John Steinbeck's letter to his son about Love

New York
November 10, 1958

Dear Thom:

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First — if you are in love — that’s a good thing — that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second — There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you — of kindness and consideration and respect — not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply — of course it isn’t puppy love.

But I don’t think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it — and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone — there is no possible harm in saying so — only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another — but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I’m glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Love,

Fa

The Word by Tony Hoagland

Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,

between "green thread"
and "broccoli" you find
that you have penciled "sunlight."

Resting on the page, the word
is as beautiful, it touches you
as if you had a friend

and sunlight were a present
he had sent you from some place distant
as this morning -- to cheer you up,

and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing,

that also needs accomplishing
Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds

of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder

or a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue

but today you get a telegram,
from the heart in exile
proclaiming that the kingdom

still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,

- to any one among them
who can find the time,
to sit out in the sun and listen.

Ecstasy by Hayden Carruth

For years it was in sex and I thought

this was the most of it
            so brief
                    a moment
or two of transport out of oneself
                    or
in music which lasted longer and filled me
with the exquisite wrenching agony
of the blues
        and now it is equally
transitory and obscure as I sit in my broken
chair that the cats have shredded
by the stove on a winter night with wind and snow
howling outside and I imagine
the whole world at peace
                at peace
and everyone comfortable and warm
the great pain assuaged
                    a moment
of the most shining and singular sensual gratification.

Yoga Girl

SEVEN HAPPY ENDINGS by Li-Young Lee

Love, Love, Love, where are we now?

Where did we begin?

I think

one of us wanted to name this,
wanted to call it something!
Shadows on the Garden Wall.
A Man Rowing Alone Out to Sea.
A Song in Search of a Singer.

I think that was me, I wanted to call it something.
And you? You were happy
with a room, two rooms, and a door to divide them.
And daylight on either side of the door.
Borrowed music from an upstairs room.
And bells. Bells from down the street .
Bells to urge our salty hearts.

But I wanted to call it something.
I needed to know what we meant
when we said we, when we said
us, when we said this.

So call it Seven Happy Endings.
That would have been enough.

You see, I woke up one night
and realized I was falling.
I turned on the lamp and the lamp was falling.
And the hand that turned on the lamp was falling.
And the light was falling, and everything the light touched
falling. And you were falling
asleep beside me.
And that was the first happy ending.

And the last one?
it went something like this:

A child sat down, opened a book,
and began to read. And what he read out loud
came to pass. And what he kept to himself
stayed on the other side of the mountains.

But I promised seven happy endings.
I who know nothing about endings.
I who am always at the beginning of everything.
Even as our being together
always feels like beginning.
Not just the beginning of our knowing each other,
but the beginning of reality itself.

See how you and I
make this room so quiet with our presence.

With every word we say
the room grows quieter.

With every word we keep ourselves
from speaking, even quieter.

And now I don’t know where we are.
Still needing to call it something:

A clock the bees unearth,
gathering the over-spilled minutes.

hide and seek by kay ryan

It’s hard not
to jump out
instead of
waiting to be
found. It’s
hard to be
alone so long
and then hear
someone come
around. It’s
like some form
of skin’s developed
in the air
that, rather
than have torn,
you tear.

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person. • W. Somerset Maugham

Bitch by Carolyn Kizer

Now, when he and I meet, after all these years,

I say to the bitch inside me, don’t start growling.   

He isn’t a trespasser anymore,

Just an old acquaintance tipping his hat.

My voice says, “Nice to see you,”

As the bitch starts to bark hysterically.

He isn’t an enemy now,

Where are your manners, I say, as I say,

“How are the children? They must be growing up.”   

At a kind word from him, a look like the old days,   

The bitch changes her tone; she begins to whimper.   

She wants to snuggle up to him, to cringe.

Down, girl! Keep your distance

Or I’ll give you a taste of the choke-chain.

“Fine, I’m just fine,” I tell him.

She slobbers and grovels.

After all, I am her mistress. She is basically loyal.   

