The Savage Poem Around Me

"Ghostly, wrapped in its shroud of snow, my island stands white above the blackness of unfreezing waters. What have I done? Although I had lived these days by anticipation, no sooner had the sails of the departing yacht vanished below the water horizon...then I realized at once, and with a strange sinking of the heart...the savage poem around me."

Alfred Lambourne (artist) from his book, Our Inland Sea: The Story of a Homestead
Talking about The Great Salt Lake.  Painting Black, Rock, Great Salt Lake c. 1880

Inside Bickerings

"My heart wants roots. My mind wants wings. I cannot bear their bickerings."

— E. Y. Harburg 

Choose

"Sometimes, making the wrong choice is better than making no choice. You have the courage to go forward, that is rare. A person who stands at the fork, unable to pick, will never get anywhere. "
— Terry Goodkind 

Love

"Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love."

-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Make of that what you will

"Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led- make of that what you will."

-Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

There's a guy I know peripherally

"There’s a guy I know. Peripherally. And only a little. But I know him well enough to know that I like to sneak glances of him when I can. And occasionally, when I’m lucky, he does the same. I said something to him not loo long ago. It was a silly something—nothing really. It was boring and not to the point and he looked up at me and grinned—this sort of wide, loose smile. And it struck me that his response was so disproportionate to what I had said, but so perfectly apt for what was happening in that meaty and wordless territory where two people meet. An altogether different sort of silence. A good one. I did that, I thought as he walked away. That smile—I did that. Not because of what I said or what I did but because of who I am. Twenty-eight years and I’d never consciously had that thought before. I can’t help thinking that that’s the sort of smile a girl should walk down the stairs to. A little bit giddy and little bit unrestrained and so totally guileless.

And to accept anything less would be to miss the point."http://www.megfee.com/2014/01/21/paris-explained/#.UuXz8P0QHUQ

-Meg Fee

Why

"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear."

-Joan Didion

Full Circle

"She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation."

— Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

Let's Go

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts."

— Mark Twain 

On Waiting

"Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering."

— Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept 

To Thine Own Self

"There are times when you don’t know yourself. There are times when you don’t want to know yourself. There are times when you want to be what you have never allowed yourself to be before."

— Aidan Chambers

Preach

"I’m not gonna sit around and waste my precious divine energy trying to explain and be ashamed of things you think are wrong with me."

— Esperanza Spalding

You do not bring the ocean to a river

'She was born out of ocean breath.
I reminded her;
‘Stop pouring so much of yourself
into hearts that have no room for themselves
Do not thin yourself
Be vast
You do not bring the ocean to a river.’

— Tapiwa Mugabe, You Are Oceanic

Prison

"The greatest prison that people live in is the fear of what other people think."

— David Icke

Boredom

"Boredom is what happens to people who have no control over their minds."

— Liar & Spy by Rebecca Stead

Full Circle

“In general, I try not to be too critical of myself or of others… So when I’m on the subway, I’ve made it a habit to look at every single woman and find one thing that’s beautiful about her. It’s a good practice, and it’s actually so easy to do. I don’t want to be a critical person, and I don’t want people to look at me in that way, either. Because when you’re being so critical of other people, you ultimately turn that on yourself. It goes full circle.”

— Poppy King 

Survival

"You never need to apologize
for how you chose to survive."

— Clementine von Radics

East of Eden

"A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid anymore.

-John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Love What You Love

“…you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” | 

from Wild Geese  Mary Oliver

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
       love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Laugh Hard

"I always knew looking back on my tears would bring me laughter, but I never knew looking back on my laughter would make me cry."

— Cat Stevens 

BFFs

"It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Care No More

"One day, a long time from now you’ll cease to care anymore whom you please or what anybody has to say about you. That’s when you’ll finally produce the work you’re capable of."

— J.D. Salinger, from a letter to Joyce Maynard

North

"Don’t live with the impression that North is always the right direction for you, some of the greatest adventures take place when your compass breaks."

— Rakishi to Georgia Whots, “Go forth, go." 1907

Change

"You cannot change what you refuse to confront." 
— Unknown

Storm Chaser

"Do not fall in love with people like me. 

I will take you to

museums, and parks, and monuments,

and kiss you in every beautiful

place, so that you can

never go back to them

without tasting me

like blood in your mouth.

I will destroy you in the most 

beautiful way possible.

And when I leave 

you will finally understand, 

why storms are named after people."

