The Earth - Sinister

For the 200,000 plus who perished in the tsunami

The silent Earth - sinister,
Now quakes in laughter,
And spreads its wicked smile
Mile after mile.

Inconsolable Father,
Where is your daughter?
And where's her winning smile?!
Love's little smile!

-written after the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake

Questions, questions, questions...

What is the distance in round meters between the sun and oranges?

Who wakes up the sun when it falls asleep on its burning bed?

Does the earth sing like a cricket in the music of the heavens?

Is it true that sadness is thick and melancholy thin?

-Pablo Neruda (The Book of Questions)

What color bleeds from your spirit?

Did Jesus ever step on an ant?

Is the young hyena insecure about its laugh?

How can roses grow in cemetaries with utter indifference?

What is the value of a thimble-full of pure joy?

-Prague :)

On watching "The Pianist"

Here's a small dedication:

Frozen Jews
Avrom Sutzkever
July 10, 1944

Have you seen, in fields of snow, frozen Jews, row on row? Blue marble forms lying, not breathing, not dying.

Somewhere a flicker of a frozen soul - glint of fish in an icy swell. All brood. Speech and silence are one. Night snow encases the sun.

A smile glows immobile from a rose lip's chill. Baby and mother, side by side. Odd that her nipple's dried.

Fist, fixed in ice, of a naked old man: the power's undone in his hand. I've sampled death in all guises. Nothing surprises.

Yet a frost in July in this heat - a crazy assault in the street. I and blue carrion, face to face. Frozen Jews in a snowy space.

Marble shrouds my skin. Words ebb. Light grows thin. I'm frozen, I'm rooted in place like the naked old man enfeebled by ice.

Why Anything?

Why is there something rather than nothing?

-Bede Rundle (and, as Mircion has correctly pointed out, many others:)

Possibly the greatest philosophical question of all time...Why anything? Why you? Why the illimitable universe? Why the diminutive atom? Why is there a rose in this great garden? and all "the dearest freshness deep down things"? (GM Hopkins) Why do you see? Beauty? and, each morning, "Dawn's rose fingers touch the sky"? (Homer) Why do you hear? the poetry of Music? and the music of Poetry? Sound? the Voices of one another? the Wind? Why do we feel in our hearts? Hope? and, at moments, are sent into "boundless vistas of light"? (Tolstoy) Why Family? Friends? Memories? History? Pain? Why this searching in our minds and this longing in our hearts? Why are we not unintelligent beasts? wandering about in darkness - ignorant even of our own ignorance? Why not nothing?

From what root did all this life spring from? (The Thin Red Line)

just testing

this is a test of the emergency blogging system. if this was not a test it would not say that it was a test.