Apple Pie is Food

Last night we peeled the apples. Today we made the crust...
Tonight we baked the an apple pie for dinner and had it with cheddar cheese and a glass of white wine.

Sarah Waters

Going for a long walk almost always gets me thinking about my manuscript in a slightly new way. And if all else fails, there's prayer. St. Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers, has often helped me out in a crisis. If you want to spread your net more widely, you could try appealing to Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, too.
-Sarah Waters

Kashana

Kashana
‏Verified account @kashanacauley

Today a red traffic light stopped me and to defeat it I yelled “I WENT TO YALE.”

Furious Dancing

“Hard times require furious dancing. Each of us is proof.”
― Alice Walker, Hard Times Require Furious Dancing: New Poems

To Share

“...have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

Activism

“Activism is my rent for living on the planet.”
― Alice Walker

Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is. I have a right to be this way...I can't apologize for that, nor can I change it, nor do I want to... We will never have to be other than who we are in order to be successful...We realize that we are as ourselves unlimited and our experiences valid. It is for the rest of the world to recognize this, if they choose.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

Please us Back

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

Alice Walker

“Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.”
― Alice Walker

Faulkner

The writer’s only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is worth any number of old ladies.
- William Faulkner

Borges

A writer — and, I believe, generally all persons — must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

-Jorge Luis Borges

Colum McCann

Try, if possible, to finish in the concrete, with an action, a movement, to carry the reader forward. Never forget that a story begins long before you start it and ends long after you end it. Allow your reader to walk out from your last line and into her own imagination. Find some last-line grace. This is the true gift of writing. It is not yours any more. It belongs in the elsewhere. It is the place you have created. Your last line is the first line for everybody else.
- Colum McCann

Virginia Woolf

No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.
-Virginia Woolf

Save The Children!

“Obviously we have concerns about kids falling through the cracks, not getting sufficient attention if they need attention, not getting the emotional or mental health care that they need,” said Leah Chavla, a lawyer with the Women’s Refugee Commission, an advocacy group.

“This cannot be the right solution,” Ms. Chavla said. “We need to focus on making sure that kids can get placed with sponsors and get out of custody.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/30/us/migrant-children-tent-city-texas.html

Dream

I was visiting my former 6th grade teacher, Mr Perucci. I had a sculpted model of a brain with me. He thought I was giving it to him. He said "Make a drawing of this and give that to me."

What You Remember

“What you remember saves you.”
― W. S. Merwin

Poetry

“Poetry is a way of looking at the world for the first time.”
― W.S. Merwin

Asleep

“We are asleep with compasses in our hands.”
― W.S. Merwin

The Story

“The story of each stone leads back to a mountain.”
― W.S. Merwin

The Sound

“How beautiful you must be
to have been able to lead me
this far with only
the sound of your going away”
― W.S. Merwin, The Moon Before Morning

Merwin

“from what we cannot hold the stars are made”
― W.S. Merwin

One Word

“Poetry is like making a joke. If you get one word wrong at the end of a joke, you've lost the whole thing.”
― W.S. Merwin

W.S. Merwin

“I needed my mistakes
in their order
to get me here”
― W.S. Merwin, The Moon Before Morning

Inside this Pencil

“Inside this pencil
crouch words that have never been written
never been spoken
never been taught

they’re hiding

they’re awake in there
dark in the dark
hearing us
but they won’t come out
not for love not for time not for fire

even when the dark has worn away
they’ll still be there
hiding in the air
multitudes in days to come may walk through them
breathe them
be none the wiser

what script can it be
that they won’t unroll
in what language
would I recognize it
would I be able to follow it
to make out the real names
of everything

maybe there aren’t
many
it could be that there’s only one word
and it’s all we need
it’s here in this pencil

every pencil in the world
is like this”
― W. S. Merwin

Condiment

“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”
― Truman Capote

Never love a Wild Thing

“Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell,' Holly advised him. 'That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky."
"She's drunk," Joe Bell informed me.
"Moderately," Holly confessed....Holly lifted her martini. "Let's wish the Doc luck, too," she said, touching her glass against mine. "Good luck: and believe me, dearest Doc -- it's better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.”
― Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's

No Matter Where You Run

“You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.”
― Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's

Confidence

“Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.”
― Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's

Season

“Aprils have never meant much to me, autumns seem that season of beginning, spring.”
― Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's

Mood

“You know the days when you get the mean reds?
Paul Varjak: The mean reds. You mean like the blues?
Holly Golightly: No. The blues are because you’re getting fat, and maybe it’s been raining too long. You’re just sad, that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid, and you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?”
― Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's

Capote

“You can't blame a writer for what the characters say.”
― Truman Capote

The Music

“To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make.”
― Truman Capote, Truman Capote: Conversations

Amy Hempel

Just because you have stopped sinking doesn't mean you're not still underwater.
- Amy Hempel

Gordon Lish

Wear your heart on the page, and people will read to find out how you solved being alive. -Gordon Lish

The More you Use

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
-Maya Angelou

Fine Fuel

I think that to write well and convincingly, one must be somewhat poisoned by emotion. Dislike, displeasure, resentment, fault-finding, imagination, passionate remonstrance, a sense of injustice—they all make fine fuel.
-Edna Ferber

By Witholding

“You do not keep the audience's interest by giving it information, but by withholding information ....”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Curiosity

“Curiosity is the intellectual need to answer questions and close open patterns. Story plays to this universal desire by doing the opposite, posing questions and opening situations.”
― Robert McKee

A Vehicle

“Story isn’t a flight from reality but a vehicle that carries us on our search for reality, our best effort to make sense out of the anarchy of existence.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Stories are...

“Stories are the currency of human relationships.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Evolve

“A culture cannot evolve without honest, powerful storytelling. When a society repeatedly experiences glossy, hollowed-out, pseudo-stories, it degenerates. We need true satires and tragedies, dramas and comedies that shine a clean light into the dingy corners of the human psyche and society.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

Where we are Going

“We rarely know where we are going; writing is a discovery.”
― Robert McKee

Robert McKee on Story

“Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.”
― Robert McKee

“Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Do this despite fear. For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure. As you follow the quest for stories told with meaning and beauty, study thoughtfully but write boldly. Then, like the hero of the fable, your dance will dazzle the world.”
― Robert McKee

“True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure - the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“A fine work of art - music, dance, painting, story - has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“Do research. Feed your talent. Research not only wins the war on cliche, it's the key to victory over fear and it's cousin, depression.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

“When we want mood experiences, we go to concerts or museums. When we want meaningful emotional experience, we go to the storyteller.”
― Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting

An Oven is a Story Magnet

"An oven is a story magnet. People rarely pass by the park oven when something is baking without stopping to talk."

"An oven attracts festivals and community events. This only makes sense. People want to share food on special occasions... A nursery school wants to do its annual fundraiser... a street festival will culminate in a pizza-potluck, a city parks tour wants to have lunch at the oven."

We don't have to put on the festivals ourselves. People call up and say:

...six folk-dancing groups get together once a year and there are too many people for a small hall -- could they come and dance outdoors and bring a potluck to augment our bread and pizza? ....A theater company has devised an open-air park performance about the mythology surrounding baking in ancient times, could they get us to bake some bread for opening night? .....A community Hallowe'en parade needs a destination for the parade to end at -- could they end at the park around a giant bonfire, with fresh bread for the participants? .....The local city councillor's office wants to host an all-neighbourhood lawn sale, could they put it near the oven and have some pizza available?

https://www.pps.org/article/awoodfiredcommunal

Shaping the Dough

The dough rose again in the fridge overnight. I punched it down and shaped pieces of the dough into baseball-sized blobs. I placed two 'baseballs' in each greased loaf pan. Now I have six loaf pans of dough rising in the cold oven.

