Let's saddle up and ride

Brick walls are there for a reason. They give us a chance to show how badly we want something.

...

Through this whole ordeal, I don't think we ever said to each other: "This isn't fair." We just kept going. We recognized that there were things we could do that might help the outcome in positive ways ... and we did them. Without saying it in words, our attitude was, "Let's saddle up and ride."

...

Too many people go through life complaining about their problems. I've always believed that if you took one-tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you'd be surprised by how well things can work out.

...

I've found that a substantial fraction of many people's days is spent worrying about what others think of them. If nobody ever worried about what was in other people's heads, we'd all be 33 percent more effective in our lives and on our jobs.

...

people will show you their good side. Almost everybody has a good side. Just keep waiting. It will come out.

-- The Last Lecture, Randy Pausch

" We travel, I thought for adventure and fun, to get away from the drudgery of our lives at home. We travel to court hardship and face the dangers and excitements that are themselves a kind of vacation and challenge for us. We meet people for whom our presence is nothing but opportunity, to take them out of the sadness and difficulty of their lives.

...

And now Leah and Jorge are at latitude zero, able to go any which way, north, south, east or west.

....

Here's what I love about travel: strangers get a chance to amaze you. Sometimes a single day can bring a blooming surprise, a simple kindness that opens a chink in the brittle shell of your heart and makes you a different person when you go to sleep - more tender, less jaded - than the one you were when you woke up.

...

the Sun woman rises in the morning and lights a fire  below the horizon and there she uses red ochre powder to decorate her face. Often it spills into the air and this is the red of dawn. She goes west to her other campsite and carries her torch, our sun, across the sky.

...

I would learn of the malleability of time, which can stretch a minute into a mile's length and compress a month into the space of a single bed.

...

Everything come round, you know."

-- Best of lonely planet travel writing, edited by Tony Wheeler 

I'm loving every minute of it, including the bumps in the road.

"Youth, I thought, truly is wasted on the young.

... 

And I thought again about how travel - how being in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by unfamiliar faces and languages not your own - changes so much about a person, at the moment and, sometimes, forever after.

...

sometimes, when it comes to the really big decisions, you want someone - you need someone - to confirm that you've made the right choice.

...

You're not immune to trouble, Marina. No one is. No one, no matter how in control they think they are, can keep life from happening to them.

...

Most people - many, at least - live with the memory of a lost love, or a relationship gone horribly wrong, or a broken heart. And some people live with the memory of a missed opportunity, a road not taken, a possibility not explored, a relationship not embraced. It's a rare person who doesn't carry around some big sadness.

...

A child's lack of confidence, a child's misery, always reflect on the parent; the parent is forced to assume some degree of responsibility, mo matter how imaginary.

...

They always said I was a dreamer. That my 'head was in the clouds.' It didn't bother me. Clouds are very beautiful.

...

I'm loving every minute of it, including the bumps in the road.

...

passion is bigger and stronger than reason, and how, with a few exceptions, people aren't really victim to passion - they're participants, even celebrants.

And celebrations come to an end."

-- Tuscan Holiday, Holly Chamberlin

We can bury the lies and embrace the truth.

" Every family has a story, told and retold so many times is seems firm and irrefutable. Etched in granite. Here are the bare bones of my family's story:

My parents were murdered by a masked stranger, who shot them in our driveway.

My sister, Rebecca, is beautiful, wild, coolheaded and fiercely independent. She needs no one to make her happy. She does, however, need danger.

I am sensitive, quiet, brilliant and fearful, in many ways my sister's opposite. I need safety, protection and a man who loves me.

More often than not, family stories turn out to be etched in sand rather than granite. Even the parts we think are true - even the parts about ourselves - crumble under scrutiny. These are the lies we tell everyone who knows us. These are the lies we tell ourselves.

...

I could smell the rain on her. I could smell fear.

...

It was always this way. Ninety-nine parts human kindness for every one part depravity.

