“How you can sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can’t make out. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless."

"Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them."

"I say it’s perfectly heartless your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances.” -- Oscar Wilde

find your calm. 

when it isn't there. 

when there is only stress and tension.

it is there. way back there.

find your calm. 

always, know it is there. 

the sun behind the stormiest days

the love in anger sadness and pain. 

find your calm. 

when your mind is not a safe place

know that that is not your heart.

that is your pain. inner peace is beyond. 

find your calm. 

speak to and with your heart. 

even when the connection is static.

be patient and hold space for it every day. 

find your calm.

be endlessly kind to yourself. 

forgive everything. as we will forgive all around us. 

take the time. know thyself as calm. 

these voices sound in the night like softly jingling light bulbs 

that have long retired to couches and front porches

they dangle, they creak, they perturb 

and once in a while, they light for a few seconds

only to go back at once to resting

it is easy to get caught in this momentary flash in the sky, this warmth

to wish and pray, to build pyres and temples

to coax this familiar glow and clarity to come more often

it is easier to do this all this than it is to look down to the market 

where brilliant lights glow all night, and we, by ourselves

have to risk traveling there all alone, and greater yet,

risk that the lights will not be there when we arrive

It’s harder to soften into love than it is to hang onto bitterness and cynicism. Love will crack you wide open. It grabs onto you with its teeth and shakes you like a limp teddy bear that’s been through the washing machine a few dozen too many times. Love’s no fucking joke.

my heart is granite, a fixture in my chest

it lets in no light, impervious in all respects

hardened in its house of origin, weathered and beaten

this work of healing is the slow, nearly impossible softening of stone

where rain will wick right off to where rain will soften and soak

it will never show, but it wants gentle rain, it wants to soften,

to heal to taste to open to slowly crumble and cradle rather than reject

wish me luck, i am the alchemist. 

.

Everything you need is already within you.

.

sometimes i feel, full of fear, full of fear, i am

i sit with fear, make friends with pain, sit through the dark

my heart trembles, my breath jerks my body

and i notice a feeling of complete worthlessnesss

i'm afraid of being nothing. i'm afraid i'm not good enough

for the air i breathe. i know who this is. i know this is 

my inner child. and i recognize the pain. it's so much it can consume me

it can eat me wide open. my skin expands, my heart races. until i find the calm of my breath. my body where it is.

Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience. Camus

.

a sign of a pig stands outside a breakfast place with the note:

I TURN VEGETABLES INTO BACON, what superpower do you have?

the body, bloated with fear, 

will transmorph this fear, slowly sifting into containers

that can be understood, but more importantly,  released. 

words fail to capture these feelings. words left many moons ago along with numbers, logic and it's cousin, time. 

At this time we often begin to experience confusion, fear, enthusiasm, excitement, sadness, numbness, and anger. 

. 

next to the primal fear is tenderness

if i can just step into the fear enough

make enough room to find the space

for myself, for my soul, for my spirit, 

trapped, afraid, singing songs of longing

of pain, of soft tender pain and hope