Once In Your Life
Collage Created by j. kiley
Created May 17th 2013
Posted May 17th 2013 Nesta Robert “Bob” Marley, OM (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981) was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician best known for his Reggae records. He was the rhythm guitarist and lead singer for the ska, rocksteady and reggae bands The Wailers (1963-1974) and Bob Marley & The Wailers (1974–1981). Marley remains the most widely known and the best-selling performer of reggae music, having sold more than 75 million albums worldwide. He is also credited with helping spread both Jamaican music and the Rastafari movement to a worldwide audience. He was a poet, philosopher, prophet, Rastafarian, vegetarian, an advocate of love and peace. He had eleven children. Because of his religious beliefs when it was discovered he had a melanoma in his toe he refused for it to be amputated and continued on with his tours and music. Eventually, the cancer was catching up with him and he tried natural treatments which were unsuccessful and on the way home from Germany to Jamaica, they made a stop over in Florida to seek emergency medical treatment. He died at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami (now University of Miami Hospital) on the morning of 11 May 1981, at the age of 36. The spread of melanoma to his lungs and brain caused his death. His final words to his son Ziggy were “Money can’t buy life”. Marley received a state funeral in Jamaica on 21 May 1981, which combined elements of Ethiopian Orthodoxy and Rastafari tradition. He was buried in a chapel near his birthplace with his red Gibson Les Paul or a Fender Stratocaster. His music is so alive as though his spirit were possessing it still today.
only once in your life by j. kiley (c) jennifer kiley
The LEGEND of Bob MarleyOnly once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can
completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve
never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say
and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future,
dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved
and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When some-
thing wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, know-
ing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to
cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make
a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel
like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show
you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful.
There is never any pressure, jealousy or competition but only a quiet
calmness when they are around. You can be yourself and not worry
about what they will think of you because they love you for who you
are. The things that seem insignificant to most people such as a note,
song or walk become invaluable treasures kept safe in your heart to
cherish forever. Memories of your childhood come back and are so
clear and vivid it’s like being young again. Colours seem brighter and
more brilliant. Laughter seems part of daily life where before it was
infrequent or didn’t exist at all. A phone call or two during the day
helps to get you through a long day’s work and always brings a smile
to your face. In their presence, there’s no need for continuous conver-
sation, but you find you’re quite content in just having them nearby.
Things that never interested you before become fascinating because
you know they are important to this person who is so special to you.
You think of this person on every occasion and in everything you do.
Simple things bring them to mind like a pale blue sky, gentle wind or
even a storm cloud on the horizon. You open your heart knowing that
there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart,
you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You
find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel
true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing
you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal
to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile.
Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your
life. LOVE IS OUR DESTINY Bob Marley
This is a tribute to the legendary prophet, poet, philosopher, mystic
and Rastafari Nesta Robert Marley. He was one of our divine
messengers. Rest in Peace…The LEGEND of Bob Marley
QUOTATIONS on LOVE:
“I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.” ― Marilyn Monroe
“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”
― Dr. Seuss
“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you” — Elbert Hubbard
“we accept the love we think we deserve.” ― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
“Only once in your life, I truly believe, you find someone who can completely turn your world around. You tell them things that you’ve never shared with another soul and they absorb everything you say and actually want to hear more. You share hopes for the future, dreams that will never come true, goals that were never achieved and the many disappointments life has thrown at you. When something wonderful happens, you can’t wait to tell them about it, knowing they will share in your excitement. They are not embarrassed to cry with you when you are hurting or laugh with you when you make a fool of yourself. Never do they hurt your feelings or make you feel like you are not good enough, but rather they build you up and show you the things about yourself that make you special and even beautiful.” — Bob Marley
“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” ― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
“Love is like the wind, you can’t see it but you can feel it.” ― Nicholas Sparks, A Walk to Remember
Genius or Madness?
“Up/Down” Bipolar Disorder Documentary
Post Created by Jk the SK
Illustrated by j. kiley
Created May 12th 2013
Posted May 13th 2013
Original Transcript
6 November 2012
Genius or Madness?
Professor Glenn Wilson
“Great wits are sure to madness near allied, and thin partitions do their bounds divide” (John Dryden, 1681).
“There is no great genius without a tincture of madness” (Seneca, 1st Century A.D.).
dali spider of the evening
Many great artists and scientists appear to have gone slightly mad following their lofty achievements. Isaac Newton was arguably the greatest physicist of all time, introducing the concept of gravity and making major advances in optics, mechanics and mathematics. He was also intensely suspicious and distrustful of others and in later life dabbled in alchemy and sought hidden messages in the Bible. Of course, alchemy was not thought a mad pursuit in Newton’s day and he could have been afflicted with mercury poisoning as a result of his experiments.
dali the disintegration of the persistance of memory
Beethoven and Van Gogh are also said to have gone progressively mad, though the reasons are equally debatable. Beethoven’s mania may have been due to alcoholism, syphilis, or lead poisoning (apart from his profound deafness, which would distress anyone, let alone a musician). There are theories that Van Gogh’s mood swings were caused by porphyria rather than bipolar disorder, that he lost his ear in a duel with Gauguin (claiming self-injury to maintain his friendship) and that his “suicide” was an accidental shooting by two boys playing cowboys (whom he also protected).
van gogh starry night on the rhone
For others, the genius and madness appear in parallel. Nikola Tesla was a brilliant applied scientist whose inventions rivaled those of Edison. He obtained around 300 patents in radio and electricity technologies, pioneering alternating current and hydroelectric power. However, he claimed to be in communication with other planets, to have invented “death rays” and suffered from bizarre compulsions.
