Good quotes from 'Writing Down the Bones' by Natalie Goldberg

"Actually, when I look at my old notebooks, I think I have been a bit self-indulgent and have given myself too much time to meander in my discursive thoughts. I could have cut through sooner. Yet it is good to know about our terrible selves, not laud or criticize them, just acknowledge them. Then, out of this knowledge, we are better equipped to make a choice for beauty, kind consideration and clear truth. We make this choice with our feet firmly on the ground. We are not running wildly after beauty with fear at our backs."

"It's much better to be a tribal writer, writing for all people and reflecting many voices through us, than to be a cloistered being trying to find one peanut of truth in our own individual mind. Become big and write with the whole world in your arms.

Even if we go off alone to write in the wilderness, we have to commune with ourselves and everything around us: the desk, the trees, the birds, the water, the typewriter. We are not separate from everything else. It's only our egos that make us think we are. We build on what came before us, even if our writing is a reaction to it or we try to negate the past. We still write with the knowledge of what's at our backs."

"It is very important to go home if you want your work to be whole. You don't have to move in with your parents again and collect a weekly allowance, but you must claim where you come from and look deep into it. Come to honor and embrace it, or at the least, accept it."

"William Carlos Williams said to Allen Ginsberg: 'If only one line in the poem has energy, then cut the rest out and leave only that one line.' That one line is the poem. Poetry is the carrier of life, the vessel of vitality. Each line should be alive. Keep those parts of a piece; get rid of the rest."

Rainbow cake!

Patrick is 27. What a night...

living

it's so real right now
this pain and this beauty
i can hardly stand the juxtaposition
except to say that i stepped into this path many months ago
the life i live these days is real
it's authentic
i breathe life into my fears and my agony
my love and my peace
i'm digging deeper everyday into the soul of myself
searching for a calm i know exists
but sidesteps my emotions every chance she gets
i'll reach her
one day, as the sun is setting, and life is not looking
i'll catch that slippery emotion
love
or peace
peace
or love
whatever you fancy
i'll scrape together whatever words are left
and corner her
i'll let go of every other emotion in my soul
and bare my bones
to the cold and windy world
in that moment
i least expect
she'll arrive
wet and dripping on my doorstep
complaining about this cold Oregon rain
but tomorrow when we awaken in each other's arms
the tulips will be blooming
the sky cracking open with sunlight
a hammock waiting
for our embrace

goodnight

i'm turning in for the night
melding into the darkness and lightness at once
shifting my body toward a world beyond this one
my fingers type and feel the silence
it reverberates within my soul
i'm here
it's real
and life is beautiful
goodnight