The Summer Day

A friend sent me this poem and I fell in love with it. I think it's extraordinary.

The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Love Letters of Great Men, Vol. 1

So I was watching SATC and absolutely loved some of the phrases read out by Carrie...Love Letters of Great Men, Vol. 1. Copied below for absolute reading pleasure, or use in general life.

Napolean to Josephine

I wake filled with thoughts of you. Your portrait and the intoxicating evening which we spent yesterday have left my senses in turmoil. Sweet incomparable Josephine, what a strange effect you have on my heart! Are you angry? Do I see you looking sad? Are you worried? ... My soul aches with sorrow, and there can be no rest for your lover; but is there still more in store for me when, yielding to the profound feelings which overwhelm me, I draw from your lips, from your heart a love which consumes me with fire? Ah! it was last night that I fully realized how false an image of you your portrait gives!You are leaving at noon; I shall see you in three hours. Until then, mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses; but give me none in return, for they set my blood on fire.

Ludwig Van Beethovan

Even in bed my ideas yearn towards you, my Immortal Beloved, here and there joyfully, then again sadly, awaiting from Fate, whether it will listen to us. I can only live, either altogether with you or not at all. Yes, I have determined to wander about for so long far away, until I can fly into your arms and call myself quite at home with you, can send my soul enveloped by yours into the realm of spirits – yes, I regret, it must be. You will get over it all the more as you know my faithfulness to you; never another one can own my heart, never – never! O God, why must one go away from what one loves so, and yet my life in W. as it is now is a miserable life. Your love made me the happiest and unhappiest at the same time. At my actual age I should need some continuity, sameness of life – can that exist under our circumstances? Angel, I just hear that the post goes out every day – and must close therefore, so that you get the L. at once. Be calm – love me – to-day – yesterday.

What longing in tears for you – You – my Life – my All – farewell. Oh, go on loving me – never doubt the faithfullest heart of your beloved.
L
Ever thine.
Ever mine.
Ever ours.

Lord Byron to Lady Caroline Lamb

‘Byronic’ has become shorthand for a particular type of romantic hero – pale, dark-haired, hollowcheeked, cruel, reckless, irresistible to many women and therefore a source of deep irritation to the better behaved and more reliable sort of man so often and so inexplicably overlooked. Byron’s behaviour, and his poetry, scandalized large parts of Europe to the extent that in 1924, a hundred years after his death, a petition for a memorial to him in Westminster Abbey was refused by the dean, whose opinion it was that ‘Byron, partly by his openly dissolute life and partly by the influence of his licentious verse, earned a world-wide reputation for immorality among English-speaking people’.Of the many entanglements of Byron’s life, one of the most notorious was with the married Lady Caroline Lamb; in July 1813, it was rumoured that following a quarrel with him at a party, she tried to stab herself first with a knife, then with a broken glass. Eventually, she withdrew to Ireland, and the letter that follows was written to her there.

My dearest Caroline,
If the tears, which you saw, and I know I am not apt to shed; if the agitation in which I parted from you – agitation which you must have perceived through the whole of this nervous affair, did not commence till the moment of leaving you approached; if all I have said and done, and am still but too ready to say and do, have not sufficiently proved what my feelings are, and must ever be, towards you, my love, I have no other proof to offer. God knows I never knew till this moment the madness of my dear dearest and most beloved friend. I cannot express myself, this is no time for words – but I shall have a pride, a melancholy pleasure, in suffering what you yourself can scarcely conceive, for you do not know me.
I am about to go out with a heavy heart, for my appearing this evening will stop any absurd story to which the events of the day might give rise. Do you think now I am cold and stern and wilful? Will ever others think so? Will your mother ever? The mother to whom we must indeed sacrifice much more, much more on my part than she shall ever know, or can imagine.‘Promise not to love you’? Ah, Caroline, it is past promising! But I shall attribute all concessions to the proper motive, and never cease to feel all that you have already witnessed, and more than ever can be known, but to my own heart – perhaps, to yours. May God forgive, protect and bless you ever and ever, more than ever. –Your most attached.
Byron
P.S. –These taunts have driven you to this, my dearest Caroline, and were it not for your mother, and the kindness of your connexions, is there anything in heaven or earth that would have made me so happy as to have made you mine long ago? And not less now than then, but more than ever at this time God knows I wish you happy, and when I quit you, or rather you, from a sense of duty to your husband and mother, quit me, you shall acknowledge the truth of what I again promise and vow, that no other, in word nor deed, shall ever hold the place in my affections which is and shall be sacred to you till I am nothing. You know I would with pleasure give up all here or beyond the grave for you, and in refraining from this must my motives be misunderstood? I care not who knows this, what use is made of it – it is to you and to you only, yourself. I was, and am yours, freely and entirely, to obey, to honour, love and fly with you, when, where, and how, yourself might and may determine.

