Women over 40

As I grow in age, I value women who are over forty most of all. Here are just a few reasons why: A woman over forty will never wake you in the middle of the night to ask, “What are you thinking?” She doesn’t care what you think.

If a woman over forty doesn’t want to watch the game, she doesn’t sit around whining about it. She does something she wants to do. And, it’s usually something more interesting.

A woman over forty knows herself well enough to be assured in who she is, what she is, what she wants and from whom. Few women past the age of forty give a hoot what you might think about her or what she’s doing.

Women over forty are dignified. They seldom have a screaming match with you at the opera or in the middle of an expensive restaurant. Of course, if you deserve it, they won’t hesitate to shoot you, if they think they can get away with it.

Older women are generous with praise, often undeserved. They know what it’s like to be unappreciated.

A woman over forty has the self-assurance to introduce you to her women friends. A younger woman with a man will often ignore even her best friend because she doesn’t trust the guy with other women. Women over forty couldn’t care less if you’re attracted to her friends because she knows her friends won’t betray her.

Women get psychic as they age. You never have to confess your sins to a woman over forty. They always know.

A woman over forty looks good wearing bright red lipstick. This is not true of younger women. Once you get past a wrinkle or two, a woman over forty is far sexier than her younger counterpart.

Older women are forthright and honest. They’ll tell you right off if you are a jerk, if you are acting like one! You don’t ever have to wonder where you stand with her.

Yes, we praise women over forty for a multitude of reasons. Unfortunately, it’s not reciprocal. For every stunning, smart, well-coiffed hot woman of forty-plus, there is a bald, paunchy relic in yellow pants making a fool of himself with some twenty-two-year-old waitress.

Ladies, I apologize.

For all those men who say, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free,” here’s an update for you. Now 80 percent of women are against marriage, why? Because women realize it’s not worth buying an entire pig, just to get a little sausage.



Saw this piece on facebook, attributed to Andy Rooney, and of course, being me, I had to verify that before I put it up myself and it turns out he liked it, but didn't write it and was annoyed that people kept attributing it to him. Someone said that Frank Kasier wrote it but I read his piece and while it is very similar and clearly the originating story, it's not as elegant. So this is a piece that's been honed anonymously, till we get to this... and I very much like it! Love the image too...

Verifying everything

Quote Investigator is the sort of site I really like - it verifies quotes. I found it when I read on a facebook link - be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle - attributed to Plato. It's a sentiment I agree with, but it does not sound like the Plato I know...

So I googled it and came to this site - which finds it came into existence about 120 years ago at the earliest and possibly even sooner than that.

Do love the web, it both creates and destroys myths with the same charming abandon...


(and the picture is Picasso, but I don't know the title)

The Invitation

I first came across this when I was working at South Pacific Private Hospital, and I loved it then and it hasn't lost its perfume over the years, it's still wild and untamed and joyous... Enjoy


It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithlessand therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day,and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

by
Oriah Mountain Dreamer
copyright © 1999 by Oriah Mountain Dreamer.

Celebrity Marriages

Why am I irritated that Kim Kardashian is filing for divorce after 72 days of marriage? Because it debases the entire concept of marriage. Clearly the entire thing was a ratings game. Fine. But she has trivialized something meaningful.


When I read news like this, and then I hear people squawk against gay marriage, because it 'should only be between a man and a woman' I get cranky. If fools can spend ten million dollars on a ratings extravaganza, if reality shows can end with engineered marriages, then why can't people in committed relationships get married and share 401K's and bank accounts and children?

Birthday Wishes

Here's my quote of the year -

No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of 48

H.L. Mencken US writer and humorist


And here I am, 48 years old and very happy to be here!

Loving what we want to see...

“I loved something I made up, something that’s just as dead as Melly is. I made a pretty suit of clothes and fell in love with it. And when Ashley came riding along, so handsome, so different, I put that suit on him and made him wear it whether it fitted him or not. And I wouldn’t see what he really was. I kept on loving the pretty clothes—and not him at all.”
Scarlett in Gone with the Wind

I see people do this all the time...

the older I get, the more I love poetry...