I have weensy bits of dough clinging to my hands. If I ever visited a palm reader or fortune-teller she would know I'm a bread baker.

Dream

I dreamed I shared a studio with two artists and this somehow included sharing my garden. They showed up with their extended family and began planting carrots and celery and turnips that they had purchased at Whole Foods. They were digging holes and putting the mature vegetables in the ground. Then they posed for group photos while my husband and I watched. After they left my husband and I walked through the garden. We noticed dead fish strewn about as fertilizer. One of the fish got up and came towards me. It's alive! I shouted. This fish is alive! It turned out to be a fish that was actually a bulldog. It was missing the lower half of its back legs. "That's from frostbite," I said.

Live Dough

Today I finally mixed up some sourdough. I had been living off of previously baked loaves stashed in my freezer. I temporarily got out of the habit and began avoiding baking. Today I mixed up a blend of whole wheat flour, bread flour, oat groats, coarse cornmeal, kosher salt, sourdough starter, and Fleishmann's yeast for good measure, and water.
Making bread is not only a metaphor for life it's a huge comfort because it's a parallel life. My bread preparation requires a few moments to mix up the dough and then I set it aside in another room for the day. Before bed I will punch down the dough and refrigerate it overnight. In the morning I will shape the loaves and place them in pans to rise again before baking them in a 450 degree oven.
I forgot how exciting it is to have a live dough incubating. Baking bread is a drama with many acts.

The Water of Life

“Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy. ...this book...is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.”
-Stephen King

Joyce Carol Oates

When writing goes painfully, when it’s hideously difficult, and one feels real despair (ah, the despair, silly as it is, is real!)–then naturally one ought to continue with the work; it would be cowardly to retreat. But when writing goes smoothly–why then one certainly should keep on working, since it would be stupid to stop. Consequently one is always writing or should be writing.
-Joyce Carol Oates

I Better do This

What happens is six months go by after I finish a book and I start to go out of my mind. I have no hobbies, I don’t garden, I hate travel. The impetus is not inspiration, just a feeling that I better do this. There’s something addictive about leading another life at the same time you’re living your own. If you think about it, it’s a very strange way to make a living.
- Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler

“Bravest thing about people is how they go on loving mortal beings after finding out there's such a thing as dying.”
― Anne Tyler, The Tin Can Tree

Robert McKee

Life is absurd. But there is one meaningful thing, one inarguable thing, and that is that there is suffering. Fine writing helps alleviate that suffering – and anything that puts meaning and beauty into the world in the form of story, helps people to live with more peace and purpose and balance, is deeply worthwhile.

-Robert McKee

Magic Door

“Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace.”
― Eugene O'Neill

Lives by Mending

“Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.”
― Eugene O'Neill

Eugene O'Neill

“Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be drunken continually.

Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will. But be drunken.”
― Eugene O'Neill, Long Day's Journey Into Night

Advice: Keep the Channel Open

One of the most solid pieces of writing advice I know is in fact intended for dancers – you can find it in the choreographer Martha Graham’s biography. But it relaxes me in front of my laptop the same way I imagine it might induce a young dancer to breathe deeply and wiggle their fingers and toes.
- Zadie Smith

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”
-Martha Graham

Suit of Armor

Keep on writing, no matter what! That's the most important thing. As long as you have a job on hand that absorbs all your mental energy, you haven't much worry to spare over other things. It serves as a suit of armor.

- Eugene O' Neill

Sondheim

You’ve got to work on something dangerous. You have to work on something that makes you uncertain. Something that makes you doubt yourself. You shouldn’t feel safe. You should feel, “I don’t know if I can write this.” That’s what I mean by dangerous, and I think that’s a good thing to do. Sacrifice something safe.

- Stephen Sonheim

Kurt Vonnegut

Our power is patience. We have discovered that writing allows even a stupid person to seem halfway intelligent, if only that person will write the same thought over and over again, improving it just a little bit each time. It is a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. Anybody can do it. All it takes is time.
-Kurt Vonnegut

Kathryn Schulz

Eighty percent of the battle of writing involves keeping yourself in that cave: waiting out the loneliness and opacity and emptiness and frustration and bad sentences and dead ends and despair until the damn thing resolves into words. That kind of patience, a steady turning away from everything but the mind and the topic at hand, can only be accomplished by cultivating the habit of attention and a tolerance for solitude.
-Kathryn Schulz

Placido Domingo

The high note is not the only thing.
-Placido Domingo

Me and My Robot

I made porridge from oat groats this morning. It was cooking in my robot electric pressure cooker while I sat at my desk. The oats came out great and were delicious with raisins and milk and cinnamon.

Timothy Egan

Story follows character, as the Greeks knew,
article

Dream

I was outside on the phone at an art gallery. The owner showed up and wanted in on my conversation. I ignored her. She put me into her chicken shack where I was attacked by hens, to get me off the phone.
A tall man was standing in the next yard. He had just rolled in a gigantic bottle of rosé wine that was the same size as he was. He unscrewed the cap. The mouth of the bottle was as wide as a mason jar. He began sipping.
I was in a crowded room with someone tapping me on the shoulder. I woke up from my dog pawing at me.

Free Advice

From the Old Coots.

They also field questions about how to keep romance alive, said Klein, who has been married for 27 years.

"I always tell people that the first thing you do is put down your phone and start talking,” Klein said.

 On a recent Saturday, the coots listened carefully to Jane Riley, 57, who runs a property management company in Park City, Utah, and wanted tips on communicating better with her husband. They told her it was important to “listen, be kind and laugh together.” Riley smiled and offered her thanks.

The Sky

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Decision

Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Each Day

Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.
- May Sarton

In the Chaos

“In the chaos of this world, where we carom and collide in the everyday turbulence, there's something about the specific gravity of the helpless individual, the lost and the fractured, that draws kindness from us, like venom from a wound.”
― David Stuart MacLean

Inceredibly Random

“... it made me realize how crazy random it was not just that I was me (the billion sperm to one egg; the insane odds against all of my ancestors ever meeting each other), but also how, with the millions of electrical pulses in the brain that were needed to fire every microsecond, it was incredibly random that I continued to be me.”
― David Stuart MacLean, The Answer to the Riddle Is Me: A Memoir of Amnesia

The Answer to the Riddle

“You’ve done a good job of saying everything but how you feel,” she said. “Sadness isn’t something you get to get out of by being smart. You don’t get to outwit this. You will have to deal with the pain at some point.”
― David Stuart MacLean, The Answer to the Riddle Is Me: A Memoir of Amnesia

David Stuart MacLean

“The thing that gets in the way of people writing is what they want to write about. Because they'll start writing, and they'll get angry at the thing that they're writing because it wasn't what was in their head. One of the things you have to do in writing is get over the thing that brought you to the chair. The thing that brought you to the chair is great and really wonderful, but at some point you have to give over to the practice of what you've written versus what you want to write. What you want to write is going to destroy you. What you have written is the thing you've got.”
― David Stuart MacLean

The Tilted Man

I saw the tilted man again. He was tilted backwards as if he was holding a large piece of glass. He lifted his knees slowly as he walked. He must be in pain. I couldn't help watching, mesmerized. As he methodically walked across the Walgreen's parking lot the whole world became the grounds of his asylum.

