Eyes of Meaning, Eyes of Truth

Going for the Green

Oh! Paddy, dear, and did you hear
The news that's going round,
The shamrock is forbid by law
To grow on Irish ground.
Saint Patrick's Day no more we'll keep
His color can't be seen
For there's a bloody law agin'
The wearing of the green.

I met with Napper Tandy
And he took me by the hand
And he said "How's poor old Ireland?
And how does she stand?"
She's the most distressful country
That ever you have seen,
They're hanging men and women there
For wearing of the green.

Then since the color we must wear
Is England's cruel red
Sure Ireland's sons will n'er forget
The blood that they have shed.
You may take the shamrock from your hat
And cast it on the sod,
But 'twill take root and flourish still
Tho' underfoot 'tis trod.

When the law can stop the blades of grass
From growing as they grow,
And when the leaves in summer time
Their verdure dare not show,
Then I will change the color
I wear in my caubeen,
But till that day I'll stick for aye
To wearing of the green.

But if at last our color should
Be torn from Ireland's heart,
Her sons with shame and sorrow
From the dear old sod will part.
I've heard a whisper of a country
That lies beyond the sea,
Where rich and poor stand equal
In the light of freedom's day.

Oh, Erin! Must we leave you,
Driven by the tyrant's hand?
Must we ask a mother's welcome
From a strange but happy land?
Where the cruel cross of England's thralldom
Never shall be seen
And where in peace we'll live and die
A-wearing of the green.

- Dion Boucicault (1820-1890)

That's the Way it Goes!

sometimes its rough, and scars still show
but thats the way it sometimes goes
we will all fail, but we all know
thats the way it sometimes goes
you will be challenged, in the path you've chose
thats just the way it sometimes goes.
you will feel struggle, thats what im told
i guess this is the way it sometimes goes.

-whosoevers1995, "The Way it Goes" (2013)

Angela Maria "Geli" Raubal ([ˈɡeːliː ˈʀaʊ̯bal]; 4 June 1908 – 18 September 1931) was Adolf Hitler's half-niece. Born in Linz, Austria-Hungary, she was the second child and eldest daughter of Leo Raubal Sr. and Hitler's half-sister, Angela Raubal. Raubal lived in close contact to her uncle from 1925 until her presumed suicide in 1931

Angela Maria "Geli" Raubal was born in Linz, where she grew up with her brother, Leo, and a sister, Elfriede. Her father died at the age of 31, when Geli was two. She and Elfriede accompanied their mother when she became Hitler's housekeeper in 1925; Raubal was 17 at the time and spent the next six years in close contact with her half-uncle, who was 19 years her senior. Her mother was given a position as housekeeper at the Berghof villa near Berchtesgaden in 1928. Raubal moved into Hitler's Munich apartment in 1929 when she enrolled in medicine at Ludwig Maximilian University. She did not complete her medical studies.

As he rose to power as leader of the Nazi Party, Hitler was domineering and possessive of Raubal, keeping a tight rein on her. When he discovered she was having a relationship with his chauffeur, Emil Maurice, he forced an end to the affair and dismissed Maurice from his service. After that he did not allow her to freely associate with friends, and attempted to have himself or someone he trusted near her at all times, accompanying her on shopping trips, to the movies, and to the opera.

Raubal was in effect a prisoner, but planned to escape to Vienna to continue her singing lessons. Her mother told interrogators after the war that her daughter was hoping to marry a man from Linz, but that Hitler had forbidden the relationship. He and Raubal argued on 18 September 1931—he refused to allow her to go to Vienna. He departed for a meeting in Nuremberg, but was recalled to Munich the next day: Raubal was dead from a gunshot wound to the lung; she had apparently shot herself in Hitler's Munich apartment with Hitler's Walther pistol. She was 23.

Rumours immediately began in the media about physical abuse, a possible sexual relationship, and even murder. Otto Strasser, a political opponent of Hitler, was the source of some of the more sensational stories. The historian Ian Kershaw maintains that "whether actively sexual or not, Hitler's behaviour towards Geli has all the traits of a strong, latent at least, sexual dependence." The police ruled out foul play; the death was ruled a suicide. Hitler was devastated and went into an intense depression. He took refuge at a house on the shores of Tegernsee lake, and did not attend the funeral in Vienna on 24 September. He visited her grave at Vienna's Zentralfriedhof (Central Cemetery) two days later. Thereafter, he overcame his depression and refocused on politics.

Hitler later declared that Raubal was the only woman he had ever loved. Her room at the Berghof was kept as she had left it, and he hung portraits of her in his own room there and at the Chancellery in Berlin.

we are not together here
though we lie entwined
to make room for the other presence
we both draw back in our minds
I have a prophecy
threatening to spill into words
this growing certainty
of Over

there once was a time I was sure of the bond
when my hands and my tongue and my thoughts were enough
we are the same but our lives move along
and the third one between replaces what once was love

freedom is being alone
I fear liberation
but something more alive than silence
swallows conversation
no pleasing drama
in subtle averted eyes
the swelling fermata
as the chord dies

there's no denying we feel the third one
we do
I'm tired of hiding and so are you

- Vienna Teng, "Between"

Snoozin'