Inspiration for You

I want to encourage you. Although you feel stuck in your overgrown forest, perplexed about how to change it, overwhelmed and frustrated with yourself that more progress has not happened, you are changing. You are noticing, you are learning, and those alone are evidence of change. 

You long for the one book that will provide guidance. And here is the truth: you are the book. You are writing your life. Other books can inform you (goodness knows I believe this), but they cannot solve you, or for you. The information they offer -- you must metabolize and integrate it -- you must write it into your self through exploration and action, and through developing trust in your self and Life. Our conversations are another part of your learning. I'm your "study partner": a witness, clarifier, and encourager. But your life is entirely your creation.

“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

Implacably Aloof

"At the start of this quest, I had no way of imagining that long after it was over I would still be struggling to formulate a coherent response to the miseries the canyon inflicted on us, the satisfactions that would later overtake the memories of that misery, or the yearning and splendor that transcended them all. I had no way to fathom the force with which the canyon's austerity, its grandeur, and its radiance -- traits that stand implacably aloof to human hopes and ambitions -- can impart a perspective that will enable you to see yourself as nothing more, and nothing less, than a grain of sand amid the immensity of rock and time and the stars at night."

-Kevin Fedarko, A Walk in the Park: the True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon

Low Winter Sun

Low Winter Sun 

The sun peers

over my shoulder

through the window.

Winter sunlight arrives

deferentially -- or perhaps

casually, like a cat deciding

to settle for a nap against

a poet on the sofa.

-Kathryn Harper

Barns Courtney - Glitter & Gold

I am flesh and I am bone
Rise up, ting ting, like glitter and gold
I've got fire in my soul
Rise up, ting ting, like glitter

Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Like glitter and gold
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Like glitter

Do you walk in the valley of kings?
Do you walk in the shadow of men
Who sold their lives to a dream?
Do you ponder the manner of things
In the dark
The dark, the dark, the dark

I am flesh and I am bone
I'll rise ting ting like glitter and gold
I've got fire in my soul
Rise up, ting ting, like glitter

Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Like glitter and gold
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
Like glitter

Do you walk in the meadow of spring?
Do you talk to the animals?
Do you hold their lives from a string?
Do you ponder the manner of things
In the dark
The dark, the dark, the dark

I am flesh and I am bone
I'll rise ting ting like glitter and gold
I've got fire in my soul
Rise up, ting ting, like glitter
I am flesh and I am bone
I'll rise ting ting like glitter and gold
I've got fire in my soul
Rise up, ting ting, like glitter

'Cause everybody in the backroom's spinning out
Don't remember what you're asking for
And everybody in the front room's tripping out
You left your bottle at the door
Cause everybody in the backroom's spinning out
Don't remember what you're asking for
And everybody in the front room's tripping out
You left your bottle at the door

Haiku

In the black abyss

glorious color shifting

revealing a path.

-Kathryn Harper

To All Those Seniors Soon to Graduate

 

Go Outside and Play

Knowing Experience

"Because here's something that's weird but true: we don't actually know what a positive or negative experience is. Some of the most difficult and stressful moments of our lives also end up being the most formative and motivating. Some of the best and most gratifying experiences of our lives are also the most distracting and demotivating. Don't trust your conception of positive/negative experiences. All that we know for certain is what hurts in the moment and what doesn't. And that's not worth much."

--Mark Manson