Glass House

“I myself shall continue living in my glass house where you can always see who comes to call; where everything hanging from the ceiling and on the walls stays where it is as if by magic; where I sleep nights in a glass bed, under glass sheets, where who I am will sooner or later be etched by a diamond.”
― Andre Breton

Prying Loose

“I could spend my whole life prying loose the secrets of the insane. These people are honest to a fault, and their naivety has no peer but my own.”
― Andre Breton

Soul

“I am the soul in limbo.”
― Andre Breton, Nadja

Love is

“Love is when you meet someone who tells you something new about yourself.”
― Andre Breton, Mad Love

Haunt

“Tell me whom you haunt and I’ll tell you who you are.”
― Andre Breton

Words

“Words make love with one another.”
― Andre Breton

Leads to Everything

“Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that leads to everything.”
― André Breton

Night

“May night continue to fall upon the orchestra”
― Andre Breton

The Man

The man who cannot visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot.
― Andre Breton

Lara Bazelon

I’ve Picked My Job Over My Kids

I love them beyond all reason. But sometimes my clients need me more.

By Lara Bazelon

Ms. Bazelon is a law professor.

June 29, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/29/opinion/sunday/ive-picked-my-job-over-my-kids.html

Recycle!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/home/contact-lenses-corks-and-christmas-lights-can-all-be-recycled-heres-how/2019/06/24/49e7694c-92d2-11e9-aadb-74e6b2b46f6a_story.html

Ian McEwan

I don't write like my mother, but for many years I spoke like her, and her particular, timorous relationship with language has shaped my own. There are people who move confidently within their own horizons of speech; whether it is cockney, estuary, RP or valley girl, they stride with the unselfconscious ease of a landowner on his own turf. My mother, Rose, was never like that. She never owned the language she spoke. Her displacement within the intricacies of English class, and the uncertainty that went with it, taught her to regard language as something that might go off in her face, like a letter bomb. A word bomb. I've inherited her wariness, or more accurately, I learnt it as a child. I used to think I would have to spend a lifetime shaking it off. Now I know that's impossible, and unnecessary, and that you have to work with what you've got.

IAN McEWAN

Life After Death

What I didn't expect after my parents died is that their mannerisms and gestures would live on in my brother and sister and continue to annoy me.

Alain de Botton on Fear

A famous British philosopher explains the surprising root of all procrastination
"We begin to work only when the fear of doing nothing at all exceeds the fear of not doing it very well … And that can take time," he writes.

Alain de Botton

A famous British philosopher says this nightly exercise is better than a sleeping pill
https://www.businessinsider.com/alain-de-botton-explains-his-nightly-ritual-2015-11
Richard Feloni
Nov. 13, 2015, 10:06 AM

The Swiss-British philosopher Alain de Botton has made a career of bringing high-minded philosophical concepts to the masses with best-selling books like 1997's " How Proust Can Change Your Life" and 2006's " The Architecture of Happiness."

In his quest to help others find what makes them feel fulfilled, he has of course used himself as a case study. When secular meditation became increasingly popular over the past decade or so, he decided to try it, he tells investor and " The 4-Hour Workweek" author Tim Ferriss in the latest episode of Ferriss' podcast.

"I've realized that what I love doing at the end of the day ... is to just download the thoughts that are buzzing around — slightly shapeless, slightly directionless, and they need a little help," de Botton tells Ferriss.

Before going to bed, de Botton grabs a pen and pad of paper and spends a few minutes writing down whatever is flying through his head. He doesn't write stream of conscious, but rather uses single words or short phrases to represent larger, somewhat intangible ideas. The act of making them somewhat tangible, he says, helps him process them, and sometimes those ideas eventually turn into books.

"It's a kind of housekeeping — intellectual housekeeping," he says.

De Botton tells Ferriss that he thinks the exercise could benefit someone at the beginning of the day as well, but it has helped him overcome insomnia, a malady he considers "a kind of revenge for all the stuff you haven't thought about enough that demands to be thought about."

"And if you can do that before bed with a pad and paper, it can be the best sleeping pill you've ever had," he says.

You can listen to the full podcast episode on iTunes or Ferriss' website.

Cooling Off

I soaked my t-shirt and I'm wearing it while sitting in front of the fan drinking iced water.

Morning is nice and cool as long as you are up very early to catch it! A woman I know gets up daily at 4AM to beat the heat.

Understand

“I love a lot of people, understand none of them...”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

Fiction

“Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction. It's not a grand enough job for you.”
― Flannery O'Connor

The Kind

“The old woman was the kind who would not cut down a large old tree because it was a large old tree.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories

Wise Blood

“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place... Nothing outside you can give you any place... In yourself right now is all the place you've got.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

Flannery O'Connor

There’s a certain grain of stupidity that the writer of fiction can hardly do without, and this is the quality of having to stare, of not getting the point at once. The longer you look at one object, the more of the world you see in it; and it’s well to remember that the serious fiction writer always writes about the whole world, no matter how limited his particular scene. For him, the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima affects life on the Oconee River, and there’s not anything he can do about it…. People without hope not only don’t write novels, but what is more the point, they don’t read them. They don’t take long looks at anything, because they lack the courage. The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience, and the novel, of course, is a way to have experience.

FLANNERY O’CONNOR

Hiding (Part Three)

Wednesday, two days later, I got a message from Lisa.

"Chu visited the kids, she told me a young man from Child Services showed up yesterday. He knocked on the door and spoke Chinese to the 12 year old. Then she called her mother. Chen did not care. He's coming back today at ten AM to ask the girl more questions."

"This is good news!" I wrote back.

"Indeed," wrote Lisa.

A few hours later I texted Lisa, "Any news?"

"Not yet."

"Be brave," I replied. About an hour later Lisa texted again.

"Chu has been checking in on the three children on her way home from the restaurant each night. Today Chen commanded her to stop," Lisa reported.

"Why did Chen do that? Does she suspect something?"

"I don't think she even cares!"

"I think of Chen more as mentally ill," I said. "Can Chu still call them each day?"

"Yes, of course," Lisa said.

"Good, we have to stay focused on the children. The kids will feel the love from Chu and it will give them strength and courage."

