"The world is full of abandoned meanings. In the commonplace I find unexpected themes and intensities."

- Don DeLillo, White Noise

Honor

"I go to my fathers, and even in their mighty company I shall not now be ashamed."

Theoden, king of the Rohirrim

None of us die. Death is only seen by those left behind, not by the ones going.

- Dr John Patrick 

“I actually attack the concept of happiness. I don’t mind people being happy - but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It’s a really odd thing that we’re now seeing people saying ‘write down 3 things that made you happy today before you go to sleep’, and ‘cheer up’ and ‘happiness is our birthright’ and so on. We’re kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position - it’s rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don’t teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say ‘Quick! Move on! Cheer up!’ I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word ‘happiness’ and to replace it with the word ‘wholeness’. Ask yourself ‘is this contributing to my wholeness?’ and if you’re having a bad day, it is.”

 Hugh Mackay, psychologist and social researcher

"We only believe in those thoughts which have been conceived not in the brain but in the whole body."

Yeats

"I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night."

--Sylvia Plath

to live by, pt. 6

"Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich."

— Sarah Bernhardt

to live by, pt. 5

"I beg you...to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

--rainer maria rilke,

from 'letters to a young poet'

. . . makes me want to cry with relief every time i read it.

to live by, pt. 4

"Francie stood on tiptoe and stretched her arms wide. "Oh, I want to hold it all!" she cried. "I want to hold the way the night is-- cold without wind. And the way the stars are so near and shiny. I want to hold all of it tight until it hollers out, 'Let me go! Let me go!'""

"Dear God," she prayed,"let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry . . . have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere-- be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost."

--from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

(which I just finished for the third time. Oh, I love this book with so much of me. It's one of those that's a friend. One of those that the first time I read it, I would turn the page and find a new piece of myself I hadn't known about before. If you haven't read it, you should pick it up in October, on a cool morning so new and full that it reminds you of a dozen other October mornings you can't quite remember, and it gathers until the unmemory is like a strong fragrance coming from the trees. Because that's the kind of book it is.)

neruda on poetry

"I have always wanted the hands of people to be seen in poetry. . . I have always preferred a poetry where the fingerprints show. A poetry of loam, where water can sing. A poetry of bread, where everyone may eat."

"Poetry is song and fertility. . . it emerged from its secret womb and flows, fertilizing and singing, It kindles with its swelling waters, it works at milling flour, tanning hides, cutting wood, giving light to cities."

choose the day

I've developed something of a Pablo Neruda obsession recently and am reading through the mammoth sized (1000+ pages) volume "Poetry of Pablo Neruda." I found a poem the other day that resonated, so deeply, with our (mine and Dan's) vision of who we are, and wanted to share the two most beautiful stanzas (the second of which is written on our chalkboard wall)--

"Two happy lovers make one bread,

a single moon drop in the grass.
Walking, they cast two shadows that flow together;
waking, they leave one sun empty in their bed.

Of all the possible truths, they chose the day;
they held it, not with ropes but with an aroma.
They did not shred the peace; they did not shatter words;
their happiness is a transparent tower."

dear old elwyn

"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."

E. B. White

to live by, pt. 3

"Love is like hash-- you have to have confidence in it to enjoy it."

--Colonel Carlton Carroway, from Road Show

to live by, pt. 2

"there is only one clear problem between a man and a woman: when one is in love and the other isn't. After that, it's all mechanics. "

--I copied this quote in an email draft, which makes me think it's from a movie I was watching at a moment when my laptop was handy, because if I had been reading I would have written it in my quote book. Anyway, dumbledy dumb that I am, I forgot to write down from whence it came. Anyone know?

compendium; or, a post written a month ago and never posted.

a category on our netflix recommendations page:

"critically-acclaimed suspenseful movies from the 1960's"

a quote I loved:

"All people have their ways of expressing kindness, and it seemed to Mrs. Sedley that a muffin and a quantity of orange marmalade spread out in a little cut-glass saucer would be peculiarly agreeable refreshments to Amelia in her most interesting situation."

-- from Vanity Fair, by William Thackery

our supper tonight:

St. Nectaire cheese

Orange Blossom Honey

Pesto

Baquette

Oil and Pepper

and oh it was tasty tasty.

compendium

I sat with Dan last night during the Duke-Baylor game, doing homework (actually read an entire Faulkner novel from 3:00 to 10:00-- I heart my attention span), and noticed that Baylor has got some of Richard Scary's Best Names Ever on their team. I call your attention to the following gems:

Quincy Acy

LaceDarius Dunn

Tweety Carter

I didn't have time to make a bracket this year, but I was planning to base my predictions on which team had more Exemplary Names. Had I done so, this right here might just have taken Baylor to the top.

Sometimes I love being a writer. Today I went to Cafe Brazil after school to have a mocha and get some writing done, and an overheard speech pattern of the woman at the table behind me triggered a whole set of new ideas and three pages of notes for my next short story. Moments like that are what keep me going.

Got 14 packages of pasta for 3.50 last week. Oh yeah.

Currently Listening: to one of Pottery Barn's ever-beloved jazz compilations. It's just right with the weather and my window down. Plus it's Elwood's favorite kind of music, and puts him in a peppy mood.

"Maybe you got a lot to learn

Don't waste another day!

Maybe you got to lose it all

Before you find your way.

Take a chance, play your part,

Make romance, though it may break your heart. . ."

Recently decided that I kind of love the name Nolan. It's so cool, but in an old-man-cool way, not an "aahh!!-hugh-jackman-named-his-kid-that!!!" way.

to live by, pt. 1

"The time to make up your mind about people is never."

--Tracy Lord + a lot of champagne, from The Philadelphia Story

E.B. White on starting a Model T Ford

"During my association with Model T's, self-starters were not a prevalent accessory. They were expensive and under suspicion. Your car came equipped with a serviceable crank, and the first thing you learned was how to Get Results. It was a special trick, and until you had learned it (usually from another Ford owner, but sometimes by a period of appalling experimentation) you might as well have been winding up an awning. The trick was to leave the ignition switch off, proceed to the animal's head, pull the choke (which was a little wire protruding through the radiator) and give the crank two or three nonchalant upward lifts. Then, whistling as though thinking about something else, you would saunter back to the driver's cabin, turn the ignition on, return to the crank, and this time, catching it on the down stroke, give it a quick spin with plenty of That. If this procedure was followed, the engine almost always responded - first with a few scattered explosions, then with a tumultuous gunfire, which you checked by racing around to the driver's seat and retarding the throttle. Often, if the emergency brake hadn't been pulled all the way back, the car advanced on you the instant the first explosion occurred and you would hold it back by leaning your weight against it. I can still feel my old Ford nuzzling me at the curb, as though looking for an apple in my pocket."

"For EARTH which is an intelligence hath a voice and a propensity to speak in all her parts."


--Christopher Smart, 16th century poet put in an insane asylum because of his habit of praying loudly and jubilantly at odd times in public places.

Two favorite quotes of mine, by which I try always to live, of which I was reminded by Logan's comment on a previous post. Enjoy, and take to heart.

"Attentiveness is the natural prayer of the soul."

"Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost."