Liora Sophie

Free Publishing!

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 11:37:56 +0200

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.

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 02:34:18 +0300

what childhood looks like.

"The Call Of The Wild Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there’s nothing else to gaze..."

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 02:31:04 +0300

“

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.

”

- Robert William Service

"The funny thing about arguing that same-sex couples will damage the lives of the children they raise..."

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 16:17:47 +0300

“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.”

- The L Wire (via fujiidom)

writing project for the day.

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 16:16:11 +0300

writing project for the day.

We Have a Contradiction in Judaism.

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 20:59:20 +0300

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.

I was raised that the most basic principle of judaism is to love your neighbor like yourself. Do not do to another what you wouldn’t want done to you, and all the rest is commentary. That is how I practice my religion. By being open and accepting whenever possible, being slow to judge, giving out kindness. I believe those are the most meaningful ways for me to be a jew. And of course everyone is entitled to make that decision for themselves. But I think ואהבת לרעך כמוך is a very high priority.

I get the message, from studying torah and growing up in a jewish community, that keeping the sabbath is also pretty high up there on the scale of important laws. In fact, we can see examples in the bible where violating the sabbath publicly is punishable by a horrible death. And yet, I’ve noticed that in our generation, even in the case of a person who is publicly violating the sabbath, it is acceptible to treat them with proper respect - even expected. You might be looked down upon if you think otherwise. Our leaders have made the decision that loving your neighbor is more important than providing the proper punishment to those who violate the sabbath. And I’m proud to say I agree with them.

There’s another commandment which the jewish community is pretty hung up on, though. It has come to the point where not only do our leaders encourage shunning and oppression of people who sin, individuals take it upon themselves to punish these people in their own judgement. Where the rabbis are lenient in the case of the sabbath, which is taken very seriously in the original text, they will not budge in the case of a person who publicly or privately does this one thing, which is mentioned in passing amidst a list of much worse things, and the bible is pretty clear that if there’s any punishment at all, it’s completely up to God. I am talking about homosexuality. (Isn’t that what I always talk about?

So can you understand why I’m a little bit confused? The torah states specifically that people who violate the sabbath should be killed, and that the community has a responsibility to carry out their punishment, and yet, we choose not to. We choose to value love over the death of our people. In the case of a person who is gay, we have no responsibility to punish them, which I think means it’s none of our business. But we choose to shun them, and put them through all sort os craziness trying to convince them to change something they might not know how, or may not want to. We tag them as diseased, dangerous, contageous, sinners. We distance our children from them. We mourn them when they are in fact flourishing, successful people. We choose to value punishment over love.

And here’s another thing. We talk a lot about modesty, like wearing long sleeves is the most important thing a woman could possibly ever do. We treat the subject of sex like a taboo. We don’t talk about straight sex in public, and yet we make a public judgement based on someone’s choice of partner. That seems like an interesting set of ideals. Huh.

I consider myself extremely lucky that I have the ability to be happy in a straight relationship so I don’t have to put up with all of the community’s bullshit. But I also firmly believe that it’s my choice to be in a relationship with whoever I want, and that it’s no one else’s business. I’m not going to try and change to make it harder for strangers to hate me. I’m not going to make someone else suffer in a relationship with someone who isn’t attracted to them. I’m not going to choose hate over love. I think that loving one’s neighbor is a higher priority than sticking your nose into someone’s private bedroom business and choosing to shun them based on something you don’t actually know.

Come gay people, come violators of the sabbath. Let’s go somewhere and actually be nice to people.

If You Can Look At Me and See a Person

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 19:44:00 +0300

If You Can Look At Me and See a Person:

a poem I wrote inspired by Holocaust Remembrance Day 2012.

READ THIS. NOW.

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 23:06:43 +0200

READ THIS. NOW.:

The Good Men Project:

The Myth: Men Are Horny, Women Are Not

The Enemy of Art

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 20:49:13 +0200

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.

itsthemusicpeople: I basically wanted to get these messages...

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 20:39:18 +0200

itsthemusicpeople:

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

“Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I...

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:18:11 +0200

“Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”

God she’s good with her metaphors.

"There is an unbelievable arrogance in trying to write something, even more arrogance in expecting..."

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:11:36 +0200

“There is an unbelievable arrogance in trying to write something, even more arrogance in expecting someone to pay money to read it.”

- David Foster Wallace (via paperlover)

"Virginia Woolf said that writers must be androgynous. I’ll go a step further. You must be bisexual."

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 10:50:41 +0200

“Virginia Woolf said that writers must be androgynous. I’ll go a step further. You must be bisexual.”

- Rita Mae Brown (via sapphosnymph)

Jerusalem's Most Cliche Couples

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 11:07:00 +0200

The OMGADORABLE Couple

The PDA Couple

The BFF with Laptops Couple

The Shomer Couple

The Happily Ever After Couple

"And that’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too."

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:46:46 +0200

“And that’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”

- Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner (via pleuvoire)

Alice's Unhelpful Writing Tips of Glory and Wonder #132

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 22:44:36 +0200

alicevernon:

‘Pin the Manuscript on the Publisher’ is a lesser-known writing game. Firstly, you need to find a street on which a publishing house is based. Next, stand on the pavement with your manuscript (unstapled) on a particularly windy day. Wait for a literary fellow to emerge for their lunchtime Subway, and let go of your manuscript like Anna Paquin in Fly Away Home. If you’ve judged it correctly, several pages should stick to the person’s face, thus attracting their undivided attention to it.

Also, in the event that they read your manuscript and have the nerve to reject it, read How to respond to a Rejection Letter. It’s funny!

thefifthelephant: By Adam Quest “Open your mind”

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:01:13 +0200

thefifthelephant:

By Adam Quest “Open your mind”

"Stop caring what other people think. How? Understand that this is your life, not theirs, and you’ll..."

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 20:20:14 +0200

““Stop caring what other people think. How? Understand that this is your life, not theirs, and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself if things don’t work out the way you’d hoped…their opinion shouldn’t matter more than your own.””

- Stephanie Klein (via creatingaquietmind)

Can You Help Me Be Featured on Seventeen Magazine?

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 20:01:06 +0200

Answer: YES!

Does it cost money? No!

Is it awesome? YES!

What do I need to do:

Follow the link to my story, “The Night I Crashed a Cello Concert” and if you have an account on Figment, please heart it. If you don’t have one you can create a free account and give it a heart. All hearts and follows will be paid back in turn! :) So if you feel like doing something good while being lazy, here’s a perfect opportunity to help me win the seventeen magazine contest. I will love you forever for it!

THANKSSSSS AMIGOS! <3

Disbelief

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 19:20:44 +0200

Disbelief:

Told from the point of view of someone who is different, observing an occurrence which everyone around him takes to be a miracle. This story begins with a troop of tired, cranky soldiers, euphoric and exhausted from their recent victory…

Happy Hanukkah!