"For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning."

- T. S. Eliot

http://bryanpatricktodd.com

In the Train

Fields beneath a quilt of snow
From which the rocks and stubble sleep
And in the west a shy white star
That shivers as it wakes from deep.

The restless rumble of the train,
The drowsy people in the car,
Steel blue twilight in the world,
And in my heart a timid star.

- Sara Teasdale

"A bouquet of clumsy words: you know the place between sleep and awake when you're still dreaming but it's slowly slipping? I wish we could feel like that more often. I also wish I could click my fingers three times and be transported to anywhere I like. I wish that people didn't always say "just wondering" when you both know there was a real reason behind them asking. And I wish I could get lost in the stars.

Listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door, let's go."

- ee cummings

http://tanamachistudio.com/

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what." - Atticus Finch

- Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

"Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies - God damn it, you've got to be kind."

- Kurt Vonnegut

Voyage

I feel as if we opened a book about great ocean voyages
and found ourselves on a great ocean voyage:
sailing through December, around the horn of Christmas
and into the January Sea, and sailing on and on

in a novel without a moral but one in which
all the characters who died in the middle chapters
make the sunsets near the book's end more beautiful.

- And someone is spreading a map upon a table,
and someone is hanging a lantern from the stern,
and someone else says, "I'm only sorry
that I forgot my blue parka; It's turning cold."

Sunset like a burning wagon train
Sunrise like a dish of cantaloupe
Clouds like two armies clashing in the sky;
Icebergs and tropical storms,
That's the kind of thing that happens on our ocean voyage -

And in one of the chapters I was blinded by love
And in another, anger made us sick like swallowed glass
and I lay in my bunk and slept for so long,

I forgot about the ocean,
Which all the time was going by, right there, outside my cabin window.

And the sides of the ship were green as money,
              and the water made a sound like memory when we sailed.

Then it was summer. Under the constellation of the swan,
under the constellation of the horse.

At night we consoled ourselves
By discussing the meaning of homesickness.
But there was no home to go to.
There was no getting around the ocean.
We had to go on finding out the story
                                                    by pushing into it -

The sea was no longer a metaphor.
The book was no longer a book.
That was the plot.
That was our marvelous punishment.

- Tony Hoagland

Typography/Hand Lettering/Word Beauty

I didn't pay attention in school - ever. I lived lost in my own head, and spent class time writing notes to my friends, or scribbling song lyrics and quotes and poetry in my notebooks.  I loved this. I still do this, in fact. Look for me in the conference room at work, in the chair with the best view of the Hudson River, the one where the sunlight will spill just right across my open notebook, and there I'll be, actively listening to whatever is going on (because I am a grown up now and apparently I must) but with my hand busy, deep in a doodle session without even noticing. 

But back in school, I noticed that when it came to doodling, most people drew things - stick figures in compromising positions, little friendly houses, flowers, cartoon characters smoking cigarettes, that kind of thing. But when I "doodled" what came out was always words. Bubble letters, fancy scripts, big block print. Shaded in or left open, just stark outlines and white insides. I'd write the same words or phrases over and over again in all different ways and styles. Some of my friend's names had a weird rhythm to their letters, and to this day I write those names over and over again for no reason when my mind wanders. It's completely creepy to wake up after a phone call reverie to find a piece of paper with the same name written on it 25 times, of course. But something in my hand loves to scrawl those letters out, to play with their length and width and shading. 

I used to think this quirk was just me, that I was a big weirdo. I didn't know there was a whole art form around it. Lo, what the internet has brought to me. 

Now, when I do this stuff it essentially looks like no more than a goofy, manic doodle war splattered all over the page. I am physically artless and I know it. But some people make glory! Glory! Like this guy! My freaking god! 

Tell me you don't want to wallpaper your entire house, your whole stinking planet, in this kind of perfect word beauty. Words are already beautiful, of course. Do this to them, and I'm slain. It's done. Game over for this girl. 

Enjoy! 

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice -
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late enough,
and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do-
determined to save
the only life you could save.

- Mary Oliver