Romeo and Juliet: A belated valentine's post

What is a Liger? It is the offspring of a male Lion and a tigress. A Teon is the offspring of a Tiger and a lionness. Interspecies love: an example of how true love knows no bonds! The below picture(s) illustrates this.

The offspring of Love is Beauty and Strength.

A picture of me!! I'm a Ligress! Here me rawr!!!

I don't believe in age

Zbigniew Brzezinski is a thinker, advisor, politician working for many decades. Some of his inspiring words, which illustrate why age doesn't matter, and why we need to keep up the good fight:

(source, The Christian Science Moniter, volume 103 issue 13, reported by Dave Cook)

"What formed me was World War II and the realization of how far humanity can go in doing wrong things to itself....human affairs require some combination of moral commitment with disciplined political action. And that is what keeps me intrigued and challenged and wanting to influence events." --Zbigniew Brzezinski

Dance

We should consider every day lost on which we haven't danced atleast once.

Nietzsche

Dance

If I can't dance, I don't want your revolution!

Emma Goldman

More Rumi

You're voice echoes in my heart like the wind in the mountains. 

Rumi

Courtesan wisdom

"Always leave them wanting more. It is want that drives this world." 
 -Advice from one courtesan to another, in the movie Dangerous Beauty

Palace of Memories

"Je suis la palais de memoirs." Or, "I am the palace of memories."

This was one of my favorite images from Salman Rushdie's novel The Enchantress of Florence. A character from the book, as well as many actual Greek philosophers, used this tool to remember huge amounts of information--like an entire legal code or the entire Iliad. (It was considered the mark of a high intellect to have an amazing memory, quite a different aesthetic from today, with all our electronic memory devices.) They imagined a house, and in each room they would put a different piece of information. To retrieve the information, they would mentally walk through their house.

I think it is a beautiful metaphor, because it alludes to the greatness of each person's spirit; as big as a house. Our childhood homes hold memories in every corner for us, but as adults we learn that we are these houses, and we must take them with us, for it is sometimes impossible to return.

Locked Doors

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.
Rainer Maria Rilke

An Inspiring Poem by Rumi

This is one of my favorites by the great Rumi. I especially like the last stanza, tell me what you make of it! (translated by Kabir Helminski, published in RUMI Everyman's Library Pocket Poets)

A moment of happiness, 
you and I sitting on the verandah, 
apparently two, but one in soul, you and I.

We feel the flowing water of life here, 
you and I, with the garden's beauty and the birds singing.
The stars will be watching us, 
and we will show them 
what it means to be a thin crescent moon.

You and I unselfted, will be together,
indifferent to idle speculation, you and I. 
The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar
as we laugh together, you and I.

And what is even more amazing
is that while here together, you and I
are at this very moment in Iraq and Khorasan.
In one form upon this earth, 
and in another form in a timeless sweet land.