[0038]

[0037]

[0036]

"I didn't invent the rainy day, man, I just have the best umbrella"

[0035]

[0034]

I got to thinking about relationships. There are those that open you up to something new and exotic, those that are old and familiar, those that bring up a lot of questions, those that bring you somewhere unexpected, those that bring you far from where you started, and those that bring you back. But the most exciting, challenging, and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you find someone to love the you who you love, well that's just fabulous.

[0033]

"I've seen life as it is. Pain, misery, cruelty. I've heard all the voices of God's noblest creatures. Moans from the bundles of filth in the street. I've been a soldier and a slave. I've seen my comrades fall in battle or die, more slowly, under the lash in Africa. I've held them at the last moment. These were men who saw life as it is, and died despairingly. No glory. No brave last words. Their eyes filled with confusion; questioning why. I do not think they were asking why they were dying, but why they had ever lived. When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? To surrender dreams -- this may be madness; to seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness. But maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be."
-- Cervantes

[0032]

[0031]

Why is it that through out all of human kind's existence, the woman is the one who bears the most grief? Why is the woman designed to care more? Why is it, that in every debacle that involves a man and a woman as one entity, the woman is the one who takes the blow harder? Even if the man is facing the same sort of trials as the woman, he will still for some unearthly reason, have lesser to lose. He will still for some God foresaken reason, be more at peace with himself than the woman. No matter that they've suffered the same way to every extent possible. No ma'am, no matter what. But just by the divine right of his gender, he somehow, in some way, feels at ease relative to the woman. Unacceptable. But there's not a damn thing we can do. Because that's just how it is.

[0030]

"Though the sex to which I belong is considered weak, you will nevertheless find me a rock that bends to no wind."

--Elizabeth I

[0029]

So much rain, so much life like the swollen sky
of this black August. The sun,
broods in her yellow room and won't come out.

Everything goes to hell; the mountains fume
like a kettle, rivers overrun; still,
she will not rise and turn off the rain.

She is in her room, fondling old things,
my poems, turning her album. Even if thunder falls
like a crash of plates from the sky,

she does not come out.
Don't you know I love you but am hopeless
at fixing the rain ? But I am learning slowly

to love the dark days, the steaming hills,
the air with gossiping mosquitoes,
and to sip the medicine of bitterness,

so that when you emerge,
parting the beads of the rain,
with your forehead of flowers and eyes of forgiveness,

all with not be as it was, but it will be true
(you see they will not let me love
as I want), because, then

I would have learnt to love black days like bright ones,
The black rain, the white hills, when once
I loved only my happiness and you.

- Derek Walcott (Dark August)