Paper Follies ~ A Bit of Whimsy

Somewhere Between Day 5 and Now

{Day 23: Life is Sweet}

 

...life is sweet ~ natalie merchant

They told you life is hard
It's misery from the start
It's dull and slow and painful 

I tell you life is sweet
In spite of the misery
There's so much more
Be grateful 

Who do you believe? 
Who will you listen to
Who will it be? 

It's high time you decide
It's time you make up your own sweet little mind 

They told you life is long
Be thankful when it's done
Don't ask for more
You should be grateful 

But I tell you life is short
Be thankful because before you know
It will be over 

Cause life is sweet
And life is also very short
Your life is sweet

 

{listen here} ❤

Looking Up

Day 5: {view~ this coming year holds the promise of dreams no longer deferred}

 

A Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up 
like a raisin in the sun? 
Or fester like a sore-- 
And then run? 
Does it stink like rotten meat? 
Or crust and sugar over-- 
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags 
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

~Langston Hughes

 

to find yourself

Chance
may favor obscure brainy aptitudes in you and a love of the past so blind you would venture, always securing permission, into the back library stacks, without food or water because you have a mission: to find yourself, in the regulated light, holding a volume in your hands as you yourself might like to be held. Mostly your life will be voices and images. Information. You may go a long way alone, and travel much to open a book to renew your touch. {Molly Peacock}

 

Morning Poem

 

 

Every morning

the world

is created. 

Under the orange 

sticks of the sun

the heaped

ashes of the night

turn into leaves again 

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---

and the ponds appear

like black cloth

on which are painted islands 

 

of summer lilies. 

If it is your nature

to be happy

you will swim away along the soft trails 

for hours, your imagination

alighting everywhere. 

And if your spirit

carries within it 

the thorn

that is heavier than lead ---

if it's all you can do

to keep on trudging --- 

there is still

somewhere deep within you

a beast shouting that the earth

is exactly what it wanted --- 

 

each pond with its blazing lilies

is a prayer heard and answered

lavishly, 

every morning, 

whether or not

you have ever dared to be happy, 

whether or not

you have ever dared to pray. 

~Mary Oliver

all the rest depend on us

At the entrance, my bare feet on the dirt floor, 

Here, gusts of heat; at my back, white clouds. 

I stare and stare. 

It seems I was called for this: 

To glorify things just because they are. 

{Czeslaw Milosz} 

 

hello there...

{i know not where the time goes. it ebbs and flows with the seasons, but always manages to elude my hands stretching out to capture it. the only place it is captured is in my heart, living as a memory in the corners of my mind.}

{therefore, i remind myself to treasure it in the moment it is here. be in the moment, be in the moment. be in the moment and you will be at peace with the forward march of time and its ever-quickening pace.}

dear ______,

 

Dear ____________ (that's YOU!),

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight.

Extend to them all the care, kindness, and understanding you can muster, and do it with

no thought of any reward.

Your life will never be the same again.

Warmly,

Og Mandino

 

 

 

insight

{Mistakes are the portals of discovery. ~Chinese Fortune}

‡Lucky Numbers: 24, 5, 49, 38, 2, 20‡

sacred water

{expanses of blue are like a steady, soothing mantra that we hear with our hearts}

 

reflecting all : absorbing all

{❤ that my 18-year-old writes poetry and helps me find heart-shaped rocks}

color week: tuesday = white/gray/black