“If you want to be sad, 

no one in the world can make you happy. 

But if you make up your mind to be happy, 

no one and nothing on earth can take that 

happiness from you.”

                                                                                                        Paramahansa Yogananda 

New Yorkers Edward Field 

Everywhere else in the country, if someone asks,

How are you? you are required to answer,

like a phrase book, Fine, and you?

Only in New York can you say, Not so good, or even,

Rotten, and launch into your miseries and symptoms,

then yawn and look bored when they interrupt

to go into the usual endless detail about their own.

Nodding mechanically, you look at your watch.

Look, angel, I’ve got to run, I’m late for my…uh…

uh…analyst. But let’s definitely

get together soon.

In just as sincere a voice as yours,

they come back with, Definitely!

and both of you know what that means,

Never.

The technical side of writing

“The technical side of writing — by which I mean, the physical act itself — is one of the easiest things you can do. It’s literally one word placed after the other with some appropriate punctuation thrown in between breaths and ending thoughts. Yes, it gets more complex once you start thinking about narrative, character, meaning, text versus subtext — but for now, fuck all that. Just breathe. Let the tension go out of you (not so much you pee yourself). This is like LEGO. One block upon the other. One word after the next.” Chuck Wendig

Psalm 23

from The Bay Psalm Book

The Lord to me a shepherd is,

want therefore shall not I:

He in the folds of tender grass,

doth cause me down to lie:

To waters calm me gently leads

restore my soul doth he:

He doth in paths of righteousness

for his name's sake lead me.

Yea, though in valley of death's shade

I walk, none ill I'll fear:

Because thou art with me, thy rod,

and staff my comfort are.

For me a table thou hast spread,

in presence of my foes:

Thou dost anoint my head with oil;

my cup it overflows.

Goodness and mercy surely shall

all my days follow me:

And in the Lord's house I shall dwell

so long as days shall be.

Poorness of spirit

“I envy no mortal, though ever so great,

Nor scorn I a wretch for his lowly estate;

But what I abhor and esteem as a curse

Is poorness of Spirit, not poorness of Purse.”

                                                                            Henry Carey

 

Welcome Morning
Anne Sexton

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry "hello there, Anne"
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,
dies young.

Wash of the day................

“Take a shower, wash off the day. Drink a glass of water. Make the room dark. Lie down and close your eyes.

Notice the silence. Notice your heart.

Still beating.

Still fighting.

You made it, after all.

You made it, another day.

And you can make it one more.

You’re doing just fine.”

                                                                            Charlotte Eriksson

How Many Nights
Galway Kinnell

How many nights

have I lain in terror,

O Creator Spirit, Maker of night and day,

only to walk out

the next morning over the frozen world

hearing under the creaking of snow

faint, peaceful breaths...

snake,

bear, earthworm, ant...

and above me

a wild crow crying 'yaw yaw yaw'

from a branch nothing cried from ever in my life.

Stand up, be counted

“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world…would do this, it would change the earth.” William Faulkner 

Poem in Thanks

Thomas Lux

Lord Whoever, thank you for this air

I'm about to in- and exhale, this hutch

in the woods, the wood for fire,

the light-both lamp and the natural stuff

of leaf-back, fern, and wing.

For the piano, the shovel

for ashes, the moth-gnawed

blankets, the stone-cold water

stone-cold: thank you.

Thank you, Lord, coming for

to carry me here-where I'll gnash

it out, Lord, where I'll calm

and work, Lord, thank you

for the goddamn birds singing!

Passion

6 Truths About Finding Your Passion

1. You need to experiment with lots of things.

2. It takes time to discover your true passion in life.

3. What interests you now might not turn into a passion.

4. However, you’ll find that you return to what you’re passionate about.

5. It will take over your thinking when you’re silent or daydreaming.

6. Investing in your passion will give meaning to your life.

Address to the Lord

John Berryman

Master of beauty, craftsman of the snowflake,

inimitable contriver,

endower of Earth so gorgeous & different from the boring Moon,

thank you for such as it is my gift.

I have made up a morning prayer to you

containing with precision everything that most matters.

