• About

is this anything

~ a compendium, by Nancy Coughlin

is this anything

Category Archives: twitter tweets

@zerosumr (a tweet)

27 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

acceptance, apophenia, both, comfort, death, friendship, grace, imkertje, metaphor, miracle, paradox, randomness, surrender, transience, tweet, zen

u know how i know yer Here, mijn schatje? Coz w/ yr death u finally taught me yr ineffable truth: that Here is an infinite place.

laughing buddha

 

 

less ( a tweet)

25 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

balance, choice, freedom, less, loss, love, metaphor, mijn imkertje, serenity, simplicity, surrender, tweet, zen

The joy of less: if I choose the narrow bed, any blanket will be wide enough to cover it.Image

chagrin (a tweet)

27 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

absurdity, acceptance, arrogance, comfort, god, grace, grief, imbalance, surrender, tweet, zen

In hard times especially, I find myself confronted by my trademark absurdity: that I’m far more desirous that god should know me than that I should know god.

Image

blind (an extended tweet)

17 Saturday May 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

apophenia, blindness, both, compassion, grace, illusion, kindness, metaphor, randomness, tweet, vision, zen

Clearly we’re all blind. We each “know” just one small part of the elephant. Thus, how absurd to be arguing with such fury when we really ought to be comparing notes.

 Image

time (a tweet)

04 Sunday May 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

compassion, love, paradox, surrender, thinking out loud, tweet, yin yang, zen

I think it’s time we finally started believing in what we already know.

Image

 

 

 

 

a happy, half-learned lesson (a tweet)

15 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

apophenia, balance, both, happiness, illusion, play, truth, yin yang, zen

The knowledge that the world is illusory has little to do with how much fun it is to play with.Image

is this anything (an extended tweet)

11 Friday Apr 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

acceptance, don't know, helplessness, imkertje, metaphor, mushin, paradox, surrender, truth, tweet, writing, zen

Some days I don’t feel like searching [through clover] for [four-leaf] metaphors. I want to tell this story straight, for once–but I honestly don’t know how. As it is, can you glimpse it, love? Could it be hiding, maybe, in the spaces between my words?Image

 

 

live (a tweet)

01 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

balance, choice, grace, tweet, zen

Live deliberately–if only because it keeps you from bumping into the furniture.

Image

both all and nothing, too (tweet)

24 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

balance, both, metaphor, non-duality, paradox, thinking out loud, transience, tweet, yin yang, zen

The trick: to re-remember that we’re Both. Both sea and wave. Both log and fire. Both noun and verb.

holding-praising-the-sun-silhouette

here (a tweet)

15 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

death, eternity, grace, imkertje, paradox, tweet, zen

Maybe souls who leave their bodies are still here. Maybe it’s just that “here” turns out to be a very big place.

Image

so far (a tweet)

13 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

acceptance, birth, death, grace, grief, imkertje, miracle, silence, surrender, transience, tweet, zen

So far: death has been my most successful–and tersest–teacher. (Life’s a good teacher too, but distractingly verbose.) Image

not a good sign (tweet)

12 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

choice, habit, helplessness, illusion, imbalance, thinking out loud, twitter

Often I can’t fit a thought into 140 characters. Thing is, lately I need to remind myself that that’s not the thought’s fault.Image

Two (tweets)

12 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

buddhism, grief, happiness, imkertje, love, mushin, paradox, surrender, transience, truth, tweet, zen

O, the night I typed to him not knowing he’d left his body! Now I long to ask him what came next…

Image

…then laugh because of course that’s all he’d been talking about, the whole time.

Image

yab yum (a tweet)

11 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

apophenia, imkertje, love, memory, metaphor, sex, thinking out loud, tweet, yab yum, zen

Polishing a pipe today,

its shaft blown sleek and stony-smooth,

when words you taught me leap to heart,

and heart leaps headlong into you.

Image

aan mijn lieve imker (a tweet)

09 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

grace, imkertje, love, miracle, surrender, transience, zen

I wrote my 1st haiku today–I, with no monk to transmit it to. Only an empty address: @zerosumr. Ah, how lucky we no longer need the middleman!Image

balancing act (tweet)

07 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

balance, choice, desire, grace, grief, letting go, love, paradox, yin yang, zen

Tightrope path: to allow yourself to want something to the exact degree you’re willing to let it go.

.BDv2E2JCMAAmUxq

white flag (a tweet)

05 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

acceptance, marriage, surrender, tweet, zen

Fact I need to get used to: I have absolutely no idea how to get the horse to drink the water—I only know what doesn’t work. baby-common-goldeneye-ducks-leaving-nest-flying-for-first-time

parts of speech (tweet)

01 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

awareness, compassion, love, zen

With awareness comes compassion. Truth and love are inseparable. (Truth is the noun, love is the verb.)

Image

on fire (twitter tweet)

01 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

balance, both, physics, thinking out loud, yin yang, zen

It seems to me that we know we’re the candle, but forget that we’re also the flame.

Image

ghost (tweet)

27 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

acceptance, comfort, grief, loss, memory, surrender, zen

As I get older, I find that the past doesn’t haunt me the way it used to. But sometimes, now, I haunt it.

