Source: RudyOldeSchulte

#13.
How do we forgive ourselves
for all of the things
we did not become?

~ David “Doc” Luben

Notes:

• Excerpt from “14 Lines from Love Letters or Suicide Notes” by David ‘Doc’ Luben.  Luben was the feature poet on August 5th at the Vancouver Poetry Slam.  Find the youtube video of the performance here. Original source: Artpropelled.
• Photograph: Stephan Wurst via Tri-ciclo

A Mother’s Last Dance With Her Son

by Frank Somerville (Evening Anchor atKTVU)

“This is one of the most beautiful pictures I’ve ever seen. It’s also one of the most heartbreaking pictures I’ve ever seen, because of what happened just 72 hours later.”

This is Ryan Manning dancing with his mother Mary Ann Manning at his wedding earlier this month.

He says simply: “It was very special.”

The reason it was so special is because three years ago Mary Ann was diagnosed with breast cancer. And in the past few months her condition got so bad that she was confined to a wheelchair.

But there was ONE thing she was determined to do. She was determined to dance with her son at his wedding.

And this is a picture of the two of them as they slowly swayed back and forth to the song, “Somewhere over the Rainbow.”

I don’t know the actual meaning of maturity but for me, maturity is when a person hurts you and you try to understand their situation rather than hurting them back. — Unknown

Source: verystrongwords

Just when you’d begun to feel
You could rely on the summer,
That each morning would deliver
The same mourning dove singing
From his station on the phone pole,
The same smell of bacon frying
Somewhere in the neighborhood,
The same sun burning off
The coastal fog by noon,
When you could reward yourself
For a good morning’s work
With lunch at the same little seaside cafe
With its shaded deck and iced tea,
The day’s routine finally down
Like an old song with minor variations,
There comes that morning when the light
Tilts ever so slightly on its track,
A cool gust out of nowhere
Whirlwinds a litter of dead grass
Across the sidewalk, the swimsuits
Are piled on the sale table,
And the back of your hand,
Which you thought you knew,
Has begun to look like an old leaf.
Or the back of someone else’s hand.

—

You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you. — Brian Tracy

von René Cassien

Der vorhergehende Beitrag – Sehnsucht nach dem “Starken Mann”– wurde durch Dirk Neu kommentiert und er spricht in diesem Kommentar ein grundsätzliches und bedeutendes Dilemma der Menschheit an, zumindest der Menschheit, die der sog. Westlichen Hemisphäre zugeordnet werden kann.

Ich zitiere Dirk Neu, der wiederum dankens- und bemerkenswerter Weise längere Textpassagen von dem russischen Philosphen Nikolai Alexandrowitsch Berdjajew übernahm und mich dadurch inspirierte den Kommentar zu ergänzen.

Dirk Neu kommentiert:

Sie schreiben: “Somit wandeln sich Antiamerikanismus mitsamt Verschwörungsglauben in einen Alternativimperialismus. Neid auf die Machtfülle der USA treibt diese Ideologie an.”

Ich lese viel in den sozialen Netzwerken. Und es nicht einfach nur Neid gegenüber den USA, sondern auch Empörung und Erschütterung angesichts der Unmenschlichkeit und sonstiger Grausamkeiten, angezettelter Kriege etc., die gegenwärtig vor allem auch die Machtfülle der USA in der Welt hervorgerufen hat. Das dabei zumeist eine übergeordnete Zusammenhangssicht hinsichtlich des Kapitalismus nicht vorgenommen…

One of the questions I always try to keep in the front of my mind is to ask why would anyone want to read this, and to try to find a positive answer for that. People’s time, if you bought it off them, is expensive. Someone’s going to give you eight or ten hours of their life. I want to give them something back, and I want it to be an enjoyable experience.

~ David Mitchell, The Soul Cycle

Notes:

• Photograph source from Your Eyes Blaze Out
• David Mitchell Quote from a book review titled the ‘Soul Cycle‘ in The New Yorker by James Woods. Mitchell’s new book can be found on Amazon here: “The Bone Clock’s.”