Would you be interested in writing a chapter for a swap? If you’ll write a chapter for one of my books I’ll read/heart/reblog/give feedback on anything you want. Just follow the link here:
Let me know! (If you have questions just ask:)
~ Liora
what childhood looks like.
(Source: tonsofphotographyxox, via tonsofphotographyxox)
The Call Of The Wild
Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there’s nothing else to gaze on,
Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,
Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,
Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?
Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,
Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?
Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God’s sake go and do it;
Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.Have you wandered in the wilderness, the sagebrush desolation,
The bunch-grass levels where the cattle graze?
Have you whistled bits of rag-time at the end of all creation,
And learned to know the desert’s little ways?
Have you camped upon the foothills, have you galloped o’er the ranges,
Have you roamed the arid sun-lands through and through?
Have you chummed up with the mesa? Do you know its moods and changes?
Then listen to the Wild — it’s calling you.Have you known the Great White Silence, not a snow-gemmed twig aquiver?
(Eternal truths that shame our soothing lies.)
Have you broken trail on snowshoes? mushed your huskies up the river,
Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize?
Have you marked the map’s void spaces, mingled with the mongrel races,
Felt the savage strength of brute in every thew?
And though grim as hell the worst is, can you round it off with curses?
Then hearken to the Wild — it’s wanting you.Have you suffered, starved and triumphed, groveled down, yet grasped at glory,
Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?
“Done things” just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,
Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?
Have you seen God in His splendors, heard the text that nature renders?
(You’ll never hear it in the family pew.)
The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things —
Then listen to the Wild — it’s calling you.They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their preaching,
They have soaked you in convention through and through;
They have put you in a showcase; you’re a credit to their teaching —
But can’t you hear the Wild? — it’s calling you.
Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;
Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There’s a whisper on the night-wind, there’s a star agleam to guide us,
And the Wild is calling, calling … let us go.
The funny thing about arguing that same-sex couples will damage the lives of the children they raise is that never once has a same-sex couple conceived a child by accident. Every single gay and lesbian couple who decided to have a child together must plan for it, often in great detail; whether this is a lesbian couple who need to find a sperm donor, a gay couple who must find a surrogate mother or either of these looking to go through the lengthy and often difficult process of adoption. Every single child brought into the home of a gay or lesbian couple is wanted.
(Source: bilvee, via onpointjams)
writing project for the day.
Of course there’s more than one, but in this post I’m going to focus on a contradiction which speaks to me personally in everyday life. I’m not expecting this post to change the way you think or the way you practice your religion. I just think this little chink in the armor ought to be pointed out.
Come gay people, come violators of the sabbath. Let’s go somewhere and actually be nice to people.
a poem I wrote inspired by Holocaust Remembrance Day 2012.
The Good Men Project:
The enemy of art
Is the ever-present, big, scary
Sharp-clawed, yellow-eyed, fire-breathing
English teacher.
You know I’m right.
If not for her,
You may have had a chance
To appreciate the works
Of William Shakespeare or George Orwell,
But instead they were shoved down your throat.
At a young age you were forced to bear witness
To the mortifying sight of these masterpieces
Being dissected, deformed, mutilated
And burned at the stake
As punishment for attempting to show us
A human experience.
We are taught to look at art and say,
“You’re trying to make me feel?
Well I’ll make YOU feel!”
And we tear them apart
And hang them by their thumbs
And return to our televisions,
Hoping they will cry themselves to sleep.
But sometimes, their screaming
Manages to penetrate our sleepy minds,
Shaking us awake and forcing us
To look them in the eye
Until we find the voice to say,
“Wow.”
Or perhaps they will be satisfied
With a sharp intake of breath,
Because art does not want to be analyzed,
Are just wants to be heard.
And I know for certain
That if you stand before a real work of art,
You stand in front of one of Picasso’s paintings
And humbly forget all the nonsense metaphors
You were told it contains,
And just listen,
Even today, so many years later
The painter’s own scream will reach your ears.
And I dare you to come back to me
And look me in the eye
And tell me it didn’t
Make your knees tremble.
I basically wanted to get these messages across when selling Seuss to UWS ‘rents. Sometimes it worked. Most of the time, I was met with silence. #LifeOfAnActivistBookSeller
(Source: foxxypants, via mknmv)
