READ--LOOK--WRITE! 13

READ
One Art
The art of losing isn't hard to master; 

so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster. 

Elizabeth Bishop

LOOK

Do you feel down in the dumps, or perhaps spy that creepy self-loathing coming on?  Just watch this.  I swear, it clears the cobwebs.




WRITE!

Lonely comes the night.
My skin is dry.
I have not spied rain
since a long time ago.

This room is heavy;
dark and shuddered.
I wish it would rain
so I could grow.

I was born to
pound the sky,
and steam up the earth,
But no matter.  I will find water here.

READ--LOOK--WRITE! 12

READ


ANYWAY

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

--Mother Theresa





LOOK

It helps me, when dealing with feelings of anger and shame, to turn my gaze to how good I have it.  How incredibly lucky I have been throughout my life.  When struggling with hard feelings (first-world problems, as I like to call them), any sense of perspective helps.  This photo series did just that for me.  Oh, what a crazed, mad, beautiful world!  Children and their possession's




WRITE!


When rain comes,
plant your feet.
Those little seeds will grow.
Just as life;
kicking down your door.

READ--LOOK--WRITE! 11

READ

I left no ring with her: what means this lady?Fortune forbid my outside have not charm'd her!She made good view of me; indeed, so much,That sure methought her eyes had lost her tongue,For she did speak in starts distractedly.She loves me, sure; the cunning of her passionInvites me in this churlish messenger. None of my lord's ring! why, he sent her none.I am the man: if it be so, as 'tis,Poor lady, she were better love a dream.Disguise, I see, thou art a wickedness,Wherein the pregnant enemy does much. How easy is it for the proper-falseIn women's waxen hearts to set their forms!Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we!For such as we are made of, such we be.How will this fadge? my master loves her dearly; And I, poor monster, fond as much on him;And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me.What will become of this? As I am man,My state is desperate for my master's love;As I am woman,.now alas the day!. What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe!O time! thou must untangle this, not I;It is too hard a knot for me to untie!

-- William Shakespeare, from Twelfth Night

LOOK
Its been a tiresome few weeks for me.  I've been battling an especially sticky cold, my family may have to move, and I can't seem to digest gluten (an otherwise choice-ingredient for coping).  When a friend posted this on FB, I just had to share.  Its so light and funny and well-done.  Thank goodness for the minds of our everyday kids!  I don't know what I would do without the comic relief of my brood!  Enjoy!  When kids write scripts for grown-ups.




WRITE!


Where the dry grasses 
come down to the bank, 
and the stream widens, 
there you can find 
animal tracks. 
Remain open 
and true. 
The clear stream
enters the woods, 
and becomes untraceable,
Only to emerge again, 
Into the open,
anew. 

READ--LOOK--WRITE! 10

READ



Happiness


It is morning. I think
Soon they will waken.
On the bedside table is a vase
of lilies; sunlight
pools in their throats.
I watch him turn to her
as though to speak her name
but silently, deep in her mouth--
At the window ledge,
once, twice,
a bird calls.
And then she stirs; her body
fills with his breath.
I open my eyes; you are watching me.
Almost over this room
the sun is gliding.
Look at your face, you say,
holding your own close to me
to make a mirror.
How calm you are. And the burning wheel
passes gently over us.
I open my eyes; you are watching me.
Almost over this room
the sun is gliding.
Look at your face, you say,
holding your own close to me
to make a mirror.
How calm you are. And the burning wheel
passes gently over us.


--Louise Gluck

LOOK

well, its a video this week.  Sometimes you just need someone to lighten the load, to take yourself out of yourself in a intelligent, call-it-like-it-is, shameless way, and well, this is one of the things/people that does it for me.  When I've had a long, brutal day, if I can just sit down in front of my computer and watch a few of this brilliant man's sketches, you can call me 'happy'.  Enjoy!

Louise CK- gays 

WRITE!

I had a funny feeling
When the last shiny
Thing I kept
From the old country
slipped off,
And fell into a dark, silent
Hole in the great earth.
I didn't hear a thing.
Just somewhere, easing away
Into the white sky,

Because my thoughts were elsewhere;
The feeling of my skin turning inside out, and the dark landing over the land with

the ticklings of love-

Distracting.

Strange pressure is built in
To the things that are missing,
taken away, done so well, unlike this disorganized room that we live in,
so long and so tenderly.

The song birds start to sing at night
And there is a flurry of wings
Up In the trees.
This feels Right to me
This feels home. 

