Thursday.

Change has a considerable psychological impact on the human mind.

To the fearful, it is threatening because it means that things may get worse.

To the hopeful, it is encouraging because things may....

-King Whitney Jr.

You have your way.

I have my way.

As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way-- it does not exist.

-Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

BFF

BFF, originally uploaded by Ronaldo F Cabuhat.

If you were alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be the purpose in life? It is other life, it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.
-Mitsugi Saotome

The ridiculously perfect website for the musical nomad.



'Why do they treat us like children?' they said.
And I said 'why do you treat them like adults?'
Their eyes opened wide and they began to laugh and talk all at once;
and suddenly, everything looked possible again." -Story People

A person will worship something, have no doubt about that.
We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out.
That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts
will determine our lives, and our character.
Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship,
for what we are worshiping we are becoming.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

and this is what memories are made of...

Some people come into our lives and quickly go.

Some people move our souls to dance.

They awaken us to a new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom.

Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon.

They stay in our lives for awhile,

leave footprints on our hearts,

and we are never, ever the same.

-Flavia Weedn

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.

Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land.

There is no other land, there is no other life but this.

-Henry David Thoreau

you may say that i'm a dreamer...

love never wanted me, but i took it anyway

For there are only two worlds:

your world, which is the real world,

and other worlds, the fantasy.

Worlds like this are worlds of the human imagination:

their reality, or lack of reality, is not important.

What is important is that they are there.

These worlds provide an alternative, provide an escape.

Provide a threat.

Provide a dream, and power, provide refuge and pain.

They give your world meaning.

They do not exist; and thus they are all that matters.

-Neil Gaiman

Even the great Gatsby could not make Daisy stay...

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

He had one of those rare smiles

with a quality of eternal reassurance in it,

that you may come across four or five times in life.

It faced, or seemed to face,

the whole external world for an instant

and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor.

It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood,

believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.

It occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.

A life yet lived

Feathers filled the small room.

Our laughter kept the feathers in the air.

I thought about birds.

Could they fly is there wasn't someone, somewhere, laughing?

-Jonathan Safran Foer

what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams

that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows

and short-winded elations of men

-The Great Gatsby

Home is wherever I'm with you....

Love is a temporary madness.

It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides.

And when it subsides you have to make a decision.

You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together

that it is inconceivable that you should ever part.

Because this is what love is.

Love is not breathlessness,

it is not excitement,

it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion.

That is just being 'in love',

which any of us can convince ourselves we are.

Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away,

and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.

...we had roots that grew towards each other underground,

and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches

we found that we were one tree and not two.

And in the heat of summer sunshine...

Perhaps everything that frightens us is,

in its deepest essence,

something helpless that wants our love.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

And they say there is no fate,

but there is: it's what you create.

Even though the world goes on for eons and eons,

you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second.

Lest We Forget...

Lest We Forget from Whitestone Motion Pictures on Vimeo.

Let the Good Times Roll...

Don't let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.

-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

, originally uploaded by mynameisrowan.

Love is not a word...

, originally uploaded by mynameisrowan.

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint.

When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.

    -Dom Helder Camara

I've never seen a smiling face that was not beautiful...

Tell them dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the Twilight of Summer

Old hippies don't die, they just lie low until the laughter stops and their time comes round again.
-Joseph Gallivan

, originally uploaded by mynameisrowan.

...we condemned them, our children, for seeking a different future.
We hated them for their flowers,
for their love, and for their unmistakeable rejection
of every hideous, mistaken compromise
that we had made throughout our hollow, money-bitten, frightened, adult lives.
-June Jordan

'tis a Sunday afternoon...

    One of the strange things about living in this world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. 
     One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands out and throws one's head far back and looks up and up and and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun-which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.
        One knows it then for a moment or so.
And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with the millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone's eyes.

Passing...

passing, originally uploaded by worth the wait..

We are not made for the mountains, for sunrises, or for the other beautiful attractions in life - those are simply intended to be moments of inspiration.
We are made for the valley and the ordinary things of life and that is where we have to prove our stamina and strength.
-Oswald Chambers

There's a still in the street outside your window...

The Black Keys - Tighten Up - Official Video

Let us toast to animal pleasures,
to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee,
to unemployment insurance and library cards,
to absinthe and good-hearted landlords,
to music and warm bodies and contraceptives...
and to the "good life",
whatever it is and wherever it happens to be.
-Hunter S. Thompson

emergence

emergence, originally uploaded by worth the wait..

A few times in my life,
I've had moments of absolute clarity.
When for a few brief seconds
the silence drowns out the noise
and I can feel rather than think.
And things seem so sharp
and the world seems so fresh.
I can never make these moments last.
I cling to them, but like everything, they fade.
I have lived for these moments.
They pull me back to the present,
and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be.

Of days past...

swimming2, originally uploaded by mydarlingdinosaur.

I want to read every book ever written about love, lust, and lavishness;
I want to feed from the lives of the beautiful

and thrilling and feathers and pearls.

I wish i lived where every word uttered
was a world unto itself
and no one had to apologize for anything

except a blessed, wretched abandon,
trumpets and horns and voices straining to a heaven
like pomogranate juice bleeding on your tongue.

Sunny Road...

Time is lost on me. It always has been.
To me, the most sensible thing about time is that the clock is a perfect circle.
I keep coming back here;

back to this place, but on a different day and with a different set of eyes.
I read an old journal this morning.

Nearly by accident, but not exactly.
It had been lying there in my closet waiting for a home after a recent unpacking.
Before I retired it to the drawer where I retire things, I gave it one last look.
A page from another life.
Same person, different day, different set of eyes, lighter pressure on the pen.
A page full of certainty and also full of questions.
It's always strange to read the things you've hoped for in the past
because by now those hopes may be spoken for or gone,
transformed or altogether forgotten.
Like time, hope can be so senseless.
It can carry us up mountains or lie us in the quicksand.
But like time, hope is unstoppable, inevitable, and blind.
Sometimes we travel fast, hurdling towards the unknown,
sometimes the unknown comes hurdling towards us

while we watch time standing still.
-Andrew McMahon

'Til the Morning Light

over the shoulder, originally uploaded by mydarlingdinosaur.

Begin doing what you want to do, now.
We are not living in eternity.

why are our days numbered and not lettered?

Just so you know,
it's never easy to understand why memories hold our hand
but people let go.

Who says we can't be free?

Havana Nights, originally uploaded by Rowena R.

the only people for me are the mad ones,
the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk,
mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time,
the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing,
but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles
exploding like spiders across the stars
and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop
and everybody goes "Awww!"
-Jack Kerouac