Go now selkie-boy, swim from the shore,
Rinse your ears clean of human chatter…
– Spell Songs, from the Lost Words
The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.
– Oscar Wilde
for DP
the way to write things down?
jot them, paint them, type them–
slow the flow of words into
– Alec Finlay
Some people have this extraordinary gift; their words and combinations of words have a greater effect than that of the average person. Some are capable of developing it. Surely it should be like any other craftsmanship. Practice and study and knowledge increase the ability to make words sing. Other people access that place where their words sound true, they have a real meaning, by being who they are. There we go back to what I said before: there must be after words an inner energy, an emotional inner quality, or intellectual. It is also true that people are gifted in diverse degrees regarding an enlightening language, just as in different degrees they are gifted in relation to painting, carpentry or music.
– William Segal
Empathy isn’t just something that happens to us – a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain – it’s also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It’s made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse. Sometimes we care for another because we know we should, or because it’s asked for, but this doesn’t make our caring hollow. This confession of effort chafes against the notion that empathy should always rise unbidden, that genuine means the same thing as unwilled, that intentionality is the enemy of love. But I believe in intention and I believe in work. I believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worst selves for our better ones.
– Leslie Jamison
We lost our home, which means the familiarity of daily life. We lost our occupation, which means the confidence that we are of some use in this world. We lost our language, which means the naturalness of reactions, the simplicity of gestures, the unaffected expression of feelings.
– Hannah Arendt, We Refugees
A classical LP was playing…
… Jealous and sweet, this music was,
sobbing and gorgeous, muddy and crystal.
But if the right words existed
the music wouldn’t need to.
– David Mitchell
Tell me a story.
In this century, and moment, of mania, Tell me a story.
Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.
The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.
Tell me a story of deep delight.
– Robert Penn Warren
There’s more than meets the eye with the human body. It keeps score all on its own. It remembers; it hurts; it hides memories, secrets, even from us. The body is a record keeper, even when the brain forgets what’s been recorded. Bodies, bodies, bodies. Vanishing bodies.
– Moses Yuriyvich Mikheyev
The art of living has no history: it does not evolve: the pleasure which vanishes vanishes for good, there is no substitute for it. Other pleasures come, which replace nothing. No progress in pleasures, nothing but mutations.
– Roland Barthes
Don’t get it crossed—
It’s a beautiful thing
When you become brave enough
To let colonies of the ego
Begin to die,
When they can no longer
Provide for themselves
With worn out strategies
To hide their pain.
It is a brutal
But beautiful thing
When addiction stops working,
When the privilege you’ve earned
From keeping your heart separate
Begins to wilt
And reveals its poverty.
Failing at living falsely
Can be the most meritorious
And victorious thing
You do with your life.
Take the invitation.
Let the truth
Of every unsustainable
Foundation
You’ve invested your whole life in
Crumble—
That which humbles us
Is not a true loss.
True loss is living
Avowed to distance,
Avowed to hiding,
Avowed to pride.
– Chelan Harkin
When the obstacles in the world become greater and more complex there are two great tendencies in the psyche. One is to simplify and quickly adopt some form of fundamentalism. The other is to accept the multiplicity and the great tension that come from embracing the world as it presents itself.
– Michael Meade
There’s a priceless diamond
inside your chest.
Why stop to buy trinkets
on the steps of the temple?
They are for tourists and pilgrims,
but you live here.
The door is always open.
Step into the darkness
where you were glowing
before your first breath
and the silence hummed
your true Name
before you were conceived.
Rest in your original body.
The one with edges is just a shell.
The real one has empty hands,
half-parted lips about to sing,
bare soles covered with soot
from other buildings, burnt and fallen,
an eye that never sleeps
shining between two wells,
the fountain of laughter
and the spring of tears.
Here you have a boundless heart
inside the one that beats.
This shrine isn’t holy,
or secret, or hard to find.
Nothing carved in marble.
No priests, no experts.
It’s a place where your
guru appears
as an ordinary person.
Where everyone whispers, I Am,
yet each of us is incomparable.
Friend, isn’t it time
to give up the journey
toward being right?
Come home.
Learn to smile again.
Master the skill of repose.
– Fred LaMotte
What I find most startling are the people who have convinced themselves that they are fighting for humanity’s freedom, while simultaneously oppressing the voices they don’t agree with. If that’s what you are doing, you are not fighting for freedom. You’re just fighting.
– Jeff Brown