Many months ago I dropped what used to be Twitter from my life. I missed it immediately, not for the political extremism but for the carefully cultivated feed I’d developed over the years I had it. Sometimes I still miss that, because the alternatives aren’t all that great yet. But I keep pressing on with…
“The appearance of things changes according to the emotions; and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.” ― Kahlil Gibran, The Broken Wings Who said that every wishWould be heard and answeredWhen wished on the morning starSomebody thought of thatAnd someone believed itAnd look what…
“All morning I lay down sentences, erase them, and try new ones. Soon enough when things go well, the world around me dwindles: the sky out the window, the furious calm of the big umbrella pine ten feet away, the smell of dust falling onto the hot bulb of the lamp. That’s the miracle of…
“We need habit to get through a day, to get to work, to feed our children. But habit is dangerous too. The act of seeing can quickly become unconscious and automatic. The eyes see something—gray-brown bark, say, fissured into broad, vertical plates—and the brain spits out tree trunk and the eye moves on. But did…
Well, it’s a marvelous night for a moondanceWith the stars up above in your eyesA fantabulous night to make romance‘Neath the cover of October skiesAnd all the leaves on the trees are fallingTo the sound of the breezes that blowYou know I’m tryin’ to please to the callingOf your heartstrings that play soft and lowYou…
“I’ll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore.” ― Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things:…
You learn quickly that you simply cannot write as effectively when a puppy has a squeaky toy in close proximity to you (anywhere you can hear it counts). So you redirect that puppy towards another toy that doesn’t squeak, at least for that time when you’re writing. This process works equally well with mobile phones…
“The poet doesn’t invent. He listens.” — Jean Cocteau The thing about listening is we sometimes hear things contrary to the way we’ve always done things. Do we follow this path or stick with the tried and true? What’s so true about the tried anyway? The muse isn’t the author, it’s the voice of countless…
“No matter what the art, the most important thing is to establish who you really are. That is, move from the ego-centered self to the absolute self.” — Awa Kenzo, Zen Bow, Zen Arrow When I was a teenager I tried my hand at welding in a class. I found it thrilling to take a…
I stepped away from the platform formerly known as Twitter some time ago, losing a familiar information source but gaining meaningful time in my life. The replacement platforms haven’t measured up, but I stay with them anyway. For all the hype about Nest and Mastodon, they haven’t come close to what Twitter was at its…