Minds are like parachutes...

That is just too beautiful not to share: Minds are like parachutes—not much good unless they are open. Taken from here.

the one with the partner in crime

A friend is someone who would bail you out of jail, a best friend would be sitting beside you saying 'Damn that was fun'

The Boys of Summer by Don Henley

E=mc2

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it. Albert Einstein

rabbits

Don't you just love those of your friends who can always come up with an appropriate poem, quote or any other form of cultural reference to anything that you say, pulling them out of their memory as magicians pull out rabbits from their hats?

Last Thursday I shared with Assen and Ganka theory on "men's modes" presented to me some time ago by Lev. According to this theory men have 4 modes: eating, sleeping, fucking and bullshitting. Assen contemplated on that for a second and then with all the seriousness said: "Lev forgot about one more mode: shitting. As Bukowski says: A man can go seventy years without a piece of ass, but he can die in a week without a bowel movement." It's good to know that men are that simple.

Other example. Yesterday I was skyping with BB and somehow we got into the subject of who is sleeping or sleeping not with whom, why and why not, and also who finds whom attractive, and again why and why not. There, not the first and surely not the last time in my life, I had to admit that (esthetically) I find girls much more attractive than guys. BB kindly suggested that maybe then I should consider dating girls. I told him that I did not think that it was what I wanted as I tend to enjoy sex with guys a lot, and even though I could imagine somehow technically solving this issue, still - maybe because I have a battered wife syndrome or something - I simply like guys regardless of their physical appearance. To that Bartek came up with Shakespeare's sonnet: Were kisses all the joys in bed, One woman would another wed. (Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music, IV)
I asked him if he knew all Shakespeare's sonnets, and I said that he definitely should, as then all girls would find him irresistible. He answered (in Polish, of course): "Nie wkurwiaj mnie". There isn't really direct translation of that into English. I think the closest would be: "Don't fuck with me". And here I have to add that BB NEVER EVER swears, neither in English nor in Polish.

PS Two links sponsored by BB: intellectual whores and ladder wiki

quote of a day

Truth springs from argument amongst friends.
- David Hume

Art is life

Art is life. And the perspective that we have on the life. You can not create art in the vacuum (well, you can, but then it will be empty and meaningless). That's why I have to study, I have to learn all the time new things, I have to be exposed to the world and new ideas. That keeps me moving and helps developing as an artist.
Natalia Szostak, 21st of June, 2007 in Boogaloos, San Francisco

navigare

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain

sense of humor

If man had more of a sense of humor, things might have turned out differently.

Solaris, Stanislaw Lem

marriage - what others think

Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience. (Samuel Johnson)

I won't promise to love you forever; I take promises seriously. (Amanda P.)

I think, therefore I'm single. (Liz Winston)

If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married. (Katharine Hepburn)

I don't believe in marriage. It's bloody impractical. 'To love, honor, and obey.' If it weren't, you wouldn't have to sign a contract. (Katharine Hepburn)

I love being married. It's so great to find one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life. (Rita Rudner)

Marriage is the death of hope. (Woody Allen, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy)

Sex alleviates tension. Marriage causes it. (Woody Allen, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy)

More Woody, more about sex rather than marriage but still I like them a lot:

I'm tired of making love to a woman I feel inferior to. (Woody Allen, Interiors)

Sex without love is an empty experience.
Yes, but as empty experiences go, it's one of the best. (Woody Allen, Love and Death)

You are the greatest lover I have ever had.
Well, I practice a lot when I'm alone. (Woody Allen, Love and Death)

To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer. But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness. I hope you're getting this down. (Woody Allen, Love and Death)

Empty sex is better than no sex at all, right? (Woody Allen, Stardust Memories)

Intelligence is the ultimate aphrodisiac. (No idea who said that but it is ingenious.)

Sex between the a man and a woman can be wonderful, provided you get in between the right man and the right woman. (Also have no idea who said that, but it is my personal favorite.)

Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.

Promiscuous: Someone who gets more sex than you.

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another. (H.L. Mencken)

A man on a date wonders if he'll get lucky. The woman already knows. (Monica Piper)

It is better to be unfaithful than to be faithful without wanting to be. (Brigitte Bardot; I felt in love with Bardot when I read an interview with her in which asked what the best day in her life was she answered: It was a night...)

Another quiz: a bottle of wine for the person that finds optimistic (and preferably funny) quote about marriage.

do not freud me

The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is "What does a woman want?"
Sigmund Freud

motto for today

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Douglas Adams "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

more on the subject of love

I have just found this quote by Anna Louise Strong and I have to say that I am impressed how well it reflects what I think and feel about love and relationship(s):

To fall in love is easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be.

every day at least

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

My inspirations of today:
1. Song: My Lady Blue from my favorite movie Le Grand Bleu


2. Poems: introducing Halina Poswiatowska, Polish Sylvia Plath

(I)
i look for you in the cat's soft fur
in rain drops
in fence planks
i lean against a good fence
and sun-spun
-- a fly in a spider's web --
i wait...


(II)
in your perfect fingers
I am only a shiver
a song of leaves
under the touch of your warm lips

your fragrance irritates – it says: you exist
your fragrance irritates – it takes the night away
in your perfect fingers
I am the light

I shine with green moons
above the dead darkened day
suddenly you know that my lips are red

– with salty taste the blood flows up –


(III)
my lover is not that handsome
and he has quite a temper
but who will paint my sky
in the dark afternoon purple
if I let him go not to come back
my lover has burning lips
and a row of sharp teeth when with laughter
he replies to the challenge of the world
my lover has a mouth which rises
as a crescent over each of my nights
my lover is not tender his eyes
dance in the street's rectangle
he lights a flame in girls
clutching his shadow
I hold my love by the hair
in his shadow a frail blade of grass blossoms
into an April appletree


(IV)
I am dazed by the beauty of my body.
today I looked at myself with your eyes. discovered
the soft curve of shoulders the tired round breasts which
want to sleep and slowly roll down in spite of themselves.
my legs unfolding offering infinitely up to
the limits absent from what is me and what beyond me
throbs in every leaf in every raindrop.
I saw myself as if through glass in your eyes
looking at me. I felt your hands on the warm tight
skin of my thighs and obeying your command
I stood naked before a huge mirror and then
I covered your eyes not to see and not to feel
the loneliness of my body blossoming with you.

3. Pictures: Dali's self-portrait and Malczewski's Polonia

4. A few reasonable words: I tried to say something reasonable during the group meeting that I had today and I spectacularly failed… So I'd better stay silent for some time now.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

A friend is someone who understands your past, believes in your future, and accepts you today just the way you are. (Robert Louis Stevenson)