Also sprach Zarathustra -Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (German: Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen, also translated as Thus Spake Zarathustra) is a philosophical novel by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885 and published between 1883 and 1891. Much of the work deals with ideas such as the "eternal recurrence of the same", the parable on the "death of God", and the "prophecy" of the Übermensch, which were first introduced in The Gay Science.

The book chronicles the fictitious travels and speeches of Zarathustra. Zarathustra's namesake was the founder of Zoroastrianism, usually known in English as Zoroaster (Avestan: Zaraϑuštra). Nietzsche is clearly portraying a "new" or "different" Zarathustra, one who turns traditional morality on its head. He goes on to characterize "what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth, the mouth of the first immoralist:"

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, philologist, and Latin and Greek scholar whose work has exerted a profound influence on Western philosophy and modern intellectual history.

He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24. He resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life, and he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 44, he suffered a collapse and a complete loss of his mental faculties. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897, and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, and died in 1900.

Also sprach Zarathustra (Strauss)

Also sprach Zarathustra, Opus 30 (Thus Spoke Zarathustra or Thus Spake Zarathustra) is a tone poem by Richard Strauss, composed in 1896 and inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical novel of the same name. The composer conducted its first performance on 27 November 1896 in Frankfurt. A typical performance lasts half an hour.

The initial fanfare – titled "Sunrise" in the composer's program notes – became particularly well-known after its use in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The piece is divided into nine sections played with only three definite pauses. Strauss named the sections after selected chapters of the book:

1. Einleitung, oder Sonnenaufgang (Introduction, or Sunrise)
2. Von den Hinterweltlern (Of Those in Backwaters)
3. Von der großen Sehnsucht (Of the Great Longing)
4. Von den Freuden und Leidenschaften (Of Joys and Passions)
5. Das Grablied (The Song of the Grave)
6. Von der Wissenschaft (Of Science and Learning)
7. Der Genesende (The Convalescent)
8. Das Tanzlied (The Dance Song)
9. Nachtwandlerlied (Song of the Night Wanderer)

Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream summary

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy written by William Shakespeare in 1595/96. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of Theseus, the Duke of Athens, to Hippolyta, the former queen of the Amazons. These include the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of six amateur actors (the mechanicals) who are controlled and manipulated by the fairies who inhabit the forest in which most of the play is set. The play is one of Shakespeare's most popular works for the stage and is widely performed across the world.

Plot overview

Theseus, duke of Athens, is preparing for his marriage to Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, with a four-day festival of pomp and entertainment. He commissions his Master of the Revels, Philostrate, to find suitable amusements for the occasion. Egeus, an Athenian nobleman, marches into Theseus’s court with his daughter, Hermia, and two young men, Demetrius and Lysander. Egeus wishes Hermia to marry Demetrius (who loves Hermia), but Hermia is in love with Lysander and refuses to comply. Egeus asks for the full penalty of law to fall on Hermia’s head if she flouts her father’s will. Theseus gives Hermia until his wedding to consider her options, warning her that disobeying her father’s wishes could result in her being sent to a convent or even executed. Nonetheless, Hermia and Lysander plan to escape Athens the following night and marry in the house of Lysander’s aunt, some seven leagues distant from the city. They make their intentions known to Hermia’s friend Helena, who was once engaged to Demetrius and still loves him even though he jilted her after meeting Hermia. Hoping to regain his love, Helena tells Demetrius of the elopement that Hermia and Lysander have planned. At the appointed time, Demetrius stalks into the woods after his intended bride and her lover; Helena follows behind him.

