APPLE, WORD, KISS: December 2012

Monday, December 31, 2012

Beginning

Every day, I come across things that fascinate me on the internet: poems, stories, essays, videos, pictures, and more. Often those things are related to the literary life; sometimes they're related to mindfulness or Buddhism or the kind of spirituality that doesn't judge or claim to have the one right way; sometimes they're about gender or teaching or just stuff that makes me laugh. I share those links via the various social media networks (yes, I'm on Facebook, Twitter and Google+), but I'm a bit of a packrat by nature. Social media is ephemeral. I want to be able to easily search for that one article that talked about gaslighting or that poem I barely remember the title of. I want, basically, a hoarding-place for the stuff I find fascinating. So welcome to my dragon lair. Maybe you'll have something to add, in which case I'll be eternally grateful, and I'll be happy to give your particular piece of gold a place in the pile.

QUOTES

"Here among the disappearing, in the realm of the transient,

be a ringing glass that shatters as it rings."

--Rilke

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

“I exist as I am, that is enough,

If no other in the world be aware I sit content,

And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself,

And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years,

I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness, I can wait.” ― Walt Whitman

"There are a thousand ways to love a poem." --Donald Hall

Good. Now here's what poetry can do.

Imagine yourself a caterpillar.

There's an awful shrug and, suddenly,

You're beautiful for as long as you live.

—Stephen Dunn

“I believe poetry can be...a constant reminder to ourselves and to our fellow citizens that being alert, both inwardly and outwardly, rewards each person with more life…I say let the poems move in all ways; at least, then, we'll have a chance to reach the bridge—and if we do lose our minds let it be because we believed too much in the heart's voice.” —Tim Seibles, from the intro to Buffalo Head Solos

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.” ―Walt Whitman

“The people in the world, and the objects in it, and the world as a whole, are not absolute things, but on the contrary, are the phenomena of perception... If we were all alike: if we were millions of people saying do, re, mi, in unison, One poet would be enough... But we are not alone, and everything needs expounding all the time because, as people live and die, each one perceiving life and death for himself, and mostly by and in himself, there develops a curiosity about the perceptions of others. This is what makes it possible to go on saying new things about old things.” ―Wallace Stevens