Neighbor

by John Donohue

There in her backyard in the rain and crazier by the week, my neighbor Joan is laying out the many big blue pieces of her downstairs carpet on the grass, “To clean them,” she calls holding up her Tide and a long-handled brush, “just like the Persians in the villages!”   “They use Tide?” I ask, shocked stupid, this never-dry-out, 5,000 pound, smell-bad disaster pushed aside by an image of the orange box set amid the rocks beside a stream in hills near Hamadan.   And where the hell’d she find the strength of will and just plain strength to rip it up and drag it out? And yes, there’s something I could say to her, something I could do that might help turn her from her hell-bent march to full-blown madness—   but I won’t, I’ll never be her friend: smart, short-fused, aggressive, you give an inch she’s calling, leaving food, barging in and personal; slow it down she’s slamming doors, accusing, writing incoherent letters. And I do not love her—except in theory.   So. I watch her sprinkle Tide, her white, loose underarm shaking with the box. I watch her spread it with the brush. In the lightly falling rain I watch her turning on the hose.

__________

From A Small Asymmetry, Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2005, by JOHN DONOGHUE.

When you cease to fear your solitude, a new creativity awakens in you. John O'Donohue

When you cease to fear your solitude, a new creativity awakens in you. Your forgotten or neglected wealth begins to reveal itself. You come home to yourself and learn to rest within. Thoughts are our inner senses. Infused with silence and solitude, they bring out the mystery of inner landscape.

 John O'Donohue  Anam Cara, p. 17

It’s not that I decide what to write and carry it out. It’s more that I grope my way towards something—not even knowing what it is until I’ve arrived.

 Kathryn Harrison

If I were to die in a fall from the breakwater, the last thing I’d smell would be the seaweed rotting on the beach. The last thing I’d see would be my mother’s face, like that of a clock: still, flat, and white [...]

Kathryn Harrison 

She will accept, acknowledge, see me only in as much as I will make myself the child who pleases her.

― Kathryn Harrison, The Kiss: A Memoir

I have to write. It’s not an option. When I write, I am literally building myself a place in which to live. Kathryn Harrison

When I’m writing the way I want, the way I love, which is without thinking about what I’m writing, a strange thing happens: I feel simultaneously the most myself I could possibly be, and at the same time totally relieved of self. I become, I guess, a version of myself that isn’t filtered through the detritus and clutter of experience. We can’t control so much of what happen to us in life. Even our own actions unfold in time in ways we can’t possibly imagine. But there is someone inside who remains untouched by all of that. That person may not really exist in the light, but she is there, waiting, in the dark.

― Kathryn Harrison

The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely. Carl Gustav Jung

To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. Thich Nhat Hanh

When the resistance is gone, so are the demons. Pema Chödrön

To resist change, to try to cling to life, is like holding your breath: if you persist you kill yourself. Alan Watts

Let your body relax and your heart soften.

To let go does not mean to get rid of. To let go means to let be. When we let be with compassion, things come and go on their own. Jack Kornfield

 Let go of the battle. Breathe quietly and let it be. Let your body relax and your heart soften. Open to whatever you experience without fighting. Jack Kornfield

The way of love is the way of no-expectation. Love exists only when there is a total acceptance and no desire to change anything. Osho

Doing nothing is sometimes one of the highest of the duties of man. G.K. Chesterton

Some of us think holding on makes us strong but sometimes it is letting go. Hermann Hesse

 “Conversation between a princess and an outlaw:
"If I stand for fairy-tale balls and dragon bait--dragon bait--what do you stand for?"
"Me? I stand for uncertainty, insecurity, bad taste, fun, and things that go boom in the night."
"Franky, it seems to me that you've turned yourself into a stereotype."
"You may be right. I don't care. As any car freak will tell you, the old models are the most beautiful, even if they aren't the most efficient. People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve."
"Well, you may get off on being a beautiful stereotype, regardless of the social consequences, but my conscience won't allow it."
"And I goddamn refuse to be dragon bait. I'm as capable of rescuing you as you are of rescuing me."
"I'm an outlaw, not a hero. I never intended to rescue you. We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

Curiosity, especially intellectual inquisitiveness, is what separates the truly alive from those who are merely going through the motions. ― Tom Robbins

In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn't creak.
― Tom Robbins

You risked your life, but what else have you ever risked? Have you risked disapproval? Have you ever risked economic security? Have you ever risked a belief? I see nothing particularly courageous about risking one's life. So you lose it, you go to your hero's heaven and everything is milk and honey 'til the end of time. Right? You get your reward and suffer no earthly consequences. That's not courage. Real courage is risking something that might force you to rethink your thoughts and suffer change and stretch consciousness. Real courage is risking one's clichés.

― Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction

You've heard of people calling in sick. You may have called in sick a few times yourself. But have you ever thought about calling in well?

It'd go like this: You'd get the boss on the line and say, "Listen, I've been sick ever since I started working here, but today I'm well and I won't be in anymore." Call in well.
― Tom Robbins