Random Quotes..

No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes

No one knows what it's like
To be hated
To be fated
To telling only lies

But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free


No one knows what it's like
To feel these feelings
Like I do
And I blame you

No one bites back as hard
On their anger
None of my pain and woe
Can show through

But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free

When my fist clenches, crack it open
Before I use it and lose my cool
When I smile, tell me some bad news
Before I laugh and act like a fool

If I swallow anything evil
Put your finger down my throat
If I shiver, please give me a blanket
Keep me warm, let me wear your coat

No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes

-Artist: The Who Lyrics
Song: Behind Blue Eyes Lyrics

Jonathan's Obituary(from the movie Serendipity)

Dean: Jonathan Trager, prominent television producer for ESPN, died last night from complications of losing his soul mate and his fiance. He was thirty-five years old. Soft-spoken and obsessive, Trager never looked the part of a hopeless romantic. But in the final days of his life, he revealed an unknown side of his psyche. This hidden quasi-Jungian persona surfaced during the Agatha Christie-like pursuit for his long, reputed soul mate; a woman whom he only spent a few precious hours with. Sadly, the protracted search ended late Saturday night in complete and utter failure. Yet even in certain defeat, the courageous Trager secretly clung to the belief that life is not merely a series of meaningless accidents or coincidences. Uh-uh. But rather, it is a tapestry of events that culminate into an exquisite, sublime plan. Ask about the loss of his dear friend, Dean Kansky, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and executive editor of New York Times, described Jonathan as a changed man in the last days of his life. Things were clearer for him, Kansky noted. Ultimately, Jonathan concluded that if we are to live life in harmony with the universe we must all possess a powerful faith, of what the ancients used to call fatum; what we currently refer to as destiny.
-Marc Klein


So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have you found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here.

~ Pink Floyd

... And I promise to touch you ever so gently, That you'll mistake my caress for a swift breeze born for the simple sake of blowing your troubles away.
You are safe child.
But if pain ever dare threaten the safety of our love,
Then I would grant you wings to lift your spirit above the sky and allow your tears to free fall onto the face of the earth, so that its children begin to believe that the rain comes from an angel crying.
So let it rain, let it rain, let it rain and I will stand a hundred miles beneath you with my hands lifted towards the heavens collecting your teardrops in crystal glasses of wine.
Because I believe that this love potion number nine holds the remedy for time and just one taste would allow me to love you forever...

-Alan Maramag




Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been to ballparks for seventeen years and I have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn't consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure I'm lucky. Who wouldn't have considered it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball's greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I'm lucky. When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat and vice versa, sends you a gift, that's something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in the white coats remember you with trophies, that's something. When you have a father and mother who work all their lives so that you can have an education and build your body, it's a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed, that's the finest I know. So I close by saying that I might have had a bad break, but I have an awful lot to live for. Thank you.

-Lou Gehrig


After so long together, so many words passed between you and him, and all the love you thought there could ever be was shared, you wake up out of this dream only to realize that the hand you reached for every morning is no longer there, as it never will be again. You wonder why God chose you to go through this nightmare, this pain of wanting something you can't have back, and why everything; the love of your life ever said to you was all lies. He's found somebody else, and as your heart is breaking, his is being over taken by her. But remember this, everyone has that one person out there who will love you and cherish you until your dying day, and even though it may not seem true now, that day will come, and you will realize that the man you were once in love with was just a taste of everything to come in this new love, and the feeling of finally knowing you've found that one person will over turn the feeling of pain and suffering, learn to let go, and learn to trust again, for if you live your life in wonder, thats wasted time of what could be passion, and happiness, and if that happiness is wasted, it's a moment never to be givin back. Love life and live it to the fullest.

-Shalindali Routh

Wherever life takes you, big cities, small towns you will inevitably come across small minds. People who think they are better than you are. People who think that material things or being pretty or popular makes you a worthwhile human being. But none of these things matter unless you have a strength of character, integrity, sense of pride. And if you have these things, don't ever sell them. Don't ever sell out. So when you meet a person for the first time, please don't judge them by their station in life. Because who knows, that person just might end up being your best friend.
-Dawson’s creek


A couple of hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin shared with the world the secret of his success. Never leave that till tomorrow, he said, which you can do today. This is the man who discovered electricity. You think more people would listen to what he had to say. I don't know why we put things off, but if I had to guess, I'd have to say it has a lot to do with fear. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, sometimes the fear is just of making a decision, because what if you're wrong? What if you're making a mistake you can't undo? The early bird catches the worm. A stitch in time saves nine. He who hesitates is lost. We can't pretend we hadn't been told. We've all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to seize the day. Still sometimes we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today's possibility under tomorrow's rug until we can't anymore. Until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin really meant. That knowing is better than wondering, that waking is better than sleeping, and even the biggest failure, even the worst, beat the hell out of never trying.
Meredith Grey--Grey's Anatomy

Phoebe: If you buy a mattress from Janice's ex-husband, isn't that like betraying Chandler?
Monica: Not at these prices!


Rachel: Oh honey, please, no, I can't get started with all that Ross stuff again. I mean he's going to be screwed up for a long time. And besides, you know, I don't go for guys right after they get divorced.
Monica: Right, you only go for them 5 minutes before they get married.


Chandler: All right, let's get some perspective here, ok? These things, they happen for a reason.
Monica: Yeah. You!
Chandler: All right, Pheebs, back me up here, ok? You believe in that karma crap, don't you?
Phoebe: Yeah, by the way, good luck in your next life as a dung beetle.
-Friends

I sit here in the dark and stare up at the sky,
But I can't give my heart one good reason why.
Everywhere I look it's lovers that I see.
It seems like everyone's in love with everyone but me.
I guess I must be wishing on someone else's star.
It seems like someone else keeps gettin what I'm wishing for.
Why can't I be as lucky as those other people are?
I guess I must be wishing, on someone else's star.
Bryan White

Nickolas:You dont have to worry about your emotions they're either black and white
Lucky: Well you either love Emily or you love Courtney
Nickolas:There you go,black and white. You just want me to be with Emily
Lucky:Nickolas, I want you to be happy. What gets you there is up to you.
-Lucky To Nickolas on General Hospital

Sometimes it's important to work for that pot of gold. But other times it's essential to take time off and to make sure that your most important decision in the day simply consists of choosing which color to slide down on the rainbow.
Douglas Pagels
from These Are the Gifts I'd Like to Give to You

Always obey and follow the guidelines set before you, but always follow your heart too, because without that, you have nothing! It is your eternal guide, it is what will lead you to salvation! If that is how you feel and that is what you believe - then that is how you will be judged... in the eye's of God! If you feel it's wrong, then don't do it. Always do what's best, and what you feel is the right thing to do. One of my favorite quotes is "stand up for what you believe in, even if that means standing alone" Remember this earth was created for both you and me!
-Robert William Black

A hundred days have made me older
Since the last time that i saw your pretty face
A thousand lies have made me colder
And i don't think i can look at this the same
But all these miles that seperate
Disappear now when i'm dreaming of your face

I'm here without you baby
But you're still on my lonely mind
I think about you baby
And i dream about you all the time
I'm here without you baby
But you're still with me in my dreams
And tonight it's only you and me
-Here Without You - 3 Doors Down

That's neither here nor there. Anyway, I saw this widow and she's a wreck. She has just lost the person she loved the most in this world and I realised we're all going to lose the people we love. That's how it is, but not me. Not now. Because the person *I* love the most is standing right here and I'm not ready to lose you yet. Claire, I'm not standing here asking you to marry me, I'm just asking you not to marry *him* and maybe take a walk, take a chance.
-wedding crashers


As Gandhi stepped aboard a train one day, one of his shoes slipped off and landed on the track. He was unable to retrieve it as the train was moving. To the amazement of his companions, Gandhi calmly took off his other shoe and threw it back along the track to land close to the first. Asked by a fellow passenger why he did so, Gandhi smiled. "the poor man who finds the shoe lying on the track," he replied, "will now have a pair he can use.
Author unknown. First quoted in The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes.

