Wise Poets, Personal Writings, Clouds And Wisdom
Pablo Casals (December 29, 1876–October 22, 1973) On my last birthday I was ninety-three years old. That is not young, of course. In fact, it is older than ninety. But age is a relative matter. If you continue to work and to absorb the beauty in the world about you, you find that age does …
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Adam Zagajewski (June 21, 1945 – March 21, 2021) You shout from the other roomYou ask me how to spell boogie-woogieAnd instantly I think what luckno war has been declaredno fire has consumedour city’s monumentsour bodies our dwellingsThe river didn’t floodno friendshave been arrestedIt’s only boogie-woogieI sigh relievedand say it’s spelled just like it soundsboogie-woogie …
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George Orwell (June 25, 1903 – January 21, 1950) Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So …
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Maja Lukic I was as blank today as you canimagine, lost the way to circle backto the beginning or even last summer.I remember those days we wore matchinglemon flower dresses. I remember themorbid anatomy of lemons and suburbanfront yards. We posed for photographsin our lemon dresses. We were little girlson film, locked in a disposable …
I have the most intense erotic dreams now. I have a sense of taste in my dreams, I have soundtracks, I have original works of art. It’s like the movies but better, ’cause I’m in it. My best dream was that I put a credit card down on a reception desk in a fancy hotel …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Sandra Cisneros – Making Love After Celibacy"
Lucille Clifton (June 27, 1936 – February 13, 2010) people who are going to bein a few yearsbottoms of treesbear a responsibility to somethingbesides people if it was onlyyou and mesharing the consequencesit would be differentit wouId be justgenerations of men …
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Winston Churchill (November 30, 1874 – January 24, 1965) The world looks with some awe upon a man who appears unconcernedly indifferent to home, money, comfort, rank, or even power and fame… The world feels not without a certain apprehension, that here is some one outside its jurisdiction; someone before whom its allurements may be …
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Bob Hicok In deciding what I am, I’ve ruled out cat, vulture, shoe,a sadist who tortures people to death in a Syrian hospital,a president who separates families at the border,a handful of purple irises at the beginning of the pathto heaven. Is there memory in the shade of a treeof a lynching fifty years ago, …
Thich Nhat Hanh (October 11, 1926 - January 22, 2022) It’s funny how much our surroundings influence our emotions. Our joys and sorrows, likes and dislikes are colored by our environment so much that often we just let our surroundings dictate our course. We go along with “public” feelings until we no longer even know our …
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Alison Townsend At sunset the russet oak turns into a lamp.Each polished leaf glows amber, lit by sun.As a child, I raked leaves with my mother each fall.We burned small pyres, their flames the color of loss. Each polished leaf glows amber, lit by sun.I could not know my mother would die young.We burned small …
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What I learned from trying to fit in is that I don’t, but it took me a long time to let go of trying and to accept my freedom and choice to not have to fit in. Not with any group. Not with any state or any nation. Not with any idea, concept or god. …
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Maria Mazziotti Gillan At eleven, my granddaughter looks like my daughterdid, that slender body, that thin face, the gracewith which she moves. When she visits, she sitswith my daughter; they have hot chocolate togetherand talk. The way my granddaughter moves her hands,the concentration with which she does everything,knocks me back to the time when I …
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Henry Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) You have to get to the point of no return before coming up again. There's no God protecting you. In the end you have to come back to yourself. It has got to be you doing something, whatever you decide upon. Do what you think you …
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Jacinta V White women in white dresses surroundme after service like absent motherslonging for baby's return to their breasts rejoicing—prayers for a daughter's return are answered while they wait in line to tell me they knew my folks, and how …
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Suzy Kassem They say that wisdom is a dying flower, and I disagree. In a world covered in mud, the lotus still continues to grow. Even after mankind washes itself away from the surface of the earth, knowledge will still remain. Look no further than the bosom of Nature. It offers all the solutions needed …
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Scott Owens Pulling the house down piece by piece,we see each other at our worstbefore we've even had our first date,my face itching with black insulation,yours covered with white dust of sheetrock.We scrape off paint and paper, buff outspots, old glue, unexplainedstains, remove tacky panelingrevealing forgotten charm, originalbeadboard, hard woods, solid ceilings.We're woefully unprepared, untrained,undertooled, …
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Edna St Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) 🌹In memory of those whose lives ended on September 11, 2001 I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:Into the darkness …
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Elizabeth Train-Brown I feel unraveledI feel like scriptureI feel like the words of prophetstorn aparttranslatedretranslatedrewrittenspread to countries that don’t carewhat I have to say. I feel like taking out the middle mantaking out the writerthe penthe pageburrowing my face through the undergrowthslithering through the cracksof a confession boothand whispering my sinsthrough a mouthful of leaves. …
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Mario Vargas Llosa (March 28, 1936 -) A cross between a superhuman and a jester, the caudillo makes and unmakes things at his will, inspired by God or by an ideology in which socialism and fascism — two forms of statism and collectivism — are nearly always confused, and communicates directly with his people through …
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Rita Dove (August 28, 1952 -) Imagine you wake upwith a second chance: The blue jayhawks his pretty waresand the oak still stands, spreadingglorious shade. If you don’t look back,the future never happens.How good to rise in sunlight,in the prodigal smell of biscuits –eggs and sausage on the grill.The whole sky is yoursto write on, …
Martha Nussbaum (May 06, 1047 -) The condition of being good is that it should always be possible for you to be morally destroyed by something you couldn’t prevent. To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control, …
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Toi Derricotte (April 12, 1941 -) How I thrived from the triflesin my aunt Lenora’s handbag—Tums,pencils, Lifesavers, fancycolored cards—how, in the early morningbefore dawn, beforemy parents rose, her welcoming sheetshid me from the house’sstorms. She’d listen tomy far-fetched taleswhile I (standing on a stool) “helped”her dry dishes; or, after, when we’dwalk through the neighborhood’sdeep night, …
William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) To see a World in a Grain of SandAnd a Heaven in a Wild FlowerHold Infinity in the palm of your handAnd Eternity in an hourA Robin Red breast in a CagePuts all Heaven in a RageA Dove house filld with Doves & PigeonsShudders Hell thr' …
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Jo McDougall From a wood beyond the fields,something dark has not yet advancedtoward the yellow lightof the kitchen.A woman puts away the dishes.A man goes through the mail.A child leans over the table,saying her homework. The dog looks up once and growlsas if not meaning to, a soundalmost inaudible.He clicks across the floor, nosing for …
Pierre Elliott Trudeau (October 18, 1919 – September 28, 2000) The only constant factor to be found in my thinking over the years has been opposition to accepted opinion. Had I applied this principle to the stock market, I might have made a fortune. I chose to apply it to politics and it led me …
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Perie Longo For my husband Everything I see or hear is about him.This morning, the Dalai Lamasays there is so much sufferingin the world he can’t do much. With his monks he sifts colored sandinto an intricate design for peace,then sweeps it away. They collectthe remains in a small jar, sprinkle a littleon top of …
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There is something in the pang of change — More than the heart can bear — Unhappiness remembering happiness. Euripides From The Archives - Originally Published June 29, 2018Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) 🌹For Kathleen Sherrill - Happy Birthday Remember To Remember When all that remains of me are my cremated ashesdon’t store them …
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Steven Espada Dawson That summer we’d hop fencesand call them gates. You’d shark pool, then we’d hunt deerwith all the quarters you tricked. You smiled when they leaptout of view. Passed me that orange rifle, told me to aimthen close my eyes for ten years. My antlered brother, momwon’t sell the house so you can …
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My uniqueness, I realized, came in the specifics of all the dreams — from incredibly meaningful to decidedly quirky — that defined my forty-six years of life. Sitting there, I knew that despite the cancer, I truly believed I was a lucky man because I had lived out these dreams. And I had lived out …
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Anthony Hoagland (November 19, 1953 – October 23, 2018) Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,up to my neck in that most precious element of all, I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon featherfloating on the tension of the water at the very instant when a dragonfly,like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin, hovered over …
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May Swenson (May 28, 1913 – December 4, 1989) Poetry is based in a craving to get through the curtains of things as they appear, to things as they are, and then into the larger, wilder space of things as they are becoming. This ambition involves a paradox: an instinctive belief in the senses as …
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Heather Allen Gradually along the rangeAll things exchange their lightFor darkness. Single oaksOn hills that burned with goldMerge now in shadow, And hawks sail outOver the valley,Its air like a mirror Filling with night,That takes our imagesAnd does not return them, Just as the pinesBlot out our voices,And even the stones at our feet Fade …
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Henry Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) We have talked breathlessly about equality and democracy without ever facing the reality of it. We shall have to take these despised and neglected ones to our bosom, melt into them, absorb their anguish and misery. We cannot have a real brotherhood so long as we …
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June Adrienne Su The lazy Susan, in antiquity, would have been a fire.Drinking all night, the parents never get drunk.This is an ancient brew, with nuts, seeds, fruitto fuel the hours, to light a center.The tea dispenser’s orange light reminds us:they’re in the dining room, laughing in Chinesewhile we play Scrabble or Monopoly out here.They’re …
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From The Archives - Originally Published February 22, 2018 Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) My Father’s Son I became my father’s sonnot borne of his angerbut of my mother’s grace.My older brother was his favorite,from the same mold they were made.He was distant from meand absent from us all.I hid from him in solitude,my mother …
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Alicia Elsbeth Stallings (July 2, 1968 -) Dear A., Even before the virus, theseWere nearly empty galleries,But now we have these cluttered shelvesAnd halls of statues to ourselves.Stickers on the floor, in Greek,Tell us “Watch your apostasies”: “Mind your distance,” so to speak.But since the guards outnumber usThere is no nearness we need fear,No tourists …
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Henri Matisse (December 31, 1869 – November 03, 1954) The effort to see a thing without distortion takes something very much like courage and this courage is essential to the artist who has to look at everything as though he saw it for the first time: he has to look at life as he did …
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May Sarton (May 3, 1912 – July 16, 1995) Oh wild and gentle beast,Immense antlered shape,This morning in the meadow!Like something ancient, lostAnd found now, promise kept,Emerging from the shadow,Emerging while I slept—Wilderness and escape!You set me free to shirkThe day's demanding workAnd cast my guilt away.You make a truant of meThis moose-enchanted dayWhen all …
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Giorgos Seferis (February 29 1900 – September 20, 1971) But to say what you want to say, You must create another language and nourish it for years with what you have loved, with what you have lost, with what you will never find again.
