Life responds when we risk.

-Rodney Smith, "Lessons From the Dying"

Yeats Quote of the Day

I said: "A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world."

from Adam's Curse

The Young Watch Us

The young girls look up
as we walk past the line at the movie,
and go back to examining their fingernails.

Their boyfriends are combing their hair,
and chew gum
as if they meant to insult us.

Today we made love all day.
I look at you. You are smiling at the sidewalk,
dear wrinkled face.

Donald Hall

5. If you could relive a single day or moment, what would it be?

Up the narrow flight of stairs.
Eyes closed
The dark door opens with familiar creak.
Of myself and her entangled
Radiator hisses and clanks.
Not in my body
Sweaty mattress on the floor.
Above us, out of us
Cool night drifts through the window.
One

Later we hear murmurs from the streets below.

7. Under what circumstances have you been closest to death?

"Some kind of virus" was their final diagnosis. Dehydration. Renal failure. Extremely low blood pressure. She was 25.

I can't look at her. I can barely walk out the door. I wake up at 4am vomiting.

At the funeral I lay my hand on her cold forehead. I don't remember hitting the floor.

1. What door do you wish you never opened?

Dont' go home!

A fog comes over me when I think about it.

I couldn't go home. He was there.

I sat in the theater for movie after movie. Sticky floors and Bright Light headaches.

I tried to pay attention to the story on the screen, but he was always waiting in the quiet spaces.

18. What is the most joyful moment you have experienced?

Pop-tarts for breakfast all week. We wade through a freezing cold stream that empties into even colder Lake Superior.

I stole/borrowed my parent's car and drove for five days to get us here.

I remove the leeches from our feet with salt. Everything is perfect.

8. What is the most gracious act of kindness you have witnessed?

[Cut-up]

I knew an 8 year old whose hobby was fundraising for charities. He was a preacher.

"Kiss and a hug!" he always demanded when I went out the door.

I found out later he headed an anti-evolution group in Pennsylvania. He died two years ago from pancreatic cancer.

What is the greatest risk you have ever taken?

Driving south on I-75 in Michigan and for no explainable reason passed my exit and kept going. Slept in a restaurant parking lot in Missouri that night. Ran out of money and gas outside Vegas. Sold my coat at a convenience store. Ended up on the coast. Worst time. Best time.

What's In My Journal

What's In My Journal

Odd things, like a button drawer. Mean
Thing, fishhooks, barbs in your hand.
But marbles too. A genius for being agreeable.
Junkyard crucifixes, voluptuous
discards. Space for knickknacks, and for
Alaska. Evidence to hang me, or to beatify.
Clues that lead nowhere, that never connected
anyway. Deliberate obfuscation, the kind
that takes genius. Chasms in character.
Loud omissions. Mornings that yawn above
a new grave. Pages you know exist
but you can't find them. Someone's terribly
inevitable life story, maybe mine.

William Stafford

3. Where is your favorite place in the world, and why?

The four of us met at the small gray dive every Wednesday night. We always stayed until last call, and since we knew the bartender we sometimes stayed after the doors were locked, talking and drinking into the morning.

It's since been torn down. I've lost track of everyone over the years.

14. What was the single most terrifying moment of your life?

The clock on the wall is the same type as the one in my history class
that always seems extra slow. This one is in my doctor's waiting room.
I'm going to find out my test results in a few minutes.

I can't take my eyes off the clock.

20. Open Question: Submit your own question and answer.

20. What is your guilty pleasure?

I'm going straight home this time. I won't stop there tonight.

The first cheeseburger goes down quickly. I try to savor the second,
alternating bites with ketchup drenched fries. I sit a few more
minutes, sucking down the last of my corn syrupy drink.

Next time I'm going to drive past, I promise.

15. If you have experienced a moment of sudden faith or loss of faith, what prompted it?

I attended a Christian fundamentalist middle school from 1979 to 1981. Right after John Lennon was killed he was the subject of our weekly sermon. He was in hell, we were told, because he wanted us to "Imagine there's no heaven."

My path to atheism began that day.

9. What is the worst betrayal you have ever experienced?

I still don't know when she decided to leave. Was it before or after she came and sat beside my hospital bed? When they finally let me go home all her stuff was gone.

12. What is your earliest, most vivid memory?

I am three years old. It is a misty, cloudy day on a lonely beach. My Dad and I are climbing a rock that is a mountain to me. At the top he points upward to a wisp of fog. He lifts me and I reach to touch a cloud.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close behind me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lonely worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air;
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Theodore Roethke

Saw this one twice this week

TaoToday.com - The Daily Tao

Sixteen

Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind become still.
The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches their return.
They grow and flourish and then return to the source.
Returning to the source is stillness, which is the way of nature.
The way of nature is unchanging.
Knowing constancy is insight.
Not knowing constancy leads to disaster.
Knowing constancy, the mind is open.
With an open mind, you will be openhearted.
Being openhearted, you will act royally.
Being royal, you will attain the divine.
Being divine, you will be at one with the Tao.
Being at one with the Tao is eternal.
And though the body dies, the Tao will never pass away.

Read this Tao at http://www.schrades.com/tao/TaoText.cfm?TaoID=16

Eight

The highest good is like water.
Water give life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.

In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In daily life, be competent.
In action, be aware of the time and the season.

No fight: No blame.