In these same woods are two very different groups of characters. The first is a band of fairies, including Oberon, the fairy king, and Titania, his queen, who has recently returned from India to bless the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. The second is a band of Athenian craftsmen rehearsing a play that they hope to perform for the duke and his bride. Oberon and Titania are at odds over a young Indian prince given to Titania by the prince’s mother; the boy is so beautiful that Oberon wishes to make him a knight, but Titania refuses. Seeking revenge, Oberon sends his merry servant, Puck, to acquire a magical flower, the juice of which can be spread over a sleeping person’s eyelids to make that person fall in love with the first thing he or she sees upon waking. Puck obtains the flower, and Oberon tells him of his plan to spread its juice on the sleeping Titania’s eyelids. Having seen Demetrius act cruelly toward Helena, he orders Puck to spread some of the juice on the eyelids of the young Athenian man. Puck encounters Lysander and Hermia; thinking that Lysander is the Athenian of whom Oberon spoke, Puck afflicts him with the love potion. Lysander happens to see Helena upon awaking and falls deeply in love with her, abandoning Hermia. As the night progresses and Puck attempts to undo his mistake, both Lysander and Demetrius end up in love with Helena, who believes that they are mocking her. Hermia becomes so jealous that she tries to challenge Helena to a fight. Demetrius and Lysander nearly do fight over Helena’s love, but Puck confuses them by mimicking their voices, leading them apart until they are lost separately in the forest.

When Titania wakes, the first creature she sees is Bottom, the most ridiculous of the Athenian craftsmen, whose head Puck has mockingly transformed into that of an ass. Titania passes a ludicrous interlude doting on the ass-headed weaver. Eventually, Oberon obtains the Indian boy, Puck spreads the love potion on Lysander’s eyelids, and by morning all is well. Theseus and Hippolyta discover the sleeping lovers in the forest and take them back to Athens to be married—Demetrius now loves Helena, and Lysander now loves Hermia. After the group wedding, the lovers watch Bottom and his fellow craftsmen perform their play, a fumbling, hilarious version of the story of Pyramus and Thisbe. When the play is completed, the lovers go to bed; the fairies briefly emerge to bless the sleeping couples with a protective charm and then disappear. Only Puck remains, to ask the audience for its forgiveness and approval and to urge it to remember the play as though it had all been a dream.

TATTOO PARTY at T.R.A.C.S

TATTOO 

My first tattoo

 a number on my inner arm,

 removed

 as soon as I was able.

 The scar remained,

 covered up.

The next tattoo

 My lover's name

 Embedded in a rose.

 He died in my arms.

 I added words............

........"I Love You"

The third tattoo

 A dragon coiled

 Around my thigh,

 Caressed

 By loving hands -

 My husband's choice.

My last tattoo

 My name and number

 To help you

 To return me -

 If I'm found.

© Diana Grant      13 March 2008

Pop meets the Classics 2

"Hate Me Now" is a 1999 hip hop single by rapper Nas featuring Puff Daddy. The backbeat is inspired by, and contains some samples from, Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. It was ranked 119 on xxl's best songs of the 90's.

Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones (born September 14, 1973), better known simply as Nas, is an American rapper and actor. He is the son of jazz musician Olu Dara. Since 1994, Nas has released eight consecutive platinum and multi-platinum albums and sold over 25 million records worldwide. Aside from rapping and acting, Nas is an entrepreneur through his own record label, retail sneaker store, and magazine publishing. He currently serves as Mass Appeal Magazine's associate publisher as well as an owner of a Fila sneaker store.

His musical career began in 1991 when he was featured on Main Source's track "Live at the Barbeque". His debut album Illmatic, released in 1994, received universal acclaim from both critics and the hip hop community. It is frequently ranked as one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time. His follow-up album It Was Written debuted at number 1 on the Billboard Charts, stayed on top for four consecutive weeks, went platinum twice in only two months, and made Nas internationally known.

Carmina Burana is a scenic cantata composed by Carl Orff in 1935 and 1936. It is based on 24 of the poems found in the medieval collection Carmina Burana. Its full Latin title is Carmina Burana: Cantiones profanæ cantoribus et choris cantandæ comitantibus instrumentis atque imaginibus magicis (Songs of Beuern: Secular songs for singers and choruses to be sung together with instruments and magic images.) Carmina Burana is part of Trionfi, the musical triptych that also includes the cantata Catulli Carmina and Trionfo di Afrodite. The first and last movements are called "Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi" (Fortune, Empress of the World) and start with the very well known "O Fortuna".

