A poem is done when it stops bothering me. That is my definition of doneness.

 —Mary Ruefle

Poetry led me by the hand out of madness.

  ―Anne Sexton

Keeping a Journal

 Please don't call it journaling. That makes my stomach turn.

The word “preventative” is commonly and erroneously used in place of “preventive” when referring to the medical specialty, preventive medicine.

Question Air

Do you sleep 8 hours a night?

Do you linger on the color yellow?

Do you ever daydream or think about the past?

Do you peel your vegetables?

Do you understand the reason for these questions?

1973

 

Two Feet

Lena wasn't allowed to wash her hair for some reason. After a while her hair looked like an oily mop and nobody wanted to sit near her. One day her mom came to pick her up from school in a huge black Oldsmobile. They offered me a ride home. While her mom was driving I looked down and noticed that her mom was using both feet, one foot used the break and one on the gas. I remembered being told that was the wrong way to drive because your reflex in an emergency would be to use both feet at once and that was dangerous. I was worried.  Her mom wore a black dress and pointy black shoes and shiny black nail-polish on her long fingernails. She smiled at me with dark red lipstick and her teeth were olive green. I jumped out at the stop sign and ran the rest of the way home.

Writers were fortunate enough that they could treat their neurosis every day by writing. Edmund Burgler

The Writer and Psychoanalysis

Edmund Bergler (1899 - 1962), an Austrian Jew, fled the Nazis in 1937-38 to live and practice in New York City. He wrote 25 psychology books along with 273 articles that were published in leading professional journals.

Bergler's contribution to psychoanalytic thought was remarkable.

Practicing art is not a way to make money or become famous, it’s a way to make your soul grow.

 Kurt Vonnegut

Dalton Hessel: The Death of the Dinner Table

Article

Author Alice P. Julier wrote a book titled, Eating Together, and in her book she mentions, “when people invite friends, neighbors, or family members to share meals within their households, social inequalities involving race, economics, and gender reveal themselves in interesting ways: relationships are defined, boundaries of intimacy or distance are set, and people find themselves either excluded or included.” When we don’t share meals together, we are robbing ourselves of getting to know the people around us. It gives us a chance to hear different perspectives and stories. We are thieves of stories that are longing to be shared because it’s not seen as convenient. We’d rather read about it on Facebook than hear the story directly from the person sitting across from us.

People don't have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you're dead, when they've killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn't have any character. They weep big, bitter tears - not for you. For themselves, because they've lost their toy.

 ― James Baldwin, Another Country

It is very nearly impossible to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

― James Baldwin

People can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.

 ― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room 

There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.

― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room 

The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

― James Baldwin 

All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.

― James Baldwin 

I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

― James Baldwin 

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.

 ― James Baldwin 

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time 

Pastectomy

The complete delusional rewriting of the past.

A sage was asked, “How long have we been on this journey?” He replied, “Imagine a mountain three miles wide, three miles high, and three miles long. Once every hundred years, a bird flies over the mountain, holding a silk scarf in its beak, which it brushes across the surface of the mountain. The time it would take for the scarf to wear down the mountain is how long we’ve been doing this.”

This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard.

― Neil Gaiman 

Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.

― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country 

Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it's always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.

― Neil Gaiman 

Don't ever apologise to an author for buying something in paperback, or taking it out from a library (that's what they're there for. Use your library). Don't apologise to this author for buying books second hand, or getting them from bookcrossing or borrowing a friend's copy. What's important to me is that people read the books and enjoy them, and that, at some point in there, the book was bought by someone. And that people who like things, tell other people. The most important thing is that people read...”

 ― Neil Gaiman 

Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.

 ― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.

― Neil Gaiman 

What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.

  ― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.

 ― Neil Gaiman 

I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.

― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane 

Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.

― Neil Gaiman

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

― G.K. Chesterton

Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

 ― G.K. Chesterton 

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.

― G.K. Chesterton

There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.

 ― G.K. Chesterton

The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.

 ― G.K. Chesterton 

Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.

  ― G.K. Chesterton

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart you feel others should care about.

Kurt Vonnegut

How Long Have We Been on this Journey?

A sage was asked, “How long have we been on this journey?” He replied, “Imagine a mountain three miles wide, three miles high, and three miles long. Once every hundred years, a bird flies over the mountain, holding a silk scarf in its beak, which it brushes across the surface of the mountain. The time it would take for the scarf to wear down the mountain is how long we’ve been doing this.” Article

Elsewhere by Richard Russo

I gobbled up this beautiful book the past few days. I LOVED it.

