Last Tambourine

[dk-thrive]

If You’re Alive Than Act Alive

The human heart beats approximately 100,000 times a day -give it a reason to beat faster. The human body has trillions of nerve endings -give them something to feel. You’re going to break, so let it be wide open. You’re going to fumble, so let it be towards something worth crawling to. That thing that calls your name, chase it. That thing that rattles your bones, do it until your courage drowns out the fear. When your soul growls, feed it. When your skin tugs, shapeshift into something new. Your life is bread. Eat it. Soak it in salted butter, in rich olive oil and deep vinaigrette. Slurp the day - mouth open, belly ready, let the remnants stain your lips. Dance, your steps don’t have to be rhythmic. Sing, who cares if you can’t. Write postcards to who you once were. Let them see how well you lived.

— Lauren E. Bowman, If You're Alive Than Act Alive in "Shapeshifter: Poems" (Button Poetry, March 4, 2025)

[dk-thrive]

Fall in love and stay in love. Explode. Don’t intellectualize. Get passionate about ideas. Cram your head full of images. Stay in the library. Stay off the internet and all that crap. Read all the great books. Read all the great poetry. See all the great films. Fill your life with metaphors. And then explode.“

— Ray Bradbury, Conversations with Ray Bradbury. Edited by Steven L. Aggelis. (University Press of Mississippi, June 2004)

[brilandsupperclub]

[last-tambourine]

Everyone seems to remember that Ecarus flew too close to the sun.

But not that his father also told him not to fly too low and let the sea dampen his wings.

We only ever tell half the story

The falling off

Because hubris makes better cautionary tale than mediocrity does.

Daedalus understood something that we don’t like to admit.

Both directions kill you.

The only safe altitude is the one that requires constant adjustment.

Someone called me obsessive recently. They corrected themselves almost immediately and said extreme, like it helped.

I have been thinking about it since because I couldn’t work out if it was a warning, or a compliment, or both.

Which is probably enough answer.

I’ve seen what it costs. When you grip something too tightly the thing you’re holding on to starts taking pieces of you with it.

And somewhere between telling other people’s stories, writing my own, and trying to be useful to both, I’ve stopped believing the answer is balance.

The real choice is simpler and far worse.

Be viciously mediocre with the time you have

Or absolutely and unashamedly get after it.

Fly low and drown quietly

Fly high and risk the fall

The difference between all in and all consumed is smaller than it looks from the ground.

One starves you, the other erodes you

The trick and the only trick is learning to feel the wax soften before the feathers go.

To know the difference between burning and being on fire.

To make sure it’s the work you’re devouring, and not yourself.

~ Oscar Foraday

“Because who am if don’t give my whole heart every time...

I know that sounds excessive in a moment where everyone is so protective of their time and space. But I don’t think any of our time is “free”.

And regret has weight, and surviving is already hard enough without carrying the weight.

[valscrapbook]

[fravery]

Offline is the new luxury

Aiart by Kaoru Yamada

[fravery]

“Set wide the window. Let me drink the day.” ― Edith Wharton, Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verses

Art by Jungho Lee, Sunset (2012)

[fravery]

We are utterly, completely alone, and when I have been my most fragile, my most shattered, that has been when I have fully realized how vulnerable I am.

- Tennessee Williams

Edward Hopper

[enjoy-the-small-thingsxx]

[last-tambourine]

❤️

[wovi]

*

susan sontag

[wovi]

*

osho

[myelicia]

[last-tambourine]

something I realize now as english as a second language speaker

i never use big words

this is not intentional

i always use the simple words to describe a feeling a thought or an image

the most basic words

the ones I learned in the first few years i started learning the english language

i know the meaning of the big words and i can look up a new one

but when i am expressing myself in speaking or writing i tend to go back to the basics

~ last tambourine, a b c go

[dk-thrive]

Do you feed me? Brush me? Soothe me? Am I safe?

I wonder, as I feel myself dissolve into sadness. I have to sit down, and I try to remind myself: talking is only one way of relating, and perhaps we rely too heavily on it, forgetting that we can also connect through gestures, sounds, glances. I think about the nonverbal and preverbal entities in our lives: animals, newborns. They don’t want our explanations of love; they want to see it in action. Do you feed me? Brush me? Soothe me? Am I safe?

— Tory Henwood Hoen, Before I Forget: A Novel (St. Martin's Press, December 2, 2025)

[dk-thrive]

In this world made up of hunger and of seeking / a quiet luck to see a bird for what it is.

— Tara Bray, from "Starved by Tara Bray" in The Hudson Review, Summer Issue, 2015 (via Read a Little Poetry)

[julesofnature]

Feed the cat. Fold the towels. Clean the lint from the dryer. Say thank you for someone’s kindness. And mean it.

This is the temple – Not on some distant mountaintop, but here, in a messy kitchen, in a real apology in a long exhale when you’re stuck in morning traffic.

Enlightenment isn’t an escape. It’s seeing, really seeing, what’s right in front of you. It’s staying. Even when it’s uncomfortable. Even when it’s brutally mundane.

There’s holiness in every breath.

In doing the small things with love.

In the life you already have.

'The Forgotten Corners', by Jeff Foster

[dk-thrive]

I manage to read no more than a few pages. But those few pages already enclose for me whole universes

Don't be amazed if you see my eyes always wandering. In fact, this is my way of reading, and it is only in this way that reading proves fruitful for me. If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought, from image to image, in an itinerary of reasonings and fantasies that I feel the need to pursue to the end, moving away from the book until I have lost sight of it. The stimulus of reading is indispensable to me, and of meaty reading, even if, of every book, I manage to read no more than a few pages. But those few pages already enclose for me whole universes, which I can never exhaust.

— Italo Calvino, Why Read the Classics (Mariner Books, 1999)

[last-tambourine]

it is dark because it is dark

not because im trying too hard

~ last tambourine, sorry huxley