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20 entries this month
18:50 Oct 31 2024
Times Read: 75
THE KIND OF FAITH THAT ISSUES FROM DESPAIR: T.S. ELIOT
From "The Cocktail Party" (1949)
All cases are unique, and very similar to others.
You will change your mind, but you are not free.
Your moment of freedom was yesterday.
You made a decision. You set in motion
Forces in your life and in the lives of others
Which cannot be reversed.”
“Half the harm that is done in this world
Is due to people who want to feel important.
They don’t mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them.
Or they do not see it, or they justify it
Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle
To think well of themselves.”
“There is another way, if you have the courage.
The first I could describe in familiar terms
Because you have seen it, as we all have seen it,
Illustrated, more or less, in lives of those about us.
The second is unknown, and so requires faith —
The kind of faith that issues from despair.
The destination cannot be described;
You will know very little until you get there;
You will journey blind. But the way leads towards possession
Of what you have sought for in the wrong place.”
06:25 Oct 30 2024
Times Read: 142
Only a respite,
Sweet interlude
Where we can inhale hope
And exhale soft omissions.
What's the harm
Sweet time-out-of-time
In one last dream
Of who we might have been?
Ndutu Yah Got the Shine22:34 Oct 29 2024
Times Read: 186
Ndutu Yah got the shine, girl.
She asked me for change
But I need change from her.
I ain't afraid of the doll's eye
Lookin at me through celluloid tape
Yellow tape on her forehead,
A window pane
Or a hidden door,
I don't know no more.
She got a djembe heart;
Cricket say the djembe in her chest.
I want to hear
But she scratchin the earth
She searchin the earth
I gotta say somethin
But my words got no brakes
And if that eye blink
That broken doll eye...
She say it don't have a mind,
The earth. That's why she scratchin.
I feel her watch me
Snatch down some Spanish moss
And dangle it from my chin.
Her spine roll up slow
And she nod.
"The year changin now, Hatshepsut.
Words don't mean nothin
And absinthe just melt the sugar, you know?"
I do.
Ndutu Yah got the shine, girl.
The lingue' tree spirit
Smile with her lips
And that djembe heart drum,
Il est magique,
Beat with a bass and slap
That's the stuff
That's the scratch
We gonna find the mind.
Joseph Campbell20:32 Oct 28 2024
Times Read: 233
"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive."
Filaments and Flights of Fancy02:50 Oct 27 2024
Times Read: 314
Your stacatto snare-drum tale
Too lyrical on my lips.
I keep forgetting to climb the damn fountains,
My own quixotic windmills...
Remind me to tell you about that,
Min skald.
Regret is a liar and a thief -
You taught me to pluck threads
From the ether
Best fucking gift I was ever given.
Easy, Fortuna...
Gossamer threads,
Dewy spider silk threads
Of skerried shores
Stitched to a delta coast,
Hold their breath.
Sister Sea
You, I
Time gone by
A soft and weary sigh
And eye that seeks to see
Where are you now, Kanchanaburi?
Dreaming tigers unconstrained.
23:16 Oct 25 2024
Times Read: 365
I am so addicted to sound healing. Give me all the Tibetan sound bowls, chimes and gongs. Heaven. When the door closes, everything I've walked away from stays outside. It is one of the best things I've ever done for myself, and a great way to end the work week.
I try to go to a different yoga class each day, but Yin is what my heart, body, and soul longs for.
Killing time...15 more minutes, then bliss.
15:40 Oct 25 2024
Times Read: 397
Dismantling the dam and setting my river back to its natural course. Surrendering to the flow of Love and divine inspiration.
"Come to terms with your fears and desires" - Clarence Worley (True Romance)06:32 Oct 25 2024
Times Read: 422
I want a balanced life - harmonious, centered, and affirmative...even in suffering. To not only experience my own sorrows, but to be willing to see/share in the sorrows of others with compassion.
Compassion compels the heart to awaken from a singular perspective of self-interest to an inclusive one. The word "compassion" literally means "suffering with."
22:31 Oct 24 2024
Times Read: 460
Sometimes, when you think nobody can see you at all, the kindness appears from nowhere.
It took you a moment... And in my moment, it meant everything. Thank you.
Blue Snare08:35 Oct 24 2024
Times Read: 503
Knothole shapes shift in the paneling
As soon as she is alone again.
Dustmotes shimmer in the spiderwebs
That no one else sees.
She worries that the upstairs neighbor
Is intentionally dripping,
Incessantly dripping.
Her dislocated reason bends backward
Like the finger joint of a madman
Showing the way.
She waits for the face
On the back of her head
To scream on cue
As she unravels,
A cardboard tube
Curling into galaxy arms
That wobble and spin
Like a pinwheel
In the wheeze
Of a feverish God-child.
