“Isn’t it odd how much fatter a book gets when you’ve read it several times?” Mo had said…”As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells…and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower…both strange and familiar.”
quote-Cornelia Funke on good books January 17, 2016
quote from Jenny Hubbard January 15, 2016
In the book, And We Stay by Jenny Hubbard, protagonist Emily is sorting out the world by writing poetry and reading Emily Dickinson. The book is full of poetry and is written with a very poetic tone. Here is a particularly beautiful passage:
So sew. Either way you spell it, on its own, the word looks wrong. Emily could write a poem about it, about how sew needs a subject, an object. About how a girl needs a duty to lock her in place. So if she sits at a desk, scrawls words on paper, are the words as lonely as she, or do they sow seeds into a soul across time, across centuries? Was Emily Dickinson ever able to thread the words together in such a way that she was beyond the need for stitches?
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quote- insults June 13, 2015
Just came across this in my audio book today:
“An insult is like a drink, it affects one only if accepted.”
Robert A. Heinlein in Glory Road
How true is this!
The difference between being ‘thin-skinned’ and ‘thick-skinned’ lies in if you ‘accept’ the insult or not. If you do not, it rolls over you and you can remain jovial and calm. If you accept an insult, it can be toxic, taking bitter root and poisoning both you and others around you as you spread the toxicity.
This brings to mind that some need more gentleness than others.
While insult may be completely unintended, those who presume a negative intent will let their ‘acceptance’ of the insult fester. Their perception is their reality.
This is when one can either wait for the one presuming insult where none was intended or implied to either wake up or move on, or one can say “I’m sorry you felt that way, it was not the intent.”
I am prone to the former, with a shrug of shoulders. For those of us who ignore even intentional insults (some of us have taught junior high and therefore have a lot of practice) it can be hard to feel sorry for those who are so fragile or victimized that they see insult wherever they turn. They’re emotionally exhausting to be around.
I don’t drink either literally or figuratively. It seems like a sound way of avoiding trouble.
poem-with alacrity May 30, 2015
(for DG) 🙂
In whatever capacity
you deal with animousity,
develop a good strategy
to sort out dreaded calumny,
then avoid falling into laxity
and resolve it with alacrity!
.
.
Another poem dedicated (with tongue in cheek) to Outlander author, Diana Gabaldon. The phrase ‘with alacrity’ appears frequently in Outlander, and whenever it does I shout enthusiastically “WITH ALACRITY!” and chuckle. (Alacrity means haste, FYI). It’s silly, but it is not much different than throwing boxes of KD at a Barenaked Ladies concert or toast during Rocky Horror Picture Show. (Neither of which I’ve done, unfortunately, so I have to settle with shouting to a book. Kind of sad, really.) 😉
poem-stacks October 30, 2014
Row on row
books rest, wise and eager
waiting for a hopeful reader
Someone seeking information
or an escape into fiction.
In racks and stacks
new worlds await
and the library is the gate.
poem- looking (an #Outlander poem) September 29, 2014
“I want to look,”
she says.
Finger outlining
the focus of
her attention,
she walks
a slow, studious circle
of analysis
and inevitable
appreciation.
.
“Fair’s fair,”
he says,
stepping back
with a glint in his eye,
joyfully
thankful for circumstance
that made her
his.
.
.
.
Another poem based on Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander; this one based on Ron Moore’s TV series, specifically episode 107, “The Wedding.”
poem-tynchal (an #Outlander poem) September 16, 2014
“Score one for the pig,” she said,
but a hunter limping, partially gored
not prudent from the perspective
of a boar.
A roar marks the victory:
Geordie’s blood stains the earth
entrails pour onto leaves
at what is the more satisfying score
for the boar.
.
.
An Outlander poem, based on TV show ep 104 “The Gathering”
History- Leap o’the cask and the Dun Bonnet June 30, 2014
I discovered this article about regional history around Loch Ness that includes the actual recorded story of ‘Leap o the Cask’ and the ‘Dun Bonnet’ as it shows up in Diana Gabaldon’s books. The story IS about a James Fraser. This is the kind of historical coincidence that tends to give one goose bumps.
I found the reference here:
http://www.caithness.org/caithnessfieldclub/bulletins/2004/historyoffoyers.htm
James Fraser, 9th of Foyers, was on very friendly terms with Simon, 13th Lord Lovat, later to be executed for his part in the 1745 Rising, and on that account, Foyers joined Lovat in supporting Prince Charles during his short reign in Edinburgh as King James VIII. After the disastrous battle of Culloden in 1746 the ill-fated Prince Charles fled westwards and took refuge in Gorthleck farmhouse on the Foyers estate but was soon alarmed by a party of Red Coats and effected his escape by jumping out of a window. Foyers also escaped from the battlefield and his efforts to elude capture were every bit as romantic as those of Prince Charles.
