People of Wonder - Words of Wisdom -
PoW WoW
A place to share the ever growing collections of words, links, thoughts, projects, places, programs, people ++ that help illuminate Cygnets Way.
Angela Carter
“We say to fibbing children: ‘Don’t tell fairy tales!’ Yet children’s fibs, like old wives’ tales, tend to be over-generous with the truth rather than economical with it.”
“Ours is a highly individualized culture, with a great faith in the work of art as a unique one-off, and the artist as an original, a godlike and inspired creator of unique one-offs. But fairy tales are not like that, nor are their makers. Who first invented meatballs? In what country? Is there a definitive recipe for potato soup? Think in terms of the domestic arts. “This is how I make potato soup.”
Rumi
The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.
Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.
Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.
When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.
The cure for pain is in the pain.
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.
Only from the heart can you touch the sky.
Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.
Pema Chodron
You are the sky. Everything else—it’s just the weather.
The most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.
Lynda Barry
“At the center of everything we call 'the arts,' and children call 'play,' is something which seems somehow alive.”
“What is it? The ordinary is EXTRAORDINARY. The ordinary is extraordinary. The ordinary is the thing we want back when someone we love dies. When someone dies or leaves or falls out of love with us. We call it "little things". We say, "it's the little things I miss most." The ordinary things. It's the little thing that brings them back to us unexpectedly. We say "reminds us" but it is more than reminding-it's a conflagration-it's an inundation-Both fire and flood is memory. It's spark and breach so ordinary we do not question it. The atom split. The little thing.”
“Fingers the original digital devices”
Nick Cave & The Red Hand Files
Dear Ermine,
Things changed after my first son died. I changed. For better or for worse, the rage you speak of lost its allure and, yes, perhaps I became a Hallmark card hippie. Hatred stopped being interesting. Those feelings were like old dead skins that I shed. They were their own kind of puke. Sitting around in my own mess, pissed off at the world, disdainful of the people in it, and thinking my contempt for things somehow amounted to something, had some kind of nobility, hating this thing here, and that thing there, and that other thing over there, and making sure that everybody around me knew it, not just knew, but felt it too, contemptuous of beauty, contemptuous of joy, contemptuous of happiness in others, well, this whole attitude just felt, I don’t know, in the end, sort of dumb.
When my son died, I was faced with an actual devastation, and with no real effort of my own that posture of disgust toward the world began to wobble and collapse underneath me. I started to understand the precarious and vulnerable position of the world. I started to fret for it. Worry about it. I felt a sudden, urgent need to, at the very least, extend a hand in some way to assist it – this terrible, beautiful world – instead of merely vilifying it, and sitting in judgement of it.
Perhaps, Ermine, you are right, and I did, for good or ill, turn from a living shit-post into a walking Hallmark card. But, well, here we are, you and me, sending smoke signals to each other across a yawning ideological divide. Hello Ermine, I drone, hello.
Love, Nick
Audre Lorde
Now
Woman power
is
Black power
is
Human power
is
always feeling
my heart beats
as my eyes open
as my hands move
as my mouth speaks
I am
are you
Ready.
Sri Aurobindo & The Mother
True knowledge is not attained by thinking. It is what you are; it is what you become.
Edward Gorey
“My favorite journey is looking out the window.”
hafiz
I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.
Even After All this time The Sun never says to the Earth, "You owe me.” Look What happens With a love like that, It lights the whole sky.
Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions.
Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.
The place you are right now God circled on a map for you.
Laurie Anderson
“I believe that the purpose of death is the release of love.”
“Don't be afraid of anyone. Imagine your life if you're not afraid of anyone.”
“Performance art is about joy, about making something that's so full of kind of a wild joy that you really can't put into words.”
We must understand that anger is an experience that points us to hurt and woundedness. When it is ego-centered it becomes destructive and violent; we’re back to the idea of protecting the ego. The tantric perspective is that we can decentre the ego from the energy of anger, and then that energy can easily be channelled towards benefiting other people, not just yourself. It becomes an act of compassion.
Bell Hooks
“For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”
“The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is-it’s to imagine what is possible.”
“Giving generously in romantic relationships, and in all other bonds, means recognizing when the other person needs our attention. Attention is an important resource.”
Fred Rogers
“Love, is at the root of everything – all learning, all parenting, all relationships, love. Or the lack of it.”
Chani Nicholas
Life is so much shorter than we think. Make your art. Take care of each other. Risk everything for joy.
Alok Vaid-Menon
The scrutiny on our bodies distracts us from what's really going on here: control. The emphasis on our appearance distracts us from the real focus: power.
― Beyond the Gender Binary
Marianne Williamson
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. -A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"
Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.
We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present.
Rabindranath Tagore
Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.
Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.
The flower which is single need not envy the thorns that are numerous.
Full of Admiration & Links