cultural assertions

"These are tense times, but it is better think in terms of powerful and powerless communities, the secular politics of reason and ignorance, and universal principles of justice and injustice, than to wander off in search of vast abstractions that may give momentary satistfaction but little self-knowledge or informed analysis."

~Edward Said

persuasion

"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it... Dare not say that a man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant."

~jane austen

[in context]

“We’re not called to be colorblind at all... At the end of history, we’ll keep our ethnicity and culture. We won’t lose it; it will be redeemed. We’ll no longer fight each other but be reconciled. We’ll speak different languages but understand each other perfectly. We’re not to be colorblind but color-embracing. If it’s in God’s kingdom at the end, can ethnicity and culture be a curse? It can’t be. It must be good and intended.”
~james Choung [True Story]


Truth.

over the sea & far away

Over the sea and far away
She's waiting like an Iceberg
Waiting to change,
But she's cold inside
She wants to be like
the water,

Then the fire fades away
But most of everyday
Is full of tired excuses
But it's too hard to say
I wish it were simple
But we give up easily
You're close enough to see that
You're the other side of the world
to me

On comes the panic light
Holding on with fingers
and feelings alike
But the time has come
To move along

Can you help me?
Can you let me go
And can you still love me
When you can't see me anymore
~KT tunstall

quiet nights

Quiet nights of quiet stars
Quiet cords from my guitar
Floating on the silence that surrounds us

Quiet thoughts and quiet dreams
Quiet walks by quiet streams
And the window looking on the mountains and the sea how lovely
This is where i want to be
Here with you so close to me
Until the final flicker of life's ember
~diana krall

Spirit

His soul, overflowing with rapture, was craving for freedom and unlimited space. The vault of heaven, stuffed with softly shining stars, stretched wide and vast over him. From the zenith of the horizon the Milky Way stretched its two arms dimly across the sky. The fresh, motionless, still night enfolded the earth. The white towers and golden domes of the cathedrals gleamed against the sapphire sky. The gorgeous autumn flowers in the beds near the house went to sleep till morning. The silence of the earth seemed to merge into the silence of the heavens. The mystery of the earth came into contact with the mystery of the stars. Alyosha stood, gazed, and suddenly he threw himself down upon the earth. He did not know why he was embracing it. He could not have explained to himself why he longed so irresistibly to kiss it, to kiss it all, but h kissed it weeping, sobbing, and drenching it with his tears and vowed frenziedly to love it, to love it forever and ever. “Water the earth with the tears of your gladness and love those tears,” it rang in his soul. What was he weeping over? Oh, he was weeping in a rapture even more over those stars which were shining for him from the abyss of space and he was not ashamed of that ecstasy. It was as though the threads from all those innumerable worlds of God met all at once in his soul and was trembling all over as it came in contact with other worlds.
~the brothers karamazov

for good

Like a comet pulled from orbit
As it passes a sun
Like a stream that meets a boulder
Halfway through the wood
Who can say if I've been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good
~wicked

nothing this world can satisfy

For we, we are not long here
Our time is but a breath, so we better breathe it
And I, I was made to live, I was made to love, I was made to know you
Hope is coming for me
Hope, He's coming
~brooke fraser

more than it seems

Is my imagination running away or is all this really happening to me?
Am I a prince[ss] in a far-away land filled with fantasy?

Where is reailty and what are the actions that will define who I am?
I am holding on to the visions I've seen of what I could be
It's what I should be

More than it seems these dreams inside blur reality's line
If I could believe the dreams aside, I am capable more than it seems

More than it seems

Passing through darkness into my own world
Will I be more than when I left, be more than when I left?
Never letting go of the lessons I've learned, this will make a change
A change within me

This time I won't run away
I found the strength to fight life's long days
This time I won't run away

~kutless