Foyers was excluded from the Act of Parliament pardoning treasonable offences committed in the rebellion, and was forced to live in hiding for seven years after the rebellion. One of his favourite haunts was a cave, a mile to the west of the Falls of Foyers. One day, on looking out of the cave, the laird saw a Red Coat secretly following a girl bringing food for him and, as to avoid capture was a matter of life and death to him, the laird shot the soldier who was buried where he fell. So Foyers’s whereabouts could be kept secret, the inhabitants used to speak of him by the nickname “Bonaid Odhair” (Dun Coloured Bonnet).
After the Battle of Culloden, the Duke of Cumberland’s troops brought much misery and brutality to the district. The estates were plundered and burnt on a scale never before known on account of the proximity of Foyers to Fort Augustus, where Cumberland and his troops were garrisoned. Many people starved to death and many outrages were committed on their persons. At a change-house, An Ire Mhor (a large piece of arable land), on the road to Inverness near Foyers, a group of soldiers, including an officer, raped a young girl living there with her grandmother and, when the old woman tried to defend her grandchild, she was strangled to death. At a funeral, taking place in Foyers cemetery, one of the starving mourners grabbed a loaf of bread off a passing provisions cart heading for Fort Augustus – uproar followed. The offender was arrested and the troops fired indiscriminately into the funeral party, killing at least one and wounding many others. The bullet holes in the grave stone of Donald Fraser of Erchit, buried in 1730, can still be seen to this day. Another outrage was committed on a boy taking a cask of beer to Foyers in his hiding place – when the boy refused to tell of his master’s hiding place, the soldiers cut off his hands.
I’m particularly bemused that one of the bibliographic sources is History of the Frasers by Alex MacKenzie. It makes you wonder if it was printed by A. Malcolm, doesn’t it? 🙂
Here’s a link to some photos of the actual Dun Bonnet cave:
http://alastaircunningham07.blogspot.ca/2007/10/dun-bonnet-cave-from-inside.html
The Inverness Outlander group were able to go explore the cave. Here’s a link to their blog post and photos of the day: https://invernessoutlanders.wordpress.com/2015/04/13/trip-to-the-dun-bonnets-cave Diana said she wouldn’t have gone on this trip because she is too claustrophobic. 🙂
quote- Jodi McIsaac on truth in storytelling November 7, 2013
“So it’s not just stories you want, then” Maggie said, eyeing Cedar keenly. “You want the truth. Well, there is truth to be found in stories, that’s for certain.”
“Not all stories are true,” Eden piped up from her father’s lap.
“They’re always true about something, little one,” Maggie said, passing Eden another cookie. “If not about what actually happened, then maybe about the person telling the story–or about the person hearing it…”
(Jodi McIsaac Into the Fire p. 136)
I particularly like the last sentence there, because half of the story is in the reader, and the connections s/he makes with it. More than that though, is the very fact that the reader picked that story says something, as does that the writer wrote that story. Subconsciously intentional choices are all around us. 😉
Shawn L. Bird 
quote- the mind December 26, 2013
Tags: attitude, clinical depression, depression, John Milton, mental health, mind, Paradise Lost, quote
Milton said that in Paradise Lost in 1667. That’s 344 years ago, and as fine a statement on mental health as ever I’ve heard.
If you’re not clinically depressed, it expresses the simple concept that your attitude to the situation is what’s important, not the situation itself.
I’ve known a lot of people over the years who are constantly saying negative things about their hard-working, diligent spouses. For whatever reasons, they feel that bashing their spouse is acceptable sport. Inevitably, their relationships crumble, and they blame the spouse for the divorce when in fact, their own attitude is what doomed the relationship.
Speak what you want to be true, and you will make it so. Articulate thankfulness, appreciation, and passion and you will create those things.
It may only be in your mind, but your mind controls the body.
If you are clinically depressed, this quote expressed the simple concept that your perception of the situation transforms it. Other people may see simple delights, while you see complicated anguish. Your perception is valid, but don’t let it ruin you. See your doctor. You’d be willing to medicate for a heart condition, your brain deserves just as much respect.
Your mind controls the body. Make sure it’s healthy.
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