Train not just the mind, but the heart as well. The mind knows, but the heart governs. Wisdom here from our dystopian buddha.
Much of the notion of the comfort/discomfort of an activity comes from the connotation we put on it—”I like/hate this.” “I’m good/horrible at this” “this is boring/fun.”
Training should be more than just a mindless acquisition of skill; it should be a conscious deprogramming of that which keeps us inept.
Another spammy post of stories, this one about a trans-Siberian roadtrip.
And some stumping for my favorite band, Ленинград, with Sergei “Shnur” Shnurov as their frontman with Alisa Vox providing most of the new vocals. The song linked has some 343 listens in my iTunes.
With no further delay, Fish!
I’m only black and white.
Not strong in stride,
I’ve never known pride,
Only love undebriding.
I was there for the castles,
I was there for the night’s hassle,
Of you trying to sleep, but secretly dreaming,
While all the world carried on snoring.
You used to talk to me, that sweet “pillow talk,”
Of course we never called it that then, mom’dve balked,
(And it would have been weird, like stalking)
But now you don’t. It’s like your mouth’s plugged with caulk.
You once told me of dragons and knights,
The brave and the meek, fighting through the night.
Or the maid and her lion, leading the other unto dawn’s crest.
I sleep now under a silent thrum, held against your chest,
A subject of your tight, nervous arm, the grind of broken teeth,
and the whine of a more broken heart, alone on the heath.
Now the night stories I hear are dark and cruel,
It’s not dragons and knights, but tyrants and traitors,
And the maid is held in chains, dragged on by twin masters.
Regret and pain, loneliness, covered in white plaster,
Undone in sleep, unraveled in dreams.
I loved you once and I love you still, warm against you,
Though now you never name me,
Only murmur incessant, shuddering in the cold.
I know my time has passed, for you seek others to love,
Others taller, others fairer, sweet like a dove.
You’ll find for yourself who to trust, and who needs a shove.
For it’s not just me that’s waiting patiently in bed,
But all childhood’s songs and hopes not dead,
Only dreaming inside your head.
-Rylie
Inspired by this prompt from the Poet’s Billow
I must have been five or six when I read the Velveteen Rabbit. A gorgeously deep children’s book— words to live by even as an adult. If you follow me and don’t already follow the Billow, try it. You can learn some surprising things about yourself writing poetry.
“‘It doesn’t happen all at once…You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit
I couldn’t help but share this excerpt that was shared with me today in my Yin Yoga class. For our class purposes, this was used as a meditation on acceptance. Here, on the Billow, for our purposes, I want to think about the Veleveteen Rabbit and his friend the horse who said this.
For today’s poem, write a…
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Sorry about sporadic posts. Exams, projects, papers, and my own lack of self-discipline (or perhaps simply normal discipline that fails to compare to the Roman standards I hold myself to) have all gotten in the way of keeping this regularly updated, as well as writing and generally enjoying life’s other pleasures besides stuffing my face with low quality confectionery.
I was bored, or more accurately, in a frenzied trance induced by Wardruna and my daily ADHD medications (and around 400 grams of sugar), and wrote this piece from start to finish, a short story from the perspective of one of the Syntar, depicted in that other post about them.
With less flapping gums and more content, here it is:
Oh, and if you’re so inclined, I appreciate feedback. It’s by no means required (not that I’d have any way to enforce it; I’m not the CCP), but giving me your thoughts 1) helps me write better stories, 2) inflates my ego that people actually care, and 3) lets me evaluate where this blog is going in terms of audience and content. And 4) makes me very, very happy. And don’t feel afraid to drop links or ask me to visit your blog, being directly impelled to read others’ content is excellent motivation to get out there and see what all everyone else has to offer.
Have you ever gone out on a rescue mission for the most uncomfortably designed sex-robot who was kidnapped by psychotic drugged-out desert bandits, only to be lured into an ambush of animatronic suicide teddy bears engaged in a dangerous game of landmine frisbee, then upon acquiring and taming the sex-robot, whose circuit boards have all been replaced with cheese pizza, been roped into performing in a concert for the king of the raiders by a giant mutant lizard thing with claws the size of your forearm, playing a giant electric guitar made out of a 40mm anti-aircraft gun, while also protecting him from assassins in the middle of the mosh-pit concert while he rocks out the hardest anyone has in ages, killing several dozen audience members with his guitar cannon, and instead of being rewarded with money, been showered with dozens of copies of his newest album?
Continue reading No Context #2: And Now For Something Completely Different
Not a post of any healthy length, but a reposting of some glorious self-help from the Art of Manliness, which is an excellent guide not just for men, but for those who have had it with self-defeat, externalizing failures, and stagnation.
http://www.artofmanliness.com/2014/05/19/10-overlooked-truths-about-taking-action/
Fire and ice indeed. You’ve no idea the hope this gives me, knowing that even writers older than me still suffer these doubts; as with all seasons, this too shall pass.
‘No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.’
-Aristotle
I often have days where I contemplate giving up. They’re the kind of days where I sit down at my computer to write and think to myself why the hell am I doing this? I’m twenty six years of age and I’ve never had a career, I’ve never finished any of the multiple university degrees that I’ve started, and despite having served more than a decade in the workforce I don’t really have anything of substance to my name. I really struggle when those moments arrive. I sit at my computer for hours and stare blankly at a screen clouded by my own insecurities and self-doubt wondering why I don’t just give up and become happy like everyone else. I want to be a writer; I am a goddamn writer. But in those moments I question whether I have what…
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Good point. Sleep is good. But chores are necessary. And guys are bad at using many word in line.
I must resist mightily the temptation to caption this with an emoji.
And here’s a relevant link to an old episode of the Honeymooners!
(But read this first.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWei1aFDUU8&nohtml5=False
I deserve flak from my female cohorts. As a young adult, I never got the I-AM-WOMAN-HEAR-ME-ROAR hullabaloo. Why Oprah and devotees, TV shows, and pop culture rattled on about the woman with all the balls up in the air, exhausted in the attempt to satisfy diverse roles. Then I got married.
And became a mother.
The breadth of the tasks in my day-to-day, not to mention the depth, is such that I actually forget a lot of what I do. It is a great much, the littlest things one tends to as a mom.
I tore out a page of our calendar for you. I usually do more lessons, and doctor visits obviously are not a regular affair. But this day was typical in the way it packed one activity right into the next:
Breakfast
Dental checkup 45 minutes away
Lunch
Groceries
Brief playdate
Return: traffic
Martialarts
Math lesson
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I’ve been quite lazy about blogging. I’d like to say it’s because recent days have been keeping me busy, but it’s more like I’m just a self-piteous wreck who needs to get a ******* move-on.
So I drew something. I was bored, and didn’t feel like moping anymore (having got in a good four hours of moping in between fragments of sleep this last night), so I got out my trusty Papermate #2 mechanical twist pencil (one of twelve identical twins, mostly out of lead), laboriously drew 73 million scales, and threw a lazy iPhone filter over it.
From the City on a Hill 