Frederick Douglass, Autobiographies

I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.

 

CS Lewis - "The Great Divorce"

I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.

Anne Lamott - “Almost Everything”

This is good news, that almost everyone is petty, narcissistic, secretly insecure, and in it for themselves, because a few of the funny ones may actually long to be friends with you and me. They can be real with us, the greatest relief. As we develop love, appreciation, and forgiveness for others over time, we may accidentally develop those things toward ourselves, too.

poem by GPT-3 open AI

Julia Cameron, “The Artist’s Way”

By Malcolm Venable

 SEP 17, 2021

When we do what we are meant to do … doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play.

Kanye, “Dark Fantasy”

…

Beyond the truest, hey, teacher, teacher
Tell me, how do you respond to students?
And refresh the page and restart the memory?

Respark the soul and rebuild the energy?
We stopped the ignorance, we killed the enemies
Sorry for the night demons still visit me
The plan was to drink until the pain over
But what's worse, the pain or the hangover?

…

Cleo Wade

Yell if you need to
Need if you need to

Just dont be scared
Just dont not live

While you are here

Adrienne Rich, “Power”

Living in the earth-deposits of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power

Alex Dimitrov, from “Monday” in The New Yorker 8/31/21

…

Doesn't it bother you sometimes
what living is, what the day has turned into?
So many screens and meetings
and things to be late for.
Everyone truly deserves
a flute of champagne
for having made it this far!
Though it's such a disaster
to drink on a Monday.

…

Tomas Transtromer, “The Blue House”

…

It is always so early in here, it is before the crossroads, before the irrevocable choices. I am grateful for this life! And yet I miss the alternatives. All sketches wish to be real.

…

Alison Bechdel in The Believer September 2021

Whenever I write anything, I somehow want to write everything.