'According to Thy will' the thing begins.

It took me off & on two days. It does not aim at eloquence.

You have come to my rescue again & again

in my impassable, sometimes despairing years.

You have allowed my brilliant friends to destroy themselves

and I am still here, severely damaged, but functioning.

Unknowable, as I am unknown to my guinea pigs:

How can I 'love' you?

I only as far as gratitude & awe

confidently & absolutely go.

I have no idea whether we live again.

It doesn't seem likely

from either the scientific or the philosophical point of view

but certainly all things are possible to you,

and I believe as fixedly in the Resurrection-appearances to Peter and

to Paul

as I believe I sit in this blue chair.

Only that may have been a special case

to establish their initiatory faith.

Whatever your end may be, accept my amazement.

May I stand until death forever at attention

for any your least instruction or enlightenment.

I even feel sure you will assist me again, Master of insight & beauty.

The best of intentions

“I myself am made entirely of flaws, 

  stitched together with good intentions.” 

                                                                                                               Augusten Burroughs

At Least

Raymond Carver

I want to get up early one more morning,

before sunrise. Before the birds, even.

I want to throw cold water on my face

and be at my work table

when the sky lightens and smoke

begins to rise from the chimneys

of the other houses.

I want to see the waves break

on this rocky beach, not just hear them

break as I did all night in my sleep.

I want to see again the ships

that pass through the Strait from every

seafaring country in the world-

old, dirty freighters just barely moving along,

and the swift new cargo vessels

painted every color under the sun

that cut the water as they pass.

I want to keep an eye out for them.

And for the little boat that plies

the water between the ships

and the pilot station near the lighthouse.

I want to see them take a man off the ship

and put another up on board.

I want to spend the day watching this happen

and reach my own conclusions.

I hate to seem greedy-I have so much

to be thankful for already.

But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.

And go to my place with some coffee and wait.

Just wait, to see what's going to happen.

Grateful

Let us be grateful for people who make us happy. They are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. - 

                                                             Marcel Proust

O Karma, Dharma, pudding and pie

Philip Appleman

O Karma, Dharma, pudding and pie,

gimme a break before I die:

grant me wisdom, will, & wit,

purity, probity, pluck, & grit.

Trustworthy, loyal, helpful, kind,

gimme great abs & a steel-trap mind,

and forgive, Ye Gods, some humble advice-

these little blessings would suffice

to beget an earthly paradise:

make the bad people good-

and the good people nice;

and before our world goes over the brink,

teach the believers how to think.

I don’t believe one reads to escape reality.

“I don’t believe one reads to escape reality. A person reads to confirm a reality he knows is there, but which he has not experienced.” Lawrence Durrell

Junot Diaz? Really? Are they serious?...well anyway......

It might seem premature to start naming the "best books of the century," considering we're only 15 years in, but the great debate is off and running.

The BBC polled dozens of U.S. book critics to find the greatest novels published in the 21st century. They tapped writers at The New York Times, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews and more for their expertise. Critics named 156 novels, but only one can be the winner.

                                         The best books of the 21st century (so far)

The book that landed at the top of the most critics' lists was Junot Diaz's "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," published in 2007. Diaz took home the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for the book; he was only the second Latino author to receive the award.

Critic Gregg Barrios noted that "Diaz's deft mash-up of Dominican history, comics, sci-fi, magic realism and footnotes totally rocks." Other critics clearly agreed. Author Rigoberto Gonzalez said Diaz's work "re-energized these questions: Who is American? What is the American experience?"

The 12 greatest novels of the 21st century, so far

1) "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz (2007)

2) "The Known World" by Edward P. Jones (2003)

3) "Wolf Hall" by Hilary Mantel (2009)

4) "Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson (2004)

5) "The Corrections" by Jonathan Franzen (2001)

6) "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" by Michael Chabon (2000)

7) "A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan (2010)

8) "Billy Flynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain (2012)

9) "Atonement" by Ian McEwan (2001)

10) "Half of a Yellow Sun" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006)

11) "White Teeth" by Zadie Smith (2000)

12) "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides (2002)

Book lovers hounded the BBC until they agreed to unveil the rest of the top 20. Rounding out the critics' picks were "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (giving Adichie a second nod on the list), "Austerlitz" by W.G. Sebald, "My Brilliant Friend" by Elena Ferrante, "The Line of Beauty" by Alan Hollinghurst, "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, "NW" by Zadie Smith (another second nod), "2666" by Roberto Bolano and "The Great Fire" by Shirley Hazzard.

