kindness strange poet every thing you do comes back to you...so why not live peacfully and be kind...make your name poetry. 990414 ... meeker bleh 990510 ... fryed Chikkin will generally be betrayed. 000511 ... misstree the other day, on my way to a concert got stopped by someone who had jsut been robbed... cops caught the guys, but they hed his $47 as evidence. he had a train ticket to chicago, but had no money to get home from the train station. i can tell the difference between being shaken because of substances and shaken because of crisis, and he was in crisis--i could amost see his whole world lying mangled and bleeding on the sidewalk. i brought him to the bar so i could get change, he refused my offer to buy him a beer, and gave him the $10 he needed, though cash is incredibly tight right now. i've been in his place before, and there's always been someone there to help. i've been told it was a very kind action, that it will come back to me: to me, it was a small part of returning the favor to all the strangers from my past, and i am very grateful to have been able to. 020316 ... misstree i've spent so much of my life as a mooch, a stray cat, a bum and a waste of skin (rarely by choice), that nowadays any time someone does something nice for me i feel compelled to do something in return, or i get horrific churnings of guilt. if someone gives me a ride, i offer them food or cigarettes. at the bar, i insist on reading poetry for people to wheedle drinks out of them, and get perturbed when they offer to buy me one out of the blue. i make the people that i'm friendly with at work uncomfortable, because i offer extravagant things for simple kindnesses, showing obvious distress when i can't buy a soda for the ride home, or buy them lunch for helping me cash my paycheck. not that it really matters. but i thought i'd clutter up blatherdom with useless information about my insecurities anyway. and you can't stop me. *sigh* 030908 ... 6sy ~ is the only appropriate use of time. it_fits_true the puzzle PEACE is fitogether. 081121 ... hsg time, shattered in peace is healing up(in)art. thIS the art is work(man kind)necessarILY has to offer. 081230 ... hsg "strange poet every thing you do comes back to you...so why not live peacfully and be kind...make your name poetry." wow, i've gone to do just that very thing. i do not remember any point in my life deciding to do it. but it is rather clear to me that it was a decision because it's the only thing that works and the only thing with which forever_spirit has willingness_to_play. kindness IS happiness the paralysis of self_pity only holds its illusion when there is still anger or fear in the heart. our power to remember happiness when we are afraid is directly dependent on our willingness to be kind. then we find that kindness is how ready we are to see things from ulterior_viewpoints. acim defines a miracle as a shift in perception. and yes, it would be a miracle if we could be find happiness while clinging to a mode. i found happiness. i tried to run from it but i just can't seem to shake it because i'm not afraid to leave. 081230 ... camille Kindness Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say it is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you every where like a shadow or a friend. Naomi Shihab Nye 110708 ... lev They say "loss" is the most universal_human_emotion If this is a background_field then what must follow is kindness, aware_and_untaken_for_granted 110708 ... Soma My ocean is turbulent, bright blue and choppy waters I swim the top deftly But at times sink down Here to the dark blathing blue Release worry sharks And gnawing woes Into calming blue waters. Thank_you_blather For calm. For love. For responses. 180420 ... unhinged mantra_of_the_year (deep inside the ocean is still) 180421 what's it to you? who go blather from