Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

In these deep solitudes and awful cells,
Where heav'nly-pensive contemplation dwells,
And ever-musing melancholy reigns;
What means this tumult in a vestal's veins?
Why rove my thoughts beyond this last retreat?
Why feels my heart its long-forgotten heat?
Yet, yet I love!--From Abelard it came,
And Eloisa yet must kiss the name.


Dear fatal name! rest ever unreveal'd,
Nor pass these lips in holy silence seal'd.
Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise,
Where mix'd with God's, his lov'd idea lies:
O write it not, my hand--the name appears
Already written--wash it out, my tears!
In vain lost Eloisa weeps and prays,
Her heart still dictates, and her hand obeys.

.....

No, fly me, fly me, far as pole from pole;
Rise Alps between us! and whole oceans roll!

Ah, come not, write not, think not once of me,
Nor share one pang of all I felt for thee.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

Eloisa to Abelard

VideoVets: Oliver Stone

No comment by Layla.

Farmworker to Surgeon: Immigrant Lives Dream

May 6, 2007 · The life of Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa, a former illegal immigrant, may sound like a movie script, but it is no fiction.

Twenty years ago, he hopped a border fence from Mexico into the United States and became a migrant farmworker.

Today, he is a neurosurgeon and professor at Johns Hopkins University, and a researcher who is looking for a breakthrough in the treatment of brain cancer.

His remarkable journey began in a tiny farming community, 60 miles south of the U.S. border. Quinones-Hinojosa was born there, and by age 5, he was working at his father's gas station. His grandmother was a village healer and a midwife.

But in the mid-1970s, Mexico's economy collapsed, and his father could no longer keep food on the table for the family. Quinones-Hinojosa continued his schooling and became a teacher by the time he was 18, but he, too, was unable to provide for his family. So he made the decision — like so many relatives before him — to head north.

Quinones-Hinojosa picked cotton, tomatoes and cantaloupes, and lived in the fields in a broken-down camper he bought for $300. When his cousin told him he would be a farmworker for the rest of his life, he realized it was time to move on.

He signed up for English classes at a community college, where a teacher encouraged him to attend the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley on a scholarship, Quinones-Hinojosa developed a passion for the scientific method. He went on to Harvard Medical School, where he eventually delivered the commencement speech. It is also during this time that he received his U.S. citizenship.

Quinones-Hinojosa says he owes so much of his success to the many people who have extended a hand to him throughout his life.