...

I watched as Tully leaned over as though he might kiss Simmee's cheek. Instead, he breathed in the spun fold of her halo, and for a moment, I forgot about being afraid. Instead I felt touched. Touched and, finally, truly, grateful.

...

The tangled web of love and hate she felt for her? The admiration tainted by resentment? Her mind and heart could barely hold the contradictions. Lying there, she felt as though she might explode with them.

...

Every family has a story, and I love that those stories are etched in sand rather than granite. That way we can change them. We can bury the lies and embrace the truth.

And we can move forward"

-- The Lies We Told, Diane Chamberlain

If every fault is mine, Every forgiveness should be yours.

"Time is two days, one safe and one of peril,
And our lives are of two halves, one fair, one overcast.
Say to those who reproach us for what Time has done:
'Does Time oppose any but great men?'
Do you not see that when the storm winds blow,
It is the tall trees that they strike?
Corpses rise to the surface of the sea,
While it is in its depths that pearls lie hid.
It may be that Time will mishandle us,
Subjecting us to constant harm.
Though in the heavens there are countless stars,
Only the sun and moon suffer eclipse.
There are both green and dry boughs on the earth,
But we throw stones only at those with fruit.
You think well of the days when they are fine,
So do not fear the evil that fate brings.

...

You have no power at all over your daily bread;
Neither learning nor letters will fetch it for you.
Fortune and sustenance are divided up;
One land is fertile while another suffers drought.
Time's changes bring down cultured men,
While fortune lifts the undeserving up.
Come, death, and visit me, for life is vile;
Falcons are brought down low while ducks are raised on high.
Feel no surprise if you should see a man of excellence
In poverty, while an inferior holds sway.
One bird circles the earth from east to west;
Another gets its food but does not have to move.

...

You are the object of my whole desire;
Union with you, beloved, is unending bliss,
While absence from you is like fire.
You madden me, and throughout time
In you is centred the infatuation of my love.
It brings me no disgrace that I love you.
The veils that cover me are torn away by love,
And love continues shamefully to rend all veils.
I clothe myself in sickness; my excuse is clear.
For through my love, you lead my heart astray.
Flowing tears serve to bring my secret out and make it plain.
The tearful flood reveals it, and they try
To cure the violence of this sickness, but it is you
Who are for me both the disease and its cure.
For those whose cure you are, the pains last long.
I pine away through the light shed by your eyes,
And it is my love whose sword kills me,
A sword that has destroyed many good men.
Love has no end for me nor can I turn to consolation.
Love is my medicine and my code of law;
Secretly and openly it serves to adorn me.
You bring good fortune to the eye that looks
Its fill on you, or manages a glance.
Yes, and its choice of love distracts my heart.

...

If I complain of the beloved's absence, what am I to say?
Where can I go to reach what I desire?
I might send messengers to explain my love,
But this complaint no messenger can carry.
I may endure, but after he has lost
His love, the lover's life is short.
Nothing remains but sorrow and then grief,
With tears that flood the cheeks.
You may be absent from my sight but you have still
A settled habitation in my heart.
I wonder, do you know our covenant?
Like flowing water, it does not stay long.
Have you forgotten that you loved a slave,
Who finds his cure in tears and wasted flesh?
Ah, if this love unites us once again,
I have a long complaint to make to you.

...

Forgive those who do wrong, for the wise man
Forgives wrongdoers for their evil deeds.
If every fault is mine,
Every forgiveness should be yours.
Who hopes that his superior will pardon him
Has to forgive inferiors their faults.

...

If beauty comes to be measured against him,
It must hang down its head in shame.
Asked: Have you ever seen a sight like this?'
It answers: 'No, I never have.'

...

You must speak the truth, even if this truth
Burns you with the promised fire of hell.

...

You thought well of Time when Time was kind,
You did not fear the evils fate might bring.
The nights kept peace with you; you were deceived.
It is when the nights are undisturbed that distress comes."