A Hero

A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.
- Joseph Campbell

Dedicate Ourselves

One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that.
- Joseph Campbell

Metaphorically

Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.
- Joseph Campbell

Yes

The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.
- Joseph Campbell

Sacred Space

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.
- Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell

Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.
- Joseph Campbell

Joy

Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.
-Joseph Campbell

A Child

A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
-James Baldwin

James Baldwin

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
-James Baldwin

Season of Apples

This is my desperate season--I call it "receive mode" because everything is coming in (anxiety overwhelm) versus flying out---which I call "transmit mode". I swim and write to save my life. My schedule holds me up. I get spoiled by 'transmit mode' and then I have to adjust to 'receive mode'. Each mood 'house' is 10 weeks long. It's how I'm made! I'm cyclothymic.

In this 'house' I'm rolling boulders up hill! But then I have to ask myself what's good about it? I stay focused and admittedly that is good for many things.

Amen to workouts they help me immeasurably and the side effects are elevated mood and feeling calm and the SUPER BONUS is excellent muscles.

Yesterday I found a new memoir yesterday at the library, The Locust and the Bird by Hanan Al-Shaykh. So far it's fabulous. I love well written memoirs.

Hanan Al-Shaykh

“Surely you know that pleasure soon evaporates, into thin air?
Then all we are left with are stories.”
― Hanan Al-Shaykh

The Writer's Almanac is Back

The Writer's Almanac is back--as an email newsletter, as a podcast, as a Facebook page, etc.
http://www.garrisonkeillor.com/

Brautigan

“Excuse me, I said. I thought you were a trout stream.
I'm not, she said.”
― Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

I Cannot Understand

“I cannot understand why my arm is not a lilac tree.”
― Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

Poetry

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”
― Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen

“I have tried in my way to be free.”
― Leonard Cohen

Dance Me

“Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love”
― Leonard Cohen

Going Nowhere

“Going nowhere, as Leonard Cohen would later emphasize for me, isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply.”
― Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

“Not many years ago, it was access to information and movement that seemed our greatest luxury; nowadays it’s often freedom from information, the chance to sit still, that feels like the ultimate prize.”
― Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

“If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with. —Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz”
― Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

“Writers, of course, are obliged by our professions to spend much of our time going nowhere. Our creations come not when we’re out in the world, gathering impressions, but when we’re sitting still, turning those impressions into sentences. Our job, you could say, is to turn, through stillness, a life of movement into art. Sitting still is our workplace, sometimes our battlefield.”
― Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

Sitting Still

“In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.”
― Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

“Sitting still as a way of falling in love with the world and everything in it;”
― Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

Pico Iyer

“Writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.”
― Pico Iyer

Gustave Flaubert

“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it”
― Gustave Flaubert

“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
― Gustave Flaubert

This Morning

Sirens howling red though the city

Jenn Blair

I don't dare
wipe my lips on a skyscraper.
poem

End with an Image

“End with an image and don't explain.”
― Stanley Kunitz, The Collected Poems

“I dropped my hoe and ran into the house and started to write this poem, 'End of Summer.’ It began as a celebration of wild geese. Eventually the geese flew out of the poem, but I like to think they left behind the sound of their beating wings.”
― Stanley Kunitz

“You must be careful not to deprive the poem of its wild origin.”
― Stanley Kunitz

Stanley Kunitz

“The universe is a continuous web. Touch it at any point and the whole web quivers.”
― Stanley Kunitz

Demeter

by Barbara Crooker

It was November, when my middle daughter
descended to the underworld. She fell
off her horse straight into coma's arms.
He dragged her down, wrapped her in a sleep
so deep I thought I would never see her again.
Each day, the light grew dimmer, as Earth
moved away from sun. I was not writing this story;
no one knew the ending, not the neurosurgeons,
not their fancy machines. Her skin grew pale,
the freckles stood out like stars, and every
twenty-four hours she was further away.
I called and called her name, offered to trade places,
ate six pomegranate seeds, their bleeding garnets
tart on the tongue. Her classmates took
their SATs, wrote their entrance essays. She
slipped down into the darkness, another level
deeper. I was ready to deliver her to college,
watch her disappear into a red brick dorm, green
trees waving their arms in welcome. Not this,
season without ending, where switches changed
the darkness to light, and breath was forced
through tubes and machines, their steady hum
the only music of the dim room. The shadows
under her eyes turned blue-violet, and pneumonia
filled her lungs.

And then, one morning, slight as the shift
from winter to spring, her eyelids fluttered,
and up she swam, a slippery rebirth,
and the light that came into the room
was from a different world.

Barbara Crooker

In the Middle
by Barbara Crooker, from Word Press, 1998.

of a life that's as complicated as everyone else's,
struggling for balance, juggling time.
The mantle clock that was my grandfather's
has stopped at 9:20; we haven't had time
to get it repaired. The brass pendulum is still,
the chimes don't ring. One day you look out the window,
green summer, the next, and the leaves have already fallen,
and a grey sky lowers the horizon. Our children almost grown,
our parents gone, it happened so fast. Each day, we must learn
again how to love, between morning's quick coffee
and evening's slow return. Steam from a pot of soup rises,
mixing with the yeasty smell of baking bread. Our bodies
twine, and the big black dog pushes his great head between;
his tail is a metronome, 3/4 time. We'll never get there,
Time is always ahead of us, running down the beach, urging
us on faster, faster, but sometimes we take off our watches,
sometimes we lie in the hammock, caught between the mesh
of rope and the net of stars, suspended, tangled up
in love, running out of time.

The Transformation

“Ideas at first considered outrageous or ridiculous or extreme gradually become what people think they've always believed. How the transformation happened is rarely remembered, in part because it's compromising: it recalls the mainstream when the mainstream was, say, rabidly homophobic or racist in a way it no longer is; and it recalls that power comes from the shadows and the margins, that our hope is in the dark around the edges, not the limelight of center stage. Our hope and often our power.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

Dream

I was bicycling on the frozen river when I arrived at a spot that was flooded with huge gaps in the ice. I found two men in a work space below ground and I asked them to be my witness in case I don't make it.