van gogh bridge
John Nash, the Nobel-winning mathematician who developed “game theory” for the social sciences also suffered paranoid delusions throughout his career. He was hospitalised involuntarily and had to feign sanity to be released. He still heard the voices but learned how to live with them and not to talk about them. “I wouldn’t have had such good scientific ideas if I had thought more normally” he said.
van gogh starry night
Sometimes it is a matter of chance or social milieu that determines whether an individual is deemed brilliant or crazy. To the Counter-Reformation Church leaders, Galileo was not necessarily mad (probably just heretical) but they clearly failed to appreciate his genius and subjected him to a lifetime of house arrest. In other times and places Picasso and Einstein might have been committed to an insane asylum rather than revered for their original thinking.
moby dick – jackson pollock
Many lists of creative achievers throughout history have been compiled along with mental health symptoms and diagnostic categories retrospectively assigned to them. Unfortunately, these are mostly anecdotal, speculative and lacking in proper controls for comparison. Some have argued that the connection between genius and madness has been over-egged because of a few high-profile cases such as those described above.
virginia woolf by george charles beresford 1902
The best evidence in support of the genius-madness link comes from behaviour genetics. The close relatives of creative people are more likely to be schizophrenic and vice versa (psychotics having more creative relatives). Einstein, for example, had a son who was schizophrenic, while Bertrand Russell had many schizophrenic relatives. According to Simonton (1999), “creative hits and crazy misses” are mixed within many illustrious family pedigrees, including the Darwins, Galtons and Huxleys.
virginia woolf
The first degree relatives of creative people are actually more prone to mental disorders than creatives themselves. This is because actual illness (as opposed to its genetic predisposition) is likely to impede a creative career. The exception seems to be writers, who themselves show high rates of many behavioural disorders, including psychoses, mood disorders, substance abuse and suicide.Could the environment also be involved? Traumatic events in childhood and orphan status seem more common in those who make outstanding contributions to art and science. In a study of 700 high achievers, found that three-quarters had troubled childhoods, especially loss of a parent. The “school of hard knocks” could provide motivation and inspiration (Dickens and Chaplin come to mind here) while at the same time generating psychological disorder. However, this idea is opposite to the common-sense view that parental support and encouragement is beneficial to achievement, rather than maltreatment and deprivation. Indeed, the Goetzels found that wealth was more common in the backgrounds of famous people than poverty. And of course, pathology in the parents may be genetically transmitted to their children, thus accounting for some of the associations reported.
Virginia Woolf
Similar thought processes, such as unusual and grandiose ideas, together with a determination to promote them, seem to link genius and psychosis. Certain neurotransmitters and gene loci have been cited as common to both, including the male sex hormone testosterone, a gene relating to a growth factor involved in neural development and plasticity called neuregulin 1 (NRG1 and genes modulating dopamine transmission in the brain, e.g., DARPP-32.
virginia woolf painting
Unconventional thinking is characteristic of a constitutional personality trait called Psychoticism (P). This has many facets, including tough-mindedness, lack of empathy, impulsiveness, risk-taking, adventure-seeking, bizarre thinking, and a refusal to adhere to social norms. High levels of P predispose to psychopathy and clinical psychosis, as well as to creativity, thus accounting for the overlap between them. A good deal of research over recent decades has supported this theory. A related trait is called schizotypy. An optimum number of indicators for this relates to creative achievement, rather than full-blown schizophrenia.
kurt cobain
Dopamine function (or dysfunction?) may account for the link between genius and madness. Dopamine is the chemical messenger in the meso-limbic and cortical areas of the brain concerned with approach, reward, positive mood and achievement-seeking. Genes that modulate dopamine levels are reported to affect novelty-seeking behaviour and to relate to Impulsivity and Psychoticism. Recreational drugs that are addictive and sometimes lead to delusions and hallucinations (e.g., amphetamine psychosis) tend to raise levels of dopamine in the brain. By contrast, anti-psychotic medications are usually dopamine antagonists (this being one of the reasons why compliance is difficult). Untreated schizophrenics have more D2 receptors in the striatum and lower D2 binding in the thalamus.
kurt cobain – bipolar
Genius and psychotic are both inclined to loose associations (i.e., “thinking outside the box”). This can be observed as unusual responses on a word association test or in some of Salvador Dali’s surreal images (e.g., the Lobster-Telephone and the Mae West Lips Sofa). Such flexibility of thought seems to be increased by dopamine.
beethoven – bipolar
Another description of the schizophrenic thinking style is that it tends to be over-inclusive, with the boundaries of relevance being set more broadly. To most people, an apple falling off a tree and the movement of planets in the solar system would appear to have nothing in common, but Newton was insightful enough to connect them under the grand unifying concept of “gravity.” Of course, not all such generalisations turn out to be that useful but many great scientific theories depend upon the ability to perceive improbable connections.
carrie fisher – bipolar
Exactly how loose associations or over-inclusive thinking promote genius is unclear. If enough crazy ideas are generated, one or two might hit the target by chance alone. This approach is deliberately harnessed in “brainstorming” sessions which use random “flashcards” as a means of generating fresh ideas. Certainly, it is difficult to be creative operating within received wisdom and some of the greatest artists and composers were the “rebels” least shackled by the traditional rules of their art. However, the “shotgun” theory smacks slightly of “monkeys on typewriters”. (It would take a long time for them come up with the complete works of Shakespeare). Outstanding advances in science, like the theories of evolution and relativity, and great works of art, such as Wagner’s Ring Cycle, cannot be generated by chance alone. Profound imagination and high-level spatial intelligence is usually required in addition.
bipolar behaviour
Application to the point of “work addiction” is also often involved. Edison reckoned that genius was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.Most creative people are also the most productive. There is a positive correlation between quality and quantity of output, implying that each masterpiece is likely to be interspersed with much that is mediocre. (I do not ne)cessarily agree with this statement.)
