It was 45 degrees out

At 7AM I walked past a man walking down the street wearing a short navy bathrobe over his boxer shorts. He had on slippers. His legs were bare. It was 45 degrees out.

On the Street

The wiry lady in leopard skin stretch pants walks like a cowboy. She's wearing high heeled ankle boots.  She has a deep smoker's voice and a loud cackle. Her skin is tanned and leathery. Nothing phases her. She's seen it all. She's been walking downtown for years.

Every morning I pass two homeless people sleeping on the concrete slab patio under the pizza restaurant's overhang. They're wrapped in blankets lying on thin blue yoga mats. Next to them is a metal supermarket shopping cart with two yellow cereal boxes and two backpacks.

Tableau

There's a naked toddler standing on the second floor windowsill facing out. He's watching the men in the parking lot below rebuilding brakes on a car.

Sunday in the Park

We drove to the park to walk our dog. It was empty except for a young couple in the parking lot inside their car. A large curvy woman got out. She was wearing a black bra and colorful squeezy pants. She was shouting at her bean pole of a man who wore a shirt and hot pink jeans hanging below his butt, black undies showing.  He was pulling a quilt out of the back seat. She was gathering garbage from inside the car and filling a bag while shouting at him. A blue sport beverage with orange cap and two coffee cups were perched on the roof.

I have a feeling they slept in their car, my husband said.

It's sad. Maybe she's pregnant and they've been thrown out of their homes. 

They tossed a bag of trash next to the park trash bin. The woman's shouting continued. As we circled the park her voice carried across the empty ball field. My socks and sneakers were wet from the dew.

Let's go for another walk, I said to my husband. I need to wipe the slate clean and start the walk over, this is too painful to witness. 

We drove a few blocks and walked through another neighborhood. There was an abandoned box fan on the sidewalk, blades spinning in the wind. I feel so much better, I said.

The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help. 

 —WILLIAM FAULKNER, address upon receiving the Nobel Prize for literature, Stockholm, Sweden, December 10, 1950.—Faulkner, Essays, Speeches & Public Letters, p. 120 (1951).

The past is never dead. It's not even past.

  ― William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

Dream

I dreamed I was painting a skeleton with sepia oil paint on canvas. No wonder we are haunted this time of year, I thought.

William 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

You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.

 ― William Faulkner

Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth.

― William Faulkner

I don't get any pleasure from talking shop.

I never feel the need to discuss my work with anyone. No, I am too busy writing it. It has got to please me and if it does I don't need to talk about it. If it doesn't please me, talking about it won't improve it, since the only thing to improve it is to work on it some more. I am not a literary man but only a writer. I don't get any pleasure from talking shop. 

William Faulkner

Faulkner

I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it. 

William Faulkner

Writing a first draft is like trying to build a house in a strong wind.

 William Faulkner

Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely.

― William Faulkner

A Day in the Life

Today walking home from the pool I spotted a pristine cigarette on the sidewalk in front of the former Brazilian restaurant. I continued home and spotted Kyle. Kyle was hunting for cigarette butts across the intersection. Kyle is always hunting for tobacco. Hey Kyle, I shouted and pointed, there's a cigarette in front of the store front. He walked over. I paused in front of my stairs to watch him find it. He did and then we waved to each other.

Later, when I walked Romeo, I saw a squirrel running and hopping right toward us. He was the happiest squirrel I'd ever seen. We were on the swath of grass behind the baseball field. He was young and reddish brown. I spotted the man who had just released the squirrel from a have-a-heart trap. I watched him drive away in a dark red SUV.

On my way home I saw a sedan drive by stuffed with yellow balloons. It was followed by another sedan filled with pink balloons. I worried about their ability to see the road but assumed they were going to the same celebration.

I'm enjoying the predawn darkness

I'm enjoying the predawn darkness. I might like the day to stay this way. Give the sun a day off. Too late, the sky is bright. I am already missing the buoyant late summer energy which seems so long ago. Receive-mode is here.

The one who plants trees

The one who plants trees, knowing that he will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.

 Rabindranath Tagore

By plucking her petals you do not gather the beauty of the flower. Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds

The Small Wisdom

“Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“The small wisdom is like water in a glass:
clear, transparent, pure.
The great wisdom is like the water in the sea:
dark, mysterious, impenetrable.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

“Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. Rabindranath Tagore

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”
― Tagore

“It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

Tagore

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,
but to be fearless in facing them.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but
for the heart to conquer it.
― Rabindranath Tagore, Collected Poems and Plays of Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”
― Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds

“If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

discover what is already there

“Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. there is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.”
― Henry Miller 

Henry Miller

Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.

― Henry Miller

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
― Henry Miller

face to face with myself

“I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

Fredrick Seidel

Write beautifully what people don’t want to hear.

Fredrick Seidel

Henry Miller

Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery. The adventure is a metaphysical one; it is a way of approaching life indirectly, of acquiring a total rather than a partial view of the universe. The writer lives between the upper and lower worlds: he takes the path in order eventually to become that path himself.

Henry Miller

Each Loss

“Whenever someone who knows you disappears, you lose one version of yourself. Yourself as you were seen, as you were judged to be. Lover or enemy, mother or friend, those who know us construct us, and their several knowings slant the different facets of our characters like diamond-cutter's tools. Each such loss is a step leading to the grave, where all versions blend and end.”
― Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet 

Ira Glass

By making stories full of empathy and amusement and the sheer pleasure of discovering the world, these writers reassert the fact that we live in a world where joy and empathy and pleasure are all around us, there for the noticing.”
― Ira Glass, The New Kings of Nonfiction

Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring--it was peace.

Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera

You think that just because it’s already happened, the past is finished and unchangeable? Oh no, the past is cloaked in multicolored taffeta and every time we look at it we see a different hue.

 MILAN KUNDERA

John Updike

Try to develop steady work habits, maybe a more modest quota, but keep to it. Don’t be thin-skinned or easily discouraged because it’s an odds-long proposition; all of the arts are. Many are called, few are chosen, but it might be you. JOHN UPDIKE

I'd rather say hello to strangers than be afraid of them.

“But I'd rather help than watch. I'd rather have a heart than a mind. I'd rather expose too much than too little. I'd rather say hello to strangers than be afraid of them. I would rather know all this about myself than have more money than I need. I'd rather have something to love than a way to impress you.”
― Po Bronson, What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question 

Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.

 H.G. Wells

Jon Frankel

I meet the dead who have called ahead
to say they are still here swimming.

 Jon Frankel from poem , Mary Asked About the Water

Patrick Skinner

A Reporter at Large May 7, 2018 Issue The Spy Who Came Home Why an expert in counterterrorism became a beat cop.  By Ben Taub

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/07/the-spy-who-came-home

It often falls to the police to handle what Skinner calls “the social work of last resort.” One night, as the temperature dropped into the twenties, he spotted a person in dark clothing skulking through an empty parking lot, near the site of a recent unsolved robbery. He pulled into the lot, and as he got closer his headlights illuminated an aging black woman with a sunken face, wearing a Santa hat and a leopard-print jacket. “You doing O.K.?” Skinner asked.

“I was trying to get to Walgreens,” she said. She looked at the ground and spoke slowly, in subdued, raspy tones. “Everybody mad at me,” she said.

“They’re not too mad at you, are they?” Skinner said.

“They say I’m a troublemaker.”

“You’re not a troublemaker. What’s your first name?”

“Norma Jeane.” She was too cold to make it to the Walgreens, she said, and so Skinner told her to hop in the car. After he closed the windows and turned up the heat, Norma Jeane lit up. “I’m named after Marilyn Monroe,” she said. “I’m gonna be a superstar.”

She launched into tales from her past, with characters and events entering and vanishing from her story as spontaneously, it seemed, as they had in her life. As a young child, she said, “I took my brothers with me, and we got baptized” at a church on May Street, just north of Cuyler-Brownsville. “They say, ‘Where are your parents?’ And I said, ‘They’re both alcoholics.’ ” The rest was a chronological blur, a half century of hardship, arguments, scarcity, and violence. As we approached Walgreens, the McDonald’s next door caught her attention.

Skinner asked if she was hungry, and she asked if he would get her some pancakes and sausages, since she hadn’t eaten all day. Skinner pulled into the drive-through. “If I sit down, it hurts,” Norma Jeane said. “Feels like I got polio. That’s why I keep walking. I know how to walk, and I ain’t scared. I never been scared. I been walking these streets since I was five.”

When Norma Jeane mentioned that someone had once given her a calico cat, Skinner asked for its name.

“I didn’t know no better name than Calico,” Norma Jeane said.

“That’s awesome—I have an orange cat named Orangey,” Skinner replied. “He’s so mean, though. I usually just call him Mean Cat.”

“Oh, boy, I love cats! I turn cats into dogs,” Norma Jeane said.

Norma Jeane carried a wooden cane and a black handbag, in which she kept her Bible, an empty pickle jar that she used as a wallet, a cracked cell phone with no battery, a magnifying glass, and an old bottle for Seroquel, an antipsychotic medication used to treat bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. She said that the pills made her sleepy, so she’d stopped taking them long ago. She also has diabetes, but she couldn’t afford health insurance or treatment. “I haven’t taken insulin in three years,” she said.

Norma Jeane’s food arrived. It cost a little more than six dollars. Skinner paid with a twenty and put the change in Norma Jeane’s pickle jar. “I wish I could have a dill pickle, but I ain’t got my teeth on,” she said. “I love them Hot Mama pickles, sour pickles . . .” She trailed off.

“Where are you gonna spend tonight?” Skinner asked.

“I could go—what time is it?”

“It’s two-forty-one in the morning.”

“I’m trying to think,” she said. “I got to go where it’s clean. You know someplace I can go?” As a warm city in the Deep South, Savannah attracts many homeless people, but its overcrowded shelters had locked their doors around dusk. “I need to go to a Waffle House,” she concluded. “It’s open twenty-four hours. I’ll go in there and play the jukebox.”

Skinner notified the precinct of the plan, and pulled into the Waffle House parking lot, on Abercorn Street. Norma Jeane walked over to a booth in the corner. Then she took off her Santa hat and started messing up her hair, pulling strands so that they’d stick out in all directions. “This way, everybody gonna think I’m crazy,” she said. “No one gonna come up to me, this way. No one gonna hurt me.”

Back in the car, Skinner explained that part of his motivation in helping Norma Jeane was to prevent an emergency call, three hours later, of a homeless woman freezing to death. “Think of all the shit that went wrong in this country for Norma Jeane to be sitting in the car with us,” he said. Although schizophrenia affects a little more than one per cent of Americans, it’s a factor in a high percentage of police calls. A few hours earlier, Skinner had checked on a schizophrenic man who calls the police multiple times each night, reporting paranoid hallucinations; the department can never ignore a call, because he is the legal owner of a .357 Magnum revolver, and officers told me that he once tried to execute an intruder in his front yard. At times, Skinner feels as if the role of a police officer were to pick up the pieces of “something that has broken in every single possible way.”