I take pride in having managed to parlay the same genetic character traits that bedeviled her—stubbornness, defiance, an inclination to obsess, an excess of will, a potentially dangerous need to see things my own way— into a rich and satisfying career. 

Richard Russo,  Elsewhere (a memoir) page 204

dissonant and dormant in the background

What does it actually feel like to hate a sibling? Well, it’s something that is always there, lying dissonant and dormant in the background. You dread the slightest contact, whether by letter, email or phone call. 

‘The bond can never quite be severed, yet the bitter hatred gets ever worse. Because it happens before you can speak, it goes far deeper than anybody ever realises and can never be healed.’ source

Richard Russo

It's possible to overlook character flaws of in-laws for the simple reason that you feel neither responsible for them nor genetically implicated.
― Richard Russo, Straight Man

What I discovered I liked best about striking out on my bicycle was that the farther I got from home, the more interesting and unusual my thoughts became.

 ― Richard Russo

YMCA Logos of the Past & Present

 

Four Ounce Canning Jars

Years ago they were perfect for grabbing a pee sample from our female dog. This is why we will forever call them pee jars.  Now we drink cold black coffee out of them.

Baking Eleven Loaves of Sourdough Rye Wheat Corn Oat Semolina Bread

Made a soup from leftovers corn carrot celery onion green pepper chicken pork turkey wine and miso and orzo pasta and it is delicious. Made granola. Now baking eleven loaves of bread. Back to school lunches are about keeping up and catching up!

How it’s written counts for something. Mary Karr

Write without thinking of the result in terms of a result, but think of the writing in terms of discovery, which is to say that creation must take place between the pen and the paper, not before in a thought or afterwards in a recasting. It will come if it is there and if you will let it come. Gertrude Stein

Give your brain the regular doses of quiet it requires to support a monumental life.

 Cal Newport

This is what I love about writing. I think the writing is always larger than the writer if you are free falling into your psyche with words and curiosity and a truth-seeking intent.

 Andre Dubus III

I've been writing all my adult life, which is a long time now. And every morning, I have to strip away my ego. I have to let go of what I want to say and how I want to say it. I have to empty myself and step into whoever is on the page. And it's wonderfully humbling.

Andre Dubus III

Forget changing the clocks, does Monday have to always follow Sundays?

Ducks, Three Ducklings, Two River Otters in Blackstone

Yesterday morning amongst the lily pads we spotted a mother duck and her teenage ducklings in the old ice house pond on Carter Ave. They looked identical and the only difference was the mother had a yellow beak and was leading them. Then we spotted two river otters nibbling stuff below the surface of the water. In the past we've seen a great blue heron, bullfrogs, and turtles and have heard about the beaver, and the big snake.

 

Steve Creek photography

Not knowing what to put down for the next sentence is what my life is all about.

 Avi

In an age when Americans are spending less and less time with one another, a table and some chairs could be just what we need.

 Article

Josh Marshall

The "pro gun movement" is the great movement of social degeneracy of our time. We see this again in JD Vance's claim that school shootings are just a "fact of life" we now have to deal with ...

2/ by continuing the endless increases to school security which makes our schools into war zones. The pro-gun movement created the problem and they now announce that we have to live with it. Saying that regulating the availability of guns isn't at least part of the ...

3/ is like insisting on unhygienic hospitals because you'll never eradicate all germs. The whole premise is so absurd that it would comical if the results weren't such a field of horror and tragedy. The only reason the effort is futile is because the gun cult puts guns ...

4/ before every other social good. Even in Vance's quotes in the article above you see the standard obfuscation and lying. "Psychos" he say realize "our schools are soft targets" so "we’ve got to bolster security so if a psycho wants to walk through the front door ...

5/ and kill a bunch of children they’re not able.” Our society is so lost on this issue that we don't slow to pick apart what a complete crock of shit this statement is. They're picking schools because they "soft targets". They picking schools because they're kids who ...

6/ go to those schools and so that's where they do their mass shooting? Did you expect them to go to a law firm? Or a bank? This language about killing children is meant to ignore the fact that they are almost always themselves children. They're shooting up their own school.

7/ People like Vance and all the other members of the gun cult use this language about "soft" and "hardened targets" as a kind of commando chic, as though ordinary civil spaces are inherently war zones. But they're not. They did that. What's lost on even ...

