“Like water, be gentle and strong. Be gentle enough to follow the natural paths of the earth and strong enough to rise up and reshape the world.” ―Brenda Peterson
“Tyrants fear the poet.” —Amanda Gorman, U.S. Youth Poet Laureate
In the very end, civilizations perish because they listen to their politicians and not to their poets.” —Jonas Mekas
“Are you enhancing your power to discern the difference between rash risks motivated by fear and smart gambles driven by authentic intuition?” —Rob Brezsny
“I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings. . . . Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. . . . The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.” ―Ursula Le Guin
“I wonder how the world would be different if we grew down?” —Someone in my House, a few years ago
Gratitude List:
4. Planning and processing
3. The shades of gold, saffron, yellow, ochre
2. Grilled cheese and sauerkraut sandwiches with all the condiments
1. The way the eyes make sense of what they see. The way the create meaning: Tree branches that curve into the shape of a fish. Clouds that are dragons. A rough patch in the ceiling that is an old woman smiling.
5. Light at the end of the tunnel. I tend to visualize the light at the end of the tunnel as a gleam at the end of a long straight railroad tunnel. Sometimes it turns out that you’ve got lots of rock and debris to move from the pathway, or that it’s just a little opening, and you’ve got to dig yourself out. No matter what shape the tunnel is in, the light is there to inspire and guide.
May we walk in Beauty!
Mockingbird Chronicles 