“A huge amount of what police actually do is support and service and problem-solving,” David M. Kennedy told me. “And part of what’s so inside out is that most of that activity is not recognized.” Police officers are increasingly filling the gaps of a broken state. “They do it essentially on their own, usually without adequate training and preparation, often without the skills they need, and overwhelmingly without the resources and institutional connections that it would take to do those things well.”

Twenty-seven hours after we left Norma Jeane at the Waffle House, another cop radioed in an E.M.S. call. A fifty-nine-year-old homeless woman, dressed in a Santa hat and a leopard-print jacket, was freezing to death.

In February, Skinner began a permanent beat, from 2:30 P.M. to 11 P.M. Residents have begun to get used to him. In March, during a foot chase in Cuyler-Brownsville, two women—one of whom he’d put in handcuffs the previous week—started cheering for him from their porches. “Go, Skinner, go!” they shouted, laughing. He’d lost sight of the suspect by then, and asked if a young man had just run past. On a block where the police never get tips, the women helped him narrow the search.

One recent Saturday night, two drunk men sitting in a park waved Skinner over. One of the men was trying to console his friend Kenneth, whose girlfriend had kicked him out and taken away his car keys. Suddenly, Kenneth stood up and reached for Skinner, to embrace him. Skinner hugged back.

A few minutes later, Skinner described the scene to an officer-in-training. She was aghast. At the police academy, cops are trained how to position their bodies when interacting with members of the public—one shoulder forward, gun hip always out of reach.

“I know—I lost tactical advantage,” Skinner told her.

“Yeah!” the trainee said.

Skinner smiled. “I’m not looking for tactical,” he said. “I’m looking for strategic.” ♦

Published in the print edition of the May 7, 2018, issue.

Ben Taub, a staff writer, is the recipient of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. His 2018 reporting on Iraq won a National Magazine Award and a George Polk Award.

I withdraw from people and places from time to time, I need space from a world that is filled with millions of mouths that talk too much but never have anything to say. Kaitlin Foster

Film: Folie Circulaire

We just watched this film Folie Curculaire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOzBCC7-dUk

Heidelberg 1894. Marie Lieb makes enigmatic figures and signs on her cell floor, using only her torn bedsheets. The result is mesmerising. Over a century later, an artist stumbles across photographs of these floor installations and quickly falls under their spell. She wants to know more about Marie Lieb, but the medical file is long missing. Can she find a thread to the heart of the labyrinth? Subscribe to our channels for a new #shortfilm every day - http://goo.gl/lPLIY Click Here to Watch New Releases - http://bit.ly/newreleasesfilms Visit www.pocketfilms.in to know more about us and our activities including films, contests, updates, etc. Cast & Crew: Director: Charlotte McGowan-Griffin Music / Sound: Colleen (music) / Christoph Stahlhauer (sound design) Editor: Carolina Hellsgard Cinematographer: Leah Striker Actors: Anne Tismer Voice of : Alexandra Stewart

Dream

I stepped into the elevator in my step-father's old NYC office building. I couldn't remember which floor had his office. That's what 12 hours of sleep will do, I said to the other people in the elevator. 

The elevator door opened and there was a big glass canister of unopened teabags on a table leftover from a reception. I jumped out of the elevator and reached in and grabbed a few of my favorites and jumped back into the elevator. PG Tips is great tea, have you had it? I said to the others in the elevator. I used to live with folks from England, I said.

I was carrying tiny brass sculptures that I gave a woman who worked in my step-father's art studio. She worked as a graphic designer. I was waiting for the moment to tell her my step-father founded the company. Later I was regretting that I gave the sculptures away.

industrial food

People rail against big pharma but I'm still shouting about over-processed food.

French psychiatrist Jean-Pierre Falret. In the early 1850s, Falret identified folie circulaire or “circular insanity”

Prior its classification as “bipolar disorder,” this mood disorder was most widely known as “manic depression” or “manic-depressive illness,” as it was classified in the DSM-II. This name stems from German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin’s attempt to unify manic, depressive, and psychotic mood states in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Even to this day, this name continues to have wide support within the mental health community, as many feel that it better reflects their lived experiences. A leading example is preeminent researcher and author Kay Redfield Jamison, PhD, who continues to push for the term “manic depression” because, as she says, “The term ‘manic depression’ is the most scientifically accurate [and] most historically descriptive.” Jamison insists that “bipolar” minimizes the illness by suggesting that those with the diagnosis experience only two extreme mood states at opposite poles.

 As a result of the work of French psychiatrist Jean-Pierre Falret. In the early 1850s, Falret identified folie circulaire or “circular insanity”

Bipolar has deep historical roots, even though its name has varied over the centuries. The earliest documentation of this mood disorder dates to the second century with the works of the ancient Greek Aretaeus of Cappadocia, who is now known as the “forgotten physician.”

