Discouragement can come easy. Deep dark, the deep dark, the voices and regrets. The breaking of hearts like pigeon wings. The deaths and the walking dead. All of it can come. All of it comes. All of it can stay and take up residence. But anyone who lives in my hometown is surrounded by unspeakable beauty on all sides--oceans and bays and ancient streets, oak trees hanging with Spanish moss, Magnolias blossoming, waves rolling at the oceans two, and welcoming arms if you can find them. This is the beauty that surrounded me as a child, and six years ago, I returned. I don't know how long I'll be here. But I know that this place--with its deep love for me--saved my life, wrapped me in its sea-salted breeze, and brought me back to a mind of fearlessness and love and abandon I haven't felt since I was 10 years old and afraid of nothing, and dinner was always at 6 o'clock, when the street lamps came on, and my brothers and friends and I ran home to glowing lamplight and parents setting the table. At our house the jazz played, and the laughter always rolled over the conversation. And many days, in summer, toward the time of the setting sun, my friends and I walked the bayfront, hung on the slanted Coquina leading straight to the bay, and watched the water and the tide and the tiny waves, and we could be silent there, contented, knowing each other the way only 10-year-old best friends can, the strangest, easiest, unspoken intimacy that comes from a smaller ego, fewer fears, hope stretched before us like the horizon we could see when we looked to the west. I've never tired of that water, that scent of salt, the glowing lights. Every time I glance down from the bridge or the bay front walk, I always stop, in awe and silence and just a quiet, quiet love, so familiar and ingrained I hardly even notice anything but the words repeating in my head. Beautiful. Beautiful. I am so lucky. So lucky.
May the sun bring you new energy by day, May the moon softly restore you by night, May the rain wash away your worries, May the breeze blow new strength into your being, May you walk gently through the world and know its beauty all the days of your life.
In
our relationships with others, there is both benefit and harm. We
could concentrate on the harm that has been done to us by other sentient
beings, but there really is not much profit we can gain from that if we
focus exclusively on the harmful relationships that we have...
But conversely, if we focus on the beneficial connections that exist
between us and other sentient beings, then that is something that can
bring a profit or benefit to us. It can help us increase our
appreciation in our heart, increase our loving kindness and compassion.
~ His Holiness the Gyalwang Karmapa "Compassion and the Nature of Mind" Teachings at Hunter College, NYC - June 29, 2011
Once the sun comes out behind the mild thickness of winter’s fog, light is everywhere - and everything - shining rainbow refraction on the windshield, cutting cathedral rays of gold between our ancient Spanish buildings, spilling in pools on our city’s red brick streets, glinting white light upon the shiny slick leaves of the always blooming magnolia trees. Reflecting up from the sky-blue water rushing in a dance of the eighteenth-century fountains found all over our small old city, shining in sweaty rivulets upon the smooth black skin of old men sitting on sagging stairs in the neighborhood of Lincolnville.
The light puts everything inside a glow and a gloaming - reluctant, always, to set, taking its time, malingering from gold to pink to plum, to that deepest blue of dreams.
Hehehe Yeah b,
Talk your shit heheh (partner let me upgrade you)
How you're gonna upgrade me
What's higher than number one
you know I used to beat that block
Now I be's the block (partner let me upgrade you)
[verse 1:]
I hear you be the block
But I'm the lights that keep the streets on
Notice you the type that like to keep them on a
Leash though
I'm known to walk alone
But I'm alone for a reason
Sending me a drink ain't appeasing
Believe me
Come harder this wont be easy
Don't doubt yourself trust me you need me
This ain't a shoulder with a chip or an ego
But what you think they all mad at me for
[bridge:]
You need a real woman in your life
That's a good look
Taking care, home is still fly
That's a good look
I'm gonna help you build up your account
Thats a good look
Better yet a hood look,
Ladies thats a good look
When you're in them big meetings for the mills
Thats a good look
It take me just to compliment the deal
Thats a good look
Anything you cop I'll split the bill
That's a good look
Better yet a hood look
Believe me
Ladies that's a good look
[chorus:]
Partner let me upgrade you
Audemars Piguet you
Switch your neck ties to purple labels
Upgrade you
I can (up), can I (up)
Lemme upgrade you
Partner let me upgrade you
Partner let me upgrade you
Flip a new page
Introduce you to some new things &
Upgrade you
I can (up),
Can I (up), let me
Upgrade you
(partner let me upgrade you)
[verse 2:]
I can do for you what Martin did for the people
Ran by the men but the women keep the tempo
It's very seldom that you're blessed to find your equal
Still play my part and let you take the lead role
Believe me
I'll follow this could be easy
I'll be the help whenever you need me
I see you hustle wit my hustle I
Can keep you
Focused on your focus I can feed you
[bridge:]
You need a real woman in your life
That's a good look
Taking care
Home is still fly
That's a good look
I'm gonna help you build up your account
That's a good look
Better yet a hood look
Ladies that's a good look
When you're in the big meetings for the mills
That's a good look
It take me just to compliment the deal
That's a good look
Anything you cop I'll split the bill
That's a good look
Better yet a hood look
Ladies that's a good look
[chorus]
[Jay-Z:]
(Uh HOV, Uh, HOV, uh huh huh!)