8/ many gun cult opponents is that our inability as a society to deal with guns not only makes the modern mass shooting phenomena possible it also creates it's greatest allure. The modern school and mass shooting are different from other crimes and mass murders.

·

9/ They are quests for total power. The ability for an angry, stunted young man to go out in a blaze of indiscriminate killing and mass terror. Firearms represent this not only because they can kill so quickly and at such scale but because of the total power they ...

10/ represent in our society. They are literally untouchable. These acts of mass carnage become common place but taking any real action to restrict access to these weapons is unthinkable. Their power and sway over the society is that great. It shouldn't surprise us that ...

11/ angry and lonely and emotionally stunted young men aren't attracted to the power that represents. Of course they are. The gun cult created this world, with a fabricated history and jurisprudence and now we're told we just have to live with it. source

Richard Russo's Writing Advice to Andre Dubus III

My editor had read the first draft, and she said, well, the street violence is interesting, but didn't you live with people?

(LAUGHTER)

DUBUS: I said, yeah, but I don't want to - I mean, come on. It's one thing to shine a light on my own privacy. I mean, how do I write about them? She said, but isn't that part of your story, too? And so that night, I saw Rick [Russo] at a party, and I told him what she said. And he gave me the most helpful advice, and I have to share it because I think it's really helpful to people who are writing essays or memoirs about their lives. He said, if it were me, I'd ask myself, am I trying to hurt anybody with this? Am I trying to settle any scores? If the answer is yes, I wouldn't write it, or I'd write it, but I wouldn't publish it. If the answer is no, I'd go ahead and write it. source

Our pain is not the poison; the lies about the pain are

Most of the messages we receive every day are from people selling easy buttons. Marketers need us to believe that our pain is a mistake that can be solved with their product. And so they ask, Feel lonely? Feel Sad? Life hard? Well that's certainly not because life can be lonely and sad and hard, so everybody feels that way. No, it's because you don't have this toy, these jeans, this hair, these countertops, this ice cream, this booze, this woman . . . fix your hot loneliness with THIS. So we consume and consume but it never works, because you can never get enough of what you don't need. The world tells us a story about our hot loneliness so that we'll buy their easy button forever. We accept this story as truth because we don't realize that their story is the poison in our air. Our pain is not the poison; the lies about the pain are. 

Craig and I have spent our lives breathing the same poisonous air. Along the way, we've internalized the lies: You are supposed to be happy all the time. Everybody else is! Avoid the pain! You don't need it, it's not meant for you. Just push this button. Finally, I was being quiet and still enough to hear the truth: You are not supposed to be happy all the time. Life hurts and it's hard. Not because you are doing it wrong, but because it hurts for everybody. Don't avoid the pain. You need it. It's meant for you. Be still with it, let it come, let it go, let it leave you with the fuel you'll burn to get your work done on this earth.

Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior (p 203)

Perhaps pain was not a hot potato after all, but a traveling professor?

Oh my God—what if the transporting is keeping me from transformation? What if my anger, my fear, my loneliness were never mistakes but invitations? What if in skipping the pain, I was missing my lessons? Instead of running away from my pain, I was supposed to run towards it? Perhaps pain was not a hot potato after all, but a traveling professor? Maybe instead of slamming the door on pain, I need to throw open the door wide and say, Come in. Sit down with me. And don't leave until you've taught me what I need to know.

Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior (p201)

things start to happen on their own.

During my very early writing, certainly before I’d published, I began to learn characters will come alive if you back the fuck off. It was exciting, and even a little terrifying. If you allow them to do what they’re going to do, think and feel what they’re going to think and feel, things start to happen on their own. It’s a beautiful and exciting alchemy. And all these years later, that’s the thrill I write to get: to feel things start to happen on their own.

