The Cure for Anything
is salt water – sweat, tears, or the sea
Category Uncategorized
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i love you much(most beautiful darling) {poetry}
i love you much(most beautiful darling)more than anyone on the earth and i
like you better than everything in the sky-sunlight and singing welcome your coming
although winter may be everywhere
with such a silence and such a darkness
no one can quite begin to guess(except my life)the true time of year-
and if what calls itself a world should have
the luck to hear such singing(or glimpse such sunlight as will leap higher than high through gayer than gayest someone’s heart at your each nearness)everyone certainly would(my most beautiful darling)
believe in nothing but love
-ee cummings
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In Life
I think that learning to roll with life’s changes has been the #1 most important life skill I’ve ever acquired. Life is full of changes. That’s a given. Being able to cope with, and even thrive upon those changes is essential. -
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Learning to Receive
I read two things today, two very poignant things. It was exactly what I needed to read, exactly when I needed it. These pieces caused me to have some rather painful realizations, but that may be just what I need right now. Life works in mysterious ways sometimes. 😊
I’m going to share one of the writings that was sent to me. I may share the other one on here as well, or I may just send it directly to the person that it applies to. I haven’t decided yet.
This is could have been written by me. I never ask for help. I never admit that I need anything. When you are un-demanding and self-sufficient everyone forgets you even have needs and you’re easy to be pushed down the ladder of priorities.
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Nativity
The image below reveals what the nativity scene would look like if all Jews, Midldle Easterners, and refugees were scrubbed away from the birth of Jesus. Spoiler alert: There’s no one there, save for a few animals.
Christians need to remember that hate is not a Christian value and Jesus said “Love one another” not “Love one another only if they’re the same race, ethnicity, and religion as you.”
On a much lighter note, I just found a few pictures of me and my older brother and sister from Christmas of 1970. I was trying to figure out why two are in color and one in black and white. My grandfather was still alive then, and he was an avid photographer. He even had his own darkroom and developed all of his own photos.
I still make this exact facial expression, and my brother still has this big, goofy grin
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Show Up
I don’t know the words for what I see happening in Aleppo. I don’t know how to make it make sense. How did we let it come to this? How did blind eyes get turned for so very long, how did we give headline space to Donald Trump and his circus over this crisis? How do we still? I am heartbroken by every piece of every news coming from Syria, I am destroyed with every image of every bomb dropping, every person killed, every child displaced. It is too much. It is too far. We must stand up and let our voices combine and speak about this. We must help. We must stop brushing under the rugs all things that make us uncomfortable, we must erase the notion that out of sight can mean out of mind. We are here, together, and we are wasting our precious time killing one another for our differences rather than loving because of them. No more. Still, words are hollow if not given shape with action, and so we must act. I have listed numerous charities that are on the front lines of this tragedy and all of whom need our help so desperately. Give. Stand with Aleppo and put your money where your heart is. Support this global refugee movement and open doors instead of slamming them shut. Help. Watch. Research and learn.
Instead of buying yet another Christmas gift, give to one of these agencies. That’s what I did.
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Do You Still Get Angry?
Sometimes I need a reminder such as this.
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A Serious Girl
💕💕💕 -
I Can’t Put My Arms Down
I felt just like Randy from the movie A Christmas Story this morning. Too. Many. Layers.
That’s one thing I really dislike about winter– clothes. 😉 However, I dislike being cold even more than I dislike clothes.
This movie always makes me laugh. Plus, it’s set in northern Indiana in the 1940s, so it’s very reminiscent of my parents’ childhood. My dad loves to tell me the story of his childhood Christmases, and how he and his three brothers would get just oranges and mittens for presents. A few years ago I read a hilarious book by Havel Kimmel, who also happened to grow up in Indiana. In the book, she wrote this about her father:
“all men of a certain age tell this story, and they give themselves away by always using the same fruit. I have yet to meet the father who will look his child in the eye and say, “I was happy just to get some seedless grapes.” But”
― Haven Kimmel, A Girl Named Zippy -
Sonnet XIII
The light that rises from your feet to your hair,
the strength enfolding your delicate form,
are not mother of pearl, not chilly silver:
you are made of bread, a bread the fire adores.The grain grew high in its harvest of you,
in good time the flour swelled;
as the dough rose, doubling your breasts,
my love was the coal waiting ready in the earth.Oh, bread your forehead, your legs, your mouth,
bread I devour, born with the morning light,
my love, beacon-flag of the bakeries:fire taught you a lesson of the blood;
you learned your holiness from flour,
from bread your language and aroma..·:*¨ ¨*:·..·:*¨ ¨*:·..·:*¨ ¨*:·.
