This is one of my favorite things

TO BE FREE

Brave and Startling Truth

We, unaccustomed to courage

exiles from delight

live coiled in shells of loneliness

until love leaves its high holy temple

and comes into our sight

to liberate us into life.

Love arrives

and in its train come ecstasies

old memories of pleasure

ancient histories of pain.

Yet if we are bold,

love strikes away the chains of fear

from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity

In the flush of love's light

we dare be brave

And suddenly we see

that love costs all we are

and will ever be.

Yet it is only love

which sets us free.

A Brave and Startling Truth

We, this people on a small and lonely planet

Traveling through causal space

Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns

To a destination where all signs tell us

It is possible and imperative that we discover

A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it

To the day of peacemaking

When we release our fingers

From fists of hostility

And alow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it

When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate

And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean

When battlefields and coliseum

No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters

Up with the bruised and bloody grass

To lie in identical plots in foreign lands

When the rapacious storming of churches

The screaming racket in the temples have ceased

When the pennants are waving gaily

When the banners of the world tramble

Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it

When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders

And children dress their dolls in flags of truce

When land mines of death have been removed

And the aged may walk into evenings of peace

When religious ritual is not perfumed

By the incense of burning flesh

And childhood dreams are not kicked awake

By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it

Then we will confess that not the Pyramids

With their stones set in mysterious perfection

Not the Garden of Babylon

Hanging as eternal beauty

In our collective memory

Not the Grand Canyon

Kindled in delicious color By Western sunsets

Not the Danube flowing in its blue soul into

Europe

Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji

Stretching to the rising sun

Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi

who, without favor,

Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the

shores

These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it

We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe

Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade, the dagger

Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace

We, this people on this mote of matter

In whose mouths abide cantankerous words

Which challenge our existence

Yet out of those same mouths

Can come songs of such exquisite sweetness

That the heart falters in its labor

And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet

Whose hands can strike with such abandon

That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living

Yet those same hands can touch with such healing,

irresistible tenderness

That the haughty neck is happy to bow

And the proud back is glad to bend

Out of such chaos, of such contradiction

We learn that we are neither devils or divines

When we come to it

We, this people, on this wayward, floating body

Created on this earth, of this earth

Have the power to fashion for this earth

A climate where every man and every woman

Can live freely without sanctimonious piety

And without crippling fear

When we come to it

We must confess that we are the possible

We are the miraculous, the true wonders of this

world

That is when, and only whenWe come to it.

Equality

You declare you see me dimly

through a glass which will not shine,

though I stand before you boldly,

trim in rank and marking time.

You do own to hear me faintly

as a whisper out of range,

while my drums beat out the message

and the rhythms never change.

Equality, and I will be free.

Equality, and

I will be free.

You announce my ways are wanton,

that I fly from man to man,

but if I'm just a shadow to you,

could you ever understand ?

We have lived a painful history,

we know the shameful past,but

I keep on marching forward,

and you keep on coming last.

Equality, and I will be free.

Equality, and I will be free.

Take the blinders from your vision,

take the padding from your ears,

and confess you've heard me crying,

and admit you've seen my tears.

Hear the tempo so compelling,

hear the blood throb in my veins.

Yes, my drums are beating nightly,

and the rhythms never change.

Equality, and I will be free.

Equality, and I will be free.

Maya Angelou

for the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations

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The happy litle tired swing

Unidentified artist

This is one of my favorite things

POESIA SENSUAL

PISCINA

Após a vontade
procuro a razão

o vidro das coisas
o ventre do ar

o negar da sede
e da seducao
respirar de um corpo
que doi a tocar

Piscina profunda
onde nada o vento

vagina secreta
com seus corredores

Perdi-me do tempo
perdi-me do tempo

fechada em meu
fruto
com hálito dentro

MARIA TERESA HORTA

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DAFFODILS

Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company.
I gazed-and gazed-but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought;

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth

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MALOU

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CURIOSITY

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.

Albert Einstein

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Unidentified artist

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AUSENCIA DE COR

PASSAGEM

Vestiu o negro...

E na ausência de cor

enterrou o passado.

Em ousado passo - reto ,

escorregou num descompasso da Senda,

esbarrou na mística legenda ,

e só ,

para uma alegórica acácia,

teve a audácia de dizer um sim

secreto.

Vestiu o negro ...

E na pureza de um quadro ,

só moldura ,

criou sua obra - psíquica escultura,

e entre as sólidas colunas,

de sustentação do Ser ,

abriu os braços no escuro,

abalou o humano templod'antes obscuro.

Vestiu o negro ...

E na presença de Luzes

viu-se iniciado !

E acabado o ato , cede ao carma,

desarma o espírito silente

e sente extase secreto

na onipresença do Arquiteto.

