You are looking for the “right” word.

For a paper, an article, a story, a blog post, a presentation – – you’re trying to express a intense moment, a feeling, an emotion.

Words, sentences, paragraphs, a continuous stream flowing…your back and forth rhythm now rudely interrupted. You have hit The Wall. You can’t climb over without the Word.

It’s right there. On the tip of your tongue. Your mind is searching. You feel the Word. It’s Sizzling, Searing. The perfect Word to capture the moment, the feeling.

Yet, you come up Empty.

Your frustration grows. You use a substitute. You re-read the passage again, and again. The Word doesn’t fit. It doesn’t feel right. It’s an impostor. You go with it anyway. And it hangs, like an ill-fitting jacket or pair of oversized shoes.

Suppose we try to recall a forgotten name. The state of our consciousness is peculiar. There is a gap therein; but no mere gap. It is a gap that is intensely active. A sort of wraith of the name is in it, beckoning us in a given direction, making us at moments tingle with the sense of our closeness, and then letting us sink back without the longed-for term. If wrong names are proposed to us, this singularly definite gap acts immediately so as to negate them. They do not fit into its mould. And the gap of one word does not feel like the gap of another, all empty of content as both might seem necessarily to be when described as gaps. . . . The rhythm of a lost word may be there without a sound to clothe it; or the evanescent sense of something which is the initial vowel or consonant may mock us fitfully, without growing more distinct. Every one must know the tantalizing effect of the blank rhythm of some forgotten  verse, restlessly dancing in one’s mind, striving to be filling out with words.

~ William James, 1890

And, then you read a poem that captures this, all of this.

Magic.

She’s gone and done it.

Where is the word I want?

Groping
in the thicket,
about to pinch the dangling berry,
my fingerpads close on air.

I can hear it
scrabbling like a squirrel
on the oak’s far side.

Word,
please send over this black stretch of ocean
your singular flare,
blaze your topaz in the mind’s blank.

I could always pull the gift
from the lucky-dip barrel,
scoop the right jewel
from my dragon’s trove….

Now I flail,
the wrong item creaks up
on the mental dumbwaiter.
No use—
it’s turning out of sight,
a bicycle down a Venetian alley—
I clatter after,
only to find
gondolas bobbing in sunny silence,
a pigeon mumbling something
I just can’t catch.”

- Elise Partridge, “Chemo Side Effects: Memory” from Chameleon Hours.  (via literarymiscellany)

• Photograph: tdoeswool
• William James Quote via Sam Harris, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion.
• Poem: Thank you Schonwieder

Liz Danzico is the creative director for NPR. Here’s how she opens her post:

I think a lot about what I would say to the younger version of myself if I met her again, if I met her through the still moments of all the motion of youth — when she was sitting at the piano, or if I saw her alone on the playground, or if I watched her read, voice quivering, her short stories in front of the class…

Don’t miss the rest of her post here: Stillness in Motion.

Credits:

• Portrait of Liz Danzico: On Your Way Here
  Thank you Nicholas Bate for pointing me to her blog.

I’ve been searching for a passage that I read weeks ago. I can see the font size, the paragraph, the white space, the light above and below the words. Strings that dangle in my consciousness. Yet, despite my end of day Google searches, I’ve come up empty. It goes something like this:

People ask you: “How are you doing?” You turn on the auto-reflex-reflux. You pound the drums with your sticks and dust up dregs. You don’t want others to know, but Life is Good. Very good actually. So, why? Why lead with the dark?

She stands at the turn of Exit 10. The front end of the last mile of my morning commute. The entire elapsed time is less than five seconds, tops. I turn the corner, I look for her, and I’m gone. And she’s gone.

She’s standing with other early morning commuters waiting for the Bus.

Correction.

She stands alone and apart, while the others are huddled near the stop. Others are shuffling, looking down at their smart phones, taking puffs on their cigarettes, watching smoke rings burn off in the early morning mist.

She’s stoic. No cigarette. No smartphone. Her hands are tucked deep into her pant pockets. Her eyes, those eyes, they never steal a look at passing traffic, or me.

