Turbulence

You will be free of the world's turbulence
as soon as you stop taking your thoughts so seriously.

        Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior

 

 

 

Novel

The small thick book I’d wrapped my fingers around was the novel.
I had never read a novel, though I understood the concept of fiction.
It wasn’t so unlike religion, or history, for that matter.

            Percival Everett, James: A Novel

 

 

 

Welcome!

The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter
        are the old apartments of religion.
   
                John Updike
                Introduction to The Best American Short Stories of 1984

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Indian Summer

Somehow it is never hard work
to mourn well in October,
Indian summer being a time
of easy mourning.
We remember the smell
of leaves burning, the smoke
drifting over the fields,
angels of wood.
In October the moon, hanging,
always comes down a little,
and a woman almost forms,
then forms just below the hills.
As if she is holding out something,
as if what she holds smells
of fields, of sage and corn,
and she’s coming up toward the house.
And somehow we feel
we have always known her.
In her gourd cup she carries
the moon, there is a musk
on her dried flowers,
and the moments of her voice
hang down like grapes.
And since we are alone
we can suffer such sentiment,
there in the twilight,
the road past our house
a long door asking us in.

                 Don Welch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Imposter Syndrome

Some years ago, I was lucky enough invited to a gathering of great and good people: artists and scientists, writers and discoverers of things. And I felt that at any moment they would realise that I didn’t qualify to be there, among these people who had really done things.

On my second or third night there, I was standing at the back of the hall, while a musical entertainment happened, and I started talking to a very nice, polite, elderly gentleman about several things, including our shared first name. And then he pointed to the hall of people, and said words to the effect of, “I just look at all these people, and I think, what the heck am I doing here? They’ve made amazing things. I just went where I was sent.”

And I said, “Yes. But you were the first man on the moon. I think that counts for something.”

And I felt a bit better. Because if Neil Armstrong felt like an imposter, maybe everyone did. Maybe there weren’t any grown-ups, only people who had worked hard and also got lucky and were slightly out of their depth, all of us doing the best job we could, which is all we can really hope for.

                        Neil Gaiman, 2017 blog entry

 

 

 

  

The secret to having extra time

I don’t know whether my life has been a success or a failure.
But not having any anxiety about becoming one instead of the other,
and just taking things as they come along,
I’ve had a lot of extra time to enjoy life.

                Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No insults

Re-examine all you have been told
at school or church or in any book,
dismiss whatever insults your own soul.

        Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass