Words, they breathe.

"What else is a vision or fact of time and the peoples it bears issuing from the mouth of the cosmos, from the round mouth of eternity, in a wide and parti-colored utterance. In the complex weave of this utterance like fabric, in its infinite domestic interstices, the centuries and continents and classes dwell. Each people knows only its own squares in the weave, its wars and instruments and arts, and also the starry sky."
-Annie Dillard

"At night when everyone is silent and everything is still,  I lie in the darkness of my windowless room, the place where they exile me from the community of their heart, and search the unknowing blackness to see if I can find my way home. I tell myself stories, write poems, record my dreams. In my journal I write---I belong to this place of words. This is my way home. This dark, bone black inner cave where I am making a world for myself."
-bell hooks

"The true hero is flawed. The true test of a champion is not whether he can triumph, but whether he can overcome obstacles---preferably of his own making---in order to triumph. A hero without a flaw is of no interest to an audience or to the universe..."
-Garth Stein

"You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within; 

And to the leading Love-throb in the Heart

Thro' all my Being, thro' my pulses beat;

You lie in all my many Thoughts, like Light" ...

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are.. than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise." 
-Henry David Thoreau

“The Crisis of the sorrow of so many years is all that tires me.” 
-Emily Dickinson

"Our thoughts are clay, they are moulded with the changes of the days;--when we are resting they are good; under fire, they are dead. Fields of craters within and without."
-Erich Maria Remarque

"We were masters of nature, masters of the world. We had forgotten everything--death, fatigue, our natural needs. Stronger than cold or hunger, stronger than the shots and the desire to die, condemned and wandering, mere numbers, we were the only men on earth."
-Elie Wiesel

"Within each of us there is a silence -A silence as vast as the universe.We are afraid of it...and we long for it."
 -Ernest Hemingway

"Within each of us there is a silence - 

A silence as vast as the universe. 

We are afraid of it...and we long for it." 

-Gunilla Norris

“If you are a dreamer come in
If you are a dreamer a wisher a liar
A hoper a pray-er a magic-bean-buyer
If youre a pretender com sit by my fire
For we have some flax golden tales to spin
Come in!
Come in!” 

-Shel Silverstein

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”

-Pablo Neruda

“Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.” 

-Plato

“I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart) I am never without it (anywhere
I go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling)
I fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) I want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which

grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)”

-E.E. Cummings

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.” 

-Pablo Neruda

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
-Albert Einstein

“All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”

-J.R.R. Tolkien

“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”
-Marilyn Monroe

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
-Maya Angelou

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
-Mahatma Gandhi

"The enlightened man is the greatest stranger in the world; he does not seem to belong to anybody. No organization confines him, no community, no society, no nation."
-Osho


"As humans, we crave wilderness and open spaces. We regularly seek out aspen groves, desert oases, ocean shores, mountain lakes. But we can’t be camped by a turquoise lagoon forever. At some point, we pick up our feet and trudge back to our lives, hoping to keep those times of nature and calm with us."
-Celeste Keele

"Say you have seen something. You have seen an ordinary bit of what is real, the infinite fabric of time that eternity shoots through, and time's soft-skinned people working and dying under slowly shifting stars. Then what?"
-Annie Dillard

Ahhhh, a reprieve from insanity!

I feel so optimistic and light that I don't want anything to disrupt my June zen. Today I ran a couple of miles through the city streets and absolutely absorbed everything around me. So many houses and yards to observe. I literally stopped to smell the masses and masses of roses. It was a sensory explosion.

Perhaps I'm still reeling from my Wednesday concert. It was a first in a very, very long time and it was very, very needed. I saw Danger at the Urban Lounge. Dance floors are such a separate world where one is able to immerse fully into shared feeling and experience. Everyone moves and sways with the beat while closing their eyes to the intangible pulse. I talk a lot about pulses and drums when I write; it's probably because they're such real reverberations. Sometimes they're the only thing that reminds us we're alive.

Whatever the case may be, I feel like everything is ok. I bought this new combination of vitamins and it's ridiculous----ly good. It consists of some B's, some D's and some good ol' fashioned St. John's Wort. I kid you not, I feel a lot of the perks of Adderall without the crazy high (which I love, truly, madly, deeply, but sometimes prefer not to be buzzing all day every day).

But nobody can argue that when life is good, life is GOOD. Sometimes I think about people I've crossed who've turned into jerks, but it takes about 5 seconds to remind myself that I actually need FEWER jerks in my life. More nice people, please. And more guinea pigs. And bunnies named "Puppy." And best friends in the feline form. I love my little animals, oh so much!

Anyway, Topie is wrapping up her year of Kindergarten and as she participates in field days and fun runs, I tell her to live it up, because those 6-year-old memories last a lifetime and you can never do it again. For the most part, I think she listens. She comes home radiating with sunshine and babbles incessantly about her day. Her energy is amusingly exhausting. I want to tell her to sprint a few laps and not come back until she's tired. My friend Rueben used to throw tennis balls up the side of a steep mountain for his Labrador to chase so she'd be mellow at home. I wonder if that works for children...

I have to work in a few minutes after this nice long refreshing day of "me" time, but I'm looking forward to several hours of friendly banter and the happy faces of my coworkers. It's so nice to have a job in such a positive environment. It rubs off on me, for sure.

So as I wrap up this little Saturday blip, I just want to say that life is good. I'm looking forward to a weekend of fun and laughter. Because laughter is always always always the best medicine.