Thinking and acting

I would say
    act like a man of thought
        and think like a man of action.

Henri Bergson, 1937 Speech at the Descartes Conference in Paris 

 

 

 

 

 

The right kind of day

Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes,
        and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit.
A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world.

                                    Ada Louise Huxtable, Architecture, Anyone?

 

 

 

 

Poem: For the Traveler

Every time you leave home,
another road takes you
into a world you were never in.
New strangers on other paths await.
new places that have never seen you
will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that you know well
will pretend nothing
changed since your last visit.
When you travel, you find yourself
alone in a different way,
more attentive now
to the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
you abroad; and how what meets you
touches that part of the heart
that lies low at home:
How you unexpectedly attune
to the timbre in some voice,
opening a conversation
you want to take in
to where your longing
has pressed hard enough
inward, on some unsaid dark,
to create a crystal of insight
you could not have known
you needed
to illuminate
your way.
When you travel,
a new silence
goes with you,
and if you listen,
you will hear
what your heart would
love to say.
A journey can become a sacred thing:
make sure, before you go,
to take the time
to bless your going forth,
to free your heart of ballast
so that the compass of your soul
might direct you toward
the territories of spirit
where you will discover
more of your hidden life,
and the urgencies
that deserve to claim you.
May you travel
in an awakened way,
gathered wisely
into your inner ground;
that you may not waste
the invitations which
wait along the way
to transform you.
May you travel safely,
arrive refreshed,
and live your time away
to its fullest;
return home more enriched,
and free to balance
the gift of days
which call you.

                John O'Donohue

 

 

 

 

 

An appreciation

I showed my appreciation of my native land
        in the usual Irish way
                by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.

        George Bernard Shaw, in Saturday Review magazine

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

‘Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!’ cries she
With silent lips. ‘Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!’

                        Emma Lazurus

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Days of Teen-age Glory

When I was committing the crime of high school,
the songs on the radio
took about two minutes to play,
and smoking a cigarette took about five,
so that things happened fairly quickly
as we passed the time and it passed us
without a sound except for the singing.

                            Billy Collins 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Ms. Schadenfreude's Anti-Valedictory

Of course, she was not chosen to deliver
any of the official hail-and-farewells. Would, in fact,
have skipped the whole pomp and circumstance crap
if the principal had not threatened to hold her diploma hostage,
if her parents had not pleaded with her to celebrate
the milestone for their sakes—so she donned
the rented robe, the dorky mortarboard, and paraded
down the auditorium aisles with her beaming so-called peers.

Lots of introductions. Lots of momentous occasions
and memories—many of which Ms. S was already
eager to forget. But she listened politely to the usual
promises of new beginnings, the exhortations to follow
dreams and change the world—even got a bit teary eyed
at the prospect that one of them actually might.
Then the ritual flipping of the tassels, the alma mater
one last time off-key, the filing out to hugs and congratulations
and vows to stay in touch she knew she’d never keep.

Ms. S had her eye on distant horizons, some vague
anywhere-else-but-here place where her brief past
could be erased and all the potential her teachers had,
for years, claimed she was wasting, would be realized,
where she would finally hear her life’s calling
calling her into the life she was meant to have.

The world, she thought, is my oyster.

Of course, being an inland girl, she had never
actually seen an oyster up close. Had yet to discover
how hard the damn things were to crack.

                                Grace Bauer