Hope is a tin yellow sun
caught in my throat
burning a hole
in the heart
of my soul
A drinking problem…
“What’s your favorite poetry?”
“Poetry? You mean ‘poem?’”
“Yeah yeah, what’s your favorite poem.”
“Geez. I don’t know. That’s like asking… I don’t know. ‘What’s your favorite drink of water?’”
“I don’t drink water.”
“What?”
“Too boring.”
“I don’t think we can be friends anymore.”
“You don’t have any other friends.”
“I will cut you.”
“Poetry. Come on, educate me.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I’m not gonna try to explain it.”
“See, that’s the problem. No one knows what the darn stuff means.”
“Look out here. What do you see?”
“Uh, trees, sky, a hill, some cows.”
“How does it make you feel?”
“Uh, relaxed, I guess. I mean, it’s pretty.”
“What does it mean?”
“Huh? What does it mean? It’s just… dadgumit. You always do this.”
“Start with Frost. His famous stuff. He’s crisp and clear.”
“I’m still mad.”
“The foggier ones, not as popular, but usually my favorites. Here listen to this…”
“She would refuse love safe with wealth and honor!
The lovely shall be choosers, shall they?
Then let them choose!”
“Then we shall let her choose?”
“Yes, let her choose.
Take up the task beyond her choosing.”
Invisible hands crowned on her shoulder
In readiness to weigh upon her.
But she stood straight still,
In broad round earrings, gold and jet with pearls,
And broad round suchlike brooch,
Her cheeks high-colored,
Proud and the pride of friends.
The Voice asked, “You can let her choose?”
“Yes, we can let her and still triumph.”
“Do it by joys, and leave her always blameless.”
Empathy overflowed to me…
The best writers I’ve ever read can write about everything and nothing, with the same words. She won’t tell you what to think. Just touches you where you feel, up to her wrist in my rib cage, “it’s okay.” I don’t know how it’s done; probably with great care, hard work, lots of practice. From here, it looks like magic.
It looks like by water or wind she swishes the skirts of her soul and words ballet from there to here with a basketful of empathy.
Delightful description…
“A low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down, as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth, but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered “Listen,” a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.”
-F. Scott Fitzgerald, in The Great Gatsby
Stricken ground…
I’m a sucker for a good storm. It’s embarrassing. I just sit on his tailgate and watch the thunderheads walk straight at me; striking, ponderous steps. “You’re gonna get soaked.” I know. “You’re gonna be miserable.” Silence. “You might even get struck.” Struck. Stricken. Ooh, interesting words to play with… “You’re hopeless.” Thunder. Smile. Rain.
Watch with your ears on…
Feeding your feelings…
When a commercial makes you put your sunglasses on in Starbucks so that can’t see you crying…
…someone is doing something right.
A preface to knowing…
“The radio dial is a mood selector switch.”
– highest paid radio ad writer in the world
Want to feel sad? We’ve got stations for that.
Mad? Click, click, click.
Cars have 6 or 12 station presets because we all use the radio
as our “Dial-A-Feeling” machine.
That’s why radio stations only play songs with obvious moods.
Most of us are already tangled up, not knowing what to feel.
We don’t need a song for that.
Or maybe that’s not right.
Maybe the songs that skate some secret line are the truest songs.
The purest songs.
Like spring water for your soul. A clear taste, but what is it?
My ears sip again with a question…
Oh, salty, like tears… wait, no. Sweet! Like triumph.
Wait, hold on….
That’s it. Just “hold on.” Stay with it. Sip and wonder.
Take the ride. Follow the road. Be tied in knots. Be carried off.
Most days I know what I want to feel and hop the train to a favorite station.
Other days, rare days, I’m brave enough to feel something different.
I’ll turn and take some country road that goes nowhere to be found.
There I’ve found feeling that wouldn’t fit in a thousand songs.
I tried to pick it up with words but it fell apart.
It was a preface to knowing.
Now I just know.
And be still.
Hiking your heart…
Take a five-minute-walk with me and John Muir
through the forests of your heart?
be.thebright.co/shining-in-you
The cold and clear cry
in those first three sentences
splashes me instantly awake.
Five minutes is a serious investment, I know.
Maybe you have big things on your mind today.
In that case, here’s a favorite tiny story,
you can read it in about 15 seconds.
I like sleep…
Reading this made me want to go to sleep,
and thinking about it kept me awake.
I think I’ll rest easier once I’ve shared it with everyone I care about.
be.thebright.co/lazy-about-sleep
Ah, see, I feel better already.
Stuck out like a tongue…
Yesterday, I filled my mug and sat in my seat, the usual.
Reaching for my morning Drink, I see something unusual…
This note stuck out like a tongue:
Click the photo to see what happened next…
Beggars CAN be choosers…
Here’s something that reminded me who I am…
and whose I am…
and how those are the same, I AM.
be.thebright.co/true-words-with-travis
“Blessed are the beggars in spirit…”
That’s good news.
Why do beggars make the best choosers?
Choosing. We all get to do it.
And not choosing, well…
He’s not afraid…
A good man might take responsibility for all his wrongs, stand up right, beat a noble drum and bear his own burden. A very good man, might.
But what kind of man stands quietly while falsely accused, taking the blame for another willingly, even to death, dying under their shame?
What kind of man would give his heart so completely?
Stretching one hand to the east and one to the west… saying, “fire away.”
The cop in the video plays a character whose Name I think you know.
The woman’s name…
…just don’t run away.
A fist pump…
Feeling brave…
A boy looks through glass thick as your fist
and sticks out his tongue at the lions,
his death grip on daddy’s pant leg
and tiny fingernails let blood
but daddy doesn’t seem to mind.
—
Let this song beat your heart
like the pounding hooves of a Texas Rangers patrol
riding for truth, justice and The Resurrected Way.
Delight all you sons and daughters
of goodness and light!
Good always wins, in the end.
Revelation…
Revelation by Robert Frost
We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone find us really out.
’Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.
But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.
—
A poem about the flaws of poetry…
A delight.
And so, He did tell us.
Emerson…
Self-reliance, the height and perfection of man, is reliance on God.
DOUBT
Respect the child. Be not too much his parent.
Trespass not on his solitude.
Our strength grows out of our weakness.
The indignation which arms itself with secret forces
does not awaken until we are pricked and stung and sorely assailed.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming
that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
A great man is always willing to be little.
Whilst he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep.
When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn something;
he has been put on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got moderation and real skill.
The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself.
He is not to live the future as described to him
but to live the real future to the real present.
The highest revelation is that God is in every man.
We are, like Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned,
bereft of reason, and eating grass like an ox.
Yet a man may love a paradox,
without losing either his wit or his honesty.
ACT
Be it how it will, do right now.
The thing done avails, and not what is said about it.
An original sentence, a step forward,
is worth more than all the censures.
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions.
All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks.
Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions,
has the richest return of wisdom.
It is easy to live for others; everybody does.
I call on you to live for yourselves.
KNOW
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Accept the place the divine providence has found for you,
the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.
Great men have always done so.
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.
Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love.
Your goodness must have some edge to it — else it is none.
Speak what you think now in hard words,
and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks
in hard words again,
though it contradict every thing you said today.
I hung my verse in the wind
Time and tide their faults will find.
STAND
Valor consists in the power of self-recovery,
so that a man cannot have his flank turned,
cannot be out-generalled,
but put him where you will,
he stands.
Despair, never.