"I agree, totally." Lisa said.

I started keeping a close eye on my cellphone. I had a feeling that we'd be going back and forth as events unfolded. Now that Child Services was involved, we were just bystanders. It was hard not to want to be involved, like little detectives.

Thursday 6 AM text from Lisa: "OMFG, Chen's car is parked out front and I can hear the air conditioner running upstairs for the first time in months."

"Perhaps Chen was read the riot act." I wrote back.

"Chu said no, Chen is getting evicted for not paying rent. She has 3 days to be out," Lisa wrote. "Chu is afraid Chen will run off and not tell us where the children are being hidden. She is really scared."

11 AM text from Lisa: "I'm sending Chen's license plate and car description to Child Services, just in case she tries to escape, the police could track her down."

"Don't forget to breathe!" I wrote back. "And keep watching. If you see a moving truck get that license plate too."

8 PM text from Lisa: "Chen is gone again, she left at supper time. The kids are alone, I bet it will be for the night like usual. The littlest one is in the window watching my neighbors having a BBQ. She's sucking on a pacifier, she's maybe 2 years old? I've NEVER seen her in the window before."

"We have to try to be patient. It's the hardest thing. Make sure Chu phones the kids each day. Have you seen Chen moving any boxes?" I asked.

"Not a thing! And Monday is the first, it's coming fast." Lisa replied.

"Maybe Chen finally paid rent! At least if they're staying another month or two, we can keep an eye on them."

Friday 1:30 PM text from Lisa: "I just saw Chen and her kids unloading groceries from Chen's car, including a 20 pound bag of rice. Maybe they're NOT moving!"

"That's better for everybody," I replied. "But who knows where her rent is coming from. Not knowing what's going on is driving me crazy!"


Hiding (Part One)
https://theurbanmermaid.blogspot.com/2019/06/hiding.html

Hiding (Part Two)
https://theurbanmermaid.blogspot.com/2019/06/hiding-part-two.html

Hiding (Part Four)
https://theurbanmermaid.blogspot.com/2019/07/hiding-part-four.html

Headstones by George Bilgere

Read it here.

E.L. Doctorow

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.
-E.L. Doctorow

George Bilgere

UNWISE PURCHASES

by George Bilgere

They sit around in the house
Not doing much of anything: the boxed set
Of the complete works of Verdi, unopened.
The complete Proust, unread.
The French cut silk shirts
Which hang like expensive ghosts in the closet,
And make me look exactly
Like the kind of middle-aged man
Who would wear a French cut silk shirt.

The reflector telescope I thought would unlock
The mysteries of the heavens
But which I used only once or twice,
And which now stares disconsolately at the ceiling
When it could be examining the Crab Nebula.

The 30-day course in Spanish,
Whose text I barely opened,
Whose dozen cassette tapes remain unplayed,
Save for Tape One, where I never learned
Whether the suave American,
Conversing with a sultry-sounding desk clerk
At a Spanish hotel about the possibility
Of obtaining a room,
Actually managed to check in. I like to think
That one thing led to another between them
And that by Tape Six or so

They’re happily married
And raising a bilingual child in Seville or Terra Haute.

But I’ll never know.

Suddenly I realize
I have constructed the perfect home
For a sexy, Spanish-speaking astronomer
Who reads Proust while listening to Italian arias,
And I wonder if somewhere in this teeming city
There lives a woman with, say,
A fencing foil gathering dust in the corner
Near her unused easel, a rainbow
Of oil paints drying in their tubes
On the table where the violin lies entombed
In the permanent darkness of its locked case
Next to the dusty chess set,

A woman who has always dreamed of becoming
The kind of woman the man I’ve dreamed of becoming
Has always dreamed of meeting,

And while the two of them discuss star clusters
And Cezanne, while they fence delicately
In Castilian Spanish to the strains of Rigoletto,

She and I will stand in the steamy kitchen,
Fixing up a little risotto,
Enjoying a modest cabernet
While talking over a day so ordinary
As to seem miraculous.

Source

Ben Marcus

Writer’s block, if that’s the name for it, happens when I am boring, when my mind is flat, when I have nothing to add to what has been said and done. Therefore it happens nearly all of the time. It happens when writing is an obligation and not a desire. And I really don’t mind. It’s not clear that I am meant to pump out writing at all costs. The opposite is true. The world will be just fine without anything I might write. Writing is not exactly a scarce resource. There is far too much out there that hasn’t been read enough. So I don’t try to solve this silence. To me it is necessary.

BEN MARCUS

James Baldwin

You have to go the way your blood beats. If you don't live the only life you have, you won't live some other life, you won't live any life at all.
JAMES BALDWIN

The Roaring

“You must try to forget all you have learned,' said the old man. 'You must begin to dream. From this time on you must shut your ears to the roaring of the voices.”
― Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio

Dare

“Dare to be strong and courageous. That is the road. Venture anything.”
― Sherwood Anderson

Sherwood Anderson

I think the whole glory of writing lies in the fact that it forces us out of ourselves and into the lives of others.
SHERWOOD ANDERSON

Dream

I dreamed about a young tiger playing ball with an apple.

Nick Cave

Beautiful letter about the artist and the art.

Hiding (Part Two)

Last night Lisa and I went to Jade Palace to get spring rolls and talk to Chu. "This is really keeping me up at night," I told her. "Are you sure Chen is working 20 of the 24 hours?"

Chu took our order and said "have a seat," pointing to the orange formica tables. They are always empty because everyone orders take-out. When the food was ready she sat with us for a minute and spoke quietly.
"Chen is not working 20 hours. She has a boyfriend and she is living with him, she works a little bit." Chu is stunningly beautiful with a broad face, black hair pulled back and clear skin.

"This has just gone from bad to worse," Lisa blurted. "People get in trouble treating their dogs this badly."

"My God," I said, "We must do something."

"The apartment is a sty and seeing it made me sick," Chu continued. "The kids are lonely," she whispered.

"I'll bet they are. I can't imagine staying inside 365 days and only seeing your mom for just a few hours a day. They probably aren't even eating real food," I said.

"I've seen cookie packages and Cheez-its in the trash," Lisa added.

