What kind of mind is odder
than his who mists
a mirror and then complains
that it’s not clear.
– Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz, “You Foolish Men”
Credits: Photo – aspiringmama. Poem: bostonpoetryslam via schwonwieder
Monday Mantra
October 27, 2014 by 6 Comments
Monday Mantra: Just Do It.
September 22, 2014 by 20 Comments
#13.
How do we forgive ourselves
for all of the things
we did not become?
~ David “Doc” Luben
Notes:
- Excerpt from “14 Lines from Love Letters or Suicide Notes” by David ‘Doc’ Luben. Luben was the feature poet on August 5th at the Vancouver Poetry Slam. Find the youtube video of the performance here. Original source: Artpropelled.
- Photograph: Stephan Wurst via Tri-ciclo
Monday Morning Mantra: Swim in Your Sea
August 11, 2014 by 10 Comments
Think of one of those Chuck Close self-portraits. The face takes up the entire image. You can see every pore. Some people try to introspect like that. But others see themselves in broader landscapes, in the context of longer narratives about forgiveness, or redemption or setback and ascent. Maturity is moving from the close-up to the landscape, focusing less on your own supposed strengths and weaknesses and more on the sea of empathy in which you swim, which is the medium necessary for understanding others, one’s self, and survival.
~ David Brooks, Introspective or Narcissistic?
Notes:
- Don’t miss David Brooks entire article in the NY Times here: Introspective or Narcissistic?
- Image: Chuck Close self-portrait from Cleveland State Art.
Monday Mantra
June 9, 2014 by 12 Comments
In conversation things can be metabolized and digested through somebody else — I say something to you and you can give it back to me in different forms — whereas you’ll notice that your own mind is very often extremely repetitive. It is very difficult to surprise oneself in one’s own mind. The vocabulary of one’s self-criticism is so impoverished and clichéd. We are at our most stupid in our self-hatred.
~ Adam Phillips, The Poetics of the Psyche
Adam Phillips, 59, is Britain’s most celebrated psychoanalytical writer. He explores in his wide-ranging views in a conversation with Paul Holdengräber as part of The Paris Review’s legendary interview series.
Sources: Quote – Brainpickings. Photograph: Thank you Carol.
Have you ever noticed how beautiful a sleeping person looks?
May 21, 2014 by 22 Comments
Not just the body but all natural things, when left undisturbed, move naturally toward beauty and wholeness. If you don’t keep repaving it every few years, an ugly parking lot will crack, grass will come up, and after 100 years or so you’ll probably have a beautiful forest. Your body is the same way. Stop “paving it over” with artificial ways of being, stop trying to be other than what you are, and it will move towards its natural state of health and beauty. It happens sooner than you think. Why else is rest so healing? Have you ever noticed how beautiful a sleeping person looks?
Credits: Quote – Psychodellomellojello via Karen’s Korner. Photograph: untitled by Marcin Grüner on Flickr.
Yes.
October 8, 2013 by 18 Comments
Your body
is not
a battlefield.
It’s time
to put down
your weapons.
~ Olivia
Quote Source: Sun For Her Soul via Your Eyes Blaze Out. Portrait Credit: Thierry DeHove
Sit. Feast on your life.
May 8, 2013 by 30 Comments
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you have ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
~ Derek Walcott, Love After Love
Derek Alton Walcott, 83, was born in Saint Lucia in the West Indies. He is a poet and playwright who received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is currently Professor of poetry at the University of Essex in the U.K. In addition to having won the Nobel, Walcott has won many literary awards over the course of his career including an Obie Award in 1971, a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award, a Royal Society of Literature Award, the Queen’s Medal for Poetry. (Source: Wiki)
Photograph of Derek Walcott (in 2003) by Richard Avedon. Poem Source: journalofanobody
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