You're so vain...

"Everybody here has the ability to do anything I do and much beyond. Some of you will, and some of..."

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 14:48:11 -0400

“Everybody here has the ability to do anything I do and much beyond. Some of you will, and some of you won’t. For those who won’t, it will be because you get in your own way, not because the world doesn’t allow you to.”

- Warren Buffet

"Colpo di fulmine. The thunderbolt, as Italians call it. When love strikes someone like lightning, so..."

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 04:57:32 -0500

““Colpo di fulmine. The thunderbolt, as Italians call it. When love strikes someone like lightning, so powerful and intense it can’t be denied. It’s beautiful and messy,
cracking a chest open and spilling their soul out for the world to see. It turns a person inside out, and there’s no going back from it. Once the thunderbolt hits, your life is
irrevocably changed.””

- ― J.M. Darhower, Sempre

"“My news is this, I still want you more than any woman I’ve ever seen. I am asking you to marry me...."

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 23:40:10 -0500

“

“My news is this, I still want you more than any woman I’ve ever seen. I am asking you to marry me. Would you be convinced if I knelt down? Why not try marrying a fine young man who has a bad reputation and a way with women? It’ll be fun.”

His insistent mouth was parting her shaking lips, sending wild tremors along her nerves, evoking from her sensations she had never known she was capable of feeling. “Stop please, I’m faint,” she whispered.

“I want to make you faint. I will make you faint. You’ve had this coming to you for years. None of the fools have kissed you like this-have they?”

She would faint if he did not stop. If he would only stop -if he would never stop.

“Say Yes! Say Yes damn you, or -“

She whispered “yes” before she even thought.

”

- (via figuresandspeeches)

Photo

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 01:49:18 -0500

Only months before she had been sitting with her former lover who was taking pride in how young he...

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 01:33:47 -0500

Only months before she had been sitting with her former lover who was taking pride in how young he looked for his age. She had looked at his face and sighed at the lack of lines across his forehead, no crows feet framing his eyes. Boyishness had never been appealing to her and there was something weak about him. Almost like he wanted to be admonished and then forgiven for his wrongs like a naughty child.

While you were out sowing your wild oats, I fell into the arms of an adult.

Her new love was a man. He might have been the same height but he carried himself with such strength and assuredness he seemed to tower over others. Even his touch was so strong and hot, his grip so vital. There was nothing child-like about him and he was thoroughly masculine.

She took comfort in the grays at his temples and the lines on his face. He was so calm, yet she had an inkling how frightening he might be if he was ever crossed. Slow-building rages are usually the most terrifying. Those who are quick to anger are also quick to forget.

He was the first man to notice the weird fears that gripped her, to make the nightmares go away in his bed. “Nothing,” she had muttered to her ex when he asked what bothered her. But when the awful dream reappeared in her new man’s bed she simply woke to the heat of his strong arms wrapped about her, pulling her into the hard muscles of his chest. The nightmares slowly began to dissolve.

Something about him tamed her wildness. In his arms she became his little pet, obedient where she had always resisted. She finally felt safe. And that’s how she fell in love.

Sometime in the middle of the night he pulled her body across the bed and tight against his chest....

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 01:26:40 -0500

Sometime in the middle of the night he pulled her body across the bed and tight against his chest. It was where she was used to sleeping, where she always felt safe. And it felt good for a moment until she remembered that she hated him. Yet she still loved him too. But that love was dying inside her and turning slowly turning her body into a graveyard. She hated him with all the passion reserved for someone who had penetrated her heart.

In the morning he kissed her before he left for work. Shadows fell across his face. The dark stubble on his face she used to love merely felt abrasive now.

In his mind as he drove to his office, everything was okay now, the slate wiped clean. He thought he could remove it all so quickly, like a clinical procedure. Men have conveniently short memories, but women never forget anything. She had visions of blood slipping through her fingers, an endless red river flowing onto porcelain. Red is the color of a scream.

Good bye life, good bye dreams, good bye happily ever after.

She hid under the covers and thought about staying in bed the entire day. Why bother going through the motions of the day that culminated in facing her tainted lover again, trying to fake happiness?

A little beep pulled her out from under the tent of bedsheets. She picked up her Blackberrry…and after a quick glance she leapt out of bed.