Image

glimpse (a tweet)

14 Saturday Dec 2013

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

grief, miracle, supernova, tweet, zen

I can glimpse the fact that miracle and disaster are the same–but usually only years after the event, and rarely in the right-now.Image

apophenia (a tweet)

13 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by is this anything in Evolving ideas, twitter tweets, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

babies, comfort, patterns, randomness, surrender, tweet

Eyes, nose, mouth: this simple pattern becomes our first lullaby, our primal surrender to the comfort of randomness.

Image

Apophenia (random thought) (an extended tweet)

04 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by is this anything in Evolving ideas, journal entry, random thought, twitter tweets

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

apophenia, coincidence, randomness, thinking out loud, writing, zen

My favorite thing these days:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia

It’s vital to the human creation of art, yes?

The fact of randomness (and I may as well posit it as a fact, because I don’t know how to know differently) is the miracle from which we all spring, and the foundation upholding everything we feel, think, do, create. We needn’t even learn–we are born to know how–to take advantage of random events (“coincidences,” with all that word’s various connotations), insofar as we’re able (and willing?) to. Just seconds after our birth, among the otherwise “meaningless” distortions of a suddenly visual, almost certainly terrifying world, our eyes are somehow and irresistibly drawn to the life-saving pattern of our mother’s face. We feel better; with muscles we’ve never used before, we strain to reach her. I think it’s like this: She’s our first “Jesus-in-a-piece-of-toast.” She’s our first “Face on Mars.” (In my own private parlance, she’s the “pirate in the bathroom tile”) Two eyes, one nose, one mouth (and, in the pirate’s case [but probably not the mother’s], an eye-patch and a droopy mustache). That simple visual pattern becomes our first lullabye, our first fable, our primal surrender to the comfort of the arbitrary.

Image

practice (a tweet)

29 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

tweet, zen

Daily zen practice: Shake the habit of repeating the same old mistakes. Instead, make only new mistakes.

Image

is (a tweet)

16 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

zen

There’s no “There’s.” There’s no “just”. There’s just “is”.   (July, 2013)

cats-eye-nebula

lesson (a tweet)

16 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

fun, happiness, illusion

My latest life lesson: The knowledge that the world is an illusion has nothing to do with how much fun it is to play with.     (July 2013)

full-moon-olympic-rings-london-bridge-2012

willing (a tweet)

16 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

acceptance, freedom, surrender

Reminder to my self: I’m allowed to want something to the exact degree I’m willing to let it go.

Embedded image permalink

August, 2013

To Grief (a tweet)

16 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

freedom, grief, surrender

To Grief: I lay my heart open to you, however long your visit here, however soon your return. (August, 2013)

bridge with mandalic reflection

ritual (a tweet)

15 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

writing

Every day, before I start to write, I pre-forgive myself.

i have no idea

surrender (a tweet)

15 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

surrender, zen

We surrender, again, and laugh–again!–to learn there’s no conqueror there to bow down to–no, nor anyone left to do the bowing.  (October, 2013)
stones and sun

not minding (a tweet)

15 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

zen

is this anything ‏@nancycoughlin 9 Aug, 2013

 

Life is so much easier when you don’t mind how hard it is.

we live each other’s lives (a tweet)

12 Tuesday Nov 2013

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

zen

We live each other’s lives, from deep within our own, every day; it’s time we noticed this already.

pic.twitter.com/oocs3MRCMp

— is this anything (@nancycoughlin) October 9, 2013

trick is to find (a tweet)

12 Tuesday Nov 2013

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

zen

The trick is to find miracles in what may well be–I honestly don’t know how to know– randomness.

pic.twitter.com/c9FKsZynLZ

— is this anything (@nancycoughlin) October 9, 2013

lucky (a tweet)

12 Tuesday Nov 2013

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

surrender, zen

Just believing you’re lucky makes you lucky. Try it and see. I myself have been lucky all my life. As, in fact, have we all.

— is this anything (@nancycoughlin) November 11, 2013

Newer posts →

Recent Posts

  • Schrodinger’s cat (a poem)
  • impeachment
  • Excerpts (a poem, maybe?)
  • a trap I’m in
  • As a kid, I had a crush on Aesop (journal entry)
  • practice (a journal entry)
  • Abbreviated (a poem)

Tags

acceptance apophenia autism balance both choice comfort compassion freedom grace grief happiness illusion love memory metaphor paradox poem quotation randomness serendipity serenity surrender thinking out loud transience tweet writing zen

Top Posts & Pages

  • On days you can't remember (a poem)
    On days you can't remember (a poem)
  • Now (a poem)
    Now (a poem)
  • creativity (a quote from Albert Einstein
    creativity (a quote from Albert Einstein
  • luck (a quote from the Dalai Lama)
    luck (a quote from the Dalai Lama)
  • aperture (quote from Alan Watts)
    aperture (quote from Alan Watts)
  • The odd things we love, when we love (a poem)
    The odd things we love, when we love (a poem)
  • my latest notion (a poem)
    my latest notion (a poem)
  • too much happiness (a quote from Alice Munro)
    too much happiness (a quote from Alice Munro)
  • enlightened (a quote from Ram Dass)
    enlightened (a quote from Ram Dass)
  • Sea change (a poem)
    Sea change (a poem)

Archives

Categories

Recent Comments

Nathan AM Smith on Excerpts (a poem, maybe?)
Follow is this anything on WordPress.com

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 395 other followers

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • is this anything
    • Join 395 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • is this anything
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...