Non fanda timemus;
Sed venient maiora metu. --Lucan I.634-5 ('We fear
unspeakables;/ Worse is on the way.')

   "Parentage

'When Augustus Caesar legislated against the unmarried citizens
of Rome, he declared them to be, in some sort, slayers of the
people.'

Ah! no, not these!
These, who were childless, are not those who gave
So many dead unto the journeying wave,
The helpless nurselings of the cradling seas;
Not they who doomed by infallible decrees
Unnumbered man to the innumerable grave.

But those who slay
Are fathers. Theirs are armies. Death is theirs--
The death of innocences and despairs;
The dying of the golden and the grey.
The sentence, when these speak it, has no Nay.
And she who slays is she who bears, who bears."

--Alice Meynell

Most literate cities: Dallas is #36. (But only because i have
a copy of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.)

"Despite all the time and effort I have wasted on the attempt to hide it, trying to tell my self I am wrong and hunting for chances to prove my self wrong. I think the time now is right to reveal it, the time to be honest has come.
In the presence of that mountain sized despair, which has already burdened my weary heart with the frustrations of all the past years to wait for me now and rip me apart to pieces which are hard to bring back together. I am going to declare what has been gnawing on me brutally from the inside so hard I can't even think about blaming myself for keeping this inside for so long. I will confess that I despise you.
Yes, I blame you for creating all these rifts within me, I hate you as much our people have suffered, as much as my ears had to listen to the sounds of bombs and missiles, I hate you as much as the destruction my eyes has seen, as much as I hate the blood that flowed, the wasted years and the loss of my hopes for a future. I hate you as much as all the Iraqis who had to immigrate, as much as the politicians who had to disappear. I blame you for the suffering through the merciless humid and hot nights of Basra without the simplest creature comforts, I blame you for not being able to find the simplest entertainment in my city the second biggest city in Iraq, blame you for the dirt road I have to travel to get to my university which is right in the middle of the city. Blame you for loosing the will to live and for my need for love which was lost in you……..
Because of all that, my dearest Iraq, I despise you. But please, my love and hate, understand my anger. I want you to stop answering my questions about the wasted childhood and youth by saying that these things will be forgotten, because if you do that again you will have to allow me to keep on despising you. " --Ishtar Talking (translated by
Salam Pax)