It’s just that she remembers how she came running   

Each evening, when she heard his step;

How she lay at his feet and looked up adoringly   

Though he was absorbed in his paper;

Or, bored with her devotion, ordered her to the kitchen   

Until he was ready to play.

But the small careless kindnesses

When he’d had a good day, or a couple of drinks,

Come back to her now, seem more important

Than the casual cruelties, the ultimate dismissal.

“It’s nice to know you are doing so well,” I say.

He couldn’t have taken you with him;

You were too demonstrative, too clumsy,

Not like the well-groomed pets of his new friends.   

“Give my regards to your wife,” I say. You gag

As I drag you off by the scruff,

Saying, “Goodbye! Goodbye! Nice to have seen you again.”

?

a 

lifetime 

of 

wanton 

wandering
leaves

 me

wondering 

what 

to 

do 

with 

the 

wondrousness 

of 

unwittingly 

wanting 

you 

Prayer For The Dying

Fearless people,
Careless needle.
Harsh words spoken,
And lives are broken.
Forceful ageing,
Help me I'm fading.
Heaven's waiting,
It's time to move on.
Crossing that bridge,
With lessons I've learned.
Playing with fire,
And not getting burned.
I may not know what you're going through.
But time is the space,
Between me and you.
Life carries on... it goes on.
Just say die,
And that would be pessimistic.
In your mind,
We can walk across water.
Please don't cry,
It's just a prayer for the dying.
I just don't know what's got into me.
Been crossin' that bridge,
With lessons I've learned.
Playing with fire,
And not getting burned.
I may not know what you're going through,
But time is the space,
Between me and you.
There is a light through that window
Hold on say yes, while people say no
Life carries on
Ohh!
It goes on....oh-ee-oh, whoa-ee-oh ho oh...
I'm crossing that bridge, 
With lessons I've learned.... 
I'm playing with fire, 
And not getting burned.... 
I may not know what you're going through.
But time is the space,
Between me and you.
There is a light through that window.
Hold on say yes, while people say no
Cause life carries on....oh-ee-oh, whoa-ee-oh ho on...
It goes on....oh-ee-on,
It goes on.
Whoa.
Whoa.
Life carries on.
When nothing else matters.
When nothing else matters.
I just don't know what's got into me.
It's just a prayer for the dying.
For the dying.

“We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection.

Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them – we can only love others as much as we love ourselves.

Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed and rare.”  

Brene Brown


 

you 

DON'T

KNOW

ME 

BUT

SOME

broken

part

of 

you 

(needs)

TO

BELIEVE

you 

DO

"We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who's right and who's wrong. We do that with the people who are closest to us and we do it with political systems, with all kinds of things that we don't like about our associates or our society. It is a very common, ancient, well-perfected device for trying to feel better. Blame others. Blaming is a way to protect your heart, trying to protect what is soft and open and tender in yourself. Rather than own that pain, we scramble to find some comfortable ground."

Pema Chodron

Faint Music By Robert Hass

Maybe you need to write a poem about grace.

When everything broken is broken,   

and everything dead is dead,

and the hero has looked into the mirror with complete contempt,

and the heroine has studied her face and its defects

remorselessly, and the pain they thought might,

as a token of their earnestness, release them from themselves

has lost its novelty and not released them,

and they have begun to think, kindly and distantly,

watching the others go about their days—

likes and dislikes, reasons, habits, fears—

that self-love is the one weedy stalk

of every human blossoming, and understood,

therefore, why they had been, all their lives,   

in such a fury to defend it, and that no one—

except some almost inconceivable saint in his pool

of poverty and silence—can escape this violent, automatic

life’s companion ever, maybe then, ordinary light,

faint music under things, a hovering like grace appears.

As in the story a friend told once about the time   

he tried to kill himself. His girl had left him.

Bees in the heart, then scorpions, maggots, and then ash.   

He climbed onto the jumping girder of the bridge,   

the bay side, a blue, lucid afternoon.

