Freeman Dyson

It's the birthday of physicist and writer Freeman Dyson (books by this author), born in Crawthorne Village, England (1923). While he was in his 20s, he made a huge contribution to science: He solved the central problem of quantum electrodynamics, a theory that describes how light and matter interact.

Dyson was on a Greyhound bus trip across America when the revelation came to him. He said: "As we were driving across Nebraska on the third day, something suddenly happened. For two weeks I had not thought about physics, and now it came bursting into my consciousness like an explosion." He sorted out all the different theories and came up with the reconciling equations and diagrams — all in his head, because he didn't have paper or a pencil on him.

When he was 55 years old, he published his first book, Disturbing the Universe (1979), in which he tries to "give to non-scientists a picture of the human passions, misadventures, and dreams that constitute the life of a scientist." He's written many books since then, including A Many-Colored Glass: Reflections on the Place of Life in the Universe (2007).

He said of scientific theories: "You sit quietly gestating them, for nine months or whatever the required time may be, and then one day they are out on their own, not belonging to you any more but to the whole community of scientists. Whatever it is that you produce, a baby, a book, or a theory, it is a piece of the magic of creation. You are producing something that you do not fully understand."

Delicious Pasta Variation

While I was swimming I was dreaming up ideas for what to make for supper. When I got home I pressure cooked Colavita tricolor rotini pasta in water and a few tablespoons of olive oil for three minutes. In a frying pan I defrosted a pound of chopped spinach, steaming it in vegetable stock. I added freshly chopped garlic and olive oil, kosher salt, Adobo, and a small can of tomato paste. When it was hot it looked like red-green lava. I spooned the lava on the tricolor pasta and added freshly grated Parmesan. Delicious. My husband said it's a spinach and tomato pesto. I call it green lava sauce.

Rumi

You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you
Don't go back to sleep!
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep!
People are going back and forth
across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,
The door is round and open
Don't go back to sleep!”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“You were born with potential.
You were born with goodness and trust. You were born with ideals and dreams. You were born with greatness.
You were born with wings.
You are not meant for crawling, so don't.
You have wings.
Learn to use them and fly.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

Lucky

“Who could be so lucky? Who comes to a lake for water and sees the reflection of moon.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

Ask the Moon

“At night, I open the window
and ask the moon to come
and press its face against mine.
Breathe into me.
Close the language-door
and open the love-window.
The moon won't use the door,
only the window.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi, A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings

Be Melting Snow

“I have lived on the lip
of insanity, wanting to know reasons,
knocking on a door. It opens.
I've been knocking from the inside.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“People want you to be happy.
Don't keep serving them your pain!

If you could untie your wings
and free your soul...

you and everyone around you
would fly up like doves.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Be melting snow.
Wash yourself of yourself.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Take someone who doesn't keep score,
who's not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing,
who has not the slightest interest even
in his own personality: he's free.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Respond to every call
that excites your spirit.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“When you go through a hard period,
When everything seems to oppose you,
... When you feel you cannot even bear one more minute,
NEVER GIVE UP!
Because it is the time and place that the course will divert!”
― Jalaluddin Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“But listen to me. For one moment
quit being sad. Hear blessings
dropping their blossoms
around you.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Reason is powerless in the expression of Love.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

Being Human

“This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor...Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

Hidden

“Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

Who Created Thought

“Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison
When the door is so wide open?”
― Jalaluddin Rumi, The Essential Rumi

Gallons of Solitude

"I require gallons of solitude," Abby said.
"Gallons? Don't you mean hours?" Trish asked.
"No, gallons. I am a swimmer. I find tranquility in the pool. Nobody talks underwater," Abby replied.

Where the Light Enters

“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“What you seek is seeking you.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi, The Illuminated Rumi

“Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you're perfectly free.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi, Masnavi i Man'avi, the spiritual couplets of Maula

“silence is the language of god,
all else is poor translation.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“In your light I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems. You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you, but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Let yourself be drawn by the stronger pull of that which you truly love.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

Rumi

You already have the precious mixture that will make you well. Use it.

Abby L. Wilkerson

Sandie Friedman, a friend I teach with who also has depression, once wrote, “I remind myself every morning that it is enough to swim through the day, even in the slow lane — doing the things you don’t want to do, being visible when you would prefer not to be. That already is a lot.”

How do we loosen the double bind and remove the fear of risking careers and relationships? Sometimes vulnerability loves — and needs — company.
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Long Neck

She secretly hoped that it was never too late to grow a longer neck. Give it up, you have a long neck in your dreams. That's all that matters.

Just Because You have Stopped Sinking

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

Brautigan

“She was a perfect freeway Mona Lisa.”
― Richard Brautigan, Revenge of the Lawn / The Abortion / So the Wind Won't Blow it All Away

Silent

“We were all silent except for blink, blink, blink, blink, blink.”
― Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

Congratulations

“Congratulations," I said. "It's so wonderful to write a book." "I walked all the way here," she said. "I started at midnight. I would have gotten here sooner if I weren't so old." "Where do you live?" I said. "The Kit Carson Hotel," she said. "And I've written a book." Then she handed it proudly to me as if it were the most precious thing in the world. And it was. It was a loose-leaf notebook of the type that you find everywhere in America. There is no place that does not have them. There was a heavy label pasted on the cover and written in broad green crayon across the label was the title: GROWING FLOWERS BY CANDLELIGHT IN HOTEL ROOMS BY MRS. CHARLES FINE ADAMS”
― Richard Brautigan, The Abortion

One Word After Another

“By the way, Doc Edwards said. How's that book coming along?
Oh, it's coming along.
Fine. What's it about?
Just what I'm writing down: one word after another.
Good.”
― Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar

New Furniture

“New furniture has no character whereas old furniture always has a past. New furniture is always mute, but old furniture can almost talk. You can almost hear it talking about the good times and troubles it's seen. I think there is a Country and Western song about talking furniture, but I can't remember the name.”
― Richard Brautigan