The art of living · the storm
Storms
Some days the sky cracks open. The hard thing arrives — sudden, loud, sure of itself — and leaves a silence heavier than the noise it made. Here we don’t look away. We name them plainly, because even the breaking is part of the becoming.
Latest Storms
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Keep these market dreams!
Market women flow as if in a pattern. Clothes are often the same colors. Hair and smiles too. They seem to always appear the same, together, building, dreaming, together, as a show of force. They are always there, as a group, always a force as women. I spent the day walking down memory lane as…
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Keep these dreamy days!
These days, our dreams are red and raging. We are learning to dwell in tight spaces, learning to dream with lower cases, learning to direct our tongues to lie still and listen. In the poem night vision by Lucille Clifton, she imagines a girl tired and in a tight space. She could either stay tired…
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Keep Fathers!
I always greet this day with two emotions. One of happiness for Zobam and the fatherly role he plays for our children and so many other children. The same happiness holds for my brothers and uncles, mentors and friends, all of whom are fathers who in one way or another, color my life with happiness.…
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Keep being tough!
Some of us are resisting being fried and shaken, being seasoned and oiled, being consumed and destroyed, or being blown into nothingness. We would rather be tough in our essence, tough like kernels that never pop, such that if they eat us, they choke. Gail Chandler has a poem about being old maids like…
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Keep this grace!
I rather live in a world with more grace, more mercy, more love…We are all flawed beings. Only by grace we remain. My son and I started to plant Lillie’s this spring. It was our first time and I didn’t know to put the bulb in one space at a time. We ended up putting…
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Keep your name, Lotanna Belle and Happy Birthday!
To the brightest star we know, the one who forces us to put our hunger on pages, to a wisdom always growing, a patience personified, to all of you that is magical, deeper than any roots we know, to the one we named Belle, beautiful, in memory of our fathers, Happy Birthday. Wishing you so…
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Keep these soulful moments!
I imagine the water of my soul, on certain days, slowly flowing and at peace. There maybe deep longings and memories made of light, still I know moments blazing like bonfires in awe of the sweetness of the dark. Keep this. The past couple of days have not been easy for so many still dealing…
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Keep the messy magical start of your dreams!
At the messy magical start of your dreams, you will be long on ideas and short on time. Somethings will force you to change and change the dreams to save your soul. You will dwell in anything and nothing perfect and terrible. Of all the lives possible to you, the one you will choose is…
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Keep all your failures!
Consider yourself lucky if only unheard sounds joined to stop your flow through air. They call it failure, defeat, disappointment, even how your deficiency stopped you short from a priceless victory. What holds, what binds you still isn’t the failure bearing down your broken bones. Rather all of them, the bones, the air, the unheard…
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Keep peace!
There is a certain kind of peace I long for these days. The kind that lets me be. Free, with no demands. No strings attached, no noise, no worries too. Just a life lived well, my way, because peace flowed like a river.
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Keep stars!
When it’s over, we will still say that we were bright like stars. So many things tried to dim our light, but like stars we stood brighter than the clouds on any given day. When it’s over, we don’t want to regret anything. Not the times we worked with people crazier than the skies on…