from emily dickinson

I'm nobody, who are you?
Are you nobody too?
Then there's a pair of us.
Don't tell--they'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody.
How public--like a frog--
To tell your name the livelong June
To an admiring bog.

from "Dicey's Song" by Cynthia Voigt

"Gram," Dicey said, her voice so loud Gram's eyes popped open. "But you knew how to do everything."
"I knew how to do nothing," Gram told her. "I just did everything. There's a difference. You should know that."

from The Complete Tale of Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne

"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"

"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"

"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully.

"It's the same thing," he said.

words to ponder

This was written by Erma Bombeck near the end of her life...

"If I had my life to live over, I would have talked less and listened more. I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained and the sofa faded. I would have eaten the popcorn in the 'good' living room and worried much less about the dirt when someone wanted to light a fire in the fireplace. I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth. I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed. I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage. I would have sat on the lawn with my children and not worried about grass stains. I would have cried and laughed less while watching television - and more while watching life. I would have shared more of the responsibility carried by my husband. I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren't there for the day. I would never have bought anything just because it was practical, wouldn't show soil or was guaranteed to last a lifetime. Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished every moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle. When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, "Later. Now go get washed up for dinner." There would have been more "I love you's".. More "I'm sorrys" ... But mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute... look at it and really see it ... live it...and never give it back."

doing the heavy lifting

"You are not going to find the meaning of life hidden under a rock written by someone else. You'll find it by giving meaning to life from inside yourself." ~ Dr. Robert Firestone

peonies by Mary Oliver

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open ---
pools of lace,
white and pink ---
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweep sap,
taking it away

to their dark underground cities ---
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again ---
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?
Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?

from Jim Rohn

"You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with."

your newest addiction

Friends, prepare to take a journey down the rabbit's hole. Really: don't go to this web site if you, say, have to pick up your child in 15 minutes, or you need to pay close attention to something on the stove or you plan on going to bed within the next hour. Don't click on this link if any of those circumstances apply to you.

Wait until you have a couple hours (at least) available, a mug of coffee on hand and your favorite pen with a stack of paper and no one around to distract you.

The Paris Review has made its interview collection available online.*

I've read volume no. 1 and 4 with no luck locating no. 2 and 3. So this feels like, well, it feels like thank you Paris Review.

This is your chance to get into the heads of your favorite writers. Don't miss out.*Based on my limited picking around on the site it seems that the archives are open, free and completely available. Only the most recent interviews are cut off mid-interview with a request for a subscription if you want to read more.

happy mother's day

Have you seen this? "A Mother's Prayer for Her Child" by Tina Fey. The woman can write.

Enjoy.

from "The Gastronomical Me" by M.F.K. Fisher

"It was a wonderful window, one of the best I can  remember, and what I saw and thought and felt as I stood in it with my hands on the food for us those months will always be a good part of me."

4. by mary oliver

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

5 more people I'd like to meet

1. Beatrix Potter
2. Amelia Earhart
3. Keri Smith
4. Nikki McClure
5. Harper Lee

How about you? Whom would you most like to meet?

by maya angelou

"Every human being has paid the earth to grow up. Most people don't grow up. It's too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That's the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don't grow up. Not really. They get older. But to grow up costs the earth. It means you take responsibility for the time you take up, for the space you occupy. It's serious business. And you find what it costs us to love and to lose, to dare and to fail. And maybe even more, to succeed. What it costs, in truth. Not superficial costs - anybody can have that - I mean in truth."

love after love by derek walcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

a moveable feast ~ by ernest hemingway

"You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalks so that you saw and smelled the food. When you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the Luxembourg gardens where you saw and smelled nothing to eat all the way from the Place de l'Observatoire to the rue de Vaugirard. There you could always go into the Luxembourg museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cezanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry. Later I though Cezanne was probably hungry in a different way."

mad ones

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candle exploding like spiders across the stars..." ~ Jack Kerouac

mindful ~ by mary oliver

Every day
   I see or I hear
      something
         that more or less

kills me
   with delight,
      that leaves me
         like a needle

in the haystack
   of light.
      It is what I was born for--
         to look, to listen,

to lose myself
   inside this soft world--
      to instruct myself
         over and over

in joy,
   and acclamation.
      Nor am I talking
         about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
   the very extravagant--
      but of the ordinary,
         the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
   Oh, good scholar,
      I say to myself,
         how can you help

but grow wise
   with such teachings
      as these---
         the untrimmable light

of the world,
   the ocean's shine,
      the prayers that are made
         out of grass?

tonic

"We have been created for greater things. Not just to be a number in the world. Not just to go for diplomas and degrees. This work and that work. We have been created in order to love and to be loved." ~ Mother Teresa

language arts

This excerpt is from an interview with J. Patrick Lewis:
(the entire interview is here.)

If you were in charge of language arts, particularly poetry, instruction in the elementary grades, what changes would you make, if any, to the way language arts and poetry are taught in schools today?

Pat: At the risk of sounding imperious, I would…

• Ban all “poetry units.” Poetry should be a daily event in every class, not just in Language Arts.
• Encourage poetry cafes where students, teachers, custodians, clerical staff, even parents are invited to share their work.
• Work closely with school librarians to figure out ways of making the library as much of a magnet as the playground.
• Encourage students to write every day.
• Emphasize the supreme importance of strong action verbs, personified verbs.
• Emphasize the unimportance of adjectives and adverbs.
• Share poetry books of all schools, not just the ones you, the teacher, favors.
• Introduce a daily “Metaphor Minute,” wherein students are given a single word and asked to define it metaphorically.
• Applaud students’ failures, embrace them—failure is the only road to success.

5 people I'd like to meet

1. Madeleine L'Engle
2. Mary Oliver
3. Natalie Merchant
4. Melissa Sweet
5. Mark Rothko