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Lightly child, lightly

September 13, 2019 by 20 Comments

Like breath or a balloon, I’m rising,
I hover six inches in the air
in my blazing swan-egg of light.
You think I’m not a goddess?
Try me.
This is a torch song.
Touch me and you’ll burn.

– Margaret Atwood, from “Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing”

 

Notes:

  • Poem Source: Anne Sexton Appreciation. Photo: Deviant Art
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
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Lightly Child, Lightly.

April 4, 2019 by 15 Comments

You thought the happiness
would appear simply, without effort
or any kind of work,

like a bird call
or a pathside flower
or a school of silvery fish

– Margaret Atwood, from “Your Children Cut Their Hands…” in “The Door”

Notes:

  • Poem: via Adrasteiax; Photo: Noell Oszvald with The illumination (via see more)
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”

 

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Lightly Child, Lightly.

January 11, 2018 by 13 Comments


I’m getting somewhere now, I’m feeling lighter. I’m coming unstuck from scrapbooks, from albums, from diaries, and journals, from space, from time. Only a paragraph left, only a sentence or two, only a whisper.

I was born.

I was.

I.

– Margaret Atwood, from “Life Stories,” in The Tent

Notes:

  • Painting: The Blue Hour by Jon B. Paulsen
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
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It’s been a long day

December 14, 2016 by 5 Comments

fingers-massage

Take me to your trees.
Take me to your breakfasts,
your sunsets,
your bad dreams,
your shoes,
your nouns.
Take me to your fingers.

— Margaret Atwood, from Good Bones

Notes:

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It’s been a long day

May 18, 2016 by 3 Comments

The Storm by machihuahua

But most hearts say, I want, I want,
I want, I want. My heart
is more duplicitous,
though no twin as I once thought.
It says, I want, I don’t want, I
want, and then a pause.
It forces me to listen […]

It is a constant pestering
in my ears, a caught moth, limping drum,
a child’s fist beating
itself against the bedsprings:
I want, I don’t want.
How can one live with such a heart?

Long ago I gave up singing
to it, it will never be satisfied or lulled.
One night I will say to it:
Heart, be still,
and it will.

– Margaret Atwood, excerpts from The Woman Who Could Not Live With Her Faulty Heart from Selected Poems II: 1976 – 1986 

 

Notes:

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Lightly child, lightly

August 20, 2015 by 13 Comments

portrait-back-woman

But most hearts say,
I want, I want, I want, I want.
My heart is more duplicitous,
though no twin as I once thought.
It says, I want, I don’t want, I want,
and then a pause.
It forces me to listen…

— Margaret Atwood, from Selected Poems II: 1976 – 1986 

Credits:

  • Image Source: Jenna McElroy (via Journal of a Nobody)
  • Quote Source: Paper Ghosts
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
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Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you’ve been.

March 2, 2014 by 30 Comments

highway-sunset-motorcyle

When you’re young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling time in your hands, tossing it away. You’re your own speeding car. You think you can get rid of things, and people too — leave them behind. You don’t yet know about the habit they have, of coming back.

Time in dreams is frozen. You can never get away from where you’ve been.

~ Margaret Atwood, “The Blind Assassin”
 
 
Poem Source: Call Me Gabrielle. Photograph: jjones
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Sunday Morning: You never found us. It was the other way around.

December 9, 2012 by 16 Comments

forest, woods, trees, tall trees

The Moment

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

by Margaret Atwood

Sources: Poem via Growing-Orbits via chasingtailfeathers.  Image: Plagved

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Late August…

August 28, 2012 by 14 Comments

poem, poetry, summer, august, seasons, lifestyle, life

Author: Margaret Atwood

Source: Teaching Literacy

Related Posts: What touches you is what you touch…

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What touches you is what you touch…

March 18, 2012 by 41 Comments

Good Sunday Morning.

I just crossed my six-month anniversary on this blogging journey. I thought I’d share a bit of my reflection.

It all started on Google+ in September.  Result: Crickets. Crickets? No one there.

I then moved to Facebook.  Result: Literally got thrown out by some “Friends” and “de-Friended” by others.  Wrong platform.

And then I found WordPress. Home sweet home.

I labored over my blog title selection and landed on “Lead. Learn. Live.”  My son suggested that the tag line was missing symmetry.  That it needed another “L” and it should be “Lead. Learn. Live. Loser.”  (Is it any wonder then why I desperately need external sources of inspiration?)

[Read more…]

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