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Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower

Quiet friend who has come so far, feel how your breathing makes more space around you. Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring, what batters you becomes your strength. Move back and forth into the change. What is it like, such intensity of pain? If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine. In this uncontainable night, be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses, the meaning discovered there. And if the world has ceased to hear you, say to the silent earth: I flow. To the rushing water, speak: I am.

- Rainier Marie Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus II

A small ginger cat arrives on my terrace every afternoon, to curl up in the sun and slumber peacefully for a couple of hours. When he awakes, he gets on his feet with minimum effort, arches his back and walks away as he had come. The same spot every day, the same posture, the same pace. There may be better spots—sunnier, quieter, frequented by birds that can be hunted when the cat is rested and restored. But there is no guarantee, and the search will be never-ending, and there may rarely be time to sleep after all that searching and finding. It occurs to me that perhaps the cat is a monk. By this I do not mean anything austere. I doubt anyone in single minded pursuit of enlightenment ever finds it. A good monk would be a mild sort of fellow, a bit of a sensualist, capable of compassion for the world, but also for himself. He would know that it is all right not to climb every mountain. A good monk would know that contentment is easier to attain than happiness, and that it is enough.

Ruskin Bond

Growing up, we say, as though we were trees, as though altitude was all that there was to be gained, but so much of the process is growing whole as the fragments are gathered, the patterns found. Human infants are born with craniums made up of four plates that have not yet knit together into a solid dome so that their heads can compress to fit through the birth canal, so that the brain within can then expand. The seams of these plates are intricate, like fingers interlaced, like the meander of arctic rivers across tundra. The skull quadruples in size in the first few years, and if the bones knit together too soon, they restrict the growth of the brain; and if they don't knit at all the brain remains unprotected. Open enough to grow and closed enough to hold together is what a life must also be. We collage ourselves into being, finding the pieces of a worldview and people to love and reasons to live and then integrate them into a whole, a life consistent with its beliefs and desires, at least if we're lucky.

Rebecca Solnit

For One Who Holds Power

May the gift of leadership awaken in you as a vocation, Keep you mindful of the providence that calls you to serve.

As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its wings, May your perspective be larger than the view from the foothills.

When the way is flat and dull in times of gray endurance, May your imagination continue to evoke horizons.

When thirst burns in times of drought, May you be blessed to find the wells.

May you have the wisdom to read time clearly And know when the seed of change will flourish.

In your heart may there be a sanctuary For the stillness where clarity is born.

May your work be infused with passion and creativity And have the wisdom to balance compassion and challenge.

May your soul find the graciousness To rise above the fester of small mediocrities. May your power never become a shell Wherein your heart would silently atrophy. May you welcome your own vulnerability As the ground where healing and truth join.

May integrity of soul be your first ideal. The source that will guide and bless your work.

- John O’Donohue

Acceptance Speech After Setting the World Record in Goosebumps

i wasn’t by any means a natural was not one of those wow hounds born jaw dropped

i was tough in the husk went years untouched by rain took shelter seriously even and often especially in good weather

my tears like teenagers hiding under the hoods of my eyes so committed they were to never falling for the joke of astonishment when i was told there were seven wonders of the world i trusted the math,believed i had seen none of them of course

beauty hunted me it haunts everyone but i outran it, hid in worry regret the promise of an afterlife or a week’s end then one day in a red velvet theater in new orleans i watched maya angelou walk on stage 17 slow steps to the mic she took a breath before speaking i could hear god being born in that breath my every pore reached out like a hand pointing to the first unsinkable lotus in the bio of the universe i never felt anything like it searched the encyclopedia for the feeling’s name when i got home goosebumps

afterward i thought i can do this started training morning night crowbar swinging like a pendulum at the wall of my chest tore the caution tape off my life and let everything touch it

allen iverson on the television in his first season with the sixers crossover sharp as a v of sparrows flying through the paint like michelangelo’s brush 333 goosebumps

my baby sister sober for the first time in 13 years calling to tell me she just noticed our mother’s eyes are green 505 goosebumps

one day my friend scored tickets to a prince concert tiny venue i was right behind the sound booth prince’s entire band that evening: women at the end of the show the sound person turned around and whispered he didn’t play one song on his setlist the whole night i live on stages i know what it is to scratch a plan but not the whole trip and still arrive to your destination 200 years before your time 421 artists formerly known as goosebumps

but that’s just the fancy stuff some of them came from simple facts it rains diamonds on jupiter 189 goosebumps

blood donors in sweden receive a thank you message when their blood is used 301 nordic goosebumps

one night in michigan my friend still undiagnosed could not uncurl her fingers to strum her guitar so she sang the chords instead it was the first time in my life i’d seen pain become an instrument ten dozen goosebumps for each and every note plucked from the string section of her refusal to silence her dream

