Today I love...

Wisteria! So beautiful and romantic.

Someday I'd like to have it at my home.  Along with magnolia trees and jasmine. And a wrap-around porch.  A girl can dream :)

To Spring:

O thou with dewy locks, who lookest down
Thro' the clear windows of the morning, turn
Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,
Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!

The hills tell each other, and the listening
Valleys hear; all our longing eyes are turned
Up to thy bright pavilions: issue forth,
And let thy holy feet visit our clime.

Come o'er the eastern hills, and let our winds
Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste
Thy morn and evening breath; scatter thy pearls
Upon our love-sick land that mourns for thee.

O deck her forth with thy fair fingers; pour
Thy soft kisses on her bosom; and put
Thy golden crown upon her languished head,
Whose modest tresses were bound up for thee.

William Blake

No mistakes...

This is so hard to remember sometimes, isn't it? 

Le Corsaire!

Now 2/3 of the way to my "Watch 3 ballets I've never seen" goal!  I've been watching American Ballet Theatre's video of Le Corsaire incessantly for the last three years and finally finally had the chance to see it in person!  The Washington Ballet performed it at the Kennedy Center, and my little sister and I had a delightful time eating Junior Mints and gasping at the amazing jetes for a couple of hours.

p.s.- Angel Corella as the slave, Act II variation from the (greatest) pas de trois (ever)  is probably my most watched youtube video of all time. The link is here since there's no embed code available...strange.  But still a must see!

Goal

source.

Words

As mentioned, I've been doing a lot of writing of late.  And although it's academic rather than creative, this bit really got me this week:

Human speech is like a cracked tin kettle,
on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars.- Gustave Flaubert

But a few magicians seem to manage the latter. My favorite? Neruda. Oh, Neruda.

Come with me, I said, and no one knew
where, or how my pain throbbed,
no carnations or barcaroles for me,
only a wound that love had opened.

I said it again: Come with me, as if I were dying,
and no one saw the moon that bled in my mouth
or the blood that rose into the silence.
O Love, now we can forget the star that has such thorns!

That is why when I heard your voice repeat
Come with me, it was as if you had let loose
the grief, the love, the fury of a cork-trapped wine

the geysers flooding from deep in its vault:
in my mouth I felt the taste of fire again,
of blood and carnations, of rock and scald.

Pablo Neruda, Come With Me I Said and No One Knew

and something interesting:

My favorites are the German and the Gaelic. You?'

And now, back to my words! The finish line is in sight!

Sorry for the neglect as of late... thesis crunch time and all that.  Unfortuately there's still quite a bit to accomplish, but some (non-schoolwork) things that have had me thinking lately:

Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.

- Kurt Vonnegut

there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.

- Charles Bukowski

Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.
-Neil Gaiman

These all feel so true (the second one, painfully so), but they overlap and bump into each other in kind of dissonant ways, huh?  I'm still working on sorting it all out (maybe a little silly to say, as it certainly seems a lifetime's work.  Best to start now I suppose!), along with the 42 other things on my mind.  Give me a little time and I'll try to collect some of my own thoughts here.

Needed Reminder:

Hehehe

source.