Aretaeus identified mania and melancholia (depression), believed they shared a common link, and held that they were two forms of the same condition. In his accounts of the symptoms, Aretaeus noted excess joy, grandiose thinking, anger, insomnia, heavy sadness, and dark thoughts

In 1686, Swiss physician Théophile Bonet also associated mania with melancholia, referring to it as “manico-melancolicus.” source

The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will. Czeslaw Milosz

“Not that I want to be a god or a hero. Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.”
― Czeslaw Milosz

“In a room where
people unanimously maintain
a conspiracy of silence,
one word of truth
sounds like a pistol shot.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“Learning to believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.”
― Czeslaw Milosz

“Language is the only homeland.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.”
― Czesław Miłosz, The Issa Valley

“Yet falling in love is not the same as being able to love.”
― Czeslaw Milosz, Selected Poems Selected Poems

“A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death - the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged.”
― Czeslaw Milosz

“You see how I try
To reach with words
What matters most
And how I fail.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“The bright side of the planet moves toward darkness
And the cities are falling asleep, each in its hour,
And for me, now as then, it is too much.
There is too much world.”
― Czesław Miłosz, The Separate Notebooks

When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished. Czeslaw Milosz

Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. August Wilson

You can’t be afraid to deal with your demons. You’ve got to go there to be able to write.

  LUCINDA WILLIAMS

If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels. TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

Faire et se taire -Flaubert

The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-It on the wall in front of my desk saying “Faire et se taire” (Flaubert), which I translate for myself as “Shut up and get on with it.”

HELEN SIMPSON

Friday Pie Day

Today I had a killer sinus headache from ragweed and outdoor mold and the decongestant and generic Excedrin was not working on the second round for some reason. So I went swimming and after an hour of vigorous lap swimming I was healed. 

Then my neighbor friend Nancy invited us over for taco soup. It was delicious! 

Now I am baking 6 baby (6") pumpkin pies. I pre-baked my whole wheat press-in oil crust then I added my pumpkin pie filling made with evaporated milk egg, molasses, freshly grated ginger, cinnamon and a tiny bit of sugar. My recipe is here: https://theurbanmermaid.blogspot.com/2020/11/my-best-pumpkin-pie.html

We love pumpkin pie and we consider it food! It's excellent with hot black coffee.

Now we are cooling them so we can refrigerate them overnight.

Words of Comfort

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/09/11/1122250666/teenage-afghan-girls-are-defying-the-taliban-with-a-secret-book-club

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. Voltaire

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. Voltaire

It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one. Voltaire

It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love. Voltaire

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do. Voltaire

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled. Plutarch

What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. Plutarch

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks. Plutarch

The way up and the way down are one and the same. Heraclitus

You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor. Aristotle

Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance. Epicurus

In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face. Diogenes

Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul. Democritus

Eyes and ears are poor witnesses to people if they have uncultured souls. Heraclitus

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man. Heraclitus

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. Carl Jung

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. Barack Obama

Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better. Richard Hooker

He needed to go to a pizza dispensary and purchase some medical pizza.

Geneen Roth

“You are not a mistake. You are not a problem to be solved. But you won't discover this until you are willing to stop banging your head against the wall of shaming and caging and fearing yourself. (p. 84)”
― Geneen Roth

“When you believe without knowing you believe that you are damaged at your core, you also believe that you need to hide that damage for anyone to love you. You walk around ashamed of being yourself. You try hard to make up for the way you look, walk, feel. Decisions are agonizing because if you, the person who makes the decision, is damaged, then how can you trust what you decide? You doubt your own impulses so you become masterful at looking outside yourself for comfort. You become an expert at finding experts and programs, at striving and trying hard and then harder to change yourself, but this process only reaffirms what you already believe about yourself -- that your needs and choices cannot be trusted, and left to your own devices you are out of control (p.82-83)”
― Geneen Roth

“. . . hell is wanting to be somewhere different from where you are. Being one place and wanting to be somewhere else . . . . Wanting life to be different from what it is. That's also called leaving without leaving. Dying before you die. It's as if there is a part of you that so rails against being shattered by love that you shatter yourself first. (p. 44)”
― Geneen Roth 

“Freedom from obsession is not about something you do; it's about knowing who you are. It's about recognizing what sustains you and what exhausts you. What you love and what you think you love because you believe you can't have it. (p. 163)”
― Geneen Roth 

“...compulsive eating is basically a refusal to be fully alive. No matter what we weigh, those of us who are compulsive eaters have anorexia of the soul. We refuse to take in what sustains us. We live lives of deprivation. And when we can't stand it any longer, we binge. The way we are able to accomplish all of this is by the simple act of bolting -- of leaving ourselves -- hundreds of times a day.”
― Geneen Roth 

“It's never been true, not anywhere at any time, that the value of a soul, of a human spirit, is dependent on a number on a scale. We are unrepeatable beings of light and space and water who need these physical vehicles to get around. When we start defining ourselves by that which can be measured or weighed, something deep within us rebels.