Despair vs Hope

“Despair demands less of us, it’s more predictable, and in a sad way safer. Authentic hope requires clarity—seeing the troubles in this world—and imagination, seeing what might lie beyond these situations that are perhaps not inevitable and immutable.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities

Rebecca Solnit: Hope in the Dark

“The term 'politics of prefiguration' has long been used to describe the idea that if you embody what you aspire to, you have already succeeded. That is to say, if your activism is already democratic, peaceful, creative, then in one small corner of the world these things have triumphed. Activism, in this model, is not only a toolbox to change things but a home in which to take up residence and live according to your beliefs, even if it's a temporary and local place...”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

What We Dream Of

“What we dream of is already present in the world.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

Start Living That Way Now

“Paul Goodman famously wrote, “Suppose you had the revolution you are talking and dreaming about. Suppose your side had won, and you had the kind of society that you wanted. How would you live, you personally, in that society? Start living that way now!”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities

From the Edges

“You may be told that the legal decisions lead the changes, that judges and lawmakers lead the culture in those theaters called courtrooms, but they only ratify change. They are almost never where change begins, only where it ends up, for most changes travel from the edges to the center.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

Hope in the Dark

“The future is dark, with a darkness as much of the womb as the grave.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

Emerge

“Inside the word "emergency" is "emerge"; from an emergency new things come forth. The old certainties are crumbling fast, but danger and possibility are sisters.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

Paradise

“Paradise is not the place in which you arrive but the journey toward it. Sometimes I think victories must be temporary or incomplete; what kind of humanity would survive paradise? The industrialized world has tried to approximate paradise in its suburbs, with luxe, calme, volupté, cul-de-sacs, cable television and two-car garages, and it has produced a soft ennui that shades over into despair and a decay of the soul suggesting that Paradise is already a gulag. Countless desperate teenagers will tell you so. For paradise does not require of us courage, selflessness, creativity, passion: paradise in all accounts is passive, is sedative, and if you read carefully, soulless.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

Opposite of Fear

“Hope just means another world might be possible, not promise, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

“To hope is to gamble. It's to bet on your futures, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

Joy

“Joy doesn't betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a fine act of insurrection.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

Rebecca Solnit on Hope

“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal... To hope is to give yourself to the future - and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

The Hell Circus

For two years the political news has been one big hell circus.

Exercise

Physical activity can help you manage stress by: 1. It releases feel-good brain chemicals that may make you feel more energetic. 2. It reduces harmful immune system chemicals. 3. It increases body temperature, which may have calming effects and help you sleep better. 4. It provides a distraction to help take your mind off your worries.
-Mayo Clinic

Sometimes

Sometimes wherever I look I see disaster. This morning I spotted the orange electrical cord dangling from a neighbors window connected to their downstairs neighbor's apartment, in the rain. Their other window wide open, no screen, in spite of having small children. On my walk I saw a man rummaging through a pile of clothes in the park with three big loose dogs. As I turned the corner I saw a vehicle with it's parking lights left on.

May Sarton

“It always comes back to the same necessity: go deep enough and there is a bedrock of truth, however hard.”
― May Sarton

Waiting

“Solitude itself is a way of waiting for the inaudible and the invisible to make itself felt. And that is why solitude is never static and never hopeless. On the other hand, every friend who comes to stay enriches the solitude forever; presence, if it has been real presence, does not ever leave.”
― May Sarton, Plant Dreaming Deep: A Journal

Like a Tree

“I would like to believe when I die that I have given myself away like a tree that sows seeds every spring and never counts the loss, because it is not loss, it is adding to future life. It is the tree’s way of being. Strongly rooted perhaps, but spilling out its treasure on the wind.”
― May Sarton, Recovering: A Journal

Fierce Tension

“The fierce tension in me, when it is properly channeled, creates the good tension for work. But when it becomes unbalanced I am destructive. How to isolate that good tension is my problem these days. Or, put in another way, how to turn the heat down fast enough so the soup won’t boil over!”
― May Sarton

May Sarton

“To go with, not against the elements, an inexhaustible vitality summoned back each day to do the same tasks, to feed the animals, clean out barns and pens, keep that complex world alive.”
― May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

A Question

“I have never written a book that was not born out of a question I needed to answer for myself.”
― May Sarton

Mystic and Nonmystic

“The creative person, the person who moves from an irrational source of power, has to face the fact that this power antagonizes. Under all the superficial praise of the "creative" is the desire to kill. It is the old war between the mystic and the nonmystic, a war to the death.”
― May Sarton, Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing

Endure

“So sometimes one has simply to endure a period of depression for what it may hold of illumination if one can live through it, attentive to what it exposes or demands.”
― May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

Lover of the Work

“It is good for a professional to be reminded that his professionalism is only a husk, that the real person must remain an amateur, a lover of the work.”
― May Sarton, Plant Dreaming Deep

May Sarton

“Machines do things very quickly and outside the natural rhythm of life, and we are indignant if a car doesn’t start at the first try. So the few things that we still do, such as cooking (though there are TV dinners!), knitting, gardening, anything at all that cannot be hurried, have a very particular value.”
― May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

Suffering

“We fear disturbance, change, fear to bring to light and to talk about what is painful. Suffering often feels like failure, but it is actually the door into growth.”
― May Sarton

Think Like a Hero

“One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.”
― May Sarton

Routine

“Routine is not a prison, but the way to freedom from time.”
― May Sarton

Let it Rest

“The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of room, not try to be or do anything whatever.”
― May Sarton

Imitate the Trees

“Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember nothing stays the same for long, not even pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.”
― May Sarton

Make Peace

“The moral dilemma is to make peace with the unacceptable.”
― May Sarton

Be Alive

“For any writer who wants to keep a journal, be alive to everything, not just to what you're feeling, but also to your pets, to flowers, to what you're reading.”
― May Sarton

Description

“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Great Stories

“...the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again.

That is their mystery and their magic.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

Arundhati Roy

“The American way of life is not sustainable. It doesn’t acknowledge that there is a world beyond America. ”
― Arundhati Roy

Orhan Pamuk

“I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The New Life

Books

“Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in rapid succession had set up some sort of murmur among themselves, transforming my head into an orchestra pit where different musical instruments sounded out, and I would realize that I could endure this life because of these musicales going on in my head.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The New Life

Patience

“Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process. What does patience mean? It means to look at the thorn and see the rose, to look at the night and see the dawn. Impatience means to be so shortsighted as to not be able to see the outcome. The lovers of God never run out of patience, for they know that time is needed for the crescent moon to become full.”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

Love

“How can love be worthy of its name if one selects solely the pretty things and leaves out the hardships? It is easy to enjoy the good and dislike the bad. Anybody can do that. The real challenge is to love the good and the bad together, not because you need to take the rough with the smooth but because you need to go beyond such descriptions and accept love in its entirety.”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

Be the Flow

“Do not go with the flow. Be the flow.”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

Be Thankful!

“Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighborhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful!”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

Elif Shafak: Books

“Books change us. Books save us. I know this because it happened to me.”
― Elif Shafak

Article

https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/abdi-buddhism/
We have to be very careful with our urges to “help” other people. I need to gently probe my intentions to see how attached I am to being a helper, and I have to make sure that I am not trapping another person into needing my help so that I can feel good. Both the person helping and the person being helped are bigger than those roles.

Holographic Horses

Bring in the holographic horses, as Circus Roncalli rides into the future

M.F.K. Fisher

“I am more modest now, but I still think that one of the pleasantest of all emotions is to know that I, I with my brain and my hands, have nourished my beloved few, that I have concocted a stew or a story, a rarity or a plain dish, to sustain them truly against the hungers of the world.”
― M.F.K. Fisher

Homely Ceremony

“The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight...