Gloss was applied, perfume was sprayed…she walked up towards a glittering pool with her heart pulsing with excitement. She had spent too long thinking of consequences, of the dark mass smothering her soul. The sun was shining on a perfect Beverly Hills afternoon.
He smiled at her behind sunglasses and handed her a cocktail, which she hungrily sucked up through the straw. A drink to replace it arrived before she even set the glass down. Nothing wrong with drinking while the sun was still up. Midday decadence.

The sun and the booze warmed her flesh quickly. She hadn’t had a drink in so long, not since…

She wasn’t going to remember that now. She turned those thoughts off the way her boyfriend always did, like a little surgical removal of a memory. Clean and anesthetized.
She laughed for the first time in weeks. He set her at ease, hiding his eyes behind his glasses, his mouth curved in desire. Sunlight bounced off the water and made him glow. She wondered why she had resisted him so long. Of course she knew why—she’d been drugged with fairy tales her whole life. She thought love would transform a beast into a prince. But sometimes the beast is just a beast.

The pool was emptying. The afternoon had darkened into into the pale lavender of twilight. She was drunk and not going home.

The night went on. More places, more people, more drinks in her hand. His mouth soon found hers. It had been years since she felt another man’s lips.

She woke up the next morning in another bed. She was nude and not quite sure how she ended up there other than that it had been her intention from the moment she left the house. A few flashes came back to her of gentle love-making, in stark contrast of the raw savagery of sex with her boyfriend. But she didn’t like pain anymore. Gray morning light filtered in through the curtains, onto the face pressed into the pillow next to her. She was so struck by his beauty in repose that she gasped a little. His eyes opened. They were as bright blue as a sunny California sky.

Her Blackberry was ringing. It was a call from her boyfriend at home, where she hadn’t been in over 24 hours. She pressed a button and sent it to voice mail.

If you were born with a female body, other people will always feel entitled to tell you what to do...

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 00:49:40 -0500

If you were born with a female body, other people will always feel entitled to tell you what to do with it. Have babies, don’t have babies, cover it up, show some skin, lose weight, gain weight, get implants, how dare you get implants…it’s like you live in a prison and belong to anyone but yourself. We still tell our victims of sex crimes that they were “asking for it.” And it’s not just cruelty from men against women…women are far worse to each other. Hating something they hate within themselves. Filled with envy over someone else’s appeal, as if other people’s beauty takes away from their own. Blaming healthy women for causing eating disorders in mentally unstable women, despite the fact that over half of our country is overweight and will face severe health problems from it. Why do we blame external sources for our own problems? Why do we hate women for not living up to our beauty standards, then hate them for doing what it takes to live up to our beauty standards? Because the same people who criticize a woman for having implants are the same people who criticize a woman for having small breasts.

"It isn’t what you did in the past that will affect the present. It’s what you do in the present that..."

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 00:42:59 -0500

““It isn’t what you did in the past that will affect the present. It’s what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future.””

- Paulo Coelho, “Aleph” (via minniegupta)

Photo

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 21:12:48 -0500

"Few things as depressing to me as Men who only apologize or do the right thing because they’ve..."

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 21:08:45 -0500

“Few things as depressing to me as Men who only apologize or do the right thing because they’ve been guilted, shamed into it…not because they internally decide it’s the right thing to do. I have a friend who handles things that way…he calls it “doing damage control”…what about not inflicting the damage to begin with? All comes down to how we raise our sons and how we raise our daughters to accept mediocrity when it comes to the emotional expression/vulnerability of men…”

- Yashar Ali

"Change your thinking, your attitude will be different. Change your attitude, your behavior will be..."

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 03:19:30 -0500

“Change your thinking, your attitude will be different. Change your attitude, your behavior will be different. Change your behavior, your habit will be different. Change your habit, your life will be different.”

Blackjack Syndrome

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 14:08:59 -0400

“You don’t show much emotion. Is that an Indian thing?” he asked, snapping her out of her reverie.

She gave a small, forced laugh. “Do you think that all the centuries of arranged marriages bred every ounce of feeling out of us?”

“You have a lot of feelings. You just don’t like to show them.” He leaned forward to touch her face. “Someone broke your heart badly, didn’t they?”

She gazed off into space and just nodded.

“Did he leave you?”

“No, I left him.”

“Then don’t let him make you sad. You walked out because you expected something better. People in this town have Blackjack Syndrome—you may have a 19 in your hand but you want a 21. Just don’t hold out for too much, or else you may end up with nothing.”

There are no fairy tales, she reminded herself, over and over again. She looked up to see him studying her with a soft expression on his face.

