Ted Kerasote

Like hot weather and cities, cats simply had to be respected and endured.

-From Merle's Door

Diana Spechler

Although I was five years his junior, I was this man’s teacher. Also, I had a boyfriend. And although my boyfriend was loyal, loving and tall, our relationship reminded me of childhood, when adults would let me win every game, even though I wished they wouldn’t.

--"Modern Love," New York Times, June 13, 2010

Nicholas Carr

The deeper a technology is woven into the patterns of everyday life, the less choice we have about whether and how we use that technology.

--Nicholas Carr, author of "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains", quote taken from his blog's June 12th, 2010 post: www.roughtype.com

Jacqueline Winspear

She would step aboard [the bus] and from that vantage point look down upon the world as it went about its business. As the bus drew nearer the shops of Oxford Street, already clerks and assistants were walking and running purposefully towards their day's toil. And she could see the moving throng as it formed into tributaries and streams, running ever onward towards the ocean of commerce, a day's work and a day's pay. Each of the people had a life and, if they were fortunate, a family who loved them and who they loved in return--perhaps a wife at home, a babe in the nursery, an aging parent who needed help, brothers and sisters. It was as if she had been looking down upon a landscape of human activity, a charting of everyday endeavor. As she considered, not for the first time, the part she played in the grand scheme, a question came to mind. Was she forging ahead in a stream of her own making, or was she allowing herself to be carried out by a riptide, ever onward towards...what?

-From The Mapping of Love and Death (2010)

Crazy Aunt Purl

I think we get older and scared and we make life so hard, so complex, we pick it or it picks us but either way we start getting into the details so hard and furtively that we lose the 23-year-old way we rushed up each day to see what new thing would show up. We get consumed with the very details of living life.

Plug the hell into life! That attitude of being hopeful and invincible can come back. It exists inside us. The belief in a future of endless possibilities doesn't have to go away just because we get older. We can start making a whole list of why it won't work out ... or make a list of why it will. Or screw the list, just go live some life.

The best times are when you spend more energy living and less time worrying about consequences that may never come to pass. I'm writing this not to lecture you but to remind myself to just relax.

http://www.crazyauntpurl.com/archives/2010/06/happy_hour.php

Vows: Deborah Jacobs and Michael McPhearson

"He shows good manners to everyone," Ms. Jacobs said. "He puts toilet seats down, but not people."

Mr. McPhearson, 45, said he liked the fact that Ms. Jacobs was confident enough to cut her hair very short and go out some Saturday nights without him.

The couple made a pact not to argue about things like who did the dishes or made more money. "You don't need to deal with put-downs or whispers of failure at home," Mr. McPhearson said. "You need to come home to someone who believes in you."

--L.S. Brady (May 21, 2010). Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/fashion/weddings/23VOWS.html?ref=weddings

One-liners

A conclusion is simply the place where you got tired of thinking.

A smoking section in a restaurant is like a peeing section in a pool.

Unknown

When you don't know what to do next, do any damn thing.

Albert Einstein

Three Rules of Work:
1. Out of clutter, find simplicity.
2. From discord, find harmony.
3. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

Metta Meditation

May you be safe from internal and external harm.
May you have a calm, clear mind and a peaceful, loving heart.
May you be physically strong, healthy, and vital.
May you experience love, joy, wonder, and wisdom in this life, just as it is.

Eknath Easwaran

Simply by slowing down the mind - the first purpose of meditation - much tension can be removed. Then we are free to respond to life's difficulties not as sources of stress by as challenges, which will draw out of us deeper resources than we ever suspected we had. A one-pointed mind is slow and sound, which gives it immense resilience under stress.

With a mind like this, we always have a choice in how we respond to life around us.

(Words to Live By, May 18)

Dae Haeng

Go forward with steps that never leave any trace.
Accept everything that confronts you with a positive attitude. ...Just make sure you aren't trying to avoid the things that are coming, and don't try to cling to the things that are leaving.
Become a brave person who is never stained by anything or attached to anything.
Become a true human being, a person who is both the most normal and the most extraordinary.

"No River to Cross"
Zen Master Dae Haeng

Peace Pilgrim, Activist

If your life is in harmony... then your life is full and good, but not overcrowded. If it is overcrowded, you are doing more than is right for you, more than is your job to do in the total scheme of things.

Thomas Paine

It is the direction and not the magnitude which is to be taken into consideration.

Eknath Easwaran

[I]f a negative wave whispers to you one morning, "Just five minutes more...let's make it five after six," send a contrary wave back. Leap out of bed, and the next morning get up at five *to* six. Tell your mind, "If you like, you can even suggest six thirty. I will get up at five thirty and have my meditation." After a few mornings of this, I can assure you that your mind will have nothing more to say on the subject.