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is this anything

~ a compendium, by Nancy Coughlin

is this anything

Tag Archives: truth

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--

 

I’m Nobody! Who are you? (a poem by Emily Dickinson)

08 Monday May 2017

Posted by is this anything in poem, quotation, writing, zen

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anonymity, fame, truth, writing, zen

(Note: In a world that empowers mere celebrity, self-effacement becomes an act of rebellion.)

shh angel

I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

–Emily Dickinson

impostor (a quote from Rumi)

02 Thursday Apr 2015

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friendship, quotation, rumi, truth

 

shh angel

O king of the truthful, Have you ever seen an impostor like me?
With your lively servants I am alive; With the dead ones I am dead.
–Rumi

 

write as if (a quote from Lori Lansens)

10 Tuesday Mar 2015

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freedom, lori lansens, quotation, truth, writing

desert-island-laptop1

Write…as if you’ll never be read. That way you’ll be sure to tell the truth. –Lori Lansens

“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

 

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

simple (a quote from Alan Watts)

30 Wednesday Jul 2014

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alan watts, grace, happiness, illusion, play, quotation, serenity, simplicity, transience, truth, wisdom, zen

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”  ―Alan Watts

Take-time-to-smell-the-flower-resizecrop--

 

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

let go (a quote from Joseph Campbell)

15 Tuesday Apr 2014

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adventure, choice, illusion, joseph campbell, letting go, mystery, play, quotation, surrender, truth, zen

We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us. –Joseph Campbell

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is this anything (an extended tweet)

11 Friday Apr 2014

Posted by is this anything in twitter tweets

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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

 

 

Two (tweets)

12 Wednesday Mar 2014

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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.

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All that mad charisma doesn’t hurt, either… (video link)

08 Saturday Mar 2014

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illusion, love, play, Russell Brand, simplicity, truth, zen

How funny to see how nervous people get when you’re simply being a person, telling the truth.

Russell Brand on MSNBC: http://youtu.be/ADJhErmJuoQ  via @YouTube

the trick (quotation)

27 Thursday Feb 2014

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choice, happiness, quotations, surrender, truth, zen

“If you wish to know the truth, only cease to cherish opinions.” –the Third Zen Patriarch

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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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