marilyn monroe – bipolar
The human tendency to apophenia may be implicated in both creativity and madness. This refers to seeing meaningful patterns where they do not exist and it underlies superstition and hallucinations (e.g., seeing ghosts and hearing “voices”). This perceptual style has survival value because failing to spot a predator in the forest is a bigger (potentially fatal) mistake than seeing one where it does not exist. Exaggerated apophenia is characteristic of schizotypal individuals and is enhanced by dopamine.
ernest hemingway – bipolar
Another mental “illness” linked with creativity is bipolar mood disorder (previously called “manic-depressive psychosis”). This is characterised by extreme mood swings, occurring over a period of months, and it seems particularly to afflict artists, writers, musicians and comedians. Among highly talented people who appear to have suffered mood disorder are Peter Tchaikovsky, Robert Schumann, Vincent Van Gogh, Virginia Woolf, Spike Milligan, Paul Merton and Stephen Fry (who presented a TV documentary on bipolar disorder detailing his experiences).
winston churchill – bipolar
Genetic analysis shows links between bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Sufferers are often tortured souls, particularly when the “Black Dog” afflicts them, and their feelings may be tapped to give greater depth and sensitivity to their art. On the other hand, the “flight of ideas” experienced in the “manic” phase of the mood cycle can result in exceptional productivity. As with the trade-off between schizophrenia and genius, bipolar disorder balances troughs with peaks in a way that might account for its evolutionary survival. Treatments are available for bipolar disorder but there is a danger that, by smoothing mood, they could impede the creative forces.
bipolar wheel
Then there are the autistic spectrum disorders (such as Asperger’s syndrome) in which a deficiency in social communication is sometimes accompanied by “savant” skills in fields like music, mathematics and spatial intelligence. In the film Rain Man (1988), Dustin Hoffman plays Raymond Babbitt an autistic whose exceptional memory is exploited by his brother to count cards in Las Vegas casinos. (This was loosely based on a real-life savant called Kim Peek, who may in fact have had a chromosome disorder). The artist Louis Wain, who became famous for his surrealistic cat paintings was hospitalised for schizophrenia, but others have argued he was actually autistic.
marilyn monroe poster
These various “disorders” can all contribute to extraordinary contributions to art and science. Some tendency to psychotic traits seems to be beneficial (thus accounting for the maintenance of such genes) but too much makes the individual disorganised and is hence detrimental. It is notable that creative artists and writers have profiles similar to those of psychotic patients on clinical scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) but are less extreme – in fact, roughly half-way between normal controls and full-blown schizophrenics.
mel gibson – bipolar
What is the mechanism whereby schizophrenic genes promote survival? The clue may be in the behaviour of bower birds, the males of which make colourful and elaborate constructions in order to attract a female (the Taj Mahals of the bird world). Creativity has also been shown to promote mating success in men, as measured by number of sex partners. Since there is no such connection for women, it is not surprising that men’s productivity in art and science exceeds that of women by around ten times.(I don’t believe this statement about men exceed women by around ten times in productivity in art and science—more like opportunity and the continued imbalance in availability and acknowledgment).
medical cannabis for bipolar treatment
Obviously, it does not do to be totally and permanently “away with the fairies”; some measure of control needs to be maintained. Consider James Joyce and his daughter Lucia, who was being treated by Carl Jung for schizophrenia in 1934. Joyce doubted she could be schizophrenic because her thought patterns were so similar to his own. Jung disagreed, comparing father and daughter to two people who had arrived at the bottom of a river. According to Jung, James had dived there, whereas Lucia had fallen in.
“Up/Down” Bipolar Disorder Documentary FULL MOVIE (2011)This is a brilliantly made Documentary. Everyone who is Bipolar or knows someone who is or those in the Psychiatric profession and do counseling with anyone who is bipolar or anyone interested in bipolar and everyone who wants to have a knowledge of bipolar and find out what it is from what the myths are or how much people are misinformed about bipolar. A MUST SEE VIDEO. STOP THE STIGMA OF BIPOLAR AND ANY FORM OF MENTAL “ILLNESS” CREATIVITY.
“There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.” ― Oscar Levant
“Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.” ― Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays
“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.” ― Aristotle
“I’m a misunderstood genius.”
“What’s misunderstood?”
“Nobody thinks I’m a genius.”