Each morning, every morning, it’s a re-run of the same five-second performance. The tattered dreamcatcher that hangs from her mirror – – has failed her yet again. She stands barefooted on a cold floor, whispering a count of fierce strokes with her hair brush, readying herself for her walk to the bus stop.

I finish my day. TGIF. I stop at the red light next to the bus stop waiting to enter I-287. It’s quiet. It’s still. It’s empty. I leave work and the bus stop behind, but not Her.

I pull up to our house. Susan is sitting on the front porch with Zeke. Zeke’s tail is swishing back and forth with anticipation.

“Long Day?”

“No. Good Day. Great to be Home!”

Notes:

• Portrait Source: malariaconsortium
• Related Posts: Driving Series.

Source: So Many Cute Animals. (Photo so much like Zeke, not Zeke!)

The quote, paired with Meryl Streep photographs, was erroneously attributed to Streep and has been going viral on the internet. The quote was written by Portuguese self-help author/life coach José Micard Teixeira. It’s not clear that this quote has any connection to Meryl Streep, but, we love the quote and we love Meryl, so we’re going with it…all of it.

“I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me. I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me. I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate. I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise. I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance. I do not adjust either to popular gossiping. I hate conflict and comparisons. I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities. In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal. I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement. Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals. And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience.”

Credits: Photograph – Vanity Fair. Quote source: Splitterherzen

French Canadian artist Steve Spazuk is from Lery, Quebec. Here’s his bio from Spazuk.com:

For the past 14 years, Spazuk has developed and perfected a unique technique that allows him to use the flame of a candle or the flame of a torch as a pencil to create his paintings with trails of soot. Using various tools, he intuitively sculpt the plumes of soot left behind in response to the shapes that appear on the canvas.

Spontaneity and chance are the heart and soul of his creative process. He does not censor. He does not direct. Spazuk opens himself to the experience. This in-the-moment creative practice coupled with the fluidity of the soot, creates a torrent of images, shadows and light. Fuelled by the quest of a perfect shape that has yet to materialize, he concentrate in a meditative act and surrender to capture the immediacy of the moment on canvas.

The human body fascinates him. Bodies in a perpetual metamorphosis are the language with which he express his thoughts on the human condition: emotions, opinions, stories that are born of his uncensored psyche. Spazuk often works piece by piece, collecting a multitude of unique elements that he assembles into mosaics.  Entities that, once grouped together, afford a different meaning and provide a new perspective that is both novel and complementary. He sees fragments of things, events, people, as a powerful metaphor of modern life and, even more so, of the way we perceive things through our senses and our minds. His work expresses how every one of us is a constituent fragment of the human community.

Check out an interview with Steve Spazuk and more of his work here.

Be sure to check out his website and his gallery of portraits here: Steve Spazuk Portraits.  Wow!

Here’s a self-portrait:

Video Source: Swiss-Miss

You can change your clothes, but you gotta love your bones, baby.

- Jessica Blankenship, How To Not Fail At Your New Years Resolution

Notes:

• Bio: Jessica Blankenship. Quote Source: How To Not Fail At Your New Years Resolution
• Sources: Quote - Splitterherzen. Portrait - Solemn via krisavant

you know when someone asks you a general question like “how are you” or jokingly says something like “do you ever even sleep” and there’s that split-second moment where you consider actually telling them things

like whether they’re good or bad things whether they’re sad or happy or anything at all you just

think about telling them

everything 

but you don’t

~ jackfrost.co

Credits: Photograph - Drowned in Daydreams. Quote Source - mirrior.

The worst possible thing you can do when you’re down in the dumps, tweaking, vaporous with victimized self-righteousness, or bored, is to take a walk with dying friends. They will ruin everything for you.

First of all, friends like this may not even think of themselves as dying, although they clearly are, according to recent scans and gentle doctors’ reports. But no, they see themselves as fully alive. They are living and doing as much as they can, as well as they can, for as long as they can.

They ruin your multitasking high, the bath of agitation, rumination, and judgment you wallow in, without the decency to come out and just say anything. They bust you by being grateful for the day, while you are obsessed with how thin your lashes have become and how wide your bottom.