So: What say you? Are these the best books of the century so far?

For a comparison, let's consider Modern Library's list of the best novels of the 20th century. In 1998, a group including Gore Vidal, William Styron and other literary greats compiled what they considered to be the best the century had to offer.

The 10 greatest novels of the 20th century

1) "Ulysses" by James Joyce

2) "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

3) "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by James Joyce

4) "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov

5) "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley

6) "The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner

7) "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller

8) "Darkness at Noon" by Arthur Koestler

9) "Sons and Lovers" by D.H. Lawrence

10) "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck

What a change 17 years makes. While the Modern Library list may be packed with classics, it's severely lacking in diversity — in race, gender and genre.

The BBC's list, on the hand hand, already reflects the rapidly diversifying world of literature — here's to 85 more years of that!

Which books do you think will stand the test of time? Chime in with your choice for the book/s of the century.

What helps luck is a habit of watching for opportunities, of having a patient, but restless mind, of sacrificing one's ease or vanity, of  uniting a love of detail to foresight, and of passing through hard times bravely and cheerfully.-- Charles Victor Cherbuliez (1829-1899) French Novelist

Writing is work

Writing tips by George Orwell

Fiction writing tips

Good words to use

Edify: verb tr.: To instruct in order to improve the mind or character. Via French from Latin aedificare (to build), from aedis (building) + facere (make). Earliest documented use: 1340.

Devolve:  To transfer or be passed (duties, rights, powers, etc.) on to another. verb intr.: To deteriorate or degenerate.  From Latin devolvere (to roll down), from de- (down) + volvere (to roll). Ultimately from the Indo-European root wel- (to turn or roll), which also gave us waltz, revolve, valley, walk, vault, volume, wallet, helix, and voluble. Earliest documented use: 1420.

Terrestrial: relating to the earth or its inhabitants, iving or growing on land, belonging to a class of planets that are like the earth (as in density and silicate composition)

 Terriers, terrariums, terraces and Terra firm all derive from the Latin root terra, which means "earth."

Heimisch or heimish or haimish: adjective: Homely; unpretentious. From Yiddish heymish (domestic), from Old High German heim (home). Ultimately from the Indo-European root tkei- (to settle or dwell), which also gave us home, haunt, hangar, site, situate, and hamlet.

This is the prayer I grew up with. I keep a copy of it in my wallet and another on my desk.I thought you might enjoy reading it

 Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace; 

Where there is hatred, let me sow love; 

Where there is injury, pardon; 

Where there is discord, harmony; 

Where there is error, truth; 

Where there is doubt, faith; 

Where there is despair, hope; 

Where there is darkness, light; And where there is sadness, joy. 

O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console; To be understood as to understand; To be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

6 Signs That a Passion or Calling is "True"

You need to know what to look for, and here's a primer

Post published by Gregg Levoy on May 06, 2015 in Passion!

I used to do a lot of stone sculpting, and when you want to find out whether a stone is “true,” you bang on it with a hammer. If it gives off a dull tone, that means the stone has faults running through it that are likely to crack it apart when you work on it. But if it gives off a clear ring, one that hangs in the air for a moment, that means the stone is “true,” has “integrity,” and most importantly, will hold up under repeated blows.

This is exactly the information you need to know about your passions and callings. You need to know they ring true, have integrity, and are going to hold up under repeated blows—the kind the world specializes in, the kind you’re going to encounter the moment you take your passions, calls, commitments, and convictions out into the world where they’re going to get banged on.

