‘To obtain thy livelihood make use of every means;
Do not be satisfied with any condition,
But be equal to any enormity;
For man becomes incapable,
there is no doubt about it.’
Category Archives: RECOVERY
It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright.
Don’t rely on the label on the bag.
Crooked logs make straight fires
The years have turned the rusted key, and time is on the jog, Yet spend another night with me around the boree log.
John O’Brien
http://www.middlemiss.org/lit/authors/obrienj/poetry/boreelog.html
The frog enjoys himself in water but not in hot water. West African Negro.
Can a house be burned down with hot water.” Tamil.
“The thing I hate most about skeletons is you can never tell when they’re smiling.” ― Stephen Blackmoore, Dead Things
“He had a skull and crossbones label on him, but I drank his poison nevertheless and loved it; now I needed an antidote.”
― Genna Rulon, Only for You
Do not copy nature too much. Art is an abstraction. (Paul Gauguin)
Colour! What a deep and mysterious language, the language of dreams. (Paul Gauguin)
All your geese are swans.
The elegant swan
dances, a waltz on water
a ballerina
Chiamaka Okorie
He who knows not how to play his game, says, ” My place is narrow . “
“It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you’ve made, and there’s this panic because you don’t know yet the scale of disaster you’ve left yourself open to.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
“For the past 26 years I’ve thought of heroin every day…” But never thought of using it. It never made anything better, just worse. Look, every junky is always “considering” getting clean. Every junky wants to be clean. Every using junky also wants more heroin. Call it a contradiction call it what you want. But no junky wants the life they have. James: 26 years clean, Sydney, Australia
Soon the monster roused himself and grasping the skirt shook it, saying as he did so: **If this be human, it’s light,” then he rushed back into the water.
Luck will carry a man across the brook if he is not too lazy to leap. Dan.
“There is no more sagacious animal than the Icelandic horse. He is stopped by neither snow, nor storm, nor impassable roads, nor rocks, glaciers, or anything. He is courageous, sober, and surefooted. He never makes a false step, never shies. If there is a river or fjord to cross (and we shall meet with many) you will see him plunge in at once, just as if he were amphibious, and gain the opposite bank.”
Every dog is a lion at home
“Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Never travel far without a rope! And one that is long and strong and light. it may be a help in many needs. -J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
I am at the ship’s prow. I am no longer the suicide with her raft and paddle. Herr Doktor! I’ll no longer die to spite you, you wallowing seasick grounded man.
Anne Sexton (1928-1974), U.S. poet. “The Doctor of the Heart.”
Do not stand in a place of danger trusting in miracles. Arabian Proverb
The Market-Place
My mind is like a clamorous market-place.
All day in wind, rain, sun, its babel wells;
Voice answering to voice in tumult swells.
Chaffering and laughing, pushing for a place,
My thoughts haste on, gay, strange, poor, simple, base;
This one buys dust, and that a bauble sells:
But none to any scrutiny hints or tells
The haunting secrets hidden in each sad face.
The clamour quietens when the dark draws near;
Strange looms the earth in twilight of the West,
Lonely with one sweet star serene and clear,
Dwelling, when all this place is hushed to rest,
On vacant stall, gold, refuse, worst and best,
Abandoned utterly in haste and fear.
I see my light come shining From the west unto the east Any day now, any day now I shall be released , DYLAN
“Release”
PEARL JAM
I see the world
Feel the chill
Which way to go
Windowsill
I see the words
On a rocking horse of time
I see the birds in the rain
Which way to go
Windowsill
I see the words
On a rocking horse of time
I see the birds in the rain
Oh dear dad
Can you see me now
I am myself
Like you somehow
I’ll ride the wave
Where it takes me
I’ll hold the pain
Release me
Oh dear dad
Can you see me now
I am myself
Like you somehow
I’ll wait up in the dark
For you to speak to me
I’ll open up
Release me
Release me
Release me
Release me
wanton kittens make sober cats
Macavity: The Mystery Cat
Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw—
For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air—
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity’s not there!
Macavity’s a ginger cat, he’s very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
And when you think he’s half asleep, he’s always wide awake.
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
For he’s a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square—
But when a crime’s discovered, then Macavity’s not there!
He’s outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard’s
And when the larder’s looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke’s been stifled,
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair
Ay, there’s the wonder of the thing! Macavity’s not there!
And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty’s gone astray,
Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair—
But it’s useless to investigate—Macavity’s not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
It must have been Macavity!’—but he’s a mile away.
You’ll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumb;
Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place—MACAVITY WASN’T THERE!
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!
T.S. Eliot
“When she transformed into a butterfly, the caterpillars spoke not of her beauty, but of her weirdness. They wanted her to change back into what she always had been. But she had wings.” ― Dean Jackson
When she was fourteen, she says,
she ran away from home, at sixteen
she bought a big bike and hit the road,
moving from town to town, looking for
something she can’t explain.JOHN TRANTER
BUTTERFLY
Follow the river and you will reach the sea
foto – bellwood down at nambucca heads
The first river you paddle runs through the rest of your life. It bubbles up in pools and eddies to remind you who you are.
Lynn Noel
Even if it’s only in a tiny way, it’s nice to be part of a small dam that’s challenging our river of grog.
“I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.” — Willa Cather from O Pioneers!
Rainforest by Libby Hathorn
Oh don’t bring down
The ancient pine,
The breath of life
That’s yours and mine.
Don’t tear it out
saw it down
gouge it, chop it,
let it drown.
Don’t fell the tree
that’s stood so long.
Leave bird and bush
Where they belong.
Leave the forest,
Green gold place,
the glow of hope
on this earth’s
old face.
“How can you rise, if you have not burned” ― Hiba Fatima Ahmad
The Phoenix was not where I thought it should be— perched, say, on the rim of the volcano warming its eggs like the Galapagos shag. I had to be more brazen.
Shapcott, Thomas W
What a fine man Hath your tailor made you! Philip Massinger, City Madam
Sam Barger
Sep 26, 2014
Tailor made.
The strongest souls dress in suits of scars.
“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.” ― Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man
. “We’re in hell right now gentlemen. Believe me. And we can stay here, get the shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb outta hell…one inch at a time.”
Tony D’Amato – Any Given Sunday
Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words. Rumi
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
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
“There is an old German fable about porcupines who need to huddle together for warmth, but are in danger of hurting each other with their spines
When they find the optimum distance to share each other’s warmth without putting each other’s eyes out, their state of contrived cooperation is called good manners. Well, those old German fabulists certainly knew a thing or two. When you acknowledge other people politely, the signal goes out, “I’m here. You’re there. I’m staying here. You’re staying there. Aren’t we both glad we sorted that out?” When people don’t acknowledge each other politely, the lesson from the porcupine fable is unmistakeable. “Freeze or get stabbed, mate. It’s your choice.”
― Lynne Truss, Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door
The Register (Adelaide, SA : 1901 – 1929), Saturday 26 April 1913
THE OLD PROVERBIAL RECOVERY 