Saturday, November 30, 2013
The Paradoxical Commandments The Paradoxical Commandments by Dr. Kent M. Keith People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway. The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds. Think big anyway. People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway. Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Here’s what you will be told:
Find a man
Seek protection
The world is scary
Don’t go out
You are weak
Don’t care so much
They’re only animals
Don’t be so intense
Don’t cry so much
You can’t trust anyone
Don’t talk to strangers
People will take advantage of
you
Close your legs
Girls aren’t good with:
Numbers
Facts
Making difficult decisions
Lifting things
Putting things together
International news
Flying planes
Being in charge.
If he rapes you, surrender,
You will get killed trying to
defend yourself
Don’t travel alone
You are nothing without a man
Don’t make the first move,
Wait for him to notice you
Don’t be too loud
Follow the crowd
Obey the laws
Don’t know too much
Tone it down
Find someone rich
It’s how you look that
matters,
Not what you think.
Here’s What I’m Telling You:
Everyone’s making everything
up
There is no one in charge
except for those Who pretend to be
No one is coming
No one is going to Rescue you
Mind-read your needs
Know your body better than you
Always fight back
Ask for it
Say you want it
Cherish your solitude
Take trains by yourself to
places
You have never been
Sleep out under the stars
Learn how to drive a stick
shift
Go so far away that you stop
being afraid of Not coming back
Say no when you don’t want to
do something
Say yes if your instincts are
strong
Even if everyone around you
disagrees
Decide whether you want to be
liked or admired
Decide if fitting in is more
important than finding out What you’re doing here
Believe in kissing
Fight for tenderness
Care as much as you do
Cry as much as you want
Insist the world be theater And love the drama
Take your time
Move as fast as you do
As long as it’s your speed.
Ask yourself these questions:
Why am I whispering when I
have something to say?
Why am I adding a question
mark at the end Of all my sentences?
Why am I apologizing every
time I express my needs?
Why am I hunching over?
Starving myself when I love
food?
Pretending it doesn’t mean
that much to me?
Hurting myself when I mean to
scream?
Why am I waiting
Whining
Pining
Fitting in?
You know the truth:
Sometimes it does hurt that
much
Your mother wanted more than
that
It’s easier to be mean than
smart
But that isn’t who you are.”
Eve Ensler
Friday, July 6, 2012
Ode to a Treehouse
a poem my cousin Hannah wrote
deep in the backyard jungle
Just beyond my mother’s prized tomato plants and raspberry bushes
I brush shoulders past 4, 7, and 11 year old versions of myself
Scaling the rope ladder (carefully), an expert demonstration for those behind me
Wooden walls tinged green by moss and rot
Leafy, sky-high home of séances and first kisses
Billie Holiday is barely audible through the static of your old transistor radio
Echoes haunting a childhood paradise
Past laughter and whisper soft secrets
A thousand tedious afternoons of gin rummy and daisy chains
Sweet cakes and milkshakes
Daydream dalliance, dragonfly’s delight
Our last days as children
Painted on the inside of our skin
We lay on our backs
Stretched out like laundry on the line
Stargazing through the Plexiglas roof
You say
“In 100 years, no one will remember our names but they’ll still be looking at these same stars”
Saturday, April 21, 2012
childhood
I miss
being small and believing the world was
an infinite universe of potential, when
your little
it’s like no matter how terrible things can be you
have
this undeniable imagination that gives you
the ability to believe in
magical things and this
resilient naive optimism that all your dreams will
come
true when your older,
It’s not until you actually grow up that you
begin to realize that life is never as perfect as you
imagined however nor is
it as terrible as you had
feared, rather a compilation of mundane moments that
you cease to find the
importance of until it’s too late and they’re nothing
more than distant memories.
-Alicia
Carey
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Having a coke with you
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world.
-Frank O'Hara
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