(no subject)
Oct. 26th, 2010 08:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inspiredlifeToday has been a not good day. How much like a broken record do I sound? Remember way back in 2005 when I was the eternally peppy one with too many exclamation points? Yeah, I miss those days. There was a lot about that time that was pretty fucking awesome, tbh.
Anyway, I planned to write a largely over dramatic post of whine which would have made Mish laugh and the rest of you roll your eyes but I can't do it. I'm annoyed with my whinging so I can't imagine how y'all feel.
So, instead I propose a swap. I'm going to go and watch an episode or two of TW. Comment with something good...something in your life, a rec, a poem you love, Colin Morgan and when I get back I'll share something good with you. (disclaimer: if i actually get sleepy (omg, please), I might not get back until tomorrow.) Also, if you don't see this til tomorrow, comment anyway. 'twill be good fun.
<3
Anyway, I planned to write a largely over dramatic post of whine which would have made Mish laugh and the rest of you roll your eyes but I can't do it. I'm annoyed with my whinging so I can't imagine how y'all feel.
So, instead I propose a swap. I'm going to go and watch an episode or two of TW. Comment with something good...something in your life, a rec, a poem you love, Colin Morgan and when I get back I'll share something good with you. (disclaimer: if i actually get sleepy (omg, please), I might not get back until tomorrow.) Also, if you don't see this til tomorrow, comment anyway. 'twill be good fun.
<3
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2010-10-27 01:05 am (UTC)Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don't regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You've walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You've traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don't bother remembering
any of it. Let's stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.
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Date: 2010-10-30 01:56 pm (UTC)A Thought in Time
Every now and again
I stop my running in place
I find stillness for a moment
So that I can think
About all the things
That have been shown before me
Like many twinkling lights
My life is slowly forming
It will never be complete
For distance has no end
It will only become different
As I round another bend.
♥
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Date: 2010-10-27 01:25 am (UTC)And, of course, I love these two and their faaaaaces *smishes*
Edit to give you this: *huuuuuuuuuuuugs*
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Date: 2010-10-27 06:49 am (UTC)oh, Leo *G*
when I eventually jam through all of Merlin it will be because of that gif. awesome.
lucky IL to have such a good friend!
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Date: 2010-10-30 02:40 pm (UTC)I've been thinking about Boston a lot lately, especially the change of season and how much I love the fall. Here's a couple of snaps of Boston at the height of fall foliage. So beautiful...
Boston Public Garden:
The Charles River and some of Boston's skyline (I lived close to here for a few years :D):
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Date: 2010-10-27 01:37 am (UTC)That said, here - have some cuteness.
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Date: 2010-10-30 02:52 pm (UTC)oken record these days, Kishi. God, I hope the double digits are loads and loads better. It's about time, isn't it?
Anyway, thanks for the awesomely darling gif. Colin Morgan puts a smile on my face anytime. Meanwhilst, I love this snap. Such a great face on Arthur and Merlin is clearly trying not to laugh at him.
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Date: 2010-10-27 01:38 am (UTC)Other Lives and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem
By Bob Hicok
My left hand will live longer than my right. The rivers
of my palms tell me so.
Never argue with rivers. Never expect your lives to finish
at the same time. I think
praying, I think clapping is how hands mourn. I think
staying up and waiting
for paintings to sigh is science. In another dimension this
is exactly what's happening,
it's what they write grants about: the chromodynamics
of mournful Whistlers,
the audible sorrow and beta decay of "Old Battersea Bridge."
I like the idea of different
theres and elsewheres, an Idaho known for bluegrass,
a Bronx where people talk
like violets smell. Perhaps I am somewhere patient, somehow
kind, perhaps in the nook
of a cousin universe I've never defiled or betrayed
anyone. Here I have
two hands and they are vanishing, the hollow of your back
to rest my cheek against,
your voice and little else but my assiduous fear to cherish.
