Wednesday, January 23, 2002 at 10:37AM Succour for gloomy bloggers
He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet's soul. Melancholy was the dominant note of his temperament, he thought, but it was melancholy tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and simple joy. If he could give expression to it in a book of poems perhaps men would listen.
�� -- Joyce, Dubliners, "A Little Cloud" via wood s lot
Wednesday, January 23, 2002 at 10:37AM Succour for gloomy bloggers
He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet's soul. Melancholy was the dominant note of his temperament, he thought, but it was melancholy tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and simple joy. If he could give expression to it in a book of poems perhaps men would listen.
�� -- Joyce, Dubliners, "A Little Cloud" via wood s lot
Wednesday, January 23, 2002 at 10:37AM Succour for gloomy bloggers
He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet's soul. Melancholy was the dominant note of his temperament, he thought, but it was melancholy tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and simple joy. If he could give expression to it in a book of poems perhaps men would listen.
�� -- Joyce, Dubliners, "A Little Cloud" via wood s lot
Sunday, January 20, 2002 at 10:58PM One small step?
Some time ago, here in London, there was a series of adverts on The Underground for an exhibition commemorating the Holocaust. The image used on the posters, a huge pile of abandoned shoes belonging to the victims, has always struck a powerful cord with me. The image of normal, everyday artefacts imbued with horrific meaning is all the more powerful for its mundanity.
Maybe for related reasons I always find my daughter's abandoned shoes equally poignant. I don't quite no why. Maybe it is the mundanity, the everydayness of the image combined with its inanimate state - the life she gives the shoes isn't there - her "path" isn't being walked.
It is such a small step...to no step......
Sunday, January 20, 2002 at 10:58PM One small step?
Some time ago, here in London, there was a series of adverts on The Underground for an exhibition commemorating the Holocaust. The image used on the posters, a huge pile of abandoned shoes belonging to the victims, has always struck a powerful cord with me. The image of normal, everyday artefacts imbued with horrific meaning is all the more powerful for its mundanity.
Maybe for related reasons I always find my daughter's abandoned shoes equally poignant. I don't quite no why. Maybe it is the mundanity, the everydayness of the image combined with its inanimate state - the life she gives the shoes isn't there - her "path" isn't being walked.
It is such a small step...to no step......
Sunday, January 20, 2002 at 10:58PM One small step?
Some time ago, here in London, there was a series of adverts on The Underground for an exhibition commemorating the Holocaust. The image used on the posters, a huge pile of abandoned shoes belonging to the victims, has always struck a powerful cord with me. The image of normal, everyday artefacts imbued with horrific meaning is all the more powerful for its mundanity.
Maybe for related reasons I always find my daughter's abandoned shoes equally poignant. I don't quite no why. Maybe it is the mundanity, the everydayness of the image combined with its inanimate state - the life she gives the shoes isn't there - her "path" isn't being walked.
It is such a small step...to no step......
Sunday, January 20, 2002 at 8:18PM Truth and Jaguars
The combination of my post on truth yesterday and Chris Locke's EGR post on black holes, depression and the breath of jaguars got me thinking.
My sense of happiness is so linked in with my inherited sense of good and bad. I have so many wonderful things in my life, my wife, my kids, where I live, where I work, my health, my skills...and on and on....and yet, if I feel I have been bad, I can obsess about what is wrong in my life. I filter out anything positive and home in on the negative like a heat seeking missile.
I have read dozens of books on how to be different and do try at an intellectual level. But deep down, at a soul level, there are still the same old scripts running..... good - bad, success - failure, all or nothing.
There are some big lessons I am here to learn. There are days I get close to learning them and then pull back. Why do I keep pulling back? It's like there is a big lesson on the way and I'm waiting for it....
Sunday, January 20, 2002 at 8:18PM Truth and Jaguars
The combination of my post on truth yesterday and Chris Locke's EGR post on black holes, depression and the breath of jaguars got me thinking.
My sense of happiness is so linked in with my inherited sense of good and bad. I have so many wonderful things in my life, my wife, my kids, where I live, where I work, my health, my skills...and on and on....and yet, if I feel I have been bad, I can obsess about what is wrong in my life. I filter out anything positive and home in on the negative like a heat seeking missile.
I have read dozens of books on how to be different and do try at an intellectual level. But deep down, at a soul level, there are still the same old scripts running..... good - bad, success - failure, all or nothing.
There are some big lessons I am here to learn. There are days I get close to learning them and then pull back. Why do I keep pulling back? It's like there is a big lesson on the way and I'm waiting for it....
