March 2012
2 posts
A watch, of course, to watch impatience fly
-From The Preparations, Auden
February 2012
17 posts
NPR & M.Ward, all songs considered →
“You will continue to have my limp, obfuscating, and airless prayers.”
– Flannery O’Connor (via dailyflanneryoc
)
… And what else? “We’ve got you to stand for us.” And I have you, I said, to float for me.
- from Floating, Sarah Arvio
“Because I know that time is always time And place is always and only place And what is actual is actual only for one time And only for one place I rejoice that things are as they are …” Ash Wednesday, T.S. Eliot
“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and...”
– L.P. Jack from his Education Through Recreation, published in 1932. (via lukescommonplacebook
)
Day 2
Seeing this girl so soon in Chicago:
sarahneff:
Anyone can use
scissors. The artist is the
one who uses tape.
I believe in all that has never yet been spoken. I want to free what waits within me so that what no one has dared to wish for may for once spring clear without my contriving. If this is arrogant, God, forgive me, but this is what I need to say. May what I do flow from me like a river, no forcing and no holding back, the way it is with children. Then in these swelling and ebbing currents, these...
“I always say that winter is my fourth favorite season. It is not first, to be sure, yet there is something in it that I favor. I need the scouring that it brings. I need its toughness and endurance. I need its hope. I love the way winter stands there saying.. “I dare you not to notice my beauty.” What can I say to a winter tree when I am able to see the shape of its soul because...
1 tag
Brown House Manifesto
Do not burn yourself out. Be as I am — a reluctant enthusiast…a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out...
August 2011
1 post
June 2011
13 posts
“I suppose it’s because nearly all children go to school nowadays and have things...”
– Agatha Christie, quoted in this video by Jeff House (via Jim Burke)
stacieburley:
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
W.H. Auden
“Don’t spend money on gear. Spend it on plane tickets.”
– Audrey Sutherland (via lukescommonplacebook)
“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.”
– Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston (via sethphilpottmusic)
Something is missing in me—that feels like being born a wolf and choosing a dog’s life.
-from Ordinary Wolves by Seth Kantner
“‘There were a bunch of reasons I brought you kids here.’ He sighed and stared out the window. ‘Some kind of birds working out there. Crossbills?’ His jaw moved. He started to speak a few times. ‘Pandora’s box.’ He chuckled. He glanced down at his rough swollen hands. ‘To the Eskimos the land was everything. They knew the land.’ His...
May 2011
9 posts
No one knew that ordinary breakfast would be their last. Why not memorize everything, just in case?
-from The Maytrees by Annie Dillard
pointed
graceauden:
stacieburley:
Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment.
Henry David Thoreau
“I feel satisfied that we can get over the danger immediately before us; what tehre may be below I know not.” -John Wesley Powell
It was a long time ago. Mat was only a boy yet, though he was nearly grown. His Uncle Jack hired him to help chop out a field of tall corn in a creek bottom. It was hot and still, and the heat stood close around them as they worked. They felt they needed to tiptoe to get enough air. Mat thought he could not stand it any longer, and then he stood it a little longer, and they reached the end of...
April 2011
24 posts
The priests taught us about salvation and damnation. Now I have not the slightest notion of these things. I have felt on my shoulder the hand of my Guide, Yet he didn’t mention punishment, didn’t promise a reward.
-Czelslaw Milosz in Werki
“In good company your thoughts run, in solitude your thought is still; it goes deeper and makes for itself a deeper groove, delves. Delve means “dig with a spade”; it means hard work. In talk your mind can be stretched, widened, exhilarated to heights, but it cannot be deepened; you have to deepen it yourself.
It needs sturdiness. You will be lonely, you will be depressed; you must expect it;...
O you tender ones, step now and then into the breath that takes no heed of you: it will part as it brushes your cheeks and then tremble behind you, united again.
O you who are blissful, you who are whole, you who seem the beginnings of hearts. Bows for arrows and arrows’ aim, through tears your smile will glow more eternal.
Don’t be afraid to suffer—take your heaviness and give...
CPS and firing a teacher →
Thanks Engdahl
Luke's Commonplace Book: "I Have News for You" -... →
Best Ever.
lukescommonplacebook:
There are people who do not see a broken playground swing as a symbol of ruined childhood
and there are people who don’t interpret the behavior of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.
There are people who don’t walk past an empty swimming pool and think…