Holy comfort

It is a lie – any talk of God
That does not comfort you.

        Meister Eckhart, Love Poems from God

 

 

 

 

Poem: Everything is Going to be All Right

How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.

            Derek Mahon

 

 

 

The purpose of life

I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be “happy.”
I think the purpose of life is to be useful,
to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate.
It is, above all, to matter: to count, to stand for something,
to have made some difference that you lived at all.

        Leo C. Rosten, The Myths by Which We Live

 

 

 

 

The challenge

The essential challenge is to transform the isolation and self-interest
within our communities into connectedness and caring for the whole.

        Peter Block, Community: The Structure of Belonging

 

 

 

 

 

Understand?

Understanding,
    as we understand it,
        is misunderstanding.

                Elias Canetti, Auto-da-Fé

 

 

 

 

 

Take your medicine

Throughout the modern world,
    equality is generally prescribed,
        yet inequality is generally practiced.

                James Fishkin, Justice, Equal Opportunity, and the Family

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life saving

Survival is the ability to swim in strange water.

            Frank Herbert, Dune

 

 

 

 

 

Who do you love?

God's love for us is not the reason for which we should love him.
God's love for us is the reason for us to love ourselves.

            Simone Weil, Love

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Summer Solstice, New York City

By the end of the longest day of the year he could not stand it,
he went up the iron stairs through the roof of the building
and over the soft, tarry surface
to the edge, put one leg over the complex green tin cornice
and said if they came a step closer that was it.
Then the huge machinery of the earth began to work for his life,
the cops came in their suits blue-grey as the sky on a cloudy evening,
and one put on a bullet-proof vest, a
black shell around his own life,
life of his children's father, in case
the man was armed, and one, slung with a
rope like the sign of his bounden duty,
came up out of a hole in the top of the neighboring building
like the gold hole they say is in the top of the head,
and began to lurk toward the man who wanted to die.
The tallest cop approached him directly,
softly, slowly, talking to him, talking, talking,
while the man's leg hung over the lip of the next world
and the crowd gathered in the street, silent, and the
hairy net with its implacable grid was
unfolded near the curb and spread out and
stretched as the sheet is prepared to receive a birth.
Then they all came a little closer
where he squatted next to his death, his shirt
glowing its milky glow like something
growing in a dish at night in the dark in a lab and then
everything stopped
as his body jerked and he
stepped down from the parapet and went toward them
and they closed on him, I thought they were going to
beat him up, as a mother whose child has been
lost will scream at the child when it’s found, they
took him by the arms and held him up and
leaned him against the wall of the chimney and the
tall cop lit a cigarette
in his own mouth, and gave it to him, and
then they all lit cigarettes, and the
red, glowing ends burned like the
tiny campfires we lit at night
back at the beginning of the world.

        Sharon Olds

Rules of the game

Morals are your agreement with yourself to abide by your own rules.
    To thine own self be true or you spoil the game.

            Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love

 

 

 

 

 

 

Necessities

If you have a garden and a library,
    you have everything you need

            Cicero, On Divination

 

 

 

 

Juneteenth

We shall demonstrate once again that in this great, inventive land
man’s idlest dreams are but the blueprints and mockups
of emerging realities, technologies and poems.
Here in the fashion of our pioneer forefathers,
who confronted the mysteries of wilderness, mountain and prairie
with crude tools and a self-generating imagination,
we are committed to facing with courage
the enormous task of imposing an ever more humane order
upon this bewilderingly diversified and constantly changing society.
Committed we are to maintaining its creative momentum.

                Ralph Ellison, Juneteenth

 

 

 

 

 

Your duty

Doing what you do well is death.
Your duty is to keep trying
to do things that you don't do well,
in the hope of learning.

        John Banville, The Art of Fiction No. 200

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fizzy

Laughter is carbonated holiness.

        Annie Lamott, Plan B

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: my father moved through dooms of love

my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height

this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if (so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm

newly as from unburied which
floats the first who, his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots

and should some why completely weep
my father’s fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.

Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead called the moon
singing desire into begin

joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice

keen as midsummer’s keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly (over utmost him
so hugely) stood my father’s dream

his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn’t creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.

Scorning the Pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain

septembering arms of year extend
less humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise
offered immeasurable is

proudly and (by octobering flame
beckoned) as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the dark

his sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he’d laugh and build a world with snow.

My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing)

then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine, passion willed,
freedom a drug that’s bought and sold

giving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear, to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of am

though dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit, all bequeath

and nothing quite so least as truth
—i say though hate were why men breathe—
because my Father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all

            e e cummings

Poem: Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

                Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 

 

 

 

Flag day

Flags are bits of colored cloth
    that governments use first to shrink-wrap people's brains
        and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.

                    Arundhati Roy, Come September

 

 

 

 

 

Hit or miss

You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.

            Wayne Gretzky, The Hockey News

 

 

 

 

 

The right time

The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.

            Henry James, Italian Hours

 

 

 

 

Correct!

An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.

            O. A. Battista, How to Enjoy Work and Get More Fun Our of Life

 

 

 

 

Sense and nonsense

The pendulum of the mind oscillates
    between sense and nonsense,
        not between right and wrong.

                Carl Gustav Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saintly advice

On the Sabbath try and make no noise
That goes beyond your house.
Cries of passion between lovers are exempt.

        St. Thomas Aquinas, Love Poems from God

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Miracles

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the
ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

            Walt Whitman

 

 

 

 

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover
    that your high school class is running the country.

            Kurt Vonnegut, If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice for the Young

 

 

 

 

 

Bending history

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself;
but each of us can work to change a small portion of events,
and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.

        Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy, speech in South Africa, June 1966

Confidence

Confidence is 10 percent hard work 

        and 90 percent delusion.

                Tina Fey, Vogue

 

 

 

 

 

Wonder

We all woke up this morning and we had with it
the amazing return of our conscious mind.
We recovered minds with a complete sense of self
and a complete sense of our own existence —
yet we hardly ever pause to consider this wonder.

    Antonio Damasio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

 

 

 

 

 

Watch out for this

Never underestimate the power
        of stupid people in large groups.

                        Anonymous

 

 

 

 

The most important thing

The thing is to understand myself,
to see what God really wishes me to do:
the thing is to find a truth which is true for me,
to find the idea for which I can live and die. …
I certainly do not deny that I still recognize an imperative of knowledge
and that through it one can work upon men,
but it must be taken up into my life,
and that is what I now recognize as the most important thing.

     Søren Kierkegaard, letter to Peter Wilhelm Lund 1835

 

 

 

 

 

Language games played in bars

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.
• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.
• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”
• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.
• A question mark walks into a bar?
• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.
• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."
• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.
• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.
• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.
• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.
• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.
• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.
• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned a man with a glass eye named Ralph.
• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.
• A dyslexic walks into a bra.
• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.
• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.
• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.
• A synonym strolls into a tavern. 

             These and more can be found not in bars, but all over the internet