Sunday, January 20, 2002 at 8:18PM Truth and Jaguars
The combination of my post on truth yesterday and Chris Locke's EGR post on black holes, depression and the breath of jaguars got me thinking.
My sense of happiness is so linked in with my inherited sense of good and bad. I have so many wonderful things in my life, my wife, my kids, where I live, where I work, my health, my skills...and on and on....and yet, if I feel I have been bad, I can obsess about what is wrong in my life. I filter out anything positive and home in on the negative like a heat seeking missile.
I have read dozens of books on how to be different and do try at an intellectual level. But deep down, at a soul level, there are still the same old scripts running..... good - bad, success - failure, all or nothing.
There are some big lessons I am here to learn. There are days I get close to learning them and then pull back. Why do I keep pulling back? It's like there is a big lesson on the way and I'm waiting for it....
Saturday, January 19, 2002 at 9:00AM The spirit of blogging?
Listen attentively, and above all, remember that true tales are meant to be transmitted. To keep them to oneself is to betray them.
Elie Wiesel via synergy
Saturday, January 19, 2002 at 9:00AM The spirit of blogging?
Listen attentively, and above all, remember that true tales are meant to be transmitted. To keep them to oneself is to betray them.
Elie Wiesel via synergy
Saturday, January 19, 2002 at 9:00AM The spirit of blogging?
Listen attentively, and above all, remember that true tales are meant to be transmitted. To keep them to oneself is to betray them.
Elie Wiesel via synergy
Saturday, January 19, 2002 at 8:22AM Out of the mouths of babes - part five
Way before it was light this morning my four year old edged her way into bed and said "Why is it good to tell the truth Daddy?"
As I struggled to get back to sleep my mind, which I have depressingly little control over, shot off of its own accord and started pondering this question.
In the nanoseconds of thought, which I can now slow down and reflect on, I started off remembering my presbyterian mother drumming into me that telling the truth was important. For me truth is still wrapped up with a particular West of Scotland version of being "good". Even in my own self talk there is a pressure to live up to this concept of truth. I have arguments with myself about whether I really am "good" or whether I am just lying to myself that I am and am in reality "bad". I then feel bad for having lied to myself!
My mind then shot off into the next nanosecond and remembered my first realisation (depressingly recently) that truth is almost entirely subjective. Truth depends so much on our way of looking at things. I remember getting into self-help literature about five years ago and realising for the first time that so many of the pressures I experienced were of my own making. They were based on my old concepts of good and bad and these concepts had everything to do with the environment I had grown up in and weren't necessarily my own.
I discussed these ideas at the time with my father who dismissed them with the phrase "Oh that's just another way of looking at things." Yes - isn't everything! Some work and some don't and isn't it better to consciously choose a way that works rather than just accept the way of looking at things apparently shared by those around you?
Post Script
Just as I pressed "Post & Publish" on Blogger my daughter crawled into my arms and and gave me a cuddle. I said "Oooh cuddling is so good" to which she replied "Good is good and bad is bad"
Sometimes she scares me......
Saturday, January 19, 2002 at 8:22AM Out of the mouths of babes - part five
Way before it was light this morning my four year old edged her way into bed and said "Why is it good to tell the truth Daddy?"
As I struggled to get back to sleep my mind, which I have depressingly little control over, shot off of its own accord and started pondering this question.
In the nanoseconds of thought, which I can now slow down and reflect on, I started off remembering my presbyterian mother drumming into me that telling the truth was important. For me truth is still wrapped up with a particular West of Scotland version of being "good". Even in my own self talk there is a pressure to live up to this concept of truth. I have arguments with myself about whether I really am "good" or whether I am just lying to myself that I am and am in reality "bad". I then feel bad for having lied to myself!
My mind then shot off into the next nanosecond and remembered my first realisation (depressingly recently) that truth is almost entirely subjective. Truth depends so much on our way of looking at things. I remember getting into self-help literature about five years ago and realising for the first time that so many of the pressures I experienced were of my own making. They were based on my old concepts of good and bad and these concepts had everything to do with the environment I had grown up in and weren't necessarily my own.
I discussed these ideas at the time with my father who dismissed them with the phrase "Oh that's just another way of looking at things." Yes - isn't everything! Some work and some don't and isn't it better to consciously choose a way that works rather than just accept the way of looking at things apparently shared by those around you?