My hands are webbed
like the wind-torn work of a spider, like they squeezed
something in the womb
but couldn't hang on. One of those other worlds
or a life I felt
passing through mine, or the ocean inside my mother's belly
she had to scream out.
Here when I say "I never want to be without you,"
somewhere else I am saying
"I never want to be without you again." And when I touch you
in each of the places we meet
in all of the lives we are, it's with hands that are dying
and resurrected.
When I don't touch you it's a mistake in any life,
in each place and forever.
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Date: 2010-10-27 06:51 am (UTC)new hitchcock to me, and beautiful.
*hijacks*
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Date: 2010-10-30 04:08 pm (UTC)In return, I'd like to share one of my favourite poems.
My Mother, If She Had Won Free Dance Lessons
by Cornelius Eddy.
Would she have been a person with a completely different outlook on life?
There are times when I visit her and find her settled on a chair in our dilapidated house.
The neighborhood crazy lady, doing what the neighborhood crazy lady is supposed to do, which is absolutely nothing.
And I wonder as we talk our sympathetic talk, abandoned in easy dialogue, I, the son of the crazy lady, Who crosses easily into her point of view.
As if yawning or taking off an overcoat. Each time I visit I walk back into our lives.
And I wonder, like any child who wakes up one day to find themselves abandoned in a world larger than their bad dreams, I wonder as I see my mother sitting there, landed to the right-hand window in the living room, pausing from time to time in the endless loop of our dialogue. To peek for rascals through the Venetian blinds.
I wonder a small thought. I walk back into our lives.
Given the opportunity, how would she have danced? Would it have been as easily As we talk to each other now, the crazy lady and the crazy lady's son,
As if we were old friends from opposite coast picking up the thread of a long conversation,
Or two ballroom dancers who only know One step?
What would have changed if the phone had rung like a suitor, if the invitation had arrived in the mail like Jesus, extending a hand?
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Date: 2010-10-27 03:24 am (UTC)And a poem from one of my favorite poets, Shel Silverstein
Where the Sidewalk Ends
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
& FINALLY a pic from the real Crystal Cave, La Cueva De Los Cristales in Mexico
♡
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Date: 2010-10-30 04:24 pm (UTC)b) Silverstein is brilliant as is that particular poem. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to re-read it.
c) the real Chrystal cave is gorgeous.
In return, I'd like to share a poem I particularly enjoy with you.
Who Am I Today by Tochoway
Who am I today?
Am I to me who I am to you?
Am I the me of yesterday?
Will I be me tomorrow?
Am I my best friend?
Am I my worse enemy?
Am I a total stranger to me?
Am I your friend, enemy, stranger?
In whose eyes do I really exist?
Is the me that I see real?
Or is the me that you see real?
How many of me are there?
One, a dozen, a thousand?
More than the stars?
Is each of me real?
And yet, unreal?
Am I the me that my father foresaw?
Am I the me that my son foresees?
Am I the me of my ancestors?
Am I the me of my descendants?
Who am I today?
I am all of the above.
I am none of the above.
I am me!
I can be no more.
I can be no less.
I can be no other.
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Date: 2010-10-30 11:46 pm (UTC)I love a lot of poets, and it probably started with reading things by Shel Silverstein ask a kid
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Date: 2010-10-27 05:44 am (UTC)Also
And the Cantilevered Inference Shall Hold the Day, Michael Blumenthal
Things are not as they seem: the innuendo of everything makes
itself felt and trembles towards meanings we never intuited
or dreamed. Take, for example, how the warbler, perched on a
mere branch, can kidnap the day from its tediums and send us
heavenwards, or how, held up by nothing we really see, our
spirits soar and then, in a mysterious series of twists and turns,
come to a safe landing in a field, encircled by greenery. Nothing
I can say to you here can possibly convince you that a man
as unreliable as I have been can smuggle in truths between tercets
and quatrains on scraps of paper, but the world as we know
is full of surprises, and the likelihood that here, in the shape
of this very bird, redemption awaits us should not be dismissed
so easily. Each year, days swivel and diminish along their inscrutable
axes, then lengthen again until we are bathed in light we were not
prepared for. Last night, lying in bed with nothing to hold onto
but myself, I gazed at the emptiness beside me and saw there, in the
shape of absence, something so sweet and deliberate I called it darling.