There are 82 letters in here, and they're all addressed to you. I wrote them all this summer, one a day, but I never sent them because I was afraid. I was afraid of getting my heart broken again, like before, because it hurt so bad and I was afraid to be vulnerable and I was afraid of you and the way you make me feel - and I know that doesn't matter now after what I did, I just thought that you should know. This is how I spent my summer - wanting you. I was just too scared to admit it.
One Tree Hill - Brooke Davis

Somewhere out there is the man you're supposed to marry and if you don't get him first, somebody else will...and then, you'll have to spend the rest of your life thinking that somebody else is married to your husband.
When Harry Met Sally


But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield.
As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard.
This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.
Lao-Tzu

My Dearest Allie. I couldn't sleep last night because I know that it's over between us. I'm not bitter any more, because I know that what we had was real. And if in some distant place in the future we see each other in our new lives, I'll smile at you with joy and remember how we spent the summer beneath the trees, learning from each other and growing in love. The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds, and that's what you've given me. That's what I hope to give to you forever. I love you. I'll be seeing you. Noah
The Notebook

Most of you have been where I am tonight. The crash site of unrequited love. You ask yourself, How did I get here? What was it about? Was it her smile? Was it the way she crossed her legs, the turn of her ankle, the poignant vulnerability of her slender wrists? What are these elusive and ephemeral things that ignite passion in the human heart? That's an age-old question. It's perfect food for thought on a bright midsummer's night.


-Martin Sage and Sybil Adelman



You know how when you were a little kid and you believed in fairy tales, that fantasy of what your life would be, white dress, prince charming who would carry you away to a castle on a hill. You would lie in bed at night and close your eyes and you had complete and utter faith. Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Prince Charming, they were so close you could taste them, but eventually you grow up, one day you open your eyes and the fairy tale disappears. Most people turn to the things and people they can trust. But the thing is its hard to let go of that fairy tale entirely cause almost everyone has that smallest bit of hope, of faith, that one day they will open their eyes and it will come true.


Meredith Grey-Grey's Anatomy

Well, by the time you see this, I won't be here anymore, and I know how much that sucks, for both of us. So seeing as how I won't be around to thoroughly annoy you, I thought I would give you a little list of the things that I wish for you. Well, there's the obvious. An education. Family. Friends. And a life that is full of the unexpected. Be sure to make mistakes. Make a lot of them, because there's no better way to learn and to grow. And, I want you to spend a lot of time at the ocean, because the ocean forces you to dream, and I insist that you be a dreamer. God. I've never really believed in god. In fact, I've spent a lot of time and energy trying to disprove that god exists. But I hope that you are able to believe in god, because the thing that I've come to realize, is that it just doesn't matter if god exists or not. The important thing is for you to believe in something, because I promise you that that belief will keep you warm at night, and I want you to feel safe always. And then there's love. I want you to love to the tips of your fingers, and when you find that love, wherever you find it, whoever you choose, don't run away from it. But you don't have to chase after it either. You just be patient, and it'll come to you. Don't be afraid. And remember, to love is to live.


Jen from Dawson's Creek (DT)

I went down that river when I was a kid. There's a place in the river.. I can't remember... Must have been a gardenia plantation at one time. All wild and overgrown now, but about five miles you'd think that heaven just fell on the earth in the form of gardenias...
Have you ever considered any real freedoms ? Freedoms - from the opinions of others... Even the opinions of yourself.


Marlon Brandon in Apocalypse now


When you come to the edge of all the light you have known, and are about to step out into darkness, Faith is knowing one of two things will happen; There will be something to stand on, or you will be taught to fly.


Richard Bach -Jonathan Livingston Seagull

I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me...
but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm
seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life.
You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure... but don't worry...You will someday.

-Kevin Spacey in American Beauty

The Real World: I don't recommend it...

Kenyon College Commencement Speech
May 20, 1990

I have a recurring dream about Kenyon. In it, I'm walking to the post office on the way to my first class at the start of the school year. Suddenly it occurs to me that I don't have my schedule memorized, and I'm not sure which classes I'm taking, or where exactly I'm supposed to be going.
As I walk up the steps to the postoffice, I realize I don't have my box key, and in fact, I can't remember what my box number is. I'm certain that everyone I know has written me a letter, but I can't get them. I get more flustered and annoyed by the minute. I head back to Middle Path, racking my brains and asking myself, "How many more years until I graduate? ...Wait, didn't I graduate already?? How old AM I?" Then I wake up.

Experience is food for the brain. And four years at Kenyon is a rich meal. I suppose it should be no surprise that your brains will probably burp up Kenyon for a long time. And I think the reason I keep having the dream is because its central image is a metaphor for a good part of life: that is, not knowing where you're going or what you're doing.
I graduated exactly ten years ago. That doesn't give me a great deal of experience to speak from, but I'm emboldened by the fact that I can't remember a bit of MY commencement, and I trust that in half an hour, you won't remember of yours either.

In the middle of my sophomore year at Kenyon, I decided to paint a copy of Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" from the Sistine Chapel on the ceiling of my dorm room. By standing on a chair, I could reach the ceiling, and I taped off a section, made a grid, and started to copy the picture from my art history book.
Working with your arm over your head is hard work, so a few of my more ingenious friends rigged up a scaffold for me by stacking two chairs on my bed, and laying the table from the hall lounge across the chairs and over to the top of my closet. By climbing up onto my bed and up the chairs, I could hoist myself onto the table, and lie in relative comfort two feet under my painting. My roommate would then hand up my paints, and I could work for several hours at a stretch.

The picture took me months to do, and in fact, I didn't finish the work until very near the end of the school year. I wasn't much of a painter then, but what the work lacked in color sense and technical flourish, it gained in the incongruity of having a High Renaissance masterpiece in a college dorm that had the unmistakable odor of old beer cans and older laundry.
The painting lent an air of cosmic grandeur to my room, and it seemed to put life into a larger perspective. Those boring, flowery English poets didn't seem quite so important, when right above my head God was transmitting the spark of life to man.
My friends and I liked the finished painting so much in fact, that we decided I should ask permission to do it. As you might expect, the housing director was curious to know why I wanted to paint this elaborate picture on my ceiling a few weeks before school let out. Well, you don't get to be a sophomore at Kenyon without learning how to fabricate ideas you never had, but I guess it was obvious that my idea was being proposed retroactively. It ended up that I was allowed to paint the picture, so long as I painted over it and returned the ceiling to normal at the end of the year. And that's what I did.

Despite the futility of the whole episode, my fondest memories of college are times like these, where things were done out of some inexplicable inner imperative, rather than because the work was demanded. Clearly, I never spent as much time or work on any authorized art project, or any poli sci paper, as I spent on this one act of vandalism.

It's surprising how hard we'll work when the work is done just for ourselves. And with all due respect to John Stuart Mill, maybe utilitarianism is overrated. If I've learned one thing from being a cartoonist, it's how important playing is to creativity and happiness. My job is essentially to come up with 365 ideas a year.
If you ever want to find out just how uninteresting you really are, get a job where the quality and frequency of your thoughts determine your livelihood. I've found that the only way I can keep writing every day, year after year, is to let my mind wander into new territories. To do that, I've had to cultivate a kind of mental playfulness.

We're not really taught how to recreate constructively. We need to do more than find diversions; we need to restore and expand ourselves. Our idea of relaxing is all too often to plop down in front of the television set and let its pandering idiocy liquefy our brains. Shutting off the thought process is not rejuvenating; the mind is like a car battery-it recharges by running.
You may be surprised to find how quickly daily routine and the demands of "just getting by: absorb your waking hours. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your politics and religion become matters of habit rather than thought and inquiry. You may be surprised to find how quickly you start to see your life in terms of other people's expectations rather than issues. You may be surprised to find out how quickly reading a good book sounds like a luxury.

