Watermark

MFK FISHER on not writing

"I think that many people want to write, but of them few have the will to. I write more than half the things I do or say or think. I can see the words on the sheet of paper and see the pen writing them. And in my head a voice, a kind of silent reading voice, reads them not from but to the paper. Often what is read is good. There is a quick sureness about some phrases. At times they come too patly, with a smart-aleck tone. But I don't write. I write a few letters, which grow less interesting as I age. But that is all. It is because I am lazy, and that is true of most of the people who think in prose. Laziness and a vague fear."

    MFK Fisher    Stay Me, Oh Comfort Me: journals and stories 1933-1941

Today's words of wisdom...

... are not mine. They're Dave's:

I suppose some people will read this and wonder why I have such a bleak worldview. I can hear it now: “Dave, you just need to get laid!” (Well, maybe I do, but that’s irrelevant. My beliefs are carefully thought out and entirely rational!) The thing is, the world doesn’t feel bleak to me. If you believe, as I do, that the only paradise that matters must be sought in the present moment, than what does it matter if in the long run we are all somebody else’s dinner? Right here, right now, the coffee is good, the stars are beautiful, and the night is alive with primal music — the flow of water, and the urgent and wondrous and terrifying dance that attends the creation of new life. Regardless of how attentive or distracted I may be, the ability to draw breath at such a moment feels like pure grace. I wouldn’t want things any other way.

The last of the tomatoes, and...

Friend b. tells me: Life is no place to be smart. You not only hurt but you can't stop thinking about it.

This actually cheered me up.

NaPoWriMo ~ #26

In its origin, a poem is something completely unequivocal. It is a discharge, a call, a cry, a sigh, a gesture, a reaction by which the living soul seeks to defend itself from or to become aware of an emotion, an experience. In this first spontaneous most important function no poem can be judged.  -- Hermann Hesse

By making us stop for a moment, poetry gives us an opportunity to think about ourselves as human beings on this planet and what we mean to each other.  -- Rita Dove

Poetic language honors polarities. We use the language of poetry to provide the many levels of feeling, facets of knowing, simultaneously, so we can examine them and move forward.  -- Peggy Osna Heller

As a tool of cognition, poetry beats any existing form of analysis (a) because it pares down our reality to its linguistic essentials, whose interplay, be it clash or fusion, yields epiphany or revelation, and (b) because it exploits the rhythmic and euphonic properties of the language that in themselves are revelatory.  -- Joseph Brodsky

Appreciating poetry is probably like appreciating anything else. It means having the generosity to let a thing be what it is, the patience to know it, a sense of the mystery in all living things, and a joy in new experience.  -- M.C. Richards

All quotes from Poetic Medicine, by John Fox

Poetry & Meditation

"Meditation is when you sit down, let's say that, and don't do anything.

Poetry is when you get up and do something.

Somewhere we've developed the misconception that poetry is self-expression, and that meditation is going inward. Actually, poetry has nothing to do with self-expression, it is the way to be free, finally, of self-expression, to go much deeper than that. And meditation is not a form of thought or reflection, it is a looking at or an awareness of what is there, equally inside and outside, and then it doesn't make sense anymore to mention inside or outside."

- Norman Fischer
Beneath a Single Moon: Buddhism in Contemporary American Poetry

From Whiskey River, and already vanished...

The Irresistible Beauty of All Things

From Harpers Magazine, September 2004:

Poetry is like faith -- it isn't meant to be understood but to be received in a state of grace. No one should say "this is clear," because poetry is obscure. And no one should say "this is obscure," because poetry is clear. What we must do is search out poetry energetically and virtuously so that it will surrender to us. But we need to have forgotten poetry completely before it can fall naked into our arms. What poetry cannot bear is indifference. Indifference is the devil's armchair. Bu it is indifference we hear babbling in the streets, dressed grotesquely in self-satisfaction and culture.

. . .

Visible reality, the facts of the world and of the human body, are much more full of subtle nuances, and are much more poetic than what imagination discovers. One notices this often in the struggle between scientific reality and imaginative myth, in which -- thank God -- science wins. For science is a thousand times more lyrical than any theogony.

The human imagination invented giants in order to attribute to them the construction of great grottoes or enchanted cities. Later, reality taught us that those great caves are made by the drop of water. The pure, patient, eternal drop of water. In this case, as in many others, reality wins. After all, it is much more beautiful that a cave be a mysterious caprice of water -- chained and ordered by eternal laws -- than the whim of giants who have no other meaning than that of an explanation.

. . .

The mission of the poet is just that -- to give life (animar), in the exact sense of the word: to give soul . . .  The light of any poet is contradiction . . . Poetry doesn't need skilled practitioners, she needs lovers, and she lays down brambles and shards of glass for the hands that search for her with love.

Frederico Garcia Lorca

Winter & Writing

Against the disease of writing one must take special precautions, for it is a dangerous and a contagious disease.  ~ Peter Abelard, in a letter to Heloise

From PNWA Quote of the Day

Despair

There are always moments when one feels empty and estranged. Such moments are most desirable, for it means the soul has cast its moorings and is sailing for distant places. This is detachment-- when the old is over and the new has not yet come. If you are afraid the state may be distressing, but there is really nothing to be afraid of. Remember the instruction: What ever you come across--go beyond.

- Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Quote discovered, gratefully, at Strangechord.

Spring Crocus & Creativity

   
Click photo for larger image.

From Blue Pastures:

Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart -- to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again.

But just as often, if not more often, the interruption comes not from another but from the self itself, or some other self within the self, that whistles and pounds upon the door panels and tosses itself, splashing, into the pond of meditation. And what does it have to say? That you must phone the dentist, that you are out of mustard, that your uncle Stanley's birthday is two weeks hence. You react, of course, Then you return to your work, only to find that the imps of idea have fled back into the mist.

Mary Oliver

Tuesday Morning

If in our daily lives we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. If we really know how to live, what better way to start the day than with a smile? Our smile affirms our awareness and determination to live in peace and joy. The source of a true smile is an awakened mind.  Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step 

We take it as a given that the way emotions work is like this: We have a feeling and we may -- or may not -- express the emotion on our faces. But what this research suggests is that the process works in the opposite direction as well. Emotion can also start on the face. The face is not a secondary billboard for our feelings. It is a partner in the emotional process.   Malcolm Gladwell, Blink