Pink minimalism
The heat-hammer is back in Okieland and the Moon on this Moon-day is waxing toward full next week . . .
A successful poem is one that makes you want to become friends with the poet.
What misery to be afraid of death / What wretchedness, / to believe only in what can be proven. – Mary Oliver, from “I Looked Up” in White Pine, 1994.
Suppose you only had two weeks to become a minimalist—how would you proceed? We can imagine that most people would start by frantically going through their closets and getting rid of the items that they no longer use or need. Nothing wrong with that, but the Spiritual Minimalist would take a different approach – Light Watkins
While philosophers tend toward universals and poets love particulars, mystics and contemplative practice teach us how to encompass both. – Richard Rohr
Check out The Barbie Manifesto by Alison Luterman (At the Rattle website, she also reads the poem)
Are dreams heavier than broken hearts?
A mild start to a warming day in Okieland and more jetsam in Sol's day's mailbox. . .
If one wishes suffering not to happen
to people and the earth
it begins with a kind heart. – Pema Chödrön
Deserve your dreams. – Octovia Paz
Some of us are not meant to be specialists. When we try to 'make' ourselves commit to one thing and force our creativity into a daily routine of predictable productivity we quickly become bored and unmotivated. I don't believe 'just choosing' or 'buckling down' is the answer to this...that mostly seems to make lots of unhappy multi-passionate creatives...Sensitive creatives will find themselves feeling lost and unfulfilled when they are doing something they don't care about deeply, however much they might berate themselves or try to conform. – Elanor Chaney, online site “Creativity Matters.”
Everything that you think is solid is actually fleeting and ephemeral. – Joyce Carol Oates from a worthwhile interview this week in the NYTimes (link may insist on you signing up).
"Dead men are heavier than broken hearts" – a quote from The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler and the inscription on the gravestone shared with his ex, according to Garrison Keillor. The master of some of the most iconic lines in crime mystery writing, was born on this date in 1888 Chicago.
Kranky until biscuits . . .
It's Satyr's day. TulseyTown welcomes a break in the heat with a mild, sunny Summer's day.
The mailbox brought sad news and memories of Tony Bennett who died yesterday.
Two birthdays of note: The poet Emma Lazarus was born on this date in 1849 New York City; and sharing the date from 1882 is Edward Hopper, born in Nyack, New York and became a prolific artist in several media celebrating the everyday.
Doing what needs to be done:
Past 70 there is a tremendous diminishment of B.S. around you. And your sins diminish: your greed is satisfied at any ATM, your lust is for more sleep, your gluttony is for a Dairy Queen Blizzard, your sloth becomes meditation. . .I’m in the deletion business: I’ve eliminated running, TV (except for baseball), and I gave away my unread Moby-Dick. Not enough time. I hear that Ahab dies and Ishmael survives to tell the tale. Good enough. Time for a walk. – Garrison Keillor
from “Happiness” by Jane Kenyon
There's just no accounting for happiness . . .
It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
. . . It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.
– Jane Kenyon, Otherwise: New and Selected Poems. Graywolf Press. 1996.