"Does the boyfriend even know Chen has kids?," I asked Chu.

"Yes."

"So the boyfriend is not interested in caring for the kids?"

"NOPE!" Lisa said sarcastically.

"Chen isn't and neither is her boyfriend," Chu said.

"Wow! Okay Thank you, Chu, you've been very helpful. We'll keep you posted," I said.

"We must save them, they deserve a right to play and eat and learn and read and be LOVED. They deserve a right to a happy childhood, to daylight!" I said, as we walked back to Lisa's apartment.

"Here, would you like an order of spring rolls," Lisa said offering me the Styrofoam package.

"No, thanks," I said.

"That's okay, my son will eat them, they won't go to waste." Lisa paused. "I'm a mother, I can't stand this. I'm calling Child Services. I am calling the hotline right now." Lisa turned and went up the front steps into her apartment house. The steel door banged shut.

I walked the two blocks home. Nothing seemed as important as this right now. I collapsed on the couch, staring at the ceiling mesmerized by the slow spin of the ceiling fan. I fell asleep.

My phone vibrated on the coffee-table waking me up. "I called!" Lisa had written. "Shoot me if it was not the best thing we could do for these kids!"

"I am proud of you, Lisa," I wrote back. "You've got guts!"

The next day at breakfast I received another text from Lisa. "The hotline lady told me that the more calls they get the faster they can get to the problem. Will you call?"

"Yes. I will call." I texted back.

"Chu might be too afraid to call. She's worried about the language barrier," Lisa wrote. "Tell her they have translators!"

"Chu has given us a lot of good info," I texted. "That counts!" I took a deep breath and dialed the number Lisa had given. "Child Services," a voice answered.

"I have a neighbor down the street and there are three kids who have lived there for a year but we believe they haven't left the apartment. They have never been to school. The mother stops by for a few hours a day but is apparently not really living there."

"Do you know the full name of the mother and names and ages of the children?" the hotline lady asked.

"No I don't but I can find out and call you back."

"Okay, just ask for Jenny."

"Thank you. I will text my friend who lives in the same building as the family, she's in touch with the woman closest to the family. I'll call you right back."

I texted Lisa, and she gave me Chen's name and address. "But I do not know the ages of the kids," she wrote. "Just that the oldest is 12." Then there was a pause between texts. "Chu told me the rent has not been paid this month. God knows what Chen's thinking. I hope Child Services rescues the kids before their mother makes any more so-called decisions."

I called Jenny back. "Here's Chen's full name and address but I do not know the ages of the kids," I told her. "Just that the oldest is 12."

"Is there anything more that you'd like to tell me?" Jenny asked.

"Yes, my friend, the one who lives in the same building, called Child Services about this also. And the woman close to the family had heard that their rent has not been paid this month."

"Okay. And you said your friend phoned about this yesterday?" Jenny asked.

"Yes, yesterday afternoon."

"I will find that call and compile the information."

"And one more person might be phoning today," I offered.

"Okay we'll process this right away. Thank you."

"Thank YOU!"


Hiding (Part One)
https://theurbanmermaid.blogspot.com/2019/06/hiding.html

Hiding (Part Three)
https://theurbanmermaid.blogspot.com/2019/06/hiding-part-three.html

Hiding (Part Four)
https://theurbanmermaid.blogspot.com/2019/07/hiding-part-four.html

Brenda Ueland

There is much, much in all of us, but we do not know it. No one ever calls it out in us, unless we are lucky enough to know intelligent, imaginative, sympathetic people who love us and have the magnanimity to encourage us, to believe in us, by listening, by praise, by appreciation, by laughing. If you are going to write, you must become aware of this richness in you and come to believe in it and know it is there so that you can write opulently with self-trust. Once you become aware of it, have faith in it, you will be all right. But it is like this: if you have a million dollars in the bank and don't know, it doesn't do you any good.

BRENDA UELAND

Sharon Shattuck Film

https://www.fromthisdayforwardfilm.com/
From This Day Forward is a moving portrayal of an American family coping with one of the most intimate of transformations. When director Sharon Shattuck’s father came out as transgender and changed her name to Trisha, Sharon was in the awkward throes of middle school. Her father’s transition to female was difficult for her straight-identified mother, Marcia, to accept, but her parents stayed together. As the Shattucks reunite to plan Sharon’s wedding, she seeks a deeper understanding of how her parents’ marriage survived the radical changes that threatened to tear them apart.
More About THE FILMMAKERS
http://www.fromthisdayforwardfilm.com/about-the-filmmakers/

In Here

“If your house ain't in order, you ain't in order. It is so much easier to be out there than in here.”
― Toni Cade Bambara

Make Room

“… got to give it all up, the pain, the hurt, the anger and make room for lovely things to rush in and fill you full.”
― Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters

Participate

“Writing is one of the ways I participate in transformation.”
― Toni Cade Bambara

Toni Cade Bambara

“Words are to be taken seriously. I try to take seriously acts of language. Words set things in motion. I’ve seen them doing it. Words set up atmospheres, electrical fields, charges. I’ve felt them doing it. Words conjure. I try not to be careless about what I utter, write, sing. I’m careful about what I give voice to.”
― Toni Cade Bambara

Write

Write one good clean sentence and put a period at the end of it. Then write another one.
M. F. K. Fisher

Forgetting the Mystery

Too few of us, perhaps, feel that breaking of bread, the sharing of salt, the common dipping into one bowl, mean more than satisfaction of a need. We make such primal things as casual as tunes heard over a radio, forgetting the mystery and strength in both.
M. F. K. Fisher

Nourished My Beloved

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

Bread

No yoga exercise, no meditation in a chapel filled with music will rid you of your blues better than the humble task of making your own bread.
M. F. K. Fisher

The Truth

“The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.”
― Pearl S. Buck

Alchemy in Sorrow

“Sorrow fully accepted brings its own gifts. For there is alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmitted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.”
― Pearl S. Buck, The Child Who Never Grew

Small Joys

“Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.”
― Pearl S. Buck

Do Right

“You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.”
― Pearl S. Buck

To Eat Bread

“To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death.”
― Pearl S. Buck, To My Daughters, With Love

