Only daughter
You got your ticket too soon
Holy water
‘Cause everybody’s getting ruined
They are waiting to see what you do
Too long, waiting
Everybody’s cleared the room

And they’ll dress you up
Stand you in all the right places
Words like honey
They smile as they change your faces
With no regard to you at all
And you find they treat you like a paper doll

And they’ll dress you up for the flight
Like Ophelia, you wave goodnight
With the earth and sky you cheer and sigh
Writhe as all your days go by
And laugh as you die

Sweet softer shoulder, oh sweet sugar safe
Sweet softer shoulder, oh sweet sugar safe

Everybody’s got their own philosophy
And I can’t wait ’til I
Find one coming to me
Oh, the bridge is narrow
You better not look down
‘Cause as soon as you jump over
You won’t find nobody around
Oh, the bridge is narrow
And you’ve got so far to fall
And you know down in dirty water’s
No place for a paper doll

–Rachael Yamagata, “Paper Doll”

This is old enough to have been popular the first time I was an admin.

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering 5
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, 10
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie, 15
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.
-T.S. Eliot

“Move within, but not the way that fear makes you move…

Keep walking though there’s no place to get to,
Don’t try to see through the distances – that’s not for human beings to know..”

“Commit yourself to a daily practice,
your loyalty to that is a ring on the door.

Keep knocking
and eventually the joy
that lives inside
will look out to see
who’s there!”
–Rumi