today

[thecassidyhall]

[thecassidyhall]

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, and create— so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.

Pearl S. Buck

[thecassidyhall]

[thecassidyhall]

If a writer is so cautious that he never writes anything that cannot be criticized, he will never write anything that can be read. If you want to help other people you have got to make up your mind to write things that some men will condemn

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation 

[thecassidyhall]

[patshen]

I’ve been making observations about my process as I edit IPOS. The hope has been to understand why I gravitate towards certain images, how long I let an image sit before I cut, and how I instinctually craft an overall aesthetic to a scene. It’s been a healthy purging of the conventional,...

[thecassidyhall]

[thecassidyhall]

It is writing that invites the reader on a pilgrimage. Because it has to do with questions of belief - questions of how to live - it makes the pattern of pilgrimage explicit. But the way of the pilgrim, so to speak, is a common way of reading and writing. It is not the only way, of course, or the correct way, but it is a way that we actually do read and write, whether or not we acknowledge it. Certain books, certain writers, reach us at the center of ourselves, and we come to them in fear and trembling, in hope and expectation - reading so as to change, and perhaps to save, our lives.

Paul Elie 

[thecassidyhall]

11.25.14

Mary Oliver

[thecassidyhall]

11.6.2014

Sara Teasdale

[thecassidyhall]

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood. How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs. How rivers and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity while we ourselves dream of rising. How two hands touch and the bonds will never be broken. How people come, from delight or the scars of damage, to the comfort of a poem. Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say "Look!" and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.

MYSTERIES, YES, by Mary Oliver

[thecassidyhall]

I strongly believe that we are not put on this earth just to accumulate victories and trophies and avoid failures; but rather to be whittled and sandpapered down until what's left is who we truly are.

Ariana Huffington 

[thecassidyhall]

Daring to step into oneself is the bravest, strangest, most natural, most terrifying thing a person can do, because when you cease to wrap yourself in artifice you are naked, and when you are naked you are vulnerable. But vulnerability is the leading edge of truth. Being willing to sacrifice a false life is the only way to live a true one.

Charles M. Blow 

[thecassidyhall]

9.29.14

[thecassidyhall]

Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness, Mary Oliver

Every year we have been witness to it: how the world descends into a rich mash, in order that it may resume. And therefore who would cry out to the petals on the ground to stay, knowing, as we must, how the vivacity of what was is married to the vitality of what will be? I don’t say it’s easy, but what else will do if the love one claims to have for the world be true? So let us go on though the sun be swinging east, and the ponds be cold and black, and the sweets of the year be doomed.

[thecassidyhall]

9.21.14

[thecassidyhall]

9.18.2014