CoodeIndigo

By Mary Oliver Every year we have been witness to it: how the world descends into a rich mash, in order that it may resume. And therefore who would cry out to the petals on the ground to stay, knowing as we must, how the vivacity of what was is married to the vitality of what will be ? I don't say it's easy, but what else will do if the love one claims to have for the world be true? So let us go on, cheerfully enough, this and every crisping day, though the sun be swinging east, and the ponds be cold and black, and the sweets of the year be doomed.

By Pablo Neruda In the night we shall go in to steal a flowering branch. We shall climb over the wall in the darkness of the alien garden, two shadows in the shadow. Winter is not yet gone, and the apple tree appears suddenly changed into a cascade of fragrant stars. In the night we shall go in up to its trembling firmament, and your little hands and mine will steal the stars. And silently, to our house, in the night and the shadow, with your steps will enter perfume's silent step and with starry feet the clear body of spring.

By Mary Oliver No doubt in Holland, when van Gogh was a boy, there were swans drifting over the green sea of the meadows, and no doubt on some warm afternoon he lay down and watched them, and almost thought: this is everything. What drove him to get up and look further is what saves this world, even as it breaks the hearts of men. In the mines where he preached, where he studied tenderness, there were only men, all of them streaked with dust. For years he would reach toward the darkness. But no doubt, like all of us, he finally remembered everything, including the white birds, weightless and unaccountable, floating around the towns of grit and hopelessness -- and this is what would finish him: not the gloom, which was only terrible, but those last yellow fields, where clearly nothing in the world mattered, or ever would, but the insensible light.

By Edna St. Vincent Millay I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk Between me and the crying of the frogs? Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass, That am a timid woman, on her way From one house to another!

BY MARGE PIERCY On the birthday of the world  I begin to contemplate  what I have done and left  undone, but this year  not so much rebuilding of my perennially damaged  psyche, shoring up eroding  friendships, digging out  stumps of old resentments  that refuse to rot on their own. No, this year I want to call  myself to task for what  I have done and not done  for peace. How much have  I dared in opposition? How much have I put  on the line for freedom?  For mine and others?  As these freedoms are pared,  sliced and diced, where have I spoken out? Who  have I tried to move? In  this holy season, I stand  self-convicted of sloth  in a time when lies choke the mind and rhetoric  bends reason to slithering  choking pythons. Here  I stand before the gates  opening, the fire dazzling my eyes, and...

From this website: A neuroscience researcher reveals four rituals that will make you happier By Eric Barker Here's what brain research says will make you happy: Ask "What am I grateful for?" No answers? Doesn't matter. Just searching helps. Label those negative emotions. Give it a name and your brain isn't so bothered by it. Decide. Go for "good enough" instead of 'best decision ever made on Earth." Hugs, hugs, hugs. Don't text — touch. So what's the simple way to start that upward spiral of happiness? UCLA neuroscience researcher Alex Korb explains: Everything is interconnected. Gratitude improves sleep. Sleep reduces pain. Reduced pain improves your mood. Improved mood reduces anxiety, which improves focus and planning. Focus and planning help with decision making. Decision making further reduces anxiety and improves enjoyment. Enjoyment gives you more to be grateful for, which keeps that loop of the upward spiral goin...

From this website Ten ways you’re making your life harder than it has to be  By Tim Hoch 1. You ascribe intent. Another driver cut you off. Your friend never texted you back. Your co-worker went to lunch without you. Everyone can find a reason to be offended on a steady basis. So what caused you to be offended? You assigned bad intent to these otherwise innocuous actions. You took it as a personal affront, a slap in the face. Happy people do not do this. They don’t take things personally. They don’t ascribe intent to the unintentional actions of others. 2. You’re the star of your own movie. 3. You fast forward to apocalypse. 4. You have unrealistic and/or uncommunicated expectations. 5. You are waiting for a sign. 6. You don’t take risks. 7. You constantly compare your life to others. 8. You let other people steal from you. 9. You can’t/won’t let go. 10. You don’t give back. When it comes down to it, there are two types of people in this world. T...

THE AMERICAN OVEN So what is this greatness that I smell? Is it the smell of fresh warm bread, the sweetness from flowers, the seductive smoke of cigarettes, the print of newspapers and newly published books? What is this odor of greatness swirling around our nation’s sky? Does it touch the workers in stores and factories, the children in locker rooms after games, the women bowed in churches before the caskets of the dead? What smell embraces the earth of things, blue, brown and in between? This American greatness, this burning, this terrible thunder, this smell so unsettling to the ear, this blinding pride and arrogance, this hollow victory over dissent, which we cover with flags, pious gestures and salutes, this burial of being first. What must be great again is what is found that wasn’t lost. This smell so invisible to the poor, so tasteless to the rich, this fragrance of freedom once inhaled by slaves, this smell of hope, this endless hunger for tomorrow, so choking and undefine...

Shamelessly stolen from Martha McLaughlin's Facebook feed. NEW YEAR'S DAY by Billy Collins Everyone has two birthdays according to the English essayist Charles Lamb, the day you were born and New Year’s Day— a droll observation to mull over as I wait for the tea water to boil in a kitchen that is being transformed by the morning light into one of those brilliant rooms of Matisse. “No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference,” writes Lamb, for unlike Groundhog Day or the feast of the Annunciation, this one marks nothing but the passage of time, I realized, as I lowered a tin diving bell of tea leaves into a little body of roiling water. I admit to regarding my own birthday as the joyous anniversary of my existence probably because I was, and remain to this day in late December, an only child. And as an only child-- a tea-sipping, toast-nibbling only child in a colorful room this morning-- I would welcome an extra birthday, one more opportunity...