Accepting This

Yes, it is true. I confess,

I have thought great thoughts,
and sung great songs—all of it
rehearsal for the majesty
of being held.

The dream is awakened
when thinking I love you
and life begins
when saying I love you
and joy moves like blood
when embracing others with love.

My efforts now turn
from trying to outrun suffering
to accepting love wherever
I can find it.

Stripped of causes and plans
and things to strive for,
I have discovered everything
I could need or ask for
is right here—
in flawed abundance.

We cannot eliminate hunger,
but we can feed each other.
We cannot eliminate loneliness,
but we can hold each other.
We cannot eliminate pain,
but we can live a life
of compassion.

Ultimately,
we are small living things
awakened in the stream,
not gods who carve out rivers.

Like human fish,
we are asked to experience
meaning in the life that moves
through the gill of our heart.

There is nothing to do
and nowhere to go.
Accepting this,
we can do everything
and go anywhere.

- Mark Nepo

Seekin' The Cause

from the "regrets" series: hobbies

: ) My poster-film for 2007.

"the phrase"

the inspiring efforts of others

i'm not posting much lately, but this time it's a good sign. work has picked up a lot (temporarily, at least), but i haven't yet figured out how to write for a living and still have enough juice left to write for myself.

for now, feeling guilty and also missing firefly quite a bit, i will start posting wonderful things i find created by other people.

not everyone has time to dig the web for stimulating creative morsels. and since i sometimes do, while i'm not chipping away at the human condition with my words, i can at least share the inspiring efforts of others.

i'll start with this youtube vid, which i just came across. over the coming days, i'll try to do a retrospective and post things i've found in the recent months.

branding 101

been studying or working in branding for 9 years now. and everything i have ever learned, is summed up in this ad. seriously.

Angelus

By Cynthia Zarin

One opens the book at random, opens the day,
reads the old architecture whose face runs
like a dog along the window while the sun plays
catch with itself, bounding from Sunday

to Sunday, speechless with desire.
What more could there be than this?
The beams of the cottage, the sheltering
bones of your hips, the great abbey

of the afternon that fills as we watch with sound
and the voices trail back to you from the apse,
from the nave, from the shell-shaped hollow
at the base of your throat that even as it says

what it wants, even as it wills it, holds back,
and a great threshing noise saws the air
as the new beams are hewn all over again as
they must be continually, and knowing this

our very words, making and undoing, are torn,
the color of blood. For why are you here before me
after all this time, time which was mine alone
but now, because we have brought each other

here, belongs to you? We talk to each other
as birds do under the eaves, like the swallows
who return and return, and each time find
everything changed, everything different.

.

"words harmed the world"

For lovers of the words, and lovers of silence, there is a wonderful short story in The New Yorker this month. And yet, for all its resonance, I am equally touched that it took words to write it.

HISTORY OF A DISTURBANCE
by STEVEN MILLHAUSER
The New Yorker, Issue of 2007-03-05

You are angry, Elena. You are furious. You are desperately unhappy. Do you know you’re becoming bitter?—bitter as those little berries you bit into, remember? in the woods that time. You are frightened. You are resentful. My vow must have seemed to you extremely cruel, or insane. You are suspicious. You are tired. I’ve never seen you so tired. And of course: you are patient. You’re very patient, Elena. I can feel that patience of yours come rolling out at me from every ripple of your unforgiving hair, from your fierce wrists and tense blouse. It’s a harsh patience, an aggressive patience. It wants something, as all patience does... READ ON

ben's weather report

This is Ben again, known on YouTube as Elba. Ben's now made a puppet of himself (yes, striking resemblance), being really, um, himself. A thousand years ago we studied for final exams together in the UCL library. Well, I studied. Ben did what Ben does. Annoying authority figures may call it creative procrastination. I call it overflowing if understated genius.