― Bill Watterson
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.” ― E.F. Schumacher
“The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde
“The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.” ― Edgar Allan Poe, Marginalia
QUOTATIONS on MADNESS:
“Sanity is a madness put to good uses.” ― George Santayana, Essential Santayana, The: Selected Writings
“So when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there’s always madness. Madness is the emergency exit.” ― Alan Moore, Batman: The Killing Joke
“Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing. When you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some still subtler form.” ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
“I don’t possess these thoughts I have — they possess me. I don’t possess these feelings I have — They obsess me.” ― Ashly Lorenzana
“The thoughts written on the walls of madhouses by their inmates might be worth publicizing.” ― Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
“Men have called me mad; but the question is not settled whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence — whether much that is glorious — whether all that is profound — does not spring from disease of thought — from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who only dream by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however rudderless or compassless, into the vast ocean of the ‘light ineffable’.” ― Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora
QUOTATIONS on BIPOLAR:
“I’m the girl who is lost in space, the girl who is disappearing always, forever fading away and receding farther and farther into the background. Just like the Cheshire cat, someday I will suddenly leave, but the artificial warmth of my smile, that phony, clownish curve, the kind you see on miserably sad people and villains in Disney movies, will remain behind as an ironic remnant. I am the girl you see in the photograph from some party someplace or some picnic in the park, the one who is in fact soon to be gone. When you look at the picture again, I want to assure you, I will no longer be there. I will be erased from history, like a traitor in the Soviet Union. Because with every day that goes by, I feel myself becoming more and more invisible…” ― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
“There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you’re high it’s tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty. There are interests found in uninteresting people. Sensuality is pervasive and the desire to seduce and be seduced irresistible. Feelings of ease, intensity, power, well-being, financial omnipotence, and euphoria pervade one’s marrow. But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Memory goes. Humor and absorption on friends’ faces are replaced by fear and concern. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against– you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind. You never knew those caves were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.” ― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
“Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it, an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not infrequently, suicide.” ― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
“Compared to bipolar’s magic, reality seems a raw deal. It’s not just the boredom that makes recovery so difficult, it’s the slow dawning pain that comes with sanity – the realization of illnesss, the humiliating scenes, the blown money and friendships and confidence. Depression seems almost inevitable. The pendulum swings back from transcendence in shards, a bloody, dangerous mess. Crazy high is better than crazy low. So we gamble, dump the pills, and stick it to the control freaks and doctors. They don’t understand, we say. They just don’t get it. They’ll never be artists.” ― David Lovelace, Scattershot: My Bipolar Family
“Depression is a painfully slow, crashing death. Mania is the other extreme, a wild roller coaster run off its tracks, an eight ball of coke cut with speed. It’s fun and it’s frightening as hell. Some patients – bipolar type I – experience both extremes; other – bipolar type II – suffer depression almost exclusively. But the “mixed state,” the mercurial churning of both high and low, is the most dangerous, the most deadly. Suicide too often results from the impulsive nature and physical speed of psychotic mania coupled with depression’s paranoid self-loathing.” ― David Lovelace, Scattershot: My Bipolar Family
“Absurdity and anti—absurdity are the two poles of creative energy.” ― Karl Lagerfeld
“Except you cannot outrun insanity, anymore than you can outrun your own shadow.” ― Alyssa Reyans, Letters from a Bipolar Mother
“Clear your energy, honor your rhythm, live your vision ” ― George Denslow, Living Out of Darkness: A Personal Journey of Embracing the Bipolar Opportunity
“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” ― Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
“It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.” ― Rose Kennedy
“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.” ― Eric Roth, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button screenplay
“Time is what we want most,but what we use worst.” ― William Penn
“Time is an illusion.” ― Albert Einstein
“You may delay, but time will not.” ― Benjamin Franklin
“Time is a game played beautifully by children.” ― Heraclitus, Fragments
meaning something being somebody
written By jennifer kiley
illustrated & abstract digital art by j. kiley
created may 7th 2013
posted may 8th 2013
Bal du Moulin de la Galette — Auguste Renoir
meaning something being somebody
written by jennifer kiley
may 7th 2013
waking sleeping slips away
dreams vanish with awareness of day
meaning enters the mind now we’re awake
is there something we must know
is there someplace we must go
are we living out our lives
being what we ought to be
do we mean something to somebody
life, does it give meaning being here
have we a purpose or become a void of nothingness
meaning, what is the reason for being here
is there a connection to something in time
does somebody have the answers
are there real questions that need asking
if so who decided either way whether they are
is it important to live within these bodies
is it important to have meaning and know what it is
is it important to have something that gives your life purpose
is it important to be alive and wait for that ultimate ending
is it important to be somebody that will be remembered after we’re gone
is fame the answer to immortality
if we can’t achieve it through having talent
then we must create something that makes us famous
we don’t need to have any ability or creativity
we just need to be somebody because people know our name
this is what life has become
a meaningless collection of names and images
that say nothing and have no depth or essence
they are flat like the world when looking at the horizon
we go on endlessly entertaining ourselves with the purist of nothing
meaning something being somebody has lost its meaning
for nobody is becoming something or somebody
it has stopped mattering what anyone has to offer
all disappear a moment after making contact
what was found becomes lost and blows away with the wind
has a fake reality taken over our brain waves
projecting fake people to boringly entertain us
with their nothingness and meaningless lack of talent
we have been capsulized and plugged in as numbers
and become faceless faces on a faceless computer network
we need to get our meaning back
where meaning something and being somebody
actually matters to us again
where we mean it when we reach out to people
and mean what we say and what we do is important
“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.” ― Albert Camus
“Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.” ― Joseph Campbell
“There is not one big cosmic meaning for all; there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.” ― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
“Beyond work and love, I would add two other ingredients that give meaning to life. First, to fulfill whatever talents we are born with. However blessed we are by fate with different abilities and strengths, we should try to develop them to the fullest, rather than allow them to atrophy and decay. We all know individuals who did not fulfill the promise they showed in childhood. Many of them became haunted by the image of what they might have become. Instead of blaming fate, I think we should accept ourselves as we are and try to fulfill whatever dreams are within our capability.
Second, we should try to leave the world a better place than when we entered it. As individuals, we can make a difference, whether it is to probe the secrets of Nature, to clean up the environment and work for peace and social justice, or to nurture the inquisitive, vibrant spirit of the young by being a mentor and a guide.” ― Michio Kaku
“There are powers far beyond us, plans far beyond what we could have ever thought of, visions far more vast than what we can ever see on our own with our own eyes, there are horizons long gone beyond our own horizons. This is courage- to throw away what is our own that is limited and to thrust ourselves into the hands of these higher powers- God and Destiny.To do this is to abide in the realm of the eternal, to walk in the path of the everlasting to follow in the footprints of God and demi-gods. The hardest part for man is the letting go. For some reason, he thinks himself big enough to know and to see what’s good for him. But in the letting go……..is found freedom. In the letting go…….. is found the flight!” ― C. JoyBell C.
“Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.” ― Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt
“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.” ― Parker J. Palmer
“They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
“The same sensitivity that opens artists to Being also makes them vulnerable to the dark powers of non-Being. It is no accident that many creative people–including Dante, Pascal, Goethe, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Beethoven, Rilke, Blake, and Van Gogh–struggled with depression, anxiety, and despair. They paid a heavy price to wrest their gifts from the clutches of non-Being. But this is what true artists do: they make their own frayed lives the cable for the surges of power generated in the creative force fields of Being and non-Being. ― David N. Elkins
A Child Needs Love Forever
Written by Jennifer Kiley
May 4th 2013
Illustrated by j. kiley
Posted May 5th 2013
A Child Needs Love Forever
Written by Jennifer Kiley
May 3rd & 4th 2013
A child grows with love, the unconditional kind.
Loving them with innocent touches,
Plenty to give them their strength to grow,
Make them feel good, let them know you care,
Giving attention, showing you love them,
Knowing that you’re there.
Let them enjoy life with you,
maintaining their innocence,
While the child needs you there.
Help her discover her own identity.
Love her as a child till she grows,
Until it’s time to set her free.
When that time comes,
She’ll find someone she wants to love,
To love someone who will give her love that is true.
This is the way that love ought to be,
Something you share as a mother and child.
Her time to choose someone to love,
Making sure the touching is tender.
Wanting it to be real,
As your child falls into someone else’s arms.
Making sure she feels the warmth through and through,
Never wanting those feelings to stop being soft and tender,
Hoping they won’t, that the love will remain real and true.
You want them to be loving and deep, caring and lasting,
Loving with proven truth, with the trust you taught her.
With trust comes feelings so free, inside your sweet daughter’s body.
She will feel acceptance, when the touches are the rare kind.
When they feel so right, her body will accept them joyfully.
She will find the love that is real,
From someone who wants to love her and to care.
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” ― Albert Einstein
“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” ― Margaret Mead
“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“Young people don’t always do what they’re told, but if they can pull it off and do something wonderful, sometimes they escape punishment. ” ― Rick Riordan
“Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” ― C.S. Lewis
“The soul is healed by being with children.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“Accept the children the way we accept trees—with gratitude, because they are a blessing—but do not have expectations or desires. You don’t expect trees to change, you love them as they are.” ― Isabel Allende
“All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, ‘Oh, why can’t you remain like this for ever!’ This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.” ― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
“Adults constantly raise the bar on smart children, precisely because they’re able to handle it. The children get overwhelmed by the tasks in front of them and gradually lose the sort of openness and sense of accomplishment they innately have. When they’re treated like that, children start to crawl inside a shell and keep everything inside. It takes a lot of time and effort to get them to open up again. Kids’ hearts are malleable, but once they gel it’s hard to get them back the way they were.” ― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
I can crash down the gates of Heaven
Poetry by Niamh Clune & Jennifer Kiley
Artists Vincent van Gogh & Alexander Jansson
Posted 05.03.13
abstract streak lightning
Before I introduce the poetry I would like to introduce you to the secret keeper’s Guess Poet for today. She is far more than a poet but as a poet she is extremely brilliant and gifted in the use of words and the depth of her poetry will astound you. Here is just a tiny sampling of who Dr. Niamh Clune is and after this short bio will follow two more beautiful paintings, and poetry by Niamh Clune and by myself, the secret keeper. Following the poetry is a piece of music that will surprise our guest but she is familiar with the piece. It is quite beautiful. Then of course, a choice selection of quotations to fill your mind with, which by that time should be brimming over. So Please enjoy. jk the secret keeper
Niamh Clune is the author of the Skyla McFee series: Orange Petals in a Storm, and Exaltation of a Rose (which is due out in the near future. Keep you eyes and ears tuned in for when that launch will be made.) You will fall in love with Skyla McFee, a young girl who must go through the most harrowing experiences and survive the most horrible people to find the goodness in her life still exists. The first book, which is available now, opens up the story and quickly draws you in. You want so much to be there to protect and help Skyla. She does the most magical things with her imagination that will astonish you. Also, Niamh is the author of The Coming of the Feminine Christ. A true story about a most powerful experience. Niamh put a great deal of time and research into the writing of this magnificent 5 star book, just recently released on eBook and available now at an amazingly reasonable price. I have read this book and re-read it. There is so much to learn and to understand. I would like to add that Niamh has a CD titled “Touching Angels” which is quite magical and mystical to hear. Very soothing in places that help you to relax and unwind. I highly recommend all of these creations. I have them in my collection and would feel lost without them being in arms reach.
Niamh has produced an anthology of happy and sad stories from childhood: Every Child is Entitled to Innocence. The proceeds of this book go to Child Helpline International. She, also, quite recently, brought together the art of many poets, writers, photographers and painters who donated their work to put together for two different Anthologies. The first is titled: Song of Sahel, this is to help the people of Sahel a vast region in Africa suffering from an extremely long drought, and it continues and the people continue to suffer. Two songs were written by Niamh and performed by her daughter Aleisha Shimizu and produced to go with the Anthology to raise funds to help the people of Sahel. They are all still available separately, Song of Sahel & Island of Hope) and the second anthology is: All The Lonely People, about loneliness and the forgotten people. It, also, include artists views on aloneness. Loneliness has become an epidemic all over the world and includes people of all ages who find they are without the contact of people who show them any care or recognition that they exist. It is bad in nursing homes where often people are thrown away to live out the rest of their lives with out hopes of anyone ever showing them any love or attention ever again. It is not just the elders in our society who suffer from loneliness, it is people of all ages. This Anthology is available for free as a download through Plum Tree Books. There is a link coming up shortly which should lead you to the location to download “All The Lonely People.”
