Administrator's blog

“ I am astonished in my teaching to find how many poets are nearly blind to the physical world.  They have ideas, memories, and feelings, but when they write their poems they often see them as similes.  To break this habit, I have my students keep a journal in which they must write, very briefly, six things they have seen each day—not beautiful or remarkable things, just things.  This seemingly simple task usually is hard for them.  At the beginning, they typically “see” things in one of three ways: artistically, deliberately, or not at all.  Those who see artistically instantly decorate their descriptions, turning them into something poetic: the winter trees immediately become “old men with snow on their shoulders,” or the lake looks like a “giant eye.”  The ones who see deliberately go on and on describing a brass lamp by the bed with painful exactness.  And the ones who see only what is forced on their attention: the grandmother in a bikini riding on a skateboard, or a bloody car wreck.  But with practice, they begin to see carelessly and learn a kind of active passivity until after a month nearly all of them have learned to be available to seeing—and the physical world pours in.  Their journals fill up with lovely things like, “the mirror with nothing reflected in it.”  This way of seeing is important, even vital to the poet, since it is crucial that a poet see when she or he is not looking—just as she must write when she is not writing.  To write just because the poet wants to write is natural, but to learn to see is a blessing.  The art of finding in poetry is the art of marrying the sacred to the world, the invisible to the human. ”

— Linda Gregg, The Art of Finding

Good afternoon.  
 

still 
  (stĭl)

n., adj. 

1.  not moving or making a sound.

2.  deep silence and calm; tranquility, serenity, peace.
      "the still of the night"

3.  in the future as in the past; at the present time.  

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.”
— John Lennon

Remember, I am made of love.
.

“I’ve a strange feeling come over me—almost as if I were going to think!”
— Aleister Crowley, Moonchild
 

“Oblivion of words will form

the exact language for

understanding the glances of

our closed eyes.

You are here, intangible

and you are all the universe which

I shape into the space of my

room. Your absence springs

trembling in the ticking of the

clock, in the pulse of light;

you breathe through the mirror. From

you to my hands, I caress

your entire body, and I am with

you for a minute and I am with

myself for a moment. And my

blood is the miracle which

runs in the vessels of the air

from my heart to yours.”

— Frida Kahlo, to Diego from The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-portrait

.

“Here is my secret. It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes. It’s the time that you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important. People have forgotten this truth,” the fox said, “But you mustn’t forget it. You become responsible for what you’ve tamed. You’re responsible for your rose…”

- The Little Prince

'

DAWN, n. The time when men of reason go to bed.  Certain men prefer to rise at about that time, taking a bath and a long walk with an empty stomach, and otherwise mortifying the flesh.  They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty, not because of their habits, but in spite of them.  The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

i wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul.

Lunar by Ulrich Grabowski

' My darling, you can't see it, can you?
How like the moon you are.  Both of you
so timid in yourselves; hiding pieces from
the world.  Then, there are those rare
moments when you are both full and it becomes
hard to look away.  Oh, you are beautiful. '
*

Without a doubt, my favorite time of the day is always by moonlight.
.:*

"She's falling hard for me, I can see it in her eyes.
She acts just like a nurse with all the other guys."

' Say hello to all the apples on the ground,
they were once in your eyes but you sneezed them out while sleeping.
Say hello to everything you've left behind, 
it's even more a part of your life now that you can't touch it. 

I'm taking her home with me, all dressed in white. 
She's got everything I need, some pills in a little cup.
She's falling hard for me, I can see it in her eyes. 
She acts just like a nurse with all the other guys. '

via apgibson

A woman who writes feels too much,
those trances and portents!
As if cycles and children and islands
weren’t enough; as if mourners and gossips
and vegetables were never enough.
She thinks she can warn the stars.
A writer is essentially a spy.
Dear love, I am that girl.
-- Anne Sexton, The Black Art
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