Ron Padgett (June 17, 1942 -) The best thing I didfor my motherwas to outlive her for which I deserveno credit though it makes me gladthat she didn't haveto see me die Like most people(I suppose)I feel I shouldhave done morefor her Like what?I wasn't such a bad son I would have wantedto have loved …
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A single moment in time can be a universe in itself. Anji - Star Trek IX - Insurrection Señor Tao (April 17, 1948 -) I believe time does not exist in the way we think it does. It is simply a concept. It is not a phenomena, an occurrence. Things happen in time because it is the …
Philip Levine (January 10, 1928 – February 14, 2015) We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and Augustwhen the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clayof this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchardwhen suddenly the wind cools and for a momentyou get a whiff of salt, and …
George Bernard Shaw (July 26, 1856 – November 02, 1950) This is the joy of my life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself …
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Gabrielle Calvocoressi The days I don’t want to kill myselfare extraordinary. Deep bass. All the peoplein the streets waiting for their high fivesand leaping, I mean leaping,when they see me. I am the sun-filledgod of love. Or at least an optimisticunder-secretary. There should be a word for it.The days you wake up and do not wantto …
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David Hockney (July 09, 1937 -) I can get excitement watching rain on a puddle. And then I paint it. Now, I admit, there are not too many people who would find that exciting. But I would. And I want life thrilling and rich. And it is. I make sure it is.
Barbara Quick That hair’s breadth of a moment,knowing that the body has lurched outsidethe mind’s controland is falling. The head-first journey of nine feetpowered by a thirty-pound backpack–seeing not lights, but the hubrisof that one false, resentful stepupwards onto the fallen tree-trunkblocking the trail–that one unpracticed vaultup to a place where balance–my balance–is suddenly gone. …
Señor Tao (April 17, 1948 -) Drawn To You I am drawnto youBy what forceI do not knowBirds to airFish to waterBody to bodySoul to soulThe natural thingsOver which weHave no controlIt is like thatWith love
But apparently man loves to kill things, the fleeting deer, the marvelous gazelle, and the great elephant. We love to kill each other. This killing of other human beings has never stopped throughout the history of man's life on this earth. If we could, and we must, establish a deep long abiding relationship with nature, …
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William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) There is a smile of love,And there is a smile of deceit;And there is a smile of smiles,In which these two smiles meet. (And there is a frown of hate,And there is a frown of disdain;And there is a frown of frownsWhich you strive to forget …
David Whyte (November 02, 1955 -) Anger truly felt at its center is the essential living flame of being fully alive and fully here; it is a quality to be followed to its source, to be prized, to be tended, and an invitation to finding a way to bring that source fully into the world …
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RA Villanueva Yanked free at the gills from cartilage and spine,these fish heads my mother cleans, whose bodies she scales, throwsall into salt water and crushed tamarind. At dinner she alonewill spoon out their eyes with her fingers, suck down each pair as we watch. See, this is why the three of youcould never hide …
Joyce Carol Oates (June 16, 1938 -) I think all art comes out of conflict. When I write I am always looking for the dramatic kernel of an event, the junctures of people's lives when they go in one direction, not another.
Louise Elisabeth Glück (April 22, 1943 -) Today I went to the doctor—the doctor said I was dying,not in those words, but when I said itshe didn't deny it— What have you done to your body, her silence says.We gave it to you and look what you did to it,how you abused it.I’m not talking …
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What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they …
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Kristene Kaye Brown Let the world come hungry at me.Let the hours learn the tender curve of this neck. For so long I've wanted to believe that I'm made of star stuff, a glittering spigot funneled from the blue spiraling armsof our milky way. I hearthe clap of hands inside my chest.I swallow. The body …
Iris Murdoch (July 15, 1919 – February 08, 1999) Art and morals are… one. Their essence is the same. The essence of both of them is love. Love is the perception of individuals. Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery …
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Lisel Mueller (February 8, 1924 – February 21, 2020) For Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms The modern biographers worry“how far it went,” their tender friendship.They wonder just what it meanswhen he writes he thinks of her constantly,his guardian angel, beloved friend.The modern biographers askthe rude, irrelevant questionof our age, as if the eventof two bodies …
Robert Burton (February 8, 1577–January 25, 1640) Whosoever he is therefore that is overrun with solitariness, or carried away with pleasing melancholy and vain conceits, and for want of employment knows not how to spend his time, or crucified with worldly care, I can prescribe him no better remedy than this of study, to compose …
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Elinor Morton Wylie (September 7, 1885 – December 16, 1928) My bands of silk and miniverMomently grew heavier;The black gauze was beggarly thin;The ermine muffled mouth and chin;I could not suck the moonlight in. Harlequin in lozengesOf love and hate, I walked in theseStriped and ragged rigmaroles;Along the pavement my footsolesTrod warily on living coals. …
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From The Archives - The Proust Questionnaire Señor Tao (April 17, 1948 -) I believe I first answered these thirty-five questions around 2005. I recently pulled the questionnaire from my archives to review and to once again share. Any parts added or changed from my original answers will be in bold text. However, true to …
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Kim Robert Stafford (October 15, 1949 -) Things pretty much worked out for you—you have what you need, and if you need more,you have people ready and able to provide. Sure, someday your luck will run out,you’ll be helpless, then gone, and your peoplewill gather in your honor. There will be music, and tears. People …
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Carl G Jung (July 26, 1875–June 6, 1961) One lives as one can. There is no single, definite way for the individual which is prescribed for him or would be the proper one. If that’s what you want you had best join the Catholic Church, where they tell you what’s what. Moreover this way fits …
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Linda Pastan (May 27, 1932 -) In the ordinary weather of summerwith storms rumbling from west to eastlike so many freight trains haulingtheir cargo of heat and rain,the dogs sprawl on the back steps, panting,insects assemble at every window,and we quarrel again, bombardingeach other with small grievances,our tempers flashing on and offin bursts of heat …
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Jorge Luis Borges (August 24, 1899–June 14, 1986) There is no human being on earth capable of declaring with certitude who he is. No one knows what he has come into this world to do, what his acts correspond to, his sentiments, his ideas, or what his real name is, his enduring Name in the …
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John Keats (October 31, 1795 – February 23, 1821) Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness!Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,Sylvan historian, who canst thus expressA flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shapeOf deities or mortals, or of both,In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?What men or gods are …
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From The Archives - Originally Published October 31, 2018 Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) O’ To Be Human I am not sure if my being human was a choice, an accident, or predetermined by fate but I am grateful in either case for the gift of life in this human form. I needed these …
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Roxane Beth Johnson I am trying to remember the lyrics of old songsI’ve forgotten, mostlyI am trying to remember one-hit wonders, hymns,and musicals like West Side Story.Singing over and over what I can recall, I hum remnants onbuses and in the car. I am so often alone these days with echoes of these old songsand …
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From The Archives - Originally Published January 24, 2020 Justice Harry Blackmun (November 12, 1908 – March 4, 1999) We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in …
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Brent Staples (1951 -) Newspapers that championed white supremacy throughout the pre-civil rights South paved the way for lynching by declaring African Americans nonpersons. They embraced the language once used at slave auctions by denying Black citizens the courtesy titles Mr. and Mrs. and referring to them in news stories as “the negro,” “the negress” …
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Dana Gioia (December 24, 1950 -) She wasn't lookingwhen they took this picture:sitting on the grassin her bare feetwearing a cotton dress,she stares off to the sidewatching something on the lawnthe camera didn't catch.What was it?A ladybug? A flower?Judging from her expression,possibly nothing at all,or elsethe lawn was like a mirror,and she sat watching herself,wondering …
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Cass Robert Sunstein (September 21, 1954 -) People often make poor choices – and look back at them with bafflement! We do this because as human beings, we all are susceptible to a wide array of routine biases that can lead to an equally wide array of embarrassing blunders in education, personal finance, health care, …
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David Whyte (November 02, 1955 -) There is a faith in loving fiercelythe one who is rightfully yours,especially if you havewaited years and especiallyif part of you never believedyou could deserve thisloved and beckoning handheld out to you this way.I am thinking of faith nowand the testaments of lonelinessand what we feel we areworthy of …
Does what goes on inside show on the outside? Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney. Vincent Van Gogh From The Archives - Originally Published May 10, 2018. Updated July 10, …
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William Shakespeare (April 26, 1564 – April 23, 1616) Our revels now are ended. These our actors,As I foretold you, were all spirits andAre melted into air, into thin air:And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,The solemn temples, the great globe itself,Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolveAnd, like …
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Brenda Ueland (October 24, 1891 – March 5, 1985) Why should we all use our creative powers…? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money.
