To ten years

(with Spouse, that is, not this dusty rag...)

It is something — it can be everything — to have found a fellow bird with whom you can sit among the rafters while the drinking and boasting and reciting and fighting go on below.

– Wallace Stegner

(via A Mindful Life, many years ago)

Quote of the era

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

― Isaac Asimov

(via MetaFilter)

Quote of the day/season

It is not our job to remain whole.
We came to lose our leaves
Like the trees, and be born again,
Drawing up from the great roots.

- Robert Bly

(via whiskey river)

Quote of the day (Thanks, I Needed That edition)

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

–The Talmud

(via A Mindful Life)

Quote of the day

Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.

- T. S. Eliot
journal of a nobody

(via whiskey river)

Quote of the day

Happiness is accepting and choosing life, not just submitting grudgingly to it. It comes when we choose to be who we are; to be ourselves, at this present moment of our lives; we choose life as it is, with all its joys, pain, and conflicts. Happiness is living and seeking the truth, together with others in community, and assuming responsibility for our lives and the lives of others. It is accepting the fact that we are not infinite but can enter into a personal relationship with the Infinite, discovering the universal truth and justice that transcends all cultures: each person is unique and sacred. We are not just seeking to be what others want us to be or to conform to the expectations of family, friends, or local ways of being. We have chosen to be who we are, with all that is beautiful and broken in us. We do not slip away from life and live in a world of illusions, dreams, or nightmares. We become present to reality and to life so that we are free to live according to our personal conscience, our sacred sanctuary, where love resides within us and we see others as they are in the depth of their being. We are not letting the light of life within us be crushed, and we are not crushing it in others. On the contrary, all we want is for the light of others to shine.

- Jean Vanier
Essential Writings
In a Dark Time

(via whiskey river)

Quote of the day

The most civilized people are as near to barbarism as the most polished steel is to rust. Nations, like metals, have only a superficial brilliancy.

- Antoine de Rivarol,
epigrammatist (1753-1801)

(via A.W.A.D.)

Quote of the day

Let me not think of my work only as a stepping stone to something else, and if it is, let me become fascinated by the shape of the stone.

- Ze Frank *

Quote of the day

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

- Anton Chekhov

(via whiskey river (riskywiver on Twitter))

Tweet of the day

Seriously, more people live in my apt complex than will vote for any candidate in the Iowa caucuses. Come here & cover our tenant meetings.

- anildash (Anil Dash)

Quote of the day

The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.

- Ted Hughes

(via whiskey river)

Quote of the day

We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.

- Carlos Castaneda

(via whiskey river)

Quote of the day

Life is a garden,
not a road
we enter and exit
through the same gate
wandering,
where we go matters less
than what we notice

- Bokonon
(muse of Kurt Vonnegut)

(via whiskey river)

Thought for the day

The only thing that is real is that we have six roots within us. Three roots of good and three roots of evil. The latter are greed, hate and delusion, but we also have their opposites: generosity, love and wisdom. Take an interest in this matter. If one investigates this and doesn't get anxious about it, then one can easily accept these six roots in everybody. No difficulty at all, when one has seen them in oneself. They are the underlying roots of everyone's behavior. Then we can look at ourselves a little more realistically, namely not blaming ourselves for the unwholesome roots, not patting ourselves on the back for the wholesome ones, but rather accepting their existence within us. We can also accept others more clear-sightedly and have a much easier time relating to them. We will not suffer from disappointments and we won't blame, because we won't live in a world where only black or white exists. Such a world doesn't exist.

- Ayya Khema

(via whiskey river)

Poem of the day

Questions Before Dark

Day ends, and before sleep
when the sky dies down, consider
your altered state: has this day
changed you? Are the corners
sharper or rounded off? Did you
live with death? Make decisions
that quieted? Find one clear word
that fit? At the sun's midpoint
did you notice a pitch of absence,
bewilderment that invites
the possible? What did you learn
from things you dropped and picked up
and dropped again? Did you set a straw
parallel to the river, let the flow
carry you downstream?

- Jeanne Lohmann
The Light of Invisible Bodies
beyond the fields we know

(via whiskey river)

Twitter quote of the day

A good jobs program would be paying people to whiteout 2011 on calendars and replace with 1937.

- ntoddpax
(NTodd Pritsky)

(via Medley)

Quote of the day, soulless edition

Wow. Boehner on whether his bill will prevent downgrade of U.S. creditworthiness: "That is beyond my control."

Josh Marshall, at TPM

Quote of the day

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

- David Whyte
Sweet Darkness
The House of Belonging

(via whiskey river)

Have some fun this weekend!

Whether success or failure: the truth of a life really has little to do with its quality. The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.

- May Sarton
Twi Chi

(via whiskey river)

Today's Twitter funny...

It doesn't TAKE all kinds. We just HAVE all kinds.

alittlepregnant

(via Medley)