I think love is fostered by a capacity to experience cosmos.*
M. C. Richards

It’s while it’s being lived that life is immortal, while it’s still alive. **
Marguerite Duras

All I know
is that whilst we rightly contemplate
and explore
whether there is life after death,
it is positively critical to deeply ponder and curiously wander through
life before death.

Whilst hedonistic and nihilistic extremes
lose the plot,
there are some elemental thoughts to
have some fun with as you
complete them:

Life is hard …
I am not as special as I think …
My life is not about me …
I am not in control …
I am going to die … .

*M. C. Richards’ Centering;
**Quoted in Maria Popova’s The Marginalian: The Backdoor to Immortality: Marguerite Duras on What Makes Life Worth Living in the Face of Death;
^Richard Rohr’s Adam’s Return.

I would rather wonder than know. … I think wondering is a way of inhabiting and lingering. There seems to be more dwelling. To dwell, inhabit and linger. I’m interested in those things. And you can do that when you don’t know.*
Mary Rueffle

We do not need understanding, we do not want understanding, we want love. Understanding already separates the observer from the observed. It is faintly condescending, faintly superior.**
M. C. Richards

To wonder or to understand?
Such a difficult choice.

Is there is another way?
To know and yet wonder?

It would be the most difficult way of all:
To grow in knowledge and also in our sense of wonder
in all our discoveries:
In each other, in our world of things and ideas,
In ourselves and beyond.

As creatures of wonder,
It seems to me that it is this way
Mary Rueffle and M. C. Richards
desire to take them
beyond understanding alone.

*Quoted in Austin Kleon’s blog: To wonder rather than know;
**M.C. Richards’ Centering.

Read, look into other areas, use different learning mediums, ask better questions, reflect, be open to ideas, be surrounded by learners, and prioritise learning*
Michael Heppell

The only thing we know for sure is that we will die one day. But before that we can try do do almost anything.**
Margareta Magnusson

Nothing is really “suddenly.”
A summating sentence can provide a false impression,
That what we want will come quickly:
Only a genie’s wish or some pixie dust away.

“Suddenly” is really our perception of something that has taken a long time
to appear or to happen.

Transformation lies at the end of a slow, long road,
So best to focus on the contents of the road.

*Michael Heppell’s The Edge;
**Margareta Magnusson’s Döstädning.

I am bigger than this. And may I be helped to grow to my full size.*
M. C. Richards

My, look how much you’ve grown!

When did adults stop saying this to you?

Perhaps more importantly,
When did children stop saying this to you?

A growth spurt is only growth that we notice,
But we’re growing little by little,
And the days add up.

Now that our outside growing is over and done with,
Each day becomes another opportunity to grow on the inside.

Some want to grow big quickly,
But the best way has always been a little each day,
And we’re on the way to a spurt.

*M. C. Richards’ Centering.

The painting is like a thread that runs through all the reasons for all the other things that makes one’s life.*
Georgia O’Keeffe

It is the time you have wasted for your rose that make your rose so important.**
Fox to Little Prince

For Georgia O’Keeffe it was painting,
And for you,
The rich vein
of your purpose and enjoyment –
Often craftily disguised as
discomfort and gritty determination –
Will be one of eight billion possibilities,
And you must mine it or be poor.

*Quoted in Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals;
**Quoted in Maria Popova’s The Marginalian: The Flower and the Meaning of Life: Emily Dickinson, Michael Pollan, and The Little Prince.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.*
Jesus of Nazareth

They say that seeing is believing. But it might be more true that believing leads to seeing.**
Seth Godin

It’s an argument for openness over judgement,
To be open as if we believe.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained,
Or is that,
Nothing gained, nothing ventured?

But breakthroughs, creativity and human connection don’t come from predictability. They come from unpredictable interactions with unknown ideas and voices.^

*Matthew 5:5
**Seth Godin’s blog: Seeing and believing;
^Seth Godin’s blog: Chaos, connection and industrial systems.

Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.*
Chuck Close

Best not to wait for the
muse or
guide or
godot
to get here.

There’s plenty we can be getting on with,
As Verlyn Klinkenborg writes helpfully for all of us:

And like “flow,” “natural” is one of the words behind
writer’s block.
So let’s suppose there’s no such thing as writer’s block.
There’s loss of confidence
And forgetting to think
And failing to prepare
And not reading enough
And giving up on patience
And hastening to write
And fearing our audience
And never really trying to understand how the sentences
work.
Above all, there’s never learning to trust yourself
Or your capacity to learn or think or perceive.**

He’s not only penning these words for writers
but for all of us.

Beginning with loss of confidence,
Simone Weil writes:

If we go down into ourselves, we find that we possess
exactly what we desire.^

So let’s go there first,
And then we may know what to think,
How to prepare,
What to read,
How to be patient,
Where to begin
and where not to,
Understanding our “audience,”
And most of all,
Understanding ourselves.

When we arrive on earth, we are provided with no map for our life journey. Only gradually, as our identity forms and we get an inking of who we are, do possibilities begin to emerge that call us.^^

*Quoted in Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals;
**Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several short sentences about writing;
^Quoted in John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
^^John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us.

I’d been distracted by talent.*
Angela Duckworth

Unless your talent is one that keeps you focused on the matter in hand,
No matter what,
Then talent won’t be enough.

It may seem a little strange for me to be telling you this;
I’ve been working with people and their talents since 2005.

Reality is,
You need to keep turning up,
Whatever the “weather.”
There’s always the possibility that “this” might not be for you to be considered,
But if you’re sure, then you have to keep going,
Disappointment after failure after hurt.

It’s what grows talents into strengths.

*Angela Duckworth’s Grit.

We save the world by being alive*
Joseph Campbell

I write when the spirit moves me, and the spirit moves me every day.**
William Faulkner

Following on from yesterday’s thoughts on being infused
leading to doing some infusing,
And alhough I am getting older and crumbly,
I am yet noticing more and more how each day provides me with
the possibility of being more alive
for me to pluck or ignore.

I want to unfold. I don’t want to stay folded anymore, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.^

*Quoted in Keri Smith’s The Wander Society;
**Quoted in Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals;
^Rainer Maria Rilke, quoted in Anne Lamott’s Hallelujah Anyway.

Transience turns everything to air. You look behind and see no sign even of a yesterday that was so intense. Yet in truth, nothing ever disappears, nothing is lost. Everything that happens to us in the world passes into us. It all becomes part of the inner temple of the soul and it can never be lost.*
John O’Donohue

A set up is a cause hidden in the past. … Setups are nothing without …**
Robert McKee

… payoff.**

We’re all infused.
Some more intentionally:
Being as open as possible
to as much as possible
for as long as possible.

When we look more closely to see what all that infusing makes
possible,
And are as open as possible to as much as possible of what we find,
And this for a long as possible,
We are ready to do some infusing.

The last time we took action on an idea, extended ourselves for a friend, and perhaps encouraged ourselves for a new project – these happened because the story worked.^

Which all leads on to what I want to share tomorrow …

*John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty;
**Robert McKee‘s newsletter: How Setups Can Drive Your Story.