Future Plans with Die Suesseste

I can't wait til the day I can read this to Die Suesseste:

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you
can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive.

But the Skin Horse only smiled.

The Velveteen Rabbit

Tuesday Poetry Shot: Pushkin

From Alexsandr Pushkin, one of the most romantic poems of all time. Our Heroine is a sucker for men with broken hearts.

I loved you.
Even now I may confess,
Some embers of my love their fire retain,
But do not let it cause you much distress,
I do not want to sadden you again.
Hopeless and tongue-tied, yet I loved you dearly
With pangs the jealous and the timid know;
So tenderly I loved you, so sincerely,
I pray God grant another love you so.

When I read this in high-school, I was so moved by it that I memorized it (and a few other romantic tearjerkers).

Years later, visiting Russia, I discovered that our guide had also loved and memorized this poem (albeit, in Russian), and so we recited it together (her in Russian, me in English), each to the other. That someone else should feel sorry for Pushkin, and the anguish he felt that wrung this poem out of him, and that these two people should meet by chance and recognize eachother as kindred spirits, was just so cool.

It remains one of my favorite memories of that trip.

O Sad Pompeii!

Today in AD 79, poor Pompeii was destroyed.

The Destruction of Pompeii in 79 AD
Karl Pavlovich Bryullov

From Pliny the Younger's letter to Tacitus:

[snip] They tied pillows on top of their heads as protection against the shower of rock. It was daylight now elsewhere in the world, but there the darkness was darker and thicker than any night. But they had torches and other lights. They decided to go down to the shore, to see from close up if anything was possible by sea. But it remained as rough and uncooperative as before.

Resting in the shade of a sail he (Pliny the Elder) drank once or twice from the cold water he had asked for. Then came an smell of sulfur, announcing the flames, and the flames themselves, sending others into flight but reviving him. Supported by two small slaves he stood up, and immediately collapsed. As I understand it, his breathing was obstructed by the dust-laden air, and his innards, which were never strong and often blocked or upset, simply shut down. When daylight came again 2 days after he died, his body was found untouched, unharmed, in the clothing that he had had on. He looked more asleep than dead.[snip]

Our Lady of Pompeii, pray for them!