READ--LOOK--WRITE! 09

READ

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; 
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink 
And rise and sink and rise and sink again; 
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, 
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; 
Yet many a man is making friends with death 
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. 
It well may be that in a difficult hour, 
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, 
Or nagged by want past resolution's power, 
I might be driven to sell your love for peace, 
Or trade the memory of this night for food. 
It well may be. I do not think I would. 



---- Edna St. Vincent Millay




LOOK

A random selection this week of things that I think are oddities, or cool.  TheMilkstone.





WRITE!


Something has eaten this building, it's clear;
Little holes in the rooms that I still love.
Have become a monument of my fear;
Darkened hallways, dust, and the cooing dove.
But I still retain this place as my home;
Meadows and groves, hallowed pine trees, the sky;
Shown only to friends who long now do roam.
And known to the western light, by and by. 
In the many years that have passed us now
Windows fretted with boards, and vulgar cracks, 
It is hard for us to remember how
Those sweet yearning years used to break our backs.  
Oh pitter-patter, oh pitter-patter, 
Muscovy duck and a bottle of wine
Oh pitter-patter, my pitter-patter, 
Your heart still scampers on the roof with mine. 

READ--LOOK--WRITE! 08

READ

"I am very old indeed.  It is so silly of people- I don't mean you, for you are such a tiny, and couldn't know better- but it is so silly of people to fancy that old age means crookedness and witheredness and feebleness and sticks and spectacles and rheumatism and forgetfulness!  It is so silly!  Old age has nothing whatever to do with all that.  The right old age means strength and beauty and mirth and courage and clear eyes and strong painless limbs.  I am older that you are able to think and-'

'And look at you Grandmother!' cried Irene, jumping up and flinging her arms about her neck.  'I won't be so silly again.  I promise you.  At least- I am rather afraid to promise- but if I am, I promise to be sorry for it- I do.  I wish I were as old as you, Grandmother.  I don't think you are ever afraid of anything."

--The Princess and the Goblin, by George MacDonald




LOOK
I like to think about movement in broader terms than dance, and I like dance that captures some element of movement that evokes emotions about daily life.  I like dance that isn't necessarily about the esthetic of a body, but how somebody moves, and expresses them self.  Here are a few pictures on my Milkstone Pinterest board that I thought were rather interesting.  check them out!






WRITE!


I want to go to bed like a fallow summer,
after I begin to swell.
When my dance falls out of the sun.

I think of a long, thin strand of light
passing in front of the clouds.

Imaging you, in tow on the horizon
makes my heart pitter-patter
with the feeling of lost blood-
An eddying mixture
of empathy and pain.

In China, old men wait for the return of the swallows
to plant their rice.
I feel like that.

I have a little swallow
that always returns to a nest in my heart.

READ--LOOK--WRITE! 07

READ

A Radio With Guts

it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street
I used to get drunk
and throw the radio through the window
while it was playing, and, of course,
it would break the glass in the window
and the radio would sit there on the roof
still playing
and I'd tell my woman,
"Ah, what a marvelous radio!"
the next morning I'd take the window
off the hinges
and carry it down the street
to the glass man
who would put in another pane.
I kept throwing that radio through the window
each time I got drunk
and it would sit there on the roof
still playing-
a magic radio
a radio with guts,
and each morning I'd take the window
back to the glass man.
I don't remember how it ended exactly
though I do remember
we finally moved out.
there was a woman downstairs who worked in
the garden in her bathing suit,
she really dug with that trowel
and she put her behind up in the air
and I used to sit in the window
and watch the sun shine all over that thing
while the music played.

--Charles Bukowski




LOOK

I adore Pinterest for the inspiration, both big and small.  A friend of mine keeps a Pinterest board of projects she'd like to try and I've sort of been doing the same.  Here are some of the things I'm inspired to try this week. The Milkstone  Enjoy!








WRITE!


It's been days since I looked over my shoulder 
and saw you were gone.

For weeks its been dry, glinting landscape, 
carrying my kids, thinking of you.

Wondering what the hell 
I thought you were doing; 
carrying sacks of grain, 
or whatever, behind me. Now your gone.

I could go pirouetting, 
off a cliff maybe.  
I could call it love.

But what am I, a dancer? 
I would have done that too maybe, 
had i not been carrying little warm bodies, 
caressing to be fed.

I would have gone crashing, 
hurling myself into walls,  
careening off of precipices, and running into shrapnel blasts,

And you. You would have been the scent I followed. 
You would have been my bliss. 
My 'misfortune of rapture'.