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is this anything

~ a compendium, by Nancy Coughlin

is this anything

Tag Archives: balance

to live (a quote from Emily Dickinson)

23 Tuesday May 2017

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balance, both, emily dickinson, freedom, happiness, life, miracle, quotation, truth, wisdom, yin yang, zen

“To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.”

―Emily Dickinson

Duck-photobombs-his-friends-resizecrop--

 

knowing (a tweet)

14 Thursday Apr 2016

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acceptance, apophenia, balance, comfort, freedom, grace, grief, paradox, suffering, thinking out loud, transience, tweet, zen

ants stick

The knowing is beautiful. Thus, the struggle that brought you the knowing–mustn’t that also be beautiful?

Fret (a poem)

11 Monday Apr 2016

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balance, poem, writing

dog clock

Fret

I want to shake you like a criminal:
when we could be so happy happy,
oh, why why do these things you do?
Why count my every not-you syllable,
deem every time I nurse my babies
as time I could have spent with you?

You who are as motherless
as I, as longing to be rocked—
How can’t I know you? How do I
evade this empathy, suppress
lactation, hold my will intact,
once startled by your tragedy?

But, sometime, I should wash my face.
And, sometime, I should write this book.
When I go out, my dog knows I’ll
Be back. He doesn’t fret and pace
With one eye on the dawdling clock.
He lets me go. (It took a while.)

meditation for a lazy day (from “Walden”)

10 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by is this anything in first principles (revised often), quotation, writing, zen

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balance, quotation, writing, zen

lazy meerkat

“I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did better than this. There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller’s wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that “for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day.” This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.”   –Henry David Thoreau (from Walden)

serious fun (a diary diatribe)

28 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by is this anything in Evolving ideas, journal entry, writing

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balance, writing

agatha christie

(above: Agatha Christie)

[The paragraphs that precede this part of today’s entry aren’t really important. They’re just the usual details. But this part, below, is about “being a writer,” so I’ll share it.]

March 28, 2016

…So now I have to calm down, and separate myself. I’m playing classical music, I’m burning incense. Door closed, water glass full beside me. Just put on headphones, which don’t work anymore on my computer, but at least make me feel cocooned. That’s the trick, in a nutshell: You have to become a separate self, to be a writer. You can’t sit listening at your writing-room door for a sigh from downstairs. Plug your ears. Close your door. Lock it if you can. It’s okay if the dog comes in, coz he’s your muse, and he just sleeps with his chin on your ankle, and he can leave whenever he wants to. Someone else will let him out when he needs it. Someone else will feed him, just as they all will feed themselves today—for, it turns out, they know how.

And nobody will clean the house. The vacuum will sit in the middle of the room, clogged I guess, and we won’t put it away I guess because we’re waiting for someone to fix it. Which—don’t tell anybody–I actually know how to do, but I guess they don’t, though they could learn I guess, just like I had to, once. No more. The dishes can stack up in the sink until, again and again, the weight of them breaks the handle off a coffee mug at the bottom—some of our favorite mugs we’ve lost that way. We’re also losing plants. And a couple of neglected bills have found their way to collection agencies, though we have $10,000 in the bank, which we never seem to deplete because the only things we ever buy are food and books and emergency room visits [again, not important right now]. And no one does the shopping either, till one of us (sometimes it’s me, sometimes B, rarely H) finally does it. No one’s taking care of this house anymore. It looks like it’s been ransacked because it has been, many times, when B loses wallet, credit card, keys, paychecks, glasses, phone. Or H loses glasses, prescriptions, phone numbers, medicines, mind. I’ve even had to ransack the place myself, especially after coming home from my trips to the mess, and having, at the very least, to get the income taxes ready.

I won’t go there again today, I swear—won’t join their world even if they get all crazy because they’ve made themselves sick or hate their jobs or don’t know what the future holds. They still stumble, somehow, under the weight of thinking me wise. I don’t know why they persist—well, yes I do, because sometimes I am wise, at least in contrast. If anyone finds the check-prescription-eyeglasses-keys, it’s usually me, and often in the very first place I look. It’s like living with mole-rats. “Where’d you find it?” they ask in relief. “On the counter,” I tell them, or “In your coat pocket.” I’m tired of being this person. I don’t mind doing my share of the daily maintenance—I cleaned the toilets this morning, just in passing, because honestly it’s not that big a deal, and takes two minutes, and because I knew no one else ‘knew how.’ But I have a job of my own right now—don’t I?–and though apparently it requires incense and silence and (occasionally) drugs, that doesn’t mean it’s not relatively real. It’s just that I’ve finally discovered my work method—and who’d have thought it entailed pleasure??? That’s what I’ve been missing all these years—fun. The fun of finally taking myself seriously.

recognition (a quotation from Blaise Pascal)

26 Thursday Feb 2015

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balance, both, illusion, pascal, quotation, reason, zen

nothing stoneThe last function of reason is to recognize that there are an infinity of things which surpass it. –Blaise Pascal

echo (thinking out loud)

17 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by is this anything in random thought, Uncategorized

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balance, grief, illusion, love, thinking out loud, transience

