Hope

The heavens burned,
the stars cried out
and under the ashes of infinity
HOPE, scarred and bleeding,
breathed its last.

Ulatempa Poetess

To Be or Not To Be!

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. – Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Pleasure of Suffering

I wished to acquire the simplicity, native feelings, and virtues of savage life; to divest myself of the factitious habits, prejudices and imperfections of civilization…and to find, amidst the solitude and grandeur of the western wilds, more correct views of human nature and of the true interests of man. the season of snows was preferred, that I might experience the pleasure of suffering, and the novelty of danger.

Estwick Evans,
A Pedestrious Tour, of Four Thousand Miles,
Through the Western States and Territories,
During the Winter and Spring of 1818.

Love, Money, Fame

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, an obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. the hospitality was as cold as the ices.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

The Desert

To the desert go prophets and hermits; through deserts go pilgrims and exiles. here the leaders of the great religions have sought the therapeutic and spiritual values of retreat, not to escape but to find reality.

Paul Shepard, Man in the Landscape: A Historic View of the Esthetics of Nature

The Mirror

We celebrated each moment of our meetings as a revelation alone in all the world. You were lighter and bolder than the wing of a bird flying down the stairs two at a time… pure giddiness, leading me through the moist lilac to your domain beyond the looking glass. When night fell, I was favored. The altar gates were opened and in the dark, there gleamed your nudity, and I slowly bowed. Awakening, ‘Be blessed,’ I said and know my blessing to be bold for you still slept. The lilac on the table stretched forth to touch your lids with heavenly blue and your blue-tinted lids were calm, and your hand was warm. Locked in crystal, rivers pulsed, mountains smoked, seas glimmered. You held a sphere of crystal in your hand and slept on a throne. And– righteous Lord!– you were mine. You awakened and transformed our mundane, human words. Then did my throat fill with new power and give new meaning to ‘you’ which now meant ‘sovereign.’ All was transformed, even such simple things as basin, pitcher, when like a sentinel, layered, solid water lay between us. We were drawn on and on where cities built by magic parted us like mirages. Mint carpeted our way, birds escorted us, and fish swam upstream while the sky spread out before us as Fate followed in our wake like a madman brandishing a razor.

Andrei Tarkovsky, The Mirror (1975)