Andre Dubus III

Interview with novelist Andre Dubus III

I am so grateful that I found writing, you know? It was rocky for the first 10 or 20 years. Being the great writer's son with the same name, it was a pain in the a**. But I am so grateful to where writing has taken me. And, you know, the writing of fiction, for me, is just a daily act of sustained empathy where you're asking, what's it like to be you? What's it like to be in your situation? And there's no way you can begin to enter into the spirit of this sacred being called a character without authentic curiosity. You know, Rumi has this wonderful line. He says, sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment. And so I - you know, I've been writing all my adult life, which is a long time now. And every morning, I have to strip away my ego. I have to let go of what I want to say and how I want to say it. I have to empty myself and step into whoever is on the page. And it's wonderfully humbling. source

This is what I love about writing. I think the writing is always larger than the writer if you are free falling into your psyche with words and curiosity and a truth-seeking intent. source

Water buffalo escapes slaughter, evades police, becomes local celebrity

article

This Tensor Fascia Latae Stretch for Athletes: Works Instantly!

demo

Instructions:

• Come into a lying position on a soft surface such as a mat with the hands behind the head
• Bend the knees so the feet are flat on the ground beyond hip width
• Slowly drop one knee in towards the ground and hold for 1-3 seconds
• Return to the start position and repeat on the opposing side
• Ensure the shoulders and upper back stay flat on the ground
• Repeat as per Physiotherapists guidelines

House Dress

I was surprised to see my neighbor Henri standing outside in his pajamas. Even as a child I had never seen my parents in a bathrobe. The woman across the street used to stand on the sidewalk in her bathrobe talking on the phone. My Grandmother called them house dresses. The schmata you wore around the house but not out in public. Now here I am walking my dog in my house dress.

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.

 Richard Wright

“You know what else is unfair, about Joel? That I loosened the jar lid, so somebody else could open him up.”
― Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

 

“It was grotesque, the way I kept trying to save that relationship. Like trying to tuck an elephant into pants.”
― Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

 

“Sharing things is how things get started, and not sharing things is how they end.”
― Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin  

“A long time ago I stopped wondering why there are so many crazy people. What surprises me now is that there are so many sane ones.”
― Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

 

“Today we went over to your mother's friend's house for dinner. We'd asked you to be polite, so you said, "No more, please, it's horrible thank you.”
― Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

“Tonight I try my hand at dessert: baked Alaska, because of course. It’s so epic! How can you bake Alaska? How can you not?”
― Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin

the ability to endure a lot of solitude and keep working

Like many others who turned into writers, I disappeared into books when I was very young, disappeared into them like someone running into the woods. What surprised and still surprises me is that there was another side to the forest of stories and the solitude, that I came out that other side and met people there. Writers are solitaries by vocation and necessity. I sometimes think the test is not so much talent, which is not as rare as people think, but purpose or vocation, which manifests in part as the ability to endure a lot of solitude and keep working. Before writers are writers they are readers, living in books, through books, in the lives of others that are also the heads of others, in that act that is so intimate and yet so alone.

REBECCA SOLNIT

Dreams

I want to go to a diner just to eavesdrop but I get heartburn from diners. The other night I dreamed about Liberace and creamed spinach. Last night I dreamed the Governor was trying to kiss me in my attic while I showed him my wooden antique clothes rack. A storm was raging and I watched large trees fall over in the yard below. This is what happens when the seasons change. My dreams get choppy and wacky.

I don’t think writers should be worried about treading any lines between autobiography and fiction. You should write whatever you want to write. Once you label it fiction, it’s fiction, even if you give the protagonist a feeling you’ve felt, or your same hometown. All fiction is born out of some alchemy of observation, imagination, and personal experience.

Rachel Khong

People who make a habit of closely observing birds are called “bird watchers.” People who make a habit of closely observing other people are called “writers.”

George Bilgere on Why I chose this poem Woody’s Restaurant, Middlebury by George Delanty

Empire of Dreams

 

Swimming brings many of us so much joy. It doesn’t seem to matter whether you're doing an endurance session, a technical workout or an interval training, the feeling remains similar - it makes you happy. The reason why you are feeling this is due to changes in your brain's chemistry, let us explain precisely how that works... 

1. Stress reliever
During swimming you stretch, tighten and relax your muscles while simultaneously breathing in a rhythmic pattern, very similar to yoga, and this has a tranquilizing effect on you. In addition, swimming stimulates the release of brain chemicals such as serotonin that influence your mood and produces a stress-reducing hormone, which helps control the brain’s response to stress and anxiety. Therefore just a short swimming session can already be very stress relieving. 

2. Happy hormones 
Swimming stimulates the release of a brain chemical called endorphins which reduce the perception of pain and as a side effect makes us feel happy and gives us this sense of a ‘natural high’, also known as the ‘runner’s high’, which is a feeling of relaxed euphoria, excitement and enjoyment, hence the wonderful feeling after swimming. 