Carl Orff (July 10, 1895 – March 29, 1982) was a 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana (1937). In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential approach of music education for children.

Orff was born in Munich. His family was Bavarian and was active in the Army of the German Empire. His paternal grandfather was a Jew who converted to Catholicism.

Orff started studying the piano at the age of five, and he also took organ and cello lessons. However, he was more interested in composing original music than in studying to be a performer. Orff wrote and staged puppet shows for his family, composing music for piano, violin, zither, and glockenspiel to accompany them. He had a short story published in a children's magazine in 1905 and started to write a book about nature. In his spare time he enjoyed collecting insects.

By the time he was a teenager, Orff was writing songs, although he had not studied harmony or composition; his mother helped him set down his first works in musical notation. Orff wrote his own texts and he learned the art of composing, without a teacher, by studying classical masterworks on his own.

In 1911, at age 16, some of Orff's music was published. Many of his youthful works were songs, often settings of German poetry. They fell into the style of Richard Strauss and other German composers of the day, but with hints of what would become Orff's distinctive musical language.

Orff's relationship with German fascism and the Nazi Party has been a matter of considerable debate and analysis. His Carmina Burana was hugely popular in Nazi Germany after its premiere in Frankfurt in 1937. Given Orff's previous lack of commercial success, the monetary factor of Carmina Burana's acclaim was significant to him. But the composition, with its unfamiliar rhythms, was also denounced with racist taunts. He was one of the few German composers under the Nazi regime who responded to the official call to write new incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream after the music of Felix Mendelssohn had been banned. Defenders of Orff note that he had already composed music for this play as early as 1917 and 1927, long before this was a favor for the Nazi regime.

FOREVER YOUNG chapter I

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde, appearing as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890, printed as the July 1890 issue of this magazine. The magazine's editors feared the story was indecent as submitted, so they censored roughly 500 words, without Wilde's knowledge, before publication. But even with that, the story was still greeted with outrage by British reviewers, some of whom suggested that Wilde should be prosecuted on moral grounds, leading Wilde to defend the novel aggressively in letters to the British press. Wilde later revised the story for book publication, making substantial alterations, deleting controversial passages, adding new chapters and including an aphoristic Preface which has since become famous in its own right. The amended version was published by Ward, Lock and Company in April 1891. Some scholars believe that Wilde would today have wanted us to read the version he originally submitted to Lippincott's.

The novel tells of a young man named Dorian Gray, the subject of a painting by artist Basil Hallward. This famous London artist Basil Hallward shows his dear friend Lord Henry Wotton his new painting: a portrait of a young nobleman, named Dorian Gray. Basil is really attracted to Dorian’s charm and beauty, and considers the youth an inspirational gift for his art. Lord Henry asks the painter to meet Dorian and Basil; after some hesitation, he agrees. The young man becomes enthralled by Lord Henry’s eloquence and his worldly view. As a new kind of hedonism, according to Lord Henry, the only aims in life are to pursue beauty and to satisfy one’s own senses. He persuades Dorian not to waste his beauty, but to make use of it, and to indulge in any pleasurable experience. In fact, when Dorian realises that one day his beauty will disappear, he wishes that the portrait painted by Basil would age instead of him. His wish comes true, indeed he finds that the portrait’s expression changes and ages for every sin he commits. For eighteen years he experiments with every kind of vice, and step by step Dorian loses his innocence, behaving in a sinful way. In fact, he causes the death of a young and talented actress, who had fallen in love with him; he ruins and corrupts a lot of friends and young noble men; he even kills his friend Basil, but his outward appearance remains unchanged. Instead, the portrait, now old and ugly, is a sort of mirror of the effect of each sin upon his soul. At the end, he decides to be really good and to forget the past. He decides to destroy the portrait, and does so, in a fit of range, by stabbing it. The servants hear his cry, and call the police, who find the corpse of Dorian suddenly aged, and the portrait in its original form. They identify the corpse through the rings on his hand.

