Tag Archives: quotes

Leaving for OSCon

For no special reason
I am leaving you for awhile tonight
I’m flying far above you
Still I love you
You make things right

Well, you know me I’m a nomad
I can’t feel bad
About the way I am
I’ve been rolling around
My whole life
You’re my candlebright in the window
You guide me back again
And I come when you shine
(Candlebright, by Stevie Nicks)

How does one make a 6 year old understand that I love travelling, love going to these conferences, but hate being away from her? I think that she almost gets it. And what’s even cooler, she’s starting to talk like she wants to visit exotic places too. I think that the great adventures are still before us.

When I think about you
I think about how much I
Miss you when you’re not around
When I think about you
I think about how much I
Can’t wait to hear the sound
Of your laughter
Time and distance never matter
Well I miss you now
(I miss you now, by Stevie Nicks)

Anywhere but here

Where would you rather be?
Anywhere but here
When will the time be right?
Anytime but now

(Double Agent – Rush – Counterparts)

When you look at me suddenly it’s clear
You’re burning up my dreams
Crazy as it seems
I don’t wanna be anywhere but here
Anywhere but here

(Anywhere but here – Hilary Duff – Metamorphosis)

So book me on a plane for Paris
Or on a cruise to a desert isle
Anywhere but here where love disappeared
Anywhere but here
I wanna party in New York City
And climb over the China Wall
Anywhere but where your love disapeared
Anywhere but here

(Anywhere but here – Eden’s Crush)

You’ll always be with me, always be with me
Part of my heart for all time
Where I’m going , you’re going
Even if it’s just in my mind
Leaving’s not leaving
I’m not leaving you behind

(Anywhere but here – LeAnn Rimes)

(California is gonna be the place for me.)
Oh leave it all to disappear. I’m heading anywhere but here.
Because I want a life, a souvenir.
I’ll find it anywhere but here.

(Anywhere but here – KD Lang)

No, there wasn’t a point. Except that it seems that only a teenage girl wants to stay right where she is. I don’t expect there’s any deep message in that.

And life is not unpleasant …

As the prospect of going to a Rush concert looms on the horizon, I’m listening to more Rush, and I’m amazed how songs that seemes like happy shiny songs in highschool now seem very dark, insightful, and profound.

I found this to be particularly interesting, at the end of Middletown Dreams, a song about people dreaming about a better life that they will assuredly never achieve:

It’s understood
By every single person
Who’d be elsewhere if they could
So far so good
And life’s not unpleasant
In their little neighbourhood

And, indeed, life is not unpleasant, just because we dream of something better. But if this realization means that we abandon our dreams, then it’s not worth it.

No, life is not unpleasant, but I do dream of better things, and there are indeed times that I am far away.

Frustrated with the fluff …

So much style without substance
So much stuff without style
It’s hard to recognize the real thing
It comes along once in a while
Like a rare and precious metal beneath a ton of rock
It takes some time and trouble to separate from the stock
You sometimes have to listen to a lot of useless talk

(Rush – Grand Designs)

A tale of two cities

The time, half-past seven of the clock on a windy March morning, Anno Domini seventeen hundred and eighty. (Mr. Cruncher himself always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it.)

A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens

Last night I tried to slightly arrange my Dickens collection. It’s much larger than I thought. But, while I have a number of copies of various books, I don’t actually have two of the same edition of anything. 😉 And I only have about 12 copies of “A Christmas Carol”. Not counting movie versions, of course, which adds another 6.

No man is an island …

John Donne (1572-1631), from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII.

“All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated…As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness….No man is an island, entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”