Poem: Blackberry Eating

I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched,
many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry -- eating in late September.

            Galway Kinnell

 

 

 

 

 

Make your own

What do we do with hope?
I have not figured that out for myself.
There was a quote I wrote down
from a climate activist, Mary Annaïse Heglar.
She says, “I think hope is really precious,
and the most precious thing about it is that you have to earn it.
Usually, when people are asking me what gives me hope,
what they really mean is ‘give me hope,’
and I can’t do that for you.
You have to go out and make your own hope.” 

        Alena Smith, Vulture, 2021 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No difference or big difference

I don't think there is any difference between fantasy and reality
        in the way these should be approached in a film.
Of course if you live that way you are clinically insane.

                    Martin Scorcese, Scorcese on Scorsese

 

 

 

 

Conduct!

It may be that you are not yourself luminous,
        but you are a conductor of light.

                Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles

 

 

 

 

 

Handed down

Like the man says, biggest problem of the world is, you can’t live a wrong life rightly.
And a wrong life is what gets handed to you.
So, everybody tried to live a wrong life, pretend that it’s okay.
And everything gets more wrong and more wrong, and so we get crazier and crazier.

Jordan Harper, A Violent Masterpiece

 

 

 

 

 

Do something

I'd rather be in trouble for having done something
            than for not having done anything.

                        C. S. Forester, Lieutenant Hornblower

 

 

 

 

 

Leaping upwards

This is the predicament of man.
All souls descend a ladder from heaven to the world.
Then the ladders are taken away.
Once they are in this world, they are called upon from heaven to rise, to come back.
It is a call that goes out again and again.
Each soul seeks the ladder in order to ascend above; but the ladder cannot be found.
Most people make no effort to ascend, claiming, how can one rise to heaven without a ladder?
However, there are souls which resolve to leap upwards without a ladder.
So they jump and fall down. They jump and fall down, until they stop.
Wise people think that since no ladder exists, there must be another way.
We must face the challenge and act.
Be what it may, one must leap until God, in His mercy, makes exultation come about.

        Abraham Joshua Heschel, No Religion is an Island