If you wish to be wealthy, duck beneath
the topcoat of a well-dressed river
until you come up with a mossy boot
filled with shiners. Spend them wisely.

To tread lightly on the earth,
first breathe in and out slowly
to sense how oxygen walks barefoot,
then observe butterflies, so weightless
even our poetry burdens them.

Avoid mistaking sadness for blueberries,
but if this happens remember only one
of the two tastes like a somersault.

Make nothing more of the moon
than what it is, a great big pebble
hunting for a shoe, not to be confused
with the heart, likewise a vagabond.

Inside of every stray cat lurks a person
who discarded love. Remember this
when you bend over to wind them up.

If you feel compelled to fly a flag,
note how it struggles in vain to be a rainbow
and how envy will make it twist and flap
like a tongue. Consider instead a kite.

If you desire to reach heaven,
have your body buried in an aspen grove.
In time, all of you will wick up
into a loud version of it.

If the din of the human world overwhelms you,
trace the voicebox of an orchid with your finger.
When you get to the aria, listen.
But beware, for beauty can be a lacewing
or a meteor, and lands wherever it pleases.

When you finish reading a poem,
bend it around so you can see
yourself in it. Then laugh out loud.
Everything else now should come easy.

- Malcolm Alexander

Keep smiling, keep fighting, keep thinking, keep loving, keep serving, and keep sacrificing. It’s not about the overnight win, it’s about what kind of human being you choose to be and what kind of legacy you want to live.

- Dr. Cornel West

To understand elephant experience, it is necessary to continue unraveling elephant psychological mysteries—to understand individual differences in elephants in the same way we try with humans. Something that is now scientifically possible.

C.G. Jung once wrote that humans remain a mystery to themselves because they are unique, lacking someone or something against which comparisons can be made. This argument can no longer be made. The practice of using animals as human surrogates for probing into the human mind and human behavior implicitly acknowledges cross-species similarities, but somehow, though sharing the attributes that privilege humans, animals have been denied psyche and rights.

Today, the seemingly impermeable species barrier has eroded, similarities outweigh differences, and a theoretical and perceptual fusion has taken place. Human psychology and animal behavior are brought together in the creation of a trans-species science, a new scientific paradigm, the beginnings of which were described by Charles Darwin more than 150 years ago. Investigations into the natural world no longer revolve around the question “How are humans different?” Instead, they cause us to wonder in awe at our relatedness. How we as humans think, feel, and behave is reflected not just in our mirrors, but in the faces of elephants.

- G.A. Bradshaw, Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Teach Us about Humanity, 16

“The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche

I dwell in Possibility—
A fairer House than Prose—
More numerous of Windows—
Superior—for Doors—

Of Chambers as the Cedars—
Impregnable of Eye—
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky—

Of Visitors—the fairest—
For Occupation—This—
The spreading wide of narrow Hands
To gather Paradise—

- Emily Dickinson

Below is a video of Bill Murray reading same, to a group of construction workers, during the construction of the new location for Poets House in lower Manhattan. I got a kick out of it. Enjoy.

I carry a torch in one hand
And a bucket of water in the other:
With these things I am going to set fire to heaven
And put out the flames of hell
So that voyagers to God can rip the veils
And see the real goal.

- Rābiʻa al-ʻAdawiyya, c.713-c.801 CE

Check out this interview between Stewart and John O’Hara, one of the founders and intellectual leaders of the Tea Party movement.

Part two is here (for some reason it’s not embeddable).

Kudos to Jon (and John) for demonstrating that substantive dialogue is possible across ideological divides. He’s able to break simplistic narratives and engage the essence of a matter. Even if such a conversation still ends in disagreement, it promotes commonality and mutual respect.

I do not take the teachings of the church and its two thousand years of accumulated wisdom lightly. I never have. But in the actual experience of loving my partner, I knew that our love was good. It was as simple as that. Our love as we experienced it was a flowering of our faith, and not its undoing. This was so overwhelmingly apparent that I was immediately suspicious of my own self. The possibilities for self-deception are infinite, I knew. And I was sure “I know that our love is good” was right up there with “It seemed like a good idea at the time” as the phrase of choice of love- and lust-addled adulterers and sundry other kinds of sinner. But at the end of the day, one is left with oneself, one’s conscience (however formed), and the stirrings of the Spirit.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
- Marianne Williamson, from A Return to Love (often incorrectly attributed to Nelson Mandela)

My hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A [person] who takes away another [person's] freedom is a prisoner of hatred … is locked behind bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.

- Nelson Mandela, from his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom (ht)