Author: L.E. Hansen

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Words

John Atkinson Grimshaw – Spirit of the Night (detail), 1879

Words. Fall in love with words—with their spirit, their story. “She was fascinated with words. To her, words were things of beauty, each like a magical powder or potion that could be combined with other words to create powerful spells.”  Dean Koontz – Lightning

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Rumi

“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”

“Whatever lifts the corners of your mouth, trust that.”

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

“Be like a tree and let the dead leaves drop.”

“I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my Soul.”

“In the blackest of your moments, wait with no fear.”

“These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.”

“Close your eyes, fall in love, stay there.”

JKrishnaPrasanta Kumar Sahoo Follow · 21 June

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Things I’ve Noticed

  • I find it not only easier to tolerate but almost enjoyable when intelligent people bash the “tyranny of virus villainy” (Jessie) but just plain annoying when stupid people shout “conspiracy” and cite neither provable nor unprovable emotional reasons that haven’t been reasoned at all. To wit: hospitals are actually empty, only one person with Covid-19 at the such-and-such hospital, all deaths are being counted as virus caused, masks cause people to have breathing problems, and on and on.
  • I have reached the age wherein changing a heel-height for a day can and will cause serious leg cramps during the night.
  • Changing a hair-do can cause me to adopt a different walk. So can heel heights.
  • There are certain expectations that are dropped in blog writing. Allowances are made, though not for misuses such as “their” for “they’re,” apostrophes when it’s a plural word or instead of “its” as a possessive. I notice this because I’ve been reading an old Jenny Diski blog. (Speaking about her content, not grammar usage.) She’s better there than in her book In Gratitude, where she tumbles into sophomoric or self-pitying. I know, I know, she did have cancer. That doesn’t explain the attacks on Doris Lessing where Doris may well have been in the right, depending on the slant of words.
  • Blogs also fall into different categories: the totally insipid, the average but ho-hum (this can also be the young self-centered darlings that all the other young darlings love) and the worthwhile. (Those on the borderline go into the lower category.)
  • Excel spreadsheets are for those of us who get tired of figuring out the same old dates we’ve figured out a hundred times before.
  • Hyperbole is the gift given—to those of us who write—as a legitimate poetic device.
  • So is sarcasm, as verbal irony.
  • Blogs may be like playing chess—you want to look at those that are better than yours so that you can improve. It’s no credit to beat an opponent who is not as good as you.
  • We all need to have those conversations with our parents or children that answer the questions we or they want to know. Now. Before they’re gone. We have to pretend we’re writing a family history or start one now. Ask.
  • Masks are now mandatory in Ohio starting tomorrow night. I wonder how long before we get to watch crazies who don’t know about the 10th amendment shout about their rights being infringed upon. OK, not funny just tragic with collateral damage.
  • Another thing about blogs—no serious editing required as when practicing your craft for publication. Some though, some. All blog writers must remember they have a certain obligation to the reader. Some standards.
  • There are grammar and spelling apps., some built-in. I know this as I’m a terrible speller.
  • An Excel spreadsheet is not going to get you all the answers to questions you wish you’d asked when people were alive. Yes, ask.

And so, for today, that’s the waaayyyy things are.

 

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Fernando Pessoa

Poetic Outlaws Yesterday at 06-59 · Shared with Public In order to understand, I destroyed myself

Posted by Poetic Outlaws

“Through these deliberately unconnected impressions I am the indifferent narrator of my autobiography without events, of my history without a life. These are my Confessions and if I say nothing in them it’s because I have nothing to say.”

And then,
“In order to understand,
I destroyed myself.”

He came to us and he left us as he intended, in the disquiet of something that both was and was not. A history without a life. He would not have caught our attention and yet today he is admired and celebrated for his words. Words that take us beyond ourselves and into the Mystery. Fernando Pessoa, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe.

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Into The Abyss

“One thing that comes out in myths, for example, is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.”

~Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

Quote via @SophiaCycles1

Sounds simple, but it isn’t. It seems at every juncture along our paths, we have a tendency to want to stay put. Stop. Not just that, but the going gets rough, plodding, overwhelming. Into the black and the muck and the mire, so much at that dark Awful that insanity is just a breath away. Think of our pal Fritz who couldn’t make it out, and if anyone should have it’s he. Myths are easy. Living them is another matter.

It’s all through the tunnel—the Birth Canal, the Bardo, the Nightmare. It occurs to me then that we might distrust this deathbed seeing of the light, for everything says the Darkness comes first. Even the story of The Christ and his travels, didn’t he do a stopover in Hell before returning? Any way you look at it, it’s not easy. Let’s hope the prize is worth it.