May I a small house and large garden have; and a few friends, and many books, both true, both wise and both delightful too.

• Abraham Cowley

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

• Robert Frost

It is easy to be an angel in the company of angels.
To be an angel in the company of devils
requires some effort.

• anonymous

Make what frail joy thou canst
in thy brief light.

• The Scottish Play

If by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise.

If you can dream and not make dreams your master
If you can think and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same,
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken
And stoop and build them up with worn out tools.

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss,
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them, 'Hold on!'.

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue
Or walk with kings nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds worth of distance run,
Yours is the earth and everything that's in it
And, which is more, you'll be a man, my son!

A Kiss

The reading lounge at the local library is a large area with alcoves and small groupings of chairs and tables and a few sofas thrown in. On this particular day the room was rather busy, patrons coming and going, groups of people talking softly and a few study groups from the school nearby. Out of this gentle hum a quiet clacking began to slowly make its way into the consciousness of the group therein. One woman looked towards the sound and saw two male students kissing and saw that the sound was from their eyeglasses coming together as they kissed. As she watched, one of them raised up slightly and they seemed to be getting into a serious embrace. Where a few pecks had not bothered the woman, this more obvious display made her aware of the other people in the room, and she thought they ought to cool it.
She noticed a man at another table lift his eyes in the direction of the boys, who were now becoming quite intense in their coupling, and saw a look of disdain cross his features before looking down again. In one of the study groups a girl tittered and pointed at the bespectacled boys, directing the rest of the group to take a peek.
Before long the mood and energy in the lounge began to get out of hand, which did not seem to phase the two boys as one gave out a bit of murmur and the other made a high pitched sound, as of pleasure, in his throat.
All this carried on for a while, boys in their embrace, more people taking notice, everyone thinking their own thoughts and then the man who had felt disdain and tried to ignore the boys at first was now feeling indignant so he stood up and walked a bit closer to them and said in a low bark, “Now that's enough of that”.
Everyone was surprised to see that instead of interrupting the two boys the command only seemed to egg them on.
Another man sitting nearby expressed his disgust at the display and called the librarian. A third man called the police directly, complaining that there was an act of indecency being carried out at the library. Within minutes, as there had just happened to be a police cruiser sitting outside the library, two officers appeared in the lounge at the direction of the librarian. The man who had made the 911 call rushed up to them and said, “Look at that! Little faggots think they can do whatever they want. That’s what comes from letting liberal ideas take hold”.
One of the officers said, “Calm down, sir. There’s no need for that kind of language”.
But, he was surprised to see that all the commotion had not separated the boys or even caused them to look up. He made his way over to them and leaning down put his hand on one of the boys back and asked them to stand up. The boy garbled some reply, but they remained seated. Bending in further the officer saw tears on their faces, he said, “What’s going on”?
One of the boys pulled his lips back to show him that their braces had become entangled.They had been struggling to get loose for some time and were in deep distress. The officer told them he was calling an ambulance. “Take it easy, they’ll be here soon”, he said.
The boys finally fell, exhausted, into eachothers arms.

Story based on a dream - juju