Handmade enlightenment . . .

In the Satyr's day mailbox . . .

Today is the birthday of Margaret Atwood. The poet and novelist was born on this date in 1939 Ottowa, Canada.

Does it bring me any closer to enlightenment if I just gather with more of my own kind so we can collectively piss on everyone who doesn’t understand us? – Tina Lear. Check the link to Ms. Lear and while there don't overlook her link to her dog Ruby. Interspecies communication if ever . . .

Men need to get better at thinking like people and beings who are not men. – Sophie Strand in her challenging book The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine.

If we want to freely navigate the sense of self and the world: we do it through ambiguity, possibility, changing states, and ways of experiencing and expressing ourselves—not through the negating or affirming of a self. – Martin Aylward

You find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it. – Pooh, The House at Pooh Corner, by A.A. Milne

The opposite of “Woke” is “Asleep.”

In Freya's day's mailbox . . .

Novelist and historian Shelby Foote was born on this date in 1916 Greenville, Mississippi. His 3-volume, three thousand word history of the American Civil War remains a critical masterpiece.

Today is also Martin Scorsese's birthday. The film director was born 81 years ago on this day in 1942 New York City. His latest film, Killers of the Flower Moon, seems headed for another Academy Award.

And in 1558 Elizabeth I began her 44 year reign as Queen of England.

Life’s work is to wake up, to let the things that enter into the circle wake you up rather than put you to sleep. The only way to do this is to open, be curious, and develop some sense of sympathy for everything that comes along, to get to know its nature and let it teach you what it will. It’s going to stick around until you learn your lesson, at any rate. – Pema Chödrön in The Wisdom of No Escape.

In every joy which kindness triggers, flashes a flicker of that wild joy of limitless belonging. – David Steindle-Rast.

Mystical poetic painters . . .

t's Odin's day . . . who's name translates as “The Master of Ecstacy” and among other matters was the Norse god protector of all artists.

For those of you who extended their thanks for yesterday's blog notes regarding the music box, my thanks backatcha.

In today's maibox . . . painters, poets and mystics.

Georgia O’Keeffe was born 131 years ago on this date in 1887 Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, an apt name for her birth town, given the famous landscapes and flowers of her beloved Taos. She was and remains one of the most significant painters of the 20th Century, while her love affair and marriage with Alfred Stieglitz remains one for the centuries.

On this same day in 1887, Marianne Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri.. A poet who's works still resonates, she held the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize.

Our journey is about being more deeply involved in life and yet less attached to it. – Ram Dass

Maybe for you: a free online event using writing practice and singing as a threshold to step into the most authentic, vulnerable and accepting space possible in this terrible moment of human history hosted by Mirbai Starr.

Poetry

In the meantime, if you demand on the one hand,

in defiance of their opinion— the raw material

of poetry in all its rawness, and that which

is on the other hand, genuine,

then you are interested in poetry. – Marianne Moore. This poem is in public domain.