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learning from experience  |  Sharing what works

A collection of thoughts

Here’s a collection of thoughts that a friend pulled together.  I recognize myself and my creative efforts in here. Not just verse and lyrics but painting, photography, music, and on and on.


A good poem is a contribution to reality.
The world is never the same
once a good poem has been added to it.
A good poem helps
to change the shape of the universe,
helps to extend
everyone’s knowledge of himself
and the world around him.
~ Dylan Thomas

To be a poet
is a condition,
not a profession.
A poem . . .
begins as a lump in the throat,
a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. . . .
It finds the thought
and the thought finds the words.
~ Robert Frost

Put your ear down close to your soul
and listen hard.
~ Anne Sexton

You ask whether your verses are good.
You ask me.
You have asked other before.
You send them to magazines.
You compare them with other poems,
and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts.
Now I beg you to give up all that.
You are looking outward,
and that, above all, you should not do now.
Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody.
There is only one single way.
Go into yourself.
Seach for the reason that bids you write.
This above all, ask yourself
in the stillest hour of your night:
Must I write?
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

How so I explain these poems?
Not at all.
I quit teaching in colleges
because it seemed so criminal
to explain works of art.
.
~ Anne Sexton

Categories
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This past month has been one where I’ve felt a little lost, even while I felt like I knew exactly where I was going. I did all the ‘right’ things; crossing all the T’s and dotting all the I’s but I felt a little empty and inadequate at the end of every day. Too much on my plate and no brakes to say ‘no.’ I was sorry every week to miss the opportunity to say ‘Hey’ to you guys.

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Don’t Fear the Egg

This week has been cold and rainy and a little grey. And this is the week that Annie, our giant chicken, laid her first egg. It was a little alarming for her and her chicken friend, Lucy and they clucked the whole time.

Check-In

Love Thy Frickin’ Self

I woke up this morning a little under the weather and the urge to stay in, under covers and just be. And here I am typing away at you guys. That’s cause I’m being led down a rabbit hole – a helpful one and have an urge to share.

Tech Tips

Tech Tip: iPhone Precision Keyboard Cursor

Selecting text on my iPhone has always been frustrating, but it’s been especially so since they stopped magnifying the text when you long press it. What I didn’t know, until recently, is that Apple updated the way the cursor works in iOS 12 — two years ago!

Check-In

Ants vs Owl

None of us is the yogi on the mountain or the unflappable guru. We’ve got lives and reactions to life, families, businesses, emergencies and troubles.

Tech Tips

Tech Tip: Remove Text Formatting in Windows

Do you ever have a need to remove formatting from text before pasting it into Word or some other document software? I do this all the time in my design work, and I needed a way to do this in Windows 10.

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