“Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
“I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone, “so I can’t take more.”
“You mean you can’t take less,” said the Hatter: “it’s very easy to take more than nothing.”
“Nobody asked your opinion,” said Alice.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Might we not say to the confused voices which sometimes arise from the depths of our being: “Ladies, be so kind as to speak only four at a time?” ~Madame Swetchine
“I asked him if it were a mirage, and he said yes. I said it was a dream, and he agreed, But said it was the desert’s dream not his. And he told me that in a year or so, when he had aged enough for any man, then he would walk into the wind, until he saw the tents. This time, he said, he would go on with them.”
― Neil Gaiman, Smoke and Mirrors
It is midsummer moon with you.
Only the sound remains, the distant thump of the good elephants, the voice of the ancient lions and how the bells trembled for the flying man.
[Anne Sexton (1928-1974), U.S. poet. “The Bells.”]
“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring–it was peace.” – Milan Kundera
Death, I need my little addiction to you. I need that tiny voice who, even as I rise from the sea, all woman, all there, says kill me, kill me.
[Anne Sexton (1928-1974), U.S
“A man must sometimes laugh at himself or go mad–Few realize it. That is why there are so many madmen in the world.”
― Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood
Will you fight bitter duels for me, my love?
And will we together sail your famous yacht?
Will you always be patient of my folly,
Or just hop over me like a masse shot?
“Kill you all!” The clown was laughing and screaming. “Try to stop me and I’ll kill you all! Drive you crazy and then kill you all! You can’t stop me!”
― Stephen King, It
MERRY GO ROUND
JAMES MCCAULEY
They say the heat and the flies here can drive a man insane. But you don’t have to believe that, and nor does that bright mauve elephant that just cycled past.
PRATCHETT
* It is wrong to judge by appearances. Despite his expression, which was that of a piglet having a bright idea, and his mode of speech, which might put you in mind of a small, breathless, neurotic but ridiculously expensive dog, Mr Horsefry might well have been a kind, generous and pious man. In the same way, the man climbing out of your window in a stripy jumper, a mask and a great hurry might merely be lost on the way to a fancy-dress party, and the man in the wig and robes at the focus of the courtroom might only be a transvestite who wandered in out of the rain. Snap judgements can be so unfair.”
― Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
Maybe some women aren’t meant to be tamed. Maybe they just need to run free until they find someone just as wild to run with them.
-Carrie Bradshaw”
― Candace Bushnell
Ron White: I got thrown out of a bar in New York City. Now, when I say I got thrown out of a bar, I don’t mean someone asked me to leave, and we walked to the door together, and I said, “Bye everyone, I gotta go!” Six bouncers picked me up and hurled me out of that bar like I was a Frisbee. Those big old New York bouncers that think that bouncing is cool. They hang out with other bouncers, talking about bouncing. They go home at night and watch ‘Road House’ and fondle themselves. For wearing a hat. I walk into a bar and the bouncer comes over to me, real pissy, and goes, “Take off the hat!” I’m like, “What’s the deal?” He goes, “I’ll tell you what the deal is. Gay people in this area wear hats; we’re tryin’ to keep them out of our club!” Oh really? The only way we can tell down in Texas is if they have their hair cut like, yours. And he got all pissed. Anyway, I took off the hat, and he walked away. About an hour later, I was drinking and I forgot. Ever forget? It happened to me. I put the hat on, and he comes back over. Now, I’m between six-one and six-six depending on which convenience store I’m leaving. I weigh two hundred and thirty pounds, and this guy comes over, poking me in the shoulder. He says, “You’re outta here!” and I said, “I don’t think so, Scooter!” And I was wrong. They hurled me out of that bar. And then they squared off with me in the parking lot, and I backed down from the fight, cause I don’t know how many of them it would have taken to whip my ass, but I knew how many they were going to use. That’s a handy little piece of information, right there. Well, they called the police because we broke a chair on the way out the door, and I refused to pay for it. I refused to pay for it cause *we* broke it over *my* thigh. The cops showed up, and at that point, I had the right to remain silent, but I didn’t have the ability. The cop was like, “Mr. White, you are being charged with drunk in public-KA!” I was like, “Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey! I was drunk in a bar! They, threw me into public-KA! I don’t want to be drunk in public-KA! I wanna be drunk in a bar, which is perfectly legal! Arrest them!” Well, he didn’t arrest them, instead he made me do a field sobriety test, where you stand on one foot, raise the other foot six inches off the ground, and count to thirty. I made it to “woo!” Is that going to be close enough? It wasn’t, so they called in for my arrest record. There’s some good news! Satellites are linking up in outer space. Computer banks at NASA are kicking on.
