Poem: The City by the Sea -- San Francisco

At the end of our streets is sunrise;
At the end of our streets are spars;
At the end of our streets is sunset;
At the end of our streets the stars.

Ever the winds of morning
Are cool from the flashing sea—
Flowing swift from our ocean,
Till the fog-dunes crumble and flee.

Slender spars in the offing,
Mast and yard in the slips—
How they tell on the azure
Of the sea-contending ships!

Homeward into the sunset
Still unwearied we go,
Till the northern hills are misty
With the amber of afterglow.

Stars that sink to our ocean,
Winds that visit our strand,
The heavens are your pathway,
Where is a gladder land!

At the end of our streets is sunrise;
At the end of our streets are spars;
At the end of our streets is sunset;
At the end of our streets the stars.

                         George Sterling

 

Expect miracles

Hence it is not in the least superstitious, it is even a counsel of realism,
to look for the unforeseeable and unpredictable,
to be prepared for and to expect “miracles” in the political realm.
And the more heavily the scales are weighted in favor of disaster,
the more miraculous will the deed done in freedom appear.

        Hannah Arendt, What is Freedom?

 

 

 

Everybody

Everybody is special. Everybody.
Everybody is a hero, a lover, a fool, a villain.
Everybody. Everybody has their story to tell.

            Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

 

 

 

 

Spacious

My heart has more rooms in it than a whore house.

        Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

 

 

 

Who counts

It’s not the voting that’s democracy,

                it’s the counting.

                            Tom Stoppard, Jumpers

 

 

 

 

 

Vote!

I have spoken of votes.
Living in a community where political power is lodged with the people,
and each citizen is an elector, the vote is an important expression of opinion.
The vote is the cutting edge.
It is well to have correct opinions, but the vote must follow.
The vote is the seed planted; without it there can be no sure fruit.
The winds of heaven, in their beneficence, may scatter the seed in the furrow;
but it is not from such accidents that our fields wave with the golden harvest.
He is a foolish husbandman who neglects to sow his seed;
and he is an unwise citizen, who, desiring the spread of good principles,
neglects to deposit his vote for the candidate who is the representative of those principles.

        Charles Sumner, Charles Sumner; His Complete Works, Volume III 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All Saints' Day

In his holy flirtation with the world,
    God occasionally drops a handkerchief.
        These handkerchiefs are called saints.

                    Frederick Buechner, Wishful thinking: a theological ABC