Archive for April, 2018

Random quote of the day:

“Increasingly I have come to realize that spiritual growth and unfolding is sometimes psychically and emotionally painful. Pricking [by thorns], and the realization of being wrong, are themselves metaphors for the challenges and pains of self-discovery.”

—Dennis Gaffin, Running with the Fairies: Towards a Transpersonal Anthropology of Religion

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Orville and Wilbur, Katy Perry, or the Avengers. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“Any profound view of the universe is mystic in that it brings men into spiritual relationship with the Infinite….Rational thinking, if it goes deep, ends of necessity in the irrational realm of mysticism. It has, of course, to deal with life and the world, both of which are non-rational entities.”

—Albert Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought (tr. Antje Bultmann Lemke)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Orville and Wilbur, Katy Perry, or the Avengers. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“The fantastic is what you imagine, but as soon as you do a fantastic thing, it’s no longer fantastic, it becomes real.”

—Jean Rhys, The Paris Review, Fall 1979, No. 76

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Orville and Wilbur, Katy Perry, or the Avengers. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.”

—Jean-Paul Sartre, The Words

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Orville and Wilbur, Katy Perry, or the Avengers. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Boot straps

Sometimes the wild creatures in your heart
get too scared, remain restless, hide away.
My mother the horse-whisperer would have
spoken gently, stroking calmness back into
those creatures, and walked them through
the fear.

Sometimes you don’t have to put the bucket
far down the well before it fills.
Other times you hit the rocky bottom.
My grandfather, the water witch, would have
gotten out the willow rod and paced the land
to find a new well.

Sometimes you need to heal but it takes so long
and the medicine you need is so hard to find.
My great-grandmother the herb witch
would have walked the hills until she found
what she needed.

Sometimes you just have to pick yourself up
and do what needs doing.
Only you can find what you need,
only you can recognize the magic
when you see it.

Generations behind point me to the path.
But only I will recognize the magic when I see it.
And I must walk the walk.

 

*For the poetry project, phase one go here.

*For a definition of Phase 2, go here.

*To see all the poems in one place go here.

Random quote of the day:

“Inside us there is a word we cannot pronounce and that is who we are.”

—Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Orville and Wilbur, Katy Perry, or the Avengers. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry.”

—Simone Weil, “Forms of the Implicit Love of God,” Waiting for God (tr. Emma Craufurd)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Orville and Wilbur, Katy Perry, or the Avengers. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“A man can’t always do as he likes, but he can always fancy what he likes.”

—John Ruskin, “Fairyland”

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Orville and Wilbur, Katy Perry, or the Avengers. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“The arc of the moral universe retreats and advances like a samba.”

—Teju Cole, Twitterfeed, June 26, 2013

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Lucy and Ethel, Justin Bieber, or the Kardashian Klan. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

“It’s all lagers and cigars here”
says the ancient postcard,
remembering a time when,
a long-gone long ago.

Lately, the Crone has slipped
me cryptic messages, all lagers
and cigars, remembering when,
whens that never were except in dreams.
I accept them all, those never-whens,
as absolute fact, an internal terrain
as real as terra firma.

Those dreams once meant something
more than fantasy, something realer
than real, a world burgeoning
in silence and sighs, forming on paper
and on screens, going forth into that
other world, the one most folks
mistake for real.

“When shall we two meet again,” she asks,
“over lagers and cigars?”

I have no answer except “soon”
and “someday.”

She laughs at that.
She recognizes the sound of dreams
disappearing into the mist,
like gorillas on the brink of
extinction.

*For the poetry project, phase one go here.

*For a definition of Phase 2, go here.

*To see all the poems in one place go here.