I B the d-boy who infiltrated all the corporate dudes
They call shots, I call audibles
Jacob the jeweler, baubles, Lorraine Schwartz sorta dude
It's big balling baby when I'm courting you
I'm talking spy bags and fly pads and rooms at the Bloomberg
And rumors you on the verge of a new merge
'Cause that rock on ya finger is like a tumor
You can't fit ya hand in ya new purse
It's humorous to me they watching
and we just yachting off the island hopping off
Amalfi coast
Mafioso, oh baby you ever seen Saturn
No, not the car but everywhere we are
You sure to see stars.
This is high level not eye level,
My bezzle courtesy of Audemars
I order yours tomorrow now look at the time I saved you
Mama let me upgrade you
[hook:]
Just when you think we had it all
Big ends, condos, collecting cars
Picture your life elevating with me
You my project celebrity
I keep your name hot in them streets
That little glimpse of light
Makes that diamond really shine
And you already is a star
Unless your flawless
Then ya dynasty ain't complete without a chief like me
Partner let me upgrade you
Audemars Piguet you
You switch your neckties to purple labels
Upgrade you
I can up
Can I up
Lemme upgrade you
Partner let me upgrade you
Partner let me upgrade you
Flip a new page
Introduce you to some new things
And upgrade you
I can up
Can I up?
Lemme upgrade you
Partner lemme upgrade you
[Outro:]
Audemars Piguet watch
Dimples in ya necktie
Hermes briefcase
Cartier top clips
Silk lined blazers
Diamond creamed facials
VVS cuff links
6 star pent suites
Partner let me upgrade ya grade ya
Partner partner let me upgrade ya grade ya
Let me let me let me upgrade ya grade ya
Partner partner partner let me upgrade ya (huh...)
Gaining mastery over our destructive propensities, through the exercise
of awareness and self-discipline with regard to our body, speech, and
mind, frees us from the inner turmoil that naturally arises when our
behaviour is at odds with our ideals. In place of this turmoil come
confidence, integrity, and dignity - heroic qualities all human beings
naturally aspire to. ~ The Dalai Llamma
Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.
I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.
May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.
Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-leggèd smith for man.
It's certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.
In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty's very self, has charm made wise,
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.
May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place.
My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
Yet knows that to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there's no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.
An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?
Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.
And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.
Everything I see will outlive me. --Anna Akhmatova
It's too late now to put a curse on you - wish
you plain, say, as Yeats did his daughter. And when we met her
in Silgo, selling her paintings, it'd worked - she was
the plainest, oldest woman in Ireland. But she was safe. For
the longest time, his reasoning escaped me. Anyway, it's too late
for you, as I said. You've grownup now, and lovely. You're a
beautiful drunk, daughter. But you're a drunk. I can't say you're
breaking my heart. I don't have a heart when it comes to this
booze thing. Sad, yes, Christ alone knows. Your old man, the one
they call Shiloh, is back in town, and the drink has started to
flow again. You've been drunk for three days, you tell me, when
you know goddamn well drinking is like poison to our family.
Didn't your mother and I set you example enough? Two people who
loved each other knocking each other around, knocking back the
love we felt, glass by empty glass, curses and blows and
betrayals? You must be crazy! Wasn't all that enough for you?
You want to die? Maybe that's it. Maybe I think I know you,
and I don't. I'm not kidding, Kiddo. Who are you kidding?
Daughter, you can't drink. The last few times I saw you, you
were out of it. A cast on your collarbone, or else a splint on
your finger, dark glasses to hide your beautiful bruised eyes. A
lip that a man should kiss instead of split. Oh, Jesus, Jesus,
Jesus Christ! You've got to take hold now. Do you hear me?
Wake up! You've got to knock it off and get straight. Clean up
your act. I'm asking you. Okay, telling you. Sure, our family was
made to squander, not collect. But turn this around now. You
simply must - that's all! Daughter, you can't drink. It will
kill you. Like it did your mother, and me. Like it did.
And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth. --Ray Carver