Sensitive

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create—so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.
― Pearl S. Buck

Faith

“I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.”
― Pearl S. Buck

Renew

“I love people. I love my family, my children . . . but inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that's where you renew your springs that never dry up.”
― Pearl S. Buck

Your Mind

“I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.”
― Pearl S. Buck

Pearl S. Buck

“Let woman out of the home, let man into it, should be the aim of education. The home needs man, and the world outside needs woman.”
― Pearl S. Buck

Carrie Fisher

"Take your broken heart, make it into art."
— Carrie Fisher

Hit the Streets

Write a lot and hit the streets. A writer who doesn't keep up with what’s out there ain’t gonna be out there.
TONI CADE BAMBARA

Hiding (Part One)

"There's a family in my building, a woman named Chen and her three kids - the oldest is 12. She needs to hire a babysitter," Lisa said. "Those kids are up all night playing, keeping me awake until two and three in the morning. I have not seen the kids except three times," she said, holding out her muddy fingers. Lisa had black dirt sprinkled on her top lip - it looked like a four o'clock shadow. She grabbed the bag of potting soil and started pouring it, black cereal into clay pots. "Three times I've seen these kids, three times in a goddamn year of living here!!" She wiped sweat from her forehead, removing her red bandana. "The mom works every single night with a team of women cleaning office buildings and supermarkets." Lisa placed three sunflower seeds into each pot. "As far as I can tell, she hasn't had a single day off while living here. She gets home at noon and sleeps for a few hours during the day and leaves again by 4PM."

"That's crazy sad," I said.

"A few times I was sure that the family had moved out," she said. She poured water on her red bandana, squeezed it, and placed it on her neck. "Last week I saw the boy in the window pointing at a stray cat on the sidewalk. They've never gone to school. They do not understand English. They are from China and they only speak Chinese." She turned on the big green hose and filled the plastic watering jug. "Lately I've been hearing a little yappy puppy barking up there but I haven't seen it. Even the puppy never goes outside." Lisa paused. "I'm too afraid to say anything about this to the landlord."

"I suspect the mother is frightened and hiding from the government or an ex-husband or both. I'm not convinced that 'the system' could make the situation better," I said. "Perhaps if she could find other Chinese families she'd have some community support."

"I doubt it," Lisa said, jabbing her trowel into the dirt. "I've tried. I spoke to Chunhua, the lady at the take-out around the corner. She knows Chen. Chu said it's impossible to get through to her. 'She's got horse-blinders on,' she said, 'She's too afraid of deportation.'"

"Where's their father?" I asked.

"He went back to China."

"Those poor kids. They have a mother but she's only home for 4 hours a day, sleeping," I said.

"I can't imagine a year of being trapped inside, and full of fear," Lisa said, hosing off her bare feet, wiggling her toes.

"They don't have home-cooked meals, books to read, friends, teachers, relatives or even medical attention. It's like they're living in the woods in the middle of the city," I said.

Lisa looked up at the windows. "That's right, and all of our hands are tied."


Hiding (Part Two)
https://theurbanmermaid.blogspot.com/2019/06/hiding-part-two.html

Hiding (Part Three)
https://theurbanmermaid.blogspot.com/2019/06/hiding-part-three.html

Hiding (Part Four)
https://theurbanmermaid.blogspot.com/2019/07/hiding-part-four.html

Italo Calvino

“Your house, being the place in which you read, can tell us the position books occupy in your life, if they are a defense you set up to keep the outside world at a distance, if they are a dream into which you sink as if into a drug, or bridges you cast toward the outside, toward the world that interests you so much that you want to multiply and extend its dimensions through books.”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

The Opposite

“To fly is the opposite of traveling: you cross a gap in space, you vanish into the void, you accept not being in a place for a duration that is itself a kind of void in time; then you reappear, in a place and in a moment with no relation to the where and when in which you vanished.”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Compassion

“I believe compassion to be one of the few things we can practice that will bring immediate and long-term happiness to our lives. I’m not talking about the short-term gratification of pleasures like sex, drugs or gambling (though I’m not knocking them), but something that will bring true and lasting happiness. The kind that sticks.”
― His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Motivation

“Usually a feeling of disappointment follows the book, because what I hoped to write is not what I actually accomplished. However, it becomes a motivation to write the next book.”
― Anita Desai

Food, Security, and Love

“It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it… and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied… and it is all one.”
― M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating

Breadmaking is...

“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

M.F.K. Fisher

Write one good clean sentence and put a period at the end of it. Then write another one.
M.F.K. FISHER

Limitless and Fluid

The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way.
STEPHEN KING

4 Loaves

I just baked four loaves of sourdough. The bread is a blend of bread flour, sourdough rye starter, coarse cornmeal, semolina flour and Irish oats. I mixed up the dough very wet and put it in a bucket with kosher slat and yeast. When it rose I punched it down and refrigerated it. The following day I punched down the cold dough and poured it onto a large wooden cutting board. I cut the dough and shaped it into softball sized boules and baked them, two per greased loaf pan. They became golden with a hint of the semolina yellow. Delicious with a hard bumpy crust.

Dream

I dreamed I joined the army. It was part of the Salvation Army. My neighbors were there too, they had joined as well. We were all eating together cafeteria-style but not rushed at all.

Physics Axis

My mood is directly on the physics axis this year because my other receive-mode(depression) lifted December 21. My mood has improved since the summer solstice.

Perception Itself

Language is not the lowborn, gawky servant of thought and feeling; it is need, thought, feeling, and perception itself. The shape of sentences, the song in its syllables, the rhythm of its movement, is the movement of the imagination.

