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…
This is the hour, O soul, thy free flight into the wordless,Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best:Night, sleep, death, and the stars. — Walt Whitman, A Clear Midnight We each must sacrifice something in our days. Some of…
“History is, above all else, the creation and recording of that heritage; progress is its increasing abundance, preservation, transmission, and use. To those of us who study history not merely as a warning reminder of man’s follies and crimes, but also as an encouraging remembrance of generative souls, the past ceases to be a depressing…
And maybe it’s the time of yearYes, and maybe it’s the time of manAnd I don’t know who I amBut life is for learningWe are stardust, we are goldenWe are billion-year-old carbonAnd we got to get ourselvesBack to the garden— Joni Mitchell, Woodstock At first I thought it was simply the snow melting while I…
Work is a funny thing, for it represents so much of our identity, yet, if we live well, it’s only a small part of who we are. For if this life is about the accumulation of experiences, relationships, knowledge and self-understanding, work adds to each of these things but isn’t all of any of them….
Dear heart, I shall not altogether die.Something of my elusive scattered spiritshall within the line’s diaphanous urnby Poetry be piously preserved.— Samuel Beckett, Non Omnis Moriar Samuel Beckett’s first stanza is a mic drop precisely because we feel the truth in it. Non Omnis Moriar—not everything dies—because we create ripples that reverberate and live beyond…
“You are everything that the rest of the universe is not.” — Ogawa (via @bashosociety) Is it the ego speaking when you reflect on Ogawa’s words? The universe can feel overwhelmingly vast, and we are but bit players in the big scheme of things. Who are we to brashly believe we have a significant stake…
“Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.” – Walt Whitman The nagging begins in weak moments of fatigue or boredom or frustration: “More“, the voice says. “I want more” it persists. And the voice bleeds over to the blog now and then, with complaints about not…
Google maps is still helpfully telling me my car is parked 90 feet away. My car hasn’t moved since I went to restock the groceries Monday. But I appreciate the reminder of why someone wrote that code anyway. They were thinking of their normal – our collective normal – not this current abnormal. “Wherever you…
Reading history you learn just how violently brutal our ancestors were to each other. Read about people being drawn and quartered, most famously William Wallace, and you shake your head at the cruelty of the slow death. Listen to the Hardcore History podcast and every episode is about the brutality of mankind in wars from…