 

Dorian Gray syndrome

Dorian Gray syndrome (DGS) denotes a cultural and societal phenomenon characterized by extreme pride in one's own appearance accompanied by difficulties coping with the aging process and with the requirements of maturation. Sufferers of Dorian Gray syndrome may be heavy users of cosmetic medical procedures and products in an attempt to preserve their youth. Dorian Gray syndrome is not recognized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV).

IN THE GUTTER part III

Gutter figurative  (metaphoric, not literal)
Eddi was one step ahead of me with his comment on the last post:

You can also talk as if "your mouth is in the gutter" using bad profanity.

I grew in New York City where the word is pronounced gut-tah (no hard r at end) and I remember my mother yelling at me out the window to "stop playing in the gut-tah" since it was the dirtiest part of the street to play in. She wanted me to play on the sidewalk.

Eddi Hasskell

In the gutter

Figurative [of a person] in a low state; poor and homeless. (*Typically: be ~; fall [into] ~; put some-one [into] ~.) You had better straighten out your life, or you'll end in the gutter.

His bad habits put him into the gutter.

In the gutter

Appropriate to or from a squalid, degraded condition. For example, The language in that book belongs in the gutter . An antonym, out of the gutter,  means "away from vulgarity or sordidness," as in That joke was quite innocent; get your mind out of the gutter. This idiom uses gutter in the sense of "a conduit for filthy waste." [Mid-1800s]

Have one's mind in the gutter and have got one's mind in the gutter

Figurative. tending to think of or say things that are obscene. Tiffany has her mind in the gutter. That's why she laughs at all that dirty stuff. Why do you tell so many dirty jokes?

Do you always have your mind in the gutter?

Bob: "Hey kid, let me tell you what a blow job is."

Kid's Mom: "Hey! Is your mind in the gutter perv?!"

Gut's in the gutter

When a person's initial reaction to any given situation or question is either immoral, sexual, impure, or all of the above.

Everytime he's asked a question, his response is so vulgar--must be that his gut's in the gutter!

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. – Oscar Wilde

Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman is a four-act comedy by Oscar Wilde, first produced 22 February 1892 at the St James's Theatre in London. The play was first published in 1893. Like many of Wilde's comedies, it bitingly satirizes the morals of Victorian society, particularly marriage.

The story concerns Lady Windermere, who discovers that her husband may be having an affair with another woman. She confronts her husband but he instead invites the other woman, Mrs Erlynne, to his wife's birthday ball. Angered by her husband's unfaithfulness, Lady Windermere leaves her husband for another lover. After discovering what has transpired, Mrs Erlynne follows Lady Windermere and attempts to persuade her to return to her husband and in the course of this, Mrs Erlynne is discovered in a compromising position. She sacrifices herself and her reputation in order to save Lady Windermere's marriage as Mrs Erlynne is Lady Windermere’s mother, who abandoned her family twenty years before the time the play is set. Mrs. Erlynne was originated by Marion Terry, and Lady Windermere by Winifred Emery. The best-known line of the play sums up the central theme:

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. —Lord Darlington

Third act

DUMBY. [With a sigh.] Good heavens! how marriage ruins a man! It's as demoralising as cigarettes, and far more expensive.

CECIL GRAHAM. You'll play, of course, Tuppy?

LORD AUGUSTUS. [Pouring himself out a brandy and soda at table.] Can't, dear boy. Promised Mrs. Erlynne never to play or drink again.

CECIL GRAHAM. Now, my dear Tuppy, don't be led astray into the paths of virtue. Reformed, you would be perfectly tedious. That is the worst of women. They always want one to be good. And if we are good, when they meet us, they don't love us at all. They like to find us quite irretrievably bad, and to leave us quite unattractively good.

