Husband and wife in perfect accord are the music of the harp and lute. (Chinese)

It’s hard to keep from trying to control the lives of others, especially in a family. We can learn from the man whose friend drove twenty miles to and from work on the freeway every day. “How can you do it?” he asked. “I’ve tried, and I can’t go a mile in such traffic without screaming at the crazy drivers who cut in, go too slow, change lanes. Nobody listens. I’d lose my mind if I had to do it your way.” His friend replied, “Your trouble is trying to drive every car around you. I relax and drive only one car–my own.”

A man knows his companions in a long journey and a small inn.

“An acquaintance merely enjoys your company, a fair-weather companion flatters when all is well, a true friend has your best interests at heart and the pluck to tell you what you need to hear.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

“I know what I’m capable of; I am a soldier now, a warrior. I am someone to fear, not hunt.” ― Pittacus Lore, The Rise of Nine

I’m afraid of a kiss

Like the kiss of a bee.

I suffer like this

And wake endlessly.

I’m afraid of a kiss!

http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/French/SelectedFrenchPoemsoftheNineteenthCentury.htm

To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it. Charlie Chaplin

in the cave she rolls the big rock for table, for the desert wildflowers they pick each another
she carries many coolamons filled with river sand to soften the hard rock floor

she makes shelf from braided saplings to hold all the feathers given by the message birds
when he sleeps she polishes his weapons with goanna and emu fat till they glisten in fire light

he tells the story of the notches on his spear, the story of the maps on his woomera
their eyes fill with spot fires lit on his return

the other women laugh “get over yourself” they laugh “he’s not that good”
she smiles she knows him in the night

YANKUNYTJATJARA LOVE POEM

FOTO – BURA AT THE BEACHSHACK MARCH 2015

A secret is a kind of promise…. It can also be a prison. JENNIFER LEE CARRELL, Interred With Their Bones

And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.”

Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Some other Hand than mine was on that helm during the night.

Captain Arthur Rostron, reflecting on his safe passage among the icebergs to the lifeboats.

“She loved the guy. She did it for him. She would’ve done anything for him. Some people are like that. Some loves are like that. Most loves are like that, from what I can see. Your heart starts to feel like an overcrowded lifeboat. You throw your pride out to keep it afloat, and your self-respect and your independence. After a while you start throwing people out—your friends, everyone you used to know. And it’s still not enough. The lifeboat is still sinking, and you know it’s going to take you down with it. I’ve seen that happen to a lot of people here. I think that’s why I’m sick of love.”

― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

Never marry a woman with bigger feet than your own

http://www.sayingsfromafrica.info/2012/12/some-great-inspiring-african-proverbs.html

Chains do not hold a marriage together.  It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years. 

~Simone Signoret

That is to say, I pray for you. And there’s an intimacy in it. That’s the truth.”

― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

The Turtles

A turtle family decided to go on a picnic. Turtles, being naturally slow about things, took seven years to prepare for their outing. Finally the turtle family left home looking for a suitable place. During the second year of their journey they found a place ideal for them at last! For about six months they cleaned the area, unpacked the picnic basket, and completed the arrangements. Then they discovered they had forgotten the salt. A picnic without salt would be a disaster, they all agreed. After a lengthy discussion, the youngest turtle was chosen to retrieve the salt from home. Although he was the fastest of the slow moving turtles, the little turtle whined, cried, and wobbled in his shell. He agreed to go on one condition: that no one would eat until he returned. The family consented and the little turtle left. Three years passed and the little turtle had not returned. Five years… six years…then on the seventh year of his absence, the oldest turtle could no longer contain his hunger. He announced that he was going to eat and begun to unwrap a sandwich. At that point the little turtle suddenly popped out from behind a tree shouting, “See! I knew you wouldn’t wait. Now I am not going to go get the salt.”

http://mforum.cari.com.my/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=113290

Venus, I pray to You that all pimps may suffer.

Propertius Eligiae 2.16.13-14

“To say that one waits a lifetime for his soulmate to come around is a paradox. People eventually get sick of waiting, take a chance on someone, and by the art of commitment become soulmates, which takes a lifetime to perfect.”

― Criss Jami, Venus in Arms

Passion is the quickest to develop, and the quickest to fade. Intimacy develops more slowly, and commitment more gradually still

Robert Sternberg

 

“Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have 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, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being “in love”, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.”

Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

Intercourse is one thing, Intimacy is everything. Be encouraged”

― Kerry E. Wagner, Never Let Go of My Hand

It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.

Jane Austen

 

 

The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.”

― Honoré de Balzac

“Once you’ve ruled out the impossible then whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth. The problem lay in working out what was impossible, of course. That was the trick, all right. There was also the curious incident of the orangutan in the night-time.”

― Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!

When an elephant is in trouble even a frog will kick him.

“A Ritual to Read to Each Other

If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.”
― William Edgar Stafford

Over time, any deception destroys intimacy, and without intimacy couples cannot have true and lasting love.”

― Bonnie Eaker Weil, Financial Infidelity: Seven Steps to Conquering the #1 Relationship Wrecker

“An intimate relationship does not banish loneliness. Only when we are comfortable with who we are can we truly function independently in a healthy way, can we truly function within a relationship. Two halves do not make a whole when it comes to a healthy relationship: it takes two wholes.”

