get up ya bowsies /  and clean out your cells

What time of day do you write?

There’s an Irish song written by Brendan Behan that goes: In the early mornin’ /  the screws were bawling /  get up ya bowsies /  and clean out your cells. Well, that’s how I feel in the early morning: Get up, ya bowsie. I want to get up before the small mundanities and the stupidities and the prison guards of the Internet. Clean out my cell. Or my cells. Get the words down on paper. A perfect day for me begins in the dark before anyone else has woken, say 4:30 or 5 am. Two hours or so of this. In the quiet. And then, when the house begins to stir, the rest of my life will too. But for a small parcel of early morning hours, I feel entirely free. And then I go out and walk the dog.

~ Colum McCann, from “Colum McCann on Ulysses, Mary Lavin, and Drinking with John Berger” (Literary Hub, February 25, 2020)


Notes: Thank you Sawsan for sharing.

It is simply the chattering of the fallen mind

painting, art,woman,portrait, close-up

Today we have more time to dwell on our problems than our ancestors ever did. Our free time is dominated by a hundred and one distractions. Thus, when we do get a free moment, the thoughts in our heads think that nothing is happening and want to move quickly to something more pressing. This leaves us with a feeling of “lack of fulfillment” which some people actually mistake for life itself, when in fact it is simply the chattering of the fallen mind. It is not more life itself than the exhaust of a bus is the bus itself.

~Archimandrite Meletios Webber


References/Credits:

The outcome of my days

black and white

“The outcome of my days is always the same; an infinite desire for what one never gets; a void one cannot fill; an utter yearning to produce in all ways, to battle as much as possible against time that drags us along, and the distractions that throw a veil over our soul.”

~ Eugene Delacroix, “The Journal of Eugene Delacroix


Credits: Image – Your Eyes Blazeout. Quote – The Hidden Abyss


Sunday afternoons…

fireplace, couch, lazy, afternoon, relax, peace, zen


“The way my Sunday afternoons go, I end up doing a little bit of various things, none very well. It’s a struggle to concentrate on any one thing. This particular day, everything seems to be going right. I think, Today I’ll read this book, listen to these records, answer these letters. Today, for sure, I’ll clean out my desk drawers, run errands, wash the car for once. But two o’clock rolls around, three o’clock rolls around, gradually dusk comes on, and all my plans are blown. I haven’t done a thing; I’ve been lying around on the sofa the whole day, same as always.”

~ Haruki Murakami


Murakami is one of my favorite authors (Kafka on the Shore; The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle; Norwegian Wood).  In addition to being an award winning and prolific writer, he’s a marathoner and triathlete.  If he lands here on Sunday afternoons, I’m good. 🙂


Quote Source: Creatingaquietmind.  Image Source: weheartit.com

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