We don't want to EAT hot fudge sundaes as much as we want our lives to BE hot fudge sundaes. We want to come home to ourselves. (p. 174-5)”
― Geneen Roth 

“I believe in love. And beauty. I believe that every single person has something they find beautiful and that they truly love. The smell of their child's hair, the silence of a forest, their lover's crooked grin. Their country, their religion, their family. And I believe that if you follow this love all the way to its end, if you start with the thing you find most beautiful and trace it's perfume back to its essence, you will perceive an intangible presence, a swath of stillness that allows the thing you love to be visible like the openness of the sky reveals the presence of the moon.”
― Geneen Roth 

“Weight (too much or too little) is a by-product. Weight is what happens when you use food to flatten your life. Even with aching joints, it's not about food. Even with arthritis, diabetes, high blood pressure. It's about your desire to flatten your life. It's about the fact that you've given up without saying so. It's about your belief that it's not possible to live any other way -- and you're using food to act that out without ever having to admit it. (p. 53)”
― Geneen Roth 

“Our work is not to change what you do, but to witness what you do with enough awareness, enough curiosity, enough tenderness that the lies and old decisions upon which the compulsion is based become apparent and fall away. When you no longer believe that eating will save your life when you feel exhausted or overwhelmed or lonely, you will stop. When you believe in yourself more than you believe in food, you will stop using food as if it were your only chance at not falling apart. When the shape of your body no longer matches the shape of your beliefs, the weight disappears. (p. 80-81)”
― Geneen Roth 

“Imagine not being frightened by any feeling. Imagine knowing that nothing will destroy you. That you are beyond any feeling, an state. Bigger than. Vaster than. That there is no reason to use drugs because anything a drug could do would pale in comparison to knowing who you are. To what you can understand, live, be, just by being with that presents itself to you in the form of the feelings you have...”
― Geneen Roth 

“The Eating Guidelines
1. Eat when you are hungry.
2. Eat sitting down in a calm environment. This does not include the car.
3. Eat without distractions. Distractions include radio, television, newspapers, books, intense or anxiety-producing conversations or music.
4. Eat what your body wants.
5. Eat until you are satisfied.
6. Eat (with the intention of being) in full view of others.
7. Eat with enjoyment, gusto, and pleasure.”
― Geneen Roth 

“When you ignore your belly, you become homeless. You spend your life trying to erase your own existence. Apologizing for yourself. Feeling like a ghost. Eating to take up space, eating to give yourself the feeling that you have weight here, you belong here, you are allowed to be yourself -- but never quite believing it because you don't sense yourself directly.

. . . I started teaching a simple belly meditation in which I asked people to become aware of sensations in their belly (numbness and emptiness count as sensations). Every time their mind wandered . . . I asked them to begin counting their breaths so they could anchor their concentration. Starting with the number one and saying it on the out breath, they'd count to seven and begin again. If they were able to stay concentrated on the sensations in their belly centers, they didn't need to use counting as a concentration anchor.

. . . you begin the process of bringing yourself back to your body, to your belly, to your breath because they -- not the mind medleys -- are here now. And it is only here, only now that you can make a decision to eat or not eat. To occupy your own body or to vacate your arms and your legs while still breathing and go through your days as a walking head.

. . . Meditation is a tool to shake yourself awake. A way to discover what you love. A practice to return yourself to your body when the mind medleys threaten to usurp your sanity.”
― Geneen Roth 

“Most of us spend our lives protecting ourselves from losses that have already happened.”
― Geneen Roth

“Treat yourself as if you already are enough. Walk as if you are enough. Eat as if you are enough. See, look, listen as if you are enough. Because it's true.”
― Geneen Roth

“And if you worry that not finishing the food on your plate is a slap in the face of all the hungry people everywhere, you are not living in reality. The truth is that you either throw the food out or you throw it in, but either way it turns to waste. World hunger will not be solved by finishing the garlic mashed potatoes on your plate.”
― Geneen Roth 

“Most of our suffering comes from resisting what is already here, particularly our feelings. All any feeling wants is to be welcomed, touched, allowed. It wants attention. It wants kindness. If you treated your feelings with as much love as you treated your dog or your cat or your child, you'd feel as if you were living in heaven every day of your sweet life.”
― Geneen Roth

“Diets are based on the unspoken fear that you are a madwoman, a food terrorist, a lunatic…The promise of a diet is not only that you will have a different body; it is that in having a different body, you will have a different life. If you hate yourself enough, you will love yourself. If you torture yourself enough, you will become a peaceful, relaxed human being.”
― Geneen Roth 

“What you pay attention to grows. Pay attention to your loveliness, your magnificent self. Begin now.”
― Geneen Roth

“Awareness is learning to keep yourself company”
― Geneen Roth

“For some reason, we are truly convinced that if we criticize ourselves, the criticism will lead to change. If we are harsh, we believe we will end up being kind. If we shame ourselves, we believe we end up loving ourselves. It has never been true, not for a moment, that shame leads to love. Only love leads to love.”
― Geneen Roth

“When we give up dieting, we take back something we were often too young to know we had given away: our own voice. Our ability to make decisions about what to eat and when. Our belief in ourselves. Our right to decide what goes into our mouths. Unlike the diets that appear monthly in magazines or the thermal pants that sweat off pounds, unlike a lover or a friend or a car, your body is reliable. It doesn't go away, get lost, stolen. If you will listen, it will speak.”
― Geneen Roth, Breaking Free from Emotional Eating

“If we think our job here on earth is to fix ourselves, we will keep looking for the broken places. If we believe our job is to be kind, we will keep lavishing love on ourselves.”
― Geneen Roth

“We eat the way we eat because we are afraid to feel what we feel.”
― Geneen Roth

“Weight loss does not make people happy. Or peaceful. Being thin does not address the emptiness that has no shape or weight or name. Even a wildly successful diet is a colossal failure because inside the new body is the same sinking heart.”
― Geneen Roth

“Bingeing is such an emotionally frenetic activity that no other concerns can exist in the same space. It is a hell that people who are food-sensitive are familiar with; and, because it is known, it is therefore not so terrifying as some of the problems that are outside our control. Problems like divorce, illness, death.”
― Geneen Roth 