More of what Dr. Niamh Clune has done in her extremely active life is to have worked in Africa for Oxfam and UNICEF in her career as a psychotherapist. She is the founder of Plum Tree Books, which has a philosophy that is unique, in that it encourages creativity in many forms for many ages. She is an award-winning social entrepreneur, an environmental campaigner and a singer/songwriter. She does a great deal more than this brief biography states. To learn more about her visit her blog at http://ontheplumtree.wordpress.com/ and Plum Tree Books on Facebook and the Plum Tree Books and Art site online. If you want, look along the right column of my blog the secret keeper and scroll down. You will find images you can click on which will take you to many of the sites I mentioned and also to the sites where you will find Niamh’s books. jk the secret keeper
vincent van gogh starry night on the rhone
Written by Niamh Clune
May 1st 2013
I can crash down the gates of Heaven
take it by storm.
pluck inspiration from fiery ether
to bring to earth.
to light you when you’re cold
to feed you when you’re hungry
to help you remember from whence you came.
I am then made of air
taking refuge in a tree
laughing.
Sooner or later
that which was stolen from the gods
flares
breeds its own wanting
wave on wave of searing sorrow
surfaces from core
floods through me
forces its way out
crying for Heaven
to be returned to the beautiful
from whence it came.
Warmth came
When you arrived
I was hungry and cold
And had no memory
Of where or who I am
Guide me
Help me soar
Let me fly with you
Through the air
Freeing me from the pain
Give me to Heaven
To be held in an angel’s arms
Until I regain my knowledge
Of who I am
Stay with me awhile
Until the waves of sorrow
Pass from my memories
Crying out the feelings
Screaming their way
Out of me
Finally the floods are released
Letting me finally find peace
With the spirit
Resting inside of me
Am I fractured, when in the wrath of sunlight streaming across my sky,
I cloak myself in darkness cool and safe?
Am I fractured if Colour speaks of secrets more ancient than this sun – speaks of a time before beginning,
when all was unformed, inherent, ready to burst upon this Blue?
When All was tacit – every thought to be heard,
every dream to be shared, every tear to be shed.
I go back there into Creation’s womb to the fiery Coloured salamanders
that spark and illuminate my Heavens.
I know them in essence.
Am I mad for seeing into that other realm?
Then, so be it. Far more beautiful is that Sun.
Unchain my weary spirit from this violent dawning.
a clear enough understanding through perceptions
you are not fractured
there is no madness inside of you
it is excitement in finding
that which you were seeking.
Fire Spirits being your friends,
lit the path of your journey.
No madness in the seeing
a desired destination
inviting one to breathe
to hear the words of your dreams welcoming,
an echoing from the eternal muse,
hearing and understanding
the meaning of your soul
the symbols resound
in their open minds.
Your tears are watering their world
with your release
the acceptance of their inviting freedom
to be your real self.
Here your spirit is accepted
To be free.
The old world
a distant shadow.
You were never fractured
Being able to hear the Colour spirit’s voice
Communicating from a world unknown
to those who cannot hear,
who have no understanding
your openness has the capacity
to perceive
to decipher their meanings
to go to their depth of perception
to understand
to absorb the wordless meanings of Colour’s definitions.
There is no madness
To want to be
to see into this other realm
to have it so open to you
it offers safe passage
to be one with their world
as your weariness fades away.
This is bliss
you have expressed
you have found it
time to celebrate
it is difficult to leave
to re-enter the storm
through which you must pass
to return to a world far less inviting
to leave an understanding
such as this realm has
it draws you into its beauty
into its acceptance of your soul
“Sometimes it’s not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don’t mean.” ― Bob Dylan
“Don’t you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn’t developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don’t expect to see.” ― Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.” ― Frank Herbert, Dune
“I think it happens to everyone as they grow up. You find out who you are and what you want, and then you realize that people you’ve known forever don’t see things the way you do. And so you keep the wonderful memories, but find yourself moving on.”
― Nicholas Sparks, True Believer
“When you were in love, you were capable of learning everything and of knowing things you had never dared even to think, because love was the key to understanding all of the mysteries.” ― Paulo Coelho, Brida
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” ― Edgar Allan Poe
“The more I see, the less I know for sure.” ― John Lennon
“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” ― W.B. Yeats
“What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew
“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.” ― Aldous Huxley
“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together,but do so with all your heart.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“All the world’s a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.” ― Seán O’Casey
“Happiness, you see, its just an illusion of Fate, a heavenly sleight of hand designed to make you believe in fairy tales. But there’s no happily ever after. You’ll only find happy endings in books. Some books.” ― Ellen Hopkins
“I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert
“… it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.” ― Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“The truth about the world is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a fevered dream, a trance with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, whose ultimate destination is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning…The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man’s mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.” ― Cormac McCarthy
“There is no such thing as coincidence in this world. The only thing is hitsuzen. Hitsuzen…A naturally fore-ordained event. A state in which all other outcomes are impossible.” ― CLAMP, xxxHolic, Volume 1
“Sometimes you imagine that everything could have been different for you, that if only you had gone right one day when you chose to go left, you would be living a life you could never have anticipated. But at other times you think there was no other way forward–that you were always bound to end up exactly where you have.” ― Kevin Brockmeier
“I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.” ― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
“A complete stranger has the capacity to alter the life of another irrevocably. This domino effect has the capacity to change the course of an entire world. That is what life is; a chain reaction of individuals colliding with others and influencing their lives without realizing it. A decision that seems miniscule to you, may be monumental to the fate of the world.” ― J.D. Stroube, Caged by Damnation
“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.” ― Thomas Merton, Love and Living
