Wisdom Art

Stevie Van Zandt, who has been playing guitar in Springsteen’s E Street Band since the early seventies, said, “The rock generation has changed the concept of chronological time. I personally know seven artists in their eighties still working. And the entire British Invasion is turning eighty in the next few years. Nobody’s grandparents made it past their sixties when we grew up.” He sees the “the birth of something I call ‘wisdom art’ – art that the artist could not have created when they were young…so there is a legitimate justification for continuing to create.”

        David Remnick, The New Yorker, 2021

Nothing in life is as important as you think it is
        while you are thinking about it.

                     Sonja Lyubomirsky, The Myths of Happiness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First love

I was in love with New York.
I do not mean 'love' in any colloquial way,
I mean that I was in love with the city,
the way you love the first person who ever touches you
and never love anyone quite that way again.

            Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

 

 

 

 

Happiness

Getting what you go after is success;
but liking it while you are getting it is happiness.

        Bertha Damon, A Sense of Humus

 

 

 

 

 

 

Memorial Day

England
Tuesday Night
May 30, 1944

My Dearest Sweet Darling Bette:
        (Good-I like it)

Sweetheart this isn’t going to be much of a letter. Surprise, I said I wasn’t going to write tonight but the situation changed. So I will keep up my good record.

I am writing this by flashlight so it probably won’t look like much as it is turning out to be a quite difficult job.

Surprise, it’s raining, and I happen to be wet from my feet up to my waist. It isn’t bad, though, after you get used to it. It’s the easy way to take a bath I guess.

The packages are starting to roll in. So I should be getting one before long. Will that ever be a happy day.

If I remember correct, today is Memorial Day. It hasn’t seemed like it here, but I suppose you had the day off today. That was one holiday I always enjoyed. I wish that I could have been there to spend it with you darling.

Gosh, but I am lonesome tonight. I don’t know what I would do or give to see you or be with you tonight. I guess anything in the world. Even swim the ocean for you. Do you know something honey – I love you.

Darling, this probably won’t make sense, but I have thought of you so much that I had to write whether it makes sense or not.

Dear I must stop and hit the bedroll. I do miss you darling very, very much, and I love you more than anyone else in the world. Take care of yourself & write soon. I Love You Darling.

All My Love & Kisses,
Goodnight
Larry

I Love You Sweetheart.

Reasons to meditate, if you need them

Meditation is always becoming. Meditation is always transformation. Meditation always moves us from one place to another; from unconsciousness to awareness, from tension to relaxation, from being scattered to being centered, from a shallow relationship with our environment and ourselves to a deeper one, from sleep to wakefulness, from a sense of God’s absence to the sense that God was in this place all along and I didn’t know it!

Alan Lew, Be Still and Get Going: A Jewish Meditation Practice for Real Life

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Most of the Warriors

Most of the warriors I knew
Have settled down to gardening, and the morning Times,
Tired of stalking ghosts
and the melody of secret rhythms
above the sound of traffic
and other monotonous voices,
Finally content to stare and wonder.

Most of the warriors I knew
Have unsaddled stallions and built a fence in the backyard,
Weary of studying the clouds
And the shadows creeping across mountains
beyond the flash of neon
and other pretentious symbols,
Finally content to stare and wonder.

Most of the warriors I knew
Have died before their time and are forgotten
Save in the memory of their sons
And the dreams they seldom share
beyond the taint of time
and other unimportant measures

Finally content to stare and wonder.

                        James Kavanaugh