-Patricia Fry

 

We were raised with the idea that we had limitless chances and we got very shocked to learn that wasn’t the case.”

Linda Ronstadt

“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to appellation. ”

― George Washington

fish hug: those stupid hugs when you’re saying bye to one of your friends and they use one hand to hug you making it an even more awkward moment.

“For this is the truth about our soul, he thought, our self, who fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces and on and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable; suddenly she shoots to the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves; that is, has a positive need to brush, scrape, kindle herself, gossiping.”

― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Never get married in the morning, because you never know who you’ll meet that night.

Paul Hornung

http://www.quotegarden.com/marriage.html

“Marriage is like calculus. Complicated and inexplicably remote. People think it’s about loving one another and riding off into the sunset, but no one tells you the horse is lame or that it’s an eclipse, and there won’t be a sunset that day.”

― Kristin Billerbeck, The Trophy Wives Club

 

Advice is like snow – the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper in sinks into the mind.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“If you want to marry me, here’s what you’ll have to do:
You must learn how to make a perfect chicken-dumpling stew.
And you must sew my holey socks,
And soothe my troubled mind,
And develop the knack for scratching my back,
And keep my shoes spotlessly shined.
And while I rest you must rake up the leaves,
And when it is hailing and snowing
You must shovel the walk…and be still when I talk,
And-hey-where are you going?”

― Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends

A canoe which we are all in with no exception.

He waka eke noa

http://www.maori.cl/Proverbs.htm

“Two people with mental issues in a relationship does not work. It’s like sitting in a boat and neither one has an oar to row the other to shore. You can meet your mirror image in life but that doesn’t mean you should marry him.”

― Shannon L. Alder

“Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock ‘n’ roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theatres, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights.”

― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer.  My bank of wild grass is majestic and full of music.  It is a fire that solitude presses against my lips.  

Violette Leduc, Mad in Pursuit

http://www.quotegarden.com/summer.html

When there’s an elephant in the room introduce him. Randy Pausch

When I said I wanted to die in my sleep, I meant I wanted to be stepped on by an elephant while making love.”

Roger Zelazny, The Great Book of Ambe

Alcohol is the river we sit on the banks of, contemplating. Sometimes we watch ourselves float past, sometimes we watch ourselves sink.”

― Nick Flynn, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

“Someday, we’ll run into each other again, I know it.
Maybe I’ll be older and smarter and just plain better. If that happens,
that’s when I’ll deserve you. But now, at this moment, you can’t hook
your boat to mine, because I’m liable to sink us both.”

Gabrielle Zevin, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“Long marriages have ended in ruin over tiny and insignificant grievances that were never properly aired and instead grew into a brittle barnacle of hatred.”

Augusten Burroughs

“Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business. Not to forgive is to yield oneself to another’s control… to be locked into a sequence of act and response, of outrage and revenge, tit for tat, escalating always. The present is endlessly overwhelmed and devoured by the past. Forgiveness frees the forgiver. It extracts the forgiver from someone else’s nightmare.”

Lance Morrow, The Chief: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons

“I don’t care what you say to me. I care what you share with me.”

Santosh Kalwar, Quote Me Everyday

“Life is hard enough as it is without choosing someone difficult to share it with”

Greg Behrendt

I am a bird , behold my wings.

A Dictionary of Foreign Phrases and Classical Quotations

FROM THE POOL

Birdland – A Poem

from Eldred

Guitar riff,  as a thorn-winged plover screechingly
messerschmitts magpies and butcherbirds,
bluff-diving to protect his nesting mate
Busily disputing their noisy offspring.

http://www.pool.org.au/text/eldred/birdland_a_poem

A man should avoid these six evils: lust, anger, avarice pleasure, pride, and rashness, for free of these he may be happy. (Sanskrit).

I Came to buy a smile—today—But just a single smile—The smallest one upon your faceWill suit me just as well—The one that no one else would missIt shone so very small—I’m pleading at the “counter”—…

Source: A man should avoid these six evils: lust, anger, avarice pleasure, pride, and rashness, for free of these he may be happy. (Sanskrit). | THE OLD PROVERBIAL RECOVERY

Bunny’s Excuse. There was once a wicked old sinner Who fancied a rabbit for dinner, But the bunny he met Said: “Don’t kill me yet, For I really am still a beginner.”

My living problems also cease to be struggles.

Heaven designs to suit our trials to our strength.

Though the sun shines, leave not your cloak at home.

” The queen’s mocking laughter cut in. “This is your treasure, Lord Sheftu?”

“Aye. The greatest treasure in Egypt—a maid whose loyalty cannot be bought. Whatever bargain we make, Daughter of the Sun, must include her freedom.”
― Eloise Jarvis McGraw, Mara, Daughter of the Nile

RISE TOGETHER

ADAM T NA SPEAKER

IF DRINKING DON’T KILL ME

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM

SMALL TRIBUTE FOR IZZY FOREAL BY PETER CARRUTHERS

RISE TOGETHER

ADAM T NA SPEAKER

IF DRINKING DON’T KILL ME

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM

SMALL TRIBUTE FOR IZZY FOREAL BY PETER CARRUTHERS