This is What You Have Been Waiting For

The Gate
by Marie Howe, from What the Living Do

I had no idea that the gate I would step through
to finally enter this world
would be the space my brother’s body made. He was
a little taller than me: a young man
but grown, himself by then,
done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,
rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold
and running water.
This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.
And I’d say, What?
And he’d say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
And I’d say, What?
And he’d say, This, sort of looking around.

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See also:

• "The Poetry of Ordinary Time," On Being, April 25, 2013
• Howe, M. (2008). The kingdom of ordinary time. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. (library)
• Howe, M. (1998). What the living do: Poems. New York: W.W. Norton. (library)
• Howe, M. (1988). The good thief. New York: Persea Books. (library)

The Important Thing

 Leonard Mlodinow, from "Randomness and Choice," OnBeing with Krista Tippett, April 30, 2014:

When you look at your life, if you had to sit down and think about, and I'm talking about in detail, not just the headlines, if you think about all the details of what happened to you, you will find that there was a time where you had the extra cup of coffee, where if you hadn't, you wouldn't have met Person A.

When I look back in my life, I could find so many instances like that. And I had fun tracing some of them. And the course of your life depends on how you react to those opportunities and challenges that the randomness presents to you.

If you're awake and paying attention, you will find that things happen. They might seem good, they might seem bad but the important thing is how you reacted to it.

Dandelion seeds are dispersed by the wind.

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See also: "Stochasticity," Radiolab, 

I Understand

"Without a receipt, you don't exist."

~ Tom Sachs, from Ten Bullets: The Studio Manual

Now and Now and Now

Elliott Alley, January 9, 2014

"You think you will never forget any of this, you will remember it always just the way it was. But you can't remember it the way it was. To know it, you have to be living in the presence of it right as it is happening. It can return only by surprise. Speaking of these things tells you that there are no words for them that are equal to them or that can restore them to your mind. And so you have a life that you are living only now, now and now and now, gone before you can speak of it, and you must be thankful for living day by day, moment by moment, in this presence.

But you have a life too that you remember. It stays with you. You have lived a life in the breath and pulse and living light of the present, and your memories of it, remember now, are of a different life in a different world and time. When you remember the past, you are not remembering it as it was. You are remembering it as it is. It is a vision or a dream, present with you in the present, alive with you in the only time you are alive."

~ Wendell Berry, from Hannah Coulter

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See also:

• "Trust your memory? Maybe you shouldn't," by Jacque Wilson, CNN, May 18, 2013
• "You're Still Mindful," short explanation from Shinzen Young regarding the content of thoughts versus their composition

Signpost

Field Guide
Ballets, Erica Braumby Tony Hoagland, from Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty

Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,
up to my neck in the most precious element of all,

I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon feather
floating on the tension of the water

at the very instant when a dragonfly,
like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin,

hovered over it, then lit, then rested.
That's all.

I mention this in the same way
that I fold the corner of a page

in certain library books,
so the the next reader will know

where to look for the good parts.