Antônio Carlos Tórtoro

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Unidentified artist

This is one of my favorite things

PUTTING THING IN PERSPECTIVE

We do not inherit the Earth from our forefathers,

we borrow it from our children

Chinese proverb

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Mount Kilimanjaro

This is one of my favorite things

CADA MOMENTO

UM FIM E UM COMECO

MORRO DO QUE HÁ NO MUNDO

Morro do que há no mundo:

do que vi, do que ouvi.

Morro do que vivi.

Morro comigo, apenas:

com lembranças amadas,

porém desesperadas.

Morro cheia de assombro

por não sentir em mim

nem princípio nem fim.

Morro: e a circunferência

fica, em redor, fechada.

Dentro sou tudo e nada

Cecília Meireles

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Unidentified artist

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THE GOLDEN RULE

And if thine eyes be turned towards justice, choose thou for thy neighbour that which thou choosest for thyself.

Baha'u'llah

Bahá'í Faith

Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you".

Mahabharata

Brahmanism

Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

Matthew 7:12

Christianity

Try your best to treat others as you would wish to be treated yourself, and you will find that this is the shortest way to benevolence."

Mencius

Confucianism

One should not behave towards others in a way which is disagreeable to oneself.

Hinduism

One should not behave towards others in a way which is disagreeable to oneself.

Ancient Egyptian

"Don't do things you wouldn't want to have done to you"

Humanists affirm that individual and social problems can only be resolved by means of human reason, intelligent effort, critical thinking joined with compassion and a spirit of empathy for all living beings.

Humanism

None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.

Imam "Al-Nawawi's Forty Hadiths.

Jainism

Therefore, neither does he [a sage] cause violence to others nor does he make others do so.

Acarangasutra

Islam

...thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

Leviticus 19:18

What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary.

Talmud, Shabbat

Judaism

Respect for all life is the foundation." The Great Law of Peace. "All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One.

Black Elk

NativeAmerican Spirituality

The basis of Sufism is consideration of the hearts and feelings of others. If you haven't the will to gladden someone's heart, then at least beware lest you hurt someone's heart, for on our path, no sin exists but this. Javad Nurbakhsh

Sufism

"...a state that is not pleasing or delightful to me, how could I inflict that upon another?"

Samyutta NIkaya v.

Buddhism

Regard your neighbor's gain as your own gain, and your neighbor's loss as your own loss.

Tao Teh Ching

Taoism

The heart of the person before you is a mirror. See there your own form" "Be charitable to all beings, love is the representative of God.

Ko-ji-ki Hachiman Kasuga

Shinto

One going to take a pointed stick to pinch a baby bird should first try it on himself to feel how it hurts. Yoruba: (Nigeria)

That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself

Dadistan-i-dinik

Zoroastrianism

We affirm and promote respect for the interdependent of all existence of which we are a part.

Unitarian

An it harm no one, do what thou wilt

Wicca

Two thousand years ago Jesus of Nazareth stated this law this way:
“Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.“

IMAGE

Figurines

Antony Gormley's

Photo manipulation

M

This is one of my favorite things

RESPEITO

Até quando aceitaremos situações e pessoas serem julgadas em termos de religião e poder económico?Carácter e atitudes devem ser as medidas que nos motivam e regulam, por deplorável que anti-semitismo seja o povo judeus não tem a exclusividade de discriminação, racismo e atrocidades. Hoje e aqui como por este mundo passado e presente, somos espectadores manipulados de situações análogas com consequências desastrosas, mas quem se queda para as analisar e resolver?

A hipocrisia é o maior cancro das boas intenções. É tempo de mudança.

Malou

Não existe outra via para a solidariedade humana senão a procura e o respeito da dignidade individual
Pierre Nouy

É preferível cultivar o respeito do bem que o respeito pela lei
Henry Thoreau

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Justin Simoni

This is one of my favourite things

SHAPING THE EARTH

The Mad Potter

Now at the turn of the year this coil of clay
Bites its own tail: a New Year starts to choke
On the old one's ragged end. I bite my tongue
As the end of me--of my rope of stuff and nonsense
(The nonsense held, it was the stuff that broke),
Of bones and light, of levity and crime,
Of reddish clay and hope--still bides its time.

Each of my pots is quite unusable,
Even for contemplating as an object
Of gross unuse. In its own mode of being
Useless, though, each of them remains unique,
Subject to nothing, and themselves unseeing,
Stronger by virtue of what makes them weak.

I pound at all my clay. I pound the air.
This senseless lump, slapped into something like
Something, sits bound around by my despair.
For even as the great Creator's free
Hand shapes the forms of life, so--what? This pot,
Unhollowed solid, too full of itself,
Runneth over with incapacity.
I put it with the others on the shelf.