FROM BLUE COLLAR
The Gundagai Times and Tumut, Adelong and Murrumbidgee District Advertiser (NSW : 1868 – 1931), Friday 21 September 1917
white stucco dreaming
and snakes that morphed into nylon hoses at the terror
of Mum’s scorn
snakes whose cool venom we sprayed onto the white stucco,
temporarily blushing it pink
amid an atmosphere of Saturday morning grass cuttings
and flirtatious melodies of ice-cream trucks
that echoed through little black minds
and sent the labrador insane
White stucco dreaming by Samuel Wagan Watson
DRANSFIELD
last week, I think on Tuesday,
she died
just gave up breathing
toppled over
a big smashed doll
with the needle still in her arm
I made a funeral of leaves
and sang the Book of Questions
to her face as white as hailstones
to her eyes as closed as heaven
‘For Ann so still and dreamy’
http://printedshadows.wordpress.com/category/australian-poetry/michael-dransfield-collected-poems/
“What was so painful about Amy’s death is that I know that there is something I could have done. I could have passed on to her the solution that was freely given to me. Don’t pick up a drink or drug, one day at a time. It sounds so simple; it actually is simple but it isn’t easy; it requires incredible support and fastidious structuring.”
― Russell Brand
You had control of my body now, and if I didn’t choose you,
you made me feel so sick to where I was helpless not knowing what to do.
By now I started doing the things I swore I would never do,
lying and stealing off the people who didn’t mean a thing to you.
You had me convinced that throughout my life you were determined to stay, that I did not have that option of turning and walking away.
Source: Addicted To Heroin Poem, Dear Heroin http://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/dear-heroin-addicted-to-heroin#ixzz2syT8xCKQ
Family Friend Poems
Warrior’s Journey
Father dies
mother leaves
sisters taken away.
Helpless, defenceless.
No hand to cling to,
Welfare Property
Ward number 77318
another number, another mouth,
another body, another untouched soul,
another heart to be healed,
another shadow in the dark of night.
She is two years old.
From one dwelling to another she is sent.
Disconnected, her child’s heart broken, the need for love
Unquenched.
A vacuum for her confidence and sense of self;
anxiety and anger her constant companions
she struggles to belong, she doesn’t belong.
Hands shake, body trembles,
cries unheard, muffled under bed covers.
She is ten years old.She thinks of death to escape the anguish.
She believes she has no right to take up space,
to breathe air.
She believes there will be rejoicing at her passing,
a problem solved.
She releases the genie in the bottle,
life goes on about her,
she closes her eyes and waits.
She is marked. She is spared.
Like the first born of the Israelites, the Angel of Death passes her by.
She is twelve years old.Tormented by anger, a prisoner of rage.
Her cries for justice, she fights to be heard.
They say, ‘she’s a psychiatric case’
and needs to be medicated.
Silence her voice, dull her mind, and inhibit her strong emotions.
She must endure the rash, the itch, the weight gain, the hand tremors, and the sluggish thoughts.
Now they say ‘she’s boring with no powers of conversation’.
In school she sits, eyes heavy; she drops her head – just for a moment.
She sleeps her days away.
She is fourteen years oldShe hears the call of the warrior soul.
She resists sedation; the murder of her spirit.
Pills hurtle across the fence, a cry goes out
‘I won’t do what you want any more!’
Strong male hands force her down, inject her into submission.
They say ‘it’s for her own good and for the good of others’.
She is ‘disturbed’, ‘mad’, emotionally retarded’.
She is fifteen years old.She is released, pushed out into a world of strangers.
They don’t understand or care about her sorrow.
She must find work, forge relationships, and build a life. There is no help, there is no social net to catch her, and there is no family to
give her connection.
She must find her own way.
She is lost, jobs are transient, and relationships unravel.
Booze is her solace, drugs her respite, madness her rescuer.
The streets her home.
She is seventeen years old.She is a mother;
frightened, solitary,
how can she care for the infant in her arms?
She needs help, she reaches out,
her children are removed.
She can’t be trusted, she can’t trust herself.
It’s for her own good ‘in the best interest of the children’.
She seeks the comfort of death,
but death rejects her plea.
The ‘Warrior Soul’ calls her to life.
She yearns to be a mother, she craves to do it right,
Her children are ‘restored’,
She is twenty-four years old.A single mother, living in poverty.
She hears the call of her warrior soul
She needs to dream, she needs to believe,
She needs to hope.
However, she is mad.
Her mind has betrayed her,
what can she anticipate?
The pills, the booze, the violence.
How can she break the will to self-annihilate?
She is determined.
She must find a way.