No one who encrusticates (I made that up!) his silliness in a bowl,
waiting for sanctity, can ever know how lovely playfulness can be,
and, that said, let me wish you a Merry One (or Chanukah if you
prefer), and may whatever holds you up stay forever beneath you,
and may the robin find many a worm, and our cruelties abate,
and may you be well and happy and full of mischief as I am,
and may all your nothings, too, hold something up and sing.
Also because I can never resist spreading love for Taylor Mali:
And in conclusion:
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Date: 2010-10-31 01:03 am (UTC)First, that youtube video is amazing. Seriously, I've watched it countless times now and it's just wonderful.
Second, I haven't read that poem by Michael Blumenthal before. It's so, so lovely. Have you read his piece Everything Is Beautiful from a Distance, and So Are You? I think that's my favourite of his.
Lastly Taylor Mali is beyond awesome. His piece What Teachers Make? I read it every once in a while when I need reminding.
In return for this wonderful comments, I'd like to share one of my favourite poems with you. Marge Piercy is a thought-provoking, inspiring poet who I discovered in the the early 90s. My favourite of her pieces is this one...
What can they do
to you? Whatever they want.
They can set you up, they can
bust you, they can break
your fingers, they can
burn your brain with electricity,
blur you with drugs till you
can t walk, can’t remember, they can
take your child, wall up
your lover. They can do anything
you can’t blame them
from doing. How can you stop
them? Alone, you can fight,
you can refuse, you can
take what revenge you can
but they roll over you.
But two people fighting
back to back can cut through
a mob, a snake-dancing file
can break a cordon, an army
can meet an army.
Two people can keep each other
sane, can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.
Three people are a delegation,
a committee, a wedge. With four
you can play bridge and start
an organisation. With six
you can rent a whole house,
eat pie for dinner with no
seconds, and hold a fund raising party.
A dozen make a demonstration.
A hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity and your own newsletter;
ten thousand, power and your own paper;
a hundred thousand, your own media;
ten million, your own country.
It goes on one at a time,
it starts when you care
to act, it starts when you do
it again after they said no,
it starts when you say We
and know who you mean, and each
day you mean one more.
--Marge Piercy, from The Moon Is Always Female
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Date: 2010-10-31 02:12 am (UTC)This poem is wonderful, I think it's going to become one of my favorites as well. *saves*
*hugs*
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Date: 2010-11-06 03:42 am (UTC)*clings*
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Date: 2010-10-27 06:58 am (UTC)Kindness | Naomi Shihab Nye
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.
and
Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.
3. In Cabin’d Ships at Sea
1
IN cabin’d ships, at sea,
The boundless blue on every side expanding,
With whistling winds and music of the waves—the large imperious waves—In such,
Or some lone bark, buoy’d on the dense marine,
Where, joyous, full of faith, spreading white sails,
She cleaves the ether, mid the sparkle and the foam of day, or under many a star at night,
By sailors young and old, haply will I, a reminiscence of the land, be read,
In full rapport at last.
2
Here are our thoughts—voyagers’ thoughts,
Here not the land, firm land, alone appears, may then by them be said;
The sky o’erarches here—we feel the undulating deck beneath our feet,
We feel the long pulsation—ebb and flow of endless motion;
The tones of unseen mystery—the vague and vast suggestions of the briny world—the liquid-flowing syllables,
The perfume, the faint creaking of the cordage, the melancholy rhythm,
The boundless vista, and the horizon far and dim, are all here,
And this is Ocean’s poem.
3
Then falter not, O book! fulfil your destiny!
You, not a reminiscence of the land alone,
You too, as a lone bark, cleaving the ether—purpos’d I know
not whither—yet ever full of faith,
Consort to every ship that sails—sail you!