At school, new ideas are thrust at you every day. Out in the world, you'll have to find the inner motivation to search for new ideas on your own. With any luck at all, you'll never need to take an idea and squeeze a punchline out of it, but as bright, creative people, you'll be called upon to generate ideas and solutions all your lives. Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems.
For me, it's been liberating to put myself in the mind of a fictitious six year-old each day, and rediscover my own curiosity. I've been amazed at how one ideas leads to others if I allow my mind to play and wander. I know a lot about dinosaurs now, and the information has helped me out of quite a few deadlines.
A playful mind is inquisitive, and learning is fun. If you indulge your natural curiosity and retain a sense of fun in new experience, I think you'll find it functions as a sort of shock absorber for the bumpy road ahead.


So, what's it like in the real world? Well, the food is better, but beyond that, I don't recommend it.

I don't look back on my first few years out of school with much affection, and if I could have talked to you six months ago, I'd have encouraged you all to flunk some classes and postpone this moment as long as possible. But now it's too late.
Unfortunately, that was all the advice I really had. When I was sitting where you are, I was one of the lucky few who had a cushy job waiting for me. I'd drawn political cartoons for the Collegian for four years, and the Cincinnati Post had hired me as an editorial cartoonist. All my friends were either dreading the infamous first year of law school, or despondent about their chances of convincing anyone that a history degree had any real application outside of academia.

Boy, was I smug.

As it turned out, my editor instantly regretted his decision to hire me. By the end of the summer, I'd been given notice; by the beginning of winter, I was in an unemployment line; and by the end of my first year away from Kenyon, I was broke and living with my parents again. You can imagine how upset my dad was when he learned that Kenyon doesn't give refunds.
Watching my career explode on the lauchpad caused some soul searching. I eventually admitted that I didn't have what it takes to be a good political cartoonist, that is, an interest in politics, and I returned to my firs love, comic strips.
For years I got nothing but rejection letters, and I was forced to accept a real job.

A REAL job is a job you hate. I designed car ads and grocery ads in the windowless basement of a convenience store, and I hated every single minute of the 4-1/2 million minutes I worked there. My fellow prisoners at work were basically concerned about how to punch the time clock at the perfect second where they would earn another 20 cents without doing any work for it.
It was incredible: after every break, the entire staff would stand around in the garage where the time clock was, and wait for that last click. And after my used car needed the head gasket replaced twice, I waited in the garage too.

It's funny how at Kenyon, you take for granted that the people around you think about more than the last episode of Dynasty. I guess that's what it means to be in an ivory tower.

Anyway, after a few months at this job, I was starved for some life of the mind that, during my lunch break, I used to read those poli sci books that I'd somehow never quite finished when I was here. Some of those books were actually kind of interesting. It was a rude shock to see just how empty and robotic life can be when you don't care about what you're doing, and the only reason you're there is to pay the bills.
Thoreau said,

"the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."


That's one of those dumb cocktail quotations that will strike fear in your heart as you get older. Actually, I was leading a life of loud desperation.

When it seemed I would be writing about "Midnite Madness Sale-abrations" for the rest of my life, a friend used to console me that cream always rises to the top. I used to think, so do people who throw themselves into the sea.


I tell you all this because it's worth recognizing that there is no such thing as an overnight success. You will do well to cultivate the resources in yourself that bring you happiness outside of success or failure. The truth is, most of us discover where we are headed when we arrive. At that time, we turn around and say, yes, this is obviously where I was going all along. It's a good idea to try to enjoy the scenery on the detours, because you'll probably take a few.

I still haven't drawn the strip as long as it took me to get the job. To endure five years of rejection to get a job requires either a faith in oneself that borders on delusion, or a love of the work. I loved the work.
Drawing comic strips for five years without pay drove home the point that the fun of cartooning wasn't in the money; it was in the work. This turned out to be an important realization when my break finally came.

Like many people, I found that what I was chasing wasn't what I caught. I've wanted to be a cartoonist since I was old enough to read cartoons, and I never really thought about cartoons as being a business. It never occurred to me that a comic strip I created would be at the mercy of a bloodsucking corporate parasite called a syndicate, and that I'd be faced with countless ethical decisions masquerading as simple business decisions.
To make a business decision, you don't need much philosophy; all you need is greed, and maybe a little knowledge of how the game works.

As my comic strip became popular, the pressure to capitalize on that popularity increased to the point where I was spending almost as much time screaming at executives as drawing. Cartoon merchandising is a $12 billion dollar a year industry and the syndicate understandably wanted a piece of that pie. But the more I though about what they wanted to do with my creation, the more inconsistent it seemed with the reasons I draw cartoons.
Selling out is usually more a matter of buying in. Sell out, and you're really buying into someone else's system of values, rules and rewards.
The so-called "opportunity" I faced would have meant giving up my individual voice for that of a money-grubbing corporation. It would have meant my purpose in writing was to sell things, not say things. My pride in craft would be sacrificed to the efficiency of mass production and the work of assistants. Authorship would become committee decision. Creativity would become work for pay. Art would turn into commerce. In short, money was supposed to supply all the meaning I'd need.
What the syndicate wanted to do, in other words, was turn my comic strip into everything calculated, empty and robotic that I hated about my old job. They would turn my characters into television hucksters and T-shirt sloganeers and deprive me of characters that actually expressed my own thoughts.

On those terms, I found the offer easy to refuse. Unfortunately, the syndicate also found my refusal easy to refuse, and we've been fighting for over three years now. Such is American business, I guess, where the desire for obscene profit mutes any discussion of conscience.


You will find your own ethical dilemmas in all parts of your lives, both personal and professional. We all have different desires and needs, but if we don't discover what we want from ourselves and what we stand for, we will live passively and unfulfilled. Sooner or later, we are all asked to compromise ourselves and the things we care about. We define ourselves by our actions. With each decision, we tell ourselves and the world who we are. Think about what you want out of this life, and recognize that there are many kinds of success.
Many of you will be going on to law school, business school, medical school, or other graduate work, and you can expect the kind of starting salary that, with luck, will allow you to pay off your own tuition debts within your own lifetime.

But having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another.

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.
You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them.

To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.
Reading those turgid philosophers here in these remote stone buildings may not get you a job, but if those books have forced you to ask yourself questions about what makes life truthful, purposeful, meaningful, and redeeming, you have the Swiss Army Knife of mental tools, and it's going to come in handy all the time.

I think you'll find that Kenyon touched a deep part of you. These have been formative years. Chances are, at least of your roommates has taught you everything ugly about human nature you ever wanted to know.
With luck, you've also had a class that transmitted a spark of insight or interest you'd never had before. Cultivate that interest, and you may find a deeper meaning in your life that feeds your soul and spirit. Your preparation for the real world is not in the answers you've learned, but in the questions you've learned how to ask yourself.
Graduating from Kenyon, I suspect you'll find yourselves quite well prepared indeed.


I wish you all fulfillment and happiness. Congratulations on your achievement.


Bill Watterson

Safety Blankets

Update: Odhani..is a Gujrati song....(i thought as much ..but read somewhere it was a punjabi song..and it's not like i'm fluent in Gujrati:)..so i didnt check further...but my first guess was right....)

I thought I’d just run through what the past week has been like…at least some of it…. Seriously if I were a character in an Enid Blyton story book..my name would have been Miss Worry-A-Lot or something… so here it is things are pretty ok for the moment and I have no immediate problems to worry about…and for some bizarre reason my mind creates all these kinds of niggling worries this is totally out of my element (well not totally) but this kind of freaked me out because I usually don’t think of worst case scenarios… anyway after a few nights of bad dreams ( now I understand what it feels like to have them ) and feeling blue.. I decided to get my teddy bear (the same as the one pictured above) out of the showcase and back to its original place( ok I know a 25 year old sleeping with a teddy bear might indicate even more serious problems… and for a person who as a child never felt the need to or had any type of security blanket ..the pink bear did provide a lot of comfort ) oh and btw..my flatmate is coming tomorrow …so it should be good ..(Yea I wouldn’t recommend staying all by yourself in an apartment ).

Anyhoo , like how in my previous blog I was consoling myself about being in t-town , today was a landmark day in that I was consoling my self about being in the A-T-L, honestly it isn’t that bad the same way ttown wasn’t that bad : )..also I had heard of the place even before I came to America, it’s a major city in the South East at least , and home to CNN and Coca Cola..etc etc. .OK enough convincing myself..

