Health food

And when people ask me why I’m so healthy,
        I say, “Plenty of red meat and gin!”

                Julia Child, 1992 interview 

 

 

 

 

Testing

Necessity may well be called the mother of invention —
        but calamity is the test of integrity.

             Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

 

 

 

 

 

Advice for a Monday

If you can’t stop the bad thoughts from coming to visit,
at least you can make fun of them while they’re hanging around.

            Jim Butcher, Turn Coat

 

 

 

 

Poem: variation of poem 1544

Who has not found the Heaven—below—
Will fail of it above—
God’s residence is next to mine,
His furniture is love.

        Emily Dickinson

A divine order

The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit.

I think there is some kind of divine order in the universe. Every leaf on every tree in the world is unique. As far as we can see, there are other galaxies, all slowly spinning, numerous as the leaves in the forest. In an infinite number of planets, there has to be an infinite number with life forms on them. Maybe this planet is one of the discarded mistakes. Maybe it's one of the victories. We'll never know.

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.

                        Jack London, The Call of the Wild

 

 

 

Play on

The ability to play is one of the principal criteria of mental health.

                Ashley Montagu, Growing Young 

 

 

 

 

Radical and rebel

Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel,
for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.

        Niels Bohr, Harmony and Unity: The Life of Niels Bohr

 

 

 

 

Discuss

A good rule for discussion is to use hard facts and a soft voice.

        Dorothy Sarnoff, Speech Can Change Your Life 

 

 

 

 

On directors and actors

The difference between being a director and being an actor
is the difference between being the carpenter banging the nails into the wood,
and being the piece of wood the nails are being banged into.

        Sean Penn, The Guardian 1991 

 

 

 

 

What's so funny?

If you can’t joke about the most horrendous things in the world, what’s the point of jokes?
What’s the point in having humor? Humor is to get us over terrible things. That’s all it’s for.
That’s why you should laugh at funerals. Of course it’s the wrong thing to say. That’s why it’s funny.

                Ricky Gervais, GQ magazine interview 

 

 

 

Shadows

Any religion is a shadow of God.
        But the shadows of God are not God.

                Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood 

 

 

 

 

 

Stuck? Let me count the ways...

From the always interesting blog Experimental History, by Adam Mastroianni:

Being stuck is the psychological equivalent of standing knee-deep in a fetid bog, bog in every direction, bog as far as the eye can see. You go wading in search of dry land and only find more bog. Nothing works, no options seem good, it’s all bleh and meh and ho hum and no thanks and more bog. This is the kind of dire situation that drives people to do crazy things like ask a blogger for advice.

Fortunately, I’ve spent much of my life in that very bog. Some say I was born in it, a beautiful bouncing baby bog boy. And I've learned that no matter how you ended up there—your marriage has stalled, you're falling behind in your classes, your trainee pilots keep flying into the side of a mountain—the forces that keep you in the bog are always the same. There are, in fact, only three, although they each come in a variety of foul flavors.

It's a new year, the annual Great De-bogging, when we all attempt to heave ourselves out of the muck and into a better life. So here, to aid you, is my compendium of bog phenomena, the myriad ways I get myself stuck, because unsticking myself always seems to be a matter of finding a name for the thing happening to me.

Read the whole entry here Experimental History

Big difference

The difference between successful people and very successful people
        is that very successful people say “no” to almost everything.

                    Warren Buffett, Bloomberg Businessweek 

 

 

 

 

 

Faster than light

Nothing travels faster than the speed of light
    with the possible exception of bad news,
        which obeys its own special laws.

                Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

 

 

 

 

 

How not to be great

No man is great if he thinks he is.

        Will Rogers, Daily Telegrams column

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Got it?

If you haven’t got it, you can’t show it.
        If you have got it, you can’t hide it.

            Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

 

 

 

 

Gear up

Life is like a ten-speed bicycle.
    Most of us have gears that we never use.

            Charles Schulz, Peanuts cartoon caption 1981

Fooling about

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward
and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels,
it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.
We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition
when infinite joy is offered us,
like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum
because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.
We are far too easily pleased.

            C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory sermon 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: The Head of the Year

The moon is dark tonight, a new
moon for a new year. It is
hollow and hungers to be full.
It is the black zero of beginning.

Now you must void yourself
of injuries, insults, incursions.
Go with empty hands to those
you have hurt and make amends.

It is not too late. It is early
and about to grow. Now
is the time to do what you
know you must and have feared
to begin. Your face is dark
too as you turn inward to face
yourself, the hidden twin of
all you must grow to be.

Forgive the dead year. Forgive
yourself. What will be wants
to push through your fingers.
The light you seek hides
in your belly. The light you
crave longs to stream from
your eyes. You are the moon
that will wax in new goodness.

                Marge Piercy 

Storage problems

I have memories -
    but only a fool stores his past in the future.

                    David Gerrold, A Covenant of Justice 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The worst lies

There is no worse lie
    than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.

            William James, Varieties of Religious Experience

 

 

 

 

 

Planning

You can never plan the future by the past.

                Edmund Burke, 1791 letter 

 

 

 

 

Good advice

Write what you know
That should leave you with a lot of free time.

        Howard Nemerov, Inside the Onion

 

 

 

 

Rock and roll

The first time that I appeared on stage, it scared me to death.
I really didn't know what all the yelling was about.
I didn't realize that my body was moving. It's a natural thing to me.
So to the manager backstage I said, "What'd I do? What'd I do?"
And he said, "Whatever it is, go back and do it again."

                    Elvis Presley, The Leading Men of MGM

 

 

 

 

Orthodox Christmas Day

I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future.
The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me.
I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!

                    Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

 

 

 

Poem: For Those Who Have Far to Travel

If you could see the journey whole
you might never undertake it;
might never dare the first step
that propels you
from the place you have known
toward the place you know not.

Call it one of the mercies of the road:
that we see it only by stages
as it opens before us,
as it comes into our keeping
step by single step.

There is nothing for it but to go
and by our going take the vows
the pilgrim takes:
to be faithful to the next step;
to rely on more than the map;
to heed the signposts of intuition and dream;
to follow the star that only you will recognize;
to keep an open eye for the wonders that
attend the path;
to press on beyond distractions
beyond fatigue
beyond what would tempt you from the way.

There are vows that only you will know;
the secret promises for your particular path
and the new ones you will need to make
when the road is revealed by turns
you could not have foreseen.

Keep them, break them, make them again:
each promise becomes part of the path;
each choice creates the road
that will take you to the place
where at last you will kneel to offer the gift
most needed— the gift that only you can give—
before turning to go home by another way.

                Jan Richardson

 

 

 

 

 

A gift from the magi

The earliest storytellers were magi, seers, bards, griots, shamans.
They were, it would seem, old as time,
and as terrifying to gaze upon as the mysteries with which they wrestled.
The helped the community live though one more darkness,
with eyes wide open, and with hearts set alight.

            Ben Okri, A Way of Being Free 

 

 

 

 

Birthday of Louis Braille

Here's something you'll never see in Braille:
            "If you see something, say something."

                            Zach Galifianakis

 

 

 

 

 

What year is it?

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

            Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

 

 

 

 

 

The beginning balance

A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care
        that the balances are correct.
                This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows.

                                        Frank Herbert, Dune

 

 

 

 

 

Time travel

The months and days are the travelers of eternity.
The years that come and go are also voyagers.

        Basho, The Narrow Road to the Deep North