He could see plainly that she was not herself. That is, he could not see that she was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.
― Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Category Archives: RECONSTRUCTION
In life as in the dance, grace glides on blistered feet. Alice Abrams
– Quoted in Revised Edition, St. Martin’s Press, NY, NY, 2003, p. 285
http://www.nsrider.com/quotes/life.htm
When love awakens in your life, in the night of your heart, it is like the dawn breaking within you. Where before there was anonymity, now there is intimacy; where before there was fear, now there is courage; where before in your life there was awkwardness, now there is a rhythm of grace and gracefulness; where before you used to be jagged, now you are elegant and in rhythm with your self. When love awakens in your life, it is like a rebirth, a new beginning.
John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
For it is commonly said: accomplished labours are pleasant.
Vulgo enim dicitur: Iucunde acti labores.
Quotation from De Finibus by Cicero.
(Lived 106-43 BC)
http://wonder.riverwillow.com.au/home_education/Latin/latin_sayings.htm
SOUVENIR
After Mardi Gras
the city’s largest bacchanalia
a dazzling display of breast
feather sequin sleek flesh
muscular loins and electricity
contraptions everywhere
the grit of hard labour. Now
the body unwinds like string
from a yo-yo, the mind tightens
into routine, toxins clear
skin takes in water.
the city’s largest bacchanalia
a dazzling display of breast
feather sequin sleek flesh
muscular loins and electricity
contraptions everywhere
the grit of hard labour. Now
the body unwinds like string
from a yo-yo, the mind tightens
into routine, toxins clear
skin takes in water.
Sydney, Australia
© 2001, Andy Quan
From: Slant
From: Slant
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room. ~Kurt Vonnegut
Revelations of re-knowing remembering
Self re-visited.
A stranger in a tidy living-room
Waiting to be announced.
By: Maggie Graham
Why don’t they knead two virtuous souls for life Into that moral centaur/man and win?
He threw his head back and sang, “‘I am a centaur, yes, a centaur is what I am.’ It’s not like you to wax, Artemis”
“Foaly is singing,” said Holly. “Surely that’s illegal?”
Beauty stands and waits with gravity to start her death-defying leap
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
http://www.litera.co.uk/greek_proverbs_freedom_or_death/47/
In a dancer, there is a reverence for such forgotten things as the miracle of the small beautiful bones and their delicate strength. In a thinker, there is a reverence for the beauty of the alert and directed and lucid mind. In all of us who perform there is an awareness of the smile which is part of the equipment, or gift, of the acrobat. We have all walked the high wire of circumstance at times. We recognize the gravity pull of the earth as he does. The smile is there because he is practicing living at that instant of danger. He does not choose to fall.
At times I fear walking that tightrope. I fear the venture into the unknown. But that is part of the act of creating and the act of performing.
That is what a dancer does.
(Martha Graham in ‘I am a Dancer’)
Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral.” – Frank Lloyd Wright
http://www.backyardchickens.com/a/common-chicken-sayings-idioms-other-funny-things-we-say
Innocence plays in the backyard of ignorance.
Sometimes it happens that a black cat lets you pass in front of it.
“Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn’t there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.”
~ Robert A. Heinlein
http://mysmelly.com/content/cats/black-cat-quotes-and-sayings.htm
Each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against ourselves.
~Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love, 1963
“There’s such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I’m such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn’t be half so interesting.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
I thought only bushrangers hid in caves.
I do not pretend that I have led a blameless life, or that one fault justifies another, but the public in judging a case like mine should remember that the darkest life may now have a bright side
Ned Kelly – bushranger
If ye do wrang, mak amends.
What is Maturity?
• Knowing myself.
• Asking for help when I need it and acting on my own when I don’t.
• Admitting when I’m wrong and making amends.
• Accepting love from others, even if I’m having a tough time loving myself.
• Recognizing that I always have choices, and taking responsibility for the ones I make.
• Seeing that life is a blessing.
• Having an opinion without insisting that others share it.
• Forgiving myself and others.
• Recognizing my shortcomings and my strengths.
• Having the courage to live one day at a time.
• Acknowledging that my needs are my responsibility.
• Caring for people without having to take care of them.
• Accepting that I’ll never be finished — I’ll always be a work-in-progress.
(from Courage to Change: One Day At a Time in Al-Anon, page 63. Reprinted with permission of Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., Virginia Beach, VA)
Shooter Teton Sioux All birds, even those of the same species, are not alike, and it is the same with animals and with human beings. The reason WakanTanka does not make two birds, or animals, or human beings exactly alike is because each is placed here by WakanTanka to be an independent individuality and to rely upon itself.
http://www.ilhawaii.net/~stony/quotes.html
“Who would deduce the dragonfly from the larva, the iris from the bud, the lawyer from the infant? …We are all shape-shifters and magical reinventors. Life is really a plural noun, a caravan of selves.”
― Diane Ackerman
When life throws you scraps, make a quilt.
“What do you like to do?”
She scuffed a toe amongst the rushes. “Needlework.”
“Very restful, isn’t it?”
“Well,” said Arya, “not the way I do it.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
“I don’t know where my ideas come from. I will admit, however, that one key ingredient is caffeine. I get a couple cups of coffee into me and weird things start to happen.” –
– Gary Larson
“When you start to get bored with your misery, you are on the first rung of recovery and you are beginning to climb back up. You add one thing at a time back into your life just as a break from monotony. Instead of feeling wretched, I will start reading again. Instead of feeling wretched, I will start working out again. I will start answering the phone. I will consider the city. I will think about coffee with friends. You start putting in the pieces until eventually what you have is an actual life.”
― Wendy Plump, Vow: A Memoir of Marriage
To select well among old things, is almost equal to inventing new ones.
Nicholas Charles Trublet
When life knocks you to your knees, and it will, why, get up! If it knocks you to your knees again, as it will, well, isn`t that the best position from which to pray?”
― Ethel Barrymore
Reality has teeth and claws. It’s rarely pretty and never fair. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
― Kaitlin Bevis, Persephone
“Slowly, desolately, the fist of what we’d done unclenched the clawed palm of what we’d become.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram
Intoxicated? The word did not express it by a mile. He was oiled, boiled, fried, plastered, whiffled, sozzled, and blotto.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, Meet Mr. Mulliner
Tea had come as a deliverer to a land that called for deliverance; a land of beef and ale, of heavy eating and abundant drunkenness; of grey skies and harsh winds; of strong nerved , stout-purposed, slow-thinking men and women. Above all, a land of sheltered homes and warm firesides - firesides that were waiting - waiting, for the bubbling kettle and the fragrant breath of tea. -Agnes Reppiler
Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun.”
“And now my old dog is dead, and another I had after him, and my parents are dead, and that first world, that old house, is sold and lost, and the books I gathered there lost, or sold- but more books bought, and in another place, board by board and stone by stone, like a house, a true life built, and all because I was steadfast about one or two things: loving foxes, and poems, the blank piece of paper, and my own energy- and mostly the shimmering shoulders of the world that shrug carelessly over the fate of any individual that they may, the better, keep the Niles and Amazons flowing.”
― Mary Oliver, Blue Pastures
THE OLD PROVERBIAL RECOVERY 