I’ve gotten used to the schedule of getting up early as well… and the train system here. .Today was the first day I took my mp3 player with me while traveling… I didn’t carry it with me previously because I thought I would miss the announcements I the train ..But I’ve figured out the stops by now ..and the announcements are pretty loud :)…

Today morning , I saw two messages sent by my friends from undergrad….one was an email that brought back some bittersweet memories and the other scrap was from a junior (very much junior) about how she missed hostel life… my first impulse on reading the bittersweet email was ..’Jeez . even if now I feel like forgive and forget..it would mean all this effort for nothing , I mean things could go back to before but then all this effort of trying to stay apart would be wasted… I hate wasted effort!!.’ , at the “missing hostel comment’ ..I couldn’t empathize at this point ..the time I missed hostel was the two years after I left undergrad and was at home with my parents in Udipi.. right now I miss Udipi.. I read the following line in a blog I was lurking around days ago “No matter where you are , there’s always someone you’ll be missing” or something to that effect…

So here I was with my (generic) Mp3 player…and all I had to listen to were these 100 hindi remixes, and very few songs I actually wanted to listen to( one Kid Rock and three Fleetwood Mac songs)… most of the songs were directly loaded from a party playlist my ttown roommate had created… anyway the songs made waiting for the shuttle less tiresome.. and sometime during the end of the day on my way back from work ..i chanced upon this song . not something I had heard before (definitely from after I left India)its called Odhni Odhae To , ( I later find out it’s a Gujrati DJ Suketu remix) , it was a timepass, catchy remix number and I replayed it quite a few times…it was one of the songs I found perfect for journeys…long journeys…. in India…with the concrete roads and the trees and forests in the side like the ones in my native place…long journeys to my native place… oh yea I’ve made them by bus …from Dharwad ( the place where I studied for my undergrad degree)….DHARWAD!!! Why , in Dharwad I would have danced to this song in one of the “Discs” or parties we had once ever so often …( OK ,folks from undergrad who read this will find this slightly sad and lame)…but while I may not have ‘partied’ the most in undergrad.. I DID!!!… I really enjoyed myself in those parties and did dance my heart out.. with my classmates, guys and girls , from whom I have for various reasons distanced away from … I’ve met many people since then and have been to clubs in so many other places ..but I never could get my groove back…it was like I had lost it forever in Hubli ( the place where those parties were held )…not in the last two months in party city Wellington ,I was totally devoted to work the first eight …not in Tuscaloosa , though I did make an effort to go out when I had a chance… Those undergrad parties once a semester where my one chance at truancy with hostel rules ..the one night I would stay out late … not tell my parents ( though parental ESP did catch me at times , its funny though ,how my parents gave up the security of knowing where I was day and night once I left India ; I think it would take a lot of courage and trust to do such a thing); at Rs 150-200 a ticket going to those parties didn’t come cheap on a student budget ..but somehow I had a reputation for being the girl along with another friend who always went for these things… this fact was brought back to my attention by a rejected orkut testimonial!!! ..i don’t know if it was a good thing or if people thought we were the only morons who actually bought tickets and went stag to these things , but we sure had fun in our own way and that’s why we kept going…

It’s been a long time since those parties …people seemed so different from how they were in college when they danced , and for a town which didn’t have much of a social scene these parties were a good thing, I probably spoke to some of my peers for the first time then.. Things have changed now …. Two of the nicest guys I met in those parties have passed away, everyone’s scattered across the globe, some people got married , some couples broke up, some others became couples…and its been months or years since I’ve really spoken to anyone from that crowd…..

While I know I was naive then and it would be easy to think that everyone else was more worldly wise ..the fact remains that how much we held on to illusions of maturity or worldliness at that age, we really were innocent ..and now I wonder what it would be like to once again be that naïve FOB( from Dubai .but in a bad way : )) nineteen year old girl , with dubious dressing sense ( I still have dubious dressing sense ,but it was worse then, and my parents would probably never let me out of the house with half the things I wear…), partying away with her friends at Hans or Naveen in Hubli : ) …no I don’t miss my hostel days…but I relish the memories…

Which reminds me..one of the first things I wanted to do after getting a job.was to join funk or modern dance classes. .guess THAT isn’t going to happen soon…
Also , for the amount I’ve dissed on undergrad the fact remains …during the process of moving to ATL ,being the credit card maxed, last assistantship stipend- have to move into big city Apartment complex- student that I was ..I was at a point in time short of funds : ) before I could ask my equally cash strapped student friends or approach relatives. The person who volunteered to help even before I had the slightest inkling of a need was a girl who stayed in the same hostel as me for four years and has known me for eight years. I guess she knew enough of my credit worthiness to lend me the substantial lump some that I needed : ) ….( Has anyone else noticed how easily it was to borrow and lend rupees ,than it is to borrow and lend dollars : ) )

Am i misguided on my search for happiness...

I do see the value of Dan Gilbert's thoughts, incorporating them definitely would make me happy ... but... I wonder...

Why We Blog..

No TV at home...so I've been watching TEDTalks:)..Here's a good talk by the creator of Live Journal about what blogging means to her...

Why abundance of choice makes us miserable...

Barry Schwartz is a sociology professor at Swarthmore College and author of The Paradox of Choice. In this talk, he persuasively explains how and why the abundance of choice in modern society is actually making us miserable.

From the YouTube description

Limited Vocabulary and Landmark Posts

I’ve been harassed to the point of exasperation by my mom and my previous roommate for persistent use of ‘Ya’…Mom-“ You never used to speak like that, it shows that your vocabulary is seriously limited’ ; Shilpa: “ Girl, say Yea or Yes or I agree with you or OK even ..what’s “Ya”??? … … Honestly , I don’t know the answer either, I’ve started checking myself whenever I utter the dreaded monosyllable ….

While I continue to search for blogging inspiration ..and struggle with my limited vocabulary , Sharath climbs even higher in the echelons of blogdom… :) ..Here he is being cited by none other than Shashi Tharoor!!!

As is usually the case, the responses can broadly be divided into two categories: agreement (sometimes enthusiastic) and disagreement (often vehement). But many in both categories of respondents are willing to see some merit in the opposite point of view, which has led to somewhat more nuanced positions than anticipated by blogger Sharath Rao in Pennsylvania, who cheerfully wrote, "I will leave Mr. Tharoor to read his weekly quota of hate mails".

Travel Quotes

‘There’s no place like home… There’s no place like home ‘, and while I don’t have to keep repeating it like Dorothy did in the Wizard of Oz.. I know that the lines are true…nonetheless here are some travel quotes that I’ve found interesting, some even ring true…. …

"Travel is the realm of the improbable adventure, the quick fix, the ship passing in the night. It entitles you to meet interesting people, whom you would never meet, even if you laid traps or advertised for them. Not only do you meet them, but also unmeet them, all in the space of, it often seems, a mere compacted evening. As there is so little time, bodies in motion drop their guard and immediatly get on with their stories. Then the proverbial ships part, each to its destination, never again to brush each other's wake."
- Lawrence Millman, "Last Places”

". . . I am going away with him to an unknown country where I shall have no past and no name, and where I shall be born again with a new face and an untried heart."
- Colette

"Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of food, your closet full of clothes - with all this taken away, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That's not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating."
- Michael Crichton


"Internal burning . . . wandering fever . . ."
- Kalevala

"If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things."
- Henry Miller


"Eat dessert first
Life is uncertain"
- Anonymous

". . .life is short and the world is wide"
- Simon Raven

"When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. . . In other words, I don't improve, in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable."
- John Steinbeck

"Traveling is like flirting with life. It's like saying, 'I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.'"
- Lisa St. Aubin de Teran

"To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world."
- Freya Stark


"Traveling carries with it the curse of being at home everywhere and yet nowhere, for wherever one is some part of oneself remains on another continent."
- Margot Fonteyn

"A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it."
- George Moore 1852-1933: the Brook Kerith

"All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it."
- Samuel Johnson

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost"
- J. R. R. Tolkien "Lord of the Rings"


"All the above is, of course, a gross simplification. There are deeper reasons to travel - itches and tickles on the underbelly of the unconscious mind. We go where we need to go, and then try to figure out what we're doing there."
- Jeff Greenwald "Shopping for Buddhas"

"There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign."
- Robert Louis Stevenson

"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready. "
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going."
- Paul Theroux



"Muhammad says, 'Love of one's country is a part of the faith.'
But don't take that literally! Your real 'country' is where you're heading, not where you are.
Don't misread that hadith."
- Rumi

"Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest."
- The late modernist painter Georgia O'Keeffe, in an introduction to her work displayed on a newly opened museum dedicated to her art in New Mexico.

"Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty-his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure."
- Aldous Huxley

"Sailing round the world in a dirty gondola oh, to be back in the land of Coca-Cola!"
- Bob Dylan

"Travel at its truest is thus an ironic experience, and the best travelers . . . seem to be those able to hold two or three inconsistent ideas in their minds at the same time, or able to regard themselves as at once serious persons and clowns."
- Paul Fussel

"If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears."
- Glenn Clark

". . .If people and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not be much point in moving from one place to another."
- Paul Bowles

"A study of the Great Malady; horror of home."
- Baudelair, Journaux Intimes

"Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe."
- Anatole France

"When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don't know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in. . ."
- D. H. Lawrence

". . .the grand tour is just the inspired man's way of heading home."
- Paul Theroux

"To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries."
- Aldous Huxley


". . .travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living."
- Miriam Beard

"I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine."
- Caskie Stinnett

"Better far off to leave half the ruins and nine-tenths of the churches unseen and to see well the rest; to see them not once, but again and often again; to watch them, to learn them, to live with them, to love them, till they have become a part of life and life's recollections."
- Augustus Hare

"We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment."
- Hilaire Belloc

"When you are everywhere, you are nowhere.
When you are somewhere, you are everywhere."
- Rumi

"Spirit of place! It is for this we travel, to surprise its subtlety; and where it is a strong and dominant angel, that place, seen once, abides entire in the memory with all its own accidents, its habits, its breath, its name."
- Alice Meynell

"Old men and far travelers may lie with authority."
- Anonymous

"That same preface also contains a single line that really does sum everything up: 'Some other places were not so good but maybe we were not so good when we were in them.'"
- Jeff Greenwald - Big World dispatch #20


"He gave the impression that very many cities had rubbed him smooth."
- Graham Greene

"A good traveler has no fixed plan and is not intent on arriving."
- Lao Tzu

"Trust in Allah, but tie your camel."
- Old Muslim Proverb

"A good holiday is one that is spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours."
- J. B. Priestley

"There are only three things which make life worth living: to be writing a tolerably good book, to be in a dinner party of six, and to be travelling south with someone whom your conscience permits you to love."
- Cyril Connolly

"What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do -- especially in other people's minds. When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road."
- William Least Heat Moon, Blue Highways
"The journey not the arrival matters."
- T.S. Eliot

"Travelling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things - air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky - all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it."
- Cesare Pavese

"The border means more than a customs house, a passport officer, a man with a gun. Over there everything is going to be different; life is never going to be quite the same again after your passport has been stamped."
- Graham Greene

"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive."
- Robert Louis Stevenson

"Remember that happiness is a way of travel - not a destination."
- Roy M. Goodman

"Once in a while it really hits people that they don't have to experience the world in the way they have been told to."
- Alan Keightley

"Every exit is an entry somewhere else."
- Tom Stoppard

"The fastest way to travel is to be there already."
- Terry Pratchett

"It is not down in any map; true places never are."
- Herman Melville

"The first experience can never be repeated. The first love, the first sun-rise, the first South Sea Island, are memories apart, and touched a virginity of sense."
- Robert Louis Stevenson

"Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think."
- Lawrence Durrell

"Is there anything as horrible as starting on a trip? Once you're off, that's all right, but the last moments are earthquake and convulsion, and the feeling that you are a snail being pulled off your rock."
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

". . .Destination is merely a byproduct of the journey."
- Eric Hansen

"Too often. . .I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen."
- Louis L'Amour

"What am I doing here?"
- Rimbaud writing home from Ethiopia

"All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware."
- Martin Buber

"It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places."
- Paul Theroux

"One of the gladdest moments of human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of habit, the leaden weight of routine, the cloak of many cares and the slavery of home, man feels once more happy."
- Sir Richard Burton

". . .I have learned that the cost of everything from a royal suite to a bottle of soda water can be halved by the simple expedient of saying it must be halved."
- Robert Byron, on bargaining in the Middle East, The Road to Oxiana, 1933

"People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home."
- Dagobert D. Runes, US writer

"We are a plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can't think what anybody sees in them!"
- Bilbo to Gandalf on their first meeting

"Here I am, safely returned over those peaks from a journey far more beautiful and strange than anything I had hoped for or imagined - how is it that this safe return brings such regret?"
- Peter Matthiessen

"It is a strange thing to come home. While yet on the journey, you cannot at all realize how strange it will be."
- Selma Lagerlof

"It may be that the satisfaction I need depends on my going away, so that when I've gone and come back, I'll find it at home."
- Rumi

"If there is anything worse than the aching tedium of staring out of car windows, it is the irritation of getting tickets, packing, finding trains, lying in bouncing berths, washing without water, digging out passports, and fighting through customs. To live in Carlsbad is seemly and to loaf at San Remo healing to the soul, but to get from Carlsbad to San Remo is of the devil."
- Sinclair Lewis on the toil of travel

"An involuntary return to the point of departure is, without doubt, the most disturbing of all journeys."
- Iain Sinclair

"The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow it who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet."
- J.R.R Tolkien

"The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land;
it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land."
- G. K. Chesterton

"I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world."
- Mary Anne Radmacher Hershey

"One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it's left behind."
- Charles Dickens


"Travel is the most private of pleasures. There is no greater bore than the travel bore. We do not in the least want to hear what he has seen in Hong-Kong."
- Vita Sackville-West

". . .the understatement, the self-ridicule, the delight in the foreignness of foreigners, the complete denial of any attempt to enlist the sympathies of his readers in the hardships he has capriciously invited."
- Evelyn Waugh, on the properties of a good travel writer (speaking of Eric Newby)

"We found in the course of our journey the convenience of having disencumbered ourselves, by laying aside whatever we could spare; for it is not to be imagined without experience, how in climbing crags and treading bogs, and winding through narrow and obstructed passages, a little bulk will hinder, and a little weight will burden; or how often a man that has pleased himself at home with his own resolution, will, in the hour of darkness and fatigue, be content to leave behind him everything but himself."
- Samuel Johnson, on packing for travel

"These spiritual windowshoppers,
who idly ask, 'How much is that?' Oh, I'm just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.
What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.
But these walk into a shop,
and their whole lives pass suddenly in that moment,
in that shop.
Where did you go? 'Nowhere.'
What did you have to eat? 'Nothing much.'
Even if you don't know what you want,
buy something, to be part of the exchanging flow.
Start a huge, foolish project,
like Noah.
It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you."
- Rumi

"A year to go around the world! A whole twelve months of scenes and curious happenings in far-off foreign lands! You have thought of doing this, almost promised yourself that when you got old enough, and rich enough, and could "spare the time," you too would go around the world. Most of us get old enough; some of us get rich enough; but the time! the time! - to spare the time, to cut loose from goods and lands, from stocks and dreary desks, quit clients, patients, readers, home and friends - ay, and our enemies whom we so dearly love! Full many a promise must be broken and few the voyagers round the world."
- D.N. Richardson, "A Girdle Round the Earth", 1888

"In the old days, people used to risk their lives in India or in the Americas in order to bring back products which now seem to us to have been of comically little worth, such as [brazilwood and pepper, which] added a new range of sense experience to a civilization which had never suspected its own insipidity. . .[From] these same lands our modern Marco Polos now bring back the moral spices of which our society feels an increasing need as it is conscious of sinking further into boredom, but that this time they take the form of photographs, books, and travelers tales."
- Claude Levi-Strauss on the motivation of travel