[Breadmaking is] one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with one of the world's sweetest smells... there is no chiropractic treatment, no yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread.”
― M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating

Meet

“You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it.”
― Goldie Hawn

Grow as a Lotus

“The lotus is the most beautiful flower, whose petals open one by one. But it will only grow in the mud. In order to grow and gain wisdom, first you must have the mud --- the obstacles of life and its suffering. ... The mud speaks of the common ground that humans share, no matter what our stations in life. ... Whether we have it all or we have nothing, we are all faced with the same obstacles: sadness, loss, illness, dying and death. If we are to strive as human beings to gain more wisdom, more kindness and more compassion, we must have the intention to grow as a lotus and open each petal one by one. ”
― Goldie Hawn

Boundless

“I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Steinbeck

“Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Sea Monsters

“Men really do need sea-monsters in their personal oceans.”
― John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez

Playing a Part

“Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? ...Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

John Steinbeck

“When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Beauty in Truth

“There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Ideas

“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”
― John Steinbeck

Free Exploring Mind

“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Dream

I dreamed that I was on a motorcycle trip with my husband and we stopped at a gas station. In the waiting area inside the office there was a fish tank with tropical fish. I noticed neon tetras and two huge fish that were wearing blue spandex athletic tank tops. I admired the fish tank. It's so relaxing, I said.

I dreamed I was invisible while sitting between two friends. That's a good thing I thought. To become nothing.

Lucky

Last week on Saturday at 7AM I woke up to a bunch of firemen in my driveway. They had just put out an engine fire in my 1995 Honda.

When the Lieutenant Fire Marshal arrived he was very thorough. We deduced that it was most likely the faulty electrical alarm system, or possibly mouse or squirrel but not vandalism. The interior of the car was unharmed (except smoke smell).

Anyway I needed some distance before I could write about it. We feel LUCKY that a neighbor was driving out to get a coffee at 6:30 AM and spotted the smoke and called. When she came by and told us I hugged and thanked her.

AMEN.

The fire could have taken down our new car and the garage and the neighbor's new car. So we feel very lucky. On top of it all the firemen and policeman were super kind and professional.

Yay, Woonsocket.

Dinner

I chopped three farm fresh green peppers and two white onions and sauteed them in olive oil in my 12 inch cast iron skillet. I added a bunch of spinach that needed to be eaten and chopped fresh garlic. Then I added a container of salsa that a friend gave me. I cracked 10 eggs and scrambled them in a bowl and added it to the vegetables. I grated a chunk of sharp cheddar and sprinkled it on top. I picked about 8 leaves of basil from the garden and added them, chopping them with scissors. I took out five corn tortillas and layered them on top of the egg mixture. I baked the whole thing in the oven at 350. Then I broiled the top for a few minutes to crisp the tortillas. It was so good I had to write it down.

Meditation

“The ending of sorrow is the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge is always within the shadow of ignorance. Meditation is freedom from thought and a movement in the ecstasy of truth. Meditation is explosion of intelligence.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti

Alive

“We carry about us the burden of what thousands of people have said and the memories of all our misfortunes. To abandon all that is to be alone, and the mind that is alone is not only innocent but young -- not in time or age, but young, innocent, alive at whatever age -- and only such a mind can see that which is truth and that which is not measurable by words.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti

The Answer

“If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem. ”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti

Intention

“To transform the world, we must begin with ourselves; and what is important in beginning with ourselves is the intention. The intention must be to understand ourselves and not to leave it to others to transform themselves or to bring about a modified change through revolution, either of the left or of the right. It is important to understand that this is our responsibility, yours and mine...”
― J. Krishnamurti

The Essence of all Philosophy

“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

Ghosts

“It's not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that walks in us. It's all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we can't get rid of them.”
― Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts

Ibsen

“You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.”
― Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People

Henrik Ibsen

“Money may be the husk of many things but not the kernel. It brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintance, but not friends; servants, but not loyalty; days of joy, but not peace or happiness.”
― Henrik Ibsen

Notes and Counternotes

“We need to be virtually bludgeoned into detachment from our daily lives, our habits and mental laziness, which conceal from us the strangeness of the world. Without a fresh virginity of mind, without a new and healthy awareness of existential reality, there can be no theatre and no art either; the real must be in a way dislocated, before it can be re-integrated.”
― Eugène Ionesco, Notes and Counternotes

An Adventure of the Mind

“A work of art really is above all an adventure of the mind.”
― Eugène Ionesco

The Question

“It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.”
― Eugène Ionesco

“Why do people always expect authors to answer questions? I am an author because I want to ask questions. If I had answers, I'd be a politician.”
― Eugène Ionesco

Eugène Ionesco

“A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.”
― Eugène Ionesco

Jiddu Krishnamurti

“If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti

“To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti

Measure of Health

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
― J. Krishnamurti

Endless River

“The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is. Self-knowledge has no end - you don't come to an achievement, you don't come to a conclusion. It is an endless river.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti

Jiddu Krishnamurti

“You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti

Italo Calvino

“Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness.”
― Italo Calvino

Herman Hesse

“I began to understand that suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there not to vex us or cheapen us or deprive us of our dignity but to mature and transfigure us.”
― Hermann Hesse, Peter Camenzind

Ram Dass

The art of escaping reactivity

by Ram Dass

When people say, “What should I do with my life?” the more interesting question is, “How do I cultivate the quietness of my being, where ‘what I should do with my life’ will become apparent?”

Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. The journey is constant, between listening to the inner voice and making the choice to take an action. The minute you make a decision, if you feel it is disharmonious with some other plane of existence, you must go back inside again. The art form of continually emptying to hear freshly. Imagine being in a relationship where the two people are meeting each other anew all the time. Imagine how freeing it would be for you.

Now, sometimes I’m in one place, sometimes I’m in another. When I meet somebody they say, “Oh, I know Dick,” or, “I know Richard,” or, “I know Ram Dass,” and they peg me into a model and their minds define it for their efficiency. “He’s who I always thought he was.” So if you come down to breakfast one day and you turn out to be the Divine Mother, but somebody else thinks of you as somebody who didn’t do the garbage last night, you begin to see how the conspiracy of mind defines reality, you know?

You can use your membership in groups as spiritual practice by exploring the power of your boundaries, because the whole issue of awakening also has the quality of expanding to embrace more and more of the universe. There has to be the dissolving of a certain boundary in order to be a part of another kind of existence.

My work constantly requires me to empty so that I become more of an instrument for some other kind of wisdom or presence or force. It’s true for each of us.

My job is to continually get out of the way. It’s interesting in my business to use personal stories impersonally. I mean, I use my personal life because it’s anecdotal and it’s easy to get to, but it has nothing to do with me particularly. I don’t take it personally.

It’s really interesting, the soul does not take the ego’s trip personally. Like somebody comes up and says, “You’re really a disappointment to me.” I figure that’s their problem. I may take it and work with it and look at it. I’ll ask myself if I’m disappointed, and I either say, “You know, they got something there, I’ll clean up my act,” or “Nope. It’s the projections of their mind.” If I’m not mindful I’ll react initially with, “What do you mean I’m….” or,“Well, I think you are…” or whatever else. To escape from reactivity is such an art form. Such an art form.



