"What I tell my students, when they feel singularly unfortunate to be born in this moment, is this is your moment, the moment your soul showed up incarnate. In this world. It is an astonishing moment to be alive. You could have been born into a lull - instead you were born into a tipping point. It's your one life and you've entered it at a flexion point - a point when everything you do matters. How often in history does a soul get to live in such an era? Don't waste it. Show up for it. With everything you've got. Some will invent, some will organize, some will witness, some will grieve, some will console. Live this life now. Even if in fury and grief, live it. You don't want to die not having lived. It's incredibly easy to find a way around experience rather than through it. But you will have cheated yourself out of your only possession: your life. You are here now. Now is the time to live fully, not hide, not escape."
- Jorie Graham
the harvard gazette
alive on all channels
"Assume that you are quite right. You are depressed because you have every reason to be depressed. No member of the other two million species which inhabit the earth - and who are luckily exempt from depression - would fail to be depressed if it lived the life you lead. You live in a deranged age - more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing."
- Walker Percy
Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book
commonplace
Let your mind and heart release all that disturbs you.
Let your body be still,
and all the frettings of your body, and all that surrounds it -
let the earth and sea and air be still, and heaven itself;
and then think of spirit
as streaming, pouring, rushing, and shining
into you, through you, and out from you in all directions while you sit quiet.
- Plotinus
"Don't worry about things. Don't push. Just do your work and you'll survive. The important thing is to have a ball, to be joyful, to be loving and to be explosive. Out of that comes everything and you grow. All you should worry about is whether you're doing it every day and whether you're having fun with it. If you're not having fun, find the reason. Perhaps you should be doing something else."
- Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury Uncensored
poetic outlaws
I wonder how many people in this city
live in furnished rooms.
Late at night when I look out at the buildings
I swear I see a face in every window
looking back at me,
and when I turn away
I wonder how many go back to their desks
and write this down.
- Leonard Cohen
The Spice-Box of Earth
"If you're reading this, if there's air in your lungs on this November day, then there is still hope for you. Your story is still going. And maybe some things are true for all of us. Perhaps we all relate to pain. Perhaps we all relate to fear and loss and questions. And perhaps we all deserve to be honest, all deserve whatever help we need. Our stories are all so many things: Heavy and light. Beautiful and difficult. Hopeful and uncertain. But our stories are not finished yet. There is still time, for things to heal and change and grow. There is still time to be surprised. We are still going, you and I. We are stories still going."
- Jamie Tworkowski
My dear,
In the midst of hate, I found there was, within me, an invincible love.
In the midst of tears, I found there was, within me, an invincible smile.
In the midst of chaos, I found there was, within me, an invincible calm.
I realized, through it all, that . . .
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there's something stronger - something better, pushing right back.
Truly yours
- Albert Camus
The Stranger
commonplace
later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?
it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.
- Warsan Shire
from What They Did Yesterday Afternoon
commonplace
a not unfamiliar phenomenon on the horizon of shimmering deserts."
- Vladimir Nabokov