In every hello, there’s an echo of goodbye. (And in every goodbye, a hello? …Don’t know.)old people

nothing useless (a quote from Michel de Montaigne)

12 Monday Jan 2015

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balance, montaigne, nature, quotation, zen

lazy meerkat

There is nothing useless in nature; not even uselessness itself. –Michel de Montaigne

the same (a tweet)

14 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets, Uncategorized

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balance, compassion, illusion, love, paradox, zen

Buddha seatbelt

Self-reminder: we are all the same in everything but form.

tweet (a quote from Lao Tzu)

10 Wednesday Dec 2014

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agoraphobia, balance, both, comfort, compassion, lao tzu, love, paradox, quotation, surrender, zen

Lao Tzu: “Without opening your door, you can open your heart to the world.” #zen #agoraphobia

mailbox agoraphobe

soothing (a tweet)

09 Tuesday Dec 2014

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apophenia, balance, comfort, happiness, illusion, love, randomness, serenity, yin yang, zen

cars road

I like, tonight, just hearing the cars go up and down the hill. I’ve always been a huge fan of the Doppler Effect.

“Genesis According to George Segal” (a poem by Robert Pinsky)

09 Tuesday Dec 2014

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acceptance, balance, compassion, dust, genesis, george segal, grace, illusion, imkertje, loss, love, poetry, robert pinsky, serenity, surrender, time, transience, truth, zen

 

george segal art

Above: “Street Crossing” (1992) by the American artist George Segal (1924-2000)

Robert Pinsky’s “Genesis According to George Segal”

The Spirit brooded on the water and made
The earth, and molded us out of earth. And then
The Spirit breathed Itself into our nostrils—

And rested. What was the Spirit waiting for?
An image of Its nature, a looking glass?
Glass also made of dust, of sand and fire.

Ordinary, enigmatic, we people waiting
In the terminal. A survivor at a wire fence,
Also waiting. Behind him, a tangle of bodies

Made out of plaster, which plasterers call mud.
The apprentice hurries with a hod of mud.
Particulate sand for glass. Milled flour for bread.

What are we waiting for? The hour glass
That measures all our time in trickling dust
Is also of dust and will return to dust—

So an old poem says. Men in a bread line
Out in the dusty street are silent, waiting
At the apportioning-place of daily bread.

At an old-fashioned radio’s wooden case
A man sits listening in a wooden chair.
A woman at a butcher block waits to cut.

What are we waiting for, in clouds of dust?
Or waiting for the past, particles of being
Settled and moist with life, then brittle again.

————————————————-

Extra cool thing: Robert Pinsky reads this poem aloud here:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/15/genesis-according-george-segal?mbid=social_twitter

 

busy (a quote from Kierkegaard)

01 Monday Dec 2014

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balance, busy, choice, happiness, indolence, quotation, serenity, zen

Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy. –Soren Kierkegaard

dog naps

meditation (a quote from Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche)

17 Monday Nov 2014

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ambition, balance, dzongsar jamyang khyentse, letting go, meditation, paradox, quotation, serenity, surrender, zen

puddle_fish

If we have ambitions—even if our aim is enlightenment— then there is no meditation, because we are thinking about it, craving it, fantasizing, imagining things. That is not meditation. This is why an important characteristic of shamatha meditation is to let go of any goal and simply sit for the sake of sitting. We breathe in and out, and we just watch that. Nothing else. It doesn’t matter if we get enlightenment or not. It doesn’t matter if our friends get enlightened faster. Who cares? We are just breathing. We just sit straight and watch the breath in and out. Nothing else. We let go of our ambitions. This includes trying to do a perfect shamatha meditation. We should get rid of even that. Just sit.

—Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

unlearning (a quote from Amy Poehler)

05 Wednesday Nov 2014

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balance, feminism, freedom, happiness, quotation, truth, wisdom, women

Jerry-Painting-Leslie-large

It takes years as a woman to unlearn what you have been taught to be sorry for.
― Amy Poehler

noteworthy (quote from Alan Watts)

19 Sunday Oct 2014

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alan watts, apophenia, balance, both, illusion, patternicity, zen

Llama-photobombs-the-kiss-scene-resizecrop--

“We ignore all kinds of things because we notice only what we think noteworthy. And therefore our version of everything is highly selective. We pick out certain things and say that’s what’s there, just as we select and notice the figure rather than the background.” –Alan Watts

forever (a tweet)

08 Wednesday Oct 2014

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balance, both, eternity, gabby douglas, infinity, moment, now, paradox, transience

There’s only now, of course. But now is an infinity unto itself. Now is forever in a moment.

gabby douglas

more (a quote from Ram Dass)

07 Tuesday Oct 2014

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awareness, balance, both, freedom, grace, illusion, quotation, slice of life, transience, zen

“Learn to watch your drama unfold while at the same time knowing you are more than your drama.” ―Ram Dass

cat knife

serendipity (quotations from Nassim Taleb and James Lawley)

15 Friday Aug 2014

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accident, apophenia, balance, black swan, coincidence, grace, James Lawley, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, patternicity, quotation, randomness, serendipity, synchronicity, transience, wabi sabi, zen

“Half the time I hate Black Swans, the other half I love them. I like the randomness that produces the texture of life, the positive accidents, the success of Apelles the painter, the potential gifts you do not have to pay for. Few understand the beauty in the story of Apelles; in fact, most people exercise their error avoidance by repressing the Apelles in them.”

–Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan

“Maximize serendipity: “A strategy of seeking gains by collecting positive accidents from maximising exposure to ‘good Black Swans’.” (p. 307, Taleb)  Taleb calls this an “Apelles-style strategy”. Apelles the Painter was a Greek who, try as he might, could not depict the foam from a horse’s mouth. In irritation he gave up and threw the sponge he used to clean his brush at the picture. Where the sponge hit, it left a beautiful representation of foam.  –James Lawley   (source: http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/articles/218/2/Black-Swan-Logic/Page2.html)

serendipity-unexpected

July 7, 2004 (ten-year-old journal entry)

08 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by is this anything in autism, journal entry, vignette

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acceptance, autism, balance, childhood, choice, family, fatherhood, freedom, grief, helplessness, journal, love, memory, motherhood, slice of life, surrender

July 7, 2004

When I say goodbye­–when I try to say goodbye—they put their arms around me, one from one side, one from the other. And they cling there. Henry says, Okay Beck, here’s the plan—we don’t let go and she never gets away.

Becky had a dream–she and Henry were chasing me.

It takes such courage to let me go—I must have done something wrong. It should be easier than this. Their lives shouldn’t suspend themselves in midair when I’m out of sight. It all makes me very nervous—I hate the goodbyeing. The long drawn-out process, the hug I have to wrench myself away from, the sad faces, hurt faces as if I’m betraying them by wanting something separate. I can’t walk into a room without their watching my every move. Today Becky tells me her tale of woe. Then Henry walks in and says, “When she’s done complaining to you, I get to be next.”

statue-juggling-plane-perfect-timing

less ( a tweet)

25 Wednesday Jun 2014

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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

a happy, half-learned lesson (a tweet)

15 Tuesday Apr 2014

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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

live (a tweet)

01 Tuesday Apr 2014

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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

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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

Guy (a found poem)

10 Monday Mar 2014

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apophenia, balance, found poem, Henry, memory, poem, randomness, slice of life

(a found poem: Henry’s description, verbatim, of what he’d just noticed out our window)

Guy

There was a young man crossing Excelsior from
east to west, and he was—first, he was in a
t-shirt and shorts in this weather; then, he was
limping, so that, I don’t know if he had a cast
on his foot or sprained or something, and, then,
he was carrying a large bag of ice. Um, so he’s
obviously going to a party to get drunk. So you
had a whole little story just in watching this guy
cross the street. It’s a story I know well from just
having finished grading their personal narrative
essays in composition, so I really was in that
world, for hours and hours, yesterday.

Image

my first haiku since 5th grade (poem)

08 Saturday Mar 2014

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balance, comfort, haiku, happiness, metaphor, peace, play, transience, warmth, writing, yin yang, zen

The heat, a soothing
roar, clicks off again, creates
a soothing silence.

Image

balancing act (tweet)

07 Friday Mar 2014

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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

ephemera (letter excerpt)

07 Friday Mar 2014

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apophenia, balance, coincidence, comfort, ephemera, love, memory, mystery, randomness, transience, writing

Part of a letter I wrote to my friend Will today:

I love ephemera–as much as you do, I think, and for the same kinds of reasons. It’s as if we walk our lives through a heavy, debris-laden wind that leans us forward, bows our heads against its force, so that we can hardly tell where it is we’re finally going. Even so, we keep our eyes squinted open, our fingers poised, ready to grab at whatever fragment of life we might notice flying by, anything viable, readable, anything with a heartbeat, anything that isn’t merely dust. We grab at each little shard of paper or thread or somebody’s tossed-away keepsake. Clutching to contain it, we study it from every angle, view it through each lens, put it through x-ray machines, decoders, translators, machines that test for DNA and carbon-dating. We compare and combine it with our other fragments–our modest collection of worn-out, tattered, wind-stolen things. Finally we catalog and curate our new find, then tuck it away like a kitten beneath our coats to keep it, and us, alive and warm.

We could have been archaeologists, I think. Well, except for the part with the kitten. That doesn’t quite go, I guess… Okay, then: We could have been collectors of lost souls.

Image

Both (thinking out loud)

01 Saturday Mar 2014

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balance, paradox, thinking out loud, yin yang, zen

We are both log and fire, both noun and verb. Time devours us, yes, but it’s as true to say that we devour time. And the odd thing is, I can’t think of any way this simultaneity can’t go on forever. Our cyclical natures–the perpetual balancing act of matter and energy, growth and dissolution, birth death birth death birth death birth–will keep us caught in their back-and-forth until the universe ends, or the laws of physics change. How could it possibly be otherwise? Frankly, there’s just nowhere else to be but here, and no other time–no time we can taste–but now.

Image

on fire (twitter tweet)

01 Saturday Mar 2014

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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

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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

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