LORD DARLINGTON. [Rising from R. table, where he has been writing letters.] They always do find us bad!

DUMBY. I don't think we are bad. I think we are all good, except Tuppy.

LORD DARLINGTON. No, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. [Sits down at C. table.]

DUMBY. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars? Upon my word, you are very romantic to-night, Darlington.

What does that mean?

Historically, the reference to being in the gutter usually refers to a drunk who is so drunk and unable to control their body that they literally, as well as figuratively, fall down, roll around, and end up in the lowest place available, the gutter. Being in the gutter was an expression of utter despair and hopelessness, of having gone down as low as one could possibly go.

In this case, the quote implies that we are all struggling in our own gutter of sorts, a place where we have nought but despair and hopelessness. The quote, however, differentiates between those who just lay there and bemoan their fate, and those who look up at the stars.

The quote implies that this second group is different, and not just lying there cursing fate. The implication of ‘looking at the stars’ is that they have goals, that the gutter is not their home, and that they have some hope of moving beyond their present circumstances.

From: Twitter, @aQuoteToday

MUSICALS Party at T.R.A.C.S

We will have a MUSICALS Party at T.R.A.C.S

T.R.A.C.S

http://slurl.com/secondlife/River%20Island/221/249/22

Musical theatre is a form of theatre that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The story and emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole. Although musical theatre overlaps with other theatrical forms like opera and dance, it may be distinguished by the equal importance given to the music as compared with the dialogue, movement and other elements of the works. Since the early 20th century, musical theatre stage works have generally been called, simply, musicals.

Although music has been a part of dramatic presentations since ancient times, modern Western musical theatre emerged during the 19th century, culminating with the works of Gilbert and Sullivan in Britain and those of Harrigan and Hart in America, followed by the numerous Edwardian musical comedies and the works of American creators like George M. Cohan. Early in the 20th century, the Princess Theatre musicals and other smart shows like Of Thee I Sing were artistic steps forward beyond revues and other frothy entertainments and led to such groundbreaking works as Show Boat and Oklahoma!. Some of the most famous and iconic musicals through the decades that followed include West Side Story, The Fantasticks, Hair, A Chorus Line, Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, Rent, The Producers and Wicked.

 

Musicals are performed all around the world. They may be presented in large venues, such as big budget West End and Broadway theatre productions in London and New York City, or in smaller fringe theatre, Off-Broadway or regional theatre productions, on tour, or by amateur groups in schools, theatres and other performance spaces. In addition to Britain and North America, there are vibrant musical theatre scenes in many countries in Europe, Latin America, Australasia and Asia.

source: WikiPedia

Gay Musicals, by JD Doyle

What is a "Gay Musical" and why do we care? Well, I produce a radio show and website called Queer Music Heritage, with an aim to preserve gay and lesbian music culture. And by using the term "Gay Musical" I immediately have to define myself. Musicals have always been a big part of our culture, to the point of it being stereotypical. But I'm not talking about musicals like "Chorus Line," or "Dreamgirls," "West Side Story," "Follies," "Gypsy," "Cats," "Cabaret," or on and on, even though many may have had a gay sensibility, or gay writers behind them. Being a purist, I'm talking about gay musicals where the central characters and plots were gay, and I further limit my focus to those that had soundtracks that made it onto vinyl or CD. Otherwise, only a few get to share the experience. In the early years, recording them didn't happen very often, as the productions were generally low budget affairs, far removed from even being off-off-Broadway.  http://www.queermusicheritage.us/gaymus.html

It was not easy to pick one song from my long list of favourite musical songs.

Than I remember the song "For good" from the musical "Wicked" because it have parts of the poem "Reason, Season, or Lifetime". That already is for ages in my profile.

