Quotes of the week
Whatever is in the heart will come up to the tongue.
~Proverb, (Persian)~
Meditation of the week
--Gerald Jampolsky
Whatever we give away returns to us, manifold. When we show love or understanding, when we are gentle or express genuine concern, usually the same will come right back to us. Perhaps not in kind, maybe not in ways we expected, nevertheless our gifts bear fruit.
Many of us have longed for love and security to come from others with a promise of forever; inevitably, we became anxious that, in time, that love or security would disappear. When we view life from such a narrow perspective, no amount of love can bolster our sense of worth.
How different the world looks when we unselfishly give out love rather than longingly await the love, attention, or understanding of others. We guarantee receiving the good feelings we crave every time we share those feelings with a fellow traveler.
I am in charge of what I receive from others today. I will get back what I willingly give.
Poem of the Week
The Sum of Man
In autumn,
facing the end of his life,
he moved in with me.
We piled his belongings—
his army-issue boots, knife magazines,
Steely Dan tapes, his grinder, drill press,
sanders, belts and hacksaws—
in a heap all over the living room floor.
For two weeks he walked around the mess.
One night he stood looking down at it all
and said: "The sum total of my existence."
Emptiness in his voice.
Soon after, as if the sum total
needed to be expanded, he began to place
things around in the closets and spaces I'd
cleared for him, and when he'd finished
setting up his workshop in the cellar, he said,
"I should make as many knives as I can,"
and he began to work.
The months plowed on through a cold winter.
In the evenings, we'd share supper, some tale
of family, some laughs, perhaps a walk in the snow.
Then he'd nip back down into the cellar's keep
To saw and grind and polish,
creating his beautiful knives
until he grew too weak to work.
But still he'd slip down to stand at his workbench
and touch his woods
and run his hand over his lathe.
One night he came up from the cellar
and stood in the kitchen's warmth
and, shifting his weight
from one foot to the other, said,
"I love my workshop."
Then he went up to bed.
He's gone now.
It's spring. It's been raining for weeks.
I go down to his shop and stand in the dust
of ground steel and shavings of wood.
I think on how he'd speak of his dying, so
easily, offhandedly, as if it were
a coming anniversary or
an appointment with the moon.
I touch his leather apron, folded for all time,
and his glasses set upon his work gloves.
I take up an unfinished knife and test its heft,
and feel as well the heft of my grief for
this man, this brother I loved,
the whole of him so much greater
than the sum of his existence.
facing the end of his life,
he moved in with me.
We piled his belongings—
his army-issue boots, knife magazines,
Steely Dan tapes, his grinder, drill press,
sanders, belts and hacksaws—
in a heap all over the living room floor.
For two weeks he walked around the mess.
One night he stood looking down at it all
and said: "The sum total of my existence."
Emptiness in his voice.
Soon after, as if the sum total
needed to be expanded, he began to place
things around in the closets and spaces I'd
cleared for him, and when he'd finished
setting up his workshop in the cellar, he said,
"I should make as many knives as I can,"
and he began to work.
The months plowed on through a cold winter.
In the evenings, we'd share supper, some tale
of family, some laughs, perhaps a walk in the snow.
Then he'd nip back down into the cellar's keep
To saw and grind and polish,
creating his beautiful knives
until he grew too weak to work.
But still he'd slip down to stand at his workbench
and touch his woods
and run his hand over his lathe.
One night he came up from the cellar
and stood in the kitchen's warmth
and, shifting his weight
from one foot to the other, said,
"I love my workshop."
Then he went up to bed.
He's gone now.
It's spring. It's been raining for weeks.
I go down to his shop and stand in the dust
of ground steel and shavings of wood.
I think on how he'd speak of his dying, so
easily, offhandedly, as if it were
a coming anniversary or
an appointment with the moon.
I touch his leather apron, folded for all time,
and his glasses set upon his work gloves.
I take up an unfinished knife and test its heft,
and feel as well the heft of my grief for
this man, this brother I loved,
the whole of him so much greater
than the sum of his existence.
Author of the week
It's the birthday of Sylvia Plath, (books by this author) born in Boston, Massachusetts (1932), who went to England on a Fulbright after college and married the poet Ted Hughes. At first they were very happy, waking up every morning to write poems together. But her first book of poems, The Colossus (1960), got mixed reviews, and she began to spend more time taking care of her two children, spending less and less of her time writing. Her marriage with Hughes broke up in 1962.
Plath had always been a slow, painstaking writer, but living alone with her two children, she began to wake up every morning at 4:00 a.m. to write, and poems just poured out of her. At the end of October, she wrote to her mother, "I am writing the best poems of my life; they will make my name." But she couldn't get the poems published because the editors of various magazines thought they were too strange and disturbing. That winter in England was one of the coldest on record, and Plath kept coming down with fevers. On the morning of February 11, she got up and sealed her children's bedroom door with tape, sealed herself in the kitchen, stuffed a towel under the door, opened the oven and turned on the gas, killing herself. The poems she had been writing that fall were published as Ariel in 1965, and they did make her name. When her Collected Poems was published in 1981, it won the Pulitzer Prize.
Best of Craig’s List of the week
Video of the week
Funny commercial
Song of the week
Looking In by Walter Afanasieff and Mariah Carey
You look at me and see the girl
Who lives inside the golden world
But don't believe
That's all there is to see
You'll never know the real me
She smiles through a thousand tears
And harbours adolescent fears
She dreams of all
That she can never be
She wades in insecurity
And hides herself inside of me
Don't say she takes it all for granted
I'm well aware of all I have
Don't think that I am disenchanted
Please understand
It seems as though I've always been
Somebody outside looking in
Well, here I am for all of them to bleed
But they can't take my heart from me
And they can't bring me to my knees
They'll never know the real me
Who lives inside the golden world
But don't believe
That's all there is to see
You'll never know the real me
She smiles through a thousand tears
And harbours adolescent fears
She dreams of all
That she can never be
She wades in insecurity
And hides herself inside of me
Don't say she takes it all for granted
I'm well aware of all I have
Don't think that I am disenchanted
Please understand
It seems as though I've always been
Somebody outside looking in
Well, here I am for all of them to bleed
But they can't take my heart from me
And they can't bring me to my knees
They'll never know the real me
