees
Daydream Believer

fifty: up the red brick wall - 2014.06.09

Dorothy: How do you talk if you don't have a brain?
Scarecrow: Well, some people without brains do an awful lot of talking don't they?

~ L. Frank Baum
The Wizard of Oz

forty nine: the root of all - 2014.06.08

While money can't buy happiness,
it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery.
~ Groucho Marx

forty eight: this is the way the midnight oil burns - 2014.06.07

There's nothing left here to lead me, but the velvet moon

All my loneliness I have felt today

It's a little more than enough to make a man throw himself away

Jimi Hendrix

~ Burning Of The Midnight Lamp

forty seven: the making of beautiful things - 2014.06.06

You never forget a beautiful thing that you have made,
[Chef Bugnard] said. 'Even after you eat it, it stays with you - always.

~ Julia Child,
My Life in France

forty six: the bone collector - 2014.06.05

“We have years to converse with someone, to blurt and rant, to explain our desires and anger and regrets - and oh how we squander those moments.”

~ Jeffery Deaver
The Bone Collector

forty five: the gray - 2014.06.04

Once more into the fray...
Into the last good fight I'll ever know...
To live and die on this day...

~ The Grey

forty four: leafy greens each day keeps the nasty infections away - 2014.06.03

Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon.

~ Doug Larson

forty three: the softest cut is the deepest - 2014.06.01

Children are knives, my mother once said.

They don’t mean to, but they cut.

And yet we cling to them, don’t we,

we clasp them until the blood flows.

~ Joanne Harris

The Girl with No Shadow

forty two: i could not find a tea cup - 2014.05.31

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

~ William Shakespeare
The Tempest

forty one: all the world was desert dry - 2014.05.30

Or I would be the rain itself, wreathing over the island, mingling in the quiet of moist places, filling its pores with its saturated breaths. And I would be the wind, whispering through the tangled woods, running airy fingers over the island’s face, tingling in the chill of concealed places, sighing secrets in the dawn.

~ Richard Nelson
The Island Within

forty: pasta - 2014.05.29

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by

~ Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken

thirty nine: pastum - 28.05.2014

A hermit is simply a person to whom civilization has failed to adjust itself.

~ Will Cuppy

thirty eight: the pink at the end of the hall - 2014.05.27

When all my days are ending
And I have no song to sing,
I think that I shall not be too old
To stare at everything;
As I stared once at a nursery door
Or a tall tree and a swing.

~ G.K. Chesterton
The Collected Poems of G. K. Chesterton

thirty seven: pale and wan fond lover - 2014.05.26

I know that if I have heaven
There is nothing to desire.
Rain and river, a world of wonder
May be paradise to me.

~ Enya
China Roses

thirty six: the infiniteness of the spaces in between - 2014.05.25

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

~ Khalil Gibran
The Prophet: On Marriage

thirty five: a grate idea - 2014.05.24

Life is great. Cheese makes it better.

~ Avery Aames

The Long Quiche Goodbye