One of the best ways to find out whether they’re “true” is to get into the habit of continually tapping in and listening to yourself with what Saint Benedict called “the ear of the heart.” It’s the core of what spiritual traditions refer to as discernment, of clarifying your calls, and it sometimes requires not just pick-and-shovel work, but patience on the order of years.

It also helps if you know what to look for—what characterizes “integrity” in a passion or calling.

It’s one of the questions I routinely asked the people I interviewed for the Callings book: How did you know it was a true call? How did you figure out that you were on the right path, or that you were the right person? How did you know whether the call came from soul/God/passion, or whether it came from ego/ wishful thinking/the desire for financial security/the desire to show the bastards?

The responses people gave me were so consistent, I can list them for you. Here are six signs that a passion or calling is “true”:

1) It keeps coming back, no matter how much you ignore it. A poet named Francis Thompson once wrote a poem called Hound of Heaven, which is about God. He referred to God as a hound-dog because of what hound dogs are famous for, which is tracking people down. They can get one whiff of you and follow you for a hundred miles. In other words, our passions and callings may be “still small voices,” but the true ones have staying power. It’s the blessing and the curse of them—the search party doesn’t retire.

2) The true calls tend to come at you from multiple directions—gifts, talents, dreams both day and night, body symptoms, synchronicities, the books that mysteriously make their way onto your nighttable, the way events and opportunities unfold in your life. In other words, there’s a clustering effect, and you’ve got to connect the dots.

3) There’s a feeling of rightness about it. It just feels right. You may not be able to explain it, but you can’t deny it either.

4) Your enthusiasm for it tends to sustain itself over time, and doesn’t just peter out after a few weeks or months or semesters. You even feel a kind of affinity or affection for all the mundane tasks involved in bringing these passions to fruition, and they all have them. No matter how exalted, every passion or calling has its version of licking stamps and stuffing envelopes, making cold calls and tacking posters up on telephone poles.

Author Malcolm Gladwell calculates that mastery in most endeavors requires at least 10,000 hours of dedicated practice—the math: 90 minutes a day for 20 years—and anyone who’s ever been in a play or a band knows that the amount of time they spend rehearsing compared to performing is something like 90-10. But it’s passion that largely explains people’s willingness to put up with that equation. to practice the same lines or lyrics for thousands of hours for the chance to go public with it barely a tenth of the time.

5) It will scare you. Some people even told me that they figured if a call felt safe, it probably wasn’t the right path, but if it scared them, it probably was, because it meant they were close to something vital.

I’m always amused by a bumper sticker campaign I see all around the country on my travels. I think it’s for a clothing company, but it says, “No Fear.” And I don’t buy it. Fear is a biological imperative—it’s hardwired in us. The fight-or-flight mechanism is a perfect example. I think what can happen sometimes is that something else becomes more important to you than the fear you feel, and then you act with real courage and conviction. But no fear? I don’t think so. In fact, I saw one of these bumper stickers in Arizona a few years back. Same sticker, but with a slight alteration made in it, I think in the name of credibility. It said, “Some Fear.”

6) The truth or falseness of a passion or calling is ultimately in the results. In other words, you’ve got to be willing to try it out, to experiment, to go down the path a little ways—even if you’re not sure it’s the path—and take field notes.

What you do is take a step toward some passion and look at the feedback your life gives you. Take a step and see if your energy expands or contracts. Take another step and see if you feel more awake or more asleep. Another step—what do your dreams at night tell you? Another step—what does your body tell you? Another step—what do your friends tell you? It’s the old gospel criteria: by their fruits you shall know them.

To kill freedom, kill the writers first

(From CNN) The attack on bloggers critical of Islam have taken on a disturbing regularity in Bangladesh with yet another writer hacked to death today.

Ananta Bijoy Das was killed as he left his home on his way to work at a bank, police in the northeastern Bangladeshi city of Sylhet said.

Four masked men attacked him, hacking him to death with cleavers, said Sylhet Metropolitan Police Commissioner Kamrul Ahsan.

The men then ran away. Because of the time of the morning when the attack happened, there were few witnesses. But police said they are following up on interviewing the few people who saw the incident.

Das was in his 30s, Ahsan said. He couldn't provide an exact age.