Category: poise

I slightly altered this.

You learn.
After a while you learn the subtle difference
between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
and you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
and company doesn’t mean security.
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
and presents aren’t promises,
and you begin to accept your defeats
with your head up and your eyes open
with the grace of maturity, not the grief of a child,
and you learn to build all your roads on today
because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans
and futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
After a while you learn
that even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,
instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure.
That you really are strong.
And you really do have worth.
And you learn. And learn.

Jorge Luis Borges:

to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek.

to seek: to embrace the questions, be wary of answers.

“Around ten years ago, the world’s most famous sailor, Sir Peter Blake, took over leadership of the Cousteau Society and was murdered by pirates on the Amazon River close to where I was captured many years before.

Reid Stowe sails and sails and sails

He’s holding the World Record for Longest Solo At Sea.

“This very atmospheric old photo… In 1974, the Amazon River… captured by pirates.

“We were tied up for three nights and two days while the pirates stripped the boat and argued amongst themselves. They let us live… We untied ourselves and sailed out…

“Four months after my pirate experience at the age of 22, I went back to the Amazon and stole my catamaran out of the pirate’s den. I sailed up to Martinique where I rejoined my French sailing friends. That was when they took this photo of me on my catamaran.

“Imagine sailing to four continents on this 1,400 pound, 27 ft boat navigating with an old brass sextant and having no motor, no electricity, no radio, or life raft.

“Those were the days!

“Those years of sailing set the stage for me to conceive of accomplishing the longest sea voyage in history.

Reid

William Reid Stowe, born 1952, is an American artist and mariner [wiki]. Silly brave clearly romantic wonderful man and tremendous new family, unheralded gift, tells a story, you can write his screenplay, pirates and a’that, so unnewsy vogue, so merely gloriously our family.

Y’got your poems. Y’got your poems. Y’got these kids. Y’got these kids close far.

When I went out to start the truck this morning all the breath got sucked out of my lungs and my nostrils immediately froze together.

Having Come This Far ~ James Broughton

I’ve been through what my through was to be
I did what I could and couldn’t
I was never sure how I would get there

I nourished an ardor for thresholds
for stepping stones and for ladders
I discovered detour and ditch

I swam in the high tides of greed
I built sandcastles to house my dreams
I survived the sunburns of love

No longer do I hunt for targets
I’ve climbed all the summits I need to
and I’ve eaten my share of lotus

Now I give praise and thanks
for what could not be avoided
and for every foolhardy choice

I cherish my wounds and their cures
and the sweet enervations of bliss
My book is an open life

I wave goodbye to the absolutes
and send my regards to infinity
I’d rather be blithe than correct

Until something transcendent turns up
I splash in my poetry puddle
and try to keep God amused.

I think I’ll go ahead & splash & enervate & blithe. Transcendence with Ether I’ll leave to transcendence of ethers and other naughts we praise.

We’re facing things no humanity has. Much more than all the heroes. Let us be pioneering. The thing mountains do, prairies do, rivers and little streams.

Part of ours is you. Part of stars is you.

The first thing to do to become happier, paradoxically, is to accept painful emotions, to accept them as a part of being alive. You know, there are two kinds of people who don’t experience painful emotions such as anxiety or disappointment, sadness, envy; two kinds of people who don’t experience these painful emotions. They are the psychopaths and the dead.

The brain is not a butler to serve our whim. Mark Morford’s column in San Francisco’s Chronicle newspaper is pointing out we just don’t know much and that’s most true when we shrink the world to our beliefs.

You’ll enjoy this massive, humbling truth:

What we do not know still far outweighs what we do. Better yet, it always will.

…you could see that there’s a buffalo painted on his chest and on his face. And he sits there in complete comfort with this…

“And I remember looking at Buffalo Bull, a Grand Pawnee warrior named La-dóo-ke-a. I tried to imagine the distance, the connection, the bridges. And I was standing in front of this man, this painting, as Catlin did.

“I was about that far away and I could look at this painting, and I could see the texture of this man’s likeness. I could see the swirl of the brush.

“I could see the power, the power invested in this image. And I can imagine that Catlin would turn his head and look at this man, then turn back to where I was standing and transfer that image—that essence—from this man to this canvas.

“It’s a powerful image. You can see an Indian man here at his finest—during our finest times.

“And he had spiritual power and physical power—you could tell by his muscular body.

“In this particular one, you could see that there’s a buffalo painted on his chest and on his face. And he sits there in complete comfort with this, and he is presenting it.

“He says, “This is me. This is what I am.” And he’s proud of it.

“He gets power and strength from these images and this belief, and there’s no fear in his eye. There’s no threat in his eye, just confidence and strength. And that was good to see.

“Most of these paintings have similar traits—just this incredible strength and power. And it’s a good representation of our people at that time.”

What is the quality you most like in a man?
Kindness.

What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Kindness.

What do you most value in your friends?
That they ARE my friends.

writing down words

‘T has ever been the top of my desires,
The utmost height to which my wish aspires,
That Heaven would bless me with a small estate,
Where I might find a close obscure retreat;
There, free from noise and all ambitious ends,
Enjoy a few choice books, and fewer friends,
Lord of myself, accountable to none,
But to my conscience, and my God alone:
There live unthought of, and unheard of die,
And grudge mankind my very memory.
But since the blessing is, I find, too great
For me to wish for, or expect of fate;
Yet, maugre all the spite of destiny,
My thoughts and actions are, and shall be, free.

