A Cowboy Poem du Jour: Dream Ranch

The dream ranch lies

Where cool streams flow

Through deep green meadows

Nourished by snow;

Where the horses are broke

And the boss is not,

Where it's not too cold

And never too hot.

There's hay in the manger

And straw in the stall

With plenty of oats to grain them all.

There's a house in the shade

And a spring on the hill

Where you hear the call of a whippoorwill.

Now the dream ranch, of course,

Just doesn't exist,

But if we didn't dream

think what we'd have missed.

(Colen H. Sweeten, Jr.)

Quotes on Writing

I have a HUGE collection of quotes about writing. I thought I would share a few from time to time. These are offered in no particular order - just as I come across them in one of my quote journals (in this case, the green one):

As a young man, I realized that I was doomed, or elected, or sentenced for life to the writing of poetry. Edwin A. Robinson

I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure. J.D. Salinger

I have drawers in my mind, so many drawers. I have hundreds of materials in these drawers. I take out the images and memories that I need. Haruki Murakami (Japanese novelist)

From "How to Be a Writer" by Lorrie Moore: First, try to be something, anything else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie star/missionary. A movie star/Kindergarten teacher. President of the world. Fail miserably. It is best if you fail at an early age - say 14. Early, critical disillusionment is necessary so that at 15 you can write long haiku sequences about thwarted desire.

If there were a special hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works. John Dos Passos

Dickens makes his books blaze up not by tightening the plot or sharpening the wit, but by throwing another handful of people upon the fire. Virginia Woolf

If only I could manage, without annoyance to my family, to get imprisoned for ten years, without hard labor, and with the use of books and writing materials, it would be simply delightful. Lewis Carroll

Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress. When I get tired of the one, I spend the night with the other. Anton Chekhov

And my favorite from this little group of quotes:

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. Anton Chekhov

Movie Review: Nim's Island

Just home from seeing Nim's Island.

Thumbs up - I liked it. You have to be willing to suspend disbelief and accept some outrageously improbably events, but if you can successfully do that (i.e., if there is a child still inside you somewhere...) it's an entertaining movie. (And it wasn't completely implausible - all motives were well explained.)

It's the story of a girl named Nim (played well by Abigail Breslin) who has lived her entire life on an island in the South Pacific with her marine biologist father. They harness solar energy for electricity to communicate with the outside world. While he's gone on what is supposed to be a two-day field trip, Nim begins answering questions online from her favorite writer, a reclusive novelist researching a story on volcanoes. (Jodie Foster plays the writer, a rare comedy role for her.) After an injury, she tells the novelist that she is 11 years old, hurt, alone, and fearful that her father will not return in time to save their island from 'buccaneers.' After trying to arrange for help from the safe confines of her San Francisco home, the novelist decides that she will go save Nim herself...a difficult proposition for someone who hasn't had an actual adventure of her own in years, perhaps ever.

I wanted to see the movie, in part, because I loved Swiss Family Robinson so much as a child, and this movie did remind me a little bit of that one (a treehouse, friendly, cooperative animals, etc.) Both movies inspire my imagination. They make me want to go live on a tropical island myself.

Quotes on Intelligence/Brains

Some of these are pretty fun and obscure quotes:

I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix. – Sherlock Holmes, in Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone”

I am still learning. – Michelangelo, 1560, age 85

In youth we learn. In age we understand. – Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorisms, 1883

I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweat shops. – Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda’s Thumb, 1980

Joining Mensa means that you are a genius….I worried about the arbitrary 132 cutoff point, until I met someone with an IQ of 131 and, honestly, he was a bit slow on the uptake. – Steve Martin

Word of the Day: Bliss

Follow your bliss.

Fuller Quote:

If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track

that has been there all the while, waiting for you,

and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.

When you can see that, you begin to meet people

who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you.

I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid,

and doors will open where you didn't know

they were going to be. (Joseph J. Campbell, 1904-1987)

bliss: supreme happiness; utter joy or contentment; ecstasy

bliss out: (slang) to experience bliss or euphoria, or to cause someone else to experience bliss or euphoria (Example: "Just follow the trail to the meadow in bloom and bliss out." "This recording is guaranteed to bliss out Mozart fans.")

Some things that have caused me to 'bliss out' (in no particular order):

husband & children (family)

open road (adventure, discovery)

mountains (from a distance or in a canyon)

green furrowed fields in spring

shady woods

water: streams, falls, rivers, ocean waves

hot fudge sundaes

books, poems, quotes, ideas, words

art supplies & office supplies

dogs

fish tacos

crossword puzzles

animals in nature

Japanese gardens

the musty smell of a basement or a museum

rolling hills dotted with cows

small cottages

laundry fresh from the dryer

movie theater popcorn

sailboats on a pier or in a bay

picnics

floating in a swimming pool, ears submerged

perfume

Observation: Very few people need a reality check, but almost everyone needs an occasional 'bliss check.'

Question for Readers: What is your bliss?

Quotes Inspired by Mount Everest

Those Himalayas of the mind are not so easily possessed. There's more than precipice and storm between you and your Everest.
(from memory...author temporarily unknown...can't even find it on the web!)

It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves. (Sir Edmund Hillary)

Poem for Spring

Daffodils

by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd, --

A host of golden daffodils

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the Milky Way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I, at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they

Outdid the sparkling waves in glee;

A poet could not but be gay

In such a jocund company;

I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft, when on my couch I lie,

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.