When I look back on my life, I see pain, mistakes and heart ache.
When I look in the mirror, I see strength, learned lessons, and pride in myself.
The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own…
The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours – it is an amazing journey – and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.
(с) Bob Moawad
Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.
Pick yourself up, dust yourself off,
and start all over again.
– Dorothy Fields
I think it is the most fulfilling and eye opening thing that you can do – to travel the world and meet and understand other cultures and more about yourself. – Philip Glass
“Philip Morris Glass” is an American composer. He is considered one of the most influential music makers of the late 20th century. His music is also often controversially described as minimal music, along with the work of the other “major minimalists” La Monte Young, Terry Riley and Steve Reich.
Glass has distanced himself from the “minimalist” label, describing himself instead as a composer of “music with repetitive structures”. Though his early mature music shares much with what is normally called “minimalist”, he has since evolved stylistically. Currently, he describes himself as a “Classicist”, pointing out that he is trained in harmony and counterpoint and studied such composers as Franz Schubert, Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with Nadia Boulanger.
Glass is a prolific composer: he has written works for the musical group which he founded, the Philip Glass Ensemble (with which he still performs on keyboards), as well as operas, musical theatre works, ten symphony/symphonies, eleven concertos, solo works, chamber music including string quartets and instrumental sonatas, and film scores. Three of his film scores have been nominated for Academy Awards.
Apache Tear Drop
An Apache / Jicarilla Legend
Apache Tear Drop is a form of black obsidian. It is a calming translucent stone, found in Arizona and other parts of the U.S. It is composed of feldspar, hornblende, biotite and quartz. It was formed by rhythmic crystallization that produces a separation of light and dark materials into spherical shapes, and is a form of volcanic glass.
There is a haunting legend about the Apache Tear Drop. After the Pinal Apaches had made several raids on a settlement in Arizona, the military regulars and some volunteers trailed the tracks of the stolen cattle and waited for dawn to attack the Apaches.
The Apaches, confident in the safety of their location, were completely surprised and out-numbered in the attack. Nearly 50 of the band of 75 Apaches were killed in the first volley of shots. The rest of the tribe retreated to the cliff’s edge and chose death by leaping over the edge rather than die at the hands of the white men.
For years afterward those who ventured up the treacherous face of Big Pacacho in Arizona found skeletons, or could see the bleached bones wedged in the crevices of the side of the cliff.
The Apache Women and the lovers of those who had died gathered a short distance from the base of the cliff where the sands were white, and for a moon they wept for their dead. They mourned greatly, for they realized that not only had their 75 brave Apache warriors died, but with them had died the great fighting spirit of the Pinal Apaches.
Their sadness was so great, and their burden of sorrow so sincere that the Great Father imbedded into black stones the tears of the Apache Women who mourned their dead. These black obsidian stones, when held to the light, reveal the translucent tear of the Apache.
The stones are said to bring good luck to those possessing them. It is said that whoever owns an Apache Tear Drop will never have to cry again, for the Apache Women have shed their tears in place of yours.
The Apache tear drops are also said to balance the emotional nature and protect one from being taken advantage of. It can be carried as an amulet to stimulate success in business endeavors. It is also used to produce clear vision and to increase psychic powers.
Black obsidian is a powerful Meditation stone. The purpose of this gemstone is to bring to light that which is hidden from the conscious mind. It dissolves suppressed negative patterns and purifies them. It can create a somewhat radical behavior change as new positive attitudes replace old, negative, egocentric patterns.
Snow
Snow is falling
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Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul…
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
— Emily Dickinson
White Rose Mari 