3. Brain health
Exercise in general increases blood flow to the brain, however during swimming this effect is magnified due to the fact that you're submerged into water. A study found that immersion in a pool increased blood flow to the brain, in the study the brain blood flow was greater when participants immersed themselves into a pool filled with water up to the height of the heart, compared to when they weren’t immersed into the pool. The pressure associated with immersion into water is causing this amplification. A steady blood flow brings oxygen and nutrients to the brain, and carries carbon dioxide and toxins away from the brain. This is essential for optimal brain function and mental health. Besides poor brain blood flow and circulation is linked to mental illnesses. The greater brain blood flow while swimming builds a healthy brain and thus a happy brain.

4. Learning a skill 
Swimming is a complex movement pattern in which communication between the two sides of the brain is necessary. When a swimmer is working on technical drills to build stroke accuracy the communication between the two brain sides will develop. This growth will improve cognition and learning. Some studies found that those who learn to swim earlier reach better physical, cognitive, coordinative and linguistic development compared to those who learn swimming later on in life. Furthermore learning a new skill such as swimming can be a positive distraction, bring fulfillment and build our self confidence. Altogether, working on your technique while swimming seems to have a very satisfying effect on you.

5. Blue color 
Lastly, the blue color of water seems to have a calming effect. In studies where colored spaces were matched to emotional facial expressions, the blue color was frequently matched with neutral facial expressions representative of relaxation, calmness and peacefulness. Therefore just looking at the blue water can make you more calm and peaceful. 

Although we never really consider the mental benefits of swimming, we all experience it. So the next time you feel the joy after a swim session you can show appreciation to your brain chemicals which prove how mentally beneficial swimming really is. 

https://swimgym.com/fast-lane/why-does-swimming-make-me-happy

Ann Sarah Iverson: it takes opening up to let something in.

I read poems because I cannot stop myself. I write poems because if I stopped myself, I would not be myself. It is all a matter of self, who and what you were appointed to do. Tampering with this ordained arrangement is dangerous. Long ago, I made a bargain with the words of my life: if I made them poems, they promised me meaning. I take in art as though I stood at a shore to swallow the sea and this makes sense to me because the act of making art takes the body’s participation; it takes opening up to let something in. Sometimes my art and poetry become integrative forces out of my control. Other times they work very independently, very stubbornly.  Most of the time, I feel like I should just get out of the way for both. But really I make poems and art because I am happiest with a pencil in my hand or with paint or glue under my fingernails. I am grateful that I have the opportunity to exist in both worlds.

Ann Sarah Iverson

There's a wid bunny in our tiny urban yard

 Last night we spotted a wild bunny munching grass in our tiny urban yard. He must live under the gigantic bush. I hope he sticks around. I love bunnies.

Orion, Jupiter Mars Saturn & The Pleiades: The gift of waking early

It was clear at 4:30 this morning so we were able to see these constellations and planets.

Who are the Pleiades in mythology?

Pleiades, in Greek mythology, the seven daughters of the Titan Atlas and the Oceanid Pleione: Maia, Electra, Taygete, Celaeno, Alcyone, Sterope, and Merope. They all had children by gods (except Merope, who married Sisyphus). The Pleiades eventually formed a constellation.

 

1. : the seven daughters of Atlas turned into a group of stars in Greek mythology. 2. : a conspicuous cluster of stars in the constellation Taurus that includes six stars in the form of a very small dipper.

I wonder if he knows that all I do is apologize. That’s all I do. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry for being me. My whole life is an apology, and that hasn’t made a damn thing better. Mary had known. She had understood: A woman doesn’t need to be told, yet again, that she’s bad. She needs to be told that she’s good. Mary didn’t ask me to repent. She asked me to rest. But sitting in the priest’s office, I see how the system works here. I have to repent to him so I can go rest with her. I do what I’m told. I apologize. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I want to be better.” He nods again and then offers some magic words I’m to repeat twenty times. After I say them, I will be forgiven. I nod and flash back twenty years. I’m at the neighborhood pool waiting in line to buy ice cream. The ice cream man is selling Popsicles for a dollar each, while a high school kid who has broken into the truck is passing out free Popsicles from the back. The ice cream man hasn’t a clue what’s going on behind him. I wonder if the priest knows that while he’s up here charging for forgiveness, Mary’s back there handing it out for free. He must not know, which is why he is insisting that God’s forgiveness has a price. I am pretending to believe this and promising to pay so I can get back to Mary, who is at the back of the truck hosting a free-for-all.

― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

On my way out to my car the next morning, I see an index card taped to my front door. It says, "Everything will be okay." It's written in my dad's handwriting. He must have driven over in the middle of the night to leave this message for me. I believe him.

 Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

When reentering society and risking rejection, the library is a good place to start. They have low expectations. I love the library. Also church. Both have to take you in.

Glennon Doyle Melton, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed 

The music is a safe place to practice being human. In the span of one song I can feel it all, let it all come—joy and hope and terror and rage and love—and then let it pass. The song always ends. I survive every time. This is how I know I’m getting better: I become able to survive the beauty of music. I have accepted another one of life’s dangerous invitations: the invitation to feel.

 Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

Be messy and complicated and afraid and show up anyway.

 ― Glennon Doyle Melton

The God I decide to believe in is the God of the bathroom floor. A God of scandalously low expectations. A God who smiles down at a drunk on the floor, wasted and afraid, and says, There you are. I’ve been waiting. Are you ready to make something beautiful with me?

Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior 

Get out of bed. Don’t lie there and think- thinking is the kiss of death for us – just move. Take a shower.

Get out of the house. If you have nowhere to go, take a walk outside. Do not excuse yourself from walks because it’s cold. Bundle up. The sky will remind you of how big God is, and if you’re not down with God, then the oxygen will help. Same thing. 

Glennon Doyle Melton

 (my same advice for when depression hits)

Pain transforms one woman into two so that she has someone to walk with, someone to sit with her in the dark when everyone else leaves.

  ― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

Since brokenness is the way of folks, the only way to live peacefully is to forgive everyone constantly, including yourself.

Glennon Melton, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed 

There must be always remaining in every life, some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathless and beautiful.

 Howard Thurman

I need to sit with the quiet. I know that much.

 ― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

Prayer is a form of communication between God and man and man and God.

I am always impressed by the fact that it is recorded that the only thing that the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to do was to pray. Howard Thurman

In whatever sense this year is a new year for you, may the moment find you eager and unafraid, ready to take it by the hand with joy and gratitude.

Howard Thurman 

There is a quiet courage that comes from an inward spring of confidence in the meaning and significance of life. Such courage is an underground river, flowing far beneath the shifting events of one's experience, keeping alive a thousand little springs of action.

Howard Thurman 

Community cannot for long feed on itself; it can only flourish with the coming of others from beyond, their unknown and undiscovered brothers.

Howard Thurman 

Whatever may be the tensions and the stresses of a particular day, there is always lurking close at hand the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace.

 Howard Thurman 

Do not be silent; there is no limit to the power that may be released through you.

 Howard Thurman 

The hard thing when you get old is to keep your horizons open. The first part of your life everything is in front of you, all your potential and promise. But over the years, you make decisions; you carve yourself into a given shape. Then the challenge is to keep discovering the green growing edge.

Howard Thurman 

In the stillness of the quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair.

 Howard Thurman 

When you write your truth, it is a love offering to the world because it helps us feel braver and less alone.

Glennon Doyle Melton, Carry On, Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life

Often, to be free means the ability to deal with the realities of one's own situation so as not to be overcome by them.

Howard Thurman, For the Inward Journey 

There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.

Howard Thurman 

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

 —Howard Thurman

If I want my world to be less vicious, then I must become more gentle. If I want my children to embrace other children for who they are, to treat other children with the dignity and respect every child of God deserves, then I had better treat other adults the same way. And I better make sure that my children know beyond a shadow of a doubt that in God's and their father's and my eyes, they are okay. They are loved as they are. Without a single unless. Because the kids who bully are those who are afraid that a secret part of themselves is not okay.

― Glennon Doyle Melton, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed

That’s the thing about becoming a family: you gotta melt. You have to keep melting into each other until you become something entirely new. The only constant family rule is that everyone has to keep showing up.
― Glennon Melton, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed

What is to give light must endure burning.

 Viktor E. Frankl

Loving people and animals makes us stronger in the right ways and weaker in the right ways. Even if animals and people leave, even if they die, they leave us better. So we keep loving, even though we might lose, because loving teaches us and changes us.

Glennon Doyle Melton, Carry On, Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life

When I need to work anything out, I turn to the blank page. There, no one can steal my pain or try to poison my knowing, and there I always have the final word in my own story.

― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

I’m trying to fix my pain with certainty, as if I’m one right choice away from relief. I’m stuck in anxiety quicksand: The harder I try to climb my way out, the lower I sink. The only way to survive is to make no sudden movements, to get comfortable with discomfort, and to find peace without answers.
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

Maybe instead of slamming the door on pain, I need to throw open the door wide and say, Come in. Sit down with me. And don't leave until you have taught me what I need to know.

 ― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

He who tries to shine dims his own light. Lao Tzu

The journey is learning that pain, like love, is simply something to surrender to. It's a holy space we can enter with people only if we promise not to tidy up.

Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior 

Here's my hunch: nobody's secure, and nobody feels like she completely belongs. Those insecurities are just job hazards of being human. But some people dance anyway, and those people have more fun.

 Glennon Melton, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed

I'll show up and stand humble in the face of a loved one's pain. I'll admit I'm as empty-handed, dumb-struck, and out of ideas as she is. I won't try to make sense of things or require more than she can offer. I won't let my discomfort with her pain keep me from witnessing it for her. I'll never try to grab or fix her pain, because I know that for as long as it takes, her pain will also be her comfort. It will be all she has left. Grief is love's souvenir. It's our proof that we once loved... So, I'll just show up and sit quietly with her.

― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

Fill Up

 “What I want to be, girls, is beautiful. Beautiful means ‘full of beauty.’ Beautiful is not about how you look on the outside. Beautiful is about what you’re made of. Beautiful people spend time discovering what their idea of beauty on this earth is. They know themselves well enough to know what they love, and they love themselves enough to fill up with a little of their particular kind of beauty each day.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

Kind people are brave people. Brave is not something you should wait to feel. Brave is a decision. It is a decision that compassion is more important than fear, than fitting in, than following the crowd.

  ― Glennon Melton, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed

It's ok to feel too much and know too little.

 Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

Your Emptiness goes with you

“Wherever you go, there you are. Your emptiness goes with you. Maddening. Things that help: writing, reading, water, walks, forgiving myself every other minute, practicing easy yoga, taking deep breaths, and petting my dogs. These things don't fill me completely, but they remind me that it is not my job to fill myself. It's just my job to notice my emptiness and find graceful ways to live as a broken, unfilled human...

If there's a silver lining to the emptiness, here it is: the unfillable is what brings people together. I've never made a friend by bragging about my strengths, but I've made countless by sharing my weakness and my emptiness.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed

to sift

 “You have been offered "the gift of crisis". As Kathleen Norris reminds us, the Greek root of the word crisis is "to sift", as in, to shake out the excesses and leave only what's important. That's what crises do. They skae things up until we are forced to hold on to only what matters most. The rest falls away.”

― Glennon Melton, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed

The sun shows up every morning, no matter how bad youve been the night before. It shines without judgment. It never withholds. It warms the sinners, the saints, the druggies, the cheerleaders- the saved and the heathens alike. You can hide from the sun, but it wont take you personally. It´ll never, ever punish yourfor hiding. You can stay in the dark for years or decades, and when you finally step outside, it´ll be there.

 ― Glennon Doyle Melton, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed

We think our job as humans is to avoid pain, our job as parents is to protect our children from pain, and our job as friends is to fix each other's pain. Maybe that's why we all feel like failures so often - because we all have the wrong job description for love.

 ― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

Reading is my inhale and writing is my exhale.

  ― Glennon Doyle Melton, Carry On, Warrior: The Power of Embracing Your Messy, Beautiful Life

I think sexy is a grown-up word to describes a person who's confident that she is already exactly who she was made to be. A sexy woman knows herself and she likes the way she looks, thinks & feels. She doesn't try to change to match anybody else. She's a good friend herself kind and patient. and she knows how to use her words to tell people she trusts about what's going on inside of her-her fears and anger, love, dreams the mistakes, and needs. When she's angry she expresses her anger in healthy ways. When she's joyful, she does the same thing. She doesn't hide her true self because she is not ashamed. She knows she's just human-exactly how God made her and that's good enough. She's brave enough to be honest and kind enough to except others when they're honest. When two people are sexy enough to be brave and kind with each other, that's love. Sexy is more about how you feel and how you look. Real sexy is letting your true self come out of hiding and find love in safe places. That kind of sexy is good, really good, because we all we want and need love more than anything else.

― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

If you feel something calling you to dance or write or paint or sing, please refuse to worry about whether you’re good enough. Just do it. Be generous. Offer a gift to the world that no one else can offer: yourself.
― Glennon Melton, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed

We know what the world wants from us. We know we must decide whether to stay small, quiet, and uncomplicated or allow ourselves to grow as big, loud, and complex as we were made to be. Every girl must decide whether to be true to herself or true to the world. Every girl must decide whether to settle for adoration or fight for love.
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

People who are hurting don't need Avoiders, Protectors, or Fixers. What we need are patient, loving witness. People to sit quietly and hold space for us. People to stand in helpful vigil to our pain.

 ― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior 

“So what is it in a human life that creates bravery, kindness, wisdom, and resilience? What if it's pain? What if it's the struggle?... The bravest people I know are those who've walked through the fire and come out on the other side. They are those who've overcome, not those who've had nothing to overcome. .. people who are hurting don't need Avoiders, Protectors, or Fixers. What we need are patient, loving witnesses. People to sit quietly and hold space for us. People to stand in helpless vigil to our pain.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

People who need help sometimes look a lot like people who don’t need help.

 ― Glennon Doyle Melton, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed

What if pain - like love - is just a place brave people visit?

 ― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

Let it all fall away and you'll be left with what matters.

What I Know: 1. What you don't know, you're not supposed to know yet. 2. More will be revealed. 3 Crisis means to sift. Let it all fall away and you'll be left with what matters. 4.What matters most cannot be taken away. 5. Just do the next right thing one thing at a time. That'll take you all the way home.
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

In all my close friendships, words are the bricks I use to build bridges. To know someone I need to hear her, and to feel known, I need to be heard by her. The process of knowing and loving another person happens for me through conversation. I reveal something to help my friend understand me, she responds in a way that assures me she values my revelation, and then she adds something to help me understand her. This back-and-forth is repeated again and again as we go deeper into each other's hearts, minds, pasts, and dreams. Eventually, a friendship is built - a solid, sheltering structure that exists in the space between us - a space outside of ourselves that we can climb deep into. There is her, there is me, and then there is our friendship - this bridge we've built together.

  ― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

I have met my self and I am going to care for her fiercely.

 ― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

If our goal is to be tolerant of people who are different than we are, Chase, then we really are aiming quite low. Traffic jams are to be tolerated. People are to be celebrated.

 Glennon Melton, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed

Carrot Salad with Brown Basmati Rice

Made a dressing of olive oil mustard wine vinegar freshly chopped garlic, honey and Adobo. Grated a bunch of large carrots. Chopped red onions and celery and added them. We enjoyed this with freshly cooked warm cooked brown basmati rice* and blended them together. Delicious.

* our favorite brand is Royal

sensitivity, compassion, and responsibility

 Escaping the Karpman Drama Triangle

If you find yourself embroiled in a Karpman Drama Triangle, resist the temptation to play the exaggerated role of the victim, rescuer  or persecutor  in which you have been cast (or have cast yourself), and counter with an action that causes your opponent to see their extreme position (without you telling them).

Move to the center. Stop participating as a victim, rescuer or persecutor. Instead, find and hold a center position. The center of the drama triangle contains elements of each corner - it is a combination of sensitivity, compassion, and responsibility - with a solutions focus, even if the solution is retreat.

Refuse to accept your opponent's force. Do not struggle with the other participants in the triangle, or yield to them. Instead, make a counter move with one opponent that allows them to fully take an awkward, indefensible, or unreasonable position. If you have successfully taken the center, your opponent will back off, rather than unmasking themselves and their exaggerated role.

In the style of Eastern Philosophy, we don't want to cast a loved one as an adversary in our mind. Rather, we want to understand their bad habits and unskillful means and counter with awareness and enlightened skills. source

The only meaningful thing we can offer one another is love. Not advice, not questions about our choices, not suggestions for the future, just love. Glennon Melton, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed

You are not supposed to be happy all the time. Life hurts and it's hard. Not because you're doing it wrong, but because it hurts for everybody. Don't avoid the pain. You need it. It's meant for you. Be still with it, let it come, let it go, let it leave you with the fuel you'll burn to get your work done on this earth. Glennon Doyle Melton

overheard

She invents her children. She has no idea who they are so she imagines them.

Yup. Advertising people.  

Don't sell the steak, sell the sizzle.

Publishers and authors sue over Florida book ban law

 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93pe9p5479o