Sunday Morning Musing: A Writer Is A World

Well that's it isn't it?! I love this quote. I marvel at this quote. I marvel at this world. I marvel at the worlds in us, the worlds in words. But I don't know about the word 'trapped'. I'd like to think of it more as: 'a writer is a world contained in a person'. Yes, contained. Or maybe 'brimming' or 'bubbling.' How about you? 

Join me over on Pinterest -  http://www.pinterest.com/siobhanbsb/on-writing-writers/ - for more writerly gems. 

~Siobhán

New Year Tidings

 

Happy New Year! I love New Year's Day, the feeling of newness in it, the promise, the luminous blank slated possibility ahead shining.

There are some lovely quotes that capture these feelings exactly that I love to peruse on New Year's Day. And poems too. Here are some of them:

Here's to a great 2015! 

~ Siobhán 

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 ~ George William Curtis
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Sunday Morning Musing: Bukowski Wisdom

'There is no losing in writing, it will make your toes laugh as you sleep. it will make you stride like a tiger...'

I love this line especially from Bukowski's declaration. 'There is no losing in writing...' There isn't. It is beneficial, it is all becoming. Even if you are never published, never famous, writing will still be there, will still re-make you and bring the world into clearer focus. It is a gift, a privilege, a power. It will make you 'stride like a tiger' down the terrain of life (yes.) And although I've never thought about it before, the idea of toes 'laughing' as we sleep is just fantastic. Fingers thrum, heart bebops, brain flicker-flashes when you're on a roll, so why wouldn't toes be laughing too!

For more of Bukowski's tough-guy hard-earned writerly wisdom, click on his name in the Labels below this post. He has a lot to say on the craft and separating the real writers from the just-a-notion ones. All straight-up to-the-point talk. And all of it tried, tested and true. 

~ Siobhán

Summer Shorts: Hello August

 

 “The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”

~ Natalie Babbitt, 'Tuck Everlasting.'

A short post this, but the above quote is just too good not to share here. I used to think August was the end of summer, nothing but its last dying amber embers. The sliding descent towards the routine of September, a month for kindling regret. Until I came across this quote that is. The reprieve of this first week sounds tantalising, doesn't it? What a wonderful way of looking at it!

I admit I have been largely absent from here for the past few months. A combination of sunny days and other priorities (which have included reading - lots of yummy summer reading!) have been the reasons (not to mention the fact that the longer you stay away - the harder it is to come back.) But I have noticed too that responses to this blog have fallen off considerably. Maybe I need to blog more often. Snazz up my content. Or maybe it is just a seasonal thing... with a quietude falling on the blogosphere.

Anyway, I hope to be more prolific this month. There are just so many things I want to write about! And I hope to maybe hear from some of you then.

Enjoy the last of the summer!

~ Siobhán 

May Day Bouquet: Flowers in Words

 

Well it's May already, official flowering month! May of course comes from the word 'Maia', the name of an ancient Roman goddess of flowers and growth. 

Because I love flowers so, and like Monet, must have them, 'always and always!  my  Poem a Day blog this month will host many poems on flowers in keeping with the general theme of May.  And here I thought I'll follow suit seeing as it is May Day and present you with a bouquet of words to describe the beauty of flowers from famous fans, among them artists, writers, poets and general commentators. 

I often think of Iris Murdoch's quote about how people from another planet would wonder at flowers and why we are not 'mad with joy' at the sight of them all the time. Everytime I think of it, it just ups my flower euphoria another few gradients. Isn't it so spectacularly true???! Imagine spending time in a bleak desert terrain and then being transposed to a park in spring?! Not an oasis, but paradise itself! And of course Buddha's remark resonates with this - if only we could see a single flower most clearly, the whole world would change and we would reel in its wonder. Maybe if we could just sit and contemplate a flower for a moment, we could start.

Just being in the presence of flowers makes me happy. They lift the spirits like nothing else. They can brighten a room, but also a heart. They are so simple, yet so sublime at the same time. Not mere footnotes to our daily routines, but fanfares of delight, is we just be aware. There for the delighting. I love looking at them and I love to buy them. Not on special occasions, but on ordinary unmarked ones, indeed, to make them special. I think that there's no more tender or beautiful gesture in this materialistic world of ours than to give flowers to someone, not just on a romantic note (which has become sadly clichéd and tarnished), but any kind of note: a thank you, a get well, happy birthday, but most especially just a 'hi, how are you, have a nice day' thinking-of-you, heres-a-little-bit-of-beauty bouquet. If only it were a practice more ingrained in our society! Think how much happiness it would spread.  

If you're not a fan of flowers then maybe these words will persuade you otherwise and open your heart, like petals unfolding, to the beauty of them. And if you are a fan, you'll enjoy these immensely I'm sure. 

Here's to a flowering May!

~ Siobhán 

 'I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers'.

'I must have flowers, always, and always.' ~ Claude Monet

 

 'If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole world would change.' ~ Buddha

  'If you've never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom.' ~Terri Guillemets

 'Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.'  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

  'The Earth laughs in flowers.' ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

'The artist is the confidant of nature, flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms. Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs towards him.' ~Auguste Rodin

 

 'When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.' ~ Chinese Proverb

'The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.' 

 ~Basho

     

'People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.' ~Iris Murdoch

'since the thing perhaps is
to eat flowers and not to be afraid'
  ~ E.E. Cummings 

 'I would rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.' ~ Anais Nin 

 'It is by believing in roses that one brings them to bloom.' ~ French Proverb

What this old world needs is more bouquets handed around to folks when they are alive and kicking. Flowers don't do a dead one much good.

ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALE

Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/f/flowers_quotes.html#LZgkLjlkHPt6K6oX.99

What this old world needs is more bouquets handed around to folks when they are alive and kicking. Flowers don't do a dead one much good.

ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALE

Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/f/flowers_quotes.html#LZgkLjlkHPt6K6oX.99

'What this old world needs is more bouquets handed around to folks when they are alive and kicking. Flowers don't do a dead one much good.' ~ Robert Elliott Gonzales

 'There are always flowers for those who want to see them.' - Henri Matisse

  'Where flowers bloom so does hope'. - Lady Bird Johnson

'Flowers are love's truest language.' ~Park Benjamin

 

 

 'Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the mind.'
  ~ Luther Burbank

  

World Book Day: A Book Lover's Mix of Pics

It's World Book Day today, hurray! And to celebrate books and reading, instead of me rambling on (again), I thought I'd post a few pictures that say it all in relation to reading and book lovers. I had a chuckle at some of these, and agree wholeheartedly with them all! Enjoy.

Happy reading,

Siobhán