Eclectic Views

    
(From the book, Prayers for Healing)

December 31
The last day of what has been an uneasy and painful year for me.  I
look forward to dawn tomorrow and, as the days get longer, to begin to
feel my way into renascence.  It is not strange though it is
mysterious that our "New Year" comes at the darkest time in the
seasonal cycle. 
When there is personal darkness, when there is pain to be overcome,
when we are forced to renew ourselves against all the odds, the
psychic energy required simply to survive has tremendous force, as
great as that of a bulb pushing up through icy ground in spring, so
after the overcoming, there is extra energy, a flood of energy that can
go into creation.
         --May Sarton

 
  

    
Just ran across this from the notebooks of poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

"The still rising Desire baffling the bitter Experience, the bitter
Experience still following the gratified Desire."

One wonders what was on his mind at the time.
  

    
My son, Graham, turns 5 today. A whole hand, as he says. I have no
more babies, only kids.
  

    
Ronks!
  

    

> no more babies, only kids

awwww... Do you feel a bit wistful about that, (lrph)? It seems like it, I
can almost hear a gentle sigh in your post.

Happy birthday, Graham!
  

    
Slightly wistful, slightly excited that I will be able to be more of
an individual and not just the Harris Mom, now.  But I guess wistful
was how I felt this morning when I first posted. Now I'm really glad
that he doesn't need me every second (more time for the Well).
  

    

Over in The WELL "Newsletter" conference (we call it <news.> for short) we
were talking about the death of Mickey Spillane. One of our members,
<smendler>, wrote the following homage to the great detective story writer:

     ********************************************


news.3051: Obits (05/24/6+++)

news.3051.764: unity, not uniformity; diversity, not division (smendler)
Tue 18 Jul 06 05:50

 She walked into the room, and my heart stopped.  Her wings hung from her
 shoulders like great downy blankets, blankets that I knew I could wrap
 myself in for years.  She wore a white robe, cinched at her waist by a
 golden rope that just begged to be loosed.  "C'mon, ya big lug," she said,
 with a smile and a wink that promised eternal delights, "time to go.  They
 want to talk to you upstairs."  She didn't have to twist my arm.  I
 grabbed for my hat, and her hand reached out and touched mine.  All the
 pain went away.  "You won't be needing that," she said gently, and in her
 eyes I could see not just stars, but great, spinning galaxies.  "We've
 got one picked out for you.  Just your size."

 Yeah, time to go.  So we went.


   *********************************************






(reposted with smendler's permission)
  

    
Woody Allen, quoted by Dick Cavett:

"You cannot prove the nonexistence of God;
 you just have to take it on faith."
  

    
Johnny Carson introducing the amply-busted Jayne Mansfield on the
Tonight Show:

"And now ladies and gentlemen, here they are."
  

    
(*applause for all*)
  

    
"The Web has transformed a lot of things, including journalism, turning it
 into a self-cleaning and occasionally overheated oven."

  - David Carr, The Media Equation column in today's NY Times