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Collecting Quotes, Poems, and Tidbits

It’s Monday, the beginning of another week.  Do you need a quick pick-me-up?  Do you need encouragement?  Well, grab that coffee cup and sit right on down now, you hear?  I’ll send a few tidbits your way.

This is from Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Renascence” (lines 203-214):

The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,–
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat–the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.

Here’s something for you writers out there, from Annie Dillard’s book The Writing Life:

“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time.  Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.  The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now.  Something more will arise for later, something better.  These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.  Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive.  Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you.  You open your safe and find ashes.

“After Michelangelo died, someone found in his studio a piece of paper on which he had written a note to his apprentice, in the handwriting of his old age: ‘Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time.’”

Oh, I can’t resist.  Here’s another fabulous piece of advice by Jim Jarmusch, which can be found as a broadside at David and Sarah Dark’s blog (find Wednesday, June 24, 2009) and Alli Steen Magee.

“Nothing is original.  Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.  Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poem, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows.  Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul.  If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic.  Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent.  And don’t bother concealing your thievery–celebrate it if you feel like it.  In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: ‘It’s not where you take things from–it’s where you take them to.’”

Here’s a quote from David Dark’s Everyday Apocalypse, where Dark cites William Stringfellow on listening:

“Listening is a rare happening among human beings.  You cannot listen to the word another is speaking if you are preoccupied with your appearance or impressing the other, or if you are trying to decide what you are going to say when the other stops talking, or if you are debating about whether the word being spoken is true or relevant or agreeable.  Such matters may have their place, but only after listening to the word as the word is being uttered.  Listening, in other words, is a primitive act of love, in which a person gives self to another’s word, making self accessible and vulnerable to that word.”

Along the same lines, Yahia Lababidi says, “A good listener helps us overhear ourselves.”

Whizzing on to the difficulty of life (from Gary Saul Morson’s “Prosaics: An Approach to the Humanities”):

“Whatever wholeness we achieve requires enormous work, which is the effort of life; and that work is never complete.”

Oh heavens, I’m afraid that last one might not have been too uplifting.  Let’s see here, bear with me.  Aha!  Here’s one.  I like to think of it as Taking One Day at a Time.  Big breath now.  Ahhhhh.  This is from Dorothy Allison’s “This is Our World.”

“Sometimes, I imagine my own life as a series of snapshots taken by some omniscient artist who is just keeping track–not interfering or saying anything, just capturing the moment for me to look back at it again later….This is the way it is, the photograph says, and I nod my head in appreciation.  The power of art is in that nod or appreciation, though sometimes I puzzle nothing out, and the nod is more a shrug.  No, I do not understand this one, but I see it.  I take it in.  I will think about it.  If I sit with this image long enough, this story, I have the hope of understanding something I did not understand before.  And that, too, is art, the best art.”

And last but not least, from Terry Tempest Williams:

“This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek.  To seek: to embrace the questions, be wary of answers.”

[Post image: The Magnetic Heart by phaln at stock.xchng]

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