She's so dizzy in this Milky Way
Cnidarian blur,
Stinging cells tangling
In her eyelashes,
A medusa tide
Pulsing in her veins.
Why does no one see the spiderwebs?
PRIVATE ENTRY
05:03 Oct 24 2024
Times Read: 507
• • • • PRIVATE JOURNAL ENTRY • • • •
Good morning, morning16:18 Oct 22 2024
Times Read: 563
Drawing from a deep well of gratitude
Love
Warm pups in still nights
The smell and taste of strong hot coffee
Deer regarding me from the treeline
Breath in my lungs
Life instilled with new hope
Mindfulness
Self-discovery
Freedom
Peace
Tiresius, Alas02:03 Oct 22 2024
Times Read: 603
The allure of a dream...
Egret, white on the wing
In a rose quartz sky.
Too much of augury
And auspices
On my porch tonight
Where the Creole moon
Whispers a tarot tale,
Reversing a beloved cup
To pour you a drink, my love,
Dipped from the River Lethe
That your shade may waft
To the shore of Asphodel,
A liminal sigh on the wind
Of the violet hour,
Striving ever homeward.
12:09 Oct 21 2024
Times Read: 645
Sleepless nights are at least a deep well of thought. All is quiet, save for the warm pup looking up at me with the deepest brown-eyed concern as he snuggles closer.
I find I am good here in my thoughts. I don't wish for...I've lost my curiosity about such things along with my shock. Now, it just is.
Far from the first person to feel loss, I reach for myself this morning. I remember me, untangled from other. I reach for those who are reaching for me with arms, life buoys, and love. So many arms reaching, so much love that my poor heart couldn't grasp only days ago. I'm grasping now.
I'm sorry I couldn't lift my arms yesterday. Heartache is an anchor that tries to pull you under the waves, and the willingness to follow, to just sink into the depths... But your arms are welcome now. I am so loved. I can see it now even through a broken eye.
Grateful for a new morning. Hopeful for new things today. And they will come.
A season such as this18:23 Oct 20 2024
Times Read: 695
These have been some of the most contemplative days of my life. That's saying something because I spend a lot of time in my head. It is a time of looking at it all and choosing, despite what I learn, to remain fully true to who I aspire to be.
I choose gratitude. I accept sorrow, even when it feels very heavy in my arms. If it is mine to carry, I will. I release judgement while being fully present and awake. There is grace enough here for all, even when it is so very hard.
I am just making my way and trying to do so honestly, sipping from an unwanted cup without asking anyone else to have a taste. And that's ok. I can be here in this place working on nothing more than this moment.
I want a wall where I can take thoughts from my head and paste them here with an honesty that aims at noone but myself. If you have a question for me, please ask. I do not bite.
TS Eliot17:41 Oct 20 2024
Times Read: 699
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
Arundhati Roy - The Cost of Living14:12 Oct 20 2024
Times Read: 713
"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget."
This Next Breath01:36 Oct 20 2024
Times Read: 759
Laid waste in the Badlands
And crowded by silence,
She combs crows from her hair
And wills her roots ever deeper.
A museum of dreams
Exhaled into a parched tomorrow,
She is only now
And perhaps this next breath.
The surprising armor
Of a hollowed - out ache
Affords the courage of surrender
Fully to love,
Fully to wind
That whirls her leathery leaves
But cannot topple her core,
Seeded along a deeply etched scar
Where already blooms
The ineffable soul.
17:04 Oct 19 2024
Times Read: 822
For many years, this journal was such a place of joy. I've missed having a wall where I can tape a scribble here and there. I went back through the years and revisited so many good times with you. Feeling grateful.
Mai Stirring18:21 Oct 16 2024
Times Read: 912
The scholar rolls his shoulders,
Raises his creased brow past candle
To the window, that he might regard her once again,
Causing the carefully curated pages to spill from his lap
She stirs. Feet firmly pressed into the earth, knees deeply bent, she balances there
Over a low fire. She seems to him as sturdy as the bamboo bridge of Hoi An
He counts five as she seasons the measure of each element into the clay vessel:
Mouthing the simple words for fire, water, earth, metal and wood
Stirring again, each grain of rice surrendering to her unhurried hand
To break. To bloom.
Like the lotus of her bearing
He discerns
Lá lành ðùm lá rách
The green leaf covers the broken one
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COMMENTS
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LiamK
19:24 Nov 09 2024
you see things like this
give me very little patience with that contingent of the population who insist that "this generation"'s struggles are new and unique
there's maybe something reassuring in the constancy of humanity
in the better lights
Joli
23:00 Nov 09 2024
I like that perspective