"Back home in the Wild West, time whips by with the relentless and terrible purpose of a stranglevine vine filmed in fast motion. A week, two months, ten years snap past like amnesia, a continual barrage of workdays, appointments, dinner dates and laundromats, television shows and video cassettes, parking meters, paydays and phone calls.
You can watch it from Asia. You read the newspapers, you think about your friends back home - marching along in the parade of events - and you know it's still happening. It's happening there. On the other side. Yesterdays, todays and tomorrows are tumbling after each other like Sambo and the tiger, blending into an opaque and viscous ooze. There is no such thing as now; only a continual succession of laters, whipping their tendrils around the calendar. The clutches of the vine. . .
In Nepal, the phenomenon is reversed. Time is a stick of incense that burns without being consumed. One day can seem like a week; a week, like months. Mornings stretch out and crack their spines with the yogic impassivity of house cats. Afternoons bulge with a succulent ripeness, like fat peaches. There is time enough to do everything - write a letter, eat breakfast, read the paper, visit a shrine or two, listen to the birds, bicycle downtown to change money, buy postcards, shop for Buddhas - and arrive home in time for lunch."
- Jeff Greenwald "Shopping for Buddhas"

"[The traveler] may feel assured, he will meet with no difficulties or dangers, excepting in rare cases, nearly so bad as he beforehand anticipates. In a moral point of view, the effect ought to be, to teach him good-humored patience, freedom from selfishness, the habit of acting for himself, and of making the best of every occurrence. . . Traveling ought also to teach him distrust; but at the same time he will discover, how many truly kind-hearted people there are, with whom he never before had, or ever again will have any further communication, who yet are ready to offer him the most disinterested assistance."
- Charles Darwin

"Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living."
- Miriam Beard

"Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life."
- Jack Kerouac

"The autumn leaves are falling like rain,
Although my neighbors are all barbarians,
And you, you are a thousand miles away,
There are always two cups at my table"
- T'ang Dynasty

"Travel, instead of broadening the mind, often merely lengthens the conversation."
- Elizabeth Drew

"Own only what you can carry with you; know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag."
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"The map is not the territory."
- Alfred Korzybski

"Travel is glamorous only in retrospect."
- Paul Theroux

"If you come to a fork in the road, take it."
- Yogi Berra

"It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'as pretty as an airport' exist."
- Douglas Adams, "Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul"

"He won't fly on the Balinese airline, Garuda, because he won't fly on any airline where the pilots believe in reincarnation."
- Spalding Gray

". . . people don't take trips--trips take people."
- John Steinbeck

"I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list."
- Susan Sontag


"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance."
- Anonymous

"Most travel is best of all in the anticipation or the remembering; the reality has more to do with losing your luggage."
- Regina Nadelson

"I think that wherever your journey takes you, there are new gods waiting there, with divine patience -- and laughter."
- Susan M. Watkins


"There is no such thing as 'the Queen's English'. The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the shares!"
- Mark Twain, on English

"Travel - to go, move or journey from one place to another."
- Anonymous



By the time we are, in our superior wisdom, decided to make a start, we discover that those who have gone fearlessly on before, have, in their blundering way, traveled a considerable distance. If you start now, you will know a lot next year that you don't know now, and that you will not know next year, if you wait. The William Feather Magazine.

A traveller without observation is a bird without wings. Moslih Eddin Saadi (1184-1291)

A wise traveler never despises his own country. Carlo Goldoni.

When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable. Clifton Fadiman.


Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.
* Bertrand Russell



"It's a battered old suitcase and a hotel someplace and a wound that will never heal."
(Tom Waits)

"No one speaks English and everything is broken."
(Tom Waits)

"I love to travel, But hate to arrive."
(Albert Einstein)



"Don't tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you traveled."
(Mohammed)


"Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives, and the serious part of frivolous ones."
(Anne Sophie Swetchine)


"If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel."
(Will Kommen)


"It is solved by walking."
((Algerian Proverb))

"Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God."
(Kurt Vonnegut)



How beautiful it is to do nothing and then rest afterwards. Spanish Proverb
The further one goes the less one knows- Lao-tzu (sixth century BC)

I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts. Heman Melville

It's a death trap it's a suicide rap We gotta get out while we're young `Cause tramps like us baby we were born to run -Bruce Springsteen



Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore Andre Gide

The people here are bound to think this is the best place, or they wouldn't be here, would they? William Sutcliffe

A ship in harbor is safe -- but that is not what ships are for." --John A. Shedd

Let your heart guide you. It whispers so listen closely. -- The Land Before Time

A guest never forgets the host who had treated him kindly. Homer

Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time -Stephen Wright

Heroes take journeys confront dragons and discover the treasure of their true selves -Carol Pearson

I'd rather wake up in the middle of nowhere than in any city on earth. Steve McQueen

If an ass goes travelling he will not come home a horse Thomas Fuller

It was kind of solemn drifting down the big still river laying on our backs looking up at stars and we didn't even feel like talking aloud Mark Twain

Love has given me wings so I must fly. -- A Knight's Tale

NOT I NOT ANYONE else can travel that road for you You must travel it for yourself. Walt Whitman

O public road I say back I am not afraid to leave you yet I love you you express me better than I can express myself Walt Whitman

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry but by demonstrating that all peoples cry laugh eat worry and die it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other we may even become friends. Maya Angelou

Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough. Charles Dudley Warner

The only journey is the one within. Rainer Maria Rilke

The universe is a big place perhaps the biggest. Kurt Vonnegut

Travel has a way of stretching the mind. The stretch comes not from travel's immediate rewards the inevitable myriad new sights smells and sounds but with experiencing firsthand how others do differently what we believed to be the right and only way -Ralph Crawshaw


We don't go anywhere. Going somewhere is for squares. We just go! -Marlon Brando The Wild One (1954)

We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time T. S. Elliot
What we do in life echoes in eternity. -- Gladiator


Travel and society polish one, but a rolling stone gathers no moss, and a little moss is a good thing on a man.
- John Burroughs

To roam giddily, and be everywhere but at home, such freedom doth a banishment become.
- Dr. John Donne



Traveling makes men wiser, but less happy.
- Thomas Jefferson


We've traveled too far, and our momentum has taken over; we move idly towards eternity, without possibility of reprieve or hope of explanation.
- Tom Stoppard

The one before the movers show up

Okay its 2am and I have to sleep , but I have to capture this moment …. As you can see this post follows what seems to be a recurring theme this week …so at 11 pm Thursday evening I start doing what I should have done the minute I heard I got a job and had to move ; i.e. begin packing in earnest so that I would be ready for the movers who will show up 8 am Friday morning .i.e the next day !!!

I was busy returning library books, locker keys ,borrowed CD’s etc. today morning and collecting books from kind and accommodating homes ,back to my own.

My bookshelf took me a while to sort , basically stuffed my clothes into luggage , and I plan on getting up 6 am tomorrow so that I can sort out my cosmetics and jewelry ( junk jewelry!! I don’t have heap loads of gold here, but yes I hope to find my non-junk jewelry earrings and bracelet somewhere in the dresser drawers…

So the point of the exercise was to separate my stuff from the possessions of my two other flat mates and get rid of unnecessary things…I found my single glove from New Zealand.. tried it for size( it felt snug) …decided not to throw it(again!) . I found a recommendation letter a professor from undergrad in India had written while I was applying to graduate school …it was interesting to say the least .I’ve had to take recommendations from my NZ professors as well before coming to Alabama , and looking at one of the originals from India , just shows what a long journey it has been.

I saw my acceptance letter to school here, my social security application form (filled with the address of the people I was staying with when I first came.) and my tickets and boarding passes from when I first came to the US,

I did throw away a few papers ,but not much else ,which makes sense considering I’m such a packrat.

Three years worth of possessions move to Atlanta tomorrow.

Love Is....

More of the stuff stored ( and soon to be deleted ) from the previously mentioned PC...

From my desktop....

I’m cleaning up my office space in college, and deleting assignments , photos and other files from the computer I’ve used for past two years.. I found these quotes that I intended to post previously, but somehow didn’t ….