Grace Paley (December 11, 1922 – August 22, 2007) I was going to write a poemI made a pie instead it tookabout the same amount of timeof course the pie was a finaldraft a poem would have had somedistance to go days and weeks andmuch crumpled paperthe pie already had a talkingtumbling audience among smalltrucks and a fire …
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Martha Nussbaum (May 06, 1947 -) You see people doing that today where they feel that society has let them down, and they can’t ask anything of it, and they can’t put their hopes on anything outside themselves. You see them actually retreating to a life in which they think only of their own satisfaction, …
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Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967) Let America be America again.Let it be the dream it used to be.Let it be the pioneer on the plainSeeking a home where he himself is free.(America never was America to me.)Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—Let it be that great strong land of …
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Hazem Fahmy Hours before the TV, my mouthagape, repeating after every American cartoonendlessly. Call it a meditation; was I not emptying my mindof language? Mouthing every syllable,like prayer–God, make me a true American,i.e. invisible, yetever-present. What a rush it wasto speak empireat such a young age. Later, I am asked: how did you getthis accent? …
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Kim Addonizio (July 31, 1954 -) I love you but I'm married.I love you but I wish you had more hair.I love you more.I love you more like a friend.I love your friends more than you.I love how when we go into a mall and classical muzak is playing,you can always name the composer.I love …
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She told him what had kept her away was Death. But he rejected that excuse—for Death, he said, can never come between lovers. Naguib Mahdouz (December 11, 1911 – August 30, 2006) Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) The Crushing Weight Of GoodBye I never thought the last time we said,“Good bye,” would be the …
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David Attenborough (May 08, 1926 -) We tend to think we are the be all and end all—but we’re not. The sooner we can realize that the natural world goes its way, not our way, the better.
Albert Garcia Here, take this palmful of raspberriesas my gift. It isn’t muchbut we’ve often said our needsare simple, some quiet timealone on the patioin the cool morning, coffee,a few words over the newspaper.I’ve rinsed these berriesso you can tumble themright into your cereal, one minuteon the vine, the next in your bowl,my hand to …
Katherine “Kate” J Boo (August 12, 1964 -) Very little journalism is world changing. But if change is to happen, it will be because people with power have a better sense of what’s happening to people who have none.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) The railroad track is miles away,And the day is loud with voices speaking,Yet there isn't a train goes by all dayBut I hear its whistle shrieking. All night there isn't a train goes by,Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,But I see …
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When, halting in front of it, I look at the reflection which is in the depths of my clear mirror. It gives me the impression of meeting an unknown old gentle man. Hitomaro (c. 653–655 – c. 707–710) Señor Tao (April 17, 1948 -) I was a bit late reaching puberty. My brother and other friends were all …
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Galway Mills Kinnell (February 1, 1927 – October 28, 2014) Wait, for now.Distrust everything if you have to.But trust the hours. Haven’t theycarried you everywhere, up to now?Personal events will become interesting again.Hair will become interesting.Pain will become interesting.Buds that open out of season will become interesting.Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;their memories are what …
Milan Kundera (April 01, 1929 -) The novel is the imaginary paradise of individuals. It is the territory where no one possesses the truth, neither Anna nor Karenin, but where everyone has the right to be understood, both Anna and Karenin… Every novel says to the reader, “Things are not as simple as they seem.” …
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Francesca Bell In the audiologist’s booth I clutch the device with the buttonI’m to press if I hear a tone, hand clammy, the waya child holds the finger of an adult she thinks can save her. Behind the one-way glass, my ears are cupped in the pinching headset, cilia becalmed, the quiet so thick I cannot …
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Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (August 13, 1899 – April 29, 1980) There is as much anticipation in confronting good food as there is in going on a holiday or seeing a good show. There are two kinds of eating — eating to sustain and eating for pleasure. I eat for pleasure.
Jane Hirshfield (February 24, 1953 -) Today, when I could do nothing,I saved an ant. It must have come in with the morning paper,still being deliveredto those who shelter in place. A morning paper is still an essential service. I am not an essential service. I have coffee and books,time,a garden,silence enough to fill cisterns. …
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This is an extraordinary time full of vital, transformative movements that could not be foreseen. It’s also a nightmarish time. Full engagement requires the ability to perceive both. Rebecca Solnit Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) From The Archives - A Writer’s Diary - The Arc Of Existence Originally published April 20, 2020. I have …
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Maxine Kumin (June 6, 1925 – February 6, 2014) You have forty-nine days betweendeath and rebirth if you're a Buddhist.Even the smallest soul could swimthe English Channel in that timeor climb, like a ten-month-old child,every step of the Washington Monumentto travel across, up, down, over or through—you won't know till you get there which to …
Constantine Peter Cavafy (April 17, 1863 – April 29, 1933) Like a good tailor who fashions a suit for one man (or even two) resplendently; and an over coat that might suit two or three — thus for me might my poems be made “to fit,” in one case (or perhaps in two or three). …
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Robert Herrick (August 24, 1591 – October 15, 1674) Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,Old Time is still a-flying;And this same flower that smiles todayTomorrow will be dying. The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,The higher he’s a-getting,The sooner will his race be run,And nearer he’s to setting. That age is best which is the …
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George Dyson (March 26, 1953 -) Living without telephone, computer, internet, or even electric light, I had time beyond measure to think. I found myself thinking about what, if anything, a tree might think. Not thinking the way we think, but the way a single neuron thinks, integrating information over time. It might take years …
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Matthew Olzmann So here’s what I’ve got, the reasons why our marriagemight work: Because you wear pink but write poemsabout bullets and gravestones. Because you yellat your keys when you lose them, and laugh,loudly, at your own jokes. Because you can hold a pistol,gut a pig. Because you memorize songs, even commercialsfrom thirty years back …
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From The Archives - TWOTW - Journal Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) Land Of The Free Almost seventy years ago George Orwell published his futuristic dystopian novel, "1984". The main character, Winston Smith, works in the Ministry of Truth where he rewrites history according to the Party's platform. Winston is a citizen who is …
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Tiana Clark Everything wanted to be touched:My bottom lip, the freshly bustedcherry blossoms, creamy drippingslike soft fluttering pearls that edgedthe lack (I meant to write lakebut kept the mistake) as I rimmedthe risky desires. And you, youwere all new, suffused with muskand sadness, height and a milk-chocolate sweater that curledat the collar rim, filling outyour …
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James Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else in the world can tell, what it is like …
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Raymond Carver Jr (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) From The Archives Originally Published August 06, 2019 The Hotel Del Mayo The girl in the lobby reading a leather-bound book.The man in the lobby using a broom.The boy in the lobby watering plants.The desk clerk looking at his nails.The woman in the lobby writing …
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Kim Phúc I have carried the results of war on my body. You don’t grow out of the scars, physically or mentally. I am grateful now for the power of that photograph of me as a 9-year-old, as I am of the journey I have taken as a person. My horror — which I barely …
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Sara Teasdale (August 8, 1884 – January 29, 1933) (War Time)There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;And frogs in the pools singing at night,And wild plum trees in tremulous white,Robins will wear their feathery fireWhistling their whims on a low fence-wire;And not one will know …
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From this I reach what I might call a philosophy; at any rate it is a constant idea of mine; that behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we — I mean all human beings — are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts …
Stephen Elliot Dunn (June 24, 1939 – June 24, 2021) As a child, some of his prayers were answeredbecause he prayed out loud for a kite or bike,which his mother would overhear, and pass onto her husband, his father, the Lord. Later, he understood that when he prayedhe was mostly talking to himself—albeit a better,more …
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Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin (February 01, 1884 – March 10, 1937) I've always sought novelty, variety, dangers – otherwise [life] would all have seemed too cold, too empty.