WILLIAM H. GASS

The Lover

The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.
JAMES BALDWIN

Anne Lamott

Perfectionism means that you try not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.
ANNE LAMOTT

11:54 AM (ET) Summer Solstice

Make Time for Your Dreams

“It is better to do what you love for work, but if it is your day job that enables an unpaid passion, then your life is still sweeter. What is important is that you make time for your dreams, not whether or not you get paid for it.”
― Tara Moss

Guts

“If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.”
― John Updike, Rabbit, Run

The True New Yorker

“The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”
― John Updike

Celebrity

“Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.”
― John Updike, Self-Consciousness

John Updike

Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.
- John Updike

Something More to Say

For me, the only way to find something comes through the sentence level, and sticking with the sentences that give a subtle feeling that there’s something more to say. This means I’ve hit on something unconscious enough to write about—something with enough unknown in there to be brought out. On some level I can sense that, and it keeps me going.
Aimee Bender

Surreal Ballet

I'm off to see the Botero orchestra bicycling on foam tubes in the deep end. It's a surreal ballet in turquoise waters supervised by life guards in bright red shirts.

Be Brave

“I think the most important thing in the world is being brave. I'd rather be brave than beautiful. Hell, I'd settle for acting brave.”
― Amy Bloom

White Houses

“I have been lonely in my life but never when drinking strong coffee, wearing my fleecy slippers, and standing in my own kitchen.”
― Amy Bloom, White Houses

When You Find Them

“Some people are your family no matter when you find them, and some people are not, even if you are laid, still wet and crumpled, in their arms.”
― Amy Bloom, Love Invents Us

Learning to Listen

“Learning to listen, letting people finish their sentences, and most of all, the habit of noticing the difference between what people say and how they say it. {on the habits of psychoanalytic training and practice applied to fiction writing} The gap between what people tell you and what's really going on is what interests me.”
― Amy Bloom

Emmanuel Carrère

When I’m not working on anything, I’ll take a notebook, and for a few hours a day I’ll just write whatever comes, about my life, my wife, the elections, trying not to censor myself. That’s the real problem obviously—“without denaturalizing or hypocrisy.” Without being afraid of what is shameful or what you consider uninteresting, not worthy of being written. It’s the same principle behind psychoanalysis. It’s just as hard to do and just as worth it, in my opinion. Everything you think is worth writing. Not necessarily worth keeping, but worth writing.

EMMANUEL CARRÈRE

Something your Hand Touched

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”
― Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

You Must Feel

The intellect is a great danger to creativity…because you begin to rationalize and make up reasons for things, instead of staying with your own basic truth—who you are, what you are, what you want to be. I’ve had a sign over my typewriter for over 25 years now, which reads “Don’t think!” You must never think at the typewriter—you must feel. Your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway.

RAY BRADBURY

Cue + Routine + Reward = Habit

by Martha Tara lee

Margaret Drabble

When I tell people I love swimming in the Ladies’ Pond there are two reactions. The first: “Ugh, isn’t it muddy/dangerous/cold?” The other is: “How wonderful, lucky old you.” Needless to say, the people I like best are the second lot. And I like the look of the other women who swim there, too – free spirits, all of them – though I never talk to anybody. Swimming is a solitary activity; it’s where I slip into a dream state and think up my plots. After a couple of circuits something loosens in my brain and I start making unusual connections. Writing is all about relationships – between sentences, between people, between changes of tone – and being submerged in another element can shake these around in a new formation.
-Margaret Drabble
source

Don DeLillo

First you look for discipline and control. You want to exercise your will, bend the language your way, bend the world your way. You want to control the flow of impulses, images, words, faces, ideas. But there's a higher place, a secret aspiration. You want to let go. You want to lose yourself in language, become a carrier or messenger. The best moments involve a loss of control. It's a kind of rapture, and it can happen with words and phrases fairly often—completely surprising combinations that make a higher kind of sense, that come to you out of nowhere. But rarely for extended periods, for paragraphs and pages—I think poets must have more access to this state than novelists do.

DON DeLILLO

Romeo Swims

We took Romeo swimming-fetching in Harris Pond in his orange life jacket on the long leash. Now he is beyond clean.
He must've gotten swiped by the stray cats in our small yard recently. He had a teensy white dot on his muzzle. I dabbed it with a black Sharpie. All is good.

Kobayashi Issa

All the time I pray to Buddha
I keep on
killing mosquitoes.


Translated by Robert Hass
Kobayashi Issa

Issa Poem

Don't Know About The People
by Kobayashi Issa


Approaching my village:

Don't know about the people,
but all the scarecrows
are crooked.


Kobayashi Issa
Translated by Robert Hass

Issa

Look, don't kill that fly!
It is making a prayer to you
By rubbing its hands and feet.
Kobayashi Issa

Selectively Numb

“We cannot selectively numb emotions, when we numb the painful emotions, we also numb the positive emotions.”
― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

Empathy

“If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

Self-Acceptance

“Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

Connection

“I define connection as the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, and valued; when they can give and receive without judgment; and when they derive sustenance and strength from the relationship.”
― Brené Brown

Set Boundaries

“When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated. This is why we sometimes attack who they are, which is far more hurtful than addressing a behavior or a choice.”
― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

Staying Vulnerable

“Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.”
― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

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.”
― Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection

After Friday

After Friday the days will begin shrinking. Amen. Every June I feel relief when I know the longest day has come and gone. April, May, and June are flat months due to the lack of change in the amount of daylight. As a creature I am excited by the rapid changes in daylight and I am bored by the stagnation of unchanging daylight. July, August, and September the rapidly shrinking daylight hours registers on my little creature brain and it is uplifting.

Four Loaves

I just pulled four sourdough multigrain loaves from the oven. I never tire of the scent and flavor of home made bread. This bread has texture from the Irish oats and coarse cornmeal, with rye sourdough starter, kosher salt and bread flour.

Baking bread is a form of birth and optimism and it chases away the blues.

Spalding Gray

“Psychoanalysis is the transformation of hysterical misery into common unhappiness.”
― Spalding Gray, Monster in a Box

Look Into your Own Heart

“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
― C.G. Jung

C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

“The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the whole moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life. That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ -- all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all the offenders, the very enemy himself -- that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness -- that I myself am the enemy who must be loved -- what then? As a rule, the Christian's attitude is then reversed; there is no longer any question of love or long-suffering; we say to the brother within us "Raca," and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide it from the world; we refuse to admit ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves.”
― C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Conscious

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
― C.G. Jung

Pain

“There's no coming to consciousness without pain.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

Cure

“Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

Accept

“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”
― C.G. Jung

Priviledge

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

Knowing

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

Loneliness

“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

Understanding

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

Darkness Conscious

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

Tree

“No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.”
― Carl Jung

Carl Gustav Jung

“The greatest tragedy of the family is the unlived lives of the parents.”
― Carl Gustav Jung

Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
― Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy

Flow

“To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments. To achieve such autonomy, a person has to learn to provide rewards to herself. She has to develop the ability to find enjoyment and purpose regardless of external circumstances.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi asks, "What makes a life worth living?" Noting that money cannot make us happy, he looks to those who find pleasure and lasting satisfaction in activities that bring about a state of "flow."

