Tag Archives: Writers

Goethe’s Wisdom

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I’m not sure there’s a whole lot to celebrate this year; I don’t feel entirely full of the joy of the holidays, and I’m not all that excited about buying presents for anyone. The depressing election results seem to have cast a pall on our future and what’s going to happen in just a few short weeks.

I found these Goethe quotes which make a lot of sense to me right now. Even though I really only know about Goethe because of my German professor Angel Boy, and despite the fact that Goethe died in 1832, his words are timeless…

“Man sieht nur das, was man weiß.” (You only see what you know.)

“We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.”

“The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.”

“You must, in studying Nature, always consider both each single thing and the whole.”

It is said that the following words were Goethe’s last as he lay on this deathbed, “More light, more light! Open the window so that more light may come in.” 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is widely regarded as the greatest and most influential writer in the German language, his work having a profound and wide-ranging influence on Western literary, political and philosophical thought from the late 18th century to the present day.

If Each Day…

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Since we’re on the precipice of September’s supermoon and a lunar eclipse, powerful cosmic energies unfold, encouraging us to reflect on the past and prepare for positive transformations.

Again, as above, so below. Are you ready?

(Featured image by Enchanted Seashells)

Forest is Mother

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The ultimate mother...

Be my mother, I said to the trees, in the language of trees, which can’t be transcribed, and they shook their hair back, and they bent low with their many arms, and they looked into my eyes as only trees can look into the eyes of a person, they touched me with the rain on their fingers till I was all droplets, till I was a mist, and they said they would.       (Emily Berry, Canopy: Stranger, Baby)
Photo by vanesa ayala on Pexels.com

Happy Mother’s Day!

Feel It

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Feel the fear and do it anyway.

Susan Jeffers was a psychologist and best-selling author. Although she died in 2012, her universal messages of love and gratitude continues to touch us, along with her belief that joy, not happiness, is the goal of life.

From her book, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway:

And what is joy? It is something that expresses the ebullience of the spiritual part of ourselves. Joy is characterized by lightness, humor, laughter, and gaiety. Lighten up. If you have ever been around a person who is centered and enlightened, you are struck with their humor and ability to laugh at themselves. All the brittleness is gone and only fluidity remains.
So commit! Commit yourself to pushing through the fear and becoming more than you are at the present moment. The you that could be is absolutely colossal. You don’t need to change what you are doing— simply commit to learning how to bring to whatever you do in life the loving and powerful energy of your Higher Self.

The World of Literature Lost a Great One – Cormac McCarthy

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“Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.”
—Cormac McCarthy, The Road

While his raw, savage, and uncompromising style of writing wasn’t REALLY my cup of tea as I’m an unashamed fan of happily-ever-after chick lit, I have read a couple of books by Cormac McCarthy.

MY habit of skipping over sections that contain any sort of violence probably causes me to miss a lot of narrative, but I think I come away with the gist of his message regarding the human affinity for brutality, which I personally abhor.

Even so, I can still be awed by his ability to convey the darkest sides of humanity (inhumanity) and his unflinching bare bones descriptions of people and places I’m happy I never met.

I read that McCarthy was very much influenced by William Faulkner, one of my favorite authors.

I haven’t seen the films adapted from his novels for the same reason I only touched the outer edges of his published works — the dark side doesn’t appeal to me.

Wiki recalls McCarthy this way: “Cormac McCarthy was an American writer who authored twelve novels, two plays, five screenplays, and three short stories, spanning the Western and postapocalyptic genres. He was known for his graphic depictions of violence and his unique writing style, recognizable by a sparse use of punctuation and attribution.”

Cormac McCarthy won the Pulitzer Prize for The Road. It was recently reported that another of his novels, Blood Meridian, will be made into a feature film directed by John Hillcoat, who directed the film adaptation of The Road.

Soul-itude

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It’s always a good time for peace and quiet, what I’ve started to refer to as “soul-itude”.

I need solitude, which is to say, recovery, return to my self, the breath of a free, light, playful air. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I can’t say that I ever read Neitzsche before my son wrote his dissertation, but this quote reveals to me one of the reasons why Nietzsche resonates with him. Like me, my son loves to be outside; hiking, camping, or in the garden — planting, pruning, and thinking.

Where do you find YOUR soul-itude?