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) When I was youngerit was plain to meI must make something of myself.Older nowI walk back streetsadmiring the housesof the very poor:roof out of line with sidesthe yards clutteredwith old chicken wire, ashes,furniture gone wrong;the fences and outhousesbuilt of barrel stavesand parts of boxes, all,if …
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by Tao Writer Book Two Of The Philosopher Series Transformation Publications Directory - The Gate Keeper Of Inspiration Prologue - Socrates Black Chapter 1 - Anaïs NinChapter 2 - Rainer Maria RilkeChapter 3 - Emily DickinsonChapter 4 - Alan WattsChapter 5 - Simone WeilChapter 6 - Simone de BeauvoirChapter 7 - Stanley KunitzChapter 8 - …
by Tao Writer Book One Of The Philosopher Series Transformation Publications Dedication The fact the story is in the realm of science fiction and fantasy is …
Rebecca Solnit (June 24, 1961 -) Guns symbolize the power of a minority over the majority, and they’ve become the icons of a party that has become a cult seeking minority power… The dots are easy to connect, because they’re so close together, and because they’re the entry and exit wounds inflicted on US society …
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Naomi Long Madgett (July 5, 1923 – November 4, 2020) If I were blind and could not watch the late sunmelting into a simmering seaor wish on the first starlight-starbright hope of evening,it would not be the lost sunsetthat would deprive mebut the oak-gold contour of your smile.And your hand never rising in a benediction …
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Señor Tao (April 17, 1948 -) As a thinker, a Philosopher, a man of words, I spend a lot of time in my head. My body has taken care of itself over the years. It is strong from cycling and now from dancing everyday it has become lean. I am proud of my body. It …
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Jennifer Chang A type of hickory, it grows by water.So are we fools to drive to the riverthe day after our most savage stormshave finally stopped to seea tree we’ve never seen before?To hike in cold mud through a leafless forest,to behold clearings now clutteredby whatever fell last night—mostly oaks,no hickory—to attend the mad performanceof …
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Emil Mihai Cioran (April 08, 1911 – June 20, 1995) When I meet friends or people I know who are going through a difficult period, I usually have this advice for them: ‘Spend 20 minutes in a cemetery, and you’ll see that, though your worry won’t disappear, you’ll almost forget about it and you’ll feel …
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Jane Kenyon (May 23, 1947 – April 22, 1995) A second crop of hay lies cutand turned. Five gleaming crowssearch and peck between the rows.They make a low, companionable squawk,and like midwives and undertakerspossess a weird authority. Crickets leap from the stubble,parting before me like the Red Sea.The garden sprawls and spoils. Across the lake …
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Simone Weil (February 03, 1909 – August 24, 1943) To desire friendship is a great fault. Friendship should be a gratuitous joy like those afforded by art or life. We must refuse it so that we may be worthy to receive it; it is of the order of grace. It is one of those things …
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Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 – February 9, 1906) When summer time has come, and allThe world is in the magic thrallOf perfumed airs that lull each senseTo fits of drowsy indolence;When skies are deepest blue above,And flow'rs aflush,—then most I loveTo start, while early dews are damp,And wend my way in woodland trampWhere …
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Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your won presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement. Alice Koller (September 13, 1925 – July 21, 2020) From The Archives - The Poetry Of Tao Writer (TPOTW) …
(September 19, 1920 - May 20, 2022)🌹 All the dead from wars and natural events and school shootings and street crimes and domestic crimes that each of us has once again escaped and felt terrible about and plan to go and leave wreaths or paper flowers at the site of. There’s never anything new about …
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Wayne Miller When the dog finally died, dad dug a hole beside the fence and buried her in a boot box. She's gone, but she had a good life,mom said. It's OK to be sad. Next day, the boy came into the kitchen holding the box in front of him. She's not gone. She's still in there, he said. Look.Mom …
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Claudia Hammond (May 23, 1971 -) We know that time has an impact on memory, but it is also memory that creates and shapes our experience of time. Our perception of the past moulds our experience of time in the present to a greater degree than we might realize. It is memory that creates the …
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Eleanor Lerman It is a mild day in the suburbsWindy, a little gray. If there issunlight, it enters through thekitchen window and spreadsitself, thin as a napkin, besidethe coffee cup, pie on a plateWhat am I describing?I am describing a dreamin which nobody has diedThese are our mothers:your mother and mineIt is an empty day; …
Joseph Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) Whatever my fate is, is what I need. If you bring love to that moment, not discouragement, you will find the strength. Any detour or disarray you can learn from is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege!
Busisiwe Mahlangu the old chair is pushed against the door/ the windows are closed/the gate is locked/ the fence has barbed wire to hook the flesh/a good night’s sleep is bought with “caution”:/ pull all the keysout of the doors/do not switch off the lights/ turn over the welcome mats/ tell thedog to start barking …
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I thank You God for most this amazingday: for the leaping greenly spirits of treesand a blue true dream of sky: and for everythingwhich is natural which is infinite which is yes. EE Cummings (October 14, 1894 – September 3, 1962) Tao Writer (April 17, 1948) Thank You This morning I woke up early, not …
Emma Hine My mother calls to tell me a story.She and my father were drivingon a mountain road, and all around,the aspen trees were dying—each one on the mountainside leafless,clutching a sticky gold web in its brancheslike it had caught a rotten cloud.Where the road turned along a cliffthe guardrail was missing.Far below, a red …
Anna Kamieńska (April 12, 1920 – May 10, 1986) I’ve learned to value failed conversations, missed connections, confusions. What remains is what’s unsaid, what’s underneath. Understanding on another level of being.
