Belly Rubs

 Watching this video of a baby sugar glider getting massaged, I feel at peace.

Oh, to Bee a Flower

One Book, Many Books

 "And then, when she's finished and the book ventures out into the world, the readers take their turn, and here another kind of comingling occurs. Because the reader is not a passive receptacle for a book's content. Not at all. You are our collaborators, our conspirators, breathing new life into us. And because every reader is unique, each of you makes each of us mean differently, regardless of what's written on our pages. Thus, one book, when read by different readers, becomes different books, becomes an ever-changing array of books that flows through human consciousness like a wave. Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli. According to the capabilities of the reader, books have their own destinies."

                --Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness

The Middle Ring

"Families teach us love, and tribes teach us loyalty. The village teaches us tolerance."

"Home-based, phone-based culture has arguably solidified our closest and most distant connections, the inner ring of family and best friends (bound by blood and intimacy) and the outer ring of tribe (linked by shared affinities). But it’s wreaking havoc on the middle ring of “familiar but not intimate” relationships with the people who live around us, which Dunkelman calls the village. “These are your neighbors, the people in your town,” he said. We used to know them well; now we don’t.

Imagine that a local parent disagrees with you about affirmative action at a PTA meeting. Online, you might write him off as a political opponent who deserves your scorn. But in a school gym full of neighbors, you bite your tongue. As the year rolls on, you discover that your daughters are in the same dance class. At pickup, you swap stories about caring for aging relatives. Although your differences don’t disappear, they’re folded into a peaceful coexistence. And when the two of you sign up for a committee to draft a diversity statement for the school, you find that you can accommodate each other’s opposing views. “It’s politically moderating to meet thoughtful people in the real world who disagree with you,” Dunkelman said."

-Derek Thompson, The Anti-Social Century

The Anti-Social Century

"When Epley and his lab asked Chicagoans to overcome their preference for solitude and talk with strangers on a train, the experiment probably didn’t change anyone’s life. All it did was marginally improve the experience of one 15-minute block of time. But life is just a long set of 15-minute blocks, one after another. The way we spend our minutes is the way we spend our decades. “No amount of research that I’ve done has changed my life more than this,” Epley told me. “It’s not that I’m never lonely. It’s that my moment-to-moment experience of life is better, because I’ve learned to take the dead space of life and make friends in it."

-Derek Thompson, The Anti-Social Century (gift link)

The Right Reasons

"The pursuit of happiness is a toxic value that has long defined our culture. It is self-defeating and misleading. Living well does not mean avoiding suffering; it means suffering for the right reasons. Because if we’re going to be forced to suffer by simply existing, we might as well learn how to suffer well."

― Mark Manson, Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope

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

(No Wind, No Rain)

 (No Wind, No Rain)

No wind, no rain,

the tree

just fell, as a piece of fruit does.

But no, not fruit. Not ripe.

Not fell.

It broke. It shattered.

One cone's 

addition of resinous cell-sap,

one small-bodied bird

arriving to tap for a beetle.

It shattered.

What word, what act,

was it we thought did not matter?

-Jane Hirshfield

Snow

Snow

 

Little soul,

for you, too, 

death is coming.

 

Was there something

you thought

you needed to do?

 

Snow

does not walk into a room

 

and wonder

 

why.

-Jane Hirshfield

Things Seem Strong

 Things Seem Strong

Things seem strong.

Houses, trees, trucks -- a chair, even.

A table. A country.

You don't expect one to break.

No, it takes a hammer to break one,

a war, a saw, an earthquake.

Troy after Troy after Troy seemed strong

to those living around and in them.

Nine Troys were strong,

each trembling under the other.

When the ground floods

and the fire ants leave their strong city,

they link legs and form a raft, and float, and live,

and begin again elsewhere.

Strong, your life's wish

to continue linking arms with life's eye blink, life's tear well,

life's hammering of copper sheets and planing of Port Orford cedar,

life's joke of the knock-knock.

Knock, knock. Who's there?

I am.  

I am who?

That first and last question.

Who once dressed in footed pajamas,

who once was smothered in kisses.

Who seemed so strong

I could not imagine your mouth would ever come to stop asking.

-Jane Hirshfield