“Anger diminshes our power to distinguish right from wrong, and this ability is one of the highest human attributes. If it is lost, we are lost. Sometimes it is necessary to respond strongly, but this can be done without anger. Anger is not necessary. It has no value.”

— The Dalai Lama, How To Practice

Barry Seiler: Retaining Wall

Invisible Fathers

Perhaps they are here.
Something is.

Something trails you
sneaking from doorway to doorway
like a cheap detective.

Something you can’t shake:
a feeling with skin.

You turn around.
You turn and turn and turn
dancing on the street corner

like a compass needle
gone crazy.

A poetry collection online. A gem plucked from my referrer logs. Want another? Check this one out:

The Story

The story that forgets to tell itself is no less a story than the one that begs to be told nor is that reluctance a virtue but, simply, a posturing for that attention each story craves. What a sorry sight: a man sits at his desk trying to write a story. He’s been there two, perhaps three hours knowing there is no story to write, and that any story that does get written will be the activity’s story, not his. The typewriter hums distractedly as a man does busy at some menial task. He needs an electric typewriter because he has confused the weary expression “plugged in” with the literal fact of being plugged in. He believes the network of wires of which his fingers are an extension actually is a conductor of words. It’s all a silliness out of Cocteau’s radio and should have been left in that place. The typewriter is humming “It’s quarter to three, there’s no one in the place except you and me.” But now he is hearing the voice of the woman singing in the bedroom softly and seductively, almost to herself. Had she forgiven him their quarrel or was she mocking him, bored, peeved at placing second to that machine? Weary, unable to locate inspiration, he rose from the defeat from which he fashioned pleasure, defeated in his heart again.

Strange Clouds

“They hover on the edge of space. Thin, wispy clouds, glowing electric blue. Some scientists think they’re seeded by space dust. Others suspect they’re a telltale sign of global warming.

They’re called noctilucent or “night-shining” clouds (NLCs for short). And whatever causes them, they’re lovely.”

Nature Writing Resources

A great portal for American nature writing, including several online texts.

t r u t h o u t – Robert Byrd | We Stand Passively Mute

I truly must question the judgment of any President who can say that a massive unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50% children is “in the highest moral traditions of our country”.

This whole speech by US Senator Robert Byrd is very powerful and charged, but this line really stood out for me. Over half the population of Iraq is under 15 years old. Nice to read and hear these voices of dissent.