These tiny cups will each provide one sip
Of what's inside them, aphoristic prose
Unwilling, like full arguments, to make
Its points, then join them in extended lines
Like long draughts from the bowl of a deep lake.
The honey of knowledge, like my milky slip,
Firms slowly up against what merely flows.

Some of my older pieces bore inscriptions
That told a story only when you'd learned
How not to read them: LIVE reverted to EVIL,
EROS kept running backwards into SORE.
Their words, all fired up for truth, got burned.
I'll not write on weak vessels any more.

My juvenalia? I gave them names
In those days: Hans was all handles and no spout;
Bernie believed the whole world turned about
Himself alone; Sadie was close to James
(But Herman touched her bottom when he could);
Paul fell to pieces; Peter wore away
To nothing; Len was never any good;
Alf was a flat, random pancake, May
An opened blossom; Bud was an ash-tray.
Even their names break off, though; Whatsisface,
That death-mask of Desire, and--you know!--
The smaller version of that (Oh, what was it?--
You know . . .) All of my pots now have to go
By number only. Which is no disgrace.

Begin with being--in an anagram
Of unending--conclude in some dark den;
This is no matter. What I've been, I am:
What I will be is what I make of all
This clay, this moment. Now begin again . . .
Poured out of emptiness, drop by slow drop,
I start up at the quarreling sounds of water.
Pots cry out silently at me to stop.

What are we like? A barrelfull of this
Oozy wet substance, shadow-crammed, whose smudges
Of darkness lurk within but rise to kiss
The fingers that disturb the gently edges
Of their bland world of shapelessness and bliss.

The half-formed cup cries out in agony,
The lump of clay suffers a silent pain.
I heard the cup, though, full of feeling, say
"O clay be true, O clay keep constant to
Your need to take, again and once again,
This pounding from your mad creator who
Only stops hurting when he's hurting you."

What will I then have left behind me? Over
The years I have originated some
Glazes that wear away at what they cover
And weep for what they never can become.
My Deadware, widely imitated; blue
Skyware of an amazing lightness; tired
Hopewear that I abandoned for my own
Good reasons; Hereware; Thereware; ware that grew
Weary of everything that earth desired;
Hellware that dances while it's being fired,
Noware that vanishes while being thrown.

Appearing to be silly, wisdom survives
Like tribes of superseded gods who go
Hiding in caves of triviality
From which they laughingly control our lives.
So with my useless pots: safe from the blow
Of carelessness, or outrage at their flaws,
They brave time's lion and his smashing paws.
--All of which tempts intelligence to call
Pure uselessness one more commodity.
The Good-for-Nothing once became our Hero,
But images of him, laid-back, carelessly
Laughing, were upright statues after all.
From straight above, each cup adds up to zero.

Clay to clay: Soon I shall indeed become
Dumb as these solid cups of hardened mud
(Dull terra cruda colored like our blood);
Meanwhile the slap and thump of palm and thumb
On wet mis-shapenness begins to hum
With meaning that was silent for so long.
The words of my wheel's turning come to ring
Truer than Truth itself does, my great
Ding Dong-an-sich that echoes everything
(Against it even lovely bells ring wrong):
Its whole voice gathers up the purest parts
Of all our speech, the vowels of the earth,
The aspirations of our hopeful hearts

John Hollander

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Roxanne Swentzell

This is one of my favorite things

GRATIDAO

Por hoje,ontem e amanha

O ponto mais alto da moral consiste na gratidão. E esta verdade proclamá-la-ão todas as cidades, todos os povos, mesmo os oriundos das regiões bárbaras, neste ponto estão de acordo os bons e os maus. Haverá quem aprecie sobretudo o prazer, outros haverá que julguem preferível o esforço activo; uns consideram a dor como o sumo mal, para outros a dor não será sequer um mal; alguns incluirão a riqueza no sumo bem, outros dirão que a riqueza foi inventada para o mal da humanidade e que o homem mais rico é aquele a quem a fortuna nada encontra para dar; no meio desta diversidade de posições uma coisa há que todos afirmarão, como soe dizer-se, a uma só voz: que devemos gratidão àqueles que nos favorecem. Neste ponto toda esta multidão de opiniões se mostra de acordo, mesmo quando por vezes pagamos favores com injúrias; e a primeira causa de ingratidão é não podermos ser suficientemente gratos. A insensatez chegou ao ponto de se tornar perigosíssimo fazer um grande benefício a alguém; como se considera uma vergonha não pagar o benefício, julga-se preferível não existir ninguém que no-lo faça! Goza em paz o que de mim recebeste; não to reclamo, não to exijo. Basta-me saber que te fui útil. Não há ódio mais violento do que o proveniente de um benefício não honrado!

Séneca

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Unidentified artist