Introduce Yourself here and say Hi.

[shivaspace23]

Dear Souls,
i come from a small tropical island in the indian ocean.
i am very pleased to join this forum..My main interests are meditation,hatha yoga,tibetan exercises,proper diet,health tips,outdoor adventure etc..
wish u all a blissful journey ahead.
warm wishes n positive vibes

[Billy Gray]

hi all my name is billyjoe gray and i love poems and other people

[Pompey Bum]

Oh sorry everyone. I had a sick day yesterday.

Welcome Outlandish. May you steep in beauty like a fragrant tea leaf.

Welcome Shiva. Beauty and vibes to you, too. You'll find many people interested in meditative traditions here. I'm sure you will add an interesting perspective.

Welcome Billy. Poems we got. Peeps we got. Share the love!

[Autodidact]

Hello
New to the site. Look forward to fruitfully rewarding interaction. Favourite writers are always hard to choose but if I were constrained to do so I daresay I would pick Dickens, Austen, Hardy and Wodehouse.

Have a good day everyone.

[Pompey Bum]

Welcome Autodidact! It's not often finds a reader who lists both Hardy and Wodehouse as favorites, but I can appreciate the wide range of your interests. You will find fans of all of the authors you mention here. It's nice to have you with us.

[Passions Read]

Hey everyone! The names Drew. I've loved good literature for most of my life, and am currently working on becoming a teacher. My favorite classics are [I]Paradise Lost [I] and anything by Dostoevsky. For fun, I love reading Kurt Vonnegut and Neil Gaiman (and I've been trying out some Stephen King recently). Recently, I've been trying my hand a bit at writing too. So, I'm glad to be here, and I look forward to some great conversations!

[Pompey Bum]

Hello and welcome Passions/Drew. It sounds like you will fit right in here. We have lots of Dostoyevsky fans (including me). And it's really nice to see that Kurt Vonnegut's reputation is still going so strong. I met him once when I was a teenager. Or was that Dostoyevsky? () In any case, welcome to the site. Please enjoy yourself here.

[IAmYouth]

Thanks for the welcome. Just joined today and look forward to everyone's thoughts on various pieces of literature!

[Pompey Bum]

You're welcome and hello. IAmYouth. Nice to have you with us. Please make yourself at home and enjoy!

[Passions Read]

Thanks so much Pompey Bum. And wow, I'm certainly jealous that you got to meet Vonnegut. He's definitely one of my favorite authors, and I would have loved to have met the man! Thanks again for the warm welcome.

[MeganParker]

Hello everyone! I am a newbie here.

[qgaby]

Hi Everybody!!! Thanks for your warm welcome!! I'm really glad to be a member of this group!!! I'm new in this site and in this kind of forums !!!
This is a rather complicated week for me since we are getting started with our students (classes will begin tomorrow) and I 'm attending different courses.... in short, I'll be quite busy, yet, I didn't want to miss the chance to introduce myself to this nice group.

I'm a teacher at Arrayanes (Myrtle School,preparing students for the Lit IGCSE exams and an educator at a T.T, College in Escobar, both )in the Province of Buenos,Aires Argentina. Virtual hug.

[DecurionBifrost]

Hi guys, I'm new here, from Venezuela, and I've decided I haven't read enough books in my life, so I joined this fine community. Good to now be a part of it.

[hannah_arendt]

Welcome

[tford1]

Hi guys. I wrote enough earlier...not feeling the inspiration. blah blah blah heres one:


I have these ugly qualities. I bury them in the soil and give them sustenance to flourish. I have these beautiful qualities, and I hide them too, because I don't have faith in them. I question their essence because of the shroud that hangs over my neck: the mariner's albatross. Like night and day, I go about my life in a constant state of disharmony, not manic depressive, but with a bipolar and ambivalent idea of self that I only project onto others. It might be stable to accept the luke warm grayness in this black and white world, but I want to embrace the moments of light, and allow them to be magnified by the juxtaposition of darkness. Until that day comes I'll continue to be consumed by both, powerless because of a refusal to embrace nothing but one.


and...

This Chain

Man goes to work,
Puts his clothes on in fear.
He wanders through the day,
And comes home weary of tomorrow.
We sell ourselves so small,
Look into the eyes of a child—
They are infinite.
The world is theirs.
Shoot him down enough,
He becomes a man.

Man is fear
Fear is man
Meet the man without fear
You’ve not met a man.

Some are consumed by the small fears
These people are obviously afraid.
Others need a more trained eye.
They aren’t so easy.
Their fear is masked with success—
Money.
The hypocrisy of religion
Goodness with a side of denial and compartmentalization.
The Shadow always lurks.

Don’t lie!
You’re so afraid.
That’s you running from your fear.
Your protective mechanisms are the very thing you fight,
And I’ve seen sterner stuff.

Look at me,
Rationalizing, analyzing, objectifying,
In the end,
Simply intellectualizing,
The fire that consumes me—
Fear.

Created by man it burns the world over,
Perpetually.
It’s a permanent blemish on our hearts,
The hill won’t break the wheel,
No man is removed.

It has many shades, colors, sizes; is highly individualized and shrouded.
We are contained by cloaked boxes
Some bigger and clunkier than others
But NONE escape the sure weight.

Words to live by: “Just let go of the child inside
He will only be denied
Let in the prince and the plow
Be rid once and for all of the dangerous child” ,

But then be weary of the weeds that seep through the walls
Of the castle.
The king and his subjects master the fire:
The delusion of control.

It cannot be tamed.
The wolf and the lion are all around us
And you can’t let go of the child inside
He sees, hears, and knows.
He waits for our paradigms to atrophy.
We wait to be broken, to awaken to that before,
The interlude is madness, with clowns and balloons.

The bright sun finally breaks our shadow.
But it is too bright for us to see.
Beauty to Men’s minds is incalculable.
Truth to man is love to Bundy—
Blinding at best.
Like the ceiling effect of a drug.
For, Be ye as little children,
Then see the kingdom.


thanks tim