“Staying requires being curious about who you actually are when you don't take yourself to be a collection of memories.When you don't infer your existence form replaying what happened to you, when you don't take yourself to be the girl your mother/father/brother/teacher/lover didn't see or adore. When you sense yourself directly, immediately, right now, without preconception, who are you?”
― Geneen Roth

“You will never stop wanting more until you allow yourself to have what you already have. To take it in. Savor it. Now is a good time to do that . . .”
― Geneen Roth

“I live between fearing doom and wishing for it.”
― Geneen Roth 

“People get old, get sick and die. Or they die suddenly. Or their deaths drag on forever. My friend Tory is dying a slow, excruciatingly painful death of bone cancer. Eight friends have died of breast cancer. Polar bears are dying. Honeybees are vanishing. The oceans are drying up. There is a part of me that wants my money back. That wants to say, 'I didn't sign up for this. I don't like the way this whole thing is set up and I won't participate in it.”
― Geneen Roth 

“Compulsive eating is only the symptom; believing that you are not worth your own love is the problem.
Go for the love. You will never be sorry.”
― Geneen Roth

you belong here, you are allowed to be yourself

When you ignore your belly, you become homeless. You spend your life trying to erase your own existence. Apologizing for yourself. Feeling like a ghost. Eating to take up space, eating to give yourself the feeling that you have weight here, you belong here, you are allowed to be yourself -- but never quite believing it because you don't sense yourself directly. Geneen Roth

swimming helps clear their sinuses (especially if you have allergies)

My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I'm grateful for it the way I'm grateful for the ocean. Anne Lamott

Steamed Cabbage

 This is so simple and delicious.

 https://healthyrecipesblogs.com/steamed-cabbage/

Half a cup of cooked cabbage has about a third the vitamin C you need for the day. It also gives you doses of fiber, folate, potassium, magnesium, vitamins A and K, and more.

Mrs D

She always carried wintergreen candies in her handbag 

and had crocheted quips on her couch pillows. 

She had framed photos of her dogs on the wall of her dining room. 

She made me a cup of tea.

It was snowing. 

When she got up to get a saucer for my spent teabag a cockroach crawled over the napkin holder.

I pretended not to see it.

I was one those kids who had books on them. Before weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, funerals and anything else where you're actually meant to not be reading, my family would frisk me and take the book away. If they didn't find it by this point in the procedure, I would be sitting over in that corner completely unnoticed just reading my book. Neil Gaiman

Local Spanish-speaking high school students were brought in to serve as translators.

Article

Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you'll start having positive results.

Willie Nelson

The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before.

Neil Gaiman

The moment that you feel that just possibly you are walking down the street naked... that's the moment you may be starting to get it right.

Neil Gaiman

Sometimes the best way to learn something is by doing it wrong and looking at what you did.

Neil Gaiman

If you are a good girl and get all of your work done you can vacuum as a reward.

To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it.

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
― Joan Didion, The White Album

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
― Joan Didion

“Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life — is the source from which self-respect springs.”
― Joan Didion, On Self-Respect

“I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”
― Joan Didion

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.”
― Joan Didion, The White Album

Marion Cunningham

 https://theheritagecook.com/sharing-a-day-of-cooking-with-marion-cunningham/

Tamale Pie

 Tamale Pie

It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful. Roald Dahl, Matilda

Roald Dahl

 “Do you know what breakfast cereal is made of? It's made of all those little curly wooden shavings you find in pencil sharpeners!”
― Roald Dahl

Above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it. Roald Dahl

A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.

― Roald Dahl

enthusiast

“I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. He taught me that if you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it at full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be.”
― Roald Dahl, My Uncle Oswald 

Grown ups are complicated creatures, full of quirks and secrets. Roald Dahl

The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She travelled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.

 Roald Dahl, Matilda

You are not alone

 “So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.”

― Roald Dahl, Matilda

I have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn't be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage. Roald Dahl

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it.

 ― Roald Dahl, The Twits

So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall. Then fill the shelves with lots of books.

  ― Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Rosh Hashanah 2022 will begin in the evening of Sunday , September 25 and ends in the evening of Tuesday , September 27

Why Rosh Hashanah kicks off the Jewish New Year in the Autumn—not January

Celebrated with trumpet blasts, prayers, and festive meals, this holiday is a time for reflection and marks the start of the Jewish high holy days.

By Erin Blakemore

Published 21 Sept 2020, 10:54 BST

A man blows a shofar horn at the Western Wall Plaza in Jerusalem's Old City to celebrate the start of Rosh Hashanah in 2011. Many Jewish people interpret the horn's sound as a call to repent their sins and seek forgiveness from God.

Food, sound, prayer, reflection, celebration. Jewish people around the world will wish one another “Shanah tovah” (Hebrew for “good year”) during Rosh Hashanah, the observance of the Jewish New Year. Here’s what you need to know about the holiday, which took place this year between sundown on September 18 and sundown on September 20 and kicks off the Jewish high holy days.

Origins and meaning of Rosh Hashanah

Jewish people welcome the new year in September or October, not January, in observance of the lunisolar Hebrew calendar. Rosh Hashanah begins on the first day of Tishri, the first month of the calendar’s civil year and seventh month of its religious year. Given that the Hebrew calendar is more than a week shorter than the Gregorian calendar and, according to tradition, originated with the biblical creation of the universe, this holiday will mark the beginning of the year 5781 for Jews worldwide.

