personification

Fame and fortune are calling. Are we taking the call or blocking the number?

This had been happening more and more often: the two of us come upon each other by accident in the early hours of the morning and take solace in each others' company, weathering out the peril of being awake at this time of night, when thoughts that are neatly ordered or justly murdered during the day come loose from their moorings and out of their graves, to tie themselves to each other in new and dangerous ways.

Alecto Sydney Steele, an entity of few words whom society managed to overlook as it rapidly dove into the 21st century. Everything about him, his interests, his friends, his own life, was constantly in danger of becoming an anachronism. And caught up in that mess was Mearth, not exactly evil in nature but just misunderstood. A very long time ago Alecto__ life had been all incandescent sparkles and Kodachrome, but that was before the environmental movement changed Mearth from a perfectly nice and kind guardian, to a deranged and malevolent monster.

I__e seen a lot of stuff_ maybe I__e seen too much. I see most humans in a bad light because I__e seen what they can do, how evil they can be_ I__e seen the Holocaust and I__e seen Jonestown, I__e seen the Vietnam War and I__e seen Hiroshima_ I__e seen the Chernobyl disaster_ I__e seen the World Trade Center attack_ I__e been alive too long, over a hundred years is a long time to be alive,_ Alecto sighed, staring at the cigarette he was holding.

Oh, trust me Sydney Tar Ponds, you aren__ the first Personification to be forgotten by somebody ordinary,_ Mearth sighed with a falsely-reassuring smile. Alecto stepped back from her, glaring hatefully. __ydney Tar Ponds,_ Mearth added, ____e had so many ordinary people as friends in my life that by now I__e forgotten all their names. At first it was difficult_ very sad_ to see them always leaving, dying, disappearing, ignoring, but after a while I realized that they weren__ worth the trouble. I__ rather be in the company of other Personifications. At least they aren__ always dropping dead like houseflies or sailing away to parts unknown. Nil sa saol seo ach ceo, i ni bheimid beo, ach seal beag gearr. Wouldn__ you agree?___o,_ Alecto told her. __ think you__e insane.

It often occurs that pride and selfishness are muddled with strength and independence. They are neither equal nor similar; in fact, they are polar opposites. A coward may be so cowardly that he masks his weakness with some false personification of power. He is afraid to love and to be loved because love tends to strip bare all emotional barricades. Without love, strength and independence are prone to losing every bit of their worth; they become nothing more than a fearful, intimidated, empty tent lost somewhere in the desert of self.

There was nothing Mandy had wanted more than to give her full attention to the world of Personifications and ignore those who ignored her in society. She__ wanted to talk out loud to Alecto, to have conversations in front of other ordinary people. Unfortunately, to do that in front of ordinary people would only prove her insanity, and although Mandy was naïve at times, she wasn__ stupid.

Every word appears in our mind as a composite of everything else we associate with it. We by default personify every word, because in each of our minds, when we think of a certain person, there is one word that is the biggest part of that composite image. If I said swimming, singing or story telling each word is personified by someone different in each of our minds. It is very important to not let hate, treachery or any negative thing be personified by anyone in our mind, also not to give any reason that we would personify them in someone else__ mind. Any space in our hearts we allow hate to occupy, is space that could be filled with love. There will come a time in every person__ life, when they realize they are woefully wanting in the love they have cultivated in their heart. How amazing to think of the contrary: that you personified love in someone__ mind. What better compliment could we ever hear, than for someone to say, that we are their personification of love? I think it__ something that is not too often said, but oh that it was, and more, that there were more reason to say it. My wish is that every person could wake up in the morning with a prayer, that they may have the courage, diligence and desire to love more truly, sincerely and objectively; that every night we reflect on what we may have represented by our thoughts, words and deeds,_ Jefferson concluded.

It is my conviction that, with the spread of true scientific culture, whatever may be the medium, historical, philological, philosophical, or physical, through which that culture is conveyed, and with its necessary concomitant, a constant elevation of the standard of veracity, the end of the evolution of theology will be like its beginning__t will cease to have any relation to ethics. I suppose that, so long as the human mind exists, it will not escape its deep-seated instinct to personify its intellectual conceptions. The science of the present day is as full of this particular form of intellectual shadow-worship as is the nescience of ignorant ages. The difference is that the philosopher who is worthy of the name knows that his personified hypotheses, such as law, and force, and ether, and the like, are merely useful symbols, while the ignorant and the careless take them for adequate expressions of reality. So, it may be, that the majority of mankind may find the practice of morality made easier by the use of theological symbols. And unless these are converted from symbols into idols, I do not see that science has anything to say to the practice, except to give an occasional warning of its dangers. But, when such symbols are dealt with as real existences, I think the highest duty which is laid upon men of science is to show that these dogmatic idols have no greater value than the fabrications of men's hands, the stocks and the stones, which they have replaced.

_Maybe I__l be watching super-8 home videos,_ Alecto told her, smiling bleakly. __ love my super-8 camera, it__ an Eastman Kodak one_ Kodak stopped manufacturing them, the world went digital and now Kodak has stopped making Kodachrome film and all kinds of traditional film products_ it__ sad._ __ell, uh_ well, have fun watching your home movies then,_ Mandy finished, but she didn__ have the slightest idea what he was talking about.

The thirty-plus years of marriage between the ceiling and the cement plaster showed signs of weakness by frequently developing cracks and holes.

I need just be a bayonet, a bayonet named Diving Punishment. I wish I'd been born a storm. Or a menace. Or a single grenade. No heart, no tears, just as a terrible gale'd have been good. If [by doing this] I become that, then so be it.

I hear the Wind Woman running with soft, soft footsteps over the hill. I shall always think of the wind as a personality. She is a shrew when she blows from the north -- a lonely seeker when she blows from the east -- a laughing girl when she comes from the west -- and tonight from the south a little grey fairy.

(...) pick up your axe, start at the rootsdon't miss the trunk, never forget:to end life truly and finallystart at the roots or end there.

I wish I had been born a storm. No heart, no tears, just a terrible gale'd been good.

Rome and New York were impressive, but they knew they were. They had the beauty of a vain woman who had squeezed herself into her favourite dress after hours of careful self worship. There was a raw, feral beauty about this landscape that was totally unselfconscious but no less real...There was no pomp or vainty here; this was an innocent, natural beauty, the best kind, like a woman first thing in the morning, lit up by the sun streaming through a window, who doesn't quite believe it when you tell her how beautiful she is.

Love conquers all. Let Love then smile at our defeat.

Moon, that against the lintel of the westYour forehead lean until the gate be swung,Longing to leave the world and be at rest,Being worn with faring and no longer young,Do you recall at all the Carian hillWhere worn with loving, loving late you lay,Halting the sun because you lingered still,While wondering candles lit the Carian day?Ah, if indeed this memory to your mindRecall some sweet employment, pity me,That even now the dawn's dim herald see!I charge you, goddess, in the name of oneYou loved as well: endure, hold off the sun.