after that nothing in the world was great even the movie of my past was released in color the oldest man in my hometown could not get to the door to listen to our carols so we went inside and sang at his bedside instead 24 boots on the front step catching snowflakes with their tongue 776 goosebumps

at one point everything started doing it a sincere apology 221 goosebumps an enemy’s love poem 222 goosebumps

the moon rising over the continental divide my girl and i thought it was a car driving off a cliff and suddenly nothing in the world was dying you ever felt that a split second when nothing in the world is dying 888 goosebumps

and the next day i sharpened a tiny axe so i could split the seconds myself too much lives in a moment to not feed it to the fire and the heart slow a missoula treehouse filled with candlelight 143 goosebumps

the octopus documentary 54 goosebumps multiplied by eight

the biggest dog in the shelter hiding behind a teacup chihuahua and the woman who came to adopt a cat taking all three of them home 1012 goosebumps

there is no escaping the magic now beauty caught me and never let me go and the thing about the world record is if someone breaks it after me and they will break it after me i will love that so much that without even trying i’ll break it again

Andrea Gibson

When Giving is All We Have

One river gives Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us. We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us. We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it, We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet, Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too, But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand, Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow. Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.

- Albert Rios

The Birthday of the World

On the birthday of the world I begin to contemplate what I have done and left undone, but this year not so much rebuilding of my perennially damaged psyche, shoring up eroding friendships, digging out stumps of old resentments that refuse to rot on their own. No, this year I want to call myself to task for what I have done and not done for peace. How much have I dared in opposition? How much have I put on the line for freedom? For mine and others? As these freedoms are pared, sliced and diced, where have I spoken out? Who have I tried to move? In this holy season, I stand self-convicted of sloth in a time when lies choke the mind and rhetoric bends reason to slithering choking pythons. Here I stand before the gates opening, the fire dazzling my eyes, and as I approach what judges me, I judge myself. Give me weapons of minute destruction. Let my words turn into sparks.

- Marge Piercy

All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.

Karen Blixen

A good teacher does not teach facts, he or she teaches enthusiasm, open-mindedness and values.

Gian-Carlo Rota

I confessed that I had a burning desire to be excellent, but no faith that I could be.

Martha said to me, very quietly: “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. As for you, Agnes, you have so far used about one-third of your talent.”

“But,” I said, “when I see my work I take for granted what other people value in it. I see only its ineptitude, inorganic flaws, and crudities. I am not pleased or satisfied.”

“No artist is pleased.”

“But then there is no satisfaction?”

“No satisfaction whatever at any time,” she cried out passionately. “There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

- Agnes de Mille recounting a conversation with Martha Graham

To be of use

The people I love the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shallows and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight. They seem to become natives of that element, the black sleek heads of seals bouncing like half-submerged balls. I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart, who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience, who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward, who do what has to be done, again and again. I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along, who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out. The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust. But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident. Greek amphoras for wine or oil, Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums but you know they were made to be used. The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real.

- Marge Piercy

Notebook, 1981

I was so willing to pull a page out of my notebook, a day, several bright days and live them as if I was only alive, thirsty, timeless, young enough, to do this one more time, to dare to have nothing so much to lose and to feel that potential dying of the self in the light as the only thing I thought that was spiritual, possible and because I had no other way to call that mind, I called it poetry, but it was flesh and time and bread and friends frightened and free enough to want to have another day that way, tear another page.

— Eileen Myles

Ordinal

i like the phrase devil's threesome because it implies to me the existence of a spiritual ranking of threesomes i looked into a mirror that said meet the person most responsible for your safety and that felt like a lot of pressure ideally i would like to be standing between two large men with safe hands and the devil watching merritt k

“There is no measuring with time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does come. But it comes only to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly still and wide. I learn it daily, learn it with pain to which I am grateful: patience is everything!”

- Rainer Maria Rilke

These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people—amongst whom your life is passed—that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire—for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience. And I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much better than this, in which we get up in the morning to do our daily work, that you would be likely to turn a harder, colder eye on the dusty streets and the common green fields—on the real breathing men and women, who can be chilled by your indifference or injured by your prejudice; who can be cheered and helped onward by your fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your outspoken, brave justice.

- George Eliot

Remember what you must do when they undervalue you, when they think your softness is your weakness, when they treat your kindness like it is their advantage.

You awaken every dragon, every wolf, every monster that sleeps inside you and you remind them what hell looks like when it wears the skin of a gentle human.

The best captain doesn’t rush in front.

The fiercest fighter doesn’t bluster.

The big winner isn’t competing.

This is the power of noncompetition.

This is the right use of ability.

To follow heaven’s lead

has always been the best way.

- Lao Tzu

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