Crooked cards and straight whiskey, 
Slow horses and fast women. 

― Kenneth Rexroth

Mary Oliver - On Being

I come back to this over and over again. Interview with Mary Oliver (by Krista Tippett of On Being), transcribed. 

And also when you write about that — the discipline that creates space for something quite mysterious to happen. You talk about that "wild, silky part of ourselves." You talk about the “part of the psyche that works in concert with consciousness and supplies a necessary part of the poem—a heart of the star as opposed to the shape of the star, let us say—exists in a mysterious, unmapped zone: not unconscious, not subconscious, but cautious.”

 

Never let the future disturb you.

“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”

― Marcus Aurelius

"In Celebration of the Citizenry of All Things Within One World"

Enjoyed reading this post written by Sandy Stotts: "In Celebration of the Citizenry of All Things Within One World" where he celebrates Henry David Thoreau and Mary Oliver, "two voices that I turn to when I want to hear from and of the earth, which is another way of saying every day."

Who then can resist “sailing
in the rain” on April 22, 1856
or sailing with today’s rain coming

on, or the rippling east wind
and finding that even Henry
tried as he held the tiller

to hold too an umbrella
to keep himself dry? Or
knowing that a sudden

“seizure of happiness”
can come on at walk’s end
on this quietest of mornings?

 

Living in literature and love is the best thing there is. You’re always home.

“Literature is love. I think it went like this: drawings in the cave, sounds in the cave, songs in the cave, songs about us. Later, stories about us. Part of what we always did was have sex and fight about it and break each other’s hearts. I guess there’s other kinds of love too. Great friendships. Working together. But poetry and novels are lists of our devotions. We love the feel of making the marks as the feelings are rising and falling. Living in literature and love is the best thing there is. You’re always home.” 

― Eileen Myles