Bear forth to them, folded, my love—(Dear mariners! for you I fold it here, in every leaf;)
Speed on, my Book! spread your white sails, my little bark, athwart the imperious waves!
Chant on—sail on—bear o’er the boundless blue, from me, to every shore,
This song for mariners and all their ships.
I have no GIFs, or words of wisdom, only my appreciation of you and all your parts. I am loving the effort of earning enough money to get ahead enough to be confident that I can take all 10 9-day sessions of Anat Baniel's Practitioner level course [www.anatbanielmethod.com, abmethod on youtube], even though it's a fuckton of work and I fall into my lesser habits of shame and doubt and woe and worry and that's like stepping in dogshit and kind of takes the fun out of it for a while. But *shrug* I'm washable. My shoes are washable. And the walk is worth it.
Much much xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo, darlin'. Hang in there.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-30 04:34 pm (UTC)Marge Piercy is one of my favourite poets. Her work always touches me deeply. I thought you'd particularly enjoy the imagery of this one.
Colors passing through us
Purple as tulips in May, mauve
into lush velvet, purple
as the stain blackberries leave
on the lips, on the hands,
the purple of ripe grapes
sunlit and warm as flesh.
Every day I will give you a color,
like a new flower in a bud vase
on your desk. Every day
I will paint you, as women
color each other with henna
on hands and on feet.
Red as henna, as cinnamon,
as coals after the fire is banked,
the cardinal in the feeder,
the roses tumbling on the arbor
their weight bending the wood
the red of the syrup I make from petals.
Orange as the perfumed fruit
hanging their globes on the glossy tree,
orange as pumpkins in the field,
orange as butterflyweed and the monarchs
who come to eat it, orange as my
cat running lithe through the high grass.
Yellow as a goat’s wise and wicked eyes,
yellow as a hill of daffodils,
yellow as dandelions by the highway,
yellow as butter and egg yolks,
yellow as a school bus stopping you,
yellow as a slicker in a downpour.
Here is my bouquet, here is a sing
song of all the things you make
me think of, here is oblique
praise for the height and depth
of you and the width too.
Here is my box of new crayons at your feet.
Green as mint jelly, green
as a frog on a lily pad twanging,
the green of cos lettuce upright
about to bolt into opulent towers,
green as Grand Chartreuse in a clear
glass, green as wine bottles.
Blue as cornflowers, delphiniums,
bachelors’ buttons. Blue as Roquefort,
blue as Saga. Blue as still water.
Blue as the eyes of a Siamese cat.
Blue as shadows on new snow, as a spring
azure sipping from a puddle on the blacktop.
Cobalt as the midnight sky
when day has gone without a trace
and we lie in each other’s arms
eyes shut and fingers open
and all the colors of the world
pass through our bodies like strings of fire.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 08:58 pm (UTC)He is quite angry in the photo, because thr groomer removed his carefully gathered stink. He worked for weeks to embed the stink of eggs, cheese, steak, peanut butter, dog food, puke, and "i like to lick my own privates" into his fur. Now that all these carefully accumulated smells have been removed he is quite full of woe, as you can see from this expression.
<3
no subject
Date: 2010-10-30 04:36 pm (UTC)In other news, I owe you an email and a proper catch up. Though you've probably heard some of it from other sources already. I'll get in touch this weekend, for sure! <3
A kitten to make you smile...
Date: 2010-11-01 04:22 am (UTC)This is Duncan Meow of the Clan Meow, climbing over his brother to be the only kitten in the shot, since "There can be only one..."
Re: A kitten to make you smile...
Date: 2010-11-06 03:31 am (UTC)Gah! My trigger-happy touchpad means I posted before I was ready. Anyway, since i don't really know you but certainly appreciate a) you spreading joy and b) your obvious admiration of cats, I thought I'd share one of my favourite kittens. Sooooo sleepy!
Sorry for the extremely delayed response. My notifications haven't been working properly and this just popped up.