~ Anne Lamott, “Prelude: Victory Lap“, Small Victories: Spotting Improbably Moments of Grace

Notes: Quote Source – Brainpickings. Portrait: Kamil Zacharski by Opaqueglitter

Source: themetapicture (Thank you Susan)

Who knows, maybe those two rogue leaders, Gandhi and Jesus, were right – a loving response changes the people who would beat the shit out of you, including yourself, of course. Their way, of the heart, makes everything bigger. Decency and goodness are subversively folded into the craziness, like caramel ribbons into ice cream. Otherwise, it’s about me, and my bile ducts, and how unique I am and how I’ve suffered. And that is what hell is like.  So whom was I going to echo, Gandhi and Jesus, or Tammy and me?

Look, can you give me a minute to decide?

Do you want to be happy, or do you want to be right? Hmm. Let me get back to you on this.

~ Anne Lamott. “Pirates.” Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace

I just finished Lamott’s new book and loved it. It’s my first foray into her work. Be forewarned, this book has more than its fair share of suffering and grief, but the sun’s rays do peak in. I’m drawn to her rants and her candor on her neuroses (but could have  done without the political barbs). I marvel at the authenticity of her self-reflection and the beauty and clarity of her observations of life.  The book roars out of the gate for the first half and tends to run out of steam.  For Lamott lovers, you should note that this book is a compilation of new and selected (aka previously published) essays.

Find the book on Amazon here: Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace

Photo Credit: TimeOut

You don’t know why you’re exhausted?
You’re fighting a war inside your head every single day.
If that’s not exhausting I don’t know what is.

~ My therapist

Credits: Quote – Borderline-ings Playbook via Eumoirous. Photography via Eclecticity Light

Was it a coincidence two days before Christmas? Maybe. Maybe not. In an excellent op-ed essay by David Brooks in yesterday’s morning paper and in “Calvary,” yesterday’s evening movie, the themes were conjoined. Doubt and Faith. I share some excerpts on both below.

David Brooks, NY Times, The Subtle Sensations of Faith:

With Hanukkah coming to an end, Christmas days away, and people taking time off work, we are in a season of quickened faith. When you watch people exercise that faith, whether lighting candles or attending Midnight Mass, the first thing you see is how surprising it is. You’d think faith would be a simple holding of belief, or a confidence in things unseen, but, in real life, faith is unpredictable and ever-changing…

Marx thought that religion was the opiate of the masses, but Soloveitchik argues that, on the contrary, this business of living out a faith is complex and arduous: “The pangs of searching and groping, the tortures of spiritual crises and exhausting treks of the soul purify and sanctify man, cleanse his thoughts, and purge them of the husks of superficiality and the dross of vulgarity. Out of these torments there emerges a new understanding of the world, a powerful spiritual enthusiasm that shakes the very foundations of man’s existence.”

Insecure believers sometimes cling to a rigid and simplistic faith. But confident believers are willing to face their dry spells, doubts, and evolution. Faith as practiced by such people is change. It is restless, growing. It’s not right and wrong that changes, but their spiritual state and their daily practice. As the longings grow richer, life does, too. As Wiman notes, “To be truly alive is to feel one’s ultimate existence within one’s daily existence.”

Xan Brooks, The Guardian, Calvary review – ‘a terrific black comedy that touches greatness‘:

The movie veers between the profane and the sacred, the damned and divine…Your best advice is to sit back, hang on to your rosary beads and enjoy the ride while it lasts…How refreshing it is…to see a spiritual saga that is smart enough to take the route less travelled, the low road to glory. Calvary touches greatness. It crawls clear through the slime and comes out looking holy.

Here’s the movie trailer:

The op-ed opinion article in its entirety, the movie review and the movie are highly recommended.

Photograph Credit: maxresdefault

Here’s Geico’s 2014 Hump Day commercial in case you missed it…for the last Hump Day of 2014.