And in the salt air he thought about the word “seafood,”

that there was something faintly ridiculous about it.

No one said “landfood.” He thought it was degrading to the rainbow perch

he’d reeled in gleaming from the cliffs, the black rockbass,   

scales like polished carbon, in beds of kelp

along the coast—and he realized that the reason for the word   

was crabs, or mussels, clams. Otherwise

the restaurants could just put “fish” up on their signs,   

and when he woke—he’d slept for hours, curled up   

on the girder like a child—the sun was going down

and he felt a little better, and afraid. He put on the jacket   

he’d used for a pillow, climbed over the railing   

carefully, and drove home to an empty house.

There was a pair of her lemon yellow panties

hanging on a doorknob. He studied them. Much-washed.   

A faint russet in the crotch that made him sick   

with rage and grief. He knew more or less

where she was. A flat somewhere on Russian Hill.   

They’d have just finished making love. She’d have tears   

in her eyes and touch his jawbone gratefully. “God,”   

she’d say, “you are so good for me.” Winking lights,   

a foggy view downhill toward the harbor and the bay.   

“You’re sad,” he’d say. “Yes.” “Thinking about Nick?”

“Yes,” she’d say and cry. “I tried so hard,” sobbing now,

“I really tried so hard.” And then he’d hold her for a while—

Guatemalan weavings from his fieldwork on the wall—

and then they’d fuck again, and she would cry some more,   

and go to sleep.

                        And he, he would play that scene

once only, once and a half, and tell himself

that he was going to carry it for a very long time

and that there was nothing he could do

but carry it. He went out onto the porch, and listened   

to the forest in the summer dark, madrone bark

cracking and curling as the cold came up.

It’s not the story though, not the friend

leaning toward you, saying “And then I realized—,”

which is the part of stories one never quite believes.   

I had the idea that the world’s so full of pain

it must sometimes make a kind of singing.

And that the sequence helps, as much as order helps—

First an ego, and then pain, and then the singing.

“The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.” 
 

“Be grateful to everyone" is about making peace with the aspects of ourselves that we have rejected... If we were to make a list of people we don't like - people we find obnoxious, threatening, or worthy of contempt - we would discover much about those aspects of ourselves that we can't face... other people trigger the karma that we haven't worked out.” Pema Chodron

Intrusion by Denise Levertov

After I had cut off my hands 
and grown new ones

something my former hands had longed for
came and asked to be rocked.

After my plucked out eyes
had withered, and new ones grown

something my former eyes had wept for
came asking to be pitied.

Heart’s Limbo by Carolyn Kizer

I thrust my heart, in danger of decay
through lack of use,
into the freezer-compartment, deep
among the ice-cubes, rolls ready to brown ‘n’ serve,
the concentrated juice.

I had to remember not to diet on it.
It wasn’t raspberry yoghurt.
I had to remember not to feed it to the cat
when I ran out of tuna.
I had to remember not to thaw and fry it.
The liver it resembled
lay on another shelf.

It rested there in its crystal sheath, not breathing,
preserved for posterity.

Suddenly I needed my heart in a hurry.
I offered it to you, cold and dripping,
incompletely thawed.
You didn’t even wash its blood from your fingertips.
As it numbed them, you asked me to kiss your hands
You were not even visibly frightened
when it began to throb with love.

“It is terrible to be an unprotected being.”

“All I know is that I've wasted all these years looking for something, a sort of trophy I'd get only if I really, really did enough to deserve it. But I don't want it anymore, I want something else now, something warm and sheltering, something I can turn to, regardless of what I do, regardless of who I become. Something that will just be there, always, like tomorrow's sky.” 

Luminary by R.S. Thomas

My luminary,
my morning and evening
star. My light at noon
when there is no sun
and the sky lowers. My balance
of joy in a world
that has gone off joy’s
standard. Yours the face
that young I recognised
as though I had known you
of old. Come, my eyes
said, out into the morning
of a world whose dew
waits for your footprint.
Before a green altar
with the thrush for priest
I took those gossamer
vows that neither the Church
could stale nor the Machine
tarnish, that with the years
have grown hard as flint,
lighter than platinum
on our ringless fingers.