Hebrew for “head of the year,” Rosh Hashanah is a chance not just to celebrate and look ahead, but to consider the past and review one’s relationship with God. It also marks the first day of a period known as the Ten Days of Awe, or Days of Repentance, during which a person’s actions are thought to be able to influence both God’s judgment and God’s plan for that person. These high holy days culminate in Yom Kippur, a time of atonement that is considered the holiest day of the year.

Though the holiday has been celebrated for thousands of years, its origins are murky. Jewish scripture lays out the month and days of a similar festival but does not call it Rosh Hashanah. In the biblical passage Leviticus 23:24-25, God tells Moses that the people of Israel should observe the first day of the seventh month as a day of rest and mark it with the blast of horns.

At some point, the horn-blowing holiday became associated with the new year. The earliest reference to Rosh Hashanah in a rabbinic text comes from the Mishnah, a Jewish legal text that dates from A.D. 200.

How Rosh Hashanah is celebrated

In the leadup to Rosh Hashanah, the shofar—a trumpet made from a ram or kosher animal’s horn—is regularly sounded in synagogues. The holiday itself is celebrated with even more shofar blasts, usually a hundred during the services on both days. Many Jews interpret the sound as a call to repent of sins and seek forgiveness from God.

Work is prohibited on Rosh Hashanah, and many Jewish people spend the holiday attending special services at their synagogues and then celebrating with festive meals.

Rosh Hashanah has its own symbolic foods: round challah, apples, and honey. Symbolising God, the cycles of the year, and the sustenance that lies ahead, a rounded challah loaf, often studded with raisins, is usually dipped in honey and eaten in a celebratory meal. So are apples, which represent hope for a sweet year ahead. The tradition of eating apples for Rosh Hashanah is thought to have originated with Ashkenazi Jews in Europe who used the fall fruit in their new year’s meals. (See nine breads from around the world.)

So how will the beginning of the year 5781 be celebrated in a time like no other? In many places worldwide, synagogue attendance and family meals are still impossible due to the coronavirus. But some believers are getting creative. In Washington, D.C., for example, synagogues and Jewish organisations came up with a pandemic plan, writes Matt Blitz for DCist. At 5 p.m. on September 18, hundreds of people around the city blew their shofars outside in a simultaneous show of new year’s devotion. 

Stretch Pie

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever,- One foot in sea and one on shore, To one thing constant never.

  William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

Dispute not with her: she is lunatic. William Shakespeare

All that glisters is not gold; Often have you heard that told: Many a man his life hath sold But my outside to behold: Gilded tombs do worms enfold.

  ― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.

 ― William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

Don't waste your love on somebody, who doesn't value it. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break. William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew

Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.

“Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.”
― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.

  ― William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Hell is empty and all the devils are here. William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

  ― William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool. William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“Men in rage strike those that wish them best.” ― William Shakespeare, Othello

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean. Maya Angelou

Edith Sitwell unpopular electric eel set in a pond of catfish.

“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.”
― Edith Sitwell

“I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of catfish.”
― Edith Sitwell

“My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.”
― Edith Sitwell

“In private life she was not in the least what her calumniators would have wished her to be. She was very quiet, had a great natural dignity, and was extremely intelligent. She was also exceedingly sensitive.”
― Edith Sitwell

“Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.”
― Edith Sitwell

I am patient with stupidity, but not with those who are proud of it. Edith Sitwell

I never think at all when I write nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well. Don Marquis

Don Marquis

  “Nearly every night before I go to bed I ask myself, "Have I vibrated in tune with the Infinite today, or have I failed?”
― Don Marquis, Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself. Neil Gaiman

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten. Neil Gaiman, Coraline

You can become an artist. Commit suicide. Adopt a new name, a new country, a new language.

“Literature allows us to cross the borders -- as imaginary as they are indispensable -- which circumscribe and define our selves. Reading, we allow other people to enter us -- and if we make room for them so willingly, it's because we know them already. The novel celebrates our miraculous capacity to recognize others in ourselves, and ourselves in others.”
― Nancy Huston, Losing North: Essays on Cultural Exile

“All sorts of behaviour can be inspired by self-hatred. You can become an artist. Commit suicide. Adopt a new name, a new country, a new language.
All of the above (Romain Gary).”
― Nancy Huston, Losing North: Essays on Cultural Exile

“The truth is that all of us have multiple identities -- if only because all of us were children once, then teenagers, and are these things no longer, yet are them still.”
― Nancy Huston, Losing North: Essays on Cultural Exile

“The problem, of course, is that languages are not only languages. They're also worldviews -- and therefore, to some extent, untranslatable ...”
― Nancy Huston, Losing North: Essays on Cultural Exile

“You've got to pay visits to your memories from time to time. You've got to feed them, take them out and air them, show them around, tell them to other people or to yourself. If you don't, they waste away.”
― Nancy Huston, Losing North: Essays on Cultural Exile

“People in exile are rich -- rich with the accumulated sum of their contradictory identities.”
― Nancy Huston, Losing North: Essays on Cultural Exile

“A person who decides, voluntarily, as an adult, unconstrained by outside circumstances, to leave her native land and adopt a hitherto unfamiliar language and culture, has to face the fact that for the rest of her life she will be involved in theatre, imitation, make-believe.”
― Nancy Huston, Losing North: Essays on Cultural Exile

“Who am I, in French? I really don't know -- a bit of everything, perhaps.”
― Nancy Huston, Losing North: Essays on Cultural Exile

 

You should always play with and not according to the rules, because a life with no danger in it is no life at all. Nancy Huston, Fault Lines

Home Delivery

  Paying for television is like home delivery sewage.

Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. Franz Kafka

Hunger for Stories

“There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them.”
― Philip Pullman

Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit. Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife

All the history of human life has been a struggle between wisdom and stupidity.

 Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

They're Sprites

“I write almost always in the third person, and I don't think the narrator is male or female anyway. They're both, and young and old, and wise and silly, and sceptical and credulous, and innocent and experienced, all at once. Narrators are not even human - they're sprites.”

― Philip Pullman

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world. Philip Pullman

The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on

 “Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
― Louis L'Amour

Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.

” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

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

Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

  ― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

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

order out of disorder

 “I love the idea of bringing order out of disorder which is what the mystery is about. I like the way in which it affirms the sanity of human life and exorcises irrational guilts.”
― P.D. James

Every island to a child is a treasure island. P.D. James, The Lighthouse

All fiction is largely autobiographical and much autobiography is, of course, fiction. P.D. James

Charm

 “Charm is often despised but I can never see why. No one has it who isn't capable of genuinely liking others, at least at the actual moment of meeting and speaking. Charm is always genuine; it may be superficial but it isn't false.”
― P.D. James, The Children of Men

nothing but the present moment

“We can experience nothing but the present moment, live in no other second of time, and to understand this is as close as we can get to eternal life.”
― P.D. James, The Children of Men

Banishes the Curse

Work is the only thing that banishes the curse of fear.

JERRY SALTZ

the world needs wisdom.

Be wise, because the world needs wisdom. If you cannot be wise, pretend to be someone who is wise and then just behave like they would. NEIL GAIMAN

Unconditional love is the greatest gift we can ever give. Amy Leigh Mercree

Writers are the exorcists of their own demons. Writers can treat their mental illnesses every day.

Writers can treat their mental illnesses every day. 

KURT VONNEGUT 

Writers are the exorcists of their own demons. 

MARIO VARGAS LLOSA

Toni Morrison

I know it seems like a lot, but I really only do one thing. I read books I teach books. I write books. I think about books. It’s one job. 

TONI MORRISON

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved

 

Stick Ball

You've had bigger challenges and gotten through them, he said. This is stick ball. He lit his cigar and puffed a cloud around himself.

The genie has spoken, and now he'll disappear, she thought.

She wasn't so sure he was correct. Every problem felt to her like fly landing on the end of her nose.

if they're telling the truth.

“Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one other person I could really talk to, who could really understand me, who'd be kind to me. That's what people really want, if they're telling the truth.”

― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

Doris Lessing

Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.

 DORIS LESSING

“There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.”
― Doris May Lessing, Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949

“There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag-and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty-and vise versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you. ”
― Doris Lessing

“That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.”
― Doris Lessing

“A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants: demagogues can persecute writers and tell them what to write as much as they like, but they cannot vanish what has been written in the past, though they try often enough...People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.”
― Doris Lessing

“Very few people really care about freedom, about liberty, about the truth, very few. Very few people have guts, the kind of guts on which a real democracy has to depend. Without people with that sort of guts a free society dies or cannot be born.”
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

you’re doing this work for yourself, and everything that happens once it’s in the world is out of your control.

As a writer, you need to approach every project with the understanding that you’re doing this work for yourself, and everything that happens once it’s in the world is out of your control. Whatever project you’re working on now doesn’t derive value from your friends’ approval, but rather from the love and energy you pour into it. You can do the work, and you can keep showing up, and that’s all you’ve got. Most of the time, it’s all you need.

TOM McALLISTER

Bad Hands

The desire for control was so profound she couldn't tell you her name. "It depends who's asking," she'd say. And this is her NAME! She actually thought she could control your thoughts by telling you what SHE THINKS you want to hear. See how ridiculous that is? This woman was the person in charge of me for my first years. But luckily I understood I was in bad hands and ran for my life. My siblings were not so lucky and they got caught in the family machinery.

Most adults have forgotten what they had to do to survive childhood. Mark Vonnegut

Art is lunging forward without certainty about where you are going or how to get there, being open to and dependent on what luck, the paint, the typo, the dissonance, give you. Without art, you're stuck with yourself as you are and life as you think life is.  Mark Vonnegut

Reading and writing are in themselves subversive acts. What they subvert is the notion that things have to be the way they are, that you are alone, that no one has ever felt the way you have. Mark Vonnegut  

Who but a brazen crazy person would go one-on-one with blank paper or canvas armed with nothing but ideas? Mark Vonnegut 

Introverts almost never cause me trouble and are usually much better at what they do than extroverts. Extroverts are too busy slapping one another on the back, team building, and making fun of introverts to get much done. Extroverts are amazed and baffled by how much some introverts get done and assume that they, the extroverts, are somehow responsible. Mark Vonnegut

The way I played music there was the way I wanted to farm, chop wood, cook, make love, raise children. Everything. A lo of it had to do with things I felt while I played. If only I could feel that sense of total absorption in what I was doing when I was doing other things. It was more than absorption, it was spontaneity, competence, a sense of grace and playfulness, of being in touch with an inexhaustible source of energy and beauty. Mark Vonnegut

With mental illness the trick is to not take your feelings so seriously; you’re zooming in and zooming away from things that go from being too important to being not important at all. Mark Vonnegut