-- The Arabian Nights, Tales of 1001 Nights. Volume I Nights I to 294, Translated by Malcolm C.Lyons, with Ursula Lyons

He dwells in the congealing shell of a giant tortoise. He's fifteen.

"BARMOUTH

A child on a beach, alone.
Grey-eyed, thickset, kneeling to look.
'A blowy day. A large black and scarlet
hemipterous insect. Many moths

including zygaena. A cicindela -
largest genus of the Tiger beetle -
not found in Shropshire.'

Why does every gentleman not
become an ornithologist?
Gulls and cormorants take their way home
at evening on a wild, irregular course.


TREASURE MAP

The world poured back and forth a daft number of times
between mountains and drill holes of his eyes.

Fissure and sky. Bronze grass, brown-glow bog
asphodel and purple heather. 'The Welsh Borders
with my elder brother!' Hours in a wet saddle.

His pony's stringy mane. Long wriggles of shadow
through drystone walls. A treasure map painted by gods.


UGLY

The streets take little nicks out of him.
Caroline says he's ugly. His feet smell.
Everyone's do, but his are worse -

so large and full of bunions. And his big nose!
He dwells in the congealing shell
of a giant tortoise. He's fifteen.

He slinks down back alleys of Shrewsbury
not to be seen. As through the ravines
of Hades

BLISS CASTLE
'You care for nothing but shooting, rat-catching and dogs!
You'll be a disgrace to yourself and your family.'
His father is the largest man he'll ever know.

He's got to be a parson, plod through the Classics again
and read Divinity at Cambridge. So it's God
and Holy Orders? As well that, as anything. He accepts

the truth of Holy Writ. And the Creed, of course.
('It never struck me how illogical it was
to say I believed what I could not understand -

and what is, in face, unintelligible.')
What matters most is shooting. The worst thing
that could happen would be getting an entry wrong

in his ledger of shot birds. He's nineteen
and the best fun is Bliss Castle, alias Maer Hall.
Lots of cousins, three girls, and a kind

sporty uncle. In the partridge and pheasant season
he keeps his boots beside the bed
not to lose thirty seconds of shooting-time.

HE READS THAT THE MEMBRANE IN A GOLDFINCH EGG IS PROOF OF DIVINE DESIGN
How could all this muscle, nerve and glint of skin
be stitched together without intelligence?
From the white of egg, would anyone look
for feathers of a goldfinch? Who, that saw red streaks
shooting in the membrane which divides the yolk from white,
would guess they were destined for bones and limbs?

LIKE GIVING TO A BLIND MAN EYES
'I expected a good deal. I had read Humboldt
and was afraid of disappointment.'
What if he'd stayed at home? 'How utterly vain
such fear is, none can tell but those who have seen
what I have today.'

NOTEBOOK M
Her mouth is a pendulous thong. The eyes
merry brown glass like a carousel horse
and wise as an antique doll.
'When she knows she's done wrong
she hides for shame - or maybe in fear.
When she thinks she'll be whipped
she covers herself in straw.' Feelings appear
in her labial muscle, the treacly red haw
of her eye. Where are the roots of morality?
...
Man thinks himself, in his arrogance, a great
and worthy a Deity's glance. More humble -
and true, I'd assert - to think him created, not bandbox new
but slowly. From this. From the animals."

-- DARWIN A LIFE IN POEM, Ruth Padel

constant reference to Paradise Lost, John Milton. i want to read!

We’re amazing creatures and we can accomplish great things

"Do what you need to do, today.

Tomorrow is another day. And you haven’t lived it yet. So don’t think about it yet.

“But it’s not that easy.”

Yes, it is.

...

If you don’t think you can make change happen I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit. We’re amazing creatures and we can accomplish great things, but sometimes we talk ourselves out of doing epic shit.

Stop talking …"

-- Why You Suck At Change, Karol Gajda