See also: 
http://christo-second-live.blogspot.com/2008/11/reason-season-and-lifetime.html

Wicked is a musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and a book by Winnie Holzman. It is based on the Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (1995), a parallel novel of the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz and L. Frank Baum's classic story The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). The musical is told from the perspective of the witches of the Land of Oz: Elphaba, the misunderstood girl with emerald-green skin, and Galinda, later Glinda, the beautiful, ambitious and popular blonde. Wicked tells the story in which these two unlikely friends grow to become the Wicked Witch of the West and the Good Witch of the North while struggling through opposing personalities and viewpoints, rivalry over the same love-interest, reactions to the Wizard's corrupt government, and, ultimately, Elphaba's public fall from grace. The plot begins before and continues after Dorothy's arrival from Kansas and includes references to locations, events, characters and situations from both the 1939 film and Baum's novel.

For Good

ELPHABA

 I'm limited:

 Just look at me - I'm limited

 And just look at you -

 You can do all I couldn't do, Glinda

 So now it's up to you

 (spoken) For both of us

 (sung) Now it's up to you:

GLINDA

 I've heard it said

 That people come into our lives for a reason

 Bringing something we must learn

 And we are led

 To those who help us most to grow

 If we let them

 And we help them in return

 Well, I don't know if I believe that's true

 But I know I'm who I am today

 Because I knew you:

 Like a comet pulled from orbit

 As it passes a sun

 Like a stream that meets a boulder

 Halfway through the wood

 Who can say if I've been changed for the better?

 But because I knew you

 I have been changed for good

ELPHABA

 It well may be

 That we will never meet again

 In this lifetime

 So let me say before we part

 So much of me

 Is made of what I learned from you

 You'll be with me

 Like a handprint on my heart

 And now whatever way our stories end

 I know you have re-written mine

 By being my friend:

 Like a ship blown from its mooring

 By a wind off the sea

 Like a seed dropped by a skybird

 In a distant wood

 Who can say if I've been changed for the better?

 But because I knew you:

GLINDA

 Because I knew you:

BOTH

 I have been changed for good

ELPHABA

 And just to clear the air

 I ask forgiveness

 For the things I've done you blame me for

GLINDA

 But then, I guess we know

 There's blame to share

BOTH

 And none of it seems to matter anymore

GLINDA ELPHABA

 Like a comet pulled Like a ship blown

 From orbit as it Off it's mooring

 Passes a sun, like By a wind off the

 A stream that meets Sea, like a seed

 A boulder, half-way Dropped by a

 Through the wood Bird in the wood

BOTH

 Who can say if I've been changed for the better?

 I do believe I have been changed for the better?

GLINDA

 And because I knew you:

ELPHABA

 Because I knew you:

BOTH

 Because I knew you:

 I have been changed for good.

About Poems and Robert Frost

Last week Tim and I talked about my post "About Roads"
http://christo-second-live.blogspot.com/2010/06/about-roads.html
and the poem of Robert Frost "The Road Not Taken".
It is Tim's second favourite poem of Robert Frost. The first is hanging, now more than a year, near the front door of our house.

I made it shortly after Tim recite it to me.

"Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" is a poem written in 1922 by Robert Frost, and published in 1923 in his New Hampshire volume. Imagery and personification are prominent in the work. In a letter to Louis Untermeyer, Frost called it "my best bid for remembrance".

Frost wrote this poem about winter in June, 1922 at his house in Shaftsbury, Vermont that is now home to the "Robert Frost Stone House Museum". Frost had been up the entire night writing the long poem "New Hampshire" and had finally finished when he realized morning had come. He went out to view the sunrise and suddenly got the idea for "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". He wrote the new poem "about the snowy evening and the little horse as if I'd had a hallucination" in just "a few minutes without strain."

Poems of Finesse

It must a day of poems. After all the reading about Anne Sexton, I been thinking of Finesse and that I never post this poem that Odric send me some time ago. I Post it with the note card he send with it.