-Ram Dass

Variety

“All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Tolstoy

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
― Leo Tolstoy

Literature

“Literature was not born the day when a boy crying "wolf, wolf" came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels; literature was born on the day when a boy came crying "wolf, wolf" and there was no wolf behind him.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature

Sea

“The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

Vladimir Nabokov

“Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

An Unfettered Howl

“Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don't stop to think, don't interrupt the scream, exhale, release life's rapture.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

Nabokov

“Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

Art of the Glimpse

“I think it is the art of the glimpse. If the novel is like an intricate Renaissance painting, the short story is an impressionist painting. It should be an explosion of truth. Its strength lies in what it leaves out just as much as what it puts in, if not more. It is concerned with the total exclusion of meaninglessness. Life, on the other hand, is meaningless most of the time. The novel imitates life, where the short story is bony, and cannot wander. It is essential art.”
― William Trevor, Paris Review

Only Love Matters

“A person's life isn't orderly ...it runs about all over the place, in and out through time. The present's hardly there; the future doesn't exist. Only love matters in the bits and pieces of a person's life.”
― William Trevor

William Trevor

“People like me write because otherwise we are pretty inarticulate. Our articulation is our writing.”
― William Trevor

“I get melancholy if I don't [write]. I need the company of people who don't exist.”
― William Trevor

“As a writer one doesn’t belong anywhere. Fiction writers, I think, are even more outside the pale, necessarily on the edge of society. Because society and people are our meat, one really doesn’t belong in the midst of society. The great challenge in writing is always to find the universal in the local, the parochial. And to do that, one needs distance.”
― William Trevor

“The same applies to any artist; we are the tools and instruments of our talent. We are outsiders; we have no place in society because society is what we’re watching, and dealing with.”
― William Trevor

Lisa Pryor

I plan to seek inspiration from people who have less than me rather than people who have more.

- Lisa Pryor

Strength, Courage Confidence

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living

Courage

“It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt

“It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.”
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Process

“It's only when caterpillarness is done that one becomes a butterfly. That again is part of this paradox. You cannot rip away caterpillarness. The whole trip occurs in an unfolding process of which we have no control.”
― Ram Dass, Be Here Now

Illusion

“We're here to awaken from the illusion of separateness.”

― Ram Dass, How Can I Help? Stories and Reflection on Service

The Mystery

“Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery.”
― ram dass

More Than

“Learn to watch your drama unfold while at the same time knowing you are more than your drama.”
― Ram Dass

Becoming Nobody

“The game is not about becoming somebody, it's about becoming nobody.”
― Ram Dass

Circle

“I would say that the thrust of my life has been initially about getting free, and then realizing that my freedom is not independent of everybody else. Then I am arriving at that circle where one works on oneself as a gift to other people so that one doesn't create more suffering. I help people as a work on myself and I work on myself to help people.”
― Ram Dass

Witness

“Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it.”
― Ram Dass

Listen

“The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can't be organized or regulated. It isn't true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth.”
― Ram Dass

Seeing the Beloved

“The most important aspect of love is not in giving or the receiving: it's in the being. When I need love from others, or need to give love to others, I'm caught in an unstable situation. Being in love, rather than giving or taking love, is the only thing that provides stability. Being in love means seeing the Beloved all around me.”
― Ram Dass

Words to Live By

“Treat everyone you meet like God in drag.”
― Ram Dass

Ram Dass

“It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.”
― Ram Dass

You will have Created Something

“If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

Welcome to Earth

“Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

Public Libraries

“And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

Kurt Vonnegut

Writers can treat their mental illnesses every day.
- Kurt Vonnegut

Mark Twain

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
― Mark Twain

Mark Twain

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”

― Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

The Importance of Play

No one wants his or her child to become a purposeless adult. But part of the joy of childhood is doing things because they anchor you to the moment, not because they will reap future benefits or rewards. There is a sense of mindfulness children feel when they play that so many of us long for as adults.
-Katherine Marsh

Lao Tzu

Meet the difficult while it is easy.
Tao Te Ching - Chapter 63

Act without action.
Pursue without interfering.
Taste the tasteless.

Make the small big and the few many.
Return animosity with virtue.
Meet the difficult while it is easy.
Meet the big while it is small.

The most difficult in the world
Must be easy in its beginning.
The biggest in the world
Is small in its beginning.
So, the sage never strives for greatness,
And can therefore accomplish greatness.

Lightly given promises
Must meet with little trust.
Taking things lightly
Must lead to big difficulties.
So, the sage regards things as difficult,
And thereby avoids difficulty.

― Lao Tzu

Lao Tzu

“Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.”
― Lao Tzu

A Good Traveler

“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.”
― Lao Tzu

Gratitude

“What separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude.”
― Brené Brown

Courage

“Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

Authenticity

“Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It's about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.”
― Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

Forecast

Areas of discontent and loneliness before 8AM. Otherwise, mostly quiet, with a light and variable melancholy.

If You Don't Become the Ocean

“If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day.”
― Leonard Cohen

Poetry

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”
― Leonard Cohen

There is a Crack in Everything

“There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.”
― Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, 1956-1968

Leonard Cohen

“The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.”
― Leonard Cohen

Charles Simic

“He who cannot howl will not find his pack.”
― Charles Simic

Soul

“If I believe in anything, it is in the dark night of the soul. Awe is my religion, and mystery is its church.”
― Charles Simic

One Writes...

“One writes because one has been touched by the yearning for and the despair of ever touching the Other.”
― Charles Simic, The Unemployed Fortune-Teller: Essays and Memoirs

If the Sky Falls...

“If the sky falls they shall have clouds for supper.”
― Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End: Prose Poems

Silence

“Silence is the only language god speaks.”
― Charles Simic, Dime-Store Alchemy

How to Find Happiness

“When people ask me how to find happiness in life I tell them, First learn how to cook.”
― Charles Simic

The Plain Truth

“The plain truth is we are going to die. Here I am, a teeny spec surrounded by boundless space and time, arguing with the whole of creation, shaking my fist, sputtering, growing even eloquent at times, and then-poof! I am gone. Swept off once and for all. I think that is very, very funny.”
― Charles Simic

Charles Simic

“Making art in America is about saving one's soul.”
― Charles Simic, Dime-Store Alchemy

The Legitimacy of the Supreme Court is on the line.

After all, if Kavanaugh is confirmed, we will be trying to navigate a turbulent era in American politics with a Supreme Court in which two seats were effectively stolen. First Republicans refused even to give President Barack Obama’s nominee so much as a hearing; then they will have filled two positions with nominees chosen by a president who lost the popular vote and eked out an Electoral College win only with aid from a hostile foreign power.
- Paul Krugman

Patrick Leahy

Important Read

Suicide Study

Martela said something more basic is required: “Human connection at that moment of crisis. It’s just about listening like you would to your friends.”
Article

Michelle Goldberg

I’m not interested in seeing these #MeToo castoffs engage in Maoist struggle sessions to purge their patriarchal impulses. But maybe they’d find it easier to resurrect their careers if it seemed like they’d reflected on why women are so furious in the first place, and perhaps even offered ideas to make things better.
- Michelle Goldberg

Paul Krugman

So if you want to understand why the great slump that began in 2008 went on so long, blighting so many American lives, the answer is politics. Specifically, policy failed because cynical, bad-faith Republicans were willing to sacrifice millions of jobs rather than let anything good happen to the economy while a Democrat sat in the White House.
-Paul Krugman

Monsieur Mangetout

Michel Lotito: The Man Who Ate An Airplane And Everything Else
By Tom Lorenzo

Michel Lotito, better known as “Monsieur Mangetout,” which appropriately translates to “Mr. Eats All,” has certainly lived up to his nickname.

Bread and Puppet: Grasshopper Rebellion Circus

http://gregcookland.com/wonderland/2018/09/09/bread-puppet-circus-2/

Ram Dass

How do We Awaken Fully Through What We do on Earth?

by Ram Dass

First of all, we have to understand that we are humans who are awakening to an awarenesses of soul, if you want to use that term. We’re awakening out of the illusion of our separateness and from our identification with our bodies and our personalities. As we awaken, as we pull back, we listen clearly to hear how we are to be on earth.