“so here i sit. a sum of the parts. about a third way down this wonderful path, so to speak. and i’ve been thinking lately about a friendship that fell apart with time, with distance, and with the misunderstanding of youth. i’m trying not to confuse sadness with regret. not the easiest thing at times. i dont regret that certain things happened. i understand that perhaps i had a choice in the matter, or perhaps i believe in fate. probably not, but so far actions as small as the quickest glance to events as monumental as death have pushed me slowly along to right here, right now. there was no other way to get here. the meandering and erratic path was actually the straightest of lines. take away a handful of angry words, things once thought of as mistakes or regrets, and i’m suddenly a different person with a different history, a different future. that, i would regret. so here i sit. thinking about a person i once called my best friends. a man who might be full of sadness and regret, who might not give a damn, or who might, just might, remember the future and realize that’s where its at.” ― Chris Wright
“But some things, no matter how unlikely, are just supposed to happen. You know what I mean. Some things just smack of the future and feel part of an overarching rightness. ” ― Marisa de los Santos, Belong to Me
“I am alone this evening, and I am alone because of a cruel twist of fate, a phrase which here means that nothing has happened the way I thought it would. Once I was a content man, with a comfortable home, a successful career, a person I loved very much, and an extremely reliable typewriter, but all of those things have been taken away from me, and now the only trace I have of those happy days is the tattoo on my left ankle. As I sit in this very tiny room, printing these words with a very large pencil, I feel as if my whole life has been nothing but a dismal play, presented just for someone else’s amusement, and that the playwright who invented my cruel twist of fate is somewhere far above me, laughing and laughing at his creation.” ― Lemony Snicket, The Hostile Hospital
“When an inner situation is not made conscious it appears outside as fate.” ― C.G. Jung
“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that has nothing to do with you, This storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up the sky like pulverized bones.” ― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
“How incredibly far our lives drift from where we knew with all certainty they would go. How little today resembles what yesterday thought it would look like.” ― Jim Beaver
“If there is no fate and our interactions depend on such a complex system of chance encounters, what potentially important connections do we fail to make? What life changing relationships or passionate and lasting love affairs are lost to chance?” ― Simon Pegg
“If a dream can tell the future it can also thwart that future. For God will not permit that we shall know what is to come. He is bound to no one that the world unfold just so upon its course and those who by some sorcery or by some dream might come to pierce the veil that lies so darkly over all that is before them may serve by just that vision to cause that God should wrench the world from its heading and set it upon another course altogether and then where stands the sorcerer? Where the dreamer and his dream?” ― Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing
“It troubles him to consider the powerful currents and fine-tuning that alter fate, the close and distant influences, the accidents of character and circumstance.” ― Ian McEwan, Saturday
“TO CHANGE THE FATE OF ONE INDIVIDUAL IS TO CHANGE THE WORLD.” ― Terry Pratchett
“Dreams are what guide us, art is what defines us, math is what makes it all possible, and love is what lights our way.” ― Mike Norton
“The stage is a magic circle where only the most real things happen, a neutral territory outside the jurisdiction of Fate where stars may be crossed with impunity. A truer and more real place does not exist in all the universe.” ― P.S. Baber, Cassie Draws the Universe
“Our destiny is aligned with our heart’s innermost longing, a longing embedded within our soul before birth. This longing is a unique pattern or configuration reminiscent of the constellations in the night sky. When we express (press out) our unique configuration, it shines through us with an otherworldly luminosity, manifesting abundance in our lives and the lives of others. Our sole task is to yoke our inner destiny, thread it through our lives and weave it into the world. All else is just shadows and dust.” ― Thea Euryphaessa, Running Into Myself
“If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life; it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth.” ― Mitsugi Saotome
“When you lost sight of your path, listen for the destination in your heart.” ― Katsura Hoshino
“The magic of purpose and of love in its purest form. Not televison love, with its glare and hollow and sequined glint; not sex and allure, all high shoes and high drama, everything both too small and in too much excess, but just love. Love like rain, like the smell of a tangerine, like a surprise found in your pocket.” ― Deb Caletti
“Those who have failed to work toward the truth have missed the purpose of living.” ― Gautama Buddha
“It’s funny. No matter how hard you try, you can’t close your heart forever. And the minute you open it up, you never know what’s going to come in. But when it does, you just have to go for it! Because if you don’t, there’s not point in being here.” ― Kirstie Alley
“Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose” ― Leonardo da Vinci
“In spite of where we were, how we had gotten here and why we had come, I felt that at this moment of our lives, this place was exactly where we belonged. We were not drifting but rising, rising toward something right and of significance.” ― Dean Koontz
“Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning and purpose to our lives.” ― Brené Brown
“There are so many stupid things that steal that purpose from us. The stupid things that you believe a lie that we ‘re not as important as we really are. That our life isn’t as important as it really is. It’s important to the people that you love, it’s important to the people that you will love in the future, it’s important to the world around you and it’s so important that you fulfill the purpose that only you can fulfill the way that you can fulfill that.” ― Lacey Mosley
“I read of a man who stood to speak
at the funeral of a friend.
He referred to the dates on her tombstone
from the beginning…to the end.
He noted that first came the date of her birth
and spoke of the following date with tears,
but he said what mattered most of all
was the dash between those years.
For that dash represents all the time
that she spent alive on earth…
and now only those who loved her
know what that little line is worth.
For it matters not, how much we own;
the cars….the house…the cash.
What matters is how we live and love
and how we spend our dash.
So think about this long and hard…
are there things you’d like to change?
For you never know how much time is left.
(You could be at “dash midrange.”)
If we could just slow down enough
to consider what’s true and real,
and always try to understand
the way other people feel.
And be less quick to anger,
and show appreciation more
and love the people in our lives
like we’ve never loved before.
If we treat each other with respect,
and more often wear a smile…
remembering that this special dash
might only last a little while.
So, when your eulogy’s being read
with your life’s actions to rehash…
would you be proud of the things they
say about how you spend your dash?”
― Linda Ellis, The Dash Making A Difference With Your Life
“The great essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for.” ― Joseph Addison
“Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity. I don’t see a different purpose for it now.” ― Dorothea Tanning
this is my purpose. this is what makes my life have meaning.
More than one in ten people suffer from chronic loneliness...
Our cultures do little to recognise this alarmingly growing trend. In fact, chronic loneliness can become a disease that eats into the soul causing depression and deep psychological change. The chronically lonely person asks, "What's wrong with me?" Why don't I fit in? Why am I the odd one out?"
All The Lonely People is an Anthology, a collection of words, art, writing, prose, poems, meaningful sentiments about loneliness, photography, pain, fear, feelings, sharing similarities and differences at where our lives are now, where they came from and where they are headed. Niamh Clune had a brilliant idea to bring together the works of artists in various fields with herself included, for she is also a brilliant artist with multiple talents, and had us write about, paint, take photographs in order to present our inner thoughts and feelings about loneliness and also aloneness or solitude. Dr. Clune gathered all the multitude of submissions and selected what she felt worked and put the Anthology together herself, a daunting job, in the least. We all thank her for her strength and sensitivity for doing such a remarkable task. Personally, when I thought about writing a poem or poems, I wasn't sure whether I felt loneliness or understood it. I want to say that it was a difficult struggle to come to terms with the feelings that surround these two states of being as I was writing what ended up being two poems. I threw away my first attempt. I had no idea what it was that I was even writing about. I was confused and debated with my partner what exactly was loneliness. I didn't understand. I rejected the idea that I felt Loneliness. I didn't want to accept that I could possibly feel lonely. The thought made me feel uncomfortable and if it were true then shame accompanied the acceptance of feeling this state. By the time I completed my two poems, I discovered deep inside a place that was quite dark and I found that state of loneliness. It felt awful and I felt so isolated and I couldn't handle how it made me feel. You will understand when and if you read my poems or any of the other poems or prose or look upon the paintings and photographs and just absorb the words of the other writers and you may understand. I put that in my poem on Loneliness, what it made me feel like and how I felt I needed to handle it. And at the last moment, near deadline, I finally think I understood what it really meant to feel Aloneness, a completely different state. As I struggled, I can see from what I read that I believe it is and was a struggle for all of us to experience the state of loneliness at all stages in our lives. This Anthology "All The Lonely People" is something everyone should look at and read. It may help you to understand what it is to be lonely. If you are lonely, it may help you to understand what it is you are experiencing. If you know someone who is lonely, it may help you to reach out to them, to offer a hand to lead them away from their loneliness. For whatever reason, seriously consider downloading this Anthology. It is available for Free right now. I downloaded it and I am amazed at the honesty and the feelings and fear that people see or have experienced or are experiencing. The introduction helps to explain a great deal about chronic loneliness. If you follow this reblogged post back to its origin you will find the complete Introduction there and also the link to where you will be able to download "All The Lonely People" for Free. If the title sounds familiar to some, it is from the lyrics of the Beatles song "Eleanor Rigby." "Ah, look at all the lonely people." Please learn about Loneliness. It is of utmost importance to find an understanding of how devastating a condition this can be. Loneliness eats at your soul. Take a chance by downloading "All The Lonely People." Thank you. Here is a caption from the Introduction that struck me all too closely: "There is the loneliness of those abandoned by the loss or death of a loved one...suddenly vulnerable, forced to begin anew, shifted from the comfort of knowing and loving someone to being surrounded by strangers again." Jennifer Kiley...jk the secret keeper
“You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search.” ― Rick Riordan
“You see, I am a poet, and not quite right in the head, darling. It’s only that.” ― Edna St. Vincent Millay
“Really, he thought, if you couldn’t trust a poet to offer sensible advice, who could you trust?” ― Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
“Is a picture really worth a thousand words? What thousand words? A thousand words from a lunatic, or a thousand words from Nietzsche? Actually, Nietzsche was a lunatic, but you see my point. What about a thousand words from a rambler vs. 500 words from Mark Twain? He could say the same thing quicker and with more force than almost any other writer. One thousand words from Ginsberg are not even worth one from Wilde. It’s wild to declare the equivalency of any picture with any army of 1,000 words. Words from a writer like Wordsworth make you appreciate what words are worth. ” ― Jarod Kintz, This is the best book I’ve ever written, and it still sucks
“To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely-ordered variety on the chords of emotion–a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge.” ― George Eliot, Middlemarch
“Who has not sat before his own heart’s curtain? It lifts: and the scenery is falling apart.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke
“He was a poet; and they are never exactly grown-up.” ― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens
“Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet.” ― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
“For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow.
Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail.
A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.
When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.” ― Hermann Hesse, Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte
Nesta Robert “Bob” Marley, OM (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981) was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician best known for his Reggae records. He was the rhythm guitarist and lead singer for the ska, rocksteady and reggae bands The Wailers (1963-1974) and Bob Marley & The Wailers (1974–1981). Marley remains the most widely known and the best-selling performer of reggae music, having sold more than 75 million albums worldwide. He is also credited with helping spread both Jamaican music and the Rastafari movement to a worldwide audience. He was a poet, philosopher, prophet, Rastafarian, vegetarian, an advocate of love and peace. He had eleven children. Because of his religious beliefs when it was discovered he had a melanoma in his toe he refused for it to be amputated and continued on with his tours and music. Eventually, the cancer was catching up with him and he tried natural treatments which were unsuccessful and on the way home from Germany to Jamaica, they made a stop over in Florida to seek emergency medical treatment. He died at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami (now University of Miami Hospital) on the morning of 11 May 1981, at the age of 36. The spread of melanoma to his lungs and brain caused his death. His final words to his son Ziggy were “Money can’t buy life”. Marley received a state funeral in Jamaica on 21 May 1981, which combined elements of Ethiopian Orthodoxy and Rastafari tradition. He was buried in a chapel near his birthplace with his red Gibson Les Paul or a Fender Stratocaster. His music is so alive as though his spirit were possessing it still today.