There is a dream dreaming us. -- A Kalahari Bushman, as quoted by Joseph Campbell

Did I do anything wrong today, or has the world always been like this and I've been too wrapped up in myself to notice?
—Arthur Dent (Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
—Douglas Adams

I had that sense of recognition . . . here was something which I had known all my life, only I didn't know it . . . . -- Ralph Vaughan Williams

The trouble with the future is that it keeps becoming the present. -- "Calvin and Hobbes"

Why be normal? -- Bumper sticker

I'd rather be reading! -- Bumper sticker

Do not think you are on the right road just because it is a well-beaten path. -- Unknown

If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience. -- Woodrow Wilson

It was so cold I almost got married. -- Shelley Winters, American actress

Law of Attraction

There is no condition that you cannot modify into something more, any more than there is any painting that you can paint and not like and just paint over it again. There are many limiting thoughts in the human environment that make it feel like it is not so, as you have these incurable illnesses, or these unchangeable conditions. But we say, they are only "unchangeable" because you believe that they are --- Abraham Hicks

I totally believe this and try to follow it.. I sincerely hope you will read the following and try to incorporate it into your living….. think good thoughts ..think good thoughts ( it’s difficult to follow after watching multiple episodes of Law and Order SVU though :S) …everyone is responsible for their life and what happens to them , and you can change your life with positive attraction …it’s tough to get rid of negative thoughts and believe in the best for yourself …but hey it’s helped me for the past seven years (if not more). If you believe I have achieved (or not achieved anything so far in my life ) …attribute it to the Law of Attraction…try and incorporate the Law of Attraction in your life……

Personally I try
1)to repeat good thoughts in my head.
2)Try to pray and put my faith in God .
3)Also distance myself from negative people ,who try to put negative thoughts about me or my loved ones in my head.. ( I think this is the most important factor that’s helped me ..i.e its ok to think that you are right and think positive thoughts about your self and appear stubborn ,than agree with someone who wants you to agree with negative opinions about yourself .)

Anyway read what the experts have to say….. I have to mention ‘Conversations with God”, “The Celestine Prophecy” , “The Alchemist” ,” Ask and it is Given”and ‘The Power of Positive Imaging “ hold positions of prime importance in my bookshelf….
This isn’t random New Age Stuff….. I remembered that I forgot after watching two one hour long Larry King Specials about it a month ago …..Please read the transcript of the show when you have the time.

From About.com (there’s a shortage of ‘scholarly’ articles about this philosophy)

Understanding the Law of Attraction
-Phylameana lila Désy
You likely know someone who is a great at manifesting. You may even have felt somewhat jealous of that person because it appears they have everything, seemingly getting these things with little effort as if they were born under a lucky star. Well, it may be that they very well were born with the knowledge of manifesting already intact. I say this because I believe once we learn something in another life (Yes, I believe in past lives, parallel existences) it is not lost, and that we can choose to bring those talents with us as we move into a new life experience.

Attracting abundance is knowledge. As any other skill people have, manifesting is no different from playing the piano or flipping pancakes in the air. How good you are at it depends on how efficient you have become at performing it.
And, although some of us are better at certain skills that doesn't mean the rest of us, with practice, can't improve or even surpass the talent expressed by another. Those people who are efficient in attracting have trained their minds to focus on their desires. They have learned it so well that they often times don't even realize how they do it. Abundance comes to them naturally. They wouldn't blink an eye if someone suggested they don't deserve something, it isn't part of their reality.

Grasping a better understanding of how the "law of attraction" works is the first step in bringing abundance into your life.

Law of Attraction

We create our own reality. We attract those things in our life (money, relationships, employment) that we focus on. I wish I could tell you that it is as simple as stating an affirmation, but no affirmation is going to work if your mind/thought is negating the positive.

When we focus on "having less" then we create that experience for ourselves. When we focus on "I hate my job" then we will never notice the aspects of our employment that might be satisfying. Basically, just wanting something isn't going to bring that to us when we continue to obsess on the not having of that something. All we will experience is "not having" and will be ultimately blocking our true desires.

Better to focus on a particular object or scenario rather than on winnings or cash.

Another mistake that we make is that we tend to think of abundance in terms of how much money we have in our bank accounts. I personally think focusing on winning the lottery is a fruitless event. Focusing on winning the lottery is kind of like focusing on "not having." I say this because of some discussions I've had with those who have held this desire, They have shared what they would do with the winnings if they won. Yet, some of the things they say they would do with the money they could actually already be doing with their current incomes on a smaller scale, but they don't. Why not? Because they cling to what they perceive as their "meager savings" with the attitude that they don't have enough out of fear. Here is an example of this:

A man's mother's has a car that is need of repair. Her son says "If I won the lottery I'd buy my mother a new car." But actually, the son has the means to take her car to the mechanics and pay out $400 needed in repairs to assure that his mom has a dependable car to drive back and forth to the market. When asked why he doesn't then just go ahead and have her current care repaired, he answers,"Well gee, I only have $800 in the bank, and doing that would knock out half my savings, what happens if my car needs repairs next week or my daughter gets sick and needs to see a doctor?"

So you see, the person's true focus is on "not enough" rather than being focused on winning the lottery. When we are focused on "not enough" it won't ever matter how much money we have, it will never be enough. Suggesting that he pay for his mother's car repairs brought his fears out into the open. It would be nice if the fellow could trust that by helping his mother and paying for the repairs he would not put himself at financial risk. But for the time being, while he feels he must hold onto that fear reality, I would suggest this man focus on visualizing his mother driving safely to and from the market in comfort and without experiencing any mechanical breakdowns. This would be a positive image/thought to get that picture to become a reality. Another suggestion would be to introduce "The Law of Attraction" to his mother so she can start attracting a new car for herself among other things she might desire.

If you have any questions ..just ask : ).I'm no expert but i can try to answer...

Old School

This picture literally bought tears to my eyes…( well almost) … apart from a uniform I never wore ( my sister did)and grass on the playground …school is exactly as I remember it ,buses and all…. . This is where I spent four hours a day , six days a week, thirty six weeks a year for fourteen years ..( twelve years with pretty much the same core group of girls …).

Those girls look so small( on second glance ..there are some boys i notice..)… when I was astudent that part of school was for tenth to twelfth graders , and for the time I was there tenth to twelfth graders seemed pretty grown up :)…
I want to go HOME!!!! .For those who I know want to see more here are more Dubai pictures.

About how life isn't always a Bollywood movie:)

First Person special

I fell in love - and she flew to Australia

How was 2006 for you? For the five people in our First Person special - from a pregnant teenager to an ill-starred lover - it was the year when everything changed. The first, Carl Carter, tells how he made the greatest romantic gesture of his life
Monday January 1, 2007

Guardian

Saturday

Eight weeks ago I spent £1,000 that I don't have on a flight to Australia. It was leaving that night. I'm no jet-setter, just your average twentysomething: single, flat-sharing and overdrawn. But something amazing had happened that left me with no choice.

It started in a nightclub when a girl called Kat came up and told me I looked bored. This was true - I'd been leaning against the wall, seeking refuge from the sea of sweaty bodies and crap music. The next night we went for dinner. We fed each other dim sum, talked for hours that felt like seconds, marvelling at how much we had in common. We're both passionate about travelling. We can both quote the entire script of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, giggling like schoolchildren into our cocktails. I'll spare you the mushy stuff. Suffice to say, I'd been waiting a long time to meet somebody like Kat. Kat was lovely. Kat thought I was lovely. And Kat was returning home to Australia in three days.

For the next few days, Kat moved in. I cooked her breakfast; we ate on the balcony, hands linked over the table, our breath steamy in the cold morning air. We played Scrabble on the lounge floor, then curled up and watched rubbish DVDs in bed. I took her to Heathrow on a rainy Tuesday night and waved a mournful goodbye. Neither of us talked about whether we'd meet again; I think I was scared I might hear the words "good while it lasted". "Hey, it's just a day away," said Kat, reading my mind. I nodded, gave her a long hug goodbye, and walked away.