“Do you want to get married someday? Have children?”

“Yes,” she replied. Maybe, maybe not, she thought to herself.

“I’ll understand when you meet someone you can settle down with. Maybe then you’ll find me someone like yourself, except a little older. Because you do make me very happy. I don’t think I ever told you. And I probably didn’t show you enough. But you deserve to be happy too.”

She could see that he had grown accustomed to her, that he’d genuinely begun to care for her. And that she was utterly disposable to him at any moment, just like he was to her.

“Those people that have been writing all those lies about...

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 17:44:58 -0400

“Those people that have been writing all those lies about me, all I know, it’s their problem. Those people, I don’t even know them, or if we met, it’s been brief. Can I take it? Are you kidding? I’m used to it and remember the old saying: ‘consider the source.’”—Marilyn Monroe

"Nowadays, anyone who committed the crime of trying to do something with her life became a victim of..."

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 19:01:45 -0400

““Nowadays, anyone who committed the crime of trying to do something with her life became a victim of Internet bullying, and there was no retribution, no control, nothing one could do.””

- One Fifth Avenue by Candace Bushnell

Notes on traveling the world

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 01:21:10 -0400

My first time in South America I remembered that someone had once told me that the water in toilet bowls swirled in the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere. I jumped up and ran to the bathroom in my Buenos Aires hotel room and flushed the toilet in anticipation. Water swirled. I stared at it, realizing that I never paid attention to which way the water flushed in North America. I walked out of the bathroom feeling quite underwhelmed. I’ve seen many of the wonders of the world—and the biggest wonder is how many of them have a Kentucky Fried Chicken right outside. Outside of the Pyramids of Giza, outside of the Taj Mahal. Even outside of the Gaudi Church de Familia in Barcelona. If aliens someday visit our deserted planet, I’m sure they’ll think the Colonel was a great ruler of our world. He might even be considered greater than Mickey Mouse, which makes me very sad.

"‘You are one of the most selfish people I’ve ever known. I’ve needed my anger to..."

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 04:25:42 -0400

“‘You are one of the most selfish people I’ve ever known. I’ve needed my anger to keep you from trampling over me, to let both of us know when enough is enough…it is by NOT always thinking of yourself, if you can manage it, that you might someday be happy. Until you make room in your life for someone as important to you as yourself, you will alway be lonely and searching and lost.’”

- The Bridge Across Forever by Richard Bach

"…my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars—points of light and..."

Sat, 28 Jul 2012 06:38:15 -0400

““…my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars—points of light and reason…And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn’t see the stars anymore. And there was no more reason for anything.””

- New Moon by Stephanie Meyer

His office was an old-school therapist’s office…innocuous paintings, green plants, a box...

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 16:13:16 -0400

His office was an old-school therapist’s office…innocuous paintings, green plants, a box of tissues and an overstuffed brown leather couch. She was so tired that she considered lying down. But the squeaks her movements made intimidated her. She tried to sit as quietly as possible.

“Tired today?” he asked, peering at her over his glasses.

“Nightmares again last night,” she sighed.

“Tell me about it.”

“I dreamed that I was fighting a woman in black to protect a little girl dressed in pink. I was wearing pink too. We tumbled down the staircase gripping each other’s hair. I looked to see my father in the living room, staring out of the window. For some reason he was completely blind and deaf to what was going on. Then I found a knife and stabbed the woman, figuring the battle was finally won. The blade went into her and back out and she just cackled like a witch. I realized then that fighting her to protect the little girl was hopeless. I ran out the front door, leaving the little girl screaming and the woman laughing. I then woke up with that sound still in my ears.”

The therapist wrote something down in his notepad and then asked “what did the woman look like?”

She thought for a moment and then gasped.

“She looked exactly like me.”

“That’s what tends to happen. What we perceive as outside forces is really about our own internal struggle. Sometimes only our own demons are putting us in harm’s way.”

look away.

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 20:15:51 -0400

He can’t bear to look at the scars on her arm

From the night he made her cry

From the night she wanted to die.

He blurs his vision

With a haze of smoke

With a line of coke

Tells himself at least it’s not whiskey

After he finishes his third bottle of wine

“Everything is going to be fine.”

You are not ready for this much cuteness—the kids of the...

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 10:26:55 -0400

You are not ready for this much cuteness—the kids of the Providence School serenading us on our visit today :)