Postsecrets that speak to me
by V.E. on November 21st, 2011
Previous favorites here.
PostSecret.
Lips That Touch Liquor Shall Never Touch Mine
by V.E. on September 26th, 2011
Alice Lee stood awaiting her lover one night,
Her cheeks flushed and glowing, her eyes full of light.
She had placed a sweet rose ‘mid her wild flowing hair;
No flower of the forest e’er looked half so fair
As she did that night, as she stood by the door
Of the cot where she dwelt by the side of the moor.
She heard a quick step coming over the moor,
And a merry voice which she had oft heard before;
And ere she could speak a strong arm held her fast,
And a manly voice whispered, “I’ve come, love, at last.
I’m sorry that I’ve kept you waiting like this,
But I know you’ll forgive me, then give me a kiss.”
But she shook the bright curls on her beautiful head,
And she drew herself up while quite proudly she said,
“Now, William, I’ll prove if you really are true,
For you say that you love me — I don’t think you do;
If really you love me you must give up the wine,
For the lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine.”
He looked quite amazed, “Why, Alice, ’tis clear
You really are getting quite jealous, my dear.”
“In that you are right,” she replied; “for, you see,
You’ll soon love the liquor far better than me.
I’m jealous, I own, of the poisonous wine,
For the lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine.”
He turned, then, quite angry. “Confound it!” he said,
“What nonsense you’ve got in your dear little head;
But I’ll see if I cannot remove it from hence.”
She said, “‘Tis not nonsense, ’tis plain common-sense:
And I mean what I say, and this you will find,
I don’t often change when I’ve made up my mind.”
He stood all irresolute, angry, perplexed:
She never before saw him look half so vexed;
But she said, “If he talks all his life I won’t flinch”;
And he talked, but he never could move her an inch.
He then bitterly cried, with a look and a groan,
“O Alice, your heart is as hard as a stone.”
But though her heart beat in his favour quite loud,
She still firmly kept to the vow she had vowed;
And at last, without even a tear or sigh,
She said, “I am going, so, William, goodbye.”
“Nay stay,” he then said, “I’ll choose one of the two –
I’ll give up the liquor in favour of you.”
Now, William had often great cause to rejoice
For the hour he had made sweet Alice his choice;
And he blessed through the whole of a long, useful life,
The fate that had given him his dear little wife.
And she, by her firmness, won to us that night
One who in our cause is an ornament bright.
Oh! that each fair girl in our abstinence band
Would say: “I’ll ne’er give my heart or my hand
Unto one who I ever had reason to think
Would taste one small drop of the vile, cursed drink”;
But say, when you are wooed, “I’m a foe to the wine,
And the lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine.”
Just like in the movies
by V.E. on August 11th, 2011
filed under favorite, personal
“Just like in the movies,
only one of us gets out of this thing alive,
I’m not sure if I am trying to save myself
or save you.”
(via)
Star Wars Day
by V.E. on May 4th, 2011
filed under entertainment, favorite
In honor of Star Wars Day, have some Rebel Alliance recruitment posters.
Ask an abortion provider
by V.E. on March 3rd, 2011
filed under beauty, favorite, health
This. Wherein an abortion provider (an actual, real-life one!) answers the questions:
Why?
What’s it like?
What about the patients? Like, who are they? and
What’s the craziest thing you’ve encountered?
And this:
I speak of my abortion as a positive experience… to save a seat for the possibility that this doesn’t have to be the worst thing that ever happened to you in your whole life… If you think that’s a bullshit line… think of why you’re a person who doesn’t want someone to do the best that they can under the circumstances they’re in.
(h/t Feministe)
The Maria Bamford Show
by V.E. on February 24th, 2011
filed under entertainment, favorite, health
Twenty episodes at roughly five minutes each and The Maria Bamford Show made me laugh, and—at the end—cry (a little). You can watch the full list on Youtube in about an hour, or click the links below for the individual episodes. However you watch it: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. I’ve included the first episode, “Dropout“, in this post.
01 – Dropout
02 – Maria Gets a Job
03 – Kicked Out
04 – Search for Meaning
05 – Ready for Love
06 – Mother’s Day
07 – Show Time
08 – Crevasse
09 – Bread
10 – Dark, a song
11 – Will
12 – Faith
13 – Oh-CD
14 – Death and Happiness, the Halloween episode
15 – Boredom
16 – Acting Out
17 – Horror
18 – Moving
19 – Replacement
20 – Exit
How To Be Alone
by V.E. on February 22nd, 2011
filed under beauty, favorite, writing
(This makes me happy.)
POEM: How To Be Alone
BY: Tanya Davis
If you are at first lonely, be patient.
If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find it’s fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.
We can start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library, where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books; you’re not supposed to talk much anyway so it’s safe there.
There is also the gym, if you’re shy, you can hang out with yourself and mirrors, you can put headphones in.
Then there’s public transportation, because we all gotta go places.
And there’s prayer and mediation, no one will think less if your hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.
Start simple. Things you may have previously avoided based on your avoid-being-alone principles.
The lunch counter, where you will be surrounded by “chow downers”, employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town, and so they, like you, will be alone.
Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.
When you are comfortable with “eat lunch and run”, take yourself out for dinner; a restaurant with linen and silverware. You’re no less an intriguing a person when you are eating solo dessert and cleaning the whip cream from the dish with your finger. In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.
Go to the movies. Where it’s dark and soothing, alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.
And then take yourself out dancing, to a club where no one knows you, stand on the outside of the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one’s watching because they’re probably not. And if they are, assume it is with best human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats, is after-all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you’re sweating. And beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things, down your back like a book of blessings.
Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you. Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, they are always statues to talk to, and benches made for sitting gives strangers a shared existence if only for a minute, and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches, might of never happened had you not been there by yourself.
Society is afraid of alone, though. Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements. Like people must have problems if after awhile nobody is dating them.
But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless, and lonely is healing if you make it.
You can stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company.
But no one’s in your head. And by the time you translate your thoughts an essence of them maybe lost or perhaps it is just kept. Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those “sappy slogans” from pre-school over to high schools groaning, we’re tokens for holding the lonely at bay.
Cause if you’re happy in your head, then solitude is blessed, and alone is okay.
It’s okay if no one believes like you, all experiences unique, no one has the same synapses, can’t think like you, for this be relived, keeps things interesting, life’s magic things in reach, and it doesn’t mean you aren’t connected, and the community is not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it.
Take silence and respect it.
If you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it, if your family doesn’t get you or a religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.
You could be in an instant surrounded if you need it.
If your heart is bleeding, make the best of it.
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.
