i will wade out

i will wade out                         

till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers 

I will take the sun in my mouth 

and leap into the ripe air

Alive                                                  

with closed eyes to dash against darkness                                        

in the sleeping curves of my body 

Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery with chasteness of sea-girls

Will i complete the mystery                                             

of my flesh I will rise                

After a thousand years 

lipping 

flowers              

And set my teeth in the silver of the moon

-e e cummings - 

he had to fight within himself.

"Joey recognized in this accumulation a superstition he had to fight within himself--the believe that everything has value. The birds in the trees, the sunflower at the edge of the orchard, the clumsily pasted-up valentine received years ago from a distant grandchild--all have a worth which might, at any moment, be called into account. It was a way of advertising that one's own life was infinitely precious."

--John Updike, p. 115 in The Afterlife short story anthology

"I cannot count the times I cursed our lack of urgency.  If I ever love again, I will not wait to love as best I can.  We thought we were young and there would be time to love well sometime in the future.  This is a terrible way to think.  It is no way to live, to wait to love."

-from What is the What, by Dave Eggers

"I guess what I find totally fascinating is that we are all made up, not just internally, but externally, of every person we have ever cared about, and ever met."


-Mark Bridges, blog post.

We don't fear death, and neither should you.

"But the last thing I want to do tonight is depress you. So I have thought of something we can all do tonight which will be definitely upbeat. I think we can come up with a statement on which all Americans, Republican or Democrat, rich or poor, straight or gay, can agree, despite our country's being so tragically and ferociously divided.

The first universal American sentiment I came up with was "Sugar is sweet."

And there is certainly nothing new about a tragically and ferociously divided United States of America, and especially here in my native state of Indiana. When I was a kid here, this state had within its borders the national headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan, and the site of the last lynching of an African- American citizen north of the Mason-Dixon Line, Marion, I think.

[.....]

I asked Mark a while back what life was all about, since I didn't have a clue. He said, "Dad, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is." Whatever it is.

"Whatever it is." Not bad. That one could be a keeper.

And how should we behave during this Apocalypse? We should be unusually kind to one another, certainly. But we should also stop being so serious. Jokes help a lot. And get a dog, if you don't already have one.

I myself just got a dog, and it's a new crossbreed. It's half French poodle and half Chinese shih tzu.

It's a shit-poo.

And I thank you for your attention, and I'm out of here."

--Kurt Vonnegut from his last speech, written for delivery at Clowes Hall, Indianapolis, April 27, 2007

Everything we did started with love, and ended with lust--

"Right after Cleveland and the ivy we made all the kids memorize poetry again. We hadn't memorized ay growing up--this was the seventies and eighties, and people hadn't taught that for years-- and we really found we missed it. The girls were fine with the idea, and the boys caught on when they realized it would help them get older women into bed. Around that time we banned wearing fur outside of arctic regions, flooded the market with diamonds and gold and silver to the point where non had any value, fixed the ozone hole--I could show you that; we've got it on video--and then we did the thing with the llamas. What are you doing? Sour cream in the salsa? No, no. That's just wrong, sweetie. My god.

So yeah, we put llamas everywhere. That was us. We just liked looking at them, so we bred about six million and spread them around. They weren't there before, honey. No, they weren't. Oh man, there's one now, in the backyard. Isn't it a handsome thing? Now they're as common as squirrels or deer, and you have your mom and pop to thank for that."

-- excerpt from Dave Eggers' short story, "Your Mother and I"

"Whether or not beautiful is good, beauty seems to bring out goodness in others.  In one psychologist's study, seventy-five college men were shown photographs of women, some of whom were very attractive and others less so.  They were asked to select the person they would be most likely do the following for: help her move furniture, loan money, donate blood, donate a kidney, swim one mile to rescue her, save her from a burning building, and even jump on a terrorist hand grenade.  The men were most likely to volunteer for any of these altruistic and risky acts for a beautiful woman.  The only thing they seemed reluctant to do for her was loan her money."

from Survival of the Prettiest by Nancy Etcoff