Dear Friends of Finesse Nolan,
Maybe I missed it or there was no Memorial for Finesse. So I want to take this chance to get in contact to you.
I have tried to buy Finesses Land - direct from Linden. I wanted to keep as it Finesse left - but it is against their (LL) regulations - they claim the land, clear it and sell the land via auction.
Finesses Land is sold now and the new owner rezzed buildings. Nothing reminds the old owner - It was hard for me to see - but I guess that’s life....
I shared with Finesse one important thing: We exchanged our writings, poems and stories.
So I want to send you a story Finesse wrote in Dec. 08
She did not give me the permission to share it with someone else - but I guess in this situation she wouldn't mind as its not a personal story. I hope you like and enjoy reading this!
Thank you for reading
With love,
Odric

At Night in the Woods by Finesse Nolan

The woods are quiet tonight, but listen:
There are whispers wandering through the darkness,
liquid night music drifting through branches,
rippling softly through the darkness to pool here and there …
would you drown in those shadow shallows
if you dared venture there?

A breeze dances briefly, fingering leaves,
causing them to rustle,
shivering and trembling like virgins
fearing its touch yet welcoming it.
Or perhaps they welcome the playful touches
And the susurrus is a greeting… or applause?

The small stream gurgles and burbles to itself
whispering little stories of where it has been,
what it has tasted in its travels.
A small vortex forms opening a swirling mouth,
and with a sly little chuckle, it gulps down a floating leaf,
and hurries on to other places far from this wooded place.

Night animals, eyes large with the need to see,
move in the darkness, rustling through the leaf carpet
creeping and crawling, sliding and gliding, prowling
each after the manner of its kind seeking sustenance.
Their small sounds in the ambient air of the cool darkness
meld and merge, each playing its own musical part
in the quiet symphony of the woods at night.

Finesse Nolan

Avatar Name: Finesse Nolan
Birthday: 2006-02-10
Last seen online: december 2008
died in real at february 23, 2009
On her profile:
"And sometimes you turn around, and there he is, the one you have been looking for for such a long time, exactly where he has been all the time!"

Finesse Nolan

Finesse Nolan

Saturday I got the news that my teacher at Gor and friend at SL, died in real at february 23, 2009. In memorial I place her poem. I will miss you, Finesse

Pixel People

I was told that Pixel People are not real,

so "not real" Pixel People do not feel,

and it clearly follows then, of course,

that Pixel People feel no remorse.

So no one cares if Pixel People sigh,

and no one cares if Pixel People cry.

No one cares if unkind words are spoken,

and no one cares when Pixel hearts are broken.

Pixel People cannot be fools,

nor can they act like stubborn mules.

Pixel People do not lie, they may prevaricate,

and Pixel People do not die, they simply hibernate.

That's all I can ever hope to be,

just a Pixel Person.........pathetic me.

Not even a good one either.........sigh.

You see, I think, i feel, I cry.

The end...

All rights reserved,

Finesse Nolan

Independence Day 2008

Reason, Season and Lifetime

People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.
When you figure out which one it is,
you will know what to do for each person.

When someone is in your life for a REASON . . .
It is usually to meet a need you have expressed.
They have come to assist you through a difficulty,
to provide you with guidance and support,
to aid you physically, emotionally, or spiritually.
They may seem like a godsend, and they are!
They are there for the reason you need them to be.

Then, without any wrong doing on your part, or at an
inconvenient time, this person will say or do something
to bring the relationship to an end.

Sometimes they die.
Sometimes they walk away.
Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand.

What we must realise is that our need has been met,
Our desire fulfilled, their work is done.
The prayer you sent up has been answered.
And now it is time to move on.

When people come into your life for a SEASON . . .
Because your turn has come to share, grow, or learn.
They bring you an experience of peace, or make you laugh.
They may teach you something you have never done.
They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy.
Believe it! It is real! But, only for a season.

LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons; things
you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional
foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the
person, and put what you have learned to use in all
other relationships and areas of your life.

It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant.