Greetings,
Happy Thursday, one and all. We’ve nearly survived another work week. To celebrate, let’s all take the weekend off. What? Oh, you’re doing that already, well never mind then.
I received good responses to my post, “Strive to live the ordinary life in a non-ordinary way.” A lot of philosophers out there.
The above quote made me think of other quotes that I have found inspiring, profound or thought-provoking. One of my favorites is by Socrates, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
I see too many people who blunder through life seemingly unaware of how the chaos inherent in their lives is similar to or a virtual repeat of past experiences. If they would take a moment to think about cause and effect, to reflect on past actions and the outcomes that developed therefrom, these individuals might have a less stressful, more emotional fulfilling life.
We all need to reflect inwardly upon occasion, to take stock of where we are, emotionally, spiritually and physically. If we don’t know where we are, how are we going to know how to get where we want to be?
Enough philosophizing, I am not particularly good at it but I keep trying.
Today’s poem is called “The Dark,” and is about the things that go bump in the night.
Scale said 252.0 yesterday. Looking for the 240s next week sometime.
Still writing “The Curious Item That Fell From The Sky.” The trouble is not that it is a particularly difficult story to write. The problem lately has been finding a block of time big enough to “get” into the story. Deadline is still aways off. Hopefully, i will have it finished before my writing group meets again.
Enough rambling for one day. Thanks in advance if you take time from your busy schedule to read these scribblings.
Till next time, be safe, be happy, be creative.
Overgrown Elf 
Get up! NOW!!! Over here! Yes, that’s it! Come with me and we’ll go introspecting for gold… we should look only for the invisible, find only that which we can grasp but do not understand and keep only that which gives us answers for which we have no questions. Look! But don’t see… Still, very still- and so to feel that gentle steel- that roaring breath of Life that tells us we are true and part of part of everything that’s real- that tells us Life goes on and on and on- within us… without us… and so we’re left to wander yon… with every right to do so.
Introspection
by Kathleen Jessie Raine
If you go deep
Into the heart
What do you find there?
Fear, fear,
Fear of the jaws of the rock,
Fear of the teeth and splinters of iron that tear
Flesh from the bone, and the moist
Blood, running unfelt
From the wound, and the hand
Suddenly moist and red.
If you go deep
Into the heart
What do you find?
Grief, grief,
Grief for the life unlived,
For the loves unloved,
For the child never to be born,
Th’unbidden anguish, when the fair moon
Rises over still summer seas, and the pain
Of sunlight scattered in vain on spring grass.
If you go deeper
Into the heart
What do you find there?
Death, death,
Death tht lets all go by,
Lets the blood flow from the wound,
Lets the night pass,
Endures the day with indifference, knowing that all must end.
Sorrow is not forever, ad sense
Endures no extremities,
Death is the last Secret implicit within you, the hidden, the deepest
Knowledge of all you will ever unfold
In this body of earth.
__________
And, since I left the other first, I now shall leave the other verse- one of my favorite poems that this world has yet given me… lyrical, haunting…
Margaret, Are You Grieving
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Perhaps the proper title of the previous poem is ‘Spring and Fall,’ and subtitled ‘To a young child’… although still by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89). And so it goes…