Watching the Hour on BBC America, with all the family, seeing 1956 come to life again, and one of the characters quotes e e cummings. What a genius that man was... there is something about his love poetry especially, which is just so tender and beautiful


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



do so love the 'net - where else would I find such a perfect image! and thanks to Pilar Pedrosa Pilar for putting it on her body!
and to Will Cook for the beautiful flower photo

September 11th...

I've been reading about September 11th and seen some new and thoughtful photos I hadn't seen before, so I'm putting here, in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the event that happened a few blocks away from where I live... We were not here on the day, we arrived about 5 months afterwards, but the day is very alive here (as indeed, it was in Sydney, which is where I was at the time)



I found the photo by Thomas Hoepker in an article in the Guardian about it

Then I saw this image taken by Matt Weber


which lead me to the poem by Auden...



Musee des Beaux Arts
W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.


In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.



Love how poetry can put everything in perspective, and show the terror and the beauty, the mundane and the exceptional, and what you see all depends where look...

Independence Day

I was writing about Independence day in my tarot blog and quoted from John Donne, so I went to look it up to make sure that I got it right..



Meditation XVII

No man is an island, entire of itself
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main
if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
it tolls for thee.


I know I often worry about the cost of a liberal arts education, and though it didn't give me the clear career path I thought I wanted in my 20's, it's serving me well these nearly 30 years later, as I recall poems and writers I read then, and who speak even louder to me now...

Perfect love song...

For You...



For you I want to sing a happier song
for you I'm gonna try to right all my wrongs
for you I'm gonna break my bad habits
there's a golden ring and I want you to have it
there's a golden ring and I want you

For you I'm gonna sit and patiently wait
it's great if you're early but if its fine if you're late
for you I feel love and I just want to show it
you're a beautiful girl and want you to know it
you're a beautiful girl and want you to know it
you're a beautiful girl and want you to know it
it's an infinite world and I want you

Once again I am opened
Once again I am opened
Once again I am opened
Once again I am opened

For you I'm waiting on the ticket line
I gotta get back I don't wanna waste time
but the people are tired and the line is so long
so all I can do is sing this song

X factor

If I list the films I've seen this year, you will immediately know I have a teenage son. Thankfully I don't have to see the real kiddie stuff anymore, but I do have to see the blockbusters. We saw Thor recently, and I guess if I had heard nothing about it, I might have enjoyed it more, but because people were raving, I was disappointed. Kenneth Brannagh is a Shakespearian director but there was no Shakespearian grandeur there, it was just too slight and silly for me.


Last night we went and saw the X men prequel, X Men, First Class. I realized that I have never seen another x men film, because I could see that there were nuances that I wasn't getting. But even with no knowledge, this was a multi leveled, well acted interesting film. I liked how they tied in all the fears of the post WWII era - eugenics, superior races and nuclear war. Then I read this article in Fox -, all concerned about its 'gay agenda' but in particular wanting to have a discussion about Evolution.


From the tone and content, it was clear that the author and perhaps much of the readership, think evolution has made humans and stopped. We are a pinnacle piece. But that is completely wrong. Evolution never ends. We are continuously evolving, and in a million years, humans we will be physically and intellectually different to how they are today. We are evolving socially far more quickly than we are evolving physically, but every day, natural selection - through nature and through cultural elements, allows some humans to thrive and others not, and the ones who thrive have children with a far better chance of survival. As long as we exist, our species is evolving. And so the dance continues...

Kindle update

I realize that every 3 months or so I write another piece about Kindle, but it is so much part of my life right now, and it's evolving...



So my first concern about Kindles was that it was great for first reads (want it, it's here, in your home, at the beach, where ever, in your hand, really in an instant!) but I am a frequent re-reader and was concerned about that. But then I really started to make good use of the write your own notes or make your own highlights option. Now as I pass sentences that make me smile or think or just are beautifully written, I highlight them. So if I think of the of book and try to recall the sentence I want, all I have to do is look at my notes, and there it is. No more flipping back and forth through pages getting myself lost. Everything I want, at my fingertips.