This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.


https://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow?language=en

Jaed Coffin

My Father, Out to Sea

A single question kept haunting me: Why did he leave me?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/13/opinion/my-absent-father.html

Jaed Coffin is the author of the forthcoming memoir “Roughhouse Friday.” He teaches writing at the University of New Hampshire’s creative writing program.

Learning

I learn the hard way. Perhaps we all do. What matters is we are open to learning.

Love

“Love is the absence of judgment.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

Strength

“There is a saying in Tibetan, 'Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.'
No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that's our real disaster.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

Too Small?

“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.”
― The Dalai Lama XIV

Kindness

“My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”

― Dalai Lama XIV

Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

“It mattered little if one was mute; people did not understand one another anyway. They collided with or charmed one another, hugged or trampled one another, but everyone knew only himself. His emotions, memory, and senses divided him from others as effectively as thick reeds screen the mainstream from the muddy bank. Like the mountain peaks around us, we looked at one another, separated by valleys, too high to stay unnoticed, too low to touch the heavens.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

Beyond Words

“There's a place beyond words where experience first occurs to which I always want to return. I suspect that whenever I articulate my thoughts or translate my impulses into words, I am betraying the real thoughts and impulses which remain hidden.”
― Jerzy Kosinski, The Painted Bird

Loved

“I'm sure there are aspects of my personality buried within me that will surface as soon as I know I am completely loved.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Devil Tree

Trembling

“I always have a sense of trembling, but so does a compass, after all.”
― Jerzy Kosiński

Proverb

“All cats are the same in the dark, says the proverb. But it certainly did not apply to people, with them it was just the opposite. During the day they were all alike, running in their well-defined ways. At night they changed beyond recognition.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

Jerzy Kosiński

“So this is insanity. How interesting. What happens next?”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Devil Tree

Conditions

“Gatherings and, simultaneously, loneliness are the conditions of a writer's life.”
― Jerzy Kosinski

Invisible

“As a child I used to lie on the floor with my eyes tightly closed and hope that people would walk past without noticing me. That would mean I was truly invisible.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Devil Tree

The Painted Bird

“One day he trapped a large raven, whose wings he painted red, the breast green, and the tail blue. When a flock of ravens appeared over our hut, Lekh freed the painted bird. As soon as it joined the flock a desperate battle began. The changeling was attacked from all sides. Black, red, green, blue feathers began to drop at our feet. The ravens ran amuck in the skies, and suddenly the painted raven plummeted to the freshly-plowed soil. It was still alive, opening its beak and vainly trying to move its wings. Its eyes had been pecked out, and fresh blood streamed over its painted feathers. It made yet another attempt to flutter up from the sticky earth, but its strength was gone.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, The Painted Bird

Growth

“- Growth has its season. There are spring and summer, but there are also fall and winter. And then spring and summer again. As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all be well.”
― Jerzy Kosinski, Being There

Travel

I can create countries just as I can create the actions of my characters. That is why a lot of travel seems to me a waste of time.
- Jerzy Kosinski

Jerzy Kosinski

The principle of art is to pause, not bypass. The principle of true art is not to portray, but to evoke. This requires a moment of pause--a contract with yourself through the object you look at or the page you read. In that moment of pause, I think life expands. And really the purpose of art––for me, of fiction––is to alert, to indicate to stop, to say: Make certain that when you rush through you will not miss the moment which you might have had, or might still have. That is the moment of finding something which you have not known about yourself, or your environment, about others, and about life.

JERZY KOSINSKI

Chuck Wendig

Writing advice is not a treasure map with a chest of gold under a big red “X" — it’s less recipe for success and more menu of food items you find may suit you.
CHUCK WENDIG

Bernard Malamud

Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Stephen Greenblatt

The first and perhaps the most important requirement for a successful writing performance—and writing is a performance, like singing an aria or dancing a jig—is to understand the nature of the occasion.

STEPHEN GREENBLATT

Joseph Campbell

You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL

Maya Angelou

When I’m writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we’re capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness.
MAYA ANGELOU

JOHN LE CARRÉ

To give the best of the day to your work is most important.
JOHN LE CARRÉ

Richard Rhodes

If you’re afraid you can’t write, the answer is to write. Every sentence you construct adds weight to the balance pan. If you’re afraid of what other people will think of your efforts, don’t show them until you write your way beyond your fear. If writing a book is impossible, write a chapter. If writing a chapter is impossible, write a page. If writing a page is impossible, write a paragraph. If writing a paragraph is impossible, write a sentence. If writing even a sentence is impossible, write a word and teach yourself everything there is to know about that word and then write another, connected word and see where their connection leads. A page a day is a book a year.

RICHARD RHODES

Ernest Hemingway

Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched form the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt use it—don’t cheat with it. Be as faithful to it as a scientist—but don’t think anything is of any importance because it happens to you or anyone belonging to you.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY, in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald

Rose Tremain

When an idea comes, spend silent time with it. Remember Keats's idea of Negative Capability and Kipling's advice to "drift, wait and obey." Along with your gathering of hard data, allow yourself also to dream your idea into being.

ROSE TREMAIN

You Write

“You write in order to change the world ... if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it.”
― James Baldwin

Barbara Tuchman

Nothing is more satisfying than to write a good sentence. It is no fun to write lumpishly, dully, in prose the reader must plod through like wet sand. But it is a pleasure to achieve, if one can, a clear running prose that is simple yet full of surprises. This does not just happen. It requires skill, hard work, a good ear, and continued practice.

BARBARA TUCHMAN

Humanity in Print

“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible. They are engines of change (as the poet said), windows on the world and lighthouses erected in the sea of time. They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.

[Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Nov. 1980), pp. 16-32]”
― Barbara Tuchman

A Writer

“A writer is a reader moved to emulation.”
― Saul Bellow

Stillness

“I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.”
― Saul Bellow

Attempting

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

Illusion

“We're here to awaken from the illusion of separateness.”
― Ram Dass, How Can I Help? Stories and Reflection on Service

Caterpillarness

“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

Watch

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

Becoming

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

Aversion or Attachment

“A feeling of aversion or attachment toward something is your clue that there's work to be done.”
― Ram Dass

Ram Dass

“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

Ram Dass

“We are all affecting the world every moment, whether we mean to or not. Our actions and states of mind matter, because we are so deeply interconnected with one another.”
― Ram Dass

The Next Message

“The next message you need is always right where you are.”
― Ram Dass

The 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

Favorite Quote

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

Be Ready

“For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace

Present Moment

“Breathing in, I calm body and mind. Breathing out, I smile. Dwelling in the present moment I know this is the only moment.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Being Peace

Seed of Suffering

“The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don't wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

Teachings on Love

“Through my love for you, I want to express my love for the whole cosmos, the whole of humanity, and all beings. By living with you, I want to learn to love everyone and all species. If I succeed in loving you, I will be able to love everyone and all species on Earth... This is the real message of love.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Teachings on Love

Love

“You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

Dream

I dreamed I was in the elevator of my grandmother's Brighton Beach apartment house. The elevator was in free-fall and I was bracing myself for the landing. There must've been some mechanism built into the system because the landing was fine. I woke up and got out of bed immediately.

Conscious Breathing

“Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, Stepping into Freedom: Rules of Monastic Practice for Novices

Thich Nhat Hanh

“Suffering is not enough. Life is both dreadful and wonderful...How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow? It is natural--you need to smile to your sorrow because you are more than your sorrow.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh

SWIMMING: Sanity vs Vanity

It’s no longer about vanity, but instead it’s all about sanity

Personal Stories
Swimming Saved My Life
https://www.nami.org/Personal-Stories/Swimming-Saved-My-Life#
Heide swimming

I’ve gotten so many private messages asking me what caused this recent positive change in my mental health that I’ve lost count. The answer is simple. Exercise. Whether you struggle with a mental illness or not, exercise is something we all need in our lives to stay healthy. Being diagnosed with a goody bag of mental disorders and then seeking treatment, taking medication, and getting support from my family/friends are all things that help me survive. But I don’t want to just survive. I want to live! Bringing back intense exercise into my life has pulled me out of my dark, lonely cave and taken me from simply existing to really living for the first time in my life.

You don’t have to train like a professional athlete, but breaking a sweat on a regular basis will make a huge difference in how you feel both physically and mentally. The fact that so many of us separate our mind and body makes it difficult to see exercise as a way to keep your brain healthy. Change how you view exercising and staying active. Choose to look at it as a way to make your brain healthy and happy instead of viewing it as a way to help you look a certain way/squeeze into those jeans that used to fit when you were in high school.

Forcing myself to change how I approach getting in shape has completely transformed the way I feel about exercise. It’s no longer about vanity, but instead it’s all about sanity. It not only keeps me sane, but it makes me incredibly happy and helps me feel the most alive I have ever felt. And who doesn’t want that? So start moving! Go for a walk around your neighborhood or simply around your room! Jump on your bed like you used to when you were a kid. Just move. It will help more than you can imagine.

I know it’s hard to listen or believe when doctors, therapists, psychiatrists, friends, or anyone tells you that exercise improves your mood, especially when you’re struggling with depression, anxiety, or any everyday life battles. But maybe it will speak louder to you if it’s coming from someone who’s gone through some serious mental health struggles. I’ve been stuck in a state of not even being able to leave my bed let alone the house for longer than I’d like to admit. Trust me, getting your body moving will in turn get your mind moving in a more positive direction. If you don’t feel like doing it for yourself, then do it for me! It breaks my heart reading your messages and hearing you giving up on yourselves the same way I gave up on myself not long ago.

So please stay safe, healthy, happy and hopeful. I’ll continue to be here if you need someone to talk/vent to.

Hope this helps and encourages you to put your health and happiness as a top priority.

Steve Pemberton

Steve Pemberton spoke at my husband's school last week

When he gives speeches and meets kids in foster care, he tells his story in hopes of inspiring them to fight their way out like he did.

He gives them this message: “This adversity that you inherited, you didn’t ask for it, you did not create it, but maybe this is your opportunity to right the wrong. That’s the power of adversity. It gives you strength.”

He said he’s not angry about his past, doesn’t wake up with nightmares or walk around with a chip on his shoulder. He said he’s melted away his angst and rage in another act of defiance aimed at his foster family and others who tried to keep him down.

“For me to walk through the world angry is to give them control over my life,” he said. “They are not allowed to have that. Nobody is.”

In the end, he said, all he wanted was to find his family. And he has.

“I think you can choose your family after all,” he said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2018/06/01/he-grew-up-abused-in-foster-care-now-an-executive-success-is-his-revenge/

Pointed

Started in life, ended in fiction but pointed to truth.

Can You Be Angry at The River?

"I'm angry," he said at the wake. "I'm angry at his parents." We stepped outside and walked across the parking lot into the shade and sat on a wooden bench.

"I understand, I am angry too. The only way I can make sense of his death is to acknowledge these patterns and grieve the multi-generational abuse. It's a river of trauma. These events have unfolded for generations in my family too, in every family. It's a river. Can you be angry at the river?"

The Path

“There is no path to happiness: happiness is the path.”
― Buddha

Every Morning

“Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.”
― Buddha

Heart and Soul

“Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it”
― Buddha

Thankful

“Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so, let us all be thankful.”
― Buddha

Moon Sun Truth

“Three things can not hide for long: the Moon, the Sun and the Truth.”
― Gautama Buddha

Rest

“Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and sorrow come and go like the wind. To be happy, rest like a giant tree in the midst of them all”

― Buddha

Herman Hesse on Trees

Yesterday when we showed up after the service to a farm where the congregation had cooked an amazing banquet, there was a gigantic beech tree at the entrance of the farm house with the head and face of a man naturally occurring from the shapes in the bark.


