LONGING
I long to return where my heart’s song began
The quaint city by the ocean I once knew so well
How I long to play along her sugar white shore
Swim in her ocean as deep and as blue as my longing
I long to jump up and down amidst her ocean floor with it’s scattered sea shells that tumble and stumble, all the while, tickling the tips of my toes
Crash about in her ocean waves as if I were a discarded cork, bobbing freely, just me…
©2011 Angela C. Soelzer Ragosa
You said, “I will go to another land, I will go to another sea.
Another city will be found, better than this.
Every effort of mine is condemned by fate;
and my heart is — like a corpse — buried.
How long in this wasteland will my mind remain.
Wherever I turn my eyes, wherever I may look
I see the black ruins of my life here,
where I spent so many years, and ruined and wasted.”
New lands you will not find, you will not find other seas.
The city will follow you. You will roam the same
streets. And you will age in the same neighborhoods;
in these same houses you will grow gray.
Always you will arrive in this city. To another land — do not hope –
there is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you have ruined your life here
in this little corner, you have destroyed it in the whole world.
“I am not eccentric.
It’s just that I am more alive than most people.
I am an unpopular electric eel
set in a pond of goldfish.”
― Edith Sitwell
A simple guide to mapping out the journey of your lifetime.
I read this article recently in O Magazine and found it a clever way of practicing introspection. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did…
Odysseus just wanted to go to Ithaca. No, not the one in upstate New York—the one in ancient Greece. He dreamed of it the whole seven years he spent trapped on the island of the nymph Calypso. Eventually the pitying gods ordered Calypso to free him, at which point he managed to build a boat and set out on what he hoped would be a brief and pleasant journey.
Ha.
At every turn, Odysseus’s travels were filled with surprises. He conquered monsters at sea only to find worse ones waiting on land. He encountered seductions that sent him half mad with longing. Finally, in the Land of the Dead, he got clear directions from a seer who, oxymoronically enough, was blind.
Does this ring any bells for you? Maybe you, too, feel stranded in your life, awash in a turbulent sea, or lured by the Siren song of a terrifying love. Or maybe you just hope to experience Winnipeg someday, if only for a long weekend. Fortunately, you have your own internal “blind seer”. It can feel its way into the future and draw you a map. I mean literally. Our project today is to help you create a map of your own epic tomorrows—a magically morphing guide that will get more detailed and accurate as you travel.
Letter from a Mother to a Daughter: “My dear girl, the day you see I’m getting old, I ask you to please be patient, but most of all, try to understand what I’m going through. If when we talk, I repeat the same thing a thousand times, don’t interrupt to say: “You said the same thing a minute ago”… Just listen, please. Try to remember the times when you were little and I would read the same story night after night until you would fall asleep.
by Dr. Judith Rich
Some people say we live in a “soulless” world, or they refer to a place as “having no soul.” What does it mean to have “no soul”? What does it mean to have soul?
Some people are called “lost” souls, some are “old” souls and some look for a soul mate. We have our soul brothers and soul sisters. What does it mean to share soul with someone?
How do you know if you’re in the presence of soul, be it in a place, in a person or even in a thing? Does art have soul? Does food have soul? Does music have the quality of soul?
The answer, of course, to all of these questions is “yes.” We could look upon everything in the world as either having that ineffable quality we call “soul” or missing whatever it is we think of as soul. But what does it mean to have soul? And how do you know if you’re in its presence?
“How does one become a butterfly?” she asked. “You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.”
-unknown
Here is a list of 15 things which, if you give up on them, will make your life a lot easier and much, much happier. We hold on to so many things that cause us a great deal of pain, stress and suffering – and instead of letting them all go, instead of allowing ourselves to be stress free and happy – we cling on to them. Not anymore. Starting today we will give up on all those things that no longer serve us, and we will embrace change. Ready? Here we go:
1. Give up your need to always be right. There are so many of us who can’t stand the idea of being wrong – wanting to always be right – even at the risk of ending great relationships or causing a great deal of stress and pain, for us and for others. It’s just not worth it. Whenever you feel the ‘urgent’ need to jump into a fight over who is right and who is wrong, ask yourself this question: “Would I rather be right, or would I rather be kind?” Wayne Dyer. What difference will that make? Is your ego really that big?
by Martha Beck, O Magazine
One of my more embarrassing memories is the day in high school drama class when I was assigned to deliver the famous monologue in which Lady Macbeth loses her freaking mind. Bumbling my way through history’s worst rendition of that scene, I suddenly understood why actors are always asking, “What’s my motivation?” I had no idea how to portray Lady M because I couldn’t imagine what the heck made her tick.
1. It’s hard to jump high and feel down at the same time.
2. Sometimes, the loneliest moments are the ones that show you how strong you really are.
3. The riskier the endeavor the more exhilarating the reward.
Everyone and everything are moving around me at light
speed. I am sure that some days I must look like one of
those die hard monks in Tiananmen Square, standing at the
epicenter of a busy intersection like an anomaly exhibiting
her humanity. My arms are at my sides, my posture is
upright, my eyes are closed, and I have a look of peace
