PoetiCulture

For appreciation of the written word

[poeticulture]

So remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes a universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t just give up.

Stephen Hawking

[poeticulture]

So often in life the things you regard as an impediment turn out to be great, good fortune.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

[poeticulture]

The events of the past day have proven to me that I am wholly alive, and that no matter what transpires from here on in, I have truly lived.

Anonymous climber

[poeticulture]

Where We Dwell - Arian Foster

When minds are at war with hearts, And light is at war with dark, This is where glory dwells, Where warriors whisper hymns, Of blood lost in vain, Where time twists and bends, And echoes all our names, Here is where those diamonds dwell, Polished in dust. From swamps to stars, we dreamed far, They called it far-fetched, we called it ours. We called them lessons, they called them scares, They call it blessings, this work was hard, That is where we dwell. The past worn as capes, memory as armor, The karma we bring, Sings truth to the soul Like kings mingling with pawns, or soup in my bowl. We came from golden slums and makeshift drums, But our music made the spaceships come, Navigate our thoughts and sever our tongues, unbound by men, Forever we run.

[theimpishgrin]

Think excitement, talk excitement, act out excitement, and you are bound to become an excited person. Life will take on a new zest, deeper interest and greater meaning. You can think, talk and act yourself into dullness or into monotony and unhappiness. By the same process you can build up inspiration, excitement and surging depth of joy.

Norman Vincent Peale (via theimpishgrin)

[poeticulture]

A Love Letter: Johnny Cash to June Carter

Originally found here:

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June 23 1994

Odense Denmark

Happy Birthday Princess,

We get old and get used to each other. We think alike. We read each others minds. We know what the other wants without asking. Sometimes we irritate each other a little bit. Maybe sometimes take each other for granted.

But once in a while, like today, I meditate on it and realize how lucky I am to share my life with the greatest woman I ever met. You still fascinate and inspire me. You influence me for the better. You're the object of my desire, the #1 earthly reason for my existence. I love you very much.

Happy Birthday Princess.

John

[poeticulture]

No day shall erase you from the memory of time.

Virgil

[poeticulture]

John Steinbeck on Falling in Love

Sourced from The Atlantic. Article can be found here.

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New York November 10, 1958

Dear Thom:

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First -- if you are in love -- that's a good thing -- that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don't let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second -- There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you -- of kindness and consideration and respect -- not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply -- of course it isn't puppy love.

But I don't think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it -- and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone -- there is no possible harm in saying so -- only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another -- but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I'm glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens -- The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Love,

Fa

[poeticulture]

“The compensation for dying is that I will learn all the things I was not able to learn here on Earth.”

Alexander Imich, An Ever-Curious Spirit, Unbeaten After 111 Years

[poeticulture]

[poeticulture]

Every account of a higher power that I've seen described, of all religions that I've seen, include many statements with regard to the benevolence of that power. When I look at the universe and all the ways the universe wants to kill us, I find it hard to reconcile that with statements of beneficence.

Neil deGrasse-Tyson

[poeticulture]

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare.

Audre Lorde

[poeticulture]

“I am both happy and sad at the same time, and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be."

Stephen Chbosky, Perks of Being a Wallflower

[poeticulture]

“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”

Charles Bukowski

[poeticulture]

The Men That Don't Fit In - Robert W. Service

There's a race of men that don't fit in,     A race that can't stay still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin,     And they roam the world at will. They range the field and they rove the flood,     And they climb the mountain's crest; Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,     And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;     They are strong and brave and true; But they're always tired of the things that are,     And they want the strange and new. They say: "Could I find my proper groove,     What a deep mark I would make!" So they chop and change, and each fresh move     Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs     With a brilliant, fitful pace, It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones     Who win in the lifelong race. And each forgets that his youth has fled,     Forgets that his prime is past, Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,     In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;     He has just done things by half. Life's been a jolly good joke on him,     And now is the time to laugh. Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;     He was never meant to win; He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;     He's a man who won't fit in.

[poeticulture]

"We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. We say to girls, ‘You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful. Otherwise you will threaten the man.’ Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage. I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is the most important. Now marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support. But why do we teach to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same? We raise girls to see each other as competitors – not for jobs or for accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing, but for the attention of men. We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are. Feminist: the person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes."