La luz que de tus pies sube a tu cabellera,
la turgencia que envuelve tu forma delicada,
no es de nácar marino, nunca de plata fría:
eres de pan, de pan amado por el fuego.La harina levantó su granero contigo
y creció incrementada por la edad venturosa,
cuando los cereales duplicaron tu pecho
mi amor era el carbón trabajando en la tierra.Oh, pan tu frente, pan tus piernas, pan tu boca,
pan que devoro y nace con luz cada mañana,
bienamada, bandera de las panaderías,una lección de sangre te dio el fuego,
de la harina aprendiste a ser sagrada,
y del pan el idioma y el aroma. -
Best
Those small, nameless moments make up the bulk of our lives, and for that I am so grateful. They make life so rich, without costing a thing. When people say “the best things in life are free” I believe this is what they’re talking about. Laughing together, shared stories, quiet moments spent looking into each other’s eyes, whispered “I love you”s, and smiling. This is what matters. This is what is important.
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Keep the Book
There are two people you’ll meet in your life. One will run a finger down the index of who you are and jump straight to the parts of you that pique their interest. The other will take his or her time reading through every one of your chapters and maybe fold corners of you that inspired them most. You will meet these two people; it is a given. It is the third that you’ll never see coming. That one person who not only finishes your sentences, but keeps the book. ❤️
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Transform
This, 100% this. ❤️
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Second Sight
Sometimes, you need the ocean light,
and colors you’ve never seen before
painted through an evening sky.Sometimes you need your God
to be a simple invitation,
not a telling word of wisdom.Sometimes you need only the first shyness
that comes from being shown things
far beyond your understanding,so that you can fly and become free
by being still and by being still here.And then there are times you need to be
brought to ground by touch
and touch alone.To know those arms around you
and to make your home in the world.
just by being wanted.To see those eyes looking back at you,
as eyes should see you at last,seeing you, as you always wanted to be seen,
seeing you, as you yourself
had always wanted to see the world.– David Whyte
from Pilgrim -
Principle, Dignity, Self-respect
I read this and struck a chord with me.
‘You know, originating from a small town in ‘fill in the blank’—one of the areas that likely made a difference in this election—I didn’t realize until just this week how much all the learning, and the travel, and the business, and the experiences, and simply having the opportunity to live as a citizen of the world, as opposed to the citizen of just one country, has been about so much more than pleasure and fulfillment. It’s been about living an intelligent, curiosity-driven life. It’s been about growing. And expanding. And experiencing. It’s been about seeing. And feeling. And exploring. And you know what it’s really been about? Not the money and the success and all—that’s really just the superficial stuff—it’s about principle. And dignity. And self-respect. And options.’One of the best things I’ve done is travel and live in different parts of the country. I grew up in a very homogeneous atmosphere. Everyone, and I mean everyone was a WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant). I went to one of the largest high schools in the state, yet in my graduating class there were only two black students and none of any other race/ethnic background. I didn’t know it while I was growing up, but I lived in a sundown town. Sundown towns, sometimes known as sunset towns or gray towns, are all-white municipalities or neighborhoods in the United States that practice a form of segregation by enforcing restrictions excluding people of other races via some combination of discriminatory local laws, intimidation, and violence. What I also didn’t know when I was growing up is that there was a very active branch of the KKK in town as well. Now, if someone asks me where I grew up, I give a vague answer such as northern Indiana. I don’t want to be associated in any way with such a place, lest someone mistakenly think that I am a prejudiced bigot.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It
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This is How We Heal
I awoke this morning to a total shock. And then I wondered just how naïve I really am – and how much of a bubble I live in. How did I not see this coming? How did we not see this coming?
I am painfully aware that I live within a bubble of privilege. There are so many out there –my friends of color, of different ethnicities and nationalities and religions, my LGBGT friends, my friends with terminal illness or disability, my friends who live in poverty – who do not have the benefit of that bubble.
This vile, misogynistic, racist man has been elected president of our country. Which means that the majority of the people around us believe this behavior to be acceptable. Which means that we collectively excuse and condone it. Which means that we’ve accepted the culture we’ve been raised in and we’re okay with shining a light on it and still refusing to shut it down.
The America I know, the America I believe in, is better than this. We are better than this man and his party built on a platform of divisiveness and hatred. We are better than this rhetoric of division and misogyny and racism.
Buddha once said “I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.” No matter what world we wake to tomorrow, we have work to do. We have compassion to spread, we have kindness to spread. We have friends to protect, we have families to support. We have understanding to practice, patience to build. We have life, so much life, and we have to shine bright lights on those whose lives and the importance of them, have taken a backseat for far too long. We have rights to fight for and so many people to love. So much light to chase. We cannot heal a wound, a split down our center, by ignoring it, nor by running away from it. Only though the work we must complete can we heal, only by giving our hearts and kindness to all those that need it most, only by loving, openly, wildly, freely, can we progress. At our centers, we are all the same and we must not forget this. We cannot abandon hope when the lights dim low, we cannot sacrifice our tenderness when grace goes unanswered. Love. More. ❤️
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Both
This pretty much says it all. It’s so mentally and physically exhausting being both.
