Jonathan Carroll's Blog, page 29

CarrollBlog 10.16

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.

With sadness there is something to rub against,

A wound to tend with lotion and cloth.

When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,

Something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

.

But happiness floats.

It doesn't need you to hold it down.

It doesn't need anything.

Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,

And disappears when it wants to.

You are happy either way.

Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house

And now live over a quarry of noise and dust

Cannot make you unhappy.

Everything has a life of its own,

It too could wake up filled with possibilities

Of coffee cake and ripe peaches,

And love even the floor which needs to be swept,

The soiled linens and scratched records….

.

Since there is no place large enough

To contain so much happiness,

You shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you

Into everything you touch. You are not responsible.

You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit

For the moon, but continues to hold it, and to share it,

And in that way, be known.

.

Naomi Shihab Nye

CarrollBlog 10.8

The Loneliest Job in the World

by Tony Hoagland

As soon as you begin to ask the question, Who loves me?,

you are completely screwed, because

the next question is How Much?,

and then it is hundreds of hours later,

and you are still hunched over

your flowcharts and abacus,

trying to decide if you have gotten enough.

This is the loneliest job in the world:

to be an accountant of the heart.

It is late at night. You are by yourself,

and all around you, you can hear

the sounds of people moving

in and out of love,

pushing the turnstiles, putting

their coins in the slots,

paying the price which is asked,

which constantly changes.

No one knows why.

CarrollBlog 10.7

You Are There

by Erica Jong

You are there.

You have always been

there.

Even when you thought

you were climbing

you had already arrived.

Even when you were

breathing hard,

you were at rest.

Even then it was clear

you were there.

Not in our nature

to know what

is journey and what

arrival.

Even if we knew

we would not admit.

Even if we lived

we would think

we were just

germinating.

To live is to be

uncertain.

Certainty comes

at the end.

CarrollBlog 10.6

Lessons

by Pat Schneider

I have learned

that life goes on,

or doesn't.

That days are measured out

in tiny increments

as a woman in a kitchen

measures teaspoons

of cinnamon, vanilla,

or half a cup of sugar

into a bowl.

I have learned

that moments are as precious as nutmeg,

and it has occurred to me

that busy interruptions

are like tiny grain moths,

or mice.

They nibble, pee, and poop,

or make their little worms and webs

until you have to throw out the good stuff

with the bad.

It took two deaths

and coming close myself

for me to learn

that there is not an infinite supply

of good things in the pantry.

CarrollBlog 10.5

Have a ____ Day

by Lou Lipsitz

Have a nice day. Have a memorable day.

Have (however unlikely) a life-changing day.

Have a day of soaking rain and lightning.

Have a confused day thinking about fate.

Have a day of wholes.

Have a day of poorly marked,

unrecognizable wholes you

cannot fathom.

Have a ferocious day, a bleak

unbearable day. Have a

riotously unproductive day;

a grim jaw-clenched, Clint Eastwood vengeful

law enforcement day.

Have a day of raging, hair-yanking

jealousy and meanness. Have a day

of almost grasping

how whole you are; a finely tuned,

empty day.

Have a nice day of walking and circling;

a day of stalking and hunting,

of planting strange seeds and wandering in the woods.

Have a day of endearing nonsense,

of hopelessly combing your hair,

a day of yielding, of swallowing

hard, breathing more deeply,

a day of fondness for beetles

and macabre spectacles, or irreverence

about anything you want, of just

sitting and wondering.

Have a day of wondering if it's

going to help, or if it just doesn't matter;

a day of dark winds

and torrents flowing though the valley,

of diving into cool water

and gasping for breath,

a day of sudden hunger for communion.

Have a day where the crusts you each

were given are lost and you stumble

with your fellows

searching endlessly together.

CarrollBlog 9.30

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You'll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She's the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That's the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She's the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she's kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author's making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce's Ulysses she's just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It's easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she's going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilightseries.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She'll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she's sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn't burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you're better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

CarrollBlog 9.29

We open doors,

close doors,

pass through doors,

and reach at the end of our only journey

no city,

no harbour-

the train derails,

the ship sinks

the plane crashes.

The map is drawn on ice.

But if I could

begin this journey all over again,

I would.

Nazim Hikmet

CarrrollBlog 9.24

The Farmer

Each day I go into the fields

to see what is growing

and what remains to be done.

It is always the same thing: nothing

is growing, everything needs to be done.

Plow, harrow, disc, water, pray

till my bones ache and hands rub

blood-raw with honest labor—

all that grows is the slow

intransigent intensity of need.

I have sown my seed on soil

guaranteed by poverty to fail.

But I don't complain—except

to passersby who ask me why

I work such barren earth.

They would not understand me

if I stooped to lift a rock

and hold it like a child, or laughed,

or told them it is their poverty

I labor to relieve. For them,

I complain. A farmer of dreams

knows how to pretend. A farmer of dreams

knows what it means to be patient.

Each day I go into the fields.

W.D. Ehrhart

CarrollBlog 9.21

At the very end of his last letter to her he wrote, "I do not wish you well." Years later it was the strongest memory she had of their relationship. Because like some fairy tale curse, his wish had come true. Sometimes she dreamed of telling him that just to see how he'd react. Tell him his dark wish had come true and her life was never her friend anymore. Then she'd ask Are you sorry for saying that? Do you wish you could take your words back? But she knew what his answer would be, even these hundreds of days later-- No.

CarrollBlog 9.20

THE LAUGHING HEART

by Charles Bukowski

your life is your life

don't let it be clubbed into dank submission.

be on the watch.

there are ways out.

there is a light somewhere.

it may not be much light but

it beats the darkness.

be on the watch.

the gods will offer you chances.

know them.

take them.

you can't beat death but

you can beat death in life, sometimes.

and the more often you learn to do it,

the more light there will be.

your life is your life.

know it while you have it.

you are marvelous

the gods wait to delight

in you.