She is twenty-seven years old.
She treads the road of trials,
She cries out ‘there is no God!’
Lost within her madness,
admitted to the Clinic.
‘What is wrong with me?’ she pleads.
She is thirty-three years old.The warrior soul is stronger
than the darkness, that binds her.
She heeds its call.
Is there a God? She prays to believe.
She dares for more than mere survival,
she crawls out from within the sewage of her life.
She is thirty-six years old.Her untaught soul greets the morning.
She discovers she is far more than all her experiences.
More than her illness.
She knows now, in each one of us
there is a gold of great worth.
There is a warrior soul of strength and courage.
Compelled to transform her suffering.
she studies, she learns, she grows,
finds enduring love, personal value.
She connects.
Passes on her hope,
helps others finds their way.
Sometimes death still whispers her name,
however, she grips the hand of the warrior within,
she has learnt to trust.
She has found power and strength within,
She is forty-five years old.
copyright Margaret Spivey 2003
http://www.nsrider.com/quotes/life.htm
Have you heard of the illness hysteria siberiana? Try to imagine this: You’re a farmer, living all alone on the Siberian tundra. Day after day you plow your fields. As far as the eye can see, nothing. To the north, the horizon, to the east, the horizon, to the south, to the west, more of the same. Every morning, when the sun rises in the east, you go out to work in your fields. When it’s directly overhead, you take a break for lunch. When it sinks in the west, you go home to sleep. And then one day, something inside you dies. Day after day you watch the sun rise in the east, pass across the sky, then sink in the west, and something breaks inside you and dies. You toss your plow aside and, your head completely empty of thought, begin walking toward the west. Heading toward a land that lies west of the sun. Like someone, possessed, you walk on, day after day, not eating or drinking, until you collapse on the ground and die. That’s hysteria siberiana.”
http://12stepsource.com/Pages/NA_Quotes.aspx?pid=0
Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.
Nigerian
There are forty kinds of lunacy, but only one kind of common sense.
(Bantu
This means that long-continued success ends at length in failure; and that long-continued impunity ends at length in punishment. However many times an action is performed, it will be done once too often; and however many times a swindler, trickster or thief succeeds, he will finally get caught out.
http://english.al/proverb/the-pitcher-goes-so-often-to-the-well-that-it-is-broken-at-last/
little pitchers have big ears
– small children often hear things that you think they won’t notice or things that they are not supposed to hear
Little pitchers have big ears and we were surprised that the little boy understood everything that we had said.
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~irelandlist/poems.html
“I met you at the cornerstone on the highway to bedlam./Walked with you to the pinnacle, along that ledge to hell,/Travelled along the passageway of all things aching,/But would crawl with you if you wanted me to/On the steeple point to hope./So we can tip the stars and hold the moon,/Graze the sun, but make it soon.”
― Melina Marchetta, The Piper’s Son
– Latin
“The distinction between sanity and insanity is narrower than a razor’s edge, sharper than a hound’s tooth, more agile than a mule deer. It is more elusive than the merest phantom. Perhaps it does not even exist; perhaps it is a phantom. ”
― Philip K. Dick, VALIS
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Dog buy rum, cow drink am, hog in sty get drunk.
A matter may not concern someone, yet he or she gets involved.
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History. Mystery. Research-in-Progress.
Learning to stumble through life without the comfort of booze.
A sweary alcohol recovery blog written by a Yorkshireman
Adventures in Addiction Recovery & Cancer Survival
A woman's quest for one year of sobriety
A mom, wife and professional's journey on recovering from addiction
ACoA Recovery Issues (adult-children of alcoholics & other narcissists)
WHERE TO START WHEN YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START
biographical, non-fiction
Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings in Mountain City, Tennessee
Emotional musings
Expedition website
ever seeking a right-fit life
Simple Thoughts on Life
Shortness of Breadth
Because we’re all recovering from something.
Climbing, Outdoors, Life!
History. Mystery. Research-in-Progress.
Learning to stumble through life without the comfort of booze.
A sweary alcohol recovery blog written by a Yorkshireman
Adventures in Addiction Recovery & Cancer Survival
A woman's quest for one year of sobriety
A mom, wife and professional's journey on recovering from addiction
ACoA Recovery Issues (adult-children of alcoholics & other narcissists)
WHERE TO START WHEN YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START
biographical, non-fiction
Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings in Mountain City, Tennessee
Emotional musings
Expedition website
ever seeking a right-fit life
Simple Thoughts on Life
Shortness of Breadth
Because we’re all recovering from something.
Climbing, Outdoors, Life!
THE OLD PROVERBIAL RECOVERY 