Notes: Image via poppins-me
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
March 9, 2020 by 13 Comments
And if, as we work, we can transmit life into our work,
life, still more life, rushes into us to compensate, to be ready
and we ripple with life through the days.
– D. H. Lawrence from “We are Transmitters” in The Complete Poems of D.H. Lawrence
Notes: Poem, thank you Beth @ Alive on all Channels. Photo: Mikael Aldo
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
March 2, 2020 by 40 Comments
I suppose if there is a reckoning in middle age, it’s a tragic sense that you have been formed by things, and sent hither and thither by those things, and put in a frenzy and made to run around the place, and up and down the house in the service of those things, and they were not real. They were the product of your upbringing or conditioning or gender or social class. And I think there’s a certain point where suddenly the grip of all of that on you loosens. It’s like a stage set beginning to sort of crumble, and you start to see it wobbling, and I think you can get some really startling and frightening perspectives on identity once you start looking at it from there. The thought that you’ve wasted your entire life in the service of things that didn’t really exist – that you were in a prison where the door, in fact, was open, and you’ve sat there all this time . . .
~ Rachel Cusk, in an interview by Sheila Heti (Paris Review, Art of Fiction No. 246, Spring 2020)
Photo: Rachel Cusk in NY Times
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
February 24, 2020 by 16 Comments
Outside I could hear a spring robin, a melancholy sound more searching than song to me.
~ Jessica Francis Kane, Rules for Visiting
Photo: Robin singing
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
January 27, 2020 by 40 Comments
It all matters. That someone turns out the lamp, picks up the windblown wrapper, says hello to the invalid, pays at the unattended lot, listens to the repeated tale, folds the abandoned laundry, plays the game fairly, tells the story honestly, acknowledges help, gives credit, says good night, resists temptation, wipes the counter, waits at the yellow, makes the bed, tips the maid, remembers the illness, congratulates the victor, accepts the consequences, takes a stand, steps up, offers a hand, goes first, goes last, chooses the small portion, teaches the child, tends to the dying, comforts the grieving, removes the splinter, wipes the tear, directs the lost, touches the lonely, is the whole thing.
What is most beautiful is least acknowledged.
What is worth dying for is barely noticed.
— Laura McBride, We Are Called to Rise: A Novel
Photo: Patty Maher, with The Red String. “Based on the Japanese legend that a red string ties us to all those with whom we will make history and all those whom we will help in one way or another.” Laura McBride quote from A Sea of Quotes.
Tuesday Morning Wake-Up Call (Post Long Weekend)
January 21, 2020 by 15 Comments
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
January 13, 2020 by 20 Comments
You really don’t have to lose everything and travel to a remote valley to discover that the world is always rushing forward to teach us, and that the greatest thing we can do is stand there, open and available, and be taught by it. There is no limit to what this cracked and broken and achingly beautiful world can offer, and there is equally no limit to our ability to meet it.
Each day, the sun rises and we get out of bed. Another day has begun and bravely, almost recklessly, we stagger into it not knowing what it will bring to us. How will we meet this unpredictable, untamable human life? How will we answer its many questions and challenges and delights? What will we do when we find ourselves, stumble over ourselves, encounter ourselves, once again, in the kitchen?
~ Dana Velden, Finding Yourself in the Kitchen: Kitchen Meditations and Inspired Recipes from a Mindful Cook (Rodale Books, September 8, 2015)
Notes:
- Quote source – Thank you Catherine @ beyondthefieldsweknow.org. Be sure to check out her blog and her design studio @ The KerrdeLune Design Works.
- Photo: elenandrevn (via BruWho)
- Post inspired by Make Believe Boutique: “When the True Self breaks through, a new and impassioned approach to life often makes itself known. We tap into an inner radiance that I call delight. I’m speaking of a unique kind of response to life that can coexist with our most painful realities. I’m speaking of the joy of saying yes to life in the core of our being. I believe that the capacity to delight in life is deeply carved by our waiting. Delight can become a way of life, a way of journeying. There’s a saying, “Religion is not to be believed, but danced.” I like this idea, as it shifts the emphasis from our endless pursuit of religious knowledge back to the dimension of living our religion in such a way that it becomes a dance, a celebration in which we open our arms and say yes to life. ~ Sue Monk Kidd, “When the Heart Waits. Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions”
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
January 6, 2020 by 41 Comments
Don’t ask. Don’t ask how many times I’ve watched this loop. Source: gifycat. Thank you Jack.
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
April 22, 2019 by 24 Comments
sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think,
I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside
remembering all the times you’ve felt that way, and
you walk to the bathroom, do your toilet, see that face
in the mirror, oh my oh my oh my, but you comb your hair anyway,
get into your street clothes, feed the cats, fetch the
newspaper of horror, place it on the coffee table, kiss your
wife goodbye, and then you are backing the car out into life itself,
like millions of others you enter the arena once more.
you are on the freeway threading through traffic now,
moving both towards something and towards nothing at all as you punch
the radio on and get Mozart, which is something, and you will somehow
get through the slow days and the busy days and the dull
days and the hateful days and the rare days, all both so delightful
and so disappointing because
we are all so alike and so different.
you find the turn-off, drive through the most dangerous
part of town, feel momentarily wonderful as Mozart works
his way into your brain and slides down along your bones and
out through your shoes.
it’s been a tough fight worth fighting
as we all drive along
betting on another day.
— Charles Bukowski, “Gamblers All” in The Night Torn Mad With Footsteps
Notes: Portrait of Bukowski by Patrick Jarnoux / Paris Match via Getty Images via PBS News Hour. Poem: Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
April 15, 2019 by 31 Comments
…wake up at six in the morning to make coffee…stay in bed, curled up under the comforter, hair tangled, skin warm, purring with pleasure.
~ Maylis de Kerangal, The Heart: A Novel
Photo: Barber in Moustache Magazine, Dec 2, 2015 (via mennyfox55)