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, TEDxEuston. Sampled in Beyoncé's “Flawless”.

[poeticulture]

Burnt Norton - T.S. Eliot [Part I of the Four Quartets]

τοῦ λόγου δὲ ἐόντος ξυνοῦ ζώουσιν οἱ πολλοίὡς ἰδίαν ἔχοντες φρόνησινI.

p. 77. Fr. 2.

ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω μία καὶ ὡυτήI.

p. 89 Fr. 60.

  I

Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable. What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind.                                    But to what purpose Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves I do not know.                                    Other echoes Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow? Quick, said the bird, find them, find them, Round the corner. Through the first gate, Into our first world, shall we follow The deception of the thrush? Into our first world. There they were, dignified, invisible, Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves, In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air, And the bird called, in response to The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery, And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses Had the look of flowers that are looked at. There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting. So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern, Along the empty alley, into the box circle, To look down into the drained pool. Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged, And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight, And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly, The surface glittered out of heart of light, And they were behind us, reflected in the pool. Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty. Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children, Hidden excitedly, containing laughter. Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind Cannot bear very much reality. Time past and time future What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present.

II

Garlic and sapphires in the mud Clot the bedded axle-tree. The thrilling wire in the blood Sings below inveterate scars Appeasing long forgotten wars. The dance along the artery The circulation of the lymph Are figured in the drift of stars Ascend to summer in the tree We move above the moving tree In light upon the figured leaf And hear upon the sodden floor Below, the boarhound and the boar Pursue their pattern as before But reconciled among the stars.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where. And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time. The inner freedom from the practical desire, The release from action and suffering, release from the inner And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving, Erhebung without motion, concentration Without elimination, both a new world And the old made explicit, understood In the completion of its partial ecstasy, The resolution of its partial horror. Yet the enchainment of past and future Woven in the weakness of the changing body, Protects mankind from heaven and damnation Which flesh cannot endure.                                                     Time past and time future Allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden, The moment in the arbour where the rain beat, The moment in the draughty church at smokefall Be remembered; involved with past and future. Only through time time is conquered.

III

Here is a place of disaffection Time before and time after In a dim light: neither daylight Investing form with lucid stillness Turning shadow into transient beauty Wtih slow rotation suggesting permanence Nor darkness to purify the soul Emptying the sensual with deprivation Cleansing affection from the temporal. Neither plentitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker Over the strained time-ridden faces Distracted from distraction by distraction Filled with fancies and empty of meaning Tumid apathy with no concentration Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind That blows before and after time, Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs Time before and time after. Eructation of unhealthy souls Into the faded air, the torpid Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London, Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney, Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.

      Descend lower, descend only Into the world of perpetual solitude, World not world, but that which is not world, Internal darkness, deprivation And destitution of all property, Dessication of the world of sense, Evacuation of the world of fancy, Inoperancy of the world of spirit; This is the one way, and the other Is the same, not in movement But abstention from movememnt; while the world moves In appetency, on its metalled ways Of time past and time future.

IV

Time and the bell have buried the day, the black cloud carries the sun away. Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray Clutch and cling? Chill Fingers of yew be curled Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still At the still point of the turning world.

V

Words move, music moves Only in time; but that which is only living Can only die. Words, after speech, reach Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern, Can words or music reach The stillness, as a Chinese jar still Moves perpetually in its stillness. Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts, Not that only, but the co-existence, Or say that the end precedes the beginning, And the end and the beginning were always there Before the beginning and after the end. And all is always now. Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Will not stay still. Shrieking voices Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering, Always assail them. The Word in the desert Is most attacked by voices of temptation, The crying shadow in the funeral dance, The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.

      The detail of the pattern is movement, As in the figure of the ten stairs. Desire itself is movement Not in itself desirable; Love is itself unmoving, Only the cause and end of movement, Timeless, and undesiring Except in the aspect of time Caught in the form of limitation Between un-being and being. Sudden in a shaft of sunlight Even while the dust moves There rises the hidden laughter Of children in the foliage Quick now, here, now, always- Ridiculous the waste sad time Stretching before and after.