Notes: Background on Caleb/Wednesday/Hump Day Posts and Geico’s original commercial: Let’s Hit it Again

What’s the kindest thing you almost did? Is your fear of insomnia stronger than your fear of what awoke you? Are bonsai cruel? Do you love what you love, or just the feeling? Your earliest memories: do you look though your young eyes, or look at your young self? Which feels worse: to know that there are people who do more with less talent, or that there are people with more talent? Do you walk on moving walkways? Should it make any difference that you knew it was wrong as you were doing it? Would you trade actual intelligence for the perception of being smarter? Why does it bother you when someone at the next table is having a conversation on a cell phone? How many years of your life would you trade for the greatest month of your life? What would you tell your father, if it were possible? Which is changing faster, your body, or your mind? Is it cruel to tell an old person his prognosis? Are you in any way angry at your phone? When you pass a storefront, do you look at what’s inside, look at your reflection, or neither? Is there anything you would die for if no one could ever know you died for it? If you could be assured that money wouldn’t make you any small bit happier, would you still want more money? What has been irrevocably spoiled for you? If your deepest secret became public, would you be forgiven? Is your best friend your kindest friend? Is it any way cruel to give a dog a name? Is there anything you feel a need to confess? You know it’s a “murder of crows” and a “wake of buzzards” but it’s a what of ravens, again? What is it about death that you’re afraid of? How does it make you feel to know that it’s an “unkindness of ravens”?

~ Jonathan Safran Foer

• Background on best selling and award winning author Jonathan Safran Foer: See his Amazon Page
• Quote Source: Thank you Steve Layman via Vanity Fair
• Photograph of Foer via Pittsburgh Post Gazette

For the New Year—I still live, I still think; I must still live, for I must still think. Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum. To-day everyone takes the liberty of expressing his wish and his favorite thought: well, I also mean to tell what I have wished for myself today, and what thought first crossed my mind this year,—a thought which ought to be the basis, the pledge and the sweetening of all my future life! I want more and more to perceive the necessary characters in things as the beautiful:—I shall thus be one of those who beautify things. Amor fati: let that henceforth be my love! I do not want to wage war with the ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not want even to accuse the accusers. Looking aside, let that be my sole negation! And all in all, to sum up: I wish to be at any time hereafter only a yea-sayer!

~ Friedrich Nietzsche, January of 1882, Sanctus Januarius in The Gay Science

Credits: Quote Source: Brainpickings. Portrait (modified): izquotes.com

Q: There was a strong, negative reaction after you won your Oscar. In a recent interview for Elle U.K., you said, “As with anything difficult, eventually its purpose revealed itself, and I found it ultimately very liberating.” What was its purpose?

AH: Self-acceptance. If you’re not someone who has a natural and effortless love for yourself, it’s hard to let go of your desire to please other people, and that’s really not an ingredient for a happy life.

~ Anne Hathaway, Anne Hathaway’s Oscars Advice: ‘Do The Opposite of What I Did’

Image: linkservice

New York-based photographer Josephine Cardin created the work ‘Keep Me Silent‘ as a series of self-portraits exploring the weight of the dark secrets, emotions, and experiences we harbor throughout our lives.  Josephine Cardin explains: “Weighing us down until we free ourselves from the burden of keeping them hidden, these hardships inevitably dictate every aspect of how we live and the decisions we make. Like most of my work, at first glance there is a sense of a beautiful, almost dreamlike state, but when one looks closer there is an evident darkness and sadness to be discovered. I wanted to give the illusion that the subject wanted nothing more than to float and be free, all the while not being able to let go of this burdensome weight holding her back. Until she finally lets go, forcing the suitcase open, her heavy cloud is lifted and vanishes away. As stated in one of my favorite quotes by Jim Morrison, ‘Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.'”

Don’t miss other photos in this series at Ignant.de: “Keep Me Silent“

Find the photographer’s website and gallery here: CardinPhotography.com

I am a prophet of the past.
And how do you see and foresee the future?
As when a man sees a woman with a beautiful body
walking before him in the street
and looks at her with desire,
but she doesn’t turn to look back,
just smooths her skirt a little,
pulls her blouse tight,
fixes the back of her hair,
then without turning toward the man’s gaze
quickens her step.
That’s what the future is like.

— Yehuda Amichai,  section 5 of “I Foretell the Days of Yore,” Open Closed Open

Notes:

• Yehuda Amichai (1924 – 2000) was an Israeli poet. Amichai is considered by many, both in Israel and internationally, as Israel’s greatest modern poet. Find his book on Amazon: Open Closed Open
• Poem Source: The Journey of Words. Image Source: sexykinkyfunny&curly.
• Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
• Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”