Love Endures, Love Prevails

 Instead of the usual Harvard student's account of the period, with an uninspiring recitation of classes, chapel and walks about Cambridge, the diary contained a lock of chestnut brown hair, a cluster of pressed flowers and a handwritten poem of worshipful love and inconsolable loss.

Brian A. Sullivan was working as Harvard's senior reference archivist when he randomly pulled down a box of 19th-century student journals and was left spellbound by an extraordinarily vivid love story.
The inscription beneath the lock of hair read: ''Katie Loring's hair. Jan. 22, 1857.'' The poem, which began with a verse about ''a lovely girlish head, with falling tresses fair,'' and ended with ''a mother's dying head/ alone with a lock of hair,'' was dated March 13, 1894. Who was Katie Loring? Who was this Harvard student who had loved and lost her? What had happened between 1857 and 1894?

Leafing through the pages, Mr. Sullivan learned that the student diarist was Francis Ellingwood Abbot, class of 1859. Katie Loring was the soulful 17-year-old girl he had met at a party in Concord on Jan. 7, 1857 (''I thought of her all night instead of going to sleep. If there ever was a fool, his name was Frank Abbot''), and married three years later. Mr. Abbot had pasted the lock of young Katie Loring's hair in his journal, with his poem, after her death.

Standing in the vast underground archives, just across Harvard Yard from Hollis Hall, where Mr. Abbot had begun his journal as a freshman on Aug. 30, 1855 (''today I begin the first term of my freshman year, and at the same time, a new era in my life''), Mr. Sullivan could not put the journal down. While the entry from Dec. 25, 1856, concerned Mr. Abbot's lively conversation in Concord about poetry with one Henry David Thoreau, ''somewhat known for his writings,'' the journal Mr. Sullivan held was, more than anything, a record of a pure and all-consuming love.

''It was like a novel,'' Mr. Sullivan said, recalling that first glimpse, in the spring of 1996, of the story that he would spend the next several years plumbing. ''I was just stunned by the quality of the writing. He used dialogue, quoting his own words and those around him. That's an unusual component of any diary from any era.''

Last week Regan Books published the Victorian love story, ''If Ever Two Were One,'' that is Mr. Sullivan's compilation of those diaries, and of the hundreds of letters the lovers exchanged, from their courtship through 34 years of married life.

Different

How are we so "different"?

If "different" is just a thing.

If we all have certain features,

What does "different" bring?



People filled with hatred,

Can't possibly see,

That there's not really "differences"

Between you and me.



Looks can't show "difference",

If they're just there to be seen.

If you don't look like someone else,

Why are they so mean?



If being "different" is what is wrong,

I'd rather not be right.

And I'd want to finish living,

Doing the "different" fight.

 by Vincen Tabatha

Symphony In Red

Within the church
The solemn priests advance,
And the sunlight, stained by the heavy windows,
Dyes a yet richer red the scarlet banners
And the scarlet robes of the young boys that bear them,
And the thoughts of one of these are far away,
With carmined lips pouting an invitation,
Are with his love - his love, like a crimson poppy
Flaunting amid prim lupins;
And his ears hear nought of the words sung from the rubricked book,
And his heart is hot as the red sun.

by A.S.J. Tessimond 

Being Human

 This being human is a guest-house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,

Who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture.

Still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

                                                          Jalrudin Rumi

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —

(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

               So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

               And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

Is it perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

               And should I then presume?

               And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,

Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,

I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worth while,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—

If one, settling a pillow by her head

               Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;

               That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—

And this, and so much more?—

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth while

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

               “That is not it at all,

               That is not what I meant, at all.”

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

by T.S. Eliot

For You I Will

I am just a man,
A lowly man at that -
But I am proud of the man
That I am...

I once robbed banks,
Poisoned people with all kinds of drugs-
I hurt so many people -
And it never bothered me...

Along the way...

Until I met you....

People may look at my tattoos -
My record of incarceration -
The me that I had always been...

And never know the me
That I ended up to be...

Because in the end,
I became what I should've
Always been -
A man of love...

I am writing these few words
For no one but one single soul,
So she will know
That in the end...

You were the one...

The one...

That taught me what love
Was all about...

I live my days lonely...

Each day...

Every single day...

Knowing I could never find someone as special as you...

And...

I just had to say,
In these few words,
How much you meant to me...

Along the way...

Jeg elsker dig, Min Heidi, Med alle min hjerte...

I'll be waiting...

With open arms..

Little Things

I remember the way
your eyes would light up
when you smiled
And the way you would laugh
it would make me laugh, too
I miss all those little things
about you
I remember how happiness
was just an ordinary feeling
It wasn’t something
that we wished for
It just happened everyday
I miss all those little things
that have somehow slipped away
But as time went on
and the years began to take their toll
we forgot the little things
that filled our hearts and our soul
and somehow it all disappeared
I miss all those little things
about us during our best years
Life can be hard and it can hurt
sometimes we do or say something
we never really meant
and before we can take it back
the pain has sunk in
I miss all those little things
about us;
the things that made us strong,
and made us promise this was forever
no matter what went wrong
If we can remember that love was ours
once upon at time
and let go of the tough years and heartache
and take a moment to rewind
I know whe can find the happiness
that used to fill our lives everyday.
I miss all those little things that we used to be.

A Song For You

I have nothing more than I have right now,
Nothing more or less
Than what I have right now -
I took a step out of the womb,
A baby boy,
In search of something I could never find...
No one ever understood...

No one ever heard...

But....

I saw you....

Amidst a world so confused,
A world so lost...

So lost...

I am so lost.