The Threshold

Joyous Nothing

On the Precipice of Six

- Lois Lowry, The Giver 

Firepower

- Emma Thompson,
The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: 
Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film 

Motherhood: A Week in the Life

The Conscience of the Blogger

The play's the thing 
wherein I'll catch
 the conscience of the king. 

- Shakespeare, Hamlet 

Surprised by Joy

- Charles Dickens, David Copperfield 

Gelatinous

Roots

Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie 

How To Be a Good Senior

Answers

Break, Break, Break

  - Alfred Lord Tennyson 

Marrying Agnes

The Metaphorical Bleed

All is Poetry

Weaving the Story Thread

First Year Guilt

Routine Comfort

Crying in the Chapel

If you cannot teach me to fly,

teach me to sing.

J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

The Cinderblocks Remember

Choice of Attention

Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - 
is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. 
In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice 
and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.

-W.H. Auden

Dear Diary

The Usual Suspects

The Geographical Lottery

The Broken Places

Vague Dancing Metaphors & Such

The Politicization of Plagiarism

Private property began the instant somebody had a mind of his own. 

- E.E. Cummings 

Ursula's Demand

Do not consider me now 
as an elegant female intending to plague you, 

but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart. 

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice 

Marching Orders

What does reason know?
Reason only knows what it has succeeded in learning.

- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Then & Now

Slab Work

Rage

I liked being a person.
I wanted to keep at it.

John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

Round & Round

All go to one place: 
all are from the dust, 
and all return to dust.

Ecclesiastes 3:20  

The Indifference Death Knell

The Memory Pool

A Spoonful at a Time

Quiet Assertion

Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves?
Even while we're still alive?
We wish to assert our existence, 
like dogs peeing on fire hydrants.


- Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin  

Silver Linings

The Descent

- John Green, The Fault in Our Stars 

Grief That Does Not Speak

Vicissitude

The Wide World

The universe is wider than our views of it.

-Henry David Thoreau 

The Chain We Forge

"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling.

"Tell me why?"

"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost.

"I made it link by link, and yard by yard, 

I girded it on of my own free will, 

and of my own free will I wore it."

-Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol 

Jealousy

O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-ey'd monster,
which doth mock the meat it feeds on.

-Shakespeare, Othello

Nobody's Perfect

Backdraft

I took a deep breath 
and listened to the old brag of my heart.

I am, I am, I am.

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

The Next Act

 It all seemed to him to have disappeared 
as if behind a curtain at a theater. 
There are such curtains that drop in life. 
God is moving on to the next act.

- Victor Hugo, Les Miserables 

My People

We shape our buildings; 

thereafter they shape us.

-Winston Churchill 

Resisting the Unravelling

It may be raining,
but there's a rainbow above you.

In Another's Eyes

Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, 
and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them,
above and beyond all thought, 
unless we were meant to be immortal. 

- Nathaniel Hawthorne 

Pleasures

One half of the world 
cannot understand 
the pleasures of the other. 

 - Jane Austen

Origins

Consider your origins:
you were not made to live as brutes, 
but to follow virtue and knowledge. 

- Dante Alighieri