Or at least have a night mare!

Amharic book titles are getting out of hand. I feel like I'm casting spells.

For years my heart inquired of me by Hafez


For years my heart inquired of me
Where Jamshid's sacred cup might be,
And what was in its own possession
It asked from strangers, constantly;
Begging the pearl that's slipped its shell
From lost souls wandering by the sea.

Last night I took my troubles to The Magian sage whose keen eyes see
A hundred answers in the wine
Whose cup he, laughing, showed to me.
I questioned him, "When was this cup
That shows the world's reality

Handed to you?" He said, "The day
Heaven's vault of lapis lazuli
Was raised, and marvelous things took place
By Intellect's divine decree,
And Moses' miracles were made
And Sameri's apostasy."

He added then, "That friend they hanged                          
High on the looming gallows tree—
His sin was that he spoke of things
Which should be pondered secretly,
The page of truth his heart enclosed
Was annotated publicly.

But if the Holy Ghost once more
Should lend his aid to us we'd see
Others perform what Jesus did
Since in his heartsick anguish he
Was unaware that God was there
And called His name out ceaselessly."

I asked him next, "And beauties' curls
That tumble down so sinuously,
What is their meaning? Whence do they come?"
"Hafez," the sage replied to me,
"It's your distracted, lovelorn heart
That asks these questions constantly.

We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does anyone's life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness.

Movie- Shall We Dance

Your perfect messy bun, your moments of tenderness, how you look up at the sky and know, just know, and that conspiratorial smile up at God, the high notes you hit and the groovy move you pull in the kitchen, the little things you forgive the world for...so much goes unwitnessed.

We want the worst of us known too. To see if we could be loved nonetheless. Misguided attempts to replicate the love of God.

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

-W.B. Yeats

Eid Mubarak!

You have to keep weeding out and trimming and pruning. "Nature reclaims what's hers," they say. And your nature will always come to claim you. So, always keep your gardening tools about you. For all its abundance of life, we can't thrive in the wild.

The stories we are told as children do, undoubtedly, mark us for life.
They are often stories of dark and terrible things, and we are usually told them just before the lights are turned out and we are left alone; but we love them. We love them when we first hear them, and even when we are grown, and think we have forgotten them entirely, they never lose their power over us.

-Skin Lane, Neil Bartlett