John Oldham (1653-1683)
“Lord of myself, accountable to none, but to my conscience, and my God alone.”

via laudator temporis acti – “praiser of time past”

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Would you buy a ticket to an evening with your local Complaint Choir ?!

Here’s the Internet Scout Project description:

You may have heard about a “chorus of complaints” as a phrase in a magazine article, casual conversation, or as a bit of acerbic social commentary. Well, it is now a very real cultural phenomenon.

The idea behind the Complaints Choirs Movement is that a group of people can get together to voice their complaints, and put them to song. They are creating a real choir of complaints, and the movement has become a worldwide success.

Learn how the process works. It’s easy.

Yes, a very well said insight on what we are:

I fell to dwelling upon the romance of the fog. And romantic it certainly was—the fog, like the grey shadow of infinite mystery, brooding over the whirling speck of earth; and men, mere motes of light and sparkle, cursed with an insane relish for work, riding their steeds of wood and steel through the heart of the mystery, groping their way blindly through the Unseen, and clamoring and clanging in confident speech the while their hearts are heavy with incertitude and fear. – Jack London, The Sea-Wolf

c. len bullard:

I can’t stand it sometimes. Nothing to it for aminals.
Us humans? Our links are arguments.

Emotion is way-y-y much more than we imagine.

I’m not saying you can’t ever be in a bad mood, but…

From the earliest moments of human awareness, gravity, sunlight, night and day, were obvious.

As well:

That health is more important than disease, that life is more important than death, that honor is preferable to dishonor, that faith and trust are preferable to doubt and cynicism, that the constructive is preferable to the destructive – all are self-evident statements not subject to proof.

Paul Handover is saying, “Truth is not something external to us; it is within us, all the time.”

😉 Plus, of course, what we’re learning from dogs.

Surely this is a fun brain tease, to invent new this, to discover one and only.

Petina Gappah

At a Harare café the other day, I was intrigued to hear an extremely well-toned and well-groomed blonde woman say, with all the confidence of the only one in Africa who does this, ‘I am the only person in Africa who does this.’ She and her companion moved away before I could find out what this was, leaving me in great suspense. I must confess that I have been obsessing over this this a little. Africa is so big, so vast, so incredibly ginormous. And yet this lady is the only one in the whole continent who does this.

What is this? Is she the only person in Africa who gives French pedicures to African poodles? The only person in Africa who eats her peas with honey, who has done it all her life, it makes the peas taste funny but it keeps them on the knife? The only person in Africa who does sudoku in a bath of vanilla milk and rose petals? The only person in Africa who eats her meals backwards, starting with dinner in the morning and ending with a nice continental breakfast in the evening? The only person in Africa who makes small scarves for bats?

[who] think with the whole of their bodies?

Ducks flying overhead.
Nuance passing back and forth.
Rhythm and volume testing the wind.

Each voice alters its feel when the speaker is blown off course by gusts, each duck using its quacks to inform the others about the state of the blast just in front, while also apprising, each replying and reassuring the others.

You never see what I see seeing you. Beauty will not fit twice.

If I could a walk a longer mile,
If I could talk a wider smile,
If I could bring a heavy weight to gravity,
If I could gild a deeper gold,
If I could find a finer bold,
There you’ll be aside of me.

Were I to have your eyes, eyes that swoon the stars to shine,
I’d love me with those eyes, I’d wash me with those eyes,
and bring our gentle manner to its etiquette and grace,
conjure our deepest passions to their potent restraint.
I’d lose my willfulness. I’d lose it in love.

Were I sculpt of your beauty, drawn in liquid color,
I’d pour my dance into my skin, move the world to melody.
I’d lose my fear. I’d lose it in love.

Were I to have your nature, spilled in heart and caved in sugar,
I’d wash you in delight and ravish your footsteps on this earth.
I’d lose my agony. I’d lose it in love.

Push the boat out, compañeros,
push the boat out, whatever the sea.
Who says we cannot guide ourselves
through the boiling reefs, black as they are,
the enemy of us all makes sure of it!
Mariners, keep good watch always
for that last passage of blue water
we have heard of and long to reach
(no matter if we cannot, no matter!)
in our eighty-year-old timbers
leaky and patched as they are but sweet
well seasoned with the scent of woods
long perished, serviceable still
in unarrested pungency
of salt and blistering sunlight. Out,
push it all out into the unknown!
Unknown is best, it beckons best,
like distant ships in mist, or bells
clanging ruthless from stormy buoys.

via wood s lot

“Tick is a humble genesis, tock a feeble apocalypse.”

We insist there’s a beginning and an end, addicted to it says Frank Kermode, otherwise we’d hear the clock as it is, tick, tick.

5 Year Old Sings National Anthem
star.wmv – 2:03 – YouTube

Fred Hart says, “This video will be all over the internet.”
John Dvorak says, “Wow! Sort of makes you wonder about reincarnation.”