Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart you feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

 KURT VONNEGUT

George Bilgere

 “One day last summer my five-year-old son walked in from the backyard and dropped a pill bug on the dining room table where I was eating my scrambled eggs. ‘Pill bugs are the dinosaurs of the backyard,’ he told me gravely. And I thanked him, because now I had an idea for a new poem. As anyone who has kids knows, they are born poets. The trick is to help them hold onto it as the distractions of adulthood loom.”

George Bilgere 

Be Drunk

by

Charles Baudelaire

You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking . . . ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.”

From Modern Poets of France: A Bilingual Anthology, translated and edited by Louis Simpson, published by Story Line Press, Inc. Copyright © 1997 by Louis Simpson. Reprinted by permission of the author and Story Line Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

We are all Teachers

I taught swimming again last night and it was so awesome having two new students who were open and ready to learn. I reassured the new people we do not need to use the deep end until they are ready. No point in increasing their anxiety! I said first let's do some bobs. One woman with a great smile and good energy maybe age 58 was holding her nose and I said OK first off let me show you how to breathe because it's the root of everything. Breathe in your mouth and then underwater blow out air like you are blowing your nose. She was off and running, happy to have the tips. I am a quick learner, she said. She made the prayer sign thanking me when she left. She grew up in Morocco and knows 5 languages!

My other new student, age 14, already swims but needed some pointers. She was also quick when I showed her how to not lift her head up in the water while doing the crawl and instead keep her head down and roll her head slightly to breathe by keeping her ear on her arm. I said you have to see yourself as a human shish kabob, all lined up straight on the skewer and you'll stay on the surface. She liked that and was able to make the adjustment. Doesn't that feel better? I asked. Yes! she said, smiling.

 

I always ask my students what they want to work on and they usually have an answer. They get to choose! Then this same new 14 year old with two beautiful braids and an Italian name did a magnificent dolphin kick and I said Oh Wow, please show my other devoted swimmer (age 13). So the new girl showed her and they were both happy. The mother of the 13-year-old was overjoyed. "I am so proud of her!" 

 

I said to the new girl, it's fun to be the teacher isn't it? This is a new exciting thing I have discovered - we are all teachers to each other.

When You're Smiling (The Whole World Smiles With You)

When you're smilin' keep on smilin'
The whole world smiles with you
And when you're laughin' oh when youre laughin'
The sun comes shinin? through

But when you? re cryin' you bring on the rain
So stop your sighin 'be happy again
keep on smilin Cause when you're smilin'
The whole world smiles with you

Oh when you're smilin' keep on smilin'
The whole world smiles with you
Ah when you're laughin' keep on laughin'
The sun comes shinin' through

Now when you're cryin' you bring on the rain
So stop that sighin' be happy again
keep on smilin Cause when you're smilin'
And the whole world smiles with you

The great big world will smile with

The whole wide world will smile with you

Songwriters: Daniel Gaston Ash / Glenn Derek Campling

 

When You're Smiling (The Whole World Smiles With You) lyrics © Universal/momentum Music 3 Ltd., Emi Mills Music Inc

for want of an understanding ear

 “The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”

― Stephen King

They gave each other a smile with a future in it.

  ― Ring Lardner

How can you write if you can't cry?

― Ring Lardner 

If you've ever been homesick, or felt exiled from all the things and people that once defined you, you'll know how important welcoming words and friendly smiles can be.

 Stephen King wrote in his novel 11/22/63

Books are a uniquely portable magic.

  ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft 

“Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.”
― Stephen King

A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.

  ― Stephen King, Skeleton Crew

You Can't Play the Blues in an Air Conditioned Room

source

All my life I had to struggle, I paid some heavy dues
Squeekin' out a livin', playin' easy blues
Then one day my music made me a millionaire
I bought a big old mansion with central heated air
Now I got more money than I know how to use
Got everything a man could want, but I ain't got no blues
Success for me could only lead to my immediate doom
'cause I can't play the blues in an airconditioned room

Now I was doin' better with a smaller piece of pie
But all my fame and fortune I can't identify
I lost the inspiration that came natural in the start
I had to hire a mean old woman, just to break my heart
Now my life's too easy, I'd be getting soft
I used to play the blues all day, but now I just play golf
Now all my pain is rearranged, my life is changes too
'cause I can't play the blues in an airconditioned room


You know what I'm saying
It's kinda hard to play the blues
if you don't have any problems


You might think I'm crazy, you might think I'm strange
The first thing in the morning I'm gonna make a change
I throw away my money, I move back to that shag
Do whatever I gotta do to get that old feelin' back
I know I'd be feelin' better with nothing left to lose
When times are bad, the less I had, the better I played the blues
I buy myself some turkey and wine, and howl it at the moon
'cause I can't play the blues in an airconditioned room


If I should die tomorrow you can write it on my tomb
'He couldn't play the blues in an airconditioned room'

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. Stephen King

 “You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.”

― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

The scariest moment is always just before you start.

  ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Fiction is the truth inside the lie. Stephen King

Good books don't give up all their secrets at once. Stephen King

Literature is not high school and it’s not actually necessary to know what everyone around you is wearing, in terms of style, and being influenced by people who are being published in this very moment is going to make you look just like them, which is probably not a good long-term goal for being yourself or making a meaningful contribution. At any point in history there is a great tide of writers of similar tone, they wash in, they wash out, the strange starfish stay behind, and the conches. Check out the bestseller list for April 1937 or August 1978 if you don’t believe me.

REBECCA SOLNIT

“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?' There will also be an American flag no larger than a child’s hand – glued to a lollipop stick and flying from the cash register.

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.

 ― Kin Hubbard

They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.

 ― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five