Muriel Rukeyser (December 15, 1913 – February 12, 1980) I lived in the first century of world wars.Most mornings I would be more or less insane,The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,The news would pour out of various devicesInterrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.I would call my friends on other devices;They …
Muriel Rukeyser (December 15, 1913 – February 12, 1980) We are a people tending toward democracy at the level of hope, on another level, the economy of the nation, the empire of business within the republic, both include in their basic premise the concept of perpetual warfare… To be against war is not enough, it …
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James Harrison (December 11, 1937 – March 26, 2016) Coming out of anesthesia I believedI had awakened in the wrong body,and when I returned to my snazzy hotel roomand looked at Architectural DigestI no longer recognized large parts of the world.There was a cabin for salefor seven million dollars, while mine had costonly forty grand …
From The Archives - The Poetry Of Tao Writer (TPOTW) Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) This Hollow Emptiness In My Soul At a time like this I want to writeabout the joy of your life and not my pain.I want everyone to share your wisdom,hear your laughter, know your devotion to Jehovah,but all I …
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Diane Seuss I could do it. I could walk into the sea.I have a rental car. It’s blue and low on fuel.I have feet, two, and proximity. I could do it.Others have before me. Jeff Buckley (1997) hewas only 30. Carol Wayne (1985) the Matinee Ladyand a photo spread in Playboy. Dennis Wilson (1983)after diving …
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Karel Čapek (January 09, 1890 – December 25, 1938) All of us have begun to feel that there is something odd and insoluble about the conflicts between world-views, generations, political principles, and whatever else divides us… Hatred, lack of knowledge, fundamental distrust, these are the psychic world of communism… I count myself among the idiots …
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Maya Pindyck Today I am my sister’s sister,my father’s brow,my mother’s squirm,urging my spirit to light. I touch my abdomen,each daughters’ doorwayopened for a few fluorescent minutesthen sewn shutfor good, if not for now. I remain here,even when my form bruises, blooms,or falls away, by way of what it doesor does not say. Instead of …
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Ada Limón I want to focus on how useful poetry can be in our daily lives. Poetry is one of the few art forms that has breath built right into it. It literally wants us to breathe, to pause for a moment and pay attention to what matters. Whether it’s a tree that we are …
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Kwame Opoku-Duku Blessed be the bitternessat your core, that quiet lightgrowing quieter still,like the dull moan that escapesyour lips while you dream.They’ll ask you, child,what you know of suffering.They’ll ask you where it hurtsthe most, when the pain changeslike wavelengths of lightin the evening sky, when the criesof the ancestors ring out to youfrom the …
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Seize the time… Live now. Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart - Star Trek: The Next Generation) Señor Tao (April 17, 1948 -) April 17, 1998 Since my arrival in November, Esalen has been closed to the public. The highway was damaged by earth slides on …
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Jane Shore Jay and Linda moved to Plateau Roadand brought with them a pair of horses:old Kahlua and his longtime mare.When her heart failed suddenly, Kahlua—a paint the color of the Mexican liqueurand swaybacked like a hammock—went on a hunger strike. Fearingthat he might die from loneliness,Jay and Linda heard about a donkeyhoused unhappily an …
Thích Nhất Hạnh (October 11, 1926 - January 22, 2022) The peace we seek cannot be our personal possession. We need to find an inner peace which makes it possible for us to become one with those who suffer, and to do something to help our brothers and sisters, which is to say, ourselves
Matthew Arnold (December 24, 1822 – April 15, 1888) The sea is calm tonight.The tide is full, the moon lies fairUpon the straits; on the French coast the lightGleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!Only, from the long line …
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William Sidney Porter (O’Henry) (September 11, 1862 – June 5, 1910) I'll give you the sole secret of short-story writing, and here it is: Rule 1. Write stories that please yourself. There is no rule 2. The technical points you can get from Bliss Perry. If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you …
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Robert Pinsky (October 20, 1940 -) Walking among the graves for exerciseWhere do you get your ideas how do I stop themLooking for Mike Mazur’s marker I lookedDown at the grass and saw Stanislaw BaranczakOur Solidarity poetry reading in PoznanYears later in Newton now he said I’m a U.S.Liberal with a car like everybody elseWhen …
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Not many of us know who or what we are, said the Doorkeeper. A glimpse is all we get. Ursula K Le Guin Señor Tao (April 17, 1948 -) I need to express some of the inner things that have and continue to play an active role in my life. I know others have experienced this duality …
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Heather McHugh (August 20, 1948 -) I. Daily, the kindergartenerspassed my porch. I lovedtheir likeness and variety,their selves in line like littlemonosyllables, but huggable—I wasn't meant to grab them, ever,up into actual besmooches or downinto grubbiest tumbles, my lot was notto have them, in the flesh.Was it better or worse to lettheir lovability go by …
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John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926–July 17, 1967) It is really easy for us [jazz musicians] to create. We are born with this feeling that just comes out no matter what conditions exist. Otherwise, how could our founding fathers have produced this music in the first place when they surely found themselves (as many of …
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Tadeusz Dąbrowski Paulina, the gardener’s daughter, caresabout flowers doomed to die.If I bring her a bouquet, she frees itfrom the ribbons and gently places it in the hospiceof a vase. When the flowers weaken, she trims their stemsand plucks off their wilting leaves. She takesthe dead ones to the compost, from the restshe forms a …
Willa Cather (December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) Art is a matter of enjoyment through the five senses. Unless you can see the beauty all around you everywhere, and enjoy it, you can never comprehend art.
Mark Bibbins In case what Yoko Ono said is true that to name one’s enemy is one’s art injures the art more than the enemyI won’t tell you whois president now I forget the name of the womanwho gave you acupuncture but notof …
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Old age again overtook me. Weariness stole into my limbs, and anguish dozed into my mind. I went to my Ulster cave and dreamed my dream, and I changed into a hawk. I left the ground. The sweet air was my kingdom, and my bright eye stared on a hundred miles. I soared, I swooped; …
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Matthew Dickman I haven’t done drugs for threedays so I name each one aftermy sister and mother and brotherand take them out with meon a walk, each one taking turnsleading, each one the leaderof a pack that was bred in the mid-seventies, each leash the colorof glass and the density of a star,I hold each …
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Janna Levin We’re all intrinsically of the same substance…. The fabric of the universe is just a coherent weave from the same threads that make our bodies. How much more absurd it becomes to believe that the universe, space and time could possibly be infinite when all of us are finite.
Clint Margrave In memory of Gerald Locklin Nobody is more surprised than he is.First of all, Toad doesn’t believe in heaven,and secondly, even if he did,he never expected to visit. In fact, he’s minorly disappointed.Has he failed to achieve the properlydebauched life he so often courted? But the food tastes good.And you can drink all …
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Eckhart Tolle (February 16, 1948 -) You recognize worry as futile and destructive, so you are able to let it go when it happens. You find inner peace and contentment in the present moment. And perhaps you begin to realize that you are not a person but an essential and intrinsic part of the evolution …
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Dilruba Ahmedq To test your pulse as you sleep.Bring the healer the howler the listening ear— Bring an apothecary to mix the tincture—We need the salvethe tablet the capsuleof the hour— Bring sword-eatersand those who will swallow fire—Fetch the guardian to flatten the wheelchair,to hoist it toward heaven:the public shuttle awaitsthe ceaseless trips to the …
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What we are to our inward vision, and what man appears to be sub specie aeternitatis, can only be expressed by way of myth. Myth is more individual and expresses life more precisely than does science… The only question is whether what I tell is my fable, my truth. Carl Jung (July 26, 1875 – …
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Rudyard Kipling (December 30, 1865 – January 18, 1936) If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied …
Clive Staples Lewis (November 29, 1898 – November 22, 1963) Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.
Yesenia Montilla i have diver’s lungs from holding mybreath for so long. i promise youi am not trying to break a recordsometimes i just forget toexhale. my shoulders held tightlynear my neck, i am a ball of tenseliving, a tumbleweed with steel-toedboots. i can’t remember the last timei felt light as dandelion. i can’t rememberthe …
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Woody Guthrie (July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) I hate a song that makes you think that you're not any good. [...] Songs that run you down or songs that poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or your hard traveling. I am out to fight those kinds of songs to …
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Adrienne Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) Living in the earth-deposits of our historyToday a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earthone bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-oldcure for fever or melancholy a tonicfor living on this earth in the winters of this climateToday I was reading about Marie Curie:she must have known she suffered from radiation sicknessher body bombarded for years by …
There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you… Do you believe? Belief will not save you. Only actions Guided and shaped By belief and knowledge Will save you. Belief Initiates and guides action — Or it does nothing. Octavia Butler (June 22, 1947–February 24, 2006) Señor Tao (April 17, 1948 …
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Now out of this vast silencethe cherry trees scraping their gnarled limbson the sky, and the wind hurls downa flurry of petals, a snowstorm really,a thousand prints on the wet pavement,each one a pair of white shutters, opening.Numinous, the souls of the dead, and now you,. . . among them—an intake of breath.How little it …
Annelies Marie Frank (June 12, 1929 – February or March 1945) I have often been downcast, but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary I treat all the privations as amusing. I have made up my mind now to lead a …
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Meghan Dunn I too am sick of the body.I too am sick of being a body,am sick of being sick about my body,have made myself sick over how to care forand clothe it, how to make it behave,make it need less. Walking in the street,I have wished it might dissolveso that I might more clearly …
Charles M Blow And I have come to see things clearly again — things that seem so simple to me now, but that somehow I couldn’t see then: that life is a series of peaks and valleys, and it is a fool’s errand to try to flatten them out. That beauty is in the connections …
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Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) Before us great Death standsOur fate held close within his quiet hands.When with proud joy we lift Life's red wineTo drink deep of the mystic shining cupAnd ecstasy through all our being leaps—Death bows his head and weeps.
