ayaMMaya

Funny Excerpt From: Sloan, Louise. “Knock Yourself Up.”

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:11:09 -0500

“In the dairy industry, artificial insemination has been the norm for at least twenty-five years. Cows and bulls in this country almost never get to do it the old-fashioned way—farmers buy semen from the best bulls in the country, then often take it even further, flushing the ovaries of their best cows, doing in vitro fertilization and implanting sibling embryos into a bunch of unrelated surrogates.

When I was maybe fifteen, I got to help inseminate a Holstein. We herded her into a small V-shaped enclosure. Don, the cute young farm manager, pulled on a shoulder-length latex glove and threaded a long catheter into the cow as she struggled vainly to get away. I got to man the syringe and pull the trigger. Yep, knocked up a cow. Nice claim to fame for a city girl.

So, about twenty-five years later, there I was in the stirrups as the doctor pulled on latex gloves and started threading a long plastic tube into my uterus.

“I feel like a cow!” I whined to Dr. Kelly, and explained why. She laughed. “Actually, most of our technology does come from the dairy industry.”

Tell me about it. Moo.”

My affection goes with you, Rolling Junk - with you and with all...

Fri, 17 May 2013 09:48:42 -0500

My affection goes with you, Rolling Junk - with you and with all the faded trappings that have brightened my youth and glittered with hope or promise on the roads I have traveled - the roads that stretch on still, less white, less glamorous, under the stars and the thunder and the recurrent inevitable sun.
-F. Scott Fitzgerald, from The Cruise of the Rolling Junk

Michael Ondaatje

Mon, 13 May 2013 06:54:45 -0500

“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on my body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography — to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience. All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.”

Washington Irving: “A mother is the truest friend we have, when...

Sun, 12 May 2013 20:36:34 -0500

Washington Irving:

“A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.”

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

Tue, 07 May 2013 19:09:00 -0500



by E. E. Cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain,has such small hands

Ode to my new favorite vegetable…by GC aka BB Spoon River...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:10:18 -0500

Ode to my new favorite vegetable…by GC aka BB

Spoon River Vegetables

Radish

It is true.

I have squandered my life.

While the frugal celery

strove to tower,

and the conscientious pepper

struggled for dignity,

I was busy admiring the way

my healthy-rosebud-complexion

spread so evenly over

my satin polished skin,

taut over my

luscious rotundity.

I loved it there

in my darkness.

I relished the warmth

of the moist lover

enveloping my swelling belly.

How was I to know

I wore green flags on my head?

But I have never been angry.

I have no regrets.

When they pulled me

from the ground

the earth kissed me goodbye.

"“We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. We glorify killing on..."

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:56:56 -0500

“

“We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach nonviolence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some looks for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear; violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.”

”

- Robert F. Kennedy, Remarks to the Cleveland City Club, April 5, 1968

I recently met a man who perfectly embodies this cartoon...

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 18:43:53 -0500

I recently met a man who perfectly embodies this cartoon character. Fly on T.

Audio

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 10:56:56 -0500

Audio

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 10:32:00 -0500

Photo

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 10:32:00 -0500

Finish this sentence: “Just like in real...

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 12:56:13 -0500

Finish this sentence:
“Just like in real life…”

Mirage by Christina Rossetti

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 16:10:00 -0500

The hope I dreamed of was a dream,

Was but a dream; and now I wake

Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old,

For a dream’s sake.

I hang my harp upon a tree,

A weeping willow in a lake;

I hang my silenced harp there, wrung and snapt

For a dream’s sake.

Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart;

My silent heart, lie still and break:

Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed

For a dream’s sake.

If You Forget Me I want you to knowone thing. You know how...

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 20:15:01 -0500

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

Pablo Neruda

"By Sinji Moon: “…i’m scared. i’ve been scared. i’ve always been scared. my entire life..."

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 21:26:46 -0500

“

By Sinji Moon:

“…i’m scared. i’ve been scared. i’ve always been scared. my entire life has been me fearing myself and the world around me, putting all of the sadness somewhere inside of me and putting on this air of giddiness and happiness and contentedness when really, every time i do that i keep disappearing inside of myself…

[Sinji’s mother] “you’ve been hurt… you were hurt for so many years…and your sister shows it but you hide it inside of you and let it smolder and burn until you can no longer handle it.” and i sat at the side of my building half-crying half-laughing thinking about how it could be the case that i let myself fall into this so often. i have mastered escapism but i don’t want to escape anymore.”

”

Rain Alone, behind these dry walls, the rain outside left me...

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 18:49:52 -0500

Rain

Alone, behind these dry walls, the rain outside left me feeling wet and cold
Painful, eloquent words dripping on me, from me outwards and into you
Careful, with the fear of breaking up the tender spell, I drop the words on a page
Hoping, that you will sing in the rain and find me, so I can dance in comfort
Crying, without a single tear my song will reach out and find it’s way back.

There is a place in my heart reserved for beauty, even though it’s unwanted and cold, it’s there and I’m here and nothing will ever change that.
We can either learn to dance in the rain, together; or cry bitter raindrops creating circles on white pages, alone.

By Luko from Denmark

Antilamentation

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 11:30:56 -0600

Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering
any of it. Let’s stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.

— Dorianne Laux

I saw the city’s towers on a luminous pale-gray sky;...

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 23:14:00 -0600

I saw the city’s towers on a luminous pale-gray sky;
Beyond them a hill of the softest mistiest green,
With naught but frost and the coming of night between,
And a long thin cloud above the colour of August rye.
I sat in the midst of a plain on my snowshoes with bended knee
Where the thin wind stung my cheeks,
And the hard snow ran in little ripples and peaks,
Like the fretted floor of a white and petrified sea.
And a strange peace gathered about my soul and shone,
As I sat reflecting there,
In a world so mystically fair,
So deathly silent—I so utterly alone.

By Archibald Lampman

“In the southern Adriatic, where the blue begins, …” - George...

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 16:26:52 -0600

“In the southern Adriatic, where the blue begins, …” - George Bradley
Read more here: http://bit.ly/px9yDN

BLEAK WEATHER By Ella Wheeler Wilcox Dear love, where the red...

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 13:15:35 -0600

BLEAK WEATHER
By Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Dear love, where the red lillies blossomed and grew,
The white snows are falling;
And all through the wood, where I wandered with you,
The loud winds are calling;
And the robin that piped to us tune upon tune,
Neath the elm—you remember,
Over tree-top and mountain has followed the June,
And left us—December.

Has left, like a friend that is true in the sun,
And false in the shadows.
He has found new delights, in the land where he’s gone,
Greener woodlands and meadows.
What care we? let him go! let the snow shroud the lea,
Let it drift on the heather!
We can sing through it all; I have you—you have me,
And we’ll laugh at the weather.

The old year may die, and a new one be born
That is bleaker and colder;
But it cannot dismay us; we dare it—we scorn,
For love makes us bolder.
Ah Robin! sing loud on the far-distant lea,
Thou friend in fair weather;
But here is a song sung, that’s fuller of glee,
By two warm hearts together.