Life stubbornly insisted upon continuation. It was the same job, the same house, the same routine, yet Kat was everywhere. She was the discarded cocoa mugs in the sink, the long chestnut hairs still in my bed, the DVD still spinning in the player. I took the plunge and phoned her the next day. I've always hated long-distance calls, but we chatted for hours. The next evening was spent doing the same; this was becoming addictive. I lay on my bed, staring at the same photos and wishing that they weren't of a person now on the other side of the world.

And that was when the idea occurred.

The next day, a week after we first met, I was on a bus back from the travel agent, clutching my plane ticket to Sydney. The flight left in five hours. And I hadn't told Kat.

Sunday

I arrived in Sydney after a torturous 26 hours. All I could think of was how Kat would react. Had I made the right decision by turning up unannounced? There was still time to call, still time to avert disaster, but the romantic in me wouldn't allow it. What was the point in spending a grand on the greatest romantic gesture of my life, only to blow the surprise?

On the drive to Canberra, the highway pushed south for a lonely 272km, giving me plenty of time to play out the following scenario in my head. I'd told Kat she was meeting a friend of mine, who happened to be passing through Canberra with a present from me. There was, of course, no such friend, and the person standing outside David Jones department store, next to the merry-go-round, at 1pm, would be me.

After delighting her with my arrival, the rough plan was to go for a drink, check myself into a hotel for the first night, then ... at this point the plan ended abruptly, as did the highway.

I made my way nervously to Canberra town centre 45 minutes early, and paced around, obsessing over my opening words. I settled on a casual, but jovial, "You're right, it is only a day away!" delivered from behind her back, to be replaced with a large grin when she turned around. Time passed in an odd, juddering way. At 1.02pm I was still pacing. And suddenly there she was. Standing with her back to me, peering around looking for my friend, every bit as beautiful as I remembered.

When she turned and saw me, I forgot everything. Her mouth dropped open and I blurted an odd, weak greeting, as if all this was perfectly normal. We had the briefest of clinches, then she said, "My mum and sister are here." This was very bad news.

She led me to a nearby bench, where a middle-aged woman sat with another in her 20s. "Mum, Hilary," explained Kat (and I could hear in her voice how freaked out she was), "this isn't Carl's friend. This is Carl." They smiled politely. I realised, with fleeting disappointment, that they hadn't been fully briefed. "We were just off to get some lunch," Kat said, and the four of us began walking.

This was not going to plan. All I wanted to do was fling my arms around her and tell her I really missed her, but, instead, I was being forced to assume the role of a placid freak who'd travelled the globe on a whim to "hang out" with a mate. Kat, left to assume whatever she liked, was looking increasingly alarmed. We had a light lunch in a cafe that played out like a Pinter scene with everybody discussing the price of milk and nobody daring to broach the topic of what this Englishman was doing at their table. The trickiest part came when her mother asked, "So, how did you and Kat meet?"

Mercifully, we were eventually left on our own and I drove us to a nearby park where we walked around, hands stuffed in pockets. I tried to put my arms around Kat, but it felt awkward and staged, like an over-eager date trying to cop a feel in the cinema. I sat on a bench and took a deep breath. Time to talk. I began with a stuttered apology for turning up out of the blue, a faltering explanation that I'd not meant it to be this scary.

"I don't know what to say," said Kat, after a pause that felt like eternity. "It was an amazing thing to do. It's just ... I don't know if things can be the same as they were in London. I've only just got home after two years abroad. I only just saw my mother again. I only just came out of a long relationship."

These statements rained down on me like meaty hailstones. I felt sick inside. It began to dawn on me how naive I'd been to assume we could carry on where we had left off. Kat took some of it back, sensing my disappointment and reassuring me that she was glad I was there. But then how could anyone reject me outright after I'd come 10,000 miles? What I had done was such an over-bloated gesture that any attempt at honesty would seem inappropriate. "I'm sorry it couldn't be how you planned," she said. "I think I just need a little time to adjust." I drove to a pokey motel on the other side of town, and sat in silence on the edge of the bed. Kat had half-heartedly invited me into the family home, but I declined; I felt I'd intruded enough already. I turned on my phone and it began to fill with messages from friends at home, tentatively asking how it had gone. I considered my response, and began to cry. A week suddenly felt like a long time.

Monday

I met Kat again. We had breakfast in a cafe like two relatives waiting for bad news in a hospital. After eating, we drove to Lake Burley Griffin and sat on a picnic mat, knees touching our foreheads, a metre-wide chasm between us. I asked myself: what have I done wrong? I'm still the same person she'd met in London.

Finally, I could bear it no longer and declared I was going home. Kat looked surprised, and for the first time I saw a flicker of something behind the gloom. "I really do want you here," she said, "but to be honest - what were you expecting?" The question caught me off-guard. "What you've done is incredible," she said. "Nobody's ever done anything like that for me before. But what the hell were you thinking, you idiot?" I smirked at this absurdity. Kat laughed, too. The tension was finally broken and we hugged tightly for what seemed like for ever.

I postponed my escape, accepting instead an invitation to lunch with the family and then, unexpectedly, things began to look up. The Englishman was a hit. Sitting at a pavement cafe, I shared jokes with the sisters and swapped stories with mum. I saw Kat looking proudly at me and hoped it was a good sign. We spent the afternoon and evening shopping together, but once again it became difficult, alternating between comfortable conversation and strained silences. I tried to play it cool, but I was trapped between Kat's need for an easy life and my own need for reassurance. The tension was driving me mad. Eventually, I came up with a plan. I'd head off to Sydney for a couple of days, give her some time, and return for the weekend. Maybe my second visit would feel more normal than the first.

Tuesday

We grabbed some lunch at a pavement cafe before my sojourn to Sydney. Confident of my plan, I felt less pressure, and conversation flowed easily. As I was talking, I noticed Kat looking at me in a funny way. Then, without warning, she leant forward, put a hand on my shoulder and kissed me, tenderly and warmly, on the lips. As soon as I relaxed and stopped pressuring her, it all seemed to work.

Finally, I was feeling the moment again, and Kat seemed to be, too. I kissed her a long goodbye until the weekend and drove off. I saw her face wrinkle into that cute smile as it receded in my rear-view mirror to a blur, a white dot and then nothing.

And that's the last time I saw her.

After two days in Sydney, I called, eager to make plans for the weekend, but got a shock. Kat sounded evasive. There would be family staying. We might not get time together. It might not be worth my while. I was about to launch into a persuasive counter-argument when something made me stop. And in that instant, everything became clear. There I was, miles from home, having emptied my wallet and bared my soul. If this was to continue, I would need a hell of a lot more back than I was getting. I swallowed hard, then told Kat I agreed. It wasn't worth my while. Maybe some other time. We'd stay in touch. With a heavy heart, I hung up, dialled the airline, and travelled home that same night.

Today

I'm back in London, wrapped in a woollen jumper, gazing out over the bleak winter skyline. It's two months since I stood in that manky nightclub and Kat walked over to alter the course of my life. I've recovered from the journey, but I haven't spoken to her since. She never did call, despite her promises. I still think about her a lot, but my friends are their usual brilliant, supportive selves. There's only been one embarrassing moment when I cried in their kitchen but I maintain that it was the tequila fumes.

In many ways, I've learned a lot. I don't regret going to Australia. If things had worked out, I'd be writing a very different, very smug story. Conversely, if I hadn't gone, I'd regret never knowing. I've always been an impatient romantic, and I now see that it's a selfish combination. I fall for people quickly and then make unreasonable demands on them to have similarly strong feelings back.

My journey has definitely changed me. Strangely, I feel more confident. It may not have worked out this time, but at least I am prepared to go to such lengths to answer life's questions. Would I do it again? Possibly. When you're loved-up, you make spontaneous decisions. But at what point does a big gesture cross the line from romantic to foolish?

Maddeningly, I still don't know. It scares me that one person can make me behave so irrationally and lay my heart open to such massive damage. But the world needs some craziness, otherwise it would be a very dull, predictable place. Maybe I'll just limit myself to European flights next time.