Post Script
Just as I pressed "Post & Publish" on Blogger my daughter crawled into my arms and and gave me a cuddle. I said "Oooh cuddling is so good" to which she replied "Good is good and bad is bad"
Sometimes she scares me......
Saturday, January 19, 2002 at 8:22AM Out of the mouths of babes - part five
Way before it was light this morning my four year old edged her way into bed and said "Why is it good to tell the truth Daddy?"
As I struggled to get back to sleep my mind, which I have depressingly little control over, shot off of its own accord and started pondering this question.
In the nanoseconds of thought, which I can now slow down and reflect on, I started off remembering my presbyterian mother drumming into me that telling the truth was important. For me truth is still wrapped up with a particular West of Scotland version of being "good". Even in my own self talk there is a pressure to live up to this concept of truth. I have arguments with myself about whether I really am "good" or whether I am just lying to myself that I am and am in reality "bad". I then feel bad for having lied to myself!
My mind then shot off into the next nanosecond and remembered my first realisation (depressingly recently) that truth is almost entirely subjective. Truth depends so much on our way of looking at things. I remember getting into self-help literature about five years ago and realising for the first time that so many of the pressures I experienced were of my own making. They were based on my old concepts of good and bad and these concepts had everything to do with the environment I had grown up in and weren't necessarily my own.
I discussed these ideas at the time with my father who dismissed them with the phrase "Oh that's just another way of looking at things." Yes - isn't everything! Some work and some don't and isn't it better to consciously choose a way that works rather than just accept the way of looking at things apparently shared by those around you?
Post Script
Just as I pressed "Post & Publish" on Blogger my daughter crawled into my arms and and gave me a cuddle. I said "Oooh cuddling is so good" to which she replied "Good is good and bad is bad"
Sometimes she scares me......
Friday, January 18, 2002 at 12:22PM Doc on Walt Whitman
The elementary laws never apologize.
How rude of them.
To a born apologizer like me, these words spoke like a burning bush. They pushed aside the overpaid guardian at the gates of my soul, walked into my sanctum and told me who I was.
Friday, January 18, 2002 at 12:22PM Doc on Walt Whitman
The elementary laws never apologize.
How rude of them.
To a born apologizer like me, these words spoke like a burning bush. They pushed aside the overpaid guardian at the gates of my soul, walked into my sanctum and told me who I was.
Friday, January 18, 2002 at 12:22PM Doc on Walt Whitman
The elementary laws never apologize.
How rude of them.
To a born apologizer like me, these words spoke like a burning bush. They pushed aside the overpaid guardian at the gates of my soul, walked into my sanctum and told me who I was.
Saturday, January 12, 2002 at 9:49PM Sometimes life just hurts and hurts and hurts and hurts.............
Art
October, a woman and a boy, a tumor
overtaking his brain, draw pictures
in the waiting room.
She makes a red apple as round
as a face. Then from her hand a cloud
grows and darkens over the apple
until the crayon breaks inside
its wrapper and hangs like a snapped
neck from her bloodless fingertips.
He's drawn two stick-figures
up to their necks in falling gold
leaves, their heads all smiles.
It's you and daddy, he tells her.
Above them a flock of m's
fly toward a grinning sun.
When she doesn't answer
he says on Halloween he'd like
to be a horse with orange wings.
Staring at his picture, she says
It looks like Thanksgiving.
Where are you?
He taps the sun. I'm shining on you.
She hugs him as if trying
to press him back inside her.
I'm not crying, she whispers.
He looks over her shoulder.
I'm not crying, too.
by Eric Nelson
via riley dog
Saturday, January 12, 2002 at 9:49PM Sometimes life just hurts and hurts and hurts and hurts.............
Art
October, a woman and a boy, a tumor
overtaking his brain, draw pictures
in the waiting room.
She makes a red apple as round
as a face. Then from her hand a cloud
grows and darkens over the apple
until the crayon breaks inside
its wrapper and hangs like a snapped
neck from her bloodless fingertips.
He's drawn two stick-figures
up to their necks in falling gold
leaves, their heads all smiles.
It's you and daddy, he tells her.
Above them a flock of m's
fly toward a grinning sun.
When she doesn't answer
he says on Halloween he'd like
to be a horse with orange wings.
Staring at his picture, she says
It looks like Thanksgiving.
Where are you?
He taps the sun. I'm shining on you.
She hugs him as if trying
to press him back inside her.
I'm not crying, she whispers.
He looks over her shoulder.
I'm not crying, too.
by Eric Nelson
via riley dog
