[This is what I was going to post yesterday. I discovered it while finding stuff I used to reflect the drought of pictures in the last 14 years before recently. The caption that I had on the top said, "For webpage (- when I do one)". This was when Geocities was just really starting to take off.]

---

What is beauty? Alas, 'tis a jewel, a glass,
A bubble, a plaything, a rose,
'Tis the snow, dew or air; 'tis so many things rare
That 'tis nothing, one may well suppose,
'Tis a jewel, Love's token; glass easily broken,
A bubble that vanisheth soon;
A plaything that boys cast aside when it cloys,
A rose quickly faded and strewn.

--Henry G. Bohn (1795-1884)

In the blindness of introspection
I stumble about, without direction,
Through corridors of pessimism
I hold myself in this dark prison.
In the silence, an offering call
Beckons me to relinquish all
I can only give, what I own
A broken shard, a heart of stone.

--Jace Seavers

"How does one become a butterfly?" she asked pensively.

"You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar."

"You mean to die?" asked Yellow, remembering the three who fell out of the sky.

"Yes and No," he answered. "What looks like you wil die but what's really you will still live. Life is changed, not taken away. Isn't that the difference from those who die without ever becoming butterflies? ... Once you are a butterfly, you can really love -- the kind of love that makes new life. It's better than all the hugging caterpillars can do."

---from the book Hope for the Flowers by Trina Paulus