We withdraw not to disappear, but to find another ground from which to see; a solid ground from which to step, and from which to speak again, in a different way, a clear, rested, embodied voice, our life as a sudden, emphatic statement, one we can recognize as our own and one from which now, …
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Jane Mead (August 13, 1958 – September 8, 2019) I wonder if I will miss the mossafter I fly off as much as I miss it nowjust thinking about leaving. There were stones of many colors.There were sticks holding bothlichen and moss.There were red gates with oldhand-forged hardware.There were fields of dry grasssmelling of first …
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Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906 – December 04, 1975) Forgiving, in other words, is the only reaction which does not merely re-act but acts anew and unexpectedly, unconditioned by the act which provoked it and therefore freeing from its consequences both the one who forgives and the one who is forgiven. The freedom contained in …
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Ursula K Le Guin (October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) Time says “Let there be”every moment and instantlythere is space and the radianceof each bright galaxy.And eyes beholding radiance.And the gnats’ flickering dance.And the seas’ expanse.And death, and chance.Time makes roomfor going and coming homeand in time’s wombbegins all ending.Time is being and beingtime, …
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Hermann Hesse (July 02, 1877 – August 09, 1962) Great masses of people these days live out their lives in a dull and loveless stupor. Sensitive persons find our inartistic manner of existence oppressive and painful, and they withdraw from sight… I believe what we lack is joy. The ardor that a heightened awareness imparts …
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Louis Burke Jenkins (October 28, 1942 – December 21, 2019) "It's no use," he says, "she's left me." This is afterseveral drinks. It's as if he had said, "Van Gogh ismy favorite painter." It's a cheap print he has addedto his collection. He's been waiting all evening toshow it to me. He doesn't see it. …
I think a lot about the word tenacity. What it takes to survive in a world that is sometimes beautiful and sometimes hostile. I’m always amazed at the body’s willingness to continue, to keep going. The heart that keeps pumping, the lungs that keep breathing, the way the will to live can outsmart those other …
Continue reading "The Writings Of Señor Tao – The Expendability Of Human Life"
Patricia Fargnoli (November 16, 1937 – February 18, 2021) I wake up to a world that is invisible,no golden trees, no picnic spread on the lawn.The ladies in hats have finished their teaand moved on. None of the questions I spent life askinghave been answered.Transience, evanescence, the dispersal of dust.God knows where, and is no …
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James Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) Best advice I ever got was an old friend of mine, a black friend, who said you have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at …
Continue reading "For The Love Of Wisdom – James Baldwin – Advice"
Nicholas Laird A human is not such a perfect machine.I didn’t design it for interaction particularlywith other machines—not closely—not non-stop.I made the campfire, for example, to be nature’stelevision but with a human being basicallyI was thinking of a tree, of what a tree needs.A root system, distance, light and air. Even livingyou are tearing through …
Chah Subhaddo known in English as Ajahn Chah (June 17, 1918 – January 16, 1992) If you let go a little, you have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you have complete peace.
Theodore J. Kooser (April 25, 1939) In the musty light, in the thin brown airof damp carpet, doll heads and rust,beneath long rows of sharp footfallslike nails in a lid, an old man standstrying on glasses, lifting each pairfrom the box like a glittering fishand holding it up to the lightof a dirty bulb. Near …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Ted Kooser – In the Basement of the Goodwill Store"
Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no results, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul. Simone Weil ( February 03, 1909 – August 24, 1943) Señor Tao (April 17, 1948 -) Saturday was the first warm sunny rainless day in almost …
Continue reading "The Writings Of Señor Tao – Sweating Out My Demons While Dancing With Angels"
Angelina Weld Grimké (February 27, 1880 – June 10, 1958) Little grey dreams,I sit at the ocean’s edge,At the grey ocean’s edge,With you in my lap. I launch you, one by one,And one by one,Little grey dreams,Under the grey, grey, clouds,Out on the grey, grey, sea,You go sailing away,From my empty lap,Little grey dreams. Sailing! …
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Naomi Shihab Nye (March 12, 1952 -) Two helpful words to keep in mind at the beginning of any writing adventure are pleasure and spaciousness. If we connect a sense of joy with our writing, we may be inclined to explore further. What’s there to find out? Perhaps too much stock has been placed in …
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Afaa M. Weaver This wall is a great stairway, wallsare things that shoot up, keep out, linethe places where we mark the halls that carry our names. The bustsof this one and that one, this historyis in the hard labor of hearts, thrusts of piston and valve. I sit downat the first house, dizzy at …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Afaa M. Weaver – Climbing China’s Great Wall"
Maria Popova (July 28, 1984 -) We, none of us, choose the century we are born in, or the skin we are born in, or the chromosomes we are born with. We don’t choose the incredibly narrow band of homeostasis within which we can be alive at all — in bodies that die when their …
Continue reading "For The Love Of Wisdom – Maria Popova – Choice"
Florence Margaret Smith, better known as Stevie Smith (September 20, 1902 – March 07, 1971) Nobody heard him, the dead man,But still he lay moaning:I was much further out than you thoughtAnd not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larkingAnd now he’s deadIt must have been too cold for him his heart gave …
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Seize the time… Live now. Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart - Star Trek: The Next Generation) Senor Tao (April 17, 1948 -) Everything dies. It is just a question of when. Life was never inevitable. There was no possible preparation for life. It happened. …
Continue reading "The Writings Of Señor Tao – Growing Old And Death"
Ellen Bass(June 16, 1947 -) Cook a large fish—choose one with many bones, a skeletonyou will need skill to expose, maybe the flyingsilver carp that’s invaded the Great Lakes, tumblingthe others into oblivion. If you don’t livenear a lake, you’ll have to travel.Walking is best and shows you mean it,but you could take a train …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Ellen Bass – How To Apologize"
Václav Havel (October 5, 1936–December 18, 2011) There is far more at stake here than simply standing up to those who would like once again to divide the world into spheres of interest, or subjugate others who are different from them, and weaker. What is now at stake is saving the human race. In other …
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Yalie Saweda Kamara While sipping coffee in my mother’s Toyota, we hear the birdcall of two teenage boysin the parking lot: Aiight, one says, Besaydoo, the other returns, as they reachfor each other. Their cupped handshake pops like the first, fat, firecrackers of summer, their fingers shimmy as if they’re solving a Rubik’s cube just …
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Léon Bloy (July 11, 1846–November 3, 1917) There is no human being on earth capable of declaring with certitude who he is. No one knows what he has come into this world to do, what his acts correspond to, his sentiments, his ideas, or what his real name is, his enduring Name in the register …
Continue reading "For The Love Of Wisdom – Léon Bloy – The Self"
Sarah Freligh I’m driving home from school when the radio talkturns to E.B. White, his birthday, and I exitthe here and now of the freeway at rush hour, travel back into the past, where my mother is readingto my sister and me the part about Charlotte laying her eggsand dying, and though this is the …
When you recognize that we are the product of purposeless, mindless laws of physics playing themselves out on our particles — because we are, all, bags of particles — it changes the way you search for meaning and purpose: You recognize that looking out to the cosmos to find some answer that’s sort of floating …
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John Paul Martinez For Lolo Ma says not to swat at the houseflychirring in our headspace for the past two hoursbecause it just might be you. Ma shows me the flimsy browned picturesof you & me in your workshop, a scored-leather tool belt strapped acrossyour chest like a bandolier. My whole body smaller stillthan a …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – John Paul Martinez – To Offer Sweet Fruit To The Ghost"
Françoise Sagan (June 21, 1935 – September 24, 2004) I have loved to the point of madness; that which is called madness, that which to me, is the only sensible way to love… Love lasts about seven years. That's how long it takes for the cells of the body to totally replace themselves.