My sister-in-law said "What keeps me here are trees."


Then I remembered this quote from Herman Hesse...

“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.

A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”


― Herman Hesse, Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte

Baking Bread

I just baked four loaves of sourdough it's a blend of bread flour, pinhead oats, my sourdough dark rye starter, and coarse corn meal.

City Human

He liked the fact that Venice had no cars. It made the city human. The streets were like veins, he thought, and the people were the blood, circulating everywhere.
― Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr. Ripley

End of Day Swim

Last night at 5:30 PM we brought Romeo to the pond for a round of swimming and fetching. We brought two sticks from our yard along with his life jacket, long leash, dog towel and poop bags. When he wouldn't drop the stick after retrieving it from the pond, I'd pick up the second stick and he'd drop the first one. We played a bunch of rounds and then we took a walk down the street lingering in the shade.

Grieving

It's been a week of grieving the loss of our beloved nephew, Jonathan. For days I have I felt like I was walking through an ocean of molasses. This morning I got up and started cooking a pot of basmati brown rice and pressure cooked a batch of soaked chick peas and then I prepared a bucket of sourdough oatmeal bread to rise. After my shower I walked Romeo downtown, wrote in my notebook and then I went swimming. It felt good. Every element of the day felt necessary and important to healing.

Nick Cave

This, of course, will not help with your “block”. My advice to you is to change your basic relationship to songwriting. You are not the ‘Great Creator’ of your songs, you are simply their servant, and the songs will come to you when you have adequately prepared yourself to receive them. They are not inside you, unable to get out; rather, they are outside of you, unable to get in. Songs, in my experience, are attracted to an open, playful and motivated mind. Throw my song away – it isn’t that good anyway – sit down, prepare yourself and write your own damn song. You are a songwriter. You have the entire world to save and very little time to do it. The song will find its way to you. If you don’t write it, someone else will. Is that what you want? If not, get to it.

Much love, Nick

https://www.theredhandfiles.com/do-u-have-any-spare-lyrics/

Displaced by Darkness

“Displaced by darkness, you lie flat on your back, putting the world behind you, and stare at the moon, the embarrassing moon, with nothing to offer it, no ebb or flow, no wolfish transformations except this lunacy you keep to yourself”
― David Wagoner, In Broken Country

Romeo Loves to Swim

Romeo has caught on to the game of fetch in the pond. We attached a day-glow orange life vest on him because he rides very low in the water. The first time for the season required some prompting. I threw the stick and then I lifted him up like a suitcase (using the handle on his vest) and placed him in the shallow water with the long leash attached. I began encouraging him him when he swam out after it and I cheered when he grabbed it. Now he will enthusiastically jump in after the stick and drop it at our feet so we'll keep throwing it. We have to keep him tethered and use two extra long leads tied together which gives him about 24 feet of reach. This way we can reel him in or steer him to the clearing if we need to.

The other day I threw the stick too far and Bill let go of the lead. Romeo lost track the stick and then veered off course hunting for it and subsequently got tangled up in the shrubs. So now we try to throw the sticks within bounds and keep a stash of them ready just in case one gets lost in the current.

Yesterday I brought Romeo to the pond on a walk by myself we played a few rounds of fetch but then I threw the last stick too far and I had to let it drift away. I reeled him in like a dog-fish and we walked home. When he dried he was super soft, silky, and clean.

Dream

Romeo my dog, was in both of my dreams last night. In the first dream we were staying locally at a friend's house and there was a foot of snow on the ground. I found a door leading to an undeveloped part of the house and wasn't sure how to get back. These friends had a fancy stone pizza and bread oven in their kitchen. In the second dream I was in NYC and there was an explosion and then the sound of machine gunfire. I was in a building with people and my dog somewhere near times square. I was calling out for my husband and at the same time trying to think fast about where we all should hide. It was like we were in a WWII film.

William Safire

Composition is a discipline; it forces us to think. If you want to "get in touch with your feelings," fine —talk to yourself; we all do. But, if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce. The secret way to do this is to write it down and then cut out the confusing parts.

WILLIAM SAFIRE

Joseph Epstein

I have never liked to suggest that writing is grinding, let alone brave work. H. L. Mencken used to say that any scribbler who found writing too arduous ought to take a week off to work on an assembly line, where he will discover what work is really like. The old boy, as they say, got that right. To be able to sit home and put words together in what one hopes are charming or otherwise striking sentences is, no matter how much tussle may be involved, lucky work, a privileged job. The only true grit connected with it ought to arrive when, thinking to complain about how hard it is to write, one is smart enough to shut up and silently grit one's teeth.

JOSEPH EPSTEIN

Unconditional Love

Quotes from Grist for the Mill

The greatest thing you can do for any other human being is provide the unconditional love which comes from making contact with that place in them which is beyond conditions, which is pure consciousness, pure essence.

There's nowhere that you have to go to work on yourself other than where you are at this moment, and everything that's happening to you is part of your work on yourself.

I have three major instructions for my life from my Guru: Love, Serve, and Remember. Love everyone, serve or feed everyone, remember God.

There are many stages on this path, many lessons; don't stop anywhere. It's all part of the process of awakening. You have all the time in the world but don't waste a moment.

As long as you are attached to your separateness, you can't help but perpetuate fear, because there is a subtle fear in you of losing your separate identity.

When you acknowledge that your life is a vehicle for your liberation it becomes clear that all of your life experiences are the optimum experience you need in order to awaken. And the minute you perceive them that way they are useful within that domain. The minute you ignore that perception, they won't work that way.


     - Ram Dass

Ram Dass

https://www.ramdass.org/a-letter-to-rachel/

Death is a Reminder

/www.ramdass.org/ram-dass-death-reminder-live-life-fully/
Death is a Reminder to Live Life Fully

Grieving

https://www.ramdass.org/learning-to-grieve/

Ram Dass Meditates on Learning to Grieve

Understanding Suicide

“Look to the living, love them, and hold on.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide

Stories of Death on the Tracks

https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/readers-share-own-stories-of-death-on-the-tracks/