I would still encourage Amazon to have pictures besides their title listings - I don't judge books by their covers, but I still remember books more from their covers than their titles. I take most books off my kindle, and down load them as I want. I guess I could hold them in folders on my kindle, but moving them to and fro is effortless and leaves my kindle with all it's memory intact.

I know that I love my kindle, (above is the pretty apple green cover I chose for it) because when I was recently given the choice between reading a book in paperback or on kindle, I chose the kindle. I have evolved :)

New Quote

Somewhere I had read this and had erroneously attributed it to Nelson Mandela, but apparently Marianne Williamson said it. Either way, it's a beautiful piece -

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Beautiful picture is by Ruth Palmer and called Lifeline and you can buy your own copy here

Gay Romance in Video Games

I stumbled across a discussion about a newly released game Dragon Age 2, which, shockingly, allowed for a gay romance option as well as a straight romance option. Some of the (straight male) gamers were distressed. The company replied with a long screed (you can read all of it here) but this is the paragraph that caught my eye:

And if there is any doubt why such an opinion might be met with hostility, it has to do with privilege. You can write it off as "political correctness" if you wish, but the truth is that privilege always lies with the majority. They're so used to being catered to that they see the lack of catering as an imbalance. They don't see anything wrong with having things set up to suit them, what's every one's fuss all about? That's the way it should be, any everyone else should be used to not getting what they want.

It's such a good argument for any majority rule... if the majority isn't specifically catered to, it feels neglected and put upon. I really liked it. If there's that level of thought behind it, I'm almost tempted to go out and buy the game!

Persistence quote

This is how my mind works... I talk with a friend and remember half a sentence from somewhere (some general, maybe a president, said something powerful about perseverance.) Not being a child of this century, I can't look it up there and then on my iphone, even though I own an iphone. What I do, is come home later, google my hodgepodge of ideas and find the right quote. At least I know a quote to look for!


“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race”
- Calvin Coolidge

And you know something... he's right!

A well written sentence that caught my eye

I read so much, and sometimes the issue is interesting and sometimes the way it is told is what catches my attention and this sentence works both ways:-

There’s a funny moment in Martin Amis’s 1984 novel “Money” in which his narrator declares: “Unless I specifically inform you otherwise, I’m always smoking another cigarette.” About Greg O’Connell, it feels safe to say: Unless I specifically inform you otherwise, his cellphone is always pinging

From a nice story in the New York Times about Greg O'Connell, fixer upper of old neighborhoods, bringing the right energy back...
I like to read about people who know that if you aren't after the biggest amount of profit in the shortest amount of time, you can make a very decent living, being a decent person and improving the world around you. A note to the developers out there - it's not rocket science; just patience.

Jewels

3 things about Jewels



Today I had a radio interview with Deirdre Hughey (I'll put links up to it when she gets them up) and she ends each interview asking for a song that has meaning for you, and I chose Hands by Jewel, I love the line – in the end, only kindness matters… If I had to stand on one foot and describe my belief system, that pretty much covers it...

Secondly, I a beading queen, I collect beads and occasionally make necklaces out of them, and even more occasionally do I wear the necklaces I make, but I've made enough now, so I don't buy other people's jewellery, but I was looking for images for a piece I am writing for my tarot blog, and I came across David Weitzman's designs - and he had some beautiful stuff on it, and I decided rather than just bookmark it and never find it again, I would list it here, and have a better chance of visiting him from time to time...


And finally, the prettiest beading designs I come across, with no spiritual meaning at all, are on Gilt.com - I get emails from them daily and buy something maybe twice a year, but I'm often looking at their designs, thinking, I could make that... and perhaps one day I will

Perfect

People send around these things and some are silly and some are boring and some are just... perfect.



Everything about this charming piece works, from the music to the clock flying through the hours to the list of books used at the end. Enjoy!