- Paraphrased and mixed from Katrina, M.K., and Unknown 

Write Ruins

“I write because I cannot lie still. I write to uncover the ruins. To ruin the ruins. I write to find the already found.”

- JENNIFER MILITELLO, FROM WHY I WRITE

Dark Light

I.
Mom, tell me about the light.
A fever knock out. A boxing match,
left hook. His embrace felt in space,
the physical and the meta intertwined.
I did not stay, but warmth did.

Your light now collective. The sun absorbs,
and your body will rest in mantle,
melt back to Mother Earth.
Ease into this illusional separation.
Take His hand, child. I will be there some day.
II.
Molly, tell me about the dark.
It is worse than the tree shadows on our skin.
It is worse than the hospice door closing behind you. 

The strings cut between our bodies, mine
in tune with a heart slow.

These shadows come from a source.
Like the spots on my kitchen table,
my mother the narrator, us the tragedy.
Notice the dim light of the moon, because
it is there, even if you do not always notice.
Embrace the slivers, the halves, the wholes.
It will guide you to me, when your heart’s knees
collapse. Death glad to finally swallow you,
a warrior in your own right.
But Life is not done with you yet.
Keep going."

- DARK / LIGHT BY ANDREW M. 

Stillness in Confidence

"Beautiful things don't ask for attention."

-James Thurber, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Self Love

"Self-love is misunderstood because people think it’s about buying yourself flowers or treating yourself to the spa once in a while. Self-love is a noun, not a verb. It’s a state of being, not doing. It’s a passive state, not an active one. That’s why 100 bubble baths won’t change how you feel about yourself. We organically acquiesce into self-love only after we reach self-acceptance, which means approving of ourselves exactly as we are with zero judgments. To get to that place, we must first do the work of self-forgiveness.

Think about it. You can't love someone if you don't fully accept them, and you certainly can’t accept them if you hold a grudge against them. That’s why the doing part of self-love, the active work to reach it, actually lies in self-forgiveness; forgiving yourself for not being a size two, the perfect wife/mother, failing at your last diet, not being what your parents wanted you to be, missed opportunities, broken relationships, parenting mistakes, etc. Women are constantly striving to meet the unattainable standards someone else has set for them. When the inevitable failure happens, they turn their judgment inward and subconsciously punish themselves for being less than the ideal. It’s impossible to take loving actions toward yourself when you feel you’ve done so much wrong that you don’t deserve to be happy and at a healthy weight."
- Dr. Habib Sadeghi,  interview

Face It

“Facing it — always facing it — that’s the way to get through." 
— Joseph Conrad 

Head West

"I was headed out down a long bone-white road, straight as a string  and smooth as glass and glittering and wavering in the heat and humming under the tires like a plucked nerve. I was doing seventy-five but I never seemed to catch up with the pool that seemed to be over the road just this side of the horizon. Then, after a while, the sun was in my eyes, for I was driving west. So I pulled the sun screen down and squinted and put the throttle to the floor. And kept on moving west. For West is where we all plan to go someday. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: 'Flee, all is discovered.' It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and see the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire. It is where you go to grow up with the country. It is where you go to spend your old age. Or it is just where you go."

Robert Penn Warren, All The King's Men, ch. 7

Stories

"The beginning is the word and the end is silence. And in between are all the stories."

— Kate Atkinson, Human Croquet 

The Price

"The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it."

— Henry David Thoreau 

My Sacred Luck

"Because if you’re lucky enough to have people in your life that make you happy, that inspire you, that move you, you need to devour each moment you have together because you never know how many of those moments you have left. These people are sacred."

— Katie Kacvinsky, First Comes Love 

Ain't No Thang

"Why do you put your self esteem in the hands of complete strangers?"

— Helena Bonham Carter

Exotic and Familiar

"She loved the landscape inside him. It was exotic and familiar at the same time. From the start she knew she could live there for years and feel at home."

— Jonathan Carroll
.

The one and only...

"I always marvel at the humans’ ability to keep going. They always manage to stagger on even with tears streaming down their faces."

— Markus Zusak, ”The Book Thief” 

Lighten the Load

"Most people think happiness is about gaining something, but it’s not. It’s all about getting rid of the darkness you accumulate."

— Carolyn Crane  

Introverts

"Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions."

— Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

Make Mistakes

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. 

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something. 

So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life. 

Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.

— Neil Gaiman 

Risk Risk

“Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth." 
— Katherine Mansfield