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

 

won't you celebrate with me by lucille clifton

won't you celebrate with me what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.


 

Mornings w/ Mozart:Clarinet Concerto in A Major- David Shifrin

Allegro

Adagio

Rondo

"A little neglect can be a benefit. Have you ever noticed how the most splendid lilacs, for instance, are the ones that grow up alongside derelict barns and abandoned shacks? Sometimes beauty needs a bit of ignoring, to properly come into being."

For You, Friend by Ted Kooser

this Valentine's Day, I intend to stand
for as long as I can on a kitchen stool
and hold back the hands of the clock,
so that wherever you are, you may walk
even more lightly in your loveliness;
so that the weak, mid-February sun
(whose chill I will feel from the face
of the clock) cannot in any way
lessen the lights in your hair, and the wind
(whose subtle insistence I will feel
in the minute hand) cannot tighten
the corners of your smile. People
drearily walking the winter streets
will long remember this day:
how they glanced up to see you
there in a storefront window, glorious,
strolling along on the outside of time.

“To belittle, you have to be little.” ― Kahlil Gibran

Destiny by Zero 7

To Do: Noma

Rene Redzepi is my hero today

A Map Of The World by Ted Kooser

One of the ancient maps of the world
is heart-shaped, carefully drawn
and once washed with bright colors,
though the colors have faded
as you might expect feelings to fade
from a fragile old heart, the brown map
of a life. But feeling is indelible,
and longing infinite, a starburst compass
pointing in all the directions
two lovers might go, a fresh breeze
swelling their sails, the future uncharted,
still far from the edge
where the sea pours into the stars.

Heavenly by Mary Oliver

So much laughter is not heard.

Some butterflies troop across the
field and settle on various flowers.
They are hungry and they are some-
thing else as well—good-mannered
might be the word. For they dally;
they turn their eyes this way and
that; they feel into the well of
the flower, patting it. They act,
in short, as if the sweetness to
come is a gift that should first,
and without haste, be anticipated.

Their wings open and close, over
and over. They are that excited.
Though sometimes the curled tube
through which they drink opens
with what seems shyness. And the
foremost legs, dark and thin as
hairs, all but kneel at the rim
of the well. And since I too am
part of the household of the world,
I too am excited as they begin to
sip the gifts of the delicate cosmos,
the hilarious spiderplant, the bold
yucca, the heavy, heavenly lilies.

Poem 42 from “50 Poems”

love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky

E.E. Cummings

Angels by The XX

  

ANGELS

LIGHT REFLECTS FROM YOUR SHADOW
IT IS MORE THAN I THOUGHT COULD EXIST
YOU MOVE THROUGH THE ROOM
LIKE BREATHING WAS EASY
IF SOMEONE BELIEVED ME

THEY WOULD BE
AS IN LOVE WITH YOU AS I AM
THEY WOULD BE
AS IN LOVE WITH YOU AS I AM
THEY WOULD BE
IN LOVE, LOVE, LOVE

AND EVERYDAY
I AM LEARNING ABOUT YOU
THE THINGS THAT NO ONE ELSE SEES
AND THE END COMES TOO SOON
LIKE DREAMING OF ANGELS
AND LEAVING WITHOUT THEM
AND LEAVING WITHOUT THEM

BEING
AS IN LOVE WITH YOU AS I AM
BEING
AS IN LOVE WITH YOU AS I AM
BEING
AS IN LOVE, LOVE, LOVE

AND WITH WORDS UNSPOKEN
A SILENT DEVOTION
I KNOW YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN
AND THE END IS UNKNOWN
BUT I THINK I’M READY
AS LONG AS YOU’RE WITH ME

BEING
AS IN LOVE WITH YOU AS I AM
BEING
AS IN LOVE WITH YOU AS I AM
BEING
AS IN LOVE, LOVE, LOVE