I got breakfast burrito sauce on my khakis, but it's okay.
I might have to change the title of my blog, since I'm now technically a "Publishing Specialist" and not an "Editor." Changes keep a'comin'.
Keeping my own thoughts close and safe for a while, but I'll share someone else's with you....
"Writing is about learning to pay attention and to communicate what is going on. Now, if you ask me, what's going on is that we're all up to here in it, and probably the most important thing is that we not yell at one another. Otherwise we'd all just be barking away like Pekingese: 'Ah! Stuck in the shit! And it's your fault, you did this...' Writing involves seeing people suffer and, as Robert Stone once put it, finding some meaning therein. But you can't do that if you're not respectful. If you look at people and just see sloppy clothes or rich clothes, you're going to get them wrong....
Your job is to see people as they really are, and to do this, you have to know who you are in the most compassionate possible sense. Then you can recognize others. It's simple in concept, but not that easy to do.... I am learning slowly to bring my crazy pinball-machine mind back to this place of friendly detachment toward myself, so I can look out at the world and see all those other things with respect. Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper-train. You don't drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor's yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper. So I keep trying gently to bring my mind back to what is really there to be seen, maybe to be seen and noted with a kind of reverence. Because if I don't learn to do this, I think I'll keep getting things wrong."
- from Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
Oh, and here's a really beautiful story about enduring love and the tenacity of human life:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19037401/
I hope everyone smiles at something and is kind to someone today.
Keeping my own thoughts close and safe for a while, but I'll share someone else's with you....
"Writing is about learning to pay attention and to communicate what is going on. Now, if you ask me, what's going on is that we're all up to here in it, and probably the most important thing is that we not yell at one another. Otherwise we'd all just be barking away like Pekingese: 'Ah! Stuck in the shit! And it's your fault, you did this...' Writing involves seeing people suffer and, as Robert Stone once put it, finding some meaning therein. But you can't do that if you're not respectful. If you look at people and just see sloppy clothes or rich clothes, you're going to get them wrong....
Your job is to see people as they really are, and to do this, you have to know who you are in the most compassionate possible sense. Then you can recognize others. It's simple in concept, but not that easy to do.... I am learning slowly to bring my crazy pinball-machine mind back to this place of friendly detachment toward myself, so I can look out at the world and see all those other things with respect. Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper-train. You don't drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor's yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper. So I keep trying gently to bring my mind back to what is really there to be seen, maybe to be seen and noted with a kind of reverence. Because if I don't learn to do this, I think I'll keep getting things wrong."
- from Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
Oh, and here's a really beautiful story about enduring love and the tenacity of human life:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19037401/
I hope everyone smiles at something and is kind to someone today.
posted by Kristen | 5:00 AM
2 Comments:
Wow. That's a great story about the guy in a coma. Beautiful.
That's a great story about the guy in a coma. Beautiful.
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