What is our work on earth that allows us to awaken fully? How do we awaken fully through what we do on earth?

Later on in your evolution, you get to the point where you want to be free so badly that you are drawn to the things that are more difficult, because those are the things that are catching you. The places where you’re out of balance. Some people meditate because it’s natural for them to meditate. At other times, they meditate because they hate it, and that’s fine too. You’re guided by your intuitive wisdom about that. You see, at first that’s the difference between high and free.

Now in terms of listening for unique manifestation, you’ve got to understand that as forms we’re in a world of changing phenomena, that everything’s changing all the time. There’s a story that many of you are familiar with of Mahatma Gandhi, who was leading a march to the sea – no, it wasn’t the Salt march, but it was another one. After several days there were many thousands of people following him, and whether he saw that there would be violence or something else, he stopped the march. His people said to him, “Mahatma-ji, you can’t just stop the march. I mean, people have left their work, they follow you, they believe in you. You can’t do that.” And he said, “I’m a human, God knows absolute truth. I am a human – I only know relative truth. My understanding of the truth changes from day to day. My commitment is to truth – not consistency, I’m sorry.”

Now, that’s very critical, because when you’re listening for your unique manifestation, you’ve got to understand that what you hear this moment may be different than what you hear a moment later. You have to deal with the inconsistency, and everybody’s expectations that you will be consistent. So you have to be ready to know that what you hear at one moment about unique manifestation is going to constantly be changing and changing and changing, and you’ve got to be listening afresh each time.

You’re listening for a unique manifestation, meaning the form of expression that will be the confluence between your Karma and your Dharma.

Karma is the unfolding of the laws of cause and effect that have made you into what you are, and that are still affecting you. When you think something, you’re not thinking within a vacuum, you’re thinking it as a result of how you’ve learned to think things in the past, and how your parents thought, and what your chemistry is inside your brain, and all sorts of things are affecting what you think at this moment. That’s your karma.

Your Dharma is that which brings you home. It brings you to truth, it brings you to God, it brings you to Oneness. It brings you back into unity, it brings you out of the illusion of separateness. The Dharma is the Way, or the path. It’s the appropriate action. So what you’re doing, as you listen more quietly, as you pull back more inside in a meditative space, you hear the way your Dharma is unfolding.

You intuitively hear and feel your route home and you keep feeling these things together.

At one point, my guru Neem Karoli Baba said to me after I asked, “How do I know God?” He said to me, “Ram Dass, feed people.” And I figured he didn’t understand or the translation was weird, because I expected him to give me a mantra or something. I said, “How can I get enlightened?” and he said, “Serve people.” And that’s in me somewhere. That is my Karma. It’s also my Dharma. I’ve tried to resist it all the way. I said to myself, “What does he know? He’s an old fat man, and I’ll go meditate,” see… But every time I’d meditate, the quieter I’d get, the more I’d feel I should be out serving people. So here I am. Can you hear that?

So in a way, I resisted it, but as I listened I could feel the inevitability of it all. And when your Karma and your Dharma come together, you get that feeling of rightness.



– Ram Dass

George Orwell

If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.
-George Orwell

Dream

I had thrown my childhood doll house into the pond. A few days later it washed ashore. I fished it out and was glad to have it back.

Indifference

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
― Elie Wiesel

Never to be Silent

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.”
― Elie Wiesel

Write

“Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.”
― Elie Wiesel

The Right Questions

“I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

Witness, Integrity, Gratitude, and Thank You

“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”
― Elie Wiesel

“When a person doesn’t have gratitude, something is missing in his or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude.”
― Elie Wiesel

“One person of integrity can make a difference.”
― Elie Wiesel

“If the only prayer you say throughout your life is "Thank You," then that will be enough.”
― Elie Wiesel

“No human race is superior; no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them.”
― Elie Wiesel

Divine Beauty in Learning

“There is divine beauty in learning... To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you.”
― Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.”
― Elie Wiesel, The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, the Accident

The Notebook

Recently a friend told me about his rage towards his siblings and then he said, "and I brought it on myself".
"What I do is write in a notebook, to get my emotions out in a safe place. Give voice to all of the conflicting voices, they all want to be heard, just like in a play. Don't judge, just express it on the page. Allowing for that space can be healing. It's powerful," I said.

Dream

I dreamed I was about to have a baby and I asked my friend if he would grab the feet of the baby as it came out. He seemed horrified so I asked my husband.

Sourdough Rye

I swam at the pool which lifted my blue spirits today When I got back I shaped yesterday's sourdough rye dough in 6 loaf pans in honor of bread and puppet. Usually I set up dough early in the morning when I am a bit more courageous but the dough spoke to me requesting that I bake it tonight.

Libraries

Libraries are being disparaged and neglected at precisely the moment when they are most valued and necessary. Why the disconnect? In part it’s because the founding principle of the public library — that all people deserve free, open access to our shared culture and heritage — is out of sync with the market logic that dominates our world. But it’s also because so few influential people understand the expansive role that libraries play in modern communities.

Libraries are an example of what I call “social infrastructure”: the physical spaces and organizations that shape the way people interact. Libraries don’t just provide free access to books and other cultural materials, they also offer things like companionship for older adults, de facto child care for busy parents, language instruction for immigrants and welcoming public spaces for the poor, the homeless and young people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/opinion/sunday/civil-society-library.html

Oliver Sacks on Libraries

"I was not a good pupil, but I was a good learner, and in my neighborhood library, I roamed the shelves and stacks, had the freedom to select whatever I wanted, to follow paths which fascinated me, to become myself. At the library I felt free..." - Oliver Sacks "On Libraries," 2013

On Libraries
by

Oliver Sacks

The Children!

Opinion
Don’t Let Migrant Kids Rot

If the Trump administration gets its way, the government will be able to detain the children indefinitely.

By The Editorial Board

The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.

Sept. 9, 2018

Insanity

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/08/world/asia/china-uighur-muslim-detention-camp.html

Being with People

“So being with other people, playing and interacting with them, as you do when you play games that require a partner or a team, probably has unique psychological and physiological effects,” he says, amplifying the benefits of the exercise.

That possibility requires verification, he says, especially in randomized experiments directly comparing different types of exercise.

But for now, people who run or ride solo might consider finding a group or partner with whom to work out, he says.

“Raising your heart rate is important” for health, he says. “But it looks like connecting with other people is, too.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/well/move/the-best-sport-for-a-longer-life-try-tennis.html

Quinoa Avocado Salad

This Quinoa Avocado salad is good even without the dressing. Adding in a tart Lime-Cilantro dressing takes it to another level.

Author: Patrick Calhoun | Mexican Please

Peter Schumann Founder of Bread and Puppet

https://vimeo.com/113776457

Cynthia Ozick

One must avoid ambition in order to write. Otherwise something else is the goal: some kind of power beyond the power of language. And the power of language, it seems to me, is the only kind of power a writer is entitled to.
CYNTHIA OZICK

Beth Brownsberger Mader

Whether I’m too down or too up to feel like it, once we’re outside and walking, even on my worstest-no-good-terrible-very-bad days, just moving my body a little bit makes things a smidgen better, and we end up staying out longer.