Adopting Babies and puppies

I have changed my mind...I always thought I wanted to get pregnant and go through the cycle of giving birth...but I know I cannot. So I am serious about adopting children.

I was just looking at some celebrities who have adopted and I found some encouraging ones -
"My life is definitely richer," says Sheryl Crow of having adopted son Wyatt "and he's the first thing I think of in the morning, and the first thing I think of before I go to sleep."
What makes the Aussie actor Hugh Jackman happiest is "being with my family, definitely, without a doubt..".Family for Jackman is wife of 15 years Deborra-Lee Furness and their two adopted children Oscar, 9, and Ava, 4. The hands-on dad says adopting is "phenomenal, and there are so many kids in need. It's the greatest thing that's ever happened to us."
"Wanting a big family is one of things that brought us together," says Angelina Jolie, whose adopted children hail from Cambodia, Vietnam and Ethiopia. Adds partner Pitt, "Always said if I were to do it, I'd do it big."
"I never felt like I was on a rescue mission or anything like that," Meg Ryan says. "I was on a mission to connect with somebody."
"Motherhood was not an urge I couldn't resist," Diane Keaton has said, "it was more like a thought I'd been thinking for a very long time." In 1996 at age 50, the actress adopted daughter Dexter, and son, Duke. The famously press-shy star says, "I do feel now that the love of my children is all-encompassing."
Through all her ups and downs, Kristy Alley's counted on two very important people: son William True, 17, and daughter Lillie Price, 15, "They are very protective of me."
In 1968, when Barbara Walters brought home a 4-day-old baby girl, she told no one. "I didn't really want people to know because there was a whole question of the biological mother," Walters told Larry King in 2001. "When you have an adopted child, people can't understand that it's yours. ... I've said [she's] born in my heart. Maybe not in my uterus, but in my heart," Walters said. "And so, I can't think of not having Jackie."
When... saw then 7-year-old Nathen at an L.A. adoption fair in 2008, he knew he'd found his son. "He has a spark. He was balancing himself on a curb, and I was like, 'That's my kid,'" "Most people want infants, but I fell in love with Nathen."


As I was browsing, I came across this site where apparantly Sandra Bullock has two handicapped dogs - one three legged one and another two legged one.

"Where I go, they go.Who's going to walk a two-legged dog?"
"If it has four legs and is perfectly okay, it's got to have some emotional problems!"
- I have learnt this about people, the most seemingly-perfect people have some serious problems somewhere or the other.
By virtue of not having her front legs, Ruby enjoys being carried. "She was born with, like, a little flipper here, and a little flipper here. She's like a little dinosaur, a velociraptor."

It's a wonderful thing, as time goes by, to be with someone who looks into your face, when you've gotten old, and still sees what you think you look like.

How to tick people off...HAHA

HOW TO TICK PEOPLE OFF

1. Leave the copy machine set to reduce 200%, extra dark, 17 inch paper, 99 copies.
2. In the memo field of all your checks, write "for sexual favors."
3. Specify that your drive-through order is "TO-GO."
4. If you have a glass eye, tap on it occasionally with your pen while talking to others.
5. Stomp on little plastic ketchup packets.
6. Insist on keeping your car windshield wipers running in all weather conditions "to keep them tuned up."
7. Reply to everything someone says with "that's what you think."
8. Practice making fax and modem noises.
9. Highlight irrelevant information in scientific papers and "cc" them to your boss.
10. Make beeping noises when a large person backs up.
11. Finish all your sentences with the words "in accordance with prophesy."
12. Signal that a conversation is over by clamping your hands over your ears and grimacing.
13. Disassemble your pen and "accidentally" flip the ink cartridge across the room.
14. Holler random numbers while someone is counting.
15. Adjust the tint on your TV so that all the people are green, and insist to others that you "like it that way."
16. Staple pages in the middle of the page.
17. Publicly investigate just how slowly you can make a croaking noise.
18. Honk and wave to strangers.
19. Decline to be seated at a restaurant, and simply eat their complimentary mints at the cash register.
20. TYPE IN UPPERCASE.
21. type only in lowercase.
22. dont use any punctuation either
23. Buy a large quantity of orange traffic cones and reroute whole streets.
24. Repeat the following conversation a dozen times.
    "DO YOU HEAR THAT?"
    "What?"
    "Never mind, it's gone now."
25. As much as possible, skip rather than walk.
26. Try playing the William Tell Overture by tapping on the bottom of your chin. When nearly done, announce "No, wait, I messed it up," and repeat.
27. Ask people what gender they are.
28. While making presentations, occasionally bob your head like a parakeet.
29. Sit in your front yard pointing a hair dryer at passing cars to see if they slow down.
30. Sing along at the opera.
31. Go to a poetry recital and ask why each poem doesn't rhyme.
32. Ask your co-workers mysterious questions and then scribble their answers in a notebook. Mutter something about "psychological profiles."