James Crews The night my mother turned back the clocksI thought that while we slept the hours stolenfrom everyone on earth would collect like coinsin a bank vault, so we’d wake up rich at last.Even as my mother explained that it meantonly extra dreams in winter, only late lightreturned to us with daffodils and rain …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – James Crews – Daylight Saving, Age Five"
Mary Jane Oliver (September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019) One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear. It mustn’t be fancy. I have the feeling that a lot of poets writing now […] sort of tap dance through it. I always feel that whatever isn’t necessary shouldn’t be …
Continue reading "For The Love Of Wisdom – Mary Oliver – Poems And Poetry"
Guillaume Apollinaire (August 26, 1880 – November 09,1918) I stand here in the sight of everyone a man full of senseKnowing life and knowing of death what a living man can knowHaving gone through the griefs and happinesses of loveHaving known sometimes how to impose his ideasKnowing several languagesHaving travelled more than a littleHaving seen …
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But the man who comes back through the door in the wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser, but less cocksure, happier but less self satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things of systematic reasoning …
Continue reading "The Writings Of Señor Tao – Getting There, The Long Broken Highway"
Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) His vision, from the constantly passing bars,has grown so weary that it cannot hold anything else.It seems to him there are a thousand bars;and behind the bars, no world. As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,the movement of his powerful soft stridesis like …
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Aldous Huxley (July 26, 1894 – November 22, 1963) Human beings are immensely complicated creatures, living simultaneously in a half dozen different worlds. Each individual is unique and, in a number of respects, unlike all the other members of the species. None of our motives is unmixed, none of our actions can be traced back …
Continue reading "For The Love Of Wisdom – Aldous Huxley – Being Human"
Charlotte Mary Mew (November 15, 1869 – March 24, 1928) I remember rooms that have had their partIn the steady slowing down of the heart.The room in Paris, the room at Geneva,The little damp room with the seaweed smell,And that ceaseless maddening sound of the tide—Rooms where for good or ill—things died.But there is the …
Eckhart Tolle (February 16, 1948 -) Most humans are still, almost literally, possessed by thought. They don’t think, but thinking happens to them. The beginning of spiritual awakening is the realization that you are not the voice in your head but the one who is aware of the voice. You are the awareness behind your …
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Elsa Gidlow (December 29, 1898 – 08, June 1986) I shall never have any fear of love,Not of its depth nor its uttermost height,Its exquisite pain and its terrible delight.I shall never have any fear of love. I shall never hesitate to go downInto the fastness of its abyssNor shrink from the cruelty of its …
USA, California, Big Sur, Bixby Creek Bridge and coast viewed from Gamboa Point Photo Credit : Huffington Post Several times now I have stressed the fact that whatever “it” is one gets here at Big Sur, one gets it harder, faster, straighter than one would elsewhere. I come back to it again. I say, the …
Continue reading "The Writings Of Señor Tao – Closer to Root, Further into Sky – Prologue"
Kim Dower Barbara, my childhood piano teacherplayed Chopin like he was whisperinginto her hands, all us kids from the buildinghad our Saturday morning lessons, apartment 6C,our giddy fingers trotting in the key of G,lifting high for Mozart, metronome tickingas her coffee brewed, her sandy-haired husbandat the wooden breakfast table, mug, cigarettetight in his hands, he …
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Margaret Higgins Sanger (September 14, 1879 – September 6, 1966) No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.
Señor Tao (April 17, 1948 -) The Sound Of Silence It was almost silentexcept for the constant buzz of life between my earsThen the cooing of the mourning doves perchedon the terrace looking for leftover seeds attracted me.They take flight and I hear the beating of wings against invisible air.I see the plants moving with …
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David Whyte (November 02, 1955 -) We withdraw not to disappear, but to find another ground from which to see; a solid ground from which to step, and from which to speak again, in a different way, a clear, rested, embodied voice, our life as a sudden, emphatic statement, one we can recognize as our …
Continue reading "For The Love Of Wisdom – David Whyte – Withdraw"
Li-Young Lee (August 19, 1957 -) I loved you before I was born.It doesn’t make sense, I know. I saw your eyes before I had eyes to see.And I’ve lived longingfor your every look ever since.That longing entered time as this body.And the longing grew as this body waxed.And the longing grows as this body …
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Señor Tao (April 17, 1948 -) January came and disappeared so quickly this year, or perhaps it disappears as quickly every year. I just did not notice until this year. January is appropriately named after the two faced Greek god Janus. One of his faces looks to the past, the other to the future. So …
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She wasn’t a good cat. Wouldn’t let us pick her upor cuddle on the bed. Sometimes she’d permit petting, but only if she was in the mood, and onher own terms. If she was perched on a chair, perhaps you might approach. But now, at fifteen, she’s stoppedeating and drinking, sleeps all day. Instead of …
Roger Angell (September 19, 1920 -) What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring — caring deeply and passionately, really caring — which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. […] It no longer matters so much what the caring …
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Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) Very slowly burning, the big forest treestands in the slight hollow of the snowmelted around it by the mild, longheat of its being and its will to beroot, trunk, branch, leaf, and knowearth dark, sun light, wind touch, bird song.Rootless and restless and warmblooded, …
Erin Westgate Although some people’s lives may be higher on one dimension than others, happiness, meaning, and richness represent three components or dimensions of the good life, rather than independent types of life.
Dorianne Laux (January 10, 1962) In the room where we lie, lightstains the drawn shades yellow.We sweat and pull at each other, climbwith our fingers the slippery ladders of rib.Wherever our bodies touch, the fleshcomes alive. Head and need, like invisibleanimals, gnaw at my breasts, the softinsides of your thighs. What I wantI simply reach …
Señor Tao (April 17, 1948 -) My motto for the last 40 years or so has been “I Am Here!” This is more than a declaration. It is a revelation. I am here to grow in wisdom and to develop a greater capacity to love. I am a finite physical manifestation of an infinite energy source. This …
Stephen Elliot Dunn (June 24, 1939 – June 24, 2021) The room has no choice.Everything that’s spoken in itit absorbs. And it must put up with the bad flirt, the overly perfumed,the many murderers of mood—with whomever chooses to walk in. If there’s a crowd, one personis certain to be concealing a sadness,another will have …
William Wordsworth (April 07, 1770 – April 23, 1850) Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origins from emotion recollected in tranquility. The emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquility gradually disappears.
Emily Jane Brontë (July 30, 1818 – December 19, 1848) No coward soul is mineNo trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphereI see Heaven's glories shineAnd Faith shines equal arming me from Fear O God within my breastAlmighty ever-present DeityLife, that in me hast rest,As I Undying Life, have power in Thee Vain are the thousand …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Emily Bronte – No Coward Soul Is Mine"
Priscilla Denise Levertov (October 24, 1923 – December 20, 1997) When I opened the doorI found the vine leavesspeaking among themselves in abundantwhispers. My presence made themhush their green breath,embarrassed, the wayhumans stand up, buttoning their jackets,acting as if they were leaving anyway, as ifthe conversation had endedjust before you arrived. I likedthe glimpse I had, though,of …
That which we call imagination is from the first an attribute of the senses themselves; imagination is not a separate mental faculty (as we so often assume) but is rather the way the senses themselves have of throwing themselves beyond what is immediately given, in order to make tentative contact with the other sides of …
Thich Nhat Hanh (October 11, 1926 - January 22, 2022) 🌹 March 16, 2007 Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh (AP Photo, file) If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable. But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water …
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Joseph Stroud Trying to tie my shoes, clumsy, not able to work outthe logic of it, fumbling, as my father stands there,his anger growing over a son who can’t even dothis simplest thing for the first time, can’t even managethe knot to keep his shoes on—You think someone’sgoing to tie your shoes for you the …
Steve Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is, your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family, have fun, …
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David Whyte (November 02, 1955 -) Sometimesif you move carefullythrough the forest,breathinglike the onesin the old stories,who could crossa shimmering bed of leaveswithout a sound,you come to a placewhose only taskis to trouble youwith tinybut frightening requests,conceived out of nowherebut in this placebeginning to lead everywhere.Requests to stop whatyou are doing right now,andto stop what …
Rebecca Solnit (June 24, 1961 -) The arguments about abortion in the US are about one thing: controlling women… A lot of people with a lot of power don’t see why women should have jurisdiction over their own bodies. That’s the anti-abortion argument in a nutshell, in that they claim a foetus, or even an …
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George Bilgere Jane, the old woman across the street,is lugging big black trash bags to the curb.It's snowing hard, and the bags are turning white,gradually disappearing in the storm. Jane is getting ready to put her house on the marketand move into a home of some sort. A facility.She's just too old to keep the …
I feel — everything. It is my genius. It burns me like fire. Mary MacLane (1861–1929) Señor Tao (April 17, 1948 -) I too am a creature of intense passionate feelings. I tried to hide it as a child but everyone knew. There was no hiding it or escape from it. At an early age …
Rob Brezsny What does it mean to feel real? Some people have a hard time doing that. They have such false ideas about who they are that they rarely feel real. Others are so distracted by trivial longings that they never have the luxury of settling into the exquisite at-home-ness of feeling real. For those …
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Sophie Jewett (June 3, 1861 – October 11, 1909), aka Ellen Burroughs I have read somewhere that the birds of fairyland are white as snow. W B Yeats (June 13, 1865 – January 28, 1939) Where all the trees bear golden flowers,And all the birds are white;Where fairy folk in dancing hoursBurn stars for candlelight; Where …
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Ernest Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if …
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Alfonsina Storni (May 29, 1892 – October 25, 1938) Teeth of flowers, bonnet of dew,hands of grass, you, lovely nursemaid,turn down the earthen sheets for meand the quilt of weeded moss. I’m going to sleep, my nurse, tuck me in,put a lamp on my headboard;a constellation; whichever you like;both are fine; lower the light a little. Leave …
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Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) I have no Life but this —To lead it here —Nor any Death — but lestDispelled from there — Nor tie to Earths to come —Nor Action new —Except through this extent —The Realm of you —
Milan Kundera (April 01, 1929 -) We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come… There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything …
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Señor Tao (April 17, 1948 -) Until last year I remembered the date January 6th only as my mother’s birthday. She would have be ninety-six years old today. Now this day has an added memory. January 06, 2021 is as etched into my mind as September 11, 2001 and November 22, 1963, the day JFK …
Maria Popova (July 28, 1984 -) We read for countless reasons and books transform us in countless ways, reckoned and unreckoned. We read the way we love — with our whole selves, with the flickering constellation of values, longings, traumas, joys, hopes, despairs, formative experiences, and half-remembered impressions composing the self. We read with our …
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Alex Dimitrov (November 30 1984 -) I was just beginningto wonder about my own lifeand now I have to return to itregardless of the weatheror how close I am to love.Doesn’t it bother you sometimeswhat living is, what the day has turned into?So many screens and meetingsand things to be late for.Everyone truly deservesa flute …
Señor Tao (April 17, 1948 -) I am eating a mango over the kitchen sink. (The best way to eat a mango.) The one I purchased at the farmer’s market from a man with round wise eyes, a reflection I thought, as the juice dripped slowly over my lips, down my chin and onto my long fingers …
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Even those of us who have not filled the bathtub with emergency water, withdrawn extra cash from the bank and stocked up on food will be entering the new millennium sobered by the awareness that unknown problems of our own making are an enduring part of existence. New York Times Señor Tao (April 17, 1948 -) This …
Sunrise On A New Year Another year, another journey via an elliptical orbit around a yellow star in a solar system named the Milky Way. Although there is no spiritual difference between December 31st and January 1st, each year at this time I find myself preparing for a new beginning. The start of a new …
William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) Thou fair-haired angel of the evening,Now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, lightThy bright torch of love; thy radiant crownPut on, and smile upon our evening bed!Smile on our loves; and, while thou drawest theBlue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dewOn every flower …
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Clare of Assisi, born Chiara Offreduccio (July 16, 1194 – August 11, 1253) There are some who do not pray nor make sacrifices; there are many who live solely for the idolatry of their senses. There should be compensation. There should be someone who prays and makes sacrifices for those who do not do so. …
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Richie Hofmann You were my second lover.You had dark eyes and hair,like a painting of a man.We lay on our stomachs reading books in your bed.I e-mailed my professor. I will be absentfrom French Novel due to sickness. You put onsome piano music. Even thoughit was winter, we had to keepthe window open day and …
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David Suzuki (March 24, 1936 -) Concentration is not to try hard to watch something. In zazen if you try to look at one spot you will be tired in about five minutes. This is not concentration. Concentration means freedom. So your effort should be directed at nothing. You should concentrate on nothing.
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko (June 11, 1889 – 05, March 1966) better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova Here is my gift, not roses on your grave,not sticks of burning incense.You lived aloof, maintaining to the endyour magnificent disdain.You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes,and suffocated inside stifling walls.Alone you let the terrible stranger …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – Anna Akhmatova – In Memory of M. B."
Muriel Rukeyser (December 15, 1913–February 12, 1980) Now, when it is hard to hold for a moment the giant clusters of event and meaning that every day appear, it is time to remember [poetry], which has forever been a way of reaching complexes of emotion and relationship, the attitude that is like the attitude of …
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Robert Elwood Bly (December 23, 1926) After writing for a week alone in my old shack,I guide the car through Ortonville around midnight. The policeman talks intently in his swivel chair.The light from above shines on his bald head. Soon the car picks up speed again beside the quarries.The moonspot on the steel tracks moves …
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Willa Cather (December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) Many people seem to think that art is a luxury to be imported and tacked on to life. Art springs out of the very stuff that life is made of. Most of our young authors start to write a story and make a few observations from …
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Peter Russell The call to let go lies at the heart of the world’s spiritual traditions. Not being attached to outcomes, surrendering desires, accepting the present, opening to a higher power, relinquishing the ego, practicing forgiveness — all entail letting go. Why is letting go deemed so important? Holding on, these teachings repeatedly affirm, limits …
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He stands at the window baffledby pleasure and how brief it is.Pleasure followed by the memoryof pleasure. Lightthen dark with a splinterleft in. Something like that.The woman in the chair is reading,drinking tea in the ground glasshaze of evening.The sudden swell he feelswatching herilluminates the past she spentgetting to this place:a lover who left, perhaps. …
Adyashanti (October 26, 1962 -) This whole universe is indeed a mirror. So if you are resisting something, what you get back is your experience of resisting something. . . . It's like you walk up to God's vending machine and you say, 'I really don't want to have this experience.' And you put that …
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Wendell Berry (August 05, 1934 -) I leave behind evenmy walking stick. My knifeis in my pocket, but thatI have forgot. I bringno car, no cell phone,no computer, no camera,no CD player, no fax, noTV, not even a book. I gointo the woods. I sit ona log provided at no cost.It is the earth I've …
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Carl Gustav Jung ( July 26, 1875 – June 06, 1961) It is important to have a secret, a premonition of things unknown. It fills life with something impersonal, a numinosum. A man who has never experienced that has missed something important. He must sense that he lives in a world which in some respects …
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Cathy Song (August 20, 1955 -) To prepare the body,aim for the translucent perfectionyou find in the sliced shavingsof a pickled turnip.In order for this to happen,you must avoid the sun,protect the faceunder a paper parasoluntil it is bruised whitelike the skin of lilies.Use white soapfrom a blue porcelaindish for this. Restrict yourself.Eat the whites …
Brenda Ueland (October 24, 1891 – March 5, 1985) Think of yourself as an incandescent power, illuminated and perhaps forever talked to by God and his messengers… Since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of time, you are incomparable.
David Watts He stands at the window baffledby pleasure and how brief it is.Pleasure followed by the memoryof pleasure. Lightthen dark with a splinterleft in. Something like that.The woman in the chair is reading,drinking tea in the ground glasshaze of evening.The sudden swell he feelswatching herilluminates the past she spentgetting to this place:a lover who …
Continue reading "Wise Poets – David Watts – Man at the Window"
Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) Apple Here’s to the crazy ones.The misfits.The rebels.The troublemakers.The round pegs in square holes.The ones who see things differently.There’re not fond or rules.And they have no respect for the status quo.You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,disbelieve them, glorify them or vilify them.About …
Ariel Francisco I heard them and I still hear themabove the threatening shrieks of police sirensabove the honking horns of morning traffic,above the home-crowd cheers of Yankee Stadiumabove the school bells and laughterlighting up the afternoonabove the clamoring trudge of the 1 trainand the 2 and 4, 5, 6, the B and the Dabove the …