autographedcat

Every so often, a book comes to my attention that perhaps wouldn’t have normally. I’ll read a review, or hear it recommended, and think “Hey, that sounds interesting”, and I’ll make a note to myself to pick it up if I see it, or sometimes i’ll just grab it off the Amazon Kindle store where it will sit, waiting for me to find a moment to crack it open.

I don’t, at this point, remember who recommended the book “Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar” by Cheryl Strayed. It’s been sitting in my Kindle Library for some time. But a couple of days ago I randomly opened it and began to read. Today I finished it.

I don’t recall the last book that so often made me laugh out loud, so often moved me to tears, so often stopped me dead in my tracks with a perfectly phrased insight or so often made me just stop, walk away from the book because I needed time to think and digest.and reflect on what I had just read.

I’ve read collections of advice columns before, from Dan Savage and Miss Manners and others. This is very likely the first collection of advice columns I will read again and again, because as much as I took from it, there’s more to take and find and connect with.

If you’re a human being who is currently in the process of living a life, I recommend this book.

Mirrored from Home of the Autographed Cat.

I was just now linking someone else to the brilliant work of Ze Frank, and it occurred to me:

1) How much I love the first episode of his new web show
2) How much it still affects me
3) How I need to listen to it every day until I internalise it.

"With my depression, there aren't so many things that give me joy, and I should be able to celebrate the shit out of the things that do. If I hate just about everything in the world, let me love what I do love hard and unrestrainedly. And even when we're teenagers, and allegedly immature enough to get away with enthusiasm, we start getting pressured to act cool, so we temper that enthusiasm so goddamn early. I'm done with it. No great art ever was made by dampening your love of anything. No great life was lived by pretending you didn't give a shit."
--maevele, in a post here

(h/t to firecat for bringing it to my attention)

For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and Things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly, and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning.

You must be able to think back to streets in unknown neighborhoods, to unexpected encounters, and to partings you had long seen coming; to days of childhood whose mystery is still unexplained, to parents whom you had to hurt when they brought in a joy and you didn’t pick it up (it was a joy meant for somebody else); to childhood illnesses that began so strangely with so many profound and difficult transformations, to days in quiet restrained rooms and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, but it is still not enough to be able to think of all that.

You must have memories of many nights of love, each one different from all the others, memories of women screaming in labor, and of light, pale, sleeping girls who have just given birth and are closing again. But you must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open windows and the scattered noises.

And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them.

from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke.

h/t to Andrew Sullivan for the pointer.

This was sent to me in the from of a typical "forward this to all your friends for good luck" e-mail. Of course, it was sent to me be someone I love dearly and who is not prone to sending me random forwards, so i took the time ro read it.

As the new year starts, there's some good stuff here to ponder (and some of it is stuff I'd already learned the long way around), so I'm going to share it with all of you.

1. Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.
2. Marry a man/woman you love to talk to. As you get older, their conversational skills will be as important as any other.
3. Don't believe all you hear, spend all you have or sleep all you want.
4. When you say, 'I love you,' mean it.
5. When you say, 'I'm sorry,' look the person in the eye.
6. Be engaged at least six months before you get married.
7. Believe in love at first sight.
8. Never laugh at anyone's dreams. People who don't have dreams don't have much.
9. Love deeply and passionately. You might get hurt but it's the only way to live life completely.
10.. In disagreements, fight fairly. No name calling.
11. Don't judge people by their relatives.
12. Talk slowly but think quickly.
13. When someone asks you a question you don't want to answer, smile and ask, 'Why do you want to know?'
14. Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
15. Say 'bless you' when you hear someone sneeze.
16. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
17. Remember the three R's: Respect for self; Respect for others; and Responsibility for all your actions.
18. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
19. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
20. Smile when picking up the phone. The caller will hear it in your voice
21. Spend some time alone.

(source is allegedly the Anthony Robbins Foundation, though the e-mail did not give a specific citation.)

When Pablo Casals was 95, he would practice his cello six hours a day. Someone asked him 'Why do you do that?'

He said, 'Because I think I'm making progress.'

In response to my last post, eiblyn mentioned having the Thoreau quote on a magnet on her fridge, which reminded me of the magnet I have on my fridge and I thought I'd post it.

"live with intention.
walk to the edge.
listen hard.
practice wellness.
play with abandon.
laugh.
choose with no regret.
continue to learn.
appreciate your friends.
do what you love.
live as if this is all there is."
--mary anne radmacher

As a credo, I could do much worse.

"The struggle is good. Being unsure of what God is calling you to is good.
Wrestling with angels and demons in the wilderness is good. Not knowing is
good. Being afraid is good. Being real and human and wanting truth so bad
that you can taste it is good."
--Gordon Atkinson (Real Live Preacher)

It is, perhaps, the cruelest of this life's many injustices that idealists are forced to live in the real world.

I posted this back in 2002, because I liked it, and I think it's worth repeating again during these uncertain times:

Seething Bilious Hate, Down 3% - Where is all the good news? Why is the media so obsessed with horror and misery? Herein, some possible salve