I became even more aware of the good that regular exercise does for me: if my body stays fit, so does my brain.

I’ve rarely been a gym rat. I still prefer to watch the landscape go by as my body moves through it, and to listen only to my breath.

I’m surprised that I find some enjoyment in it, and I can see the benefits of maintaining an exercise program no matter what.

Beyond growing more muscle, spending an hour at the gym helps me blow off steam when stress gets to me. When my moods get “blippy” (a couple days down, a couple up), a gym workout can help me get the “wiggles” out.

I’m listening to music again—I learned how to do the headphones-streaming-free-music-like-a-millennial-thing while working out. It’s a whole new world of discovery!

Developing a workout plan helps me set goals and achieve them. I learn what’s reasonable to do and stick to that. Going to the gym three times a week gives me a routine, a place to be, the knowledge that I am doing this specific thing, at this specific time, at this specific place, for the benefit of my body and my mind.

I like feeling strong, flexible, and better balanced. I like using my bed for the good sleep that exercise provides rather than as a hideout for depression.

I still go for my walks with Pika, close to home. Longer, more remote stuff: I go with my husband or a friend. The point is, being physical and adaptable remains critical to my wellness in body and mind.

Beth Brownsberger Mader

Bruce Goldstein: Freelance Madman

But the way I started believing that things will always work out was to write my thoughts down. When I was in the depths of despair, I would write mantras in my journal like, "I will feel better today." or "This is meant to be." And then the magic started taking place.
-Bruce Goldstein


Puppy Chow is Better Than Prozac: The True Story of a Man and the Dog Who Saved His Life
by Bruce Goldstein

To Bruce Goldstein-an edgy, twenty-something New Yorker trying to make his mark in advertising-just waking up in the morning was an ordeal. Underemployed and recently dumped, he was well into the downward spiral of bipolar disorder. Even with therapy, lithium, Paxil, Wellbutrin, and Prozac, he could not shake his rapid mood swings, his fear of dying, or the voice of Satan, who first visited him one sunny day in Central Park. Then came Ozzy, a black Labrador pup (named after metal’s “Prince of Darkness”) who leads Bruce toward recovery through complete, canine dependence. From the depths of his despair to a life remade, Bruce shows how learning to care for, train, and love the hilariously loyal Ozzy provided him with the structure and focus he needed to heal.

Awaken to the Truth

How can we use our familial relationships to get free?

by Ram Dass

There are two kinds of relationships that we enter into. I tend to call them, “Given” and “Acquired.”

Given relationships are your parents, your children, you can’t trade them in. They’re given. Friends, on the other hand, are acquired. You can drop them. Marriages are an ambiguous place; you can look at it either way. We changed marriages from a given karmic situation into an acquired karmic situation, where you can change it if it doesn’t work well.

When you have relationships that are “given” karmically, you have people that are from all different levels of consciousness. You’ve been thrown together with them, and it becomes about, “I can’t understand why we’ve been thrown together.” It’s the chance to see the way in which you have catered to your personality, and a chance to push against it a little bit.

I’m playing with such a delicate and uncomfortable edge, which is the idea that fulfilling roles brings freedom, and the roles are not just responding to your personal desires and yourself.

Gandhi once said, “Civilization is the art of voluntary renunciation.” Which means you give up certain things in yourself in order to be able to play a part in a dance.

Somebody said to Gandhi, “What do you think about Western civilization?” and he said, “I didn’t know there were any.”

I don’t think he actually said that, but take for example some of your parents who are approaching the age where there is a high likelihood they’re gonna get sick, and then need help. Maybe they get so sick, they are dying. They’re gonna need a support system to die.

If you look in your hearts and your personality structure, you will see that place in you that has loathing about dependency, that has loathing about needing to ask somebody for something, about needing help from somebody. See, we threw over the structure of roles that would have automatically provided that and now it has to be provided through the beneficence of somebody, not through the roles in the family.

A family can be a strangling tight thing that catches you or tortures you, or it can become a vehicle for your freedom.

When you understand that you have taken birth in order to go through a set of experiences through which you can awaken to the truth of your being, to that part of you that is not identified with the form, but is in the form; when you understand that is what your life is about, all the institutions you find yourself in become opportunities through which you can become free.

You use it all, and you use the family by becoming a dharmic parent or a dharmic son, meaning you hear the role, and you fulfill it impeccably. You are a perfect daughter or perfect son, and not perfect in the sense of somebody else’s model of what perfection is…you have to listen for yourself.

-Ram Dass

Elie Wiesel

Writers write because they cannot allow the characters that inhabit them to suffocate them. These characters want to get out, to breathe fresh air and partake of the wine of friendship; were they to remain locked in, they would forcibly break down the walls. It is they who force the writer to tell their stories.

Elie Wiesel

Naps!

Article

Martin Amis

“Life is made of fear. Some people eat fear soup three times a day. Some people eat fear soup all the meals there are. I eat it sometimes. When they bring me fear soup to eat, I try not to eat it, I try to send it back. But sometimes I'm too afraid to and have to eat it anyway.”
― Martin Amis, Other People

“Closure is a greasy little word which, moreover, describes a nonexistent condition. The truth, Venus, is that nobody gets over anything.”
― Martin Amis, House of Meetings

“The universe is a million billion light-years wide, and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. This is the position of the universe with regards to human life.”
― Martin Amis

“Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grow without thorn.”
― Martin Amis

“It seems to me that you need a lot of courage, or a lot of something, to enter into others, into other people. We all think that everyone else lives in fortresses, in fastnesses: behind moats, behind sheer walls studded with spikes and broken glass. But in fact we inhabit much punier structures. We are, as it turns out, all jerry-built. Or not even. You can just stick your head under the flap of the tent and crawl right in. If you get the okay. ”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

Keep a Diary

Keep a diary, but don't just list all the things you did during the day. Pick one incident and write it up as a brief vignette. Give it color, include quotes and dialogue, shape it like a story with a beginning, middle and end—as if it were a short story or an episode in a novel. It's great practice. Do this while figuring out what you want to write a book about. The book may even emerge from within this running diary.

JOHN BERENDT

Jocelyn Bell Burnell

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/09/07/she-made-the-discovery-but-a-man-got-the-nobel-a-half-century-later-shes-won-a-3-million-prize/

By Antonia Noori Farzan

These days, her Nobel snub is often cited as an example of how women’s contributions to science get erased or overlooked. But Bell Burnell, who teaches astronomy at Oxford University, says she isn’t bothered by it.

“I feel I’ve done very well out of not getting a Nobel Prize,” she told the Guardian on Thursday. “If you get a Nobel Prize you have this fantastic week and then nobody gives you anything else. If you don’t get a Nobel Prize you get everything that moves. Almost every year there’s been some sort of party because I’ve got another award. That’s much more fun.”

As for the $3 million, Bell Burnell, whose Quaker faith preaches living simply, doesn’t plan on keeping any of it.

“I don’t need a Porsche or Ferrari,” she told The Washington Post. “I don’t have an affluent lifestyle.”

Instead, the money will go to creating scholarships for people from underrepresented backgrounds who want to study physics. The funds will be administered by the U.K.’s Institute of Physics, and Bell Burnell is hopeful that having a more diverse array of people entering the field will lead to even more new discoveries.

“Maybe,” she joked, “having some people who suffer from impostor syndrome is not a bad thing.”