light and macaroni: December 2013

macaroni

you could not have said that her freshness was fading but she smiled at herself in mirrors a little too often, these days, and the face that smiled back was not quite the one she had seen contained in the Beasts's agate eyes.

~angela carter

inspiration exists, but it has to find you working~ pablo picasso

"Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. "
-Leonard Cohen

Now Is the Time
Poem by Hafiz

Now is the time to know
That all you do is sacred.

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child's training wheels
To be laid aside
When you can finally live
With veracity
And love.

My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time
For you to deeply compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.

Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.

"If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner. -Tallulah Bankhead

if at first you don't succeed, redefine success.
~unknown

hard work pays off in the future. laziness pays off now.
~unknown

a conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
~unknown

dad says when you close your eyes you can feel your soul.

~olive eulala cohen

"I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living."
— Anaïs Nin

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

khalil gibran in the prophet

nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent

~ carl gustav jung

olive says: when i grow up i'm not gonna be patient.

mom says: what are you gonna be?

olive says: just a girl with a cape.

december 2010

Creativity is allowing yourself

to make mistakes.

Art is knowing which ones to keep.

Scott Adams

(he says) are you sure you're not a witch, sophie? (she says) oh yes, i'm the worst kind of witch. the kind that cleans.

~from howl's moving castle

a baby sleeps in all our bones, so scared to be alone.

iron and wine

"as mama bear lay there, she thought about how cubs learn. cubs learn by doing. they learn to walk by walking. they learn to run by running. they learn to climb by climbing. that's the answer, thought mama. the cubs will learn to help others by helping others. but questions of who, when, and where went unanswered as she drifted off to sleep." ~ from the berenstain bears lend a helping hand by stan and jan berenstain

"i say, be proud of your scars. the good news is that for the most part that (shock/trauma) can be sutured and healed. and when i say for the most part, as you well know, you cannot heal the things you will not feel. and feeling what all the wounds are is very important. and you know that those things do leave scars. so it's never going to look like you never suffered. although i say be proud of your scars. it has everything to do with your strength and what you've endured. it's a map so to speak. a treasure map, in many ways, to the self. the deep self."

clarissa pinkola estes from warming the stone child

"in spite of its function as a reservoir for human darkness—or perhaps because of this—the shadow is the seat of creativity."

carl gustav jung

'i'm not done dancing.'

~olive in response to me telling her it was time to get ready to go. thankfully we had enough time for her to keep dancing until she felt done, may 2010

'mom, music tastes good. mmm, daddy's tastes good.'

~ olive 4/13/10 as she dances in her seat at the dinner table, while d plays on the piano

'she picked up her broom. she never felt quite herself without it.'

jhumpa lahiri from interpreter of maladies

(i am listening to this on the ipod when hiking lately. the writing is like watery love. sometimes i don't even follow the story, i just listen to the way she puts the words together and have tiny orgasms inside. it is so inspiring.)

ring the bells that still can ring
forget your perfect offering
there is a crack, a crack in everything
that's how the light gets in

~leonard cohen, Anthem

i won't ever let you down. you're a person after all. and a person is a person, no matter how small.

~horton (dr. seuss)

I am high above the tree line
Sitting cross legged on the ground
When all of the forbidden fruit has fallen and rotted
That's when I'm gonna come down

ani difranco, studying stones

Oh me oh my oh, look at Miss Ohio
She a-runnin’ around with her rag-top down
She says I wanna do right , but not right now
Oh I wanna do right but not right now

gillian welch, look at miss ohio

"Every time, it's a miracle. Here are all these people, full of heartache or hatred or desire, and we all have our troubles and the school year is filled with vulgarity and triviality and consequence, and there are all these teachers and kids of every shape and size, and there's this life we're struggling through full of shouting and tears and laughter and fights and break-ups and dashed hopes and unexpected luck--it all disappears, just ike that, when the choir begins to sing. Everyday life vanishes into song, you are suddenly overcome with a feeling of brotherhood, of deep solidarity, even love and it diffuses the ugliness of everyday life into a spirit of perfect communion. Even the singers' faces are transformed... I see human beings, surrendering to music."

"In the end, I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song."

muriel barbery, the elegance of the hedgehog

Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to.
Don’t try to see through the distances.
That’s not for human beings.
Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.
Rumi

“hold the sadness and pain of samsara in your heart and at the same time the power and vision of the great eastern sun. then the warrior can make a proper cup of tea.”

pema chodron quoting chogyam trungpa rinpoche

Elizabeth Strout from her novel 'Olive Kitteridge':

"she leaned forward, peering out the window : sweet pale clouds, the sky as blue as your hat, the new green of the fields, the broad expanse of water- seen from up here it all appeared wondrous, amazing. she remembered what hope was, and this was it. That inner churning that moves you forward, plows you through life the way the boats below plowed the shiny water, the way the plane was plowing forward to a place new, and where she was needed. she had been asked to be part of her son's life." p 202-203

Oscar Wilde:

“One does not see anything until one sees it’s beauty. Then, and only then does it come into existence.”

But don't confuse acceptance with

defeat. You can be
accepting and still desire change. And change happens
*easily* when you're at peace with What Is.
~scott noelle
http://dailygroove.net/no-problem

"“I am afraid to show you who I really am, because if I show you who I really am, you might not like it--and that's all I got.”"
— Sabrina Ward Harrison (Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself)

no one can make you feel inferior without your permission.

~eleanor roosevelt

when the heart grieves over what it has lost, the spirit rejoices over what it has found.

~sufi proverb

courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear -- not absence of fear.

~mark twain

this curious world which we inhabit is more wonderful than it is convenient;
more beautiful than it is useful;